more about the olympics

I think what really got the goat this time was the story about the switch-up between the two girls for the opening ceremony. Supposedly Lin Miaoke was more attractive than Yan Peiyi, so Lin Miaoke mimed the song “ode to the motherland” for the opening ceremony whilst the real singing voice was recorded by Yang Peiyi.

[...] What I think is truly despicable about the whole thing, regardless of how Yang Peiyi feels about it — is that this makes a farce of the modern concept of the Olympics.

Athletes gathered here from around the world to participate in competitions to see who is the best. This is a gathering designed, not only to see who is the best, but to give recognition to the best.

For me, the idea of not giving due recognition to someone at the Olympics just goes against the grain.

Kyrias, as promised.

Recently our expectations of coverage of women have been lowered, nullified; we have become used to seeing that strange category - celebrity women - pictured constantly, relentlessly, their image before us for no other reason than that they happen to have headed out for a pint of milk with their makeup on skew-whiff. At Beijing we have seen the antithesis of that - we have been treated to the sight of ordinary women reaching extraordinary heights. The women we have been thrilling to aren't in our eyeline because they happen to be the offspring of some 1970s rocker, or because they've bagged a multimillionaire boyfriend. They aren't on screen because they have starved themselves to a size zero - instead, their bodies are a celebration of strength.

From the Grauniad - h/t to the red one: it's a great article, one that meanders through sport and media and celebrity culture, and you all should go read. Viv.id disagrees:

A couple of years ago, Tigtog posted about athletlcs uniforms and the trend toward sexified, midriff-baring, underwear-style women’s uniforms. ...Minute increases in performance cannot account for this difference, otherwise the men would be in skintight clothing also.

No. It’s not about faster, higher, stronger. Women in sports are promoted as sexualised bodies for ogling; men are promoted as performers.

Viv.id have comparison photos of male and female team costumes for various sports - and prove that the difference was not marked in the 1980s. h/t to a comment at Shameless. (false advertising: that Shameless post is totally not shameless. But thanks for that photo!)

Also, Ren brings the boycandy.

on presentational devices at your precious non-politicised Olympic Games

Feng Silu, another volunteer, says they have gone through rigid training to achieve perfection. During the training sessions, they have to stand in five to six-inch heels with their jaws tucked in while balancing a 16-page book on their head and keeping a sheet of paper between their knees, for at least an hour at a time. If either object fell or slipped from place, they would have to start the exercise all over again.

"We only take a few minutes' rest every a couple of hours. You know, we need to adjust our pace and stride constantly to achieve perfection. When it was break time, even bending my legs hurt. And as we have our stockings on during training, we may wear out two or three pairs each day."

From CRIEnglish. (h/t Kyrias, who has promised a post on this in the near future. [edit: It's here.]

Wearing a red dress and pigtails, Lin Miaoke charmed a worldwide audience with a rendition of "Ode to the Motherland".

But the singer was Yang Peiyi, who was not allowed to appear because she is not as "flawless" as nine-year-old Lin.

The show's musical director said Lin was used because it was in the best interests of the country.

From the Beeb, with pictures of the two children.


Marina Hyde, for the most part, wrote the Olympics post I didn't want to:

Amazingly, it's not even the IOC's most unedifying moment of the past fortnight. That honour belongs to their decision to suspend the entire Iraqi Olympic team on the basis that the country's National Olympic Committee had not been properly recognised by the IOC. Clearly, Iraq's real crime was not having the right paperwork, though before rescinding the ban on some (but not all) of the athletes, the IOC chuntered that it was because of suspicions of "political interference in the Olympic movement".

Last week I asked them to clarify why they had never suspected political interference when one Uday Hussein was chairman of the NOC. Unfortunately, they were far too grand to comment, but having since read senior IOC member Dick Pound's book, I discover that they couldn't be sure that Uday was a political placeman. Thank God they didn't put two and two together and make five.

Instead, they focus on issuing directives forbidding athletes from making any political statements. Surely it's time the IOC re-examined their definition of what it means to be political. It seems entirely acceptable for states to politicise the games by using them as propaganda, and for corporations to do the same (22 years of McDonald's sponsorship feels faintly agenda-driven). Only the athletes are warned not to step out of line.

