meta rec: uhura's job description

[cimorene]

telesilla: So you want to be a Starfleet Communications Officer, but...

all you need is an in-depth understanding of tactics, hardware, software, intelligence work, and xeno-linguistics. Oh and the ability to prioritize.

There's been some debate going on with people who feel there was misogyny relating to the way Uhura was written in the movie, some of whom have said that she doesn't get to be awesome enough. (I haven't been following all this carefully; this is just a general paraphrase I've gotten from things I read on both sides!) Other people are responding with, in essence, "Are you crazy? Uhura's job requires mad qualifications and she's really good at it. She has to be a genius AND she kicks ass."

I think two issues are at work here - what I'll call the meta level and the spackle level. The meta is what was going on behind the scenes, the Moral of the Story, screentime apportionment, and creator (and studio) intent. On the meta level, in TOS we rarely saw her do anything much¹ other than "answer the phone". Sigourney Weaver as Tawny made a scathing comment about this in Galaxy Quest, and her point is in no way detracted from by the fact that in order for the ship to actually function the character must have had a lot of knowledge and expertise that we DON'T see (spackle level): the fact remains that Nichelle Nichols didn't get to do a lot aside from answer the phone and be eye candy, and it's an amazing credit to her that she made Uhura likeable, kickass, witty, intelligent, and possessed of a very definite character. In the TOS movies this was already somewhat remedied: we see her hot-wiring communications somewhere (I don't remember where, exactly), culminating in her monumentally impressive ability to decode the whalesong transmissions in STIV using a burned-out stolen Klingon ship without an instruction manual.

The meta level is what the complaints are talking about: some people have a problem with her being made into a love interest (whether this is a valid complaint has been and will continue to be the subject of much debate), or her lack of participation in physical action scenes. Many people (I would hope everybody) have a problem with her uniform, which looks like the stripper version of the real Star Fleet uniform that we just have to assume, for the sake of our sanity, really exists somewhere.

telesilla's post addresses the spackle level. In order to spackle the universe - that is, create an internally coherent interpretation of it all that makes sense - it's necessary to assume that even in TOS where she mostly said "Captain! It's MCI! They say it's a limited time offer!"², she had all the expertise that telesilla lays out. The new movie takes Uhura's expertise and runs with it. We know she's absolutely the best of the best, and considering the pool Star Fleet draws on that's pretty damn impressive.



1. Uhura did also fix the wiring of her own console: no one else ever repairs it (although Spock is allowed to help at least once), which shows that she's the expert not just in linguistics, but in all the specialized computers used for her job. She's also shown to be handy with phaser, dagger, and hand-to-hand combat (eg Mirror, Mirror) and pretty fearless under pressure (eg The Naked Time, The Squire of Gothos).

2. Futurama

Comments

[zvi]

Many people (I would hope everybody) have a problem with her uniform, which looks like the stripper version of the real Star Fleet uniform that we just have to assume, for the sake of our sanity, really exists somewhere.

Shenanigans.

Wearing a skirt and short sleeves to work makes you look like a sex worker*?

The undershirt makes sure no cleavage is visible; the skirt is long enough that she can walk or squat normally without flashing thigh. (I'm not going to claim she can bend over, but her job doesn't typically require her to do so.)

It is common for early 21st century military uniforms to allow female soldiers a skirt option. The Starfleet version is a lot more sporty-casual looking than the US military service uniforms, but the pants version of the suit is a lot more sporty-casual looking than Navy Service Uniforms, which are closer to business wear.

Also, there were female Starfleet personal in pant suits versions and long sleeve versions with the skirt. So, you know, bitch about the fact that there were no men in the skirt option. But you are going to have to explain what the evils of the skirt option are, and if your answer is, "looks like stripper uniform", I call shenanigans.

*Is not morally opposed to sex work. Is opposed to the idea that a woman dressed too attractively or exposing too much skin is assumed to be a sex worker.

[cimorene]

I have to explain the downsides of wearing a sleeveless minidress on the job? They seem completely self-explanatory to me. The fact that the skirt could be shorter is hardly relevant. For a woman to be expected to be comfortable in a sleeveless minidress while the men around her are wearing long-sleeved tunics and long pants seems suspiciously like the traditions that govern modern gender-specific dresscodes in most formal situtions as opposed to a seekritly well-thought-out bid for increased women's social liberation.

Also, the point of military service uniforms isn't to make you look attractive; I think the point of the modern military ones is more "conform to conservative prescriptions for gender roles". The navy service uniform, you'll notice, is not worn on ships underway; it is replaced by the work uniform.

idea that a woman dressed too attractively or exposing too much skin is assumed to be a sex worker.

Sure, if there weren't a Starfleet badge on the dress and it weren't supposed to be a military uniform, it wouldn't look remotely like a porn version. It's the juxtaposition of skimpy impractical styling on the minidress with the type of logic apparently at work in the trousered version (a certain amount of warmth, wide freedom of movement, protection for the skin, and pockets) that makes the former look like the porn version or, if you prefer, the naughty Halloween version, which are always styled with the rule of thumb "take the basic idea behind this and slap it onto a minidress".

[zvi]

I have to explain the downsides of wearing a sleeveless minidress on the job? From all available evidence on this film, Uhura has a deskjob in a temperature-controlled environment (i.e., she knows if the minidress will leave her feeling warm enough.) We know that women can and do wear the pantsuit, so if she were called to an away team on a planet where she was likely to be outdoors, there's no particular reason to suspect that she wouldn't wear that uniform for away work.

