Author Archives: margotmagowan

How to protect your child’s imagination

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I’m still thinking about blue milk’s post and those damn bananas. What is fascinating to me, as blue milk posted, is that the act of covering up reality to protect the child’s imagination, is such an important part of parenting. That’s why routine is so great. If your child has safe boundaries, she feels brave enough to take healthy risks. That this episode put that burden on the girl children is remarkable and sad.

Psychologist Stephen Mitchell in his book, Can Love Last: the Fate of Romance Over Time said all of this better than me:

One of the things good parents provide for their children is a partially illusory, elaborately constructed atmosphere of  safety, to allow for the establishment of “secure attachment.” Good-enough parents, to use D. W. Winnicott’s term, do not talk with young children about their own terrors, worries, and doubts. They construct a sense of buffered permanence, in which the child can discover and explore without any impinging vigilance, her own mind, her creativity, her joy in living. The terrible destructiveness of child abuse lies not just in trauma of what happens but also the tragic loss of what is not provided– protected space for psychological growth.

It is crucial that the child does not become aware of how labor intensive that protracted space is, of the enormous amount of parental activity going on behind the scenes.

A Cat in Paris ***HH***

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It’s been a while since I’ve done an actual movie review. The TV ads and the posters I’ve seen are so sexist, its been hard for me to get myself to an actual theater. But I’ve wanted to see “A Cat in Paris” ever since it received an Academy Award nomination. (I was so thrilled that “Tintin” didn’t get nominated.)

I really liked “A Cat in Paris.” So, for the most part, did my kids (ages 3, 6, 9)

Here’s the summary from imdb.com:

In Paris, a cat who lives a secret life as a cat burglar’s aide must come to the rescue of Zoe, the little girl he lives with, after she falls into a gangster’s clutches.

The cat, the star of the movie and the character in the title, is male. But the movie has three strong female characters: the mom, her daughter Zoe, and her Nanny. They still are a Minority Feisty because the whole band of bad guys, led by the evil Costa, are all male. The hero cat burglar is also male.

I was particularly fascinated by the mom character. She is a superintendent, a police detective who is definitely the boss in this movie. I loved that my kids got to see a professional woman be smart and in charge, take risks and engage in all kids of brave acts. There are fantasy sequences where the mom fights a giant, red octopus that are really cool. I did have some issues: there is the cliche of working mom neglecting her child and the evil nanny. The mom’s breasts were also distracting to me, though my kids, who often comment on the the way females– animated and actual–  wiggle their butts on TV, didn’t mention anything about the mom’s anatomy. There is also an idol, a piece of art, with a distracting penis. Don’t get scared. The movie is French, people. My kids didn’t mention the phallic symbol either.

Zoe doesn’t speak for most of the movie, and at first that annoyed me, and annoyed my three year old as well. (MAMA, WHY DOESN’T SHE TALK? followed by frustrated tears.) But by the end of the movie, Zoe is speaking, so I look at “A Cat in Paris” as the story of how she gets her voice back, and that’s pretty cool.

The animation in this movie is spectacular and the images of Paris are gorgeous.

This movie was just released on DVD, and I liked it so much that I bought it.

Reel Girl rates “A Cat in Paris” ***HH***

Boys will be boys, girls will clean up

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blue milk blogger saw her three year son watching the Australian animated show for toddlers “Bananas in Pyjamas.” She blogs:

I was so bewildered by it that I ended up watching the whole episode again on iview to be sure about what I was seeing.”

In the series, there are two banana adult figures and three bears, 2 girls and 1 boy, all friends. In the episode blue milk saw, the boy bear buys a Super Bear costume and then causes all sorts of trouble, getting caught up in his imagination and believing he really is a superhero. The bananas try to help out a little, but don’t get too involved, knowing they get to return home soon. So the clean up is left to the girl bears.

blue milk goes on:

Tellingly, the little girl bears deal with these problems in a way that doesn’t involve Super Bear having to know about it because he would only cause more mess if he tried to help and because they do not want to hurt his dignity or spoil his fun. Worse still, his fun interrupts their own fun and plans and when they express some irritation about it all the Bananas encourage them to be careful not to ruin the boy bear’s illusion of himself as a superhero. It wouldn’t have particularly disturbed me as a story if it was about a parent or uncle cleaning up after the little boy teddy bear…But the sight of two little girls doing the cleaning up and taking care of, instead of  having fun and adventures themselves? And the idea that the little boy got to experience the thrill of danger while the little girls got to worry about him? It all struck me as so, so wrong.”

First of all, I am amazed, once again, though I know I shouldn’t be, how universal sexism in kidworld is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid in Australia or a kid in the USA, if it’s PBS or Disney, if it’s a movie or TV: except for the Minority Feisty, boys will be boys and girls will clean up.

The TV show blue milk describes really irks me because my whole blog, Reel Girl, is about protecting the imagination of children (and hopefully, eventually, the adults they grown into.) I guess you could look at this episode as enlightening: Look, this is just what happens in real life. Males are encouraged and supported by the world to imagine and act; females are not. But somehow, I suspect three year old children don’t get irony.

