Margaret Cho’s “I’m the One that I Want”

          I went into viewing this video thinking it was completely different, and was quite surprised when I found out it was stand up comedy.  I thought it was going to be a documentary of some sort, and as we all know now, it was not.  I thought that she was pretty funny to some degrees, but I must say that some of it didn’t strike me as being all that funny, not because of the subject matter, but I just didn’t find some of it funny.  Anywho, that is not important I suppose.  I did however find the biographical information that she gave in-between jokes interesting, because it obviously has a lot to do with what we have been talking about in class, I suppose most of the jokes did as well (thusly why we watched it one might suggest).  It dealt with race, sexuality, gender, all those fun things we have been reading theory about.  I want to know if there really are KKK-Marts (I know there are not) but they do have to buy those things somewhere right?

          Okay so yes as we talked about in class today there are a lot of connections to Butler in her act.  The one that stuck out a good deal, as we discussed in my group today, was the destruction of the body to fit into what society has labeled and accepted to be what one should look like.  I thought the thing about her face was very interesting.  The fact that she had a wide face.  I don’t know if I am falling back on a stereotype here, but I was under the assumption that women of Asian descent actually, genetically, have broader faces.  I hope I am not using prejudice, this is something I just thought was true.  If it is, then in essence what the people telling Cho that her face was too wide, were actually not just saying that she had to change her appearance to be more “beautiful,” but that her race in itself was flawed.  I find this interesting because it passes the border of just being about sex and gender and goes into the idea of race and culture.

         Interesting article I just found.  (Don’t ask how)  Here it is.  I think that it is absolutely ridiculous that blueprints of the “face of beauty” have been created.  I think our theorists would have some words.  Is this an example in itself of discourse on sex as Foucault would call it, perhaps?  I don’t know just what to make of all this, but alas, here it is.