So, yes, actually, if she's not cold in the minidress (which one assumes she is not from the fact that she's not wearing the pants suit) and her job primarily involves sitting and talking all day, I don't think the minidress is impractical for her job.

Also, the point of military service uniforms isn't to make you look attractive; I think the point of the modern military ones is more "conform to conservative prescriptions for gender roles". Um, what? My understanding of how uniforms get issued is that everybody gets issued the pants suits by default, and if a female service member would prefer to wear a skirt, she may purchase it. I don't see how that's the military making women be girls and men be men. (Which isn't to say that there isn't a lot that is fucked up about the military and gender, but on this particular accusation, I am failing to see its basis.)

The navy service uniform, you'll notice, is not worn on ships underway; it is replaced by the work uniform. I specifically pointed you to the service uniform since the khaki seemed (to me) to be a better analogue for what we are seeing officers wear on the ship. The work uniform seemed to me to be better analogized by the grey uniforms being worn by the people shuffling cadets into shuttles, which was worn identically by male and female service personnel.

Your outrage seems to be premised on two facts the movie doesn't support. One, that women have to wear the minidress uniform. They don't. We see several different women wearing the pants uniform and a long sleeve skirt uniform in the film. The minidress is clearly an option, not a requirement. Two, the minidress uniform is impractical. While I wouldn't wear a minidress for fieldwork or in Engineering, nothing I've seen about bridge work indicates that you need more warmth, bending over without flashing (which I don't know that you can't do in the minidress, but it would be a close call), protecting the skin [the issues with skin I've seen on a bridge tend towards fire and electricity, for which I don't believe cotton and goretex are great protectors], or pockets.

[waxjism]

Shenanigans! You're acting like Uhura actually has a choice in this! She's a character that a dude wrote and directed. If actual Uhura in the actual parallel universe of Star Trek where all of this is real wants to go to work wearing a clubbing outfit from the sixties, so be it, but in the case of the movie some dude in Hollywood put her in that dress and that's just not cool.

[darkrose]

But Reboot!Uhura is constrained by the look of TOS!Uhura. And while some dude in Hollywood decided that Nichelle Nichols should be in a tiny minidress, Nichelle herself said that "I would not have worn those silly high-water bell-bottoms with the ruffle at the calf the guys had to wear for anything." If TOS Uhura had worn pants and they suddenly decided to change that for the Reboot, that would be one thing, but they made a deliberate choice to reference the original in costumes, and I think that worked.

[zvi]

Some dude in Hollywood decided that the uniforms for Enterpise era trek would heavily reference the uniforms from TOS. As a fan of the time travel reboot mechanism which says that this is not, as Battlestar Galactica was, an adaptation of a previous TV idea as if new, but instead, an AU of the already established universe, I am in favor of making those references, the same way we had drunk!McCoy and fencing!Sulu.

Some dude in Hollywood also decided that the minidress would not be the only female appropriate uniform, and we saw women in the same slacks and shirts as the men.

Also, frankly, when Cim starts out saying, "She looks like a stripper!" and then says, "She looks like a stripper compared to people wearing a *real* uniform," I have to wonder how she came to the conclusion that Uhura is wearing a fake uniform, that only pants are a legitimate uniform, or that the minidress is impractical for the places we saw it worn.

Seriously, would we be having this argument if the skirt came to her knees and the sleeves to her elbow? Is the problem that a skirt version means (since the movie didn't show us men in the minidress, and I do think that's problematic)) a girl version, and wearing the female version of the uniform is bad?

[darkrose]

For a woman to be expected to be comfortable in a sleeveless minidress while the men around her are wearing long-sleeved tunics and long pants seems suspiciously like the traditions that govern modern gender-specific dresscodes in most formal situtions as opposed to a seekritly well-thought-out bid for increased women's social liberation.

Ironically, Nichelle Nichols liked wearing the miniskirt in TOS, and after watching a few episodes, it's obvious why. It looked good on her, and she was clearly comfortable and able to move in in. The guys' uniforms were butt-ugly, unflattering to everyone, and uncomfortable. While that's less true in the Rebootverse, they were clearly trying to reference the original, so you put Uhura in something that echoes the original.

[robin_arede]

I had to do a special plea bargain and promise of more chores at home to be allowed to stay up to watch the third season TOS which came on at 9:00 Friday nights (grrrrr), so I've been a Uhura fan for years. And there are all these issues open to discussion (and which Nichelle Nichols has discussed--I can highly recommend her book Beyond Uhura and her novel written with Margaret Wander Bonanno Saturn's Child.

I think part of the problem is that people (generally and in fandom) want to operate on some binary of good/bad, misogynist/feminist, that just doesn't operate. At the time of the original series, Uhura stood out as an amazing character, with lots of unfulfilled potential (some of which was filled by the women writing media tie in novels, and I'm betting fan fic as well).

Reboot!Uhura was also awesome in ways that addressed one of my major loves--the linguistics issues. I'd have love more Uhura, and more Scotty, and more Bones, but this film tended to focus on the Kirk and Spock relationship (and I don't mean specifically slash!). I would hope, especially if there is a television series, that the focus would be more on the ensemble.

But it's also true that we're never likely to see Uhura (or Sulu!) in command of a ship--that the racism/sexism/heternormativity of the White Boyz in Hollywood will mean that most of the attention is paid to white boys, and let's face it, it's damned depressing the options offered to actors of color in the whitewashed macho world out there.