call me old-fashioned

There’s a public service announcement poster near my gym that says something like, “Pop Quiz: 1) Name three supermodels. 2) Name three of your kid’s teachers.” It sort of captures how I feel when people idolize strippers and porn stars—I have nothing against strippers and porn stars, and only a little bit against Paris Hilton, but I worry that what passes as “sex-positive” is sometimes other-stuff-negative. I worry that what passes as good old fish-don’t-need-bicycles feminism is really consumerism: case in point, a baby tee I saw that said, “No time for boys, I’d rather shop!” (And I have to admit that I saw it while shopping.)

I’m not the only one who’s worried. Jennifer Egan sums up Ariel Levy’s take on the Uncle Tom quality of “female chauvinist pigs” in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review/18egan.html.