Rachael Ray--Hot or Not?- Page 2

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:31am

Hmmm...interesting. Did you ever consider that I did not intedn THOSE comments seriously? I suppose you all think I don't have a sense of humor, right?

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:33am

Oh, yea, try to justify your shallowness by making it all seem a joke. Classic. Admit it, you like to look at girls tits covered in whipped cream, don't you.

Updated On: 1/6/07 at 11:33 AM

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:36am

And even if you were joking (which I don't believe) why is perfectly acceptable for YOU to joke about tits and ugly women but not alright for A&F to do the same? Double standard at the least, hypocrite at the worst.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:37am

Oh, sure, I wouldn't mind.

That was, by the way, a joke. Just in case you thought it wasn't.

look, I don't mind anyone on the Food Network (except for Bobby Flay, who truly seems like a pr*ck to me). Even though I find Rachael Ray to be pretty talentless, she has made some decennt recipes. She's made some disastrous ones, too, but a few of them are all right. I just wish she wouldn't wear so much makeup and highlight her hair. She was much prettier when she looked more natural back in '03-'04--her older shows.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:39am

That's actually a good point, Sueleen. Thank you for pointing it out to me. I'll remember that in the future. Sometimes I can find myself slipping into insulting other women based on appearance or sexual terms--I have been trying to break the habit. Thanks for pointing it out.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:40am

This thread is not about the talent on the Food Network or about whether Ray can cook. It is about her LOOKS. And you found it necessary to add your numerous opinions on the subject. Which to me says things like this DO matter to you, when you pretend to be all offended when someone else "degrades" women by wearing a f#cking tee-shirt with a joke on it. You can't have it both ways.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:47am

Geek, you're starting to remind me of the worst first semester Womens Studies majors I have ever encountered.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 11:59am

Thanks, Namo. Now I know what I need to work on.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:07pm

I guess I didn't mean "worst" so much as "insufferable."

I think your impulse toward questioning injustice and sexism is a great one. But reading you it becomes clear that you just have beginner tools, not a particularly well-honed analysis and almost no ability to deal with nuance or irony when you're taking a stand. Of course, you expect others to have nuance and an understanding of irony when you claim you aren't taking a stand, ie, when you're "just kidding."

I wish I could remember the name of the feminist theorist who captured the fact that real life happens in the contradictory impulses when she said something like, "I am indebted to my feminist sisters for showing me how terrible it can be to be treated like a piece of meat; and I am indebted to my gay male friends for showing me how liberating it can be sometimes to be treated like a piece of meat."

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:11pm

Thank you for making that clearer to me. I'm trying to mature in my understanding of the world and my own beliefs, and trying to accept the fact that my own beliefs are sometimes conradictory to themselves. I've been doing a lot of research on the feminist cause lately--a lot on its history. to graduate, we have to do a "graduation project" and I've decided to do mine on the history of 20th-century AMerican women and feminism. I've been learning a lot. And I've been learning a lot about myself along the way. Right now, I'm kind of testing the waters--trying to learn about the atmosphere of the world around me. And I appreciate you helping me out.

[CostumeMistress]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:12pm

Namo, that's a great quote. If you remember who said it, PM me.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:44pm

"the history of 20th-century AMerican women and feminism."

As a topic, that's kind of, well, ENORMOUS. You mention that it's a project "to graduate," are you talking high school?

I think there's just way too much to cover in that topic. In the 20th century you had two major waves of feminism, although the first wave began in the late 1800s. Second wave feminism is usually what people think of when they think of feminism in the 20th century, and that's the wave that started in the 1960s.

You might want to focus on a specific feminist icon and look at how her work resonates or doesn't resonate today. Take Margaret Sanger, the birth control activist from the early 1900s, for instance. It would be very interesting to compare the government's silencing Sanger and forbidding her to even talk to (in most cases poor) women about birth control and the current US government's silencing of discussion of birth control and abortion in countries receiving US aid for population health.

You could compare Margaret Sanger then to, say, Patricia Heaton today, the celebrity figurehead of the the so-called "Feminists for Life," who said in the Times recently that if it were up to her there would be no termination of pregnancy at any time for any reason. Can imposing one's beliefs on someone else who may not even share them actually be considered feminist? Or is that something else entirely?

Similarly, and I think this might be more resonant to your personal experience even here on this board the past couple of days, how about an examination of the exceedingly dangerous move in the 1980s wherein anti-sex "feminists" (I put that in quotes because I refuse to believe that actual feminsts can possibly be so vocally anti-sex) Catherine MacKinnon and poor, dead, miserable Andrea Dworkin worked with conservative and repressive legislators in their efforts to "stamp out" pornography. Did the so-called "Feminists Against Pornography" make a major misstep by aligning with the radical right on this one issue while choosing to ignore their myriad other policies that oppress women on a daily basis?

You've been kind of reminding me of those gals lately with your attempts to stamp out t-shirts because they offend your sensibilities and you "know what's good" for other women.

ETA: I kinda forgot what this thread topic was, sorry about that. I would like to add that my brother is a BIG Rachel Ray fan and his wife, who is Italian, says "You just love her because of her big Italian jugs." I'd like to point out how amusing and with what good humor they share that point. And how in a stark, no shades of grey analysis, there is no room for such playful exchanges.

Updated On: 1/6/07 at 12:44 PM

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:50pm

So, does any of the bullsh*t above make Rachel Ray any less of an annoying bitch?!
Updated On: 1/6/07 at 12:50 PM

[StageManager2]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:52pm

Definitely not!

I see I'm not the only one who finds Namo's ramblings nauseating.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:53pm

It is a very huge topic. I think it may be difficult to organize, i'm trying to make the documentary as long (and as interesting to teenagers) as possible, which may be very very difficult. I may try to concentrate on the "second wave of feminism" circling around the '60s and '70s, and then give a brief bit about the kind of feminism that's going on today. I'm hoping that this might spark the interest of teenagers, though I'm certainly not keeping my hopes up. I'm working right now on reading The Feminine Mystique, which I can't seem to put down, and i'm looking for some interesting books written by women today that I can use for research.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:54pm

oh, and as far as Rachael Ray--she might not be very talented but at least she's made her way on her own, which is admirable.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:56pm

Wait, it's a "documentary?" And you want to make it both long and "interesting to teenagers"? Good luck with that.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 12:59pm

That's a good point. i'm going to try to incorporate some pop culture (msuci, video clips, etc.) to keep it watchable, but we'll see how it turns oout. I'll probably keep it around half an hour, if I can.

[~FloweryFriend~]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 1:51pm

I went to a booksigning she did in December. She's gorgeous in person, and she's really very nice.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:02pm

I find her voice a little grating. I expect her to show up in "Chicago" any month now.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:04pm

A little grating??!!

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:06pm

Namo, you realize you just wrote Geeks paper for her, right?

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:07pm

ANd her laugh kinda makes me want to strangle a kitten. But that's the handy thing about cookbooks--if you buy the cookbook, you don't have to listen to her talk to find out the recipes.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:08pm

I'm calling PETA on you.

[iHeartMyGeek]

Posted: 1/6/07 at 2:09pm

Hey, I love the kittnes. Don't wanna strangle them. THat's why I refrain from watching her show. And from being around kittens if I DO watch it.