‘“I love to play strippers and to imitate them,’” says Fey. ‘I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that.’”
Tina doesn’t like the idea of “actually going there,” which presumably means really being a stripper (as opposed to parodying those who do, from the depths of her vast knowledge about strip clubs).
Instead, she (and all of us) need to be “a little bit better than that.”
“That,” presumably, is someone who has indeed wound up there. Someone who is a little bit worse.
Interestingly, in her VF shoot, Tina isn’t exactly adverse to showing skin for the mostly-male readership of the magazine.
When talking about how Tina “became hot,” her boss Lorne Michaels says, when asked “how he helped shape her career”:
“When she got here she was kind of goofy-looking, but everyone had a crush on her because she was so funny and bitingly mean. How did she go from ugly duckling into swan? It’s the Leni Riefenstahl in her. She has such a German work ethic even though she’s half Greek. It’s superhuman, the German thing of ‘This will happen and I am going to make this happen.’ It’s just sheer force of will.”
So Tina’s “becoming hot” was fueled both by hard work and also becoming a “swan,” no longer “goofy looking.” Tina admits to asking for editing photos “I also don’t want to get canceled because of my big old butt” (Tina appears to be a size 4 with butt in proportion) and to remove wrinkles.
Hollywood agent Sue Mengers says approvingly:
“she’s become this sexy, showing-tit, hot-looking woman.”
Mengers had earlier advised Michaels that Fey was too “mousy” to get a spot on Weekend Update.
She got coaching from Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock:
“You are a very attractive woman and you’ve got to work that. You’ve got to pop one more button on that blouse and you’ve got to get that hair done and you’ve got to go! Glamour it up.”
I don’t know, it sounds to me like Tina’s doing some money shots, as well. Maybe because it’s for big bucks, it’s “a little bit better than that.”
Also, Tina prefers the idea of strippers “for comedy,” “to imitate them.” When someone’s a little more in need, maybe has fewer options for making the big bucks like Tina makes, and does things – maybe sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not – that make her appear to be a caricature of something other than the Republican VP nominee, that’s apparently good comic fun for Tina.
But Tina’s proof that the industry, for better or worse, isn’t going to die. Whether we are “better,” like Tina, or worse, like I used to be, or in Tina’s lexicon, much worse – there is still going to be a market for women using our sexuality. As long as that market offers better pay than other accessible markets for our skills, then economic equilibrium will dictate supply. Not Tina’s ideas about virtue.
And is Fey “better?” Well, at the level that she can work the market, she’s still being asked to play the game. She still has a choice in the matter (possibly more of a choice than the strippers she likes to imitate) – she can choose not to listen when Alec tells her she’s “got to pop one more button” and when Mengers says she needs to “show tit” to be on Weekend Update. Tina, not actually being “better,” did listen and took her cue for how to become “white hot” in her field.
Personally, I don’t think there’s “better” and “worse.” I don’t fault Tina for her choices. I don’t fault strippers for theirs. I have written about my views that sex work isn’t typically a good long term proposition for women. Acting, however, usually isn’t either – it just pays well enough that early retirement is more feasible for those who reach Fey's level of play. And even at that level, it's often necessary to choose do a striptease now and then, or pay a price.
There is only way to create a situation in which women, some of whom would not choose sex work if they had a wider array of options, don’t choose it. It’s not for anyone to be “better.” It’s to work towards creating that wider array.
Until then, we can all appreciate the irony set forth by Fey, the so-called thinking man’s sex symbol. We can enjoy imitating her and using her ideas for comedy.
I like Tina Fey. But I think she’s a little bit better than that.
33 comments:
Yeah, that is a transparently hypocritical attitude: It's ok for me to make money off being "hot", because I mostly keep my clothes on, but it's not ok for strippers to make money, because they mostly take their clothes off.
LOVE this post!!
I don't know, I kind of liked the part where she described her response to her husband, when he said, "We’ll go to this strip club ironically": "I was like, 'The fuck you will.'" That's pretty gutsy, in a Dan Savage culture where it's considered unbelievably prudish to suggest that there's anything wrong with a man in a relationship ostentatiously ogling other women, using porn, etc.
