50 Shades For Mother's Day
mom doesn't want what you think she wants this Sunday
ROCK PAPER RADIO is a dispatch for misfits & unlikely optimists by your favorite hapa haole, beet-pickling, public radio nerd. It’s a weekly email newsletter that shares three curiosities every Thursday - something to hold on to (that’s the ‘rock’), something to read (that’s the ‘paper‘), and something to listen to (you guessed it, that’s the ‘radio’). Themes include but are not limited to: rebel violinists, immortal jellyfish, revolution. Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word.
Happy API Heritage Month, Asians and allies! Starting next week, we’ll be sharing the multimedia projects from our fire crew of #AZNxBLM artist-activists. GET READY. I knew these creatives would deliver, but for real, I did not expect to be crying like a proud mom at a dance recital (I‘ve done this too) as I scrolled through my Google drive. Make sure you’re following us on Instagram @rockpaperradio so you’re the first to know when projects drop.
SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO
In case you need a reminder that time has no meaning, consider this: it was just six years ago that 50 Shades of Grey brought blindfolds and patriarchy into suburban American bedrooms everywhere. Since that historic feat of filmmaking, the 50 Shades author has come out from hiding behind her pseudonym, the #MeToo movement has made consent sexy, and Billie Eilish has traded JNCO capris for Gucci corsets and latex sleeves. What a time to be alive!
Shortly after the film’s release, WNYC’s The Takeaway sat down with sex tech firebrand Cindy Gallop for this wild-for-public-radio 8-minute conversation: Sex, Love & Intimacy: What 'Fifty Shades' Gets Right & Wrong. This could be great Mother’s Day listening this Sunday! At 5.09 Gallop shares some excellent advice to parents. Seriously.
I am absolutely thrilled to be continuing the mission to get public radio listeners riled up. Last Friday I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Gallop for KUOW. The story will be out later this month and I will be psyched to share it with all of you. In the meantime, I highly recommend watching Gallop’s 4-minute NSFW (but surprisingly safe for TED) TED talk from 2009, Make love, not porn.
SOMETHING TO READ
Perhaps not coincidently, Teacher Appreciation Week now comes just before Mother’s Day. Lucky for moms and educators (and educators who are also moms), we’re right in the middle of all that acknowledgement now.
While it might be convenient that all of our scented candle buying can be condensed into one week of performative gratitude, as Anne Helen Petersen points in her latest essay That's What the Money Is For, instead of showering moms and teachers with mugs and hand lotion for one week a year, we could actually support women* by paying them more, backing up their unions, and voting for leaders who care about public education. Also this:
“I am trying to call attention to the way in which practices like Teacher Appreciation Week enroll both parents and educators in a larger exchange schema that somehow manages to ask very little of parents and give very little to teachers in the most exhausting way possible.
Temporarily setting aside the fact that this is the sort of labor that almost always falls upon mothers, and serves as yet another way in which working moms, less financially stable moms, single moms, and/or less mobile moms can “fail” at public performances of proper motherhood…and also setting aside the many parents are already paying up to a third of their income on daycare and preschool…and also setting aside the fact that those failures often filter down and serve as sources of shame for children…and also setting aside the fact that making participation in these weeks “optional” is at once bullshit and gaslighting, these gifts don’t actually make the teacher feel supported.”
All that being said—don’t get me wrong. I’m all about a bergamot candle, I re-read thank you notes from my former students whenever I need a reminder that the world is going to be okay, and my wife and I are absolutely looking forward to eating a pile of pancakes this weekend that neither of us prepared.
SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO
Happy Mother’s Day to new fur baby parent Ariel Davis, who NPR referred to as a “36-year-old single lesbian in Connecticut” in their announcement on Twitter celebrating her adoption of Prancer, the Chihuahua from hell.
Prancer’s adoption ad went viral after he was described by 25-year-old literary master and dog rescue hero Tyfanee Fortuna as a neurotic, gremlin-like “haunted Victorian child in the body of a small dog that hates men and children.”
Davis does not have any other fur or human children. We wish them both the best.
SHOUT OUT AN ASIAN TODAY
That’s a wrap on issue 40(!), friends. Thanks for listening, reading, holding on. And thanks too for spreading the word about our misfit fam and #AZNxBLM. Every time I see your shares on social media, it feels like we’re waving to each other from across a crowded bar where the music’s nice and everyone’s vaccinated and looking cool. You all are the best.
And one more thing, Asians and allies - if you’re feeling inspired by Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and you’re looking for a way to show some love for the community, might I recommend using your social media feeds and Zoom meetups to amplify the work of API creators. Looking for links? You can find some great ones in our ROCK PAPER RADIO archives like here and here and here.
See you next Thursday.
K.
*According to 2020 reporting by Education Week, the average teacher in America is a “43-year-old white woman,” and nearly 80% of teachers identify as female in both charter and traditional public schools.