Ruth Sadelle Alderson

This entry moves from gushing to contemplative and critical to critical. This is an entry comprised mostly of pop culture critique along political lines, specifically around issues of sex and race. If that is not fun for you, or you don't think that's a worthwhile use of fannish energy, you should skip this entry.

This entry includes spoilers for all aired episodes of all three of these shows.

Rizzoli and Isles

Have you ever watched a buddy cop show and thought, "If only this were about women"? If so, Rizzoli & Isles is the show for you. Angie Harmon plays detective Jane Rizzoli while Sasha Alexander is medical examiner Maura Isles. Together, they solve cases. They're also the kind of buddy cops who are practically married. They go undercover in a lesbian bar in season one and pretend to be together (unfortunately badly) in season two. They bicker and talk about fashion and facts and people. The show also does a fantastic job of including Jane's family. And I like the male cops. My two favorite things from this season: ( Spoilers )

Haven

Earlier this year, norwich36 linked me to an anonymous thread about shows with strong women characters to catch up on over the summer. Haven was one of them, so I started watching it. I was fascinated by how many people commented back about it when I tweeted about it, particularly for a show I'd never even heard of before. It's really good. Those of you reading this might also like it: the lead character is a woman, and there's a fantastic slash pairing. (Nate/Duke forever! Where is my story where they're exes?) But in the context of this post, what I want to talk about is how Audrey is interestingly nonsexual and nonsexualized, which is not something you see in women on TV. ( Spoilers )

Suits

In case you haven't noticed, I love Suits. The plot is stupid and gets in the way of a really fun show, but the fun stuff is enough to make up for it. My strategy has been to watch it once, and then only watch the fun parts again. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about women, so let's talk about the women on Suits. Parts of fandom (including me) are very excited about the women: Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson, lawyer whose name is in the firm name and who got Harvey out of the mail room and into law school in some fashion we haven't been made privy to yet; Sarah Rafferty as Donna, Harvey's fantastic assistant who gets all the best lines; Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane, paralegal who's smarter than most of the firm but with test-taking anxiety that's keeping her from taking the LSATs; and Vanessa Ray as Jenny, Mike's best friend Trevor's girlfriend who later becomes Mike's girlfriend. (Okay, fandom isn't as fond of Jenny. I think there are strong possibilities for some interesting stories there, but fandom's "OH MY GOD A WOMAN" thing means no one's likely to write them.)

But what I haven't seen yet (largely because I haven't gone looking for Suits conversation outside of the two email threads I'm on) is any discussion of the ways in which the show's portrayal of women is problematic. I think there's a layer of sexism on the show that's particularly insidious precisely because it's under the surface. ( Details/Spoilers )

This is eighth in an occasional series.

( Even though I'm sick of talking about it, here I go again. )

This is the sixth in an occasional series.

Remember when Gap jeans weren't working for me? Well, soon after that, I got some pants from Eddie Bauer, and they were too big, which finally knocked some sense into my head.

When things don't fit, my first thought is that the style doesn't work for me. I never think to try a different size.

So I finally went to JC Penney and tried on jeans two sizes below what I was wearing, and with my coupon, bought all four pairs of this year's versions of what I wore last year that they had in stock.

I now wear a size 8. 8! That's a single-digit number! I almost couldn't buy the pants. If I hadn't had a coupon that expired that day, I might not have.

Some time after I bought jeans at Penney's, I went to Old Navy without much hope of finding anything pants-wise, but browsing anyway. I discovered that some of their pants come in lengths short enough for me to wear. So I was trying one a pair of them, a stretchy kind, and they didn't fit right. Because I had finally realized sizing might be an issue, I went out and got the next size down. And then nearly panicked because their size 6 stretchy pants fit me, although I actually didn't like the style on me. I had half-heartedly planned to do more shopping that day, but I had to go home instead.

I found this via Our Bodies, Our Blog, which is a regular roundup of women's health news.



I'd do as she suggests and tell you how much I weigh, but, as I've mentioned before, I don't own a scale, so I don't actually know how much I weigh now. I weighed 165 in September 2006.

This is something of a follow-up to The law of unintended consequences, bra shopping, and the big fat revolution. (A Personal-Political Entry), although you don't need to read that for this to make sense.

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