Useless Reveal: Now With 50% More Gay

Remember the Useless Reveal? It's in the pages of this week's Phoenix. And it's wicked gay.

It’s just another Thursday night in South Boston.

Be calm, Reader, all is well. Or is it?

Local bars like the Boston Beer Garden and the Playwright are overstuffed with hard-drinking twenty- and thirtysomethings, mostly locals and the new crop of Southie transplants looking for a hookup.

In case you forgot what an ALTERNATIVE weekly we are, we threw some sex in.

The men are knuckling up to the bar, eyeing deals on pitchers of Miller Lite or Budweiser, scoping out prime real estate in front of a flat-screen TV to watch their favorite Boston sports team, and maybe even getting some love from one of the female hotties prancing around in skin-tight denim and low-cut halter tops.

More sex. More aimless verbiage. This is beginning to feel ominous.

The scene is similar at the Junction, another popular local watering hole. There’s a stench of beer and cologne in the air, pint glasses are being filled by the dozen, and the athletic attire that is the unofficial after-work uniform of the Southie male is everywhere in sight. But something seems off in this prototypical pub in the heart of historically xenophobic South Boston.

Uh-oh.

Maybe it’s this: almost every guy in the Junction tonight is gay.

KABLOOM! KABLAM! Mind: FUCKING BLOWN! IT CANNOT BEEEEEEEEE!

My Southie bawnanraised ex-girlfriend is going to have a goddamn field day with this.

Thanks to expert spotters Adam and Julia for finding this splendid specimen.

Useless Reveal On Steroids

You folks are familiar with the Useless Reveal, right? We've discussed this before. It's a kind of lede common in women-journalism. Sometimes invisible to the untrained eye, but rather like Euphorbia prostrata, the Prostrate Spurge, once you know what you're looking for, you'll see it everywhere. Here are its markings:

1. A headline and/or large photo that screams "THIS STORY IS ABOUT A WOMAN TYPE OF PERSON,"

2. A gormless presumption on the part of the reporter that the reader does not know this,

and 3. Faux shock and awe when some kind of wardrobe malfunction, usually involving a blond ponytail tumbling out of a helmet of some sort, betrays the subject's basic feminitude.

Today's NYT has a three-paragraph Useless Reveal. Three paragraphs. Wow. I think I need a new pair of disbelief-suspension cables.

NEW ORLEANS — Mike Henry could not get comfortable in his stance. He knew the line judge was watching him. This was only a scrimmage, but Henry, a 6-foot-5, 289-pound freshman lineman, was trying to move up thedepth chart for the Tulane Green Wave. The whistle blew and a blur of black and white stripes came running his way.

“You need to get down, and stay down,” the official said in a voice that swiveled Henry’s head and widened his eyes. It was not the tone but the timbre of Sarah Thomas’s voice.

It was soft and lilting and grounded in the rhythms of her native Mississippi. Because Thomas’s long blond hair was tucked beneath a black hat swirled in stripes, Henry had had no idea the official was a woman.

Kudos to reporter Joe Drape for informing us that women are native to Mississippi. I did not know that.

I hesitate to offend the delicate sensibilities of our readers, but you should know that subject Sarah Thomas--who, you may have deduced, is a football referee--is occasionally subject to uncouth verbiage.

She understands intensity can give way to some salty language.

Shocking. I hope the NAIA covers the cost of the lead ovary-shields she obviously needs to perform her job safely.

Bring Out Yer Dead

It pains me to do this. But it was bound to happen. I knew when I got into this Women Do racket that one day, a publication I'd recently written for would come out with a truly preposterous Women Do story. I am honor-bound to smite it, conflict of interest be damned. (Besides, the freelance check has already cleared.)

Today's item concerns women (naturally), who are flocking in increasing numbers (as is their wont) to the funeral industry. What do you suppose the headline is? Think about it for a minute before you click. Got it? OK! Here's the story!

Immediately we can see that Phoenix staff perkiness dispenser Sara Faith Alterman has turned the Useless Reveal, one of the standard tropes of Women Do literature, on its head. Gender stereotype first, manly occupation second.

Like any other 20 year olds, Megan Peterson and Mackenzie Byles chatter like hyperactive squirrels, excitedly finishing each others' sentences as though they're alien twins with melded minds.

Mind-melded hyperactive alien squirrel twins? That is so exactly what adult women are like!

It's incongruous to imagine their manicured hands expertly slitting a corpse's neck, fishing around under flesh and sinew with sinister-looking hooks for the carotid artery, exposed muscle tissue looking as plump and juicy as pre-packaged raw chicken breasts.

These fresh faces are the future of funeral service.

