At that time, about 15% of opinion pieces were written by women, though the imbalance was largely under the radar. The opinion page became a particularly contentious space for an outpouring of women’s voices in this overdue conversation.
Nationally syndicated columnist Susan Estrich called The Los Angeles Times’ leadership out for sexism on its opinion pages. Anne Applebaum of The Washington Post argued with Estrich and said she resented being called a “female” journalist. And Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, echoing one of the most commonly held beliefs about why women don’t have parity, wrote that women weren’t fairly represented because they are afraid of being attacked and care too much about what others think. They lack confidence…
To assume that a lack of confidence is the reason so few women are intellectual leaders is too simplistic. When a woman doesn’t go for a big corporate job like Sandberg’s or says no when television producers call, saying she doesn’t have any confidence implies it’s an individual choice made in some sort of sociocultural vacuum.
As women, in many cases, the impulse to do something out of the norm of our peer group, like write an opinion piece or ask for a promotion, has simply never occurred to us. If it does, we don’t act on it. Our girlfriends aren’t doing it. Our female colleagues aren’t doing it. Why should we?
At The OpEd Project, we cultivate new voices, training minorities and women to inhabit their place as narrators of the world.
After thinking about these feminist fairytales that I love so, I am going to add another letter to Reel Girl’s rating system. And the letter is…T, for Traditional. If Reel Girl assigns a book, movie, or product a T, it means that the subject in question confronts a traditional theme of girls or women in fantasy world (beauty, marriage, passivity etc) in an original, insightful way. I think the T is important because we live in the society we do with thousands of years of cultural mythology to wade through. Though I personally adore when writers and movie makers say fuck it, I’m just going to create a world where genders are equal, I want to give a shout out to those who consciously twist conventions in order to show the heroine triumph.
I think of a T as sort of similar to PG meaning parental guidance suggested. If your child is reading a book, watching a show, or playing with a toy that has a T, your kid may get the most out of the experience if you ask her some questions or dialogue with her about the traditional themes presented here.
Reel Girl will continue to assign the dreaded S, Double S, and Triple S.
All three recs this week are feminist takes on fairytales. Reel Girl is debuting a new rating letter, T for Traditional. Read about it here.
My five year old is absolutely obsessed with The Red Wolf. The illustrations in this book are extraordinary and what is especially cool about them is– see that red wolf– she’s a girl!
No bow! No curly eyelashes! How often do you see a female, magical furry creature like this not in drag in kidworld? And look how happy she is leaping over the forest. It’s impossible to read this book and not smile.
The Red Wolf is a version of the Rapunzel story that rubbed me the wrong way at first. I don’t like to see girls locked up in towers. The princess in this story does free herself, though I worry her liberation is temporary. But I decided that maybe her struggle– the child trying to break free of the overprotective parent who tries to keep her kid safe by teaching her to be fearful of the world– is a universal struggle. Didn’t the father of the Buddha try to isolate his kid from all pain and death? And it was Buddha’s first encounter with an old man that led to his enlightenment, right? With this in mind, and knowing I’m hyper-sensitive to these things, Reel Girl rates The Red Wolf ***GGG/T*** I seriously adore this book.
Next feminist fairytale is Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave.
What is special about this story is it features the rare female friendship and also– are you ready? A positive mother-daughter relationship. OK, the mom is dead, but still. Vasilisa, the protagonist, has a magical doll who helps her. But this story is also clearly a traditional fairytale as well with sentences like: “Whereas the other girls were cruel and ugly, Vasilisa was kindness itself and beautiful beyond measure.” Ugh. I think this equation of beauty-kindness and ugliness-cruelty probably started out right: if you love someone, they appear beautiful. But somehow, the correlation got switched so an “ugly” person implies a “wicked” person. When I come across this correlation in stories, I ask my kids about it and we talk about what it means. The story doesn’t dwell on the beauty issue and Vasilisa is resourceful. Reel Girl rates Vasilisa the Brave ***GGG/T***
Now for my favorite feminist fairytale yet: The Rough-Face Girl. This story also features the rare female friendship. Marriage is the central conflict but its handled in such a beautiful and original way. This is a love story in the best way. Reel Girl rates The Rough Face Girl ***GGG/T***
Another social media victory! Thank you to all who spoke out and signed the petition. Here’s to hoping LEGO becomes a leader in inspiring both genders to dream big.
