How can we welcome more women here & to Lili?

[FanDeAliFee]

Fans want to see Alizée's career continue and thrive, not the least for personal motives. For this to happen, Lili needs a persistent supply of listeners, especially those interested in buying her products. This includes people of all circumstances, nationalities, ages and genders. In this thread, we consider gender.

Alizée has more male fans than female fans. For example, currently Quantcast tentatively ("beta") <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/alizee-officiel.com/demographics">reports</a> that among French ("FR") visitors to Lili's <a href="http://alizee-officiel.com/">official Web site</a>, 58% are male and 42% are female.

This "gender gap" is of the same polarity and MUCH larger here at Alizée America. Is this an artifact of the way in which Lili became known in the USA? Remember, it is VERY hard for French singers to make sales in the USA, so we American fans are relatively few compared to those in some other countries, and our demographics might easily look rather different from those of Alizée's global fan base.

But there is also another possibility. Is this community less friendly to females than it might be? This may not be a matter of malice, but an unintended consequence of an overwhelmingly male community population. I am especially interested in the opinion of our female AAm members about this.

I have an idea for an experiment which the AAm Gods might like to entertain. What if one established two threads, one "Just for males" and the other "Just for females." Obviously an honor system would need apply, as one person could elect to enroll multiple identities at AAm, e.g. one a 19yo Swedish male, another a 37yo Canadian female, a third a 67yo Maltese female, and so on. But then most people might be much too lazy to play such games anyway. Does vBulletin support restricting thread access by user account attribute, like a gender bit?

Maybe special gender-specific threads are overkill. Perhaps what I should do is simply encourage our female members to Private Message among themselves, come to some common opinion, and then tell us "boys" here if we are being "bad" and how we might change. (For all I know, you have been doing that already, which may be why so few of you remain here long, or at least speak up often! )

I have hardly listened to all the AAm podcasts, but I don't remember hearing a single voice I deemed female. Curiously, the first person to answer a post I made (Karlalizee) is female, but it is very rare indeed when I encounter a post by someone I even think is female. I don't know the exact list of people who manage AAm, but has there ever been a female among them or invited to join them?

I am not trying to start trouble, but it would be a shame if by failing to make a simple change or two, the community at AAm is a third or more smaller than it need be. I'll be going now: I just realized I forgot to lower the seat the last time I used the AAm rest room!

[Deepwaters]

Perhaps it might also be a good idea simply to acknowledge that this is not, in fact, always a women-friendly place. I have winced sometimes at the crude, immature, vulgar comments that have been posted in certain threads. I don't want to call for more tight policing of the board; actually I find the rules that currently exist sometimes unnecessarily restrictive. Just for more awareness and an attempt at greater respect for half the human race.

The kind of comments I'm thinking of are these:

Giggling and finger-pointing over photos with nipples visible through the fabric of clothing.

Claims that a photo makes Alizée look like a penis, or like she has one. (Those left me bewildered; maybe a certain latent homosexuality emerging?)

Actually, doc, there have been a few times when YOU posted some things that I thought were a bit over the line, although at least yours were well-written. (I suspect it was the lure of the clever words themselves, too hard to resist -- I know that one well.)

The worst of it is that I have a feeling most of those posting things like this don't even understand why they're offensive. It's not that the posts have sexual content; there's nothing wrong with that per se. It's that they reduce a woman to an object to be pawed, or to sneak a peek at the naughty bits. If I were a woman browsing this thread, I would be reluctant to participate in the discussion because some of the same nasty-little-boy energy might be directed at me if I did.

And I'd be right. Remember the reception that Karla got when she posted some pictures of herself a while back? Karla's gorgeous, and those were great photos, so everyone should have clapped. There were so many ways to respond to that gesture in a positive and complimentary way. Say she's hot. Or, hell, ask her out for a date. (She's younger than my age limit or I might have. )

But instead we got -- vulgar comments about the size of her boobs, etc. Nasty little snips that tried to put her down. She hasn't posted any more photos of herself since then, and who can blame her? And it's our loss.

I would recommend an exercise for all of the prolific posters to this forum, especially those who are young and male. Go back over all of your own posts for the last month. For each one, think: if you were a woman and this was written about you, would you like to read it? Would you find it a compliment? Would it make you want to meet the guy who wrote it?

