photo by Tiffany Woods

Brandy Martell

I am a woman of Hispanic descent. My parents came here from Colombia and Cuba. Throughout my life, I never really faced discrimination as a Hispanic. I've faced more adversity for being female. During the 2008 election, I picketed against Proposition 8, in San Luis Obispo (where I lived at the time) during a Thursday night farmer's market. One night, a man approached me in a hostile and aggressive way, getting right up in my face. I don't remember what his line of reasoning was, but I do remember him yelling "you people."

"You people are what's wrong with this country!" he yelled.

I realized what he hated about me: He thought I was one of them -- one of the gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, or transgender people who have filled my life since I was a child. At that moment I realized what a hate crime was and just how ugly ignorance makes people. I bring this up because a hate crime recently happened and I have to talk about it.

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photo by Mark Richards

Marilyn Wann

Today our nation relapses into what might be our worst case of fat fearmongering yet. The current source of our infection with pseudoscientific sensationalism is something called Weight of the Nation, a highly contagious conference/book/series/website onslaught backed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and delivered tonight and Tuesday (May 14-15) via ocular injection on HBO.

I attended the first, government-sponsored Weight of the Nation conference in 2009. I didn't pay or anything self-defeating like that. I just walked in (with a brave friend or two) and delivered plastic-wrapped fortune cookies to the fancy luncheon tables where major stakeholders were about to chew on the alleged "obesity" problem. If the professional food scolds took a cookie, they got messages like these:

• The war on "obesity" is a war on PEOPLE!

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Edward Hopper

Heres how seriously SFMOMA takes Intermission (1963) -- we bet you won't read it all: Collection SFMOMA, purchase in memory of Elaine McKeon, chair, SFMOMA Board of Trustees (1995-2004), with funds provided in part by the Fisher and Schwab Families; © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art; photo courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

Next Thursday (May 17), moneyed admirers of American artist Edward Hopper can bid on the painting Bridle Path (1939) at Sotheby's for an estimated $5 million to $7 million. SFMOMA described the work as being "of interest to Hopper scholars as an atypical work by the artist." In the very same press release, the museum announced the acquisition of Intermission (1963), which is "recognized as one of his best works."

But this is not an article about SFMOMA's recent acquisition, or even its "deaccession" of Bridle Path, which might confuse regular readers of this series. Recent Acquisitions has reported on additions to Bay Area cultural institutions, whether esoteric pieces or adorable fuzzy animals. It is important to understand, however, that acquisitions have a necessary accomplice within the world of collections strategy: the deacqusition, better known as the deaccession.

Institutions are rarely as forthcoming as SFMOMA, and with good reason: Certain news organizations have treated the process as scandal. When mistakes were made, they made headlines. Any sale, trade, or donation might ignite a firestorm of controversy, creating a false sense of urgency.

This unwanted attention has put cultural institutions on the defensive. Indeed, it was challenging to find arts employees willing to discuss the subject on record, if at all, but transparency is imperative - particularly when the process of deaccessioning is not only crucial, but necessary.

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I remember the first time I saw Brent Weinbach on stage. He was a new (at least to me) comedian. And it was at the Punch Line in San Francisco. It was a Sunday night, and I was supposed to follow him. I had heard he was funny, but I didn't have much hope for him to have a good set. Why? Because he was a new comic and they usually don't.

Well, I was wrong. Brent KILLED. DESTROYED. He destroyed in the way that you occasionally see new comics destroy a room, as if to say, "I'm here and I am a force to be reckoned with. No waiting patiently in line for me. FOLLOW THAT!"

I immediately knew I had to recapture the audience's attention. It wasn't going to be easy. And in large part it wasn't going to be easy because Brent had done something that I had historically hated.

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​"Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn't have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her. "

So reads a 1970 ad for Mr. Leggs. Its glaring grammatical error aside (hello, dangling modifier), the ad is so revolting it almost seems laughable. As does the one for Chase & Sanborn coffee: "If your husband ever finds out ..."

It makes us (as a society) wince, or at least I hope it does, but it can also produce a shrug. "Oh that's just Mad-Men-ish retro kitsch and no longer our problem." We can feel smug, thinking we have achieved something in the past 40 years. We might continue, "No one would dare print something like that now."

Right? Wrong.

This ad below for Belvedere Vodka came out last month with the accompanying Twitter post that read, "Unlike some people......Belvedere goes down smoothly."

Because of public outrage, the company apologized and made a donation to RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network). Okay, groovy, but the image has already done its damage. It exists.

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"Moonlight Topaz"

Between 1942 and 1945, 11,200 Japanese-Americans were sent to Topaz Camp. It was located in a parched stretch of desert about 125 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Most of the prisoners were from San Francisco. Some were forced to live in horse stalls at Tanforan Race Track before being shipped there. Two-thirds were U.S. citizens. None had been charged with a crime. Kids lucky enough to turn 17 while at Topaz were administered a two-question loyalty test, which could win them "freedom" through the draft; resistors came to be known as the "No-No Boys" and were immediately shipped to another camp.

Amazingly, in the midst of this madness, an art school was born. Boasting 600 students, the school offered classes in watercolor, architectural drafting, oil painting, and anatomy, taught by 17 reputable instructors. One was professor Chiura Obata, who found his own UC Berkeley students similarly interned. Because writing and photography were forbidden, these images became the only record of camp life, and its primary pastime.

