Immediately after doing that Barrymore turned around and flung her arms out to soak up the audience’s appreciation, then got back down on the desk on hands and knees, and crawling towards Letterman, planted a kiss on his cheek and cradled the back of his head. When she returned to her seat she ditched the virago act and regressed again, pulling her legs up onto her chair and tucking her knees under her head like a little girl who knew she’d just been really bad.
Of course it could plausibly be argued that 1995 was another era. But it wasn’t really. This episode was looked upon as fondly in March 2018 when Barrymore was back – this time on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There Barrymore, older, if not wiser, reflected on what a ‘real, like, card’ she had been back in the day. In particular, she recalled that Letterman episode. ‘In this very theatre I did something particular with Mr Letterman,’ she said. The audience joined in a fond nostalgic laugh at this memory. Colbert, who had held a strict line during the ‘MeToo’ allegations which had emerged only months earlier and were still going around, prompted Barrymore’s memories. ‘On his birthday. On his birthday,’ he prompted. ‘Famously.’
Barrymore picked up the theme of memory, ‘I literally was like “what”?’ she set off:
I sometimes think. Like it doesn’t feel like me. It’s like a distant memory that just doesn’t seem like me. But it is me. And that’s kinda cool. I’m still down with that. I’m like a mother of two. I’m completely like, you know I don’t know. I’m such a different person now that it doesn’t feel like me but I’m like still into it.
All this was greeted with laughter and applause from the audience and encouragement from Colbert, who then segued into the fact that Barrymore was one of the first famous women in Hollywood to create her own production company. He uses this moment to ask what we can learn from this about female empowerment in Hollywood and the ‘moment we’re in now’.4 At no point is what happened in 1995 looked back at with anything other than fondness.
And why would it? The idea of women exposing themselves to men, making men feel uncomfortable or presenting themselves as especially ‘feminist’ for groping or harassing men was a trope that had itself run unmolested for years. As Stephen Colbert knew from his own experience.
He was a mere rookie television star in May 2007 when he interviewed Jane Fonda. This was a couple of years after Fonda had revived her acting career by playing Jennifer Lopez’s mother-in-law in the hit movie Monster-in-Law. But Fonda was on Colbert’s show to promote her new soon-to-be flop movie called Georgia Rule. At 69 Fonda was clearly keen to demonstrate to audiences that she still ‘had it’. And so during the interview she made a show of sexually stalking her host. The fact that the movie she was promoting was about sexual abuse did not suggest to her that now might not be a good time to do what she did.
Right at the start of the interview she climbed onto Colbert’s lap. She sat there throughout. And at one stage she proceeded to give him a full on-the-lips kiss and told him that she knew he fantasized about her. ‘It’s not exactly how I expected this interview to go,’ said the host. Colbert tried to change the subject several times, including to war-protesting. Hanoi Jane could not be diverted. She kept caressing Colbert, kissing his cheek and fondling him. She started talking about premature ejaculation. This went on interminably.
The media then didn’t seem to think that this scene was in any way unseemly or unsettling. In fact they could not get enough of it. ‘Yeah, Jane Fonda’s Still Got It’ ran the headline in the Huffington Post: ‘Wednesday’s Colbert Report also featured this hilarious – and, we’ll say it, sensual – segment wherein Jane Fonda seemed rather intent on engaging, well, Stephen Colbert’s sensual segment (“Is that a sensual segment in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”).’ The Huffington Post wittered on along these lines and linked it to a piece at Salon that they said also ‘nails it’, apparently ‘giving a little context to Fonda’s awesomeness’.5 Because in 2007 unwanted sexual advances were not only hilarious and sensual. They were also awesome.
Years later, in 2014, Colbert would relate how ‘definitely uncomfortable’ he had been during all this. Yet he relayed this, including details of his wife’s apparent unhappiness about this interview, to a hall full of yet more laughing, applauding people.6 Because, in 2014, unwanted sexual advances were still adorable.
Of course all this changed in 2017 with the first ‘MeToo’ claims against Harvey Weinstein. At that stage there seemed to be a rapid consensus that any and all sexual advances against other people were intolerable, and that no excuse whatsoever could be made for them. The new lines appeared to have been dug very deep as well as very fast. But they left behind plenty of unpleasant things that had happened in the very recent past. After the Weinstein affair everything to do with interaction between the sexes in Hollywood and the wider world was presented by the press as really wildly easy and obvious. Yet it clearly wasn’t, either in Hollywood or anywhere else.
One of the few people in the entertainment industry to slightly buck the precise contours of the digging was the actress Mayim Bialik. In October 2017 when ‘MeToo’ broke she received a certain amount of backlash for an opinion piece in The New York Times in which she talked frankly about the industry she had first entered as (in her words) ‘a prominent-nosed, awkward, geeky, Jewish 11-year-old’. She described how she had ‘always had an uncomfortable relationship with being employed in an industry that profits from the objectification of women’. And she described how she had made ‘conservative’ choices as a young actress, and that guided by her first-generation American parents, she was always careful around people in the industry. This, along with her religious observance, meant that she was the sort of person who – as she explained – was unusual among women in Hollywood.
