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Myriam Gurba

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Tasteful Rude

FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS DEEPENED MY DESIRE FOR JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE TO EAT A BAG OF DICKS

February 11, 2021 by Myriam Leave a Comment

Hilaria and Alec Baldwin
Hilaria and Alec Baldwin

Watching Britney Spears shave her head in 2007 made me want to do it too. The bitch looked good bald, better than Demi because she wasn’t doing it for a film role, she was doing it because life, and I recall feeling liberated by proxy as I watched Spears snatch hairdresser Esther Tognozzi’s razor and drag it along her scalp, using it to carve her femininity away, the precise curve of her cranium set free by her own hand. This incident and others appear in Framing Britney Spears, a new documentary by the New York Times that blends archival footage with recent interviews featuring lawyers, former staff, and activists to trace the rise of the Free Britney movement, a grassroots campaign which advocates for an end to Spears’ conservatorship. The film casts strong doubt over the legitimacy of the patriarchal legal arrangement under which the megastar has been stuck for the last twelve years. Framing Britney Spears also deepened my desire for Justin Timberlake to eat a bag of dicks.

Read the rest on TastefulRude.com

Filed Under: News, Tasteful Rude

Tasteful Rude: Don’t Call Me Resilient

January 14, 2021 by Myriam Leave a Comment

AOC, instagram
AOC, Instagram

I wrote about why calling trauma victims “brave” often feels like an insult. I also list meaningful actions people can take instead of doling out hollow compliments. Read the rest at TastefulRude.com

THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO IN LIEU OF CALLING A TRAUMA VICTIM BRAVE

At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful bitch, don’t ever call me “brave” for a) having had a life-threatening trauma forced upon me and b) talking honestly and angrily about it.

I’ve had my fill of the compliment.

“Brave” isn’t the compliment that many people think it is. Worse yet, I have a suspicion that some assholes who use the word to describe victims know that.

My brain can tell the difference between a compliment and an insult and I typically feel insulted when people, passive-aggressive cisgender men in particular, call me “brave” for having experienced trauma and for addressing that history in public. The choice to use the word “brave” feels slimy, minimizing, and condescending and I’m going to explain the logic behind my reaction to the word.

Read the rest on TastfulRude.com

Filed Under: News, Tasteful Rude

Tasteful Rude: Facism Goes to School

January 12, 2021 by Myriam Leave a Comment

Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini, former elementary school teacher

I wrote about gendered pathways to authoritarianism and the dangers of fascism in the classroom. Read the rest at TastefulRude.com

Before Benito Mussolini became Italy’s fascist dictator, he worked as a schoolteacher. I find this bit of trivia about Il Duce telling. Most children have their first encounter with public authoritarianism in a classroom, I certainly did, and I’ve heard it quipped that what white men are to policing, white women are to public education. Both of these professions can serve as gendered pathways to small-scale authoritarianism.

According the Department of Education, the average schoolteacher in the United States is a 43-year-old white woman. In 2016, 47% of white women voted for President Donald Trump. In 2020, that number rose to 55% Columnist Moira Donegan has noted that the high level of support Trump enjoys from white women has elicited “exasperation” and “rage” from the left. Because I’ve worked in public education among middle-aged white women for over a decade, I’m unsurprised by these numbers as well as by this bloc’s enthusiasm for an autocratic strongman.

Read the rest on TastefulRude.com

Filed Under: Tasteful Rude

Tasteful Rude: Hilaria Baldwin & the Perverse Myth of Reverse Body-Shaming

December 31, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

The internet recently busted yoga instructor Hilary Baldwin for moonlighting as a Thpanish immigrant and upon learning that “Hilaria” wasn’t born in Mallorca but instead in Massachusetts, I decided to skip her recipe for Boston baked beans estilo Madrileño. In a video clip that went viral, “Hilaria” pretends not to know the English word for a vegetable her bear of a husband played in Married to the Mob, “Cucumber” Frank De Marco, and social media continues to hum with speculation as her charade dissolves like a moth-eaten mantilla. Some chisme alleges that “Hilaria” is Alec Baldwin’s consolation prize and claims that the Beetlejuice star pursued and was rejected by a Latin-American actress known for her role as a snake-dancing vampiric stripper. The tea, or té, is that “Hilaria” might be the closest her Mexican-chasing husband comes to disfrutar una esposa Mexicana o Chicana pero quién sabe. Not me. I’m just repeating what a bunch of tías are saying on el internet.

Read the rest on TastefulRude.com

Filed Under: News, Tasteful Rude

Introducing Tasteful Rude

December 11, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

myriam guey

Today I launch my new website Tasteful Rude, as part of the Brickhouse Cooperative, a group of journalists . I’m the editor-in-chief, and one of the writers. Tasteful Rude’s editorial voice eschews politeness in favor of truth-seeking and fun. It is Tasteful Rude’s mission to abide by Edward’s Said’s commandment: “Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse.” Here’s my introduction:

Dear Reader,

When I was a little girl, I sipped black coffee.

I also dreamt.

One of the things I fantasized about was growing tall. My family does produce statuesque Mexicans so I believed that this goal was attainable. As a result of early childhood caffeination, I topped out at five feet. Tasteful Rude, however, is the manifestation of another early dream.

Like many families, mine strengthened its bonds through communal television watching and one of the weekly programs we (nerdily) enjoyed together was 60 Minutes. The newsmagazine taught us about a range of current events, issues, and public and private figures and my brother, sister, and I would warm the couch as the program’s correspondents shed light on our weird world. (There were, though, moments that I suspected we were being lied to. I saw the episode where then-Governor Bill Clinton told journalist Steve Kroft that his relationship with Gennifer Flowers was “friendly but limited.” MENTIRAS!)

In addition to philandering politicians, 60 Minutes also introduced my siblings and me to criticism, commentary, and satire and while I found the show’s reporting interesting, what really secured my status as a fan was a treat that concluded the program.

“I could do that!” I thought as we laughed at “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.”

I adored Rooney, a masculine frump who Morley Safer once described as “having the demeanor of an unmade bed.” Rooney did my dream job. He drew his paycheck by having an opinion and spreading it and he’d launch his weekly commentary, which he delivered as a monologue set to a curmudgeonly cadence, from a desk messier than my dad’s. “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” inspired me, proving to me that a commentator didn’t have to be cute for people to listen to her. A critic could be as ugly as Andy Rooney as long as she made what she said about the world compelling.

Rooney typically began his monologues by describing a situation that seemed undeserving of further consideration. However, as Rooney complained, it grew clear that he’d identified a problem in need of critical attention. The opening lines of a 1980 segment demonstrate Rooney’s approach: “It’s a mystery to me why people fight to have either a political convention or the Olympics held in their city. It’s like bidding to have World War III fought in your area because of all the money the war brings local businessmen.” 

With a cup of black coffee in hand and “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” in mind, I would pace my childhood home, practicing cultural criticism:

“It’s a mystery to me why my mother thinks I won’t recognize that Santa Claus’s handwriting looks identical to hers. What does she take me for? An elf? While I might be short, I…” 

“It’s a mystery to me why my best friend’s father hides his Playboy Magazines under the bathroom sink. The magazines are filled with beautiful women! Why not display them on the toilet tank? It’s important to show guests hospitality and…”

“It’s a mystery to me why I must shop for a training bra. I have nothing to train. As Judy Blume wrote in Superfudge…”

My understanding of criticism, commentary, and analysis has evolved but my concern and commitment to these phenomena remain as strong as ever. For better or worse, Tasteful Rude is influenced by early touchstones like “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” and it’s not a mystery why I prioritize shit-talking. Shit-talking entertains. It also paves the way for justice.  Criticism is a tool of liberation, mine and yours, and I look forward to taking this caffeinated journey with you.

Yours in shit-talking,

Myriam Gurba

11 December, 2020 www.tastefulrude.com

Filed Under: News, Tasteful Rude

MYRIAM GURBA SPEAKS TO FEMINIST GIANT MONA ELTAHAWY ABOUT REVOLUTION!

September 9, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

A conversation with the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
September 9, 2020
Mona Eltahawy secured my eternal devotion after I first read her self-described declaration of faith: “Fuck the patriarchy.” I, too, am a member of this faith and I live my faith through guerrilla-style tactics which I execute daily. My favorite tactic is withholding laughter from unfunny men who are under the impression that they are otherwise. A feminist giant, Mona is a writer, activist and revolutionary whose most recent book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, not only defends women’s anger, it celebrates it. I spoke with Mona about the radical changes she’s embarking on as a writer and publisher, technology and revolution, sexual and romantic terrorism, and ugliness.

This interview is part of my new magazine, Tasteful Rude, launching December 8 as part of the Brick House Cooperative. For a transcript of my interview with Mona, go to TastefulRude.com.

Filed Under: News, Tasteful Rude, Uncategorized Tagged With: Brick House Collective, Feminism, Interview, Mona Eltahawy

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