From Change.org:
After a month and more than 50,000 petition signatures, an open letter, numerous radio shows, TV segments, blog posts, articles, and even YouTube videos about the company, LEGO has decided to listen to girls! On Sunday, February 5, Michael McNally, Brand Relations Director, sent an email to SPARK Movement. SPARK, a girl-fueled movement to end the sexualization of girls, is a coalition of more than 70 organizations and reaches tens of thousands of girls and those who support their healthy development. LEGO has accepted SPARK’s request for a meeting to discuss how they can go back to offering all LEGO toys to both boys and girls and to respect girls’ hunger and desire to play with toys that challenge them creatively and intellectually.
From the recent turn around of the Komen Foundation to not buying LEGOs to leaving Go Daddy, I’m realizing more than ever how important it is to support causes we believe in by writing checks.
Of those I just listed, only Komen is a non-profit, but I want to make a plea for women to give money away. I don’t think enough women do. I was in the non-profit world for years and I was blown away by so many women’s negative and complicated relationship to money. Women who cared about social causes, who were political, who wanted to have an impact on the world often had a hard time writing checks. That is, they didn’t do it. Many progressive women don’t like to talk about money. It’s almost like it’s dirty or evil, that money is corrupt and used to hurt people. Women who generously volunteered their time often would not financially support the same causes.
Money isn’t good or bad, it’s energy. It’s a tool. More women need to get comfortable using it.
There are few things more empowering that writing a check to support a cause you believe in. If you are feeling pissed off or like a victim, few things can make your mood or outlook turn around faster than giving money away. It feels really good and that’s why I do it. Philanthropy is one of my most selfish acts.
How much money should you give? It should hurt, at least a little. I’m not into martyrdom, but you should notice it. For a long, long time the church has recommended tithing your income. I think this is perfect amount as general rule, though I, personally, don’t usually give to the church.
One more reason to do it: Since I started giving money away, it has flowed to me more easily. I know that sounds kind of hippy-dippy, but I think it’s more than karma. I think it has to do with healthy risk taking. Clinging to money and feeling fearful isn’t much help to anyone.
Besides writing stories, I believe if more women tithed their income, we would absolutely change the world. Just try it. See how it feels.
A few years ago, I took a class on forgiveness at Stanford. I was intrigued by the incredibly practical way the professor, Fred Luskin, described his course: Forgiveness is a skill that can be learned, like any other skill such as riding a bike or writing a five paragraph essay.
Professor Luskin taught our class that we were there because we’d formed a grievance that had interfered with our life. In order to form that grievance, we had all done the same three things:
(1) Took an offense too personally (In reality, the action had nothing to do with you.)
(2) Blamed the offender for how you feel. (In the present moment, right now, nothing is hurting you)
(3) Created a grievance story. (This is what gets you stuck, the narrative that you repeat and repeat in your head.)
So how do you forgive? Also, three steps:
(1) Take a hurt less personally. (Really get it has nothing to do with you.)
(2) Take responsibility for how you feel. (Again, nothing is hurting you right now.)
(3) Become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell.
I love this last step: retell your story. Create a new narrative.
A while ago, I read somewhere that the biggest obstacle to immigrants becoming successful in America is the victim mentality. Immigrants who were able to let go of that belief achieved much more than those who held on to it. Becoming the hero in your story has everything to do with why I created Reel Girl. As I wrote in the “About” section of this blog, most of the time I don’t think there’s a sexist conspiracy going on. I just think that for thousands of years, women have been living in stories written by men. That’s just warped.
Women and girls have got to be the ones to tell our own stories. No one else can make us heroes. It’s the kind of thing you have to do for yourself. It isn’t easy when we’re so mired in these other narratives. Here’s one comment I got on Reel Girl:
I’m so glad I found your blog! I have known there was something wrong with the media’s portrayal of women for as long as I remember. When I was little I always played Batman or Superman or just boys in general because the only thing I saw girls doing on TV was being rescued, then getting married off, then…
And because of this I think I may have actually thought I was a boy at one point.
As a beginner writer I would love to write an imaginary world without sexism! I’m trying to do it now.
The appalling lack of female characters in movies and such is so aggressively brainwashed into us that I didn’t even notice it until I read it in your blog. It is so bad, that it wasn’t until I read your blog that I realised my first wannabe-feminist-and-spiritual-soapbox novel has a male main character and a mostly male cast
Your blog has inspired me even more to write more and better females! For some reason my characters just ‘look’ and ‘feel’ male when they come into my head. Even the genderless ones. And now I am trying to figure out why.
Do you think it might have something to do with how I have seen women portrayed in the media?
Yes, absolutely, from the Bible to Tintin, women’s roles are continually limited and marginalized. So, women please write! If we can change our stories, we can change the world. Of course, it helps dramatically for women to get higher up in the power structure so that our stories can get out to influence more people.
If you read Reel Girl, you’ve probably noticed my primitive blog address: http://margotmagowan.wordpress.com
A couple years ago, right when I started blogging, a kind reader got me the name “Reel Girl.” I think he was on Web Hero. My ex brother-in-law had gotten me margotmagowan.com maybe ten years ago, he was on Go Daddy. My New Year’s resolution was to transfer the names, sort it all out, and get a professional address for my blog (www. reelgirl.com). So about two weeks ago, my husband started talking to Go Daddy and getting the process rolling for me– three great men helping me out, which is quite nice, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Being the procrastinator that I am, I hadn’t gotten around to finishing the process, but I started seeing Go Daddy in the news for being against SOPA and then for being sexist. Apparently, Go Daddy has been sexist for a long time. Then I watched the Superbowl yesterday and I saw one of the most offensive ads I’ve seen in my life. It was for Go Daddy.
In the ad, Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels were using a naked model as a billboard (for much of the ad her head is chopped off the screen) writing things on her body like: “Get yours now” and “Get noticed.” They ask: “Who won’t notice a hot model in body paint?” It’s so depressing to see two women objectify a third, especially Danica Patrick who excelled as a Nascar driver, a sport dominated by men. She could be such an inspiring role model for girls and women.
This morning, I went to Go Daddy’s website where there was another horrible ad. Next to a photo of the Pussycat Dolls, the copy reads: “Too hot for TV.” Is this an advertisement for a web hosting company or porn? Two nerdy guys see the Dolls come out at them and wonder if they’re in heaven.Who is this ad for? Obviously, not me. This version of heaven sounds like the Taliban’s.
The Pussycat Doll ad promises that Go Daddy will improve your business with “E-commerce tools and 24/7 customer service” but obviously, Go Daddy couldn’t care less about its female customers. Clearly, to Go Daddy, women are not business owners or bloggers. They’re just objects.
So then I called Go Daddy. I told them I no longer wanted them to host Reel Girl. I told them that their Superbowl ad was offensive and horrible and it treated women not like customers, but like dehumanized them. The woman I spoke with was polite and helpful and said I would get my money back.
I hope all women bloggers and business owners stop using Go Daddy. I hope men do as well. I hope Danica Patrick gets a new job.
Just went to the Go Daddy site to put in the links to this post and the Pussycat Doll ad is no longer on the front page. Could they be listening?
I’m compiling your suggestions in one post. This is a list of what I have NOT seen or read. I will add to it as you do and remove when I officially rate. If you don’t see your suggestions included here, they are elsewhere on Reel Girl already reviewed. To check those, in “categories” click: Reel Girl recommends, Most girlpower, or GGG. Keep the suggestions coming!
Books
Imogene’s Last Stand
Once Upon A Heroine: 450 Books for Girls to Love
Lets Hear it for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14
Sadie and the Snowman
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
Words In The Dust
Millie Gets the Mail
Gwinna
DragonSong and DragonSinger by Anne McCaffrey
Dragon Slippers by Jessica George
Dealing With Dragons
The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan: The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and Serpent’s Shadow
The Melendy Family: The Saturdays, The 4 Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two
Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North American and England
The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World
At the World Economic Conference in Davos, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke on a panel about women in leadership. Did she speak about business strategies, quotas versus merit, politics, reproductive rights? No. Sandberg spoke about female ambition and how girls’ aspirations are blunted at an early age. She spoke about the ‘ambition gap.” She said that “we don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons…Little girls are called ‘bossy’… Go find someone and watch them call a little boy bossy.” Sandberg talks about T shirts sold to kids that either read: “I’m smart like my dad” or “I’m pretty like my mom.”
The focus of Sandberg’s speech was the same topics I blog about every day on Reel Girl. Topics that many readers of my blog on SFGate repeatedly call trivial.
Sandberg says that a major obstacle to women’s achievement is that success and likeability are positively correlated for men but negatively correlated for women. I honestly believe this duality/ stereotype is fueled in the fantasy world where kids so rarely see heroines who are powerful and beautiful; smart and kind.
Sandberg says, “From early childhood through marriage we reward men for being leaders, taking risks, being competitive. We teach women as young as four to lay back, be communal. We need our boys to be as ambitious to contribute in the home and we need our girls to be as ambitious to achieve in the workforce.”
Before I go into the issues I have with this story, Beautiful Warrior should be in your collection. It’s the story of Wu Mei who defies expectations to become a fierce Kung Fu warrior. Wu Mei mentors Mingyi who doesn’t want to marry a brute and, with Wu Mei’s training, ends up beating him in a fight and liberating herself.
What is great and rare about this book: It features two female friends, one who mentors the other. Wu Mei doesn’t rescue Mingyi, she teaches her how to save herself.
While this teacher/ student relationship is extremely common in boy fantasy world, it is highly unusual for girl characters to experience it. Strong females often exist in isolation. If there are two strong women, one is usually evil. (And we all know the patterns of dead mother, wicked mothers, and the dreaded step-mother that dominate fairytales and keep positive female relationships at bay.)
This female friendship is so rare, please tell me if you see it in books, movies, or TV shows. I think its super threatening to the male power structure. I’d like to make a media list of examples. Of course this list will include a female protagonist whose best friend is a magical creature (such as BFF males Remy and Ratatouille from “Ratatouille,” Andy and Woody or Buzz and Woody from “Toy Story,” Hiccup and the dragon from “How to Train Your Dragon.” I could go on and on, the male buddy relationship is the most common plot/ theme of kids movies today.)
I also love Beautiful Warrior because, as I’ve written before about violence in kidlit, it’s metaphorical. Violence is as normal for kids to see in a story as it is to occur a dream and just as symbolic. In Beautiful Warrior, the violence is so clearly teaching larger life lessons, so much so that it seems even weird to call it violence.
So why does Beautiful Warrior get an S? I’m reviewing this book in part, because, though it’s clearly about strong females, it also features three stereotype themes/ plot devices that show up so often in feminist kidlit.
(1) Rebellion against marriage: Yes, its better than marrying the one she’s supposed to, but why does marriage have to be such a central issue in the story at all? Personally, I’m sick of it. When I come across this plot device, I sigh.
(2) References to sexism: Both Wu Mei and Mingyi become warriors, even though the story says its surprising for girls to act this way. While I understand, obviously, that sexism exists in the real world, and this kind of story can teach a great lesson in how to deal with it, why do kids have to hear so often about the low or different expectations for girls? Why do female heroes so often have to perform in this context? Why not jut show them doing heroic acts?
(3) The heroine ends up alone: This is another classic outcome in feminist kids stories such as the Paper Bag Princess. The men are obnoxious brutes and the women don’t marry them. But why do the females so often have to make this choice? Males rarely do. I think its pretty scary for girls to get drilled into them that being strong is oppositional to being in love. It’s the same artificial choice that they can’t me be smart and beautiful, while male heroes usually are, in fact their intelligence and strength makes them attractive. (One reason I was attracted to this story is because it’s title, Beautiful Warrior, defies that duality. At the same time can you imagine a story called Handsome Warrior? It sounds like gay porn.) This pairing of attributes actually seems to be the lesson learned from much of kidlit. It’s so stereotypical and annoying to deny females that wholeness. It’s one reason I absolutely love Brave Margaret (and that story could be the basis for Pixar’s Brave) Margaret gets to be smart, strong, and beautiful and ends up with a cool, hot guy who admires and adores her. Can’t girls have it all, too? We need more stories like that! Tell me if you know of any.