Be not distracted by all the hiply grotesque verbiage which is the Mark of the Alt-Weekly. Under all those juicy dead breasts is classic Women Do, as boilerplate as anything you might find in the dailies. To sum up the plot thus far: Women are dumb, and one is surprised to find them doing hard stuff, but they are. Let us continue.

As President Obama tries to resuscitate a flat-lining economy left for dead, a new wave of young females like Peterson and Byles are breathing life into the business of death.

This story was veering dangerously close to irrelevance in the national sociopolitical discourse, but we rescued it with a tacky analogy. Onward!

With increasing fervor, women are permeating what was once a male-dominated industry.

Permeate with fervor! DO IT, GIRL.

According to a study...

Hooray, Science! Enough of that. Why is it so crazy for chicks [sic] to be funeral directors?

The physical aspects of the job, historically, have been obstacles for women. Not because chicks can't haul a cadaver down a flight of stairs and then slice it open and snip rotting veins and arteries without crying and gagging at the sight of exposed muscle tissue, but because men have always assumed that they can't.

Damn those mens and their assumptions! Let's cut to the chase and find out why women are so keen on dead flesh. Increasingly. It's because they're caring. Is there ever any other reason? (Well, it might also be because they lust after corpses. Being an alt-weekly, we have to work sex in there somehow.)

Urges of a more cerebral nature have attracted many young women to the funeral industry; namely, the urge to help distressed mourners navigate one of the more difficult milestones of life.

Dr. Lyn Prendergast's slightly peevish quote indicates that perhaps a reporter has just asked her an irritating question. Maybe, "So, do girls get mortuary degrees because they like just want to help people or what?"

'The perception of the general public is that women tend to be more compassionate,' says Dr. Lyn Prendergast, founder (with her husband, Dr. Louis Misantone) of FINE. 'A lot of women do have compassionate sides, and I think it's one factor that draws them into the industry, but it shouldn't be a blanket statement. Unfortunately, though, it's mostly true.'

Can't...(cough, gasp)...fight...inherent...altruism. Must...help...people.

Women Sometimes Do Boxing

It's been a slow week at Women Do HQ. The Globe's sins since the tattoo fiasco have mostly been minor. No Women Do Power Lunch. No Women Run Giant Lizard Farms. No Women, Once Liberated From The Tyranny of Needlepoint, Now Rediscovering the Domestic Arts Anew. Even Joseph P. Kahn seems to have given up on the Mr. Mom story he promised us.

I dared to hope. Could it be that a new day was dawning over Morrissey Boulevard? Had Marty Baron seen the light? Had somebody over there been reading this humble blog, and thinking, "You know, maybe we ought to take a few reporters off the Women Do Macrame beat and send them out knocking on doors in Dorchester. Maria Cramer's getting kinda lonely covering the entire distro area of the Bay State Banner all by herself."

Alas, as today's classic story proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, the women are still doing stuff. Namely, boxing. They do it. If there is anybody living under a rock in New Hampshire who remains unaware that women sometimes do boxing, consider yourself informed.

Milton J. Valencia's story contains a nice example of the old standby of Women Do, the Useless Reveal. This is a kind of lede, much favored by reporters on all beats, in which the first sentence or two lulls you into a sense of complacency by suggesting that nothing is out of the ordinary...

"These hands are no different from any Jack O'Neill has wrapped in his decades in boxing. Good jab, strong one-two. He would like to see a little more head movement, but so far he likes the progress."

...and then, WHAM! A surprising fact is interjected!

"Matie Desjardins, the woman who walked into his gym a year ago with barely any skills, has earned his respect."

Only the dark-horse vagina fails to surprise, because of course the giant screaming headline has already given the entire premise of the story away. Rats! Foiled again! Editor 1, Reporter 0!

I love the Useless Reveal, especially when it involves long blond hair cascading out of football helmets. My personal favorite isn't from a Women Do story at all--it's from a science story, in which a mysterious special clipboard-carrying person is revealed to be carrying not just any clipboard, but a clipboard for writing down things about bears. Globe columnist Kevin Cullen has also made good use of it: for instance, in his notorious June 5, 2008 column, in which ceremonial Fenway pitch-thrower Javier Serrano is revealed to have no hands.

The boxing story (which, mercifully, is titled "Round won" and not, e.g., "She box, he box, a-we box") would probably have made a decent profile. Instead, it meanders through the last 16 years of women-in-boxing-in-New-England history, pausing occasionally to dish out tepid compliments.

"Women are finding other women to box with them at major events. Most important say those in the boxing community, is that crowds are starting to enjoy women's bouts as part of the show, rather than an oddity.

"These girls even start to have a following," said William Hoar, executive director of New England Golden Gloves..."

It Is Not Done Well, But You Are Surprised To Find It Done At All.