After receiving violent threats and a stream of near constant abuse for weeks after my interview on NPR, I had promised myself that I would never, ever, ever blog about “All About That Bass” again. My interactions with fans of the song have been so overwhelmingly negative, to the point of having to contact law enforcement, that I can’t even stand to hear a few notes of it as I scroll on past on the car radio.
However, when someone has a dissenting opinion, and it’s presented reasonably and without threatening myself, my family, or my pets (Yes, even my pets deserved to die painfully because I didn’t care for a song), then I’ve got no problem hearing it. So, when a blogger wrote her own post about why she disagreed with me, I read it.
Warning: Before you go any further, I feel obliged to warn you that if you’re a woman size six to size fourteen, there’s a high likelihood that you will feel that I am unfairly excluding women of your size from the body positivity or fat acceptance movements, or singling you out, personally. If this post makes you feel that way, before you get too angry, I’d like you imagine what it feels like to have that happen in every conversation about body positivity that you’ve ever been involved with. And if that doesn’t work, just think of the last time someone asked you for a favor, despite never doing one for you. That will help you understand my point of view and the frustration I feel a little bit better.
Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.
Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.
Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.
This week’s Wednesday Blogging is all about our favorite songs. If you don’t know where this is going, then you haven’t been paying attention lately. I talked before about how deeply Billy Joel’s “The Entertainer” has influenced my life, so it should be no surprise that all my favorite songs today are his:
• “Vienna” If you look it up, you’ll learn that Billy Joel was inspired by the sight of a very old woman sweeping the street in Vienna. Her usefulness in old age apparently became a meditation on the longevity and the speed of life. This song helps me so much in my day to day. Last Thursday, I was stressing about getting stuff done. I know so many of you are waiting on The Ex, and recaps, and there are posts to write and emails to answer, and I started to feel overwhelmed. I was listening to “Vienna” and the line “Slow down, you’re doing fine,” jumped out at me so hard, I scheduled an entire weekend off for myself. I’m doing fine. I can’t be everything I want to be before my time, and neither can you. So just slow down and be good to yourself.
• “I Go To Extremes” This song is my mental illness anthem. When I’m up, I’m up, but who the hell knows how long I’ll be up? And my lows are so extremely low, “Sometimes I’m tired, sometimes I’m shot/Sometimes I don’t know how much more I’ve got.” Hearing Billy Joel say those words and knowing that he’s still around despite hitting those lows, I know that I can go on through them and make it to the other side.
• “Allentown” No deeper meaning (yet). I just like the song. HEEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAYYYYYYAAAAAAAAY OH WHOA OH TSH OOH AH
• “My Life” I wish I would have had this spiritual awakening a few years ago, when I started reinventing myself, because this sums up my entire attitude now. Think I’m being unprofessional about stuff? “Keep it to yourself/it’s my life.” Wanna advise me about my weight and my health? “I don’t need you to worry for me, ’cause I’m all right.” Think you need to abusively argue with me about something on social media? “You can speak your mind/but not on my time.” If you’re out there trying to embrace yourself and be your most authentic you, do it, and remember the words of the prophet:
• “Tomorrow is Today” This is by far the most important of his songs, to me. In 1970, Billy Joel tried to commit suicide. Let that sink in. That was the year before his first solo album, Cold Spring Harbor, which this song is featured on. And the lyrics to this song were adapted from his suicide note. As a person who can profoundly identify with the suicidal feelings expressed in the song, I am so grateful that he shared this experience. It’s strange, but sometimes fixating on things that aren’t, “Oh, how would your family feel?” and “You’re being so selfish,” works better to talk you out of suicidal thoughts, and this is the thing I’ve decided to fixate on if I feel those thoughts creeping in. If Billy Joel had killed himself in 1970, think of what the world would have lost. Now, I’m not saying I’m as talented and profound as Billy Joel, or my death would deprive the world of a similar cultural impact, but it would definitely deprive me of the chance to see what happens next. For Billy Joel, he would have missed out on a pretty amazing life, but in 1970, everything he has now was inconceivable in the midst of a suicidal depression. The existence of this song reminds me that if I cash in now, I won’t get to see what crazy places my life might go.
• “Famous Last Words” It’s not hard to tell what this song is about. It’s the last song on his last studio album. He’s bidding goodbye to songwriting, after watching years go by as his creative process birthed album after album. And he’s giving himself permission to say goodbye. You’d think this would make me sad. It doesn’t. It’s certainly bittersweet; this song is the finale to an epic catalogue of deeply personal songs written by a beautifully flawed human being. But that doesn’t make it sad. It makes everything complete. If those are truly the last words he has to say, that means we’ll never get a disappointing, rushed album that he isn’t fully into giving us. He sealed his legacy with that song, so he’ll never fade into the same mediocrity as so many of his contemporaries have. That’s pretty much any creative person can hope for, right?