Priorities being what they are, the IOC did not bother to issue similar directives instructing China not to bulldoze homes to make way for the new Beijing. And yet they must have known this would happen, as so many games have been preceded by what we might euphemistically describe as a tidying away of humans who don't match the decor. Consider Mexico City, where police opened fire and killed hundreds of student protesters; or Atlanta, where the organising committee actually built the jail to which many people who committed new offences on the city statute book - like lying down in the street - were dispatched.

that one non-post about Wimbledon

Sometimes when you're writing blog post drafts, you realise they're just burying other drafts. This one I abandoned due to pure derailment (more on that in a moment), but I think it deserves to live.

Coverage of women's sport does, as with most coverage of women's anything, suck. Most often it's not there much at all, but then you get blessed lovely Wimbledon, in which it is there and is often cringe-worthy. Last year the blue person (with a wee bit of help from me) made a beautiful collection of the worst of the worst Wimbledon online news (locked away on Livejournal, gah [edit: It's here, so go read]), and I intended to reprise that this year.

Except:
a) many news sites were so turned on by gorgeous, fabulous Rafa that they reverted to Option 1 - not covering the women's game so much.
b) it was genuinely better. For real. I think this is partly because the worst reporting last year was about Marion Bartoli, who had the gall to play in the final in spite of not being thin. This wasn't just mean-spirited of her, but actually affronting to the laws of nature and acres of newsprint were devoted to the question of how it had happened and how it could be prevented in the future.
c) I was derailed by the discovery that by far the most stupid thing said all fortnight was by one of the female players.

Friends, I give you Sveltlana Kuznetsova, the dimmest bulb in the entire box.

...behind her on the players' terrace there is a commotion, as a posse of photographers cluster around Serena Williams. I have heard that she and Serena are good friends, I say. “Yes, we text. We go out sometimes. I have big respect for African (-American) people. I think I was black in a past life, because I feel so much for African culture. I tell Serena that I want her hair, to have corn rows like her. She laughs at me. She says we all wish for what we don't have. But she teaches me some slang, and shows me dance moves.” A delighted laugh. “I can't shake my body like African people.”

Wow.


For what it's worth, here's a few more:

At The Independent, Paul Newmanat has made his tennis article contain as little tennis as possible. Instead, he faithfully regales us with Venus Williams's comments about...get this...food and babies. They are not even comments about eating babies, which would at least have been more entertaining than this trash.

And the Indy crowns itself as my new least favourite sports site with this from Tim Glover:

Equal pay isn't fair play [...] yesterday's winner in the family affair that was Williams v Williams walked away with prize money of £750,000, the sum that will be earned – really earned – by the men's singles champion today. Parity? It's nice work if you can get it, although for most of the time it can hardly be described in the women's game as work.

At The Times, the women's game is 'tame' and Venus and Serena Williams only reached the final because other players 'the top seeds at Wimbledon capitulated one by one and handed the trophy and the prizemoney to the Williams sisters'. [Fact: black women never deserve anything they've fought for. MOW keeps pointing this meme out.] Fortunately two commenters call Nick Pitt on his bullshit; 'didnt the same two guys play the final before. Didn't the women have upsets all through the two weeks. When this happens to the men it's exciting.'; 'Djokovic and Roddick lost early too. Does that mean men's tennis is in "trouble" ? Serve and volley? Few men play it anymore either.'

Over at the Daily Telegraph, Venus Williams is no longer a woman:

Venus' serve alone would have blown a few hats off in the Royal Box, and it was almost like watching the men's final on a Saturday. Not for nothing are they sometimes referred to as the Williams brothers.

More wow.

The Guardian's David Mitchell is brutally honest about the sexualisation of women's tennis, but is oblivious to the crap behind it:

Ana Ivanovic caused quite a stir at Wimbledon before being knocked out, largely because she's pretty. This has a particularly amusing effect on the BBC's ageing male commentators, who struggle to find a way to refer to the fact without saying anything sleazy. Their discomfort is palpable as they struggle with phrases like "very mobile and athletic", "nice dress", "young lady" and even "lights up the court". They're like tremulous uncles, weary and nervous of their own arousal.

They know they've got to mention it, you see - it's good for the business that is women's tennis. So they've got to say something but they know it mustn't be "I, for one, would like to bang her!" or "What's great about a player like Ivanovic is that she attracts a lot of teenage wankers as well as the tennis fans". They don't want metaphorical jizz on everyone's mental centre court but, at the same time, they know that, if the internet's taught us anything, it's not to underestimate the masturbatory pound.