So she wants "us" to be "better than that"? Well, I hope she was referring to strip club customers, and I think she may have been, given the context. Please?
The15th, I see where you are getting that, but when someone says "‘“I love to play strippers ... but the idea of actually going there?" That suggests she's talking about herself, and she's talking about doing more than "playing" them which would suggest to me "being" them. Since she didn't express any interest in her attending as a customer, in fact the opposite, the only thing she'd be talking about backing away from is performing at one.
As I mentioned, I do like Fey generally, and I agree with you about her comments about going to a SC ironically. I'm proud to say that my SC anecdotes have totally demystified the SC experience for my husband. It was depressing to me that some of the women brought to SCs as customers by their dates were clearly trying to please their dates but not really wanting to be there. (Of course, there were a number of notable exceptions). I could usually tell who was who, and if she wasn't into it, I'd say: "listen, tell your guy to give me $500 so for you and me to go to the VIP room, we can go in there and chat, and then I'll tell him some stories about what we did that are so wild he'll be afraid to bring you back." It worked pretty well and I met one good girlfriend that way!
PS -- she got rid of the guy and her latest has no interest in their partaking in ironic SC attendance.
I could usually tell who was who, and if she wasn't into it, I'd say: "listen, tell your guy to give me $500 so for you and me to go to the VIP room, we can go in there and chat, and then I'll tell him some stories about what we did that are so wild he'll be afraid to bring you back."
That's brilliant!
Thanks, Amber! Kind of a win-win-win, I thought.
Awesome. (The $500 story.)
Yeah, rereading it, Fey's choice of words was pretty bad if she didn't mean to attack women who work as strippers.
When I read this piece, I thought she was talking about "going there" as in going to a strip club (as a customer), since they were just talking about her husband going to a strip club.
I can see the other interpretation too, now that I've read this post -but I don't think it's the only possible interpretation.
ND -- Fey said:
"I love to play strippers and to imitate them. I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that.”
Again, I think she's referring to activities SHE would personally do, with the contrast between "playing" strippers and "going there."
But for purposes of argument. By "we all need to be better" and "all of us being a little better," I think she's saying "people like me who play around with the stripping idea." But let's allow that it might mean customers too. It can't mean JUST customers, since she says "all of us," namely: all the actors involved. So the only other interpretation is: everyone involved in the industry needs to just be a little better.
I suppose it's a tad better that she'd include customers in this, but it doesn't resolve my overall issue.
Additionally, I think Fey's feelings about strippers are clear from her phrase "to play strippers and to imitate them.. for comedy." She didn't say imitate customers, for comedy.
Yeah, great post.
When women like Fey get to make a buncha movies (even bad ones) like Woody Allen or another comic writer, we'll know we have really arrived. Woody doesn't have to pop any buttons, and nobody would suggest that he did.
We need female equivalents, for him and so many others...
I'm pretty forgiving of these remarks. It's rough for women like Fey, and will continue that way, until there is a real possibility that women can DO comedy, and I don't mean just comic characters and stand-up, but writing, directing, editing, producing... then it won't matter if we pop buttons or not, we will be running the joint. :)
Thanks for illuminating the hypocrisy. I smiled at the $500 vignette.
I enjoy her and respect her life story, but everyone has their weaknesses.
Further to the last point.
The idea of the strippers being the comic value in the whole SC scene is amusing to me. What Fey seems to be missing is that there isn't much comedy in aping someone who herself is playing a part. Typically, the stripper's actions are calculated and acted out. Effective strippers are themselves imitating something.
The humor is in looking at the reactions to this act. When a customer pays $100 for his girlfriend to do a lemon shot off the area three inches above a strippers nipple (yes, that happened) -- I think the funny part is the customer, not the stripper.
When a thirty-year-old stripper acts between 15 and 45 depending on the customer, I think the customers who need that range of ages are funny. When two ruler-straight strippers convince a customer in the VIP room that they are girlfriends to coax out a higher tip and he buys it, I think the customer's gullibility is funny, especially if at least one of the strippers (hi) isn't particularly talented as an actress. When a customer tells a size-2 stripper who's 110 lb that he wishes his wife (size 4) had her figure, and then suggests that the stripper herself could lose a few pounds, there too the humor/pathos doesn't come from the stripper.