Check out what the other Wednesday Bloggers are listening to:
Hey everybody! I’m aware of the super awful bug with the newsletter (and thank you to the people who noticed and alerted me), but I would really appreciate if you wouldn’t post exactly what is going on with it in the comments on the blog. It should be fixed by now, but I’ve deleted some comments so as not to call attention to the problem and encourage mischief from badly behaved parties, just in case. Don’t take it personally if your comment got trashed, I just did it so, you know. People weren’t like, “Well, in that case, allow me to sign up and harass the shit out of Jenny in yet another venue!”
Anyway, it’s fixed now, thanks to all of you who let me know what was going on, hope you understand if your comment got trashed, and here’s a picture of a duck:
Hey everybody! Just a quick update to share some stuff.
I’m on Ello!If you’re already signed up for the new social network Ello, you can make friends with me or put me under noise there. @JennyTrout
Deirdre Saoirse Moen has created an “Ellora’s Cave Author Exodus Support Thread” If you’re an EC author or editor, you can get some more info here, and share what’s going on with you.
Three 2015 dates have been added to the Meet Me page! There will be more to come, but these are the key three for 2015.
There’s a newsletter now! People have been asking for a newsletter for a long time, and now it’s here. It will be a monthly/bimonthly update with release dates for both Jenny Trout and Abigail Barnette, news, etc. It won’t clutter up your inbox and it won’t be too long. Sign up under the Newsletter tab in the linky bar up top.
Welcome Tez Miller to the blog! She’s coming on board to help moderate comments. Tez’s services as a virtual assistant are available through her website.
I’m going to see Tony Bennett in concert! This doesn’t affect you at all. I’m just really excited about it. Also, I bought the tickets at the casino box office last night, then immediately turned around and won the price back on the first slot machine I played.
Depression is happening. I woke up this morning with the blahs. If I’m scarce, that’s why. Thanks for your continued patience as I fight through my crazy. Right now, it’s not inhibiting my work too much. I’m just kind of… blah. No emotions. For example, I know I’m excited about the Tony Bennett concert, but I don’t feel excited. Ah, brain chemistry. You magnificent bastard.
I shipped UPS from my house like a god damn gladiator. Again, doesn’t affect you, but I’ve never done it before.
You guys know that I have absolutely no love for anti-blogger authors who treat the entire publishing world like their own personal version of high school, right? So just wipe out everything in that sentence after “for” and replace it with, “Jamie McGuire.”
Jamie McGuire. How do I even begin to explain Jamie McGuire?
It’s no secret in the romance publishing world that McGuire and Jane Litte from Dear Author are never going to sit at the same lunch table. McGuire has accused Litte of being an opportunistic stalker, and Litte appears to get a kick out of poking McGuire. You get those stories from the links further up. So when news broke this week that publisher Ellora’s Cave was suing Litte and Dear Author, readers saw through one of McGuire’s tweets:
In fact, she was so happy about the law suit, she tweeted again, hours later:
and again:
It turns out that her shade was about as obvious as a backfiring glitter canon, because everyone on twitter knew what she was talking about. The Mean Girls vibe continued on Facebook, where she and author Theresa Mummert celebrated with macros:
“feeling amused”
So, they’re childishly celebrating the misfortune of their enemies. No harm there, right?
Well… not really. Litte is being sued over her post, “The Curious Case of Ellora’s Cave,” in which Litte writes that while a number of authors and editors have not been paid (some for as long as six months), the company owner has publicly bragged of shopping sprees and started up several side ventures, and that while the company posted $15 million in revenues last year, tax liens and salaries are going unpaid. Ellora’s Cave responded to these concerns by slapping Litte with a lawsuit. Litte stands by the allegations made in her post on behalf of her anonymous sources.
McGuire’s tweet opened a floodgate of responses from authors, readers, and bloggers who immediately knew exactly what she and Mummert were talking about:
If Noted Bully Jamie McGuire has achieved anything here, it’s to simply remind us that she’s not worth our time, money or respect. — Bibliodaze.com (@Bibliodaze) September 27, 2014
Dear Author is an institution, one that’s done more to support readers, writers & romance community than Noted Bully Jamie McGuire ever has.