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Mikki Willis

James Brandon as Joshua in Corpus Christi

Back in 1985, Jean-Luc Godard released a movie called Hail Mary that made Catholics breathe fire. (Paradoxical metaphor noted.) It was a modern-day retelling of the immaculate conception where a woman named Marie gets pregnant even though she is a virgin. But it was also a French experimental film, so Marie has a number of unholy attributes, including a rather foul mouth. She uses words such as "cunt" referring to her own anatomy, and she appears wholly (not holy) unclothed. (Oh, the blasphemy!) I saw Hail Mary at the Roxie in 1985. Why? Because the Catholics were out in force trying to steer people away from it. Would I have seen it otherwise? Not a chance. Did I like it? Not really (hey, I was 18), but I liked seeing it because I got to cross a picket line of religious zealots and tell them just where they could stick their thought-policing.

The Catholics protesting a documentary called Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption could take a lesson from this: They risk sending more people to see the film by making noise about it, especially in San Francisco, a city that contains Catholics who are openly queer and don't feel one bit guilty about it. (Now there's a stand-off we'd love to see: red-state Catholics vs. San Francisco out-and-proud Catholics.)

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We must protect our children from sex! Or so most modern thinking goes. Interestingly, this idea of children's inherent sexual innocence is fairly recent. In fact, the Victorians created it.

On the course blog for English 271: Psychoanalysis and Literature at Nassau Community College in New York, a person calling herself Professor Estevez writes of the Victorians, "For children, innocence and moral purity was defined by their ignorance of adult life and adult knowledge. Above all, childhood innocence was premised on a lack of sexuality: The child was seen not so much as a pre-sexual creature, but by definition an asexual one."

Before Lewis Carroll, Peter Pan, and child labor protection, sexuality in most homes was as obvious as the cows sleeping in front of the fire during winter. Children were seen as miniature versions of adults, albeit not quite as savvy, and they were subject to the same exposure to life as everyone else.

Indigenous people in Brazil known as the Canela, up until the encroachment of Christian missionaries, used sex for just about everything, including smoothing over conflicts, cementing political alliances, and celebrating holidays. Nakedness, frolicking, and the occasional gang-bang were seen by children on a regular basis. So much so that the kids would often mimic the sex play of adults. This was considered "cute" by most Canela.

"Cute," however, is not what families thought when, while watching Irish priest Martin McVeigh give a presentation about first communion, images of gay porn were accidentally flashed on the screen. Church officials are investigating the "accident" in response to the outrage of the parents.

Last year, former porn star Sasha Grey had to publicly apologize for daring to read stories to first- and third-graders at a school in Compton. Parents at the school, parents in blogs, and moms on The View found it very disturbing that a woman who as one blogger on KLIOU put it, "made a conscious decision to spend an exorbitant amount of time sucking dick on camera for money," would be chosen to talk to their children.

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The Barbie doll. Standing at 11.5 inches and made of plastic, this diminutive doll-woman created in 1959 has caused quite a fuss. Girls all over the world still clamor to possess their own, adult women might wax nostalgic when presented with Malibu Barbie, punk-minded females might remember proudly the Magic Marker tattoos drawn on theirs. But it is feminists that have kicked up the dust of debate when they accuse Barbie of being a symbol of everything that is wrong with society's view of women.

Christopher G. Boyd / Whore! Magazine

They point out that her proportions, if she were made into a real woman are, impossible for a real woman and as a result contribute to the trend of anorexia and low self-esteem. There was also the scandal about the talking Barbie who declared that math was hard. Detractors assert that Barbie is a terrible role model for girls. Though a self-described feminist, I have always been bored by that argument. Then I read this paragraph in Naomi Wolf's book Promiscuities: A Secret History of Female Desire, "Barbie's breasts and clothes seem to blunt her personality. In Barbie's life, events were merely excuses for ensembles. Her story could really go nowhere." Those words aroused my annoyance and indignant fury. Her story go nowhere? Are you kidding? Did you have absolutely no imagination at all?

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Mark Richards

Visitors to the Habit Heroes exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center walk into Will Powers Gym, where they respond to a Snack Attack ("It's food fight time!") by shooting broccoli at sugary foods and doing high kicks to force a fat, lazy, gluttonous villain named Lead Bottom to exercise. (If I weren't a disciplined, veggie-eating exercise lover, I'd make a great Disney villain.)

We need Disney's interactive "innovention" to spread this message? How many times a day do we already see fat villains? (Because only someone truly evil could enjoy life as a fat person or be such a lazy glutton? And all fatties eat all the time, dontcha know?)

"How else will we make people understand that if you are fat, you are not welcome at the 'happiest place on Earth?'" asks Deb Lemire, president of the professional organization for Health At Every Size, with the appropriate sarcasm.

From the Habit Heroes exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center

Disney's anti-childhood-"obesity" exhibit, created in partnership with Florida Blue and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, opened briefly last month before closing indefinitely for "retooling," amid all sorts of well-earned criticism for stereotyping and stigmatizing. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, a 40-year-old civil rights group, rightly suspects that any new version will be just as prejudicial and invites people to sign its petition.

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