The Villainizing of Robin Givens 🪄
The Villainizing of Robin Givens 🪄
In 1988, CNN judged her "the most hated woman in America"?!
This week on the pod, it’s a new Ask Unladylike, and we’re tackling a pair of word problems that I have a feeling LOTS of us have encountered in one way or another.
The first comes from an unlady who’s uncomfortable with how her boyfriend and his friends call each other bitch. It strikes her as misogynistic in context, but he argues the word is so ubiquitous these days, it has nothing to do with gender.
Then, it’s not a question of whether a word is OK to say (the answer is n-o.), but rather how to ask not-so-close friends to stop fucking saying it already. The nuance here is that our unlady advice seeker is neurodivergent, unbeknownst to their friends (“friends”?) who casually sling the r-slur as a synonym for stupid or ridiculous.
Any of this sound familiar? I’d love hear how other folks have dealt with these kinds of language gaps.
ICYMI
🔦 Another ‘pretendian’ reckoning. (BBC) Oscar-winning, Sesame Street-appearing Buffy Sainte-Marie is probably the highest-profile case yet of alleged Indigenous identity fraud. But as past Unladylike guest and journalist Michelle Cyca told the BBC, it’s particularly complex given Sainte-Marie’s adoption into a Piapot Nation family in the 1960s.
✂️ The legacy media that’s NOT dying off. (The Guardian) Long live zines! (And Jezebel, while we’re at it!) Reading about Brooklyn Museum’s Copy Machine Manifesto zine exhibit has me wanting to break out my scissors and glue stick and make an unladyzine already. “If art history looked the same after this exhibition, that would be a missed opportunity,” exhibit co-curator Branden Joseph told the outlet.
🫀 Gender and . . . organ donation? (South China Morning Post) New data analysis on organ transplants in India has brought attention to a global phenomenon: Organ donors are more often women, and their recipients are more often men.
🪮We still need the CROWN Act. (NYT) Your friendly angry reminder that schools are still out here forcing haircuts on students of color.
🍰 An intersectional slice of food x feminist x queer history. (them) “There was no definitive consensus on how to run a feminist business or what qualified their food as feminist, but founders balanced ethical concerns with economic constraints in each, making choices based on the ingredients available to them.” Super interesting review of Alice Ketchum’s Ingredients for Revolution!
Unladies’ Room: Robin & Mike & Luke & Laura & Pacey & Tamara
If the name Robin Givens doesn't ring a bell, the man she married in 1988 will—Mike Tyson. (Also, watch Boomerang.) Saturday in the Unladies’ Room, Susie Banikarim, co-host of In Retrospect podcast, tells us how their brief and tabloid-frenzied marriage ended with Robin as "the most hated woman in America" and why she still hasn't gotten the cultural redemption she deserves.
This whole story was pop culture news to me, and the misogynoir of it all is STIFLING. This is from a 1988 Sun-Sentinel newspaper feature headlined “The Woman America Loves to Hate”:
How much do we hate her?
— A lot. CNN’s Newsnight has taken two polls that reflect Givens’ popularity. They asked, “Who’s at fault in the marriage breakup? Mike Tyson or Robin Givens?” 93 percent of the callers said it was big bad Robin; only 7 percent said it was poor old Mike…
Big bad Robin?!! ffs.
Dear Abby even took to her advice column to dispense a truly horrendous hottake, which was nevertheless echoing popular opinion. Of Mike Tyson, she suspected he was a “marshmellow inside” and that he was the real abuse victim. And don’t even get me started on Barbara Walters (also, Susie and I discuss Babs’ role in the villainizing at length).
And there’s more! Susie and I revisit Oprah's highest-rated episode (can you guess?), the soap opera wedding that outshined Princess Di's and Pacey's "hot for teacher" (HEAVY air quotes) arc on Dawson's Creek.
💞THANK YOU, THANK YOU TO THIS MONTH’S NEW PATRONS, HADLY AND S 💞
Unladies are saying…
Enjoyed this insightful episode about beauty pageants. As a former Miss Australia I was pleased to hear about the nuances of the ‘exploitation vs empowerment binary’ you referred to.
- unlady Lil re: Beauty (Pageant) Diplomacy 👑
til next week… 🎵 it’s the most gender trad time of the yeaaaar 🎵
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