I've said before, all posts here should be made on the assumption that Alizée herself is going to read them. Odds are that isn't true, but every once in a while it will be true, and in some of those cases you might be very embarrassed. And even when she doesn't, other people will -- and sometimes you should be embarrassed.

So in part, I definitely think it's the posters here. Not all the time, and not everyone. But there are some decidedly woman-unfriendly posts that crop up with depressing regularity.

EDIT: LOL well, no sooner did I say that than Karla did post a new pic of herself. Damned good one, too. Bravo, girl!

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

The kind of comments I'm thinking of are these:

Giggling and finger-pointing over photos with nipples visible through the fabric of clothing.

Claims that a photo makes Alizée look like a penis, or like she has one. (Those left me bewildered; maybe a certain latent homosexuality emerging?)

Oh come on. What do you expect out of a bunch of teenagers? I mean, it's not like we're talking about them every other thread. If nipples were visible, guess what? Hey! They were visible, yay! Okay, on to the next picture so we can all warble on about how much we love Alizée.

As for the awkwardly bunched up pants picture... latent homosexuality? ...what? Where did that come from? The fact is, there was an inconveniently located bunched up part of her pants that was well, perfectly set up for such jokes.

And that's all it is, a joke. We point, giggle, then move on.

I see no harm in any of this. Though the comment about Karla was quite inappropriate, seeing as how that was accusatory and questioning her personally integrity.

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

Oh come on. What do you expect out of a bunch of teenagers?

That they commence the process of learning to be adults. Consider this a lesson.

If nipples were visible, guess what? Hey! They were visible, yay!

You're missing the point here. It's not that someone noticed her nipples were visible. It's that this was such a big deal. I don't know, maybe it's that you've never actually seen bare female flesh before, so something accidentally exposed is a whoop-de-do. Maybe this is another indictment of our silly cultural taboos against exposing women's nipples.

As for the awkwardly bunched up pants picture... latent homosexuality? ...what? Where did that come from?

When I find guys obsessed with penises, that's naturally the first thing that crosses my mind. Nothing wrong with it, of course. Be true to yourself.

The fact is, there was an inconveniently located bunched up part of her pants that was well, perfectly set up for such jokes.

And that's all it is, a joke. We point, giggle, then move on.

The fact is, such jokes are in poor taste and appealing only to little boys. As I said, it's time for you to start learning to be a grownup. If you want to share a silly and totally inappropriate joke like that, do it in private.

I see no harm in any of this.

As long as you can't see the harm, the problem will continue.

Though the comment about Karla was quite inappropriate, seeing as how that was accusatory and questioning her personally integrity.

Well, good. At least you can see that.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Perhaps it might also be a good idea simply to acknowledge that this is not, in fact, always a women-friendly place. I have winced sometimes... The kind of comments I'm thinking of are these:

Giggling and finger-pointing over photos with nipples visible through the fabric of clothing.

Claims that a photo makes Alizée look like a penis, or like she has one. (Those left me bewildered; maybe a certain latent homosexuality emerging?)

Actually, doc, there have been a few times when YOU posted some things that I thought were a bit over the line, although at least yours were well-written. (I suspect it was the lure of the clever words themselves, too hard to resist -- I know that one well.)

I am fond of humor (and especially puns, so you can imagine how I ate up some of the lyrics of Alizée's songs). Freud offered the theory that a key M.O. of humor is to offer a CLANDESTINELY ambiguous description of something which, upon the addition of one critical detail, is suddenly revealed to be a tabu concept. How seriously one takes the transgression of normal etiquette will determine whether one finds the putative joke funny or offensive. The boundaries hazarded can include things like religion, politics, ethnicity, health, ability and yes, even gender.

As an example of edgy humor, <i>The Onion</i> recently carried an audio article in which the teenage ghost of Anne Frank bitterly complains how everyone has been reading her diary all these decades, full of her personal, private secrets!

I think Alizée is very smart and I cannot for a microsecond believe she was not fully aware of how Mylène Farmer used her burgeoning sexuality as a young teen to touch deep within the psyche of people, BOTH men and women, who remember the emergence of their own full adult sexuality and the social difficulties which it brought forth.

