Friday Feminist Fuck You: Ignorant Coverage of Rima Fakih

Lori and I were hanging out last night and decided to make a video about the mainstream media coverage of Rima Fakih, the newly crowned Miss USA. You can read more about it here.
*Also, we are not suggesting Hezbollah is or is not a terrorist organization that is an entirely separate conversation.
**The question at the end is troubled by the fact that Fakih’s pictures were probably released against her will, so she doesn’t have the option of potentially benefiting from it. The point of the question is, why do women personally get shamed when they are doing exactly what the status quo, mainstream media and corporations are already doing? Using women’s sexuality to sell sex and other commodified products.
***The lighting sucks, apologies for that, but doesn’t our hair look great!
Transcript after the jump.

Samhita: this week’s Friday Feministing Fuck You goes to mainstream media for their inability to cover the complexity of Miss USA Rima Fakih
Lori: Specifically we need to call out CNN for their gem of a headline, “Miss USA: Muslim Trailblazer Or Hezbollah Spy?’
Samhita: Hezbollah Spy what is this 1984.
Lori: and you would think that such a sensational headline would have a solid source, but no it was from neocon bloggers. Well done CNN.
Samhita: Yeah, failure. CNN not only got this from blogger Debbie Schlussel, but TPM reports they actually pulled the story and entire blog post because they realized how ridiculous it is that someone from Dearborn, Michigan is in some way connected to Hezbollah. And what do you think this shows us Lori?
Lori: We have an inability to process someone from an American Nationalist beauty pageant as something other than of the caucasian variety.
Samhita: Exactly, is there anything that says, “USA,” more than, “Miss” USA? So if anything we are being put in an awkward position to be defending Miss USA, what is Miss USA anyway? Look in our back archives we’ve written a lot about it.
Lori: I am still in denial that we are making a video this Thursday evening on defending Miss USA.
Samhita: Well we are not really defending the pageant right? It is really that Rima Fakih deserves to get fair coverage and the fact that there is no national discourse or narrative to describe her as anything outside of potentially connected as a terrorist organization.
Lori: Wait, she is part of a terrorist discourse? I thought she was a stripper?
Samhita: Ahh, that brings us to our next point.
Lori: So if she is not a Hezbollah terrorist then she has to be a slutty stripper, because what else is there other than these two extreme dichotomies. Of course, we havd a stipper scandal that day after the pageant. What is interesting about this year is that the pics Donald Trump released before the pageant were much more “scandalous.” The only difference is the first set of pictures were serving the capitalist patriarchy system of beauty pageants and the second set of pictures were potentially serving her.
Samhita: So we ask you readers why are women blamed when they could potentially benefit from releasing pics she is shamed, but when a corporation does it, it is considered marketing?