Did you hear that subtext? Yes, yes, straight women don't masturbate. I guess Sue Barker's constant drooling over Roger Federer is representative of some phenomenon unknown to science.

Americans and their crazy social taboos

I keep meaning to write about Everything That Is Clearly Wrong With This Strange Country, but not doing. I could say I don't know where to begin, but a lot of it dispirits as well as confuses me, and then I have to think of the things America does right instead of getting on the internets and typetty typetty type. (I'm only blogging now because I have some immigration paperwork due. Srsly). Things America does right include icecream, butterflies, the cost of videogames, children (though I am sure that every nation on earth has better children than the UK), mainstream gay clubs, shoes, icecream and icecream. But some things here are terrible to contemplate. I am never going to an American mainstream straight club ever again. (And I really want to write about that here, but damn, it'd be hard). I get a lump in my throat every time I remember that most Americans do not know the taste of bread. (I am going to make them some next weekend. Disaster awaits).

And sometimes I just trip over stuff that I know isn't their fault really. My belief that they urbanised wrong is clearly biased and unfair. They have a whole vocabulary for being polite, and I am not fluent in it. And their social taboos are in places I never expect them. (If I knew what my social taboos were, I couldn't possibly tell you).


I am c/ping from my own Deadjournal here:


Look. We (that is, a large and assorted group of relations) were off foraging for lunch and I ended up in a car that also contained M (driving) and two smaller people - his stepbrother (aged 16) and his half-nephew (aged 11). I was asking the elder of these about his tatts and piercings, pretending I took his replies (and him) very seriously, like you do when people are 16. Nod, smile, He then starts talking about his atheism. Nod, smile, a few supportive comments, 'it's good that you've thought about this for yourself', nod. It seems to me that the two boys have had this discussion before, and the younger is not happy with it. We reached our destination right then, and M's sister is already there, and the 11-year-old is fretting and going over to her.

So I get chastised by M and his sister for not being a responsible adult and somehow putting a stop to that conversation. I have always thought that afflicting the comfortable was part of my remit (at least when I am not being a giant wuss), but no, I am supposed to be shutting the closet door and leaning hard against it. Of course it wasn't that they disapproved - they were concerned about what their elder half-sister would say if her little boy told her of this shocking thing, that a teenage relative talked about atheism and an adult openly encouraged this. Never mind that he surely already knows his step-uncle is an atheist; responsible adults are not supposed to facilitate that kind of conversation. Never mind that neither M nor his sister are Christians themselves.

What.

This kind of thing leads to me feeling anxious.


I've tried discussing it with both of them and they seem to be making mental leaps that I am not capable of at all. (I have an unhelpful belief that one closet is much the same as any other; just a place between two high walls). M says I have it all wrong and I'm just thinking of the elder kid but his thoughts are of the younger; myself, I don't see any reason for an 11-year-old to be shielded from the fact that not all of his family are devout Catholics. Worse, I don't see why anyone would want their child to assume that no one doubted his religion. What am I not seeing?

my feet in a strange land

Taken an hour ago, right after the tornado siren had quieted down. I still can't believe the size of the hailstones around here. (If that skirt looks crappy it's because I made it myself).

I was reading in the sunshine earlier, and left my coffee cup out. It caught about an inch and a half of rainwater. I think my evening plans are off now :/

I have a big post about films and videogames cooking, but it is still a mess. It may yet emerge. Til then, enjoy the weather.

*headdesk*

[source]

This is, of course, the same Australia that banned incandescent lightbulbs! while remaining the per-capita most polluting nation on earth.

Meanwhile the UK government has joined in with the lightbulb ban, while adding a third runway to Heathrow Airport and building our first new coal-fired power station in decades. Yay, governments care about climate change!

why I have the crazies

Sometime last week, when the purple one was clinging to the blue one's legs in the hallway:

he: Is it too early in the morning to get a restraining order?
me: Darling, it's 2pm.

I love these people. But I have been strangely tired and lacking in sleep cycle - I think we all were excepting her purpleness. I felt I was failing at joy because I hadn't the energy. We spent an inordinate amount of time singing silly songs at each other and pretending that we were about to leave the house (no, really, I've got my socks on now, we may even get to Ealing if I can find my hairbrush...)