Bialik’s trajectory had certainly been an unusual one. She had actually left the acting business for some years to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience. Then, after returning to the industry, she starred in The Big Bang Theory sitcom. Now in 2017 she said, ‘I still make choices every day as a 41-year-old actress that I think of as self-protecting and wise. I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy.’7
All of this got Bialik into a certain amount of trouble with other women in Hollywood who claimed that she was ‘victim blaming’ – specifically that she was blaming the way women dressed for the behaviour of men. Bialik was forced to apologize and express regret for some of the interpretations put on her article. But stranger than this was that so much of what Bialik said in the article ran in direct contradiction to what she had done only a year previously.
In February 2016 Bialik was on The Late Late Show with James Corden. One of the other guests on the programme was Piers Morgan. At one stage Corden asked his fellow Brit to explain the recent hashtag ‘Cleavagegate’. Morgan said that he and Susan Sarandon had had a recent bust-up over a tweet of his. At the recent Screen Actors Guild Awards the 69-year-old Sarandon had presented the ‘In Memoriam’ section in a plunging top which had showed her cleavage. Morgan had gone on social media to complain that there was something inappropriate about a tribute to dead friends and colleagues being presented in such revealing attire. In the resulting backlash – one that Morgan could not have expected and the attention from which must have been enormously painful to him – Sarandon tweeted a photo to Morgan of herself in her bra pointing at the statue of the small-penised David of Michelangelo. Morgan went on to explain to the live audience on Corden’s show that thousands of other self-declared ‘feminists’ had also responded by sending him photos of their cleavages by way of protest.
Throughout this explanation Bialik had been sitting between Corden and Morgan in a low-plunging green dress. And at this point she puts a hand on Morgan’s arm and actually manages to interrupt him. ‘You know what – I identify as a feminist. I’m going to do it this way.’ And she stands up and,
with her back to the crowd, pulls her dress apart and exposes her breasts to Morgan. The studio audience go wild with laughter and applause. Both Bialik’s host and her fellow guest clap and laugh as volubly as possible. Something is made of the fact that Morgan actually looks like he is blushing and seems almost embarrassed for a moment. When he stresses again that he likes cleavages but that he doesn’t think they should be on display during tributes to dead colleagues, but that again he loves cleavages, Bialik gets back up. ‘Do you need to see it again?’ and once again (more briefly this time) pulls the top of her dress apart for him.8
None of this could have possibly gone down better. All of it was lapped up by audiences in the studio and at home. In 2016 exposing your breasts was a ‘feminist’ act. Exposing them to a man who had not asked to see them was an especially ‘feminist’ act. And even a woman who claimed for religious and social reasons to be ‘modest’ could willingly and easily delight a studio audience by flashing her breasts – unasked for – at a man.
None of which is to say that women shouldn’t be able to do what they like with their bodies. None of which is to say that celebrities can’t flash their breasts at people to get laughs or attention, or that a woman flashing her breasts at a man is the precise equivalent of a man flashing his penis at a woman. But it is fair to say that women – perhaps especially the most famous and celebrated women – send out very confusing messages. The word ‘mixed’ doesn’t even begin to address it. What is more, these more than mixed messages exist even within one person like Bialik, who in every other way would appear to be holding herself together through this maelstrom.
Love You
One reason why anybody might be confused by the messages being pumped all around the world by the entertainment industry is that it is itself highly confused about what is going on. Only a couple of decades ago there was still some awareness of the complexity of male–female relations. There is a famous scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, released in 1989. At an early stage in the film Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, is in his classroom teaching basic archaeology to a class full of young women. Most of the class seem to be staring rather dreamily at him, and among them is one of their number who throws Professor Jones off his train of thought because she has written ‘Love’ on one eyelid and ‘You’ on the other. And she keeps blinking at him, slowly and meaningfully so that he can read the words and presumably absorb the intention behind them.
There are two memes in this scene that were perfectly familiar until we recently pretended that they weren’t. The first is that the teacher–student relationship in learning can have an undercurrent of sex. The ancient Greeks knew this, though there was then, as there is now, a knowledge that any sexual current must always be resisted. Yet it can be there. And the second theme – more important to our purpose here – is that of the predatory, even vampish younger woman preying on the older, more vulnerable, possibly even helpless male. This was a recognized motif throughout most of history and at least as recently as 1989. It is an awareness that it is not only men who can harass women, but men who can also be the subject of harassment from women. Every man knows of this experience even if they have not experienced it, though most will have at some point. Its softer versions are of the kind Drew Barrymore acted out when she reverted to naughty little girl mode: the message ‘I have been silly, and possibly naughty’. But there are harder versions of it, where a woman can positively stalk a man to extract from him what she wants.