Fergie’s truly nauseating Halloween costume

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Last night, like almost every Thursday night due to my tabloid addiction, I crawled in bed to relax with my new issue of Us Weekly. In a photo spread titled “Klum’s Favorite Halloween Costumes,” featuring pics from Heidi Klum’s annual party, I saw this picture of Fergie’s Halloween costume. I, literally, felt nauseated.

If you care at all about the sexualization of  little girls, why would a grown woman dress up as a little girl dressed up as a woman (assuming little girls with their make-up and curled hair aspire to imitate older beauty queens and not Martians.) Talk about blurring boundaries between sexualizing little girls and adults.  I just blogged about the conundrum of Batgirl, and I can barley get my mind around this costume. The bobby socks and the teddy bear? Ugh.

But here’s what Heidi Klum has to say about it: “Accessories can put a costume over the top! Fergie couldn’t have looked any better as a pageant girl.”

Right now, all I can say is GROSS. Bad move, Fergie, Heidi Klum, and Us Weekly.

Madeleine Albright’s letter to me

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Margot —

If you’re reading this email, you’re a woman, or you care about someone who is.

This year, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the backers behind their ticket are not running on what one would call a pro-women agenda. They are running on a platform of paternalistic, outdated, chauvinistic ideas — and in practice those ideas are genuinely harmful to women.

Here’s what women can expect if Romney-Ryan and the Republicans win:

A repeal of Obamacare and the free preventive screenings it covers. A return to discrimination against women by insurance companies. No support in the fight for equal pay for equal work. Supreme Court justice nominations based on radical ideology.

Every election is important, but I think this one will truly define what America is about.

I’m calling on you today because you are one of the people who can make the difference in this election. Democrats like us must, with no exceptions, speak up for women, for our children and grandchildren.

This election will be close, and your donation of $375 or more is crucial to this fight:

https://my.democrats.org/Womens-Rights

This election is ours to win or lose — and a win for Mitt Romney and Republicans is a big loss for America’s women.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Albright

For my thoughts on a Romney presidency and sex discrimination read here.

Girls go missing in new Christmas movies for kids

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Last night on TV, while watching World Series Game 2 with my three young daughters, we all saw a commercial for “Rise of the Guardians,” the Christmas-themed animated movie coming out November 21. Guess who was missing from the multitude of characters in the preview?

Females. Not one damn female voice. Seriously.

A Google search tells me there is, in fact, a Minority Feisty (the tiny minority representation of strong females you can usually find in animated films for kids): the Tooth Fairy.

I know, I know, “Rise of the Guardians” is derivative. Mythical characters throughout history are males. “Rise of the Guardians” features the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost, just like “Hotel Transylvania” features famous monsters like Dracula and Frakenstein or  the bad guys of “Wreck-It Ralph” are based on pre-existing video games. What can Hollywood do about that?

Hmmm..what about not being so lazy and using a little imagination? Why not conceive of previously male characters as female? Or what about creating some brand new female characters? Ever heard of Santa Claus’s evil sister? If that use of imagination is too challenging for Hollywood, why not make the Tooth Fairy the star of the movie instead of Jack Frost?

But come on Hollywood, aren’t stories for children supposed to be imaginative?

Here is the crazy irony. This is imdb.com’s synopsis of “Rise of the Guardians:”

When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.

Protecting the imaginations of kids is the whole reason I started this blog, Reel Girl. After having my three daughters, I was blown away by the gender stereotypes marketed to my kids through animated movies. These images and narratives in children’s movies repeatedly teach little kids that males are the adventurers, the risk-takers, and the stars, while females– half of the kid population– are continually limited to a sidelined minority.

Anyone remember 2011’s holiday movie, “Arthur Christmas?” Can you find the lone female here?

I honestly don’t know if you can even say that “Mrs. Claus” qualifies as a Minority Feisty.

And by the way, if you scoffed at my reference to Santa’s evil sister above, isn’t Santa’s son Arthur, the star of this movie, a newly made-up character? Why not put Santa’s daughter at the top of an elf-girl pyramid?

Can you imagine that? Try hard to think up a poster for an animated movie in 2012 that shows this gender ratio here but reversed. Would you do a double take? Would parents think “Fantastic Ms. Fox” was some crazy lesbian movie? Is that the concern here?

There is no good reason for the imaginary world to be sexist like this. It’s the imaginary world! Anything should be possible, even equality.

How do you think seeing these stereotyped gender roles repeated again and again is affecting your child’s imagination? Her aspirations?

Here’s an interesting “coincidence:” 16% of characters in movies for kids are female; in 2012, in top positions in professions all across America, women rarely make it past 16%.

Tell your kids that it shouldn’t be normal for females to go missing, either in movie poster after movie poster or in a boardroom.

In November, are you voting for embryo rights or human rights?

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Richard Mourdock, a Republican running for Senate in Indiana, said yesterday that when a woman becomes pregnant by rape, “it is something that God intended.”

USA Today reports:

Asked whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest, Mourdock said during Tuesday’s debate, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God.”

