blowing old steam

I really applaud Pink's 2006 endeavor on her fourth CD, I'm Not Dead, to re-direct her pop-culture roots towards the finer things in life...like social awareness.

So why the hell am I still blogging about this in 2007?

Actually, it was recently suggested that I listen to Pink's song (also from I'm Not Dead), Dear Mr. President. The song is sweet...good for her for questioning the status quo in America.

Anyhow, this talk of Pink re-sparked an old fire. While I really dug the song Stupid Girls, I still cannot contain my anger regarding the music video. So now that I have a blog and a mental erection on the matter, feel free to watch the whole video...or skip until the time remainder is 1:37...to the portion that I believe is quite counter-productive to actual understandings of women and eating disorders, and any actual progress regarding mainstream perceptions of such diseases.



I am quite bothered that Pink would use a song geared toward female empowerment, and drive it into the ground by reinforcing cultural stigma that misunderstands, humiliates and alienates bulimics.

The video clip wraps the disease in a pretty package, associating it quickly and easily with stupid, ditsy and superficial skanks.

To clarify, the majority of people (men, too) who suffer from eating disorders are intelligent, driven and perfectionist-to-a-fault.

I just want to know why any one would find it fitting to mock a bulimic...because clearly there is nothing more entertaining than an emotionally, spiritually and physically decrepit person who cannot bear the feeling of nourishment, has a chronic inability to process thoughts and feelings, has a deficiency in relationships with others and self, and suffers so desperately from guilt and personal disgust that s/he is willing to suffocate her/himself and reverse a natural and instinctual biological process to be cleansed of “sin.”

Check out an older post of mine to better understand how eating disorders are not really about food.

And on another note...I would also like to dispel this myth that women who adhere to certain hegemonic criteria of "good-looking" are inherently stupid. Take a walk around USC, and you will learn that many fake-baked, bleach blonde Barbies riding on pink beach cruisers, giggling and inserting "like" every 4 words while texting on bedazzled blackberries are actually ambitious young women and high achievers in school.