So Jamie McGuire & Teresa Mummert likes to relish that a blogger is getting sued but highlights a publisher that is screwing authors. — Has (@has_bookpushers) September 27, 2014
As it turns out, when you celebrate a blogger getting sued for exposing business practices that are harming authors, and you, yourself are an author, you come across as kind of a traitor. To McGuire and her sycophants, they’d just won a karmic victory. But many saw it differently.
Like, well. Me, for example. I’m an Ellora’s Cave author. I only have one book there, and it has never been a bestseller, but I love it and I would be heartbroken if it were to end up as part of a bankruptcy settlement. So, I asked for a reversion of my rights last week, after a summer of rumblings from other authors who weren’t happy with their experience with the company. I myself have never had any payment issues with Ellora’s Cave, but having been in the business for almost a decade, I’ve learned that when authors are saying that they aren’t getting paid, other things aren’t getting paid, either. As Litte points out in her post, if a company goes bankrupt, authors can lose their rights permanently, so some Ellora’s Cave authors are faced with a difficult, possibly bridge-burning choice right now. I’ve never met an Ellora’s Cave staff member about whom I could say a bad word, and it pains me to cut ties with a publisher that I feel has treated me well, but in business you have to make hard decisions to protect your interests. For authors who have been with them for twenty or more books, whose careers have begun and flourished there, who have good working and professional relationships with people in the company, the hard decisions are stacking up.
And this is what McGuire is celebrating? That she has been personally vindicated in her ego-fueled spat with Litte through the actions of a company that has recently gained attention for treating its authors badly? You’ll note that when Litte discovered and widely publicized the fact McGuire and other authors had been plagiarized, McGuire called her “courageous” for going public with important information. Litte did something to help authors, and it benefitted McGuire, so she’s courageous; when Litte does something to help authors and McGuire doesn’t benefit in any way, she’ll go ahead and cheer for whoever will tear Dear Author down, even if it means siding against fellow authors.
According to McGuire, we’re all misinterpreting her tweet:
But if that were the case… why not go into more detail? Why not clarify what her posts were actually about? McGuire is aware that we all know she was talking about the Ellora’s Cave suit, but she’s not interested in actually defending herself here. One of her social media talents is convincing others that she’s being victimized, thus causing a bigger stir.
Remind you of anyone?
But McGuire isn’t Regina George, publishing isn’t high school, and the social media Burn Book schtick she’s going for is just as destructive as the one assembled by the Plastics. McGuire’s lack of empathy for her peers and her inability to see past her own interests in order to celebrate some petty revenge seems at odds with the rah-rah supportive attitude she’s shown authors in her clique.
Jamie McGuire: this Ellora’s Cave situation? It isn’t about you. It’s not some cosmic gift crafted especially for you to gloat about. If it was, why would you want it, if it means other writers are facing hardship? Authors out there who just want to keep working and who don’t like the head this situation has come to? Bloggers are viewing this as a clear, serious warning that protecting authors from companies with exploitative business practices is going to result in a messy legal ordeal. So who’ll help you out if a publisher you write for starts to go under? If this plays out the way you clearly want it to in order to serve your petty vengeance, you could one day find that your rights and your royalties go away, and there will be no one willing to stand up for you.
If that happens, well, enjoy the lacrosse team, Jamie.
Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.
Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.
Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.
Last June, a funny thing happened to me. In the same way that some people “find” Jesus, I “found” Billy Joel.
I should just clue you in right now, you’re going to think this is a parody article. It is totally not. I’m fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds to say that you’ve had a spiritual awakening from listening to too much Billy Joel. And I do, admittedly, make a lot of jokes about the near creepy agápe I feel toward him via ye olde social media. This is going to be the uncomfortable part of knowing me where you realize, “Oh. So, when she tweeted that she wanted a lock of her hair delivered to Billy Joel upon her death, she… wasn’t kidding.”
I guess what I’m saying is… brace yourselves. This is going to be the blog post where some of you fall away, overwhelmed by my weirdness. I understand, and it’s been nice knowing you.
By now you’ve doubtless heard of Outlander, Starz’s new entrant in the race for premium channel subscribers. The surprise hit, based on the epic fantasy romance novels by author Diana Gabaldon, isn’t the first series to court a mostly straight female audience; True Blood, adapted from Charlain Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, banked on the appeal of love triangles and quadrangles to rope in viewers who were still hungry for the romance of Twilight, with undeniable success. But unlike True Blood, which tantalized with ever more outlandish sex scenes and airbrushed-to-perfection hardbodies, Outlander presents a fantasy that doesn’t seek to appease the pornography-influenced tastes of a straight male audience.
To put it in simpler terms, Outlander is a drama crafted specifically for the straight female gaze.