Sadly, most of the works of fiction and nonfiction about SCs deal with the stripper as the figure of drama, humor, pity. If I ever wrote one, I'd shift that paradigm.
I find it funny that Alec Baldwin is lecturing Dowd on the need for actors to be attractive. What about him?? He's overweight in a way that a woman could never be, and still play the role of someone who was considered attractive. (I'm not saying overweight people aren't attractive, but they generally aren't played as such on TV.)
Suzie -- I'll be bitchy for a second (OK, it's more of a continuous state of affairs) -- I see Baldwin at the local Coffee Bean occasionally. Or rather, I see someone who I know is AB but who looks totally different from the guy I thought was hot in The Edge. He had all his buttons popped in that one (yes, I'm pro chest hair), but now he needs to keep them buttoned. Major hypocrite.
I think that her commentary is classic slut shaming. I believe the surprise is that she played Palin who is so anti-woman that we naturally believed that her thoughts on women's emancipation were more liberal than they clearly are.
I believe that acting the part of the stripper and then alternately running them down is playing out the Madonna/whore complex. She wants the world to know that even though she reveals her body she really is pure and innocent, it is those other women that are foul. In fact when I first read her commentary one word popped into my head colluder Who needs patriarchy to run us down and discipline us when women like Fey are more than willing to do so.
That is a great post! I also generally like her and find her comedic. I think she has this attitude that she isn't conventionally attractive, and I think that skews the way she comes off when she talks about looks...I am not defending her words at all...but she tends to downplay how conventionally pretty she really is...and that also puts a foul taste in my mouth.
But that does not give her a pass to shame people. We have no business shaming women for the choices they make, especially not in the choices they make to support themselves.
Renee -- yeah, I thought more highly of TF as well, before this. I still give her a lot of credit. But I think for some liberals, sex work and sex workers are an acceptable exception to their views as to rights. I certainly know enough lawyers like that. Some of whom are major SC denizens!
Agree with you: with friends like these...
Ouyangdan, thanks and welcome! I agree, the whole "she's a brunette with glasses so she's not conventionally good looking" thing is irritating. And yeah, in interviews like this one, TF always acts like "I'm professionally hot despite being mousy" while preening in strapless dresses and clearly being conventionally attractive.
I mean, nothing wrong with preening in strapless dresses, I've been known to do that, but if you're going to lose weight to adapt to Hollywood standards and flaunt decolletage, don't pretend it's ironic mousiness.
By "we all need to be better" and "all of us being a little better," I think she's saying "people like me who play around with the stripping idea." But let's allow that it might mean customers too. It can't mean JUST customers, since she says "all of us," namely: all the actors involved. So the only other interpretation is: everyone involved in the industry needs to just be a little better.
She says "All of us should be a little bit better than that." It sounds like in your interpretation, all of us (or maybe just "people like me who play around with the stripping idea") should be above working as strippers, while in my interpretation, all of us should be above going to a strip club (not the same thing, colloquially, as working at a strip club).
So I think it would be good to be charitable about this particular excerpt, since it could be interpreted in more than one way. Also... well okay, I just think my interpretation is right, for reasons too boring to list. But I betcha a million dollars that if we could watch a video of the whole conversation, this fragment would be completely unambiguous, and "going there" would mean "going to a strip club."
Um, that's a virtual bet in virtual dollars of course :-)
So anyway, to me your post is very interesting and relevant to the whole article, using either interpretation of this fragment. I wonder, if I accept that I shouldn't patronize strip clubs, does that mean that I also shouldn't watch 30 Rock, 'cause TF had to slim down and glam up to be on it?
ND, assuming arguendo that your def'n were applicable, it makes Fey look even worse. That would mean "all of us" excludes the strippers themselves. If they're not part of the "all of us" who need to be "a little bit better," that suggests they have no agency, don't count.
Too bad you're talking a virtual bet, the market has been killing me lately.
And yeah, the implication of your interpretation isn't any prettier. Consumers shouldn't help enrich strippers but should help enrich Hollywood actresses who also "show tit" and who "imitate" the strippers and "use that idea for comedy." Nice.