If it weren’t the case that women are practised at these forms of behaviour, just consider the market for women’s clothing and accessories that are meant to present women to men in an even more sexual light than they might otherwise appear. Consider the vogue for fake stick-on nipples. Companies like ‘Just Nips’ often present these items on their website as though they are largely intended for women who have had mastectomies. But the wider marketing and the public awareness of the trend is that the ‘bra-less’ look is known to be an enormous turn-on to men. In the 1990s, in an episode of TV’s Sex and the City, Miranda wore stick-on nipples at a party and got exactly the attention she wanted as men at the party saw the nipples pushing through underneath her party dress and gravitated towards her. Because celebrities have made the ‘bra-less’ look extra desirable, manufacturers have moved in to make more affordable stick-on nipples. In 2017 ‘Just Nips for All’ were advertising products which included nipples that included the ‘cold’ and ‘slightly smaller’ sizes which were ‘the perfect perk’ to nipples that are ‘feeling down’. As the website said, ‘When your look needs a little extra je ne sais quoi, top it off with a pair of these! Cold Nips are everything you’d ever want in a fake nipple . . . and more! What’s more, you ask? They’re subtle. They’re sexy. They’re so freaking cute!’
Of course this can be presented in female-focused ways. It’s all about making women feel better about themselves: absolutely nothing to do with men; without men, women would still go around wearing ice-cold, fake, stick-on nipples. But the marketing for such products makes it perfectly clear what – and who – they are really for. About the ‘freezing’ option the makers boast:
These babies are cheaper than implants, that’s for sure! How do we put this . . . Freezing Nips are the WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] of nipple erectors. They are potent. They are lethal. They’ll cut through glass, steel, Teflon, you name it – while giving everyone at the party something to talk about behind your back – in a good way, OBV (they’re so jealous). Pair with your favorite graphic tee for that effortlessly sexy vibe models are always doing but let’s get real you’ll want them on under your tightest sweater for the hottest cold look in the game.9
Indeed. Why would women want the WMD of nipple erectors other than to make them feel better in general? Any other reason?
Although they don’t get, or seek, much attention from men, the market is filled with products of this type. More commonly, things like bra uplifts. But there is no limit to the potential of the market because there is no limit to the extent that women will go to if they want to go there. In recent years a market has developed for ‘camel toe underwear’. As one female journalist wrote it up:
One of the greatest fashion worries that every woman experiences is the fear that their vagina isn’t plump enough. Isn’t visible enough to the public gaze. You might have a nice bum and boobs…and brain, but if you don’t have a bulging labia, what’s the point? But good news my flat-lipped sisters. If you’ve ever worried that your vagina just isn’t prominent enough through your shorts or yoga pants then worry no more.
Indeed, for in 2017 the ‘push-up bra for your labia’ had been discovered. A piece of underwear coming in a range of different skin tones, ‘that looks like your pants are getting right up into your labia majora’.10 Again, it might be possible to claim that this has nothing to do with men and is just the sort of thing women would like to wear around under their dressing gown at home or under the baggiest pair of trousers or skirt at work. That it is all about how a woman feels about herself. But there are other more obvious reasons why some women might want to make it look like their pants are riding right up into their labia majora.
In recent years even making a fraction of this point has brought people very close to total career destruction. In February 2018 the Canadian academic, author and psychiatrist Dr Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Jay Caspian Kang for VICE News. At one point in the interview Kang made a set of assertions which Peterson countered by saying that the difficult questions weren’t being asked. For instance, he asked his interviewer, ‘Can men and women work together in the workplace?’ The interviewer looked amazed that the question should even be asked and countered it by saying he did know the answer to that and that yes they could because ‘I work with a lot of women’. But Peterson pointed out that it’s only been happening for around 40 years and so is a fairly new thing whose rules we’re still trying to work out. ‘Is there sexual harassment in the workplace? Yes. Should it stop?
That’d be good. Will it? Well, not at the moment it won’t because we don’t know what the rules are.’ And that was where Peterson walked onto very perilous terrain indeed.
‘Here’s a rule. How about no makeup in the workplace?’ he suggested. Jay Kang started laughing and responded, ‘Why would that be a rule?’ Peterson then asked him, ‘Why should you wear makeup in the workplace. Isn’t that sexually provocative?’ Kang couldn’t agree. ‘What’s the purpose of makeup then?’ Peterson asked him. ‘It’s, some people would just like to put on makeup. I don’t know why.’ At which point Peterson explained to him that the purpose of putting on lipstick and rouge is to simulate sexual arousal. Then, even worse, he pointed out that high heels are a tool to exaggerate sexual attractiveness. Peterson explained that he definitely was not saying that women shouldn’t wear high heels or makeup in the workplace. What he was saying was that we shouldn’t be under any illusions about the reactions they are trying to get. This is the game that women who wear makeup and high heels are playing.11 Throughout the interview Kang sometimes looked baffled, sometimes bored, as though the questions Peterson was asking were unbelievably easy to answer and obvious. What he did not at any point do was try to contend with the terrifying Pandora’s box that his guest had opened up.
The Madness of Crowds Page 9