From its premier, it’s been clear that the Scottish time-travel romance would be different. While exploring a ruined castle as part of their post-war second honeymoon, smart, introspective Claire Randall (portrayed with quiet intensity by Caitriona Balfe) and her husband, Frank (Tobias Menzies) engage in some marital relations atop a disused table. The scene, in which Frank performs oral sex on Claire, focuses entirely on her pleasure. Unlike most Hollywood couplings, there are no flickering candles, no slow strip-teases to reveal her gravity defying breasts or his rippling six-pack. Perhaps the most shocking part of this scene is how graphic it is in its realism; without the usual cues to the viewer that scream, “you’re watching something sexy,” it feels like voyeurism. It looks like sex that anyone could be having.
Of course, fans of the books aren’t sighing over Frank Randall, but the legendary Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), the young Scottish outlaw who is pushed into an arranged marriage with his time traveling bride. Readers have long known that Jamie stands apart from the romantic heroes offered in books and on screen. While he exudes sexual charisma and comes complete with a tragic backstory (including a tragic story about his back), Jamie has what most romantic heroes don’t: an ego that will take a backseat to his love interest’s feelings. He is dutifully devoted to Claire from the moment they’re affianced, and takes great care to consider not only her physical comfort, but the tender emotional state that Claire, a presumed widow, might be in when faced with a second marriage.
Rather than subjecting the viewer to the dubious consent expected from a medieval wedding night, fans were treated to an entire episode devoted solely to watching the new couple enthusiastically consummate their marriage. Mixed in with the candles and teasing glimpses of naked flesh, there were long conversations and genuine caring on the part of the groom, who had no desire to take his reluctant bride by force. When the two finally seal the deal, it’s fumbling, fast, and for Claire, disappointing; not only is Jamie younger than his wife, but he’s a virgin as well. It’s up to Claire to teach him how to be her lover, a task she’s happy to undertake by the episode’s end. In yet another role reversal, when Claire performs fellatio on Jamie, the audience sees the sexual awakening and inexperienced wonder of the male partner, in contrast to the depiction of a vulnerable woman’s introduction her own sexuality that women have been conditioned to consume.
Both romantic leads are almost supernaturally attractive. Balfe, with her flawless skin and long neck, resembles a porcelain swan, and Heughan’s chiseled features are tempered with kind eyes and shy smiles. Yet when their clothes come off, they don’t have the unobtainable bodies of gym-living actors who pump themselves up before each take. Heughan is undeniably fit, but he isn’t in the same league as the Men’s Health cover models seen on other cable dramas. Balfe is slender, but her stomach isn’t flat and her breasts are natural. The lack of body hair is a bit disturbing, given the time period, but watching the actors together, the viewer sees two people being intimate with each other, instead of two sculpted dolls switching between acrobatic positions.
And that’s where Outlander is truly appealing to the sexuality of its straight female viewers. Instead of painting female pleasure on the male terms of the virgin/whore dichotomy, the audience is shown sex as a normal, matter-of-fact piece of the relationship puzzle. Sure, Jamie and Claire can’t get enough of each other on their wedding night, but their passion is forged by the connections made in the unhurried conversations that make up the bulk of the episode. Jamie is kind and Claire is emotionally conflicted, and their sex isn’t perfect or without fumbling. At one point in the now infamous wedding episode, Jamie stops mid-coitus to make sure he hasn’t hurt Claire. It’s a far cry from the violent thrusting and distressed shouts of a Game of Thrones sex scene.
In further contrast from that HBO juggernaut, Outlander puts sexuality front and center, rather than utilizing a character’s attitude toward sex as shorthand characterization in regards to morality. Neither does it cheapen the value of sex in storytelling by using it as a constant backing track, as Game of Thrones has coyly done to entertain the male gaze during scenes of protracted exposition. Outlander approaches sex in a way that’s only shocking because it isn’t shocking at all. It’s non-violent, sensual, natural, and the woman is framed as more than an object for male pleasure. Female sexuality isn’t demonized, and engaging in sex doesn’t diminish Claire as a character. Outlander is the rare television drama that shows us a woman who is sexually experienced without being the villain of the piece, and a man who sees her desire and pleasure as a participatory experience, rather than an object to edify his own importance.
It’s far too easy to suggest that it’s the repressed desires of bored housewives driving Outlander‘s success. Women know better. When presented with a complex, emotionally engaging plot and sensual content that doesn’t degrade or shame female sexuality, they’ll tune in, gladly. If the growing fan base is any indication, Outlander is the show that television has been needing for a long, long time.
Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.
Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.
Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.