Of course Mourdock “struggled” with the rape/ incest/ life of the mother abortion exceptions that some pro-life Republicans support. If you believe that the embryo has human rights, no abortion exception makes sense. If abortion is murder, you can never justify that murder, regardless of how that embryo came into being. That’s just logic.

You’d think, logically, at the very least, pro-life candidates would be fighting like hell to make sure all women have access to contraception so at least raped women would have a better chance of not getting pregnant.

Mitt Romney, who is pro-life, is trying to differentiate his position from Mourdock’s controversial statement. Unfortunately, it’s Romney’s position, which, on a good day allows three abortion exceptions, that is, once again, unclear, inconsistent, and illogical. If you are pro-life, embryo rights must supersede women’s rights. Eventually, Romney will admit that.

Forcing a raped woman to give birth affects her economic well-being

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Richard Mourdock, a Republican running for Senate in Indiana, said yesterday that when a woman becomes pregnant by rape, “it is something that God intended.”

Regardless of God’s will, can we at least all agree that forcing a raped woman to give birth radically affects her economic well-being?

Pregnant women need health care. What if the raped woman is lower-income? How will she afford her monthly and then weekly ob-gyn visits? What about the cost of the birth? What if she has a c-section? What if she has an ectopic pregnancy? What if she hemorrhages during the birth? If she has a job, how much maternity leave will she get? Will she be able to stay at her job when she has a baby to take care of? How will she afford childcare? What about her child’s education? Will she be able to send her child to a safe school with good teachers? How will the raped woman afford health care for her child?

I am so sick of Republicans who are against reproductive rights, health care that covers contraception, and adequate funds for public education claiming that they care about improving the economy and jobs for everyone. Clearly, the only economy and the only jobs Republican policies support are those of high income males. Romney’s economic strategy comes down to this: If male breadwinners do well, America will do well. So if your financial health depends on a rich guy, Romney may be your candidate. But if it doesn’t, or if you’d rather is didn’t, consider voting for Obama in November.

‘health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime under any reason’

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Republican rep Joe Walsh is running for congress in Illinois. Last night, he told reporters that there should be no abortion exception for the life of the mother.

Of this inane statement, Planned Parenthood writes: “This is exactly why politicians have no place in a woman’s personal medical decisions.”

Not long ago, Rep. Todd Aiken said: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Who do you think should have the legal right to advise women on health choices: doctors or politicians?

‘Socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ and ‘women’s issues’ make no sense

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In this week’s debate, Romney refused to say he will support the Lily Ledbetter Act for equal pay but promised to get women home from work in time so they can “make dinner.” He lied about taking initiative in seeking out women candidates for high power jobs and refused to fess up to his promise to defund Planned Parenthood.

At least, in the VP debate, Paul Ryan was honest about his views against reproductive rights. I can respect that. But Mitt Romney is a liar and that terrifies me about any possibility of him becoming president.

Obama, on the other hand, talked in the debate about Lily Ledbetter which he signed into law. More importantly, he told Americans: “These aren’t women’s issues, they are family issues.” He discussed how it’s crucial for women’s wallets that contraception is covered by healthcare plans.

That connection should be obvious.

One more time: contraception is an economic issue and a health care issue for women. Reproductive rights are not a “single issue,” in some separate “category.”

What is there that is confusing about this? Not only is contraception used to treat all kinds of medical issues, but pregnancy is a medical issue. What is there that people don’t get about the physical dangers of pregnancy? Is the argument that contraception is preventative health care so, therefore, women shouldn’t get it covered? All kinds of preventative health care are covered by insurance. In fact, America’s whole medical system is moving towards focusing on prevention. Is it that sex is optional behavior, so if you get pregnant, it’s your fault? But if you go skiing and break your arm, you get treated and covered. It doesn’t matter that you “opted” to go skiing.

It all comes down to this: Women’s bodies are different than men’s bodies and as such, have different needs. Refusing to cover contraception is sex discrimination and no health insurance company should be allowed to refuse to cover medical care based on gender.

Obama gets that. Mitt Romney doesn’t give a shit.

Last night, On CNN’s “Outfront” host Erin Burnett talked about a “shocking” new Gallup poll where 39% women said that abortion was the number one issue for them in the presidential election. Apparently, this poll is shocking because women have been saying that the economy is the most important issue.

Once again: reproductive rights are an economic issue.

Here is my letter that I posted to Obama before the debate:

Dear Obama,

Please talk about women tonight. You didn’t, even one time, in the last debate.

If you get asked about the role of government again tonight, please be more eloquent and passionate. Please point out Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy: he claims to support small government when he wants to get involved in the most intimate and private parts of women’s lives. Clearly, he doesn’t care about small government; he cares about big business.

Mr. President, please explain to Americans tonight that reproductive rights, including choice and birth control, are economic issues. Please say that if women don’t have access to basic health care, which, of course, for female bodies must include contraception, it makes it much harder to get or hold a job.

Please tell Americans that we can’t talk about jobs for women, or the economy improving for women, without securing basