Author Archives: margotmagowan

White woman on TV attacked for appearance, defends herself, gets celebrated; black woman on TV attacked for appearance, defends herself, gets fired

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Rhonda Lee, a meteorologist for KTBS TV, the ABC affiliate in Sherevport, Louisiana was fired from her job after she publicly defended herself against a sexist and racist comment made by a viewer on the station’s Facebook page.

rhondalee

 

The viewer wrote:

the black lady that does the news is a very nice lady. the only thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair. im not sure if she is a cancer patient. but its still not something myself that i think looks good on tv.

Lee responded:

Hello Emmitt–I am the ‘black lady’ to which you are referring. I’m sorry you don’t like my ethnic hair. And no I don’t have cancer. I’m a non-smoking, 5’3, 121 lbs, 25 mile a week running, 37.5 year old woman, and I’m in perfectly healthy physical condition.

I am very proud of my African-American ancestry which includes my hair. For your edification: traditionally our hair doesn’t grow downward. It grows upward. Many Black women use strong straightening agents in order to achieve a more European grade of hair and that is their choice. However in my case I don’t find it necessary. I’m very proud of who I am and the standard of beauty I display. Women come in all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and levels of beauty. Showing little girls that being comfortable in the skin and HAIR God gave me is my contribution to society. Little girls (and boys for that matter) need to see that what you look like isn’t a reason to not achieve their goals.

Conforming to one standard isn’t what being American is about and I hope you can embrace that.

Thank you for your comment and have a great weekend and thank for watching.

 

KTBS defends its decision to fire Lee, claiming that she violated a company policy, one that she has allegedly violated before, concerning social media.

If harsh viewer comments are posted on the station’s official website, there is a specific procedure to follow. Ms. Rhonda Lee was let go for repeatedly violating that procedure after being warned multiple times of the consequences if her behavior continued. Rhonda Lee was not dismissed for her appearance or defending her appearance. She was fired for continuing to violate company procedure.

 

Lee said that she has yet to see this policy.

Lee’s response to the comment couldn’t have been more calm, focused, or right on target. It gave me chills to read it. How could someone in management (if they planned on responding at all rather than ignore it, that is, allow it) have responded any better than that? Do you think they would have or could have written:

Little girls (and boys for that matter) need to see that what you look like isn’t a reason to not achieve their goals.

No one could say that but Lee, the victim of the sexism and racism. She has to speak for herself, without shame. That is the lesson to teach kids about bullying, racism, and sexism.

But instead, the lesson learned is that when Lee refused to be a silent victim, she was punished. Fired. How can a nation that acts like it is concerned about bullying, whose President speaks on the issue and says its important one for the whole country, allow this to happen?

In October, Jennifer Livingston, a morning anchor with WKBT TV in Lacrosse, was attacked by a male viewer for her weight.

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Livingston defended herself in an on air editorial that lasted longer than four minutes. She finished her statement by thanking her colleagues, family, friends and all the others who came to her defense. Her story made headlines and she was on “Good Morning America” talking about her experience.
Just like Lee, Livingston mentioned young people:

“This was a personal attack,” Livingston said.  “Calling me obese is one thing.  Calling me a bad role model for our community that I’ve worked at for 15 years and especially for young girls when I have three girls was a low blow and I thought it was uncalled for and I wanted to call him out on it.”

 

Livingston also urged children who were victims of bullying to defend themselves, a lesson she says she teaches her own daughter. By making her speech on TV, Livingston walked her talk.

It is particularly important that women speak out publicly because, historically, women have been shamed into silence. This shaming/silence tactic is evident with everything from rape to sex tapes; again and again, it is the victim and not the perpetrator who is supposed to be humiliated.

Just yesterday, Anne Hathaway was “shamed” when someone took a photo of her. When Matt Lauer smirked during a scheduled interview on the “Today Show” that he’d seen a lot of her lately, Hathaway didn’t hide away, but responded: “I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies the sexuality of unwilling participants.” By speaking out, Hathaway directed the shame back where it belongs, on Lauer for his idiotic comment when she was trying to promote her movie, on the photographer who took the photo, and on the one who paid for the picture.

The attack on Lee is sexist. No one would be upset about that hairstyle if she were male. The taunting and comments that women receive on the internet about our appearance is epidemic and shows that sexism is alive and well in America. Attacking women for how they look, just putting out the threat that women could be attacked for how they look, has been an effective way to keep women in their place for much too long. Courageous and public acts like Lee’s and Livingston’s show all women how to deal effectively with this kind of bullying.

Of course, the attack on Lee is also racist.

It’s great that media outlets, viewers, activists, and colleagues supported Livingston when she defended herself against a bully. Lee deserves that same support now. That racism and sexism are protected in America in 2012 so that a woman defending herself against it loses her job makes me sick.

Please sign this petition demanding that Rhonda Lee get her job back.

Read Reel Girl’s latest post on the Rhonda Lee story: Black hair and feminism: Beyonce, Willow Smith, Chris Rock, and Rhonda Lee

 

 

 

 

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‘Leyla, the Black Tulip’ by Alev Croutier sweeps you away to another world

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Are you looking for a Middle Grade book that will magically transport your child and you to a different time and place?

I just finished reading Leyla, The Black Tulip to my daughters ages 6 and 9. Wow. We read this book in just one day. You know how sometimes you are reading to your kids and you’re so bored with the story, you want to scratch your eyes out? (If you think that’s an exaggeration, you’ve never been a victim of the endless Rainbow Magic series.) Leyla had us all hooked, and I’m 43, from page one until the end. When we took a reading break, I found my 9 yr old sequestered behind a chair, secretly reading ahead.

The narrative takes place in the 1700s. It is the story of a twelve year old Turkish girl who, after her father doesn’t return from war, sells herself into marriage so that her family won’t starve. On a ship to Istanbul, from the horrible conditions and whispers of other girls, Leyla realizes that she has, in fact, sold herself into slavery.

By using her wits and her talents, Leyla is able to avoid the worse fate and ends up tending the gardens of the Padishah’s harem at his palace in Istanbul. When Leyla passes the “gates of felicity” into the harem, we enter a different world.

Reading this book, my daughters and I leaned all about Turkey, Istanbul, the clothing, the food, the architecture, religion and traditions. We learned Turkish words and about the history of the Ottoman empire, all in a way that was integrated with the story and completely engrossing for all of us.

Not only all that, but Leyla is the story of a brave girl who saves her family and discovers her destiny. It is about the meaning of love, freedom, and art.

Leyla is my first venture into The American Girl series. This one is one of eight books of the Girls of Many Lands. The only reason I knew of this book is because I was lucky enough to meet the writer, Alev Croutier, at a party. When I told her that I was writing a MG book, she told me about Leyla. I since learned that Croutier is the only female novelist from Turkey to be published extensively worldwide. Her books have been translated into 21 languages. She is best known for her international best-seller: Harem, the World Behind the Veil. Here she is with my daughter, Alice.

Like many American Girl books, Leyla comes with a doll. Leyla is fascinating to look at. Her expression is so thoughtful, you can see how smart she is.

The details of the doll are amazing, replicating the description in the narrative exactly, from the pearls woven into her braids, to her earrings and slippers.

It’s hard to believe that the other books in the series are as good as this one, but I will be finding out for sure.

Reel Girl rates Leyla, the Black Tulip ***HHH***

If DreamWorks is ‘female driven studio,’ where are female protagonists?

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The headline and photo from Hollywood Reporter:

“How DreamWorks Animation Became One of Hollywood’s Most Female-Driven Studios”

 

DreamWorks Animation's Dream Team

Jeffrey Katzenberg now employs far more women producers than men: “You can have a life and still work here.”

Great photo, nice quote, but I have two questions. How many directors of DreamWorks movies are women? How many protagonists in DreamWorks movies are female?

I think I can answer the second question.

Here’s a list of films from Hollywood’s “most female driven” studio. Out of 21 movies, 2 feature female protagonists. TWO. “Chicken Run” and “Monsters and Aliens.”

That’s great, Jeffrey! Awesome job.

The movies:

Shrek 1, 2, 3, all starring…SHREK!

Puss In Boots (Shrek spin off, giving another male protagonist his own film)

Prince of Egypt (Obvious, right?)

Wallace and Gromit (2 males)

Chicken Run (females in this one)

How to Train Your Dragon (Boy trains male dragon)

Kung Fu Panda 1, 2

Madagascar 1,2,3 (gang of 3 males, 1 female)

Over the Hedge (centers on male raccoon)

Bee Movie (Jerry Seinfeld, need I say more?)

Flushed Away (stars male rat)

Antz (stars Woody Allen)

Shark Tale (centers on a fish voiced by Will Smith)

Monsters versus Aliens (Reese Witherspoon stars in this one!)

Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas (Obvious?)

Rise of the Guardians (Guardians are 4 males/ 1 female; centers on Jack Frost)

Did I miss something?

 

“Brave” doesn’t make 2012 “year of heroine worship” in movies for children

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There is one thing I really like about the A. O. Scott piece in The New York Times “Hollywood’s Year of Heroine Worship.”

This photograph by Tierney Gearon :

The New York Times chief film critic is living in an entirely different universe than my three daughters and me, or he has the lowest expectations imaginable.

Scott writes:

There is a smattering of evidence to support the impression that they have, because 2012 was, all in all, a pretty good year for movies and also a pretty good year for female heroism.

Huh?

Here’s a recap of Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girl’s Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2012 posted just yesterday:

Yes, we got “Brave” this year. Thank you director Brenda Chapman for making Pixar’s first movie ever with a female protagonist. I’m sorry that you, one of the only women to direct animated movies produced by a major studio, were fired half way through production and replaced with a male director.

But “Brave” is just one movie. The exception proves the rule. It’s December now, and sadly, it’s time for me to admit that once again, in the movies made for children in 2012, girls go missing. In staggering proportions, males are consistently front and center; females are mostly sidelined or not there at all.

If you look at the gender placement in the images on the movie posters below, the meaning of “marginalized” couldn’t be more clear. Remember, these are movie for kids. So when your children go to the movies, they are learning, time and time again, that boys are more important than girls…

Only 16% of protagonists in movies are female; only 16% of women make it into power positions in almost all professions across America. Children’s movie posters, and of course the movies themselves, are an effective way that we acclimate a new generation to expect and accept a world where females go missing.

Out of the 16 posters for children’s movies in 2012 pictured below, just 4 represent movies starring females: “Mirror, Mirror,” “Brave,” “Secret World of Arrietty” and “Big Miracle.”

Here’s the Gallery:

 

This Gallery is about the last thing I would want to tell my three daughters– ages 3, 6, and 9– that this is what  year of heroine worship looks like.

Go to the full post of Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Movies for Children in 2012

 

Reel Girl’s kidlit picks of the week

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This week Reel Girl recommends 3 classics:

George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends

The George and Martha series is practically perfect. The characters are great, smart, compassionate, and real. Their friendship is magical and special; there is nothing saccharine about this pair. The stories are beautifully illustrated and as short and poetic as haikus.

Of course, I love that the entire series is based on a cross-gender friendship; it’s impossible to label this series for girls or for boys.

As with most books that feature a character of each gender in the title, George comes first. This annoys me. If this sequence happened once in a while, or even half the time, it would be no big deal, but the consistency of this pattern in kidlit is quite amazing.

Reel Girl rates George and Martha ***HH***

A Bargain for Frances

I named my first daughter Lucy after the heroine from Narnia, my second Alice after you know who, and I almost named my third Frances. I didn’t because Frances doesn’t hold the iconic stature in my imagination as the other two (no one did except for Dorothy, but because that isn’t one of my favorite names, I went with Rose.) But I will always love Frances.

The entire series is great, but Bargain is my favorite. Thelma, Frances’s frenemy does some serious mean plotting, but Frances uses smarts to get her back. The only issue with this story is that young kids won’t get it. It takes some sophistication to keep up with Frances’s revenge. One thing I love about this story is how it shows the high-level strategies going on behind an “innocent” tea party game.

Other books are great to see how Frances copes with her little sister, Gloria, and also to witness the cross gender friendship between Frances and Albert.

If you have a kid who loves to make up songs, this is the perfect book for him.

Reel Girl rates A Bargain for Frances ***HHH***

Madeline

Madeline is one of the absolute best children’s books of all time. Madeline’s spirit is remarkable. She’s not afraid of mice or tigers or teetering on a bridge over the Seine. When she gets her appendix out, she proudly bares her scar. And when you read the book, you get to take a trip through the most beautiful places in Paris. You can’t beat that.

Reel Girl rates Madeline ***HHH***

 

Reel Girl game of the week: Clue

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If you follow Reel Girl, you know I am a sucker for narratives, and there aren’t many games out there that inspire storytelling like Clue.

Clue was my favorite board game when I was a kid. After 30 years, I played it last weekend at my sister’s with my kids and my nieces, and it was so fun. I love all of the rooms, imagining being in a mansion, and plotting or discovering a murder. The kids love all that, too, of course. The secret passages from room to room and the detective pads are also cool. If you’re not familiar with Clue, all of this may sound complicated, but it’s not.

So, now for the characters. There are three males and three females. You can’t get more equal than that, right? But here’s the problem. The male characters are Professor Plum (he must be smart, right?) Colonel Mustard (another status moniker) and Mr. Green. Poor Mr. Green, you think, he’s got no title, but at least his identity is concealed behind the ambiguous “Mr.” The females don’t fare so well: Miss Scarlet, Mrs. Peacock, and Mrs. White. Not a “Ms.” among them.

As a kid, I was always Miss Scarlet. I thought she seemed powerful and mysterious, and rebellious; she smoked.

I was disappointed to see that Miss Scarlet in my sister’s game looks far less dangerous.

Though I would’ve preferred modernizing Mrs. White and Mrs. Peacock to “Ms,” I am pleased with their new portraits. They look more complex and real than the originals.

Beyond the names or art, Clue is as equal opportunity as you can get: any character could have committed the murder with any of the weapons. The females are just as likely to whack a victim with a candlestick or a wrench as they are to shoot her. No sexism involved in solving this mystery if you want to win the game. That factor trumps all others in my book.

This game is a lot of fun for families. No tears so far.

Reel Girl rates Clue ***HH***

 

 

Geena Davis, armed with 1.2 million and new technology, imagines gender equality in the fantasy world

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You know how when you say something is sexist, like, say, the genre of animated movies marketed to kids, people will tell you it’s all in your head? They will say you don’t know what you are talking about and to stop picking on Nemo or Ratatouille or Frakenweenie or whomever.

Well, guess what? Geena Davis, goddess that she is, just scored 1.2 million dollars from Google to develop software that will analyze the portrayal of females in children’s media. This technology will scan hours of media content and through voice recognition and other features, will calculate how much screen time females get, how they appear, and the roles they play. This technology will calculate as quickly as Nielsen ratings so that it can show statistics about what appeared on TV the night before the very next day.

Gee, I wonder what this technology is going to tell us about gender roles and children’s media. How cool is that Davis got funding for an objective system that no one can argue with? She rocks.

 

Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2012

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I’ve been avoiding writing this post. I knew that female characters in children’s movies were not faring well in 2012. Not in number and not in stature. But I kept hoping. Hoping that somehow, before January, something would change, a slew of movies were going to appear from nowhere, stats would magically shift.

Yes, we got “Brave” this year. Thank you director Brenda Chapman for making Pixar’s first movie ever with a female protagonist. I’m sorry that you, one of the only women to direct animated movies produced by a major studio, were fired half way through production and replaced with a male director.

But “Brave” is just one movie. The exception proves the rule. It’s December now, and sadly, it’s time for me to admit that once again, in the movies made for children in 2012, girls go missing. In staggering proportions, males are consistently front and center; females are mostly sidelined or not there at all.

If you look at the gender placement in the images on the movie posters below, the meaning of “marginalized” couldn’t be more clear. Remember, these are movie for kids. So when your children go to the movies, they are learning, time and time again, that boys are more important than girls.

For those of you who say there are alternative posters that I didn’t put in Reel Girl’s Gallery, you may find them on Google images, but these are the ones I saw all around San Francisco. Even if you find a poster on Google featuring, say, Tooth, the one female Guardian out of five (a typical gender ratio, by the way) that’s a pretty pathetic argument for her relevance.

For those of you who say the posters below do not reflect the movie, that the movie has a strong female in it, maybe even two, maybe three, you are, most likely, referring to the Minority Feisty. No matter how many Minority Feisty there are in an animated film, they are represented as a minority. The irony is, of course, that females are not a minority, not a special interest, not even a fringe group. Females are, in fact, half of the population. Girls are half of the kid population. Why aren’t they represented that way in movies made for children?

I call the Minority Feisty “Feisty” because that is, invariably, the adjective reviewers use to describe the “strong” female character in an animated film. “Feisty” is diminutive. It is what you call someone who plays at being powerful, not someone who is actually powerful. Would you ever call Superman “feisty?” How would he feel if you did?

The role of the Minority Feisty, like a cheerleader or First Lady, is to help the male star along on his important quest. Children need to see females front and center, as protagonists, as the heroes of their own stories.

Finally, even apart from the movie, these posters– and ads– are their own media. Whether or not your kid goes to the movie, she sees these posters everywhere. The movie poster is one of the reasons that I was so thrilled about “Brave.” Finally, San Francisco was papered with an image a daring girl, an image marketed to kids. Obviously, the biggest impact of a narrative is made when kids get to know the character through the movie and then see that character on clothing, food packaging, and toys.

As you look at these posters, imagine the reverse, the gender ratio and the character placement, switched; the movie’s title reflecting the female star. Would you do a double take? How many of us grown-ups don’t even notice the dominance of male characters anymore? How many of us experience the annihilation of females as totally normal, not to mention adorable and child-appropriate?

There is no good reason for the imaginary world to be sexist. Or is there?

Only 16% of protagonists in movies are female; only 16% of women make it into power positions in almost all professions across America. Children’s movie posters, and of course the movies themselves, are an effective way that we acclimate a new generation to expect and accept a world where females go missing.

Out of the 16 posters for children’s movies in 2012 pictured below, just 4 represent movies starring females: “Mirror, Mirror,” “Brave,” “Secret World of Arietty” and “Big Miracle.” The “Big Miracle” poster diminishes Drew Barrymore pretty effectively. I loved “Arrietty,” as I love every Studio Ghibli film, but was surprised to see the boy so big on the poster.

I did not include YA movies, my three daughters are ages 3, 6, and 9. I’m not including “Oogieloves” because it’s an interactive song/ dance film, though it really annoys me that out of 7 Oogieloves, just 2 are female. I did not include “Toys in the Attic,” the dubbed Czeck stop-action film from 2009, because it is really creepy, disturbing, and not recommended for young kids.

Here’s the Gallery:

 

Related posts:

Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2011

The curse of the Minority Feisty in kids’ movies

Pixar’s female problem: Please stop asking ‘What about Jessie?” (Great post by Peggy Orenstein on the Minority Feisty issue)

 

Shopping for ‘full of awesome’ kids clothing? Go to Pigtail Pals!

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I have always loved Pigtail Pals for its cool clothing, its brilliant founder, Melissa Wardy, and its high quality product. But today, I have one more reason for romance, something that trumps all other loves: today, my three year old daughter dressed herself. She chose all of her own clothing, from underwear to socks, and arrived upstairs for breakfast, fully prepared for the day. What was she wearing, you ask? Lucky for you, we stopped at Whole Foods on the way to school and I got a photo:

All black. Hee hee. Except for the blue socks, of course, which, I’m sure you notice, match. Hallelujah! (Where is her arm though? I can’t wait to show her this. She looks like ghost-girl.) But best of all, and this goes back to Pigtail Pals, check out the back of her T-shirt:

My daughter loves the words, the colored-spiral of them, the bumpy feel, and also, how incredibly soft the material is.

Seeing this outfit reminded me of what a great Xmas shopping destination Pigtail Pals is if you are looking for clothing for children.

Melissa Wardy founded Pigtail Pals when she had a baby daughter, named her after Amelia Earhart, and then couldn’t find a single onesie that showed a girl with a plane on it. Then, Melissa realized she couldn’t find children’s clothing showing girls doing much of anything at all. So she came up with some designs and started a company. Years later, Pigtail Pals has grown into a successful business and Wardy is coming out with a book on “redefining girly.”

Here are Pigtail Pals best-selling ‘Full of Awesome’ T-shirts.

I keep giving you these sites for shopping because there are alternatives out there. It sucks that sometimes we have to look so hard for them, but I think the more we talk about them, (along with the way marketing, in general, is shifting to FB, Twitter) we can get the word out to more people.

Final photo of a proud three year old, her shirt covered in doughnut crumbs just in time for school.

Reel Girl rates Pigtail Pals ***HHH***

 

Louis C. K. and contemporary fatherhood

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I am such a fan of Louis C. K. My husband and I stream his show about every other night and it cracks us up. I have never seen a man speak publicly about fatherhood so accurately. Louis has two daughters (we have three) and the conflicted emotions he expresses about raising his kids are spot on.

I just Googled “Louis C. K. contemporary fatherhood” and came up with a recent piece from The Atlantic.

Of course, to earn the title of America’s Dad (from someone other than me, I mean) Louis probably has to have a higher Nielsen share than what he currently pulls in.

So that’s me and the writer of this Atlantic article at least, so far. Join the club! If you are not watching Louis yet and are interested at all in parenting issues, you’ve got to check this guy out. He is X-rated and, at times, his language and the topics he goes into leave my mouth hanging open. But at the same time, he is charming.

The show we watched last night made me really think about all the basic ways in every day life, our culture does not support fatherhood.

Here is Louis C.K. on the challenges of having to use the bathroom the same time his daughters do:

I was at the airport with my kids, I was at JFK, and they had to go to the bathroom and I had to go to the bathroom. So take yourself through that logically. Where do I… What do I do? I can’t take them to the ladies room. I can’t just… “Go on in there, girls… Into the public restroom of an international airport.” Just release my custody of them to whoever’s in there. “Go ahead, good luck to you. Maybe I’ll see you later.”
So I gotta take them into the men’s room, that’s what I have to do, is take them into the John F. Kennedy Airport men’s room. Look here, girls! Nine penises! Nine penises that are all peeing at the same time. Nine farting men from all over the world, with their dicks out, shaking off droplets of pee from their syphilitic penises. Look, three of them have foreskins. You can see the difference now.’

 

So much of Louis’s show is about these interactions with his daughters, not sanitized. Clearly, his kids are a part of his life. If there were more fathers like Louis C.K., I bet there would be more family bathrooms in airports.

Louis also does an amazing job of expressing the conflicted feeling parents have towards children. He hides his ice cream from his daughters. When his kids are finally asleep, to get them back for staying up so late, Louis takes his bowl of ice cream into their room and eats it in the dark over their sleeping heads.

The Atlantic posts another example of his ambivalence:

“When am I going to go to momma’s again?” Louis’ daughter asks as they do their pre-bedtime routine. “I like momma’s better. I like momma’s better because she makes good food. And I love her more so I like being there, too. I like being here, too. It’s just not as great.” Louis takes it in with great equanimity and, as she turns away to go to sleep, he gives his little daughter the finger.

When we have more fathers like Louis C.K., the world will be a better place.

Reel Girl rates Louie C.K.***HH***