This is a great post. I was in the process of writing a longish commentary about the Vanity Fair article when I came across this through Renee, so I ended up referencing your analysis as well.
I'm still not convinced that Tina meant by her comment what you think you meant by her comment. Actually I'm probably just as sure that she meant "going there" as "going to strip joints as a spectator" rather than stripping herself as you're sure that she meant the opposite. You mention that her comment was made in the context of playing a stripper, but it was also made in the context of her husband going to a strip club, so I think it's up in the air in regards to what she was referencing. I think the question of what she meant is a valid one, but we'll probably have to agree to disagree. There's quite a difference between saying that you think strippers are "less than" and saying that you think stripping as an institution shouldn't be supported (i.e. you won't go to a strip club). Regardless, either way it's a problematic statement, but I think the way you interpret her statement (about stripping or going to the club) changes the degree of severity of the statement.
That said, I'm reluctant to flay Fey to wildly over something like this (especially not knowing exactly what she meant or, possibly how Dowd may have framed what she said to be a bit misleading/ambiguous?). On the whole, I think she's a remarkable person and an positive female (feminist?) role-model. Sure, she's flaunting a bit for Vanity Fair, but she's also smart, capable, accomplished, not obnoxiously thin or (noticeably/overly) body-conscious (besides her discussion of losing weight when she was a writer, which is pretty benign as far as Hollywood/TV industry goes), has an impressive career and a family... She's generally positive about other women, speaks out against sexism, her character on 30 Rock is openly feminist...etc... While I do believe we should call out judgmental "anti-woman"/"slut shaming" behavior when we see it, Fey is not by any means the worst offender. So, she's not perfect. Who is?
Fourth wave – welcome, and thanks! I enjoyed your commentary at your post and want to take another look later today.
With the15th, NascarDaughter and you, all who are pretty brilliant, seeing another interpretation here, while personally I still would have to put my virtual million on mine, we should allow for purposes of any further discussion the possibility that the reference could have been to SC attendees.
For reasons laid out in the earlier comments, I think that’s still very suspect. Either “all of us”= strippers and other women like Tina; “all of us” includes everyone involved – meaning the strippers have to be “better” too; or “all of us” doesn’t even include the strippers because they’re not part of “us” and it’s OK to remove their sustenance under the goal of being “better.” They all pretty much suck.
As I said, I like Fey. I’m not saying she’s the worst offender out there. I could put up posts roasting Ann Coulter or Anita Bryant, but preaching to the choir really isn’t my thing, as a cynical Jewish envelope-pusher. There are a lot of good things to say about her, including some of the things you’ve said. She’ll still be fine despite this critique. But yes, I do think it’s a fair one.
Octo says, "She still has a choice in the matter (possibly more of a choice than the strippers she likes to imitate) – she can choose not to listen when Alec tells her she’s “got to pop one more button” and when Mengers..."
No, Octo, she does not have a choice either if she wants promotion and job security. That is why you are correct when you compare the professions. But it is everywhere and that is what they keep hidden from the young who believe they have a chance because they went to school.
Women whether they are TV newswomen or strippers, are viewed as entertainment in the patriarchies where ever they are in what ever profession so their looks are their sale value. As long as the patriarchy rules women will be selling their hotness first and most.
This war of evolution, is triage based. We do pity the stripper and prostitute because there are degrees of bad working conditions and when you have men who control your body, pimps, bar owners, brothel owners, you are in great physical danger and bad working conditions.
Tina was saying in her way that women must Help the ones who needs it the most and who have the been chance to survive and help others. She does it by showing how foolish are the myths these women must pretend to embody.
Strippers are not bad and worse; actresses better. But the truth is one has more money, security and personal safety than the other although not much. What was the name of the women who was shot in that movie producer's house? They are going to prosecute him again. She seemed to me to be the perfect symbol of how fine hard working women are used and abused in the patriarchy. How unfair everything is; how the deck is stacked; how the boys control it all; and how much you are a dime a way from licking sperm off the floor on your hands and knees for male entertainment.
Even more so now that I see I forgot her name.
Corrections
"Tina was saying in her way that women must help the ones who need it the most and who have the best chance ..."
sorry -- the eyes..
She also meant MEN must be better as well...
GC -- at Tina's stage, she does have a choice. It would mean making less money, but still doing well. I'm not saying she shouldn't try to maximize, just that it is a choice. Not everyone has that choice, but she does.
While it's true that the some sex workers deal with bad working conditions, there's certainly a sliding scale.
"Tina was saying in her way that women must Help the ones who needs it the most"
Whether she was saying strippers need to "be better" by not stripping or cutomers need to "be better" by not attending, neither suggestion is going to "help the ones who need it the most."
But Octo what if she was saying we must be better than to use women in this way? And what helps women is a big book -- you cant SAY it. You can only say something like we have got to be better - do better --- unless what? How would YOU say it in an interview -- ?
I really do not believe she or any of them have a choice unless they want to end up as a hostess in a club like the shot woman. If there were really choices, we would have a different media look and feel.
GC -- the women who work at SCs aren't doing it, typically, because they have an array of better options. "Not using women in this way" translates to defaulting them to a less desirable option. Unless the "not using" person is prepared to pay someone's rent and bills and help her find a better one -- which typically isn't the case. So yeah, I don't think that's helpful.
How I'd say it in an interview is how I've said here. I don't judge any women's decisions, I don't think sex work is a great long term career option but for those who have others it's not my business which they choose, and for those who don't have others, the ONLY way to help is to increase the option pool.
Yeah that is a better answer. I am memorizing it. I bet Tina Fey would too if she could read this.
Better answers is how we should all be a little bit better.
Octo, I think "cynical Jewish envelope-pusher" should be your blog's tagline.
I think Fey is well aware that she's on the same continuum as a sex-worker or stripper. In fact, if a woman who - to reach the pinnacle of success in her chosen career - had to lose weight and otherwise toe the line isn't justified in thinking and saying "what a bunch of stinking crap" I'm not sure who is. The fact that Dowd did this piece is a lot more telling than you're admitting here.
As for Alex Baldwin, eh. He's playing a part, yanking her chain. He knows she's a feminist The comments from the agent offend me more.
I had just started watching the show when this interview came along. I'm now burning through the first season, in which the loathsome Alec Baldwin character has a brief affair with Maureen Dowd.
SMMO, are you alluding to the fact that, in her book, Dowd mentions botox use and being a "Carrie Bradshaw type," which are along the same lines as "popping one more button"?
I haven't read Dowd's books but what I have read annoys the living fuck out of me. It is all "ooh, girly girls are girly and manly men are manly" and I really can't forgive her for the number she did on Al Gore. It's all supposed to be very clever - oh look, traditional gender roles, let's be meta and ironic about it. Frankly I find it boring.
She wrote a piece on Tina Fey for Vanity Fair. First of all, it's Vanity Fair, which is celebrity porn. Secondly it is Dowd, who wants to turn everything into a "ooh, shiny, pretty" moment. Dowd interviewed Fey, then she wrote her story. And of course she emphasized certain things, included certain quotes and left out other ones. Which isn't to say she shouldn't do those things - she's a writer, that's her job. I just don't see the article as "Fey: THE TRUTH."
So yes, Tina Fey is hot now. She's gone through the Hollywood Looks Machine and come out hot. But not, you know, really hot. She's just hot enough to actually be allowed on television. How empowering.
Good point. I liked Ariel Levy's article about Dowd in the times. Although a friend of Dowd's, Levy invokes the latter's hypocrisy.
She quotes Dowd from the latter's book: "I always subscribed to the Carole Lombard philosophy: ‘I live by a man’s code, designed to fit a man’s world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman’s first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick.’” and quips "one could replace 'yet at the same time' with 'consequently.'”
Dowd also claimed [regarding HRC's staying with Bill]: “Hillary was willing to kind of debilitate the integrity of feminism to promote her own and her husband’s interests, and that’s a very manly thing to do.” This from someone who "dated" her boss, Howell Raines, and a succession of powerful men in positions to do her favors.
So yeah. I agree, Dowd likely slanted the coverage here. But I assume she quoted Fey accurately.
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