Some of the silly things we kept on singing: Still Alive (the Portal song), The Mysterious Ticking Noise, They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard, and everything ever by Weebl (particularly Magical Trevor and the Parsley Boobs intro songs). At one point the blueness sent me a text message, from the next room, saying 'What is that mysterious ticking noise?' I replied 'It's a pipe bomb. Yay!!' and then walked over and tickled him.


But now, something even sillier has come up; I discovered that an old classmate of mine was lately featured in the Telegraph, and the Times, and even the Daily Mail - something that is guaranteed to make you feel grown up - when he got caught trying to spy for the Russians.

Cue much laughter and reminiscing between the blue one and myself. This is doubly hilarious because said classmate is the kind of person who I was indeed expecting to surface in the media eventually - in the Fundies column at PHB. Some of the newspaper coverage mentions that he stood for the Tories in a local election in Pendle (and came fourth, within the safest Tory seat north of Watford. I'm genuinely impressed by that level of incompetence); none mention that he's a former member of the BNP. I had a way back in sixth-form (and I still do) of conversing with people about how they came to their opinions no matter what those opinions are, or how far removed they are from conventional logic. This applied to people ranging from soft Christians to hard Muslims to the resident library anarchist. That 9/11 came less than two weeks after we started lower-sixth exacerbated that. I got to know people that way, friends of a sort, but not the sort I'd lend my LHM to, if you get me (a mistake I only made once, with the Christian). He was one of them. I could loathe him yet still talk to him rather than shun him - it seemed only fair, as I was a loathesome person myself back in those days. (according to some, and me, I became otherwise in 2003).

Two years later, on the day before stand-down, he fell victim to the best prank I have ever been involved in. Needless to say, it wasn't my idea. The blue one stole it of the internets. But it was funny as all fuck. The best part was when the victim approached me, about fifteen minutes after we'd put up the lists (hurrah for mixed-gender prank teams - he could only take down half of them) and asked me (who he perhaps trusted as some sort of friend) if I "knew anything about these posters."
"What posters?"
"You know..."
"No, really, what posters?"
"The ones that...say I like...[here he leaned close and whispered loudly]...anal penetration."

I ran away laughing. Three weeks later, I ran into him after an exam, asked him if he'd fared well, and he complained of lengthy answers and limp wrists, made a fucking horrible hand gesture and said 'I'm starting to act like [the blue one]'. I hit him clean across the face without a moment's thought. It would have been extremely hard not to. I packed my cases and left the Ribble Valley a few days later, and excepting results day, I haven't returned since.

Russia are welcome to him, I am sure, but I'd genuinely love to know how his thought process wound up resetting his political compass from the BNP to the Kremlin. But, the only link I know of between defection and wingnuttery is closeted queerness. M'just saying.


A crazy juxtaposition via Bloglines a few days ago: Ren on the inner 'perfect woman', and zombie z on recovering from an eating disorder. I read them one after another, in that order, and the effect was distinctly good. Also, I think my 'perfect woman' is currently Guan Yu. Really, I think I mean that. (When I was a child my 'perfect woman' was definitely Mara Jade, but that was before she sold out).

Kissin' trolls

Just when you're thinking the world is a decent place, up pops an idiot CiFer reminiscing about the good old days when it was cool to rape your spouse. *le sigh* I've got a lot of cynical enjoyment out of leaving youthful, uninformed comments on that thread. I'm not quite there yet myself, so I'm free to see it as a bundle of things (religious/cultural rite + legal arrangement + domestic situation) that do no need to be related, all of which have immensely dodgy histories, and which it is wrong to reward people for bundling together because on the whole those who do it are already winners.


Something everyone should know about: Warner Bros have decided to never again make a film with a female lead. Fine. Fine. That's their prerogative. I'll just never pay money to see one of their films again.


These may be the coolest people in the whole wide world. There's this beautiful idea in ILLUMINATUS! that one can only ever be the caretaker of a space, not its owner, because you are fleshy and temporary while the space, the land, is eternal. By that measure, these 'artists' are probably better caretakers than those who claim to be 'violated' by their squatting in spite of never finding a sign of their presence in four years of occupation.

But wait, no, these are the coolest people in the world. (the sparkly person showed me that.)


and !! Extraordinary place-games indeed. Shame I missed it, but hey.