The print version hasn’t even hit the streets yet, but Lynn Hirschberg’s supremely unflattering New York Times Magazine profile of rapper M.I.A. (nee Maya Arulpragasam) is burning up the blogosphere. Yesterday, M.I.A.—stupidly? brilliantly?—threw oil on the fire by publishing Hirschberg’s personal phone number on Twitter.

You can see why the Sri Lankan-by-way-of London artist would be perturbed: Hirschberg has done a grade-A hatchet job, exposing everything that’s juvenile, contradictory, and hypocritical about M.I.A.’s whole sloppy Warholian/terrorist-chic persona. It should immediately be added to every J-school reading list, right after Janet Malcolm. (If you haven’t read it, Vulture has pulled out the 10 harshest moments, and Rob Harvilla has listed the 11 most undermine-y lines.)

The thing is, M.I.A.’s politics have always been incoherent at best. Do I really need 8,000 words to remind me of this?

This quote from Diplo—M.I.A.’s often-producer and erstwhile boyfriend—offers an interesting lens on Hirschberg’s critical M.O.: “In the end, Maya is postmodern: she can’t really make music or art that well, but she’s better than anyone at putting crazy ideas into motion. She knows how to manipulate, how to withhold, how to get what she wants.”

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing today’s pop artists usually get praised for? Isn’t that kind of the point? But Hirschberg quotes it as some sort of damning gotcha. The way she sniffily details M.I.A.’s obsession with fashion also seems to miss the point—as if fashion undermines her art, when in fact it is her art. Reading Hirschberg’s takedown definitely tickled my shadenfreude center—Stars! They’re just as stupid as us!—but I wish she had tried to engage with M.I.A.’s work more sympathetically. Is there nothing interesting or valuable about her? Is everything to be dismissed so cavalierly? It’s not like I would have preferred a vapid, celebrity interview that took everything M.I.A. says on face value. But Hirschberg’s piece is uncharitable to the point of being critically unhelpful.

(Meanwhile, here’s a smart defense of M.I.A.’s work and aesthetics by Mike Barthel.)

Photograph of M.I.A. by Larry Busacca/Getty Images.

Tags: art, fashion, lynn hirschberg, M.I.A., new york times magazine

If you have not yet seen Sex and the City 2, you have probably heard about its outrageous climax, which takes place at a market in Abu Dhabi. Samantha is wandering around the souk in shorts and a tee-shirt, bra strap showing. She gets chased down by a man who thinks she has stolen a purse. He grabs it—it’s her own purse—and many condom packs drop out. The men stare at her, horrified. Samantha stands up and yells, “Yes! Yes! I have sex,” and comically thrusts her hips as a circle of angry, hairy men crowd around and scowl.

The encounter reminded me of a scene in another movie, also in the genre of posh-lady-traveler-seeks-adventure-in-Arab-lands. In Sheltering Sky, Debra Winger plays Kit Moresby, a pampered, creative type who comes to Morocco to wander. That movie also ends with Kit in an Arab souk, surrounded by a crowd of angry men, also outraged by her loose morals. The movies are worlds apart in many ways. But the difference between these similar scenes hinges on one critical plot twist: Kit is being pilloried because she slept with an Arab man.

Why is that important? For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, European leisure travelers made endless romantic speculations about the “secrets of the harems,” writes Judy Mabor in Veiled Half-Truths. They filled their fantasies with erotic scenes of dark-eyed women, but kept their distance; even as they fantasized, they pitied the poor, backwards Arab women, Mabor writes. In later years, however, Westerners began to feel guilty about these one-sided Orientalist fantasies. In Muriel Spark’s The Mandelbaum Gate, Hideous Kinky, and Sheltering Sky, the Western woman sleeps with an Arab man. The experience turns the tables on the usual fantasy. Now it’s the Western woman who becomes the other, exotic and dangerous. She gets humbled as she is forced, temporarily, to live by Muslim mores. For a while, she leaves her smug cocoon of Western superiority.

In Sex and the City 2, Samantha could easily have slept with an Arab man; she sleeps with everyone else, after all. This might have helped her understand the sex appeal of the veil, and the allure of a world in which sex is not always immediately there for the taking (just as she once experienced this on the show with her tantric yoga instructor lover). But nothing like that happens. The Arab men on the show are all tea-pourers or personal shoppers or camel herders. The cute butlers who are assigned to the women at their posh hotel are off-limits because one is sweetly in love with his wife, and the other is gay. The rest of Arab mankind is a sweaty, hairy, angry mob even Samantha wouldn’t touch. To find the women a suitable man to sleep with, the movie has to dredge up a Danish architect and Aidan, Carrie’s ex-boyfriend, who mysteriously shows up at the souk. They travel 18 hours by plane for a romantic adventure with people they could have met at home in safe, superior New York.

Kit Moresby escapes from the mob, but she is forever chastened out of her louche, pampered existence. Samantha heads to the airport, huffing, “New Middle East, my ass!” Soon after, we cut to her screwing the Dane on a car as fireworks burst behind. We are, of course, supposed to be cheering for sexual liberation here. But really, the whole thing is more effective, as Moe Tkacik suggests, as a terrorist recruitment video.

Photograph of man by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images.

Tags: sex and the city 2

During this continuing era of the memoir, women have written about their personal trials through the prism of sex addiction (Susan Cheever), alcoholism (Mary Karr), and real estate (Meghan Daum). In her new book, Cakewalk, novelist and Salon editor Kate Moses writes about her life as a series of chaotic episodes stitched together by recipes. The title is misleading in both mood and meaning; Moses' childhood was, in fact, harrowing, and her early culinary obsession served as something of a desperate attempt to “redeem with sweetness those moments that left, however bitter on occasion, such a lasting taste in my mouth.”

Food in this memoir does not serve as a grand metaphor. Sweets just happen to be the organizing principle of her most vivid childhood memories, the one thing that seemed easy to understand. A frustrated artist trapped in a miserable marriage, Moses' mother used cakes and candy as a way to create a conspiracy of joy. She fed them M&Ms as she told them elaborate family stories. “Your cakes are always better than anybody’s,” Moses tells her, and her mother agrees: “You are so right.” Her father barely ever talks to his children and when he invites them to visit him at work keeps them waiting for hours. As a child she was baffled by him but recalls vividly the bag of iced animal cookies his secretary always took out of her drawer to appease.

Moses’ sensory memory is so vivid that she keeps our interest through the slow dissolution of her parents’ marriage and then her own disillusionment with her mother, until eventually, she goes years without speaking to her, although she never stops baking. I haven’t tried any yet, but the recipes, for what it’s worth, look as promising as the book itself.

Tags: Cakewalk, Kate Moses

Recommended reading for the long weekend: Jonathan Van Meter's delightful profile of Joan Rivers in this week's New York. There is a lot to admire about Joan, but I particularly liked her unwillingness to give up the spotlight or to lavish false praise on younger female comics. Van Meter says he asked her what she thought of Kathy Griffin via e-mail a few years ago. Joan wrote:

"I am her friend but also furious. ... She is the big one now. My club dates have simply vanished and gone to her. She will last as she is very driven. Like me, she wants it. But every time a gay man tells me, ‘Oh, she is just like you! I love her!’ I fucking want to strangle them. But, please God let someone give me credit. I feel so totally forgotten. The fucking New Yorker did this big piece on the genius of Rickles, who is brilliant but who hasn’t changed a line in fifteen years. Meanwhile, I am totally ‘old hat’ and ignored while in reality I could still wipe the floor with both Kathy and Sarah. Anyhow, fuck them all. Age sucks. It’s the final mountain.”

There's a documentary about Joan Rivers that is coming out next week, called Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and Van Meter notes that there's a full-on Rivers revival afoot: She recently won the Celebrity Apprentice, she's got a show on TV Land, and she's getting great press for this documentary. While some may want to lump her in with Betty White—another famous comedian and grandmother who has been getting raves of late—what I appreciate from Joan is that she still has her old vigor and venom. No disrespect for the fantastic Ms. White, but the mass love of her performances is often tinged with condescension: That cute old lady said what? How shocking and adorable! Rivers refuses to tone down or to stop competing. According to Van Meter, Joan even has a pillow that she embroidered that says: "DON’T EXPECT PRAISE WITHOUT ENVY UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD." Gotta love it.

Photograph of Joan Rivers by Jemal Countess/Getty Images.

Tags: joan rivers, joanthan van meter, new york magazine

—The higher a woman climbs in her career, the more likely she is to have no spouse or children. And it’s not by choice. [Washington Post]

—Meg Whitman moves rightward on immigration to compete with her conservative opponent in the Republican gubernatorial primary. [Politico]

—The secret mistresses of Italian priests band together to fight the Vatican’s rule on celibacy. [Guardian]

—The House voted last night to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but no changes will take effect until December, when the Pentagon releases a study about its impact on troops. [Washington Post]

—Everybody hates Sex and the City 2. Film critic A. O. Scott says that “the ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense.” [New York Times]

Correction, May 29, 2010: In the original version of this post, repeal was misspelled.

Tags: we're talking about

This Monday, May 31 marks the one-year anniversary of the assassination of George Tiller, the Kansas abortion provider who was shot as he stood in the foyer of his church on a Sunday morning. The polarization that surrounded him in life—demonized by antiabortion extremists, cherished by his colleagues in the close knit abortion-providing community—continues after his death.

Those who hated him took no time off from their hating: On the day of his murder, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, issued a statement stating that “George Tiller was a mass murderer.” The notorious Phelps family of Kansas, known for its rabid opposition to both homosexuality and abortion, and its high profile disruptions of U.S. soliders’ funerals, attempted to picket Dr. Tiller’s funeral. (But in a moving sign of the often unexpected alliances that Tiller evoked, the Phelps’ and other demonstrators were kept away by the Kansas Patriots, a phalanx of veterans on motorcycles, the Patriots were there to protect their brother veteran, as Tiller had served as a Navy surgeon.)

Immediately after Tiller’s murder, and continuing to the present moment, many of the country’s abortion clinics reported an upsurge in aggressive and threatening behavior by protestors. Physicians attending the annual conference of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in San Francisco recently were greeted by protestors carrying signs saying “George Tiller is burning in hell.”

As for Tiller’s former colleagues, they are still mourning their beloved “Saint George,” a nickname he was given long before his death, both because of his willingness to take on the hardest cases that no one else would do, and because of his willingness to stay the course in Wichita in the face of years of attacks by his enemies. But the provider community is also organizing to carry on his work.

One part of Tiller’s abortion practice—that which he was most reviled for—involved later (post-24-week) procedures, typically for women whose wanted pregnancies had gone horribly wrong, either because of serious or lethal fetal anomalies or grave health conditions of the women themselves. The closing of his Wichita clinic after his death made clear that there remained only a handful of places in the country in which women in these situations could go. In response, a group of physicians, researchers and advocates have created a network focused on expanding the availability of later abortions, and of disseminating accurate information on this topic to both clinicians and prospective patients.

Most notably, Dr. Curtis Boyd, a longtime abortion provider in New Mexico and a close friend of Tiller’s, decided to extend his practice to provide post-24-week abortions to women “on a case by case basis,” and two physicians who formerly worked with Tiller now work at his clinic. When I spoke with Dr. Boyd about this decision, he told me, “We felt we had to do this … both because of the women who needed this service and to honor George’s memory.”

Tags: abortion, anti-choice, George Tiller, pro-choice, pro-life, randall terry

—Are long, shapeless skirts making a comeback? [New York Times]

—South Carolina’s pivotal role in the presidential primaries could explain why major GOP figures are running to the defense of beleaguered would-be governor Nikki Haley. [Politico]

—Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the site’s revamped privacy settings at a news conference yesterday. Will the new fixes satisfy critics? [Washington Post]

—Amy Sohn thinks the glut of gory divorce memoirs reflects the recent economic downturn. [Elle]

—Venus Williams’ lacy, flesh-toned dress recently raised eyebrows at the French Open, but tennis stars have a long history of making questionable sartorial choices. [New York Times]

Tags: we're talking about

I’m not enough of a legal mind to weigh in on Elena Kagan’s judicial qualifications for the Supreme Court and, well, sitting here in my home office in Gap shorts and a T-shirt, I’m probably equally unqualified to weigh in on her sartorial choices. But I have to agree with Liza that if I were subject to a thumping from Robin Givhan and others that I, too, would probably hit the nearest Nordstorm and ask for a personal stopper, stat.

I can’t help but wonder, though: Are we turning Kagan into D.C.’s own Susan Boyle? While it’s nothing new to pick apart a political figure’s wardrobe—we gnashed our teeth over young Hillary Clinton’s headband and older Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits, and let us never forget the Sarah Palin before and after—it feels different this time. Maybe it’s because we expect politicians to have a certain image and hope that our more serious officials—like judges—aren’t held to the same standard. Or maybe it’s because we wonder if Kagan is glamming it up in response not only to the charges of frumpiness but what “frumpiness” stands for (along with “softball playing” and “unmarried”).

Which is why, even though I do like Kagan’s spiffy new suit and can relate to wanting to have something flattering and feminine, I half-wish she’d ignored the silliness of Givhan’s critique.

Photograph of Susan Boyle by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images; Photograph of Elena Kagan by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Tags: Elena Kagan, Robin Givhan and Elena Kagan, Supreme Court

Facebook has racked up 15 million users in the Muslim world, just 14 months after its Arabic-language service was launched. How did it become wildly popular so quickly? Max Fisher of the Atlantic Wire offers a civic-minded explanation. According to Fisher, Facebook has caught on particularly well in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates because the site is a treasure trove of news and information in a region where anemic newspapers feed their readers a steady diet of political propaganda and salacious crime stories. But he completely missed what is perhaps the most alluring and obvious charm of Facebook to Arab youth: sex.

I live in the Gulf state of Qatar, where, in order to maintain propriety, a date between locals can consist of two young people sitting on opposite sides of a coffee shop talking to each other discreetly on cell phones. The ability of technology to facilitate romance is one of its most striking uses in this part of the world. Qatari youth, like others in the Gulf, lead romantic lives not unlike those of protagonists in Jane Austen’s novels, and it’s no coincidence that you’ll find quite a few fans of her work here (while enthusiasm for the racier SATC2 is … tepid, to say the least). Since unchaperoned male-female interaction is frowned upon, arranged marriages are commonplace, and so is unconsummated true love. Not to mention gay rendezvous: Facebook flirting is no substitute for the sexual act, and homosexual interactions will surely remain a part of life in the Gulf, though online tête-à-tête promises to fill the emotional chasm that divides men and women lusting after one another. Facebook is the next frontier in halal dating; it allows Arab youths to flirt and form attachments without doing anything haram, like the horizontal dabke.

But it’s just the newest addition to the technological arsenal put to use by Gulf youth to circumvent the strict constraints imposed on opposite sex interaction by traditional society. “Bluetooth cruising,” wherein cars filled with young men pull up beside women’s cars and use their devices to exchange phone numbers, is especially common in Kuwait. Messaging and “poking” on Facebook are potentially more satisfying modes of interaction than furtive texts sent back and forth at a darkened stoplight. Austen’s heroines treasured love letters; Gulf women have Facebook messages that let advances escape censorious eyes. There’s something to be said for a romantic life lived through letters (albeit LOLs and WYWHs).

Tags: arab world, Facebook, sex

During the contretemps over Elena Kagan's posture and fashion sense, I have sometimes wondered whether gleeful photo editors were going out of their way to find the less flattering photos of her. Everybody has good days and bad days, and the photo eds seem to doggedly focus on the days when her best outfits may have been at the dry cleaners. So it's hard to know whether the lovely, stylish image of Kagan that ran today—looking well-coiffed, feminine, belted, accessorized, decorous yet faintly flirty, and most of all, exuberantly happy—represents the photo eds making amends by showing the kind of image of her that they have, in fact, had access to all along, or whether the nominee, in the face of public pressure, went out and did some shopping.

If the latter is the case—if, tired of seeing the word "frumpy" attached to her name, perhaps worried that a Google search of the word might actually call up her Wikipedia page, Kagan took time over the weekend to duck into Barney's or Nordstrom—I, for one, would not blame her. Purists might. Some might prefer her to remain defiantly frumpy, true to herself, etc., in the face of the public critique. You've got to admit, though—if you were going to be engaging in this particular set of high-level interviews, with photos of yourself showing up in the paper every day, and if people were going to be studying your attire with the energy ordinarily reserved for a challenging painting or modernist text, then wouldn't you seek an opportunity to do a little wardrobe freshening? I would. I have always thought that maxim of Thoreau's—beware of all enterprises that require new clothes—is exactly wrong. Part of the whole point of a new enterprise is that it gives you an excuse to get a new suit or dress, definitely some shoes, and feel like you are moving ahead in life, sartorially as well as professionally. Even if you go to the job interview and don't get the job, you've still got the shoes, and that's some consolation.

Of course, come to think of it, along with transcendentalist philosopher, Supreme Court justice is probably the enterprise least likely to require new clothing, and in that sense, maybe, represents Thoreau's ideal. The justices can conceivably wear anything under their robes, right? Gym clothes? Hiking shorts? As long as they have suitable shoes and socks or stockings and a nice cravat, that's all that matters? Like bloggers, they could conceivably wear pajamas? Kind of too bad, actually, to go out and get such a nice suit and not have anybody see it. No wonder Kagan is making the most of it now. Soon enough, likely as not, she'll have the last laugh when fashion scrutiny becomes, in her case, as in that of the other justices, all but impossible.

Tags: Elena Kagan, fashion, photos, Thoreau