CAKE is in the firing line again.
This time it’s an opinion piece in Elle magazine by Virginia Vitzthum, a writer whose main interest is the online dating scene.
Ostensibly the piece starts out like a feature, but it quickly becomes a soapbox for Vtizthum’s own views on feminism, and why she doesn’t think CAKE measures up. As a piece of journalism, I think it makes a good blog rant.
I’m not saying this because I wholeheartedly support the CAKE enterprise. I’ve read other criticisms and I can see the reasoning behind some of them. CAKE does raise a lot of questions about women’s sexuality, feminism and commercialism, and a good journalist would have explored that in a fair and balanced way.
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Vitzthum doesn’t bother. Instead, we get an awful lot of commentary and not much else.
The article says that the writer attended seven separate CAKE events and two sit-down interviews with Emily and Melinda. That’s a substantial amount of research for an article, and most likely provided a huge amount of material to write about.
Unfortunately, the CAKE participants or the two founders are never quoted without the author framing their words in an antagonistic way. The quotes are short and may well be out of context. Vitzhum always has the last word on the topic.
Example:
Kramer says that of “feminist” strippers, “You can say it’s the male gaze, but what about the object looking back and redefining the gaze.” Okay, fine, but even when the dancing woman is just as fulfilled by the experience as the man leering at her, she’s still not challenging stereotypes, furthering communication or improving sex.
Even Vitzhum’s use of words to describe her conversations with the CAKE founders is aggressive. Melinda in particular gets the rough end of the stick, portrayed as a confused anorexic who “snaps” and “rails” during their interviews.
I wasn’t trained as a journalist, but I’ve worked as one and I’ve written my share of articles about controversial topics. Perhaps the hardest one I ever wrote was about the issue of “abortion grief.” From a personal point of view, I saw the whole concept as a load of bollocks, just another pseudo medical condition made up by right wing conservatives to bolster their religious opposition to abortion. But I didn’t spend the article saying that. Instead, I interviewed experts from both sides, and also a variety of women who’d had abortions, including some who believed they suffered from abortion grief.
I wrote it up as fairly as I could. The reader could look at both sides and make up their own mind.
The only dissenting voice in Vitzhum’s article is her own. She would have been better off finding one of the many feminists or commentators who have a problem with CAKE and interviewing them.
As it is, this Elle article looks like a hatchet job.
Of course, I only have the scanned copy of the article to go on. I don’t know if this piece was labelled “feature” or “opinion.” It’s under the title “culture watch” which doesn’t tell me much.
I also don’t know if Elle magazine endorses the views of the author, but I do find it somewhat amusing that on the last page Vitzhum expresses feminist opinions about the media’s unrealistic image of women. This in a magazine that regularly features skeletal fashion models (check out their website) and that pushes “better skin overnight” and “61 shoes and bags just for you” on the cover.