By the time Alizée was 19, even her "improvisational" antics on stage could be highly erotic in a way in which I compare (I think very appropriately) to the singer Prince <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=158670&postcount=20">here</a>. Lest an Alizée tyro think these mocked masculinity alone, I would cite some of the (synchronized group) dancing in <i>Je Pas Vingt Ans</i> as the height of female eroticism. And I say this not as someone who hung out swapping stories with unwashed tweenage boys in some sorry neighborhood, but as an undergraduate social science minor in psychology, whose curriculum included a course in animal behavior. But don't trust me - ask your favorite professional zoologist.

In a wide-ranging <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=150366&postcount=10">post</a> which began simply as a naive inquiry into Alizée's non-Corsican heritage, but burgeoned on account of coincidence and imagination, (and my affection for puns) I intimated that much of Alizée's entertainment persona descends from similar (literal or nom-de-plume) "Lilys" and "Lolas", including Marlene Dietrich:

<i>A fashion icon, Dietrich's frequent gender-bending attire and smoky singing voice let her stand out alone among all the famous femme fatales of her era. Her aura endures even today. with her official memorial site noting:<blockquote>What she did not appreciate, perhaps, was the vast success of the indelible quality of that image. People copy it mercilessly, some with great talent (Madonna)...</blockquote></i>I recently found reason to allude to this well-attended influence of Dietrich, using an exemplary video I embed <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=157899&postcount=29">here</a>. One cannot say what may be in Alizée's opaque pants, but the persona she assumes shows more than passing interest in another woman.

I have never found reason to compare Alizée to a penis, but a great many people think a near-decendent of her most famous fellow Ajaccian was being compared in that way, of which I was reminded when I had jocular reason to cite the artillery expertise of <i>Le Petit Caporal</i> <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=150867&postcount=22">here</a>. (Aside: Do they make jocular straps which folks like me can don for protection?)

On the other hand, Alizée's nickname of Lili/Lily/Lilly can reasonably remind one either of the <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=155361&postcount=458">female genitals</a>, or even <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=151480&postcount=13">sex in general</a>.

As for Alizée's breasts, they certainly were on the recent agenda (something most unusual for her) both when she posed for the Tekart cover as Madonna and on her blog with a suggestively undone blouse (which led you to offer an opinion on the popularity of incestuous thought.)

I'll also remark that the various recent discussion threads which focus on Alizée's hair, feet, nose and other body parts seem to echo a dimension of the Dietrich image, with her Wikipedia article noting: <blockquote><i>A significant volume of academic literature, especially since 1975, analyzes Dietrich's image, as created by the movie industry, within various theoretical frameworks, including that of psycho-analysis. Emphasis is placed, inter alia, on the "fetishistic" manipulation of the female image.</i></blockquote>Under the Victorian ethic, where sexual relations between husband and wife was a "sacrifice" the woman made on behalf of Platonic love for the man, no "decent" woman was supposed to think of sex any more than necessary, and certainly not frankly chat about it. The etiquette which follows from this would make the discussion of sex by men a socially hostile environment for women.

I do not live in such a world. In mine, the women of <i>Sex and the City</i> long ago let their vibrators come out of the closet, and now the enthusiastic female focus groups of <i>CherryTV</i> provide frank education on the social, psychological and recreational aspects of modern female sexuality in <i>21st century America</i>.

In summary, I think it is hard to separate a lot (but not all) of Alizée's work to date from sex, and so discussion of it reflects this fact. If this per se makes the Web site female unfriendly, then our feminist, often gender-bending friend Alizée is female-unfriendly.

Being singled out for relentless teasing by a group makes a place unfriendly for the victim of it, whatever the victim's identity or the abuse vector, sexual or otherwise. Thus, in a callous environment. perhaps amplified by the frequency of iconoclasm and recklessness among youth, any contingent of people who are few in number are at enhanced risk of social hostility. Women are not unique is facing such a hazard at this Web site.

P.S. When will some women post in this thread?

[wasabi622]

Deepwaters, have you ever been a kid before? Sounds like you were mature your entire life.

I'm not even twenty yet, I don't want to be full fledged grown up, I'll have no choice in the matter in a few years, so I think I'll enjoy being silly, immature, and carefree(well, not really..) for as long as I can.
There's a place to be mature, and on a fan forum, I think the bar can be lowered a bit. It's not like we're going to present this committee, it's just us hanging out and goofing off.

I don't see why we should all feel to need to be grown up about it.
We're not being insulting, anti-Semitic, derogatory, racist, homophobic, or sexist.
Maybe the jokes aren't always up to standard you wish they were, but that's just what happens on an online forum. Especially ones with a diverse group like this one.

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

I don't see why we should all feel to need to be grown up about it.
We're not being insulting,

Yes, you ARE.

Let me try again to explain this, specifically about the nipple business. I've seen an old photo of Alizée, which might be a fake but it didn't look fake. It was from late in the Gourmandises era. Anyway she had that short haircut, but looked at least 17. She was wearing a see-through top with nothing underneath, and her nipples were quite completely visible. (And every bit as yummy-looking as the rest of her.) (That I've seen.)

But the difference is, on that occasion (unless it's a fake), she intended to expose her nipples to view. Making cracks about it when, due to the way the lighting falls, a nipple shape unintentionally shows through the cloth -- that's like someone making jokes about you because you're photographed with your fly unzipped.

Can you understand the difference? It's a question of respect, that's all.

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Yes, you ARE.

Let me try again to explain this, specifically about the nipple business. I've seen an old photo of Alizée, which might be a fake but it didn't look fake. It was from late in the Gourmandises era. Anyway she had that short haircut, but looked at least 17. She was wearing a see-through top with nothing underneath, and her nipples were quite completely visible. (And every bit as yummy-looking as the rest of her.) (That I've seen.)

But the difference is, on that occasion (unless it's a fake), she intended to expose her nipples to view. Making cracks about it when, due to the way the lighting falls, a nipple shape unintentionally shows through the cloth -- that's like someone making jokes about you because you're photographed with your fly unzipped.

Can you understand the difference? It's a question of respect, that's all.

I don't get why you're so caught up the nipple business. That happened once, and yet you're acting as if that's all we do here.

I don't remember me commenting about nipples, other than noting the fact that the picture in question was quite poorly photoshopped. I'm pretty sure the only thing I said about that picture was that it resembled Roman armor or something.

If you get a picture of me with my fly unzipped, or while I'm picking my nose with a weird expression, go for it. I don't mind joking around with it. But if you were to take those pictures and say that I was a unhygienic slob, then I would be offended, seeing as how that is no longer joking, but insulting.

I don't think we've quite said anything like that yet.

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by wasabi622

I don't get why you're so caught up the nipple business. That happened once, and yet you're acting as if that's all we do here.

No, I'm acting as if that and similar things are a problem.

I don't remember me commenting about nipples

I don't remember accusing anyone by name. In fact, I don't remember who did it. I could go look it up I suppose.

What happened was that someone posted a black and white picture from the live-blog photoshoot as a favorite shot obviously because it showed a nipple and for no other reason. Several other guys jumped on the same bandwagon. At some point, a mod took the pictures down. (If not for the discourteous posts that went with it, I would see no reason to do that. I mean, I would have no problem if Her Grace wanted to pose in the nude. But considering the likely reaction, probably she shouldn't. )

Anyway -- was that you? I don't remember. You're the one that jumped in all defensive. I didn't accuse anyone by name.

BTW it wasn't the "Roman armor" picture I was talking about. It was a black and white where she was wearing the thick black glasses and had a ponytail, wearing some sort of t-shirt top, looking to the right side. Her nipple was outlined in the cloth, due to the way the light fell.

If you get a picture of me with my fly unzipped, or while I'm picking my nose with a weird expression, go for it.

No, I won't, because it would be rude. The fact that you say you wouldn't mind merely reinforces the problem. Whether you mind or not, it's reasonable to expect that someone else would.

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

BTW it wasn't the "Roman armor" picture I was talking about. It was a black and white where she was wearing the thick black glasses and had a ponytail, wearing some sort of t-shirt top, looking to the right side. Her nipple was outlined in the cloth, due to the way the light fell.

Oh, wrong picture.. my bad.

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

No, I won't, because it would be rude. The fact that you say you wouldn't mind merely reinforces the problem. Whether you mind or not, it's reasonable to expect that someone else would.

So me not being uptight about what people say reinforces the problem?
I mean, what you just said works both ways. Whether you mind or not, it doesn't necessarily mean that someone else would either. I mean then why not go politically correct too? Someone out there might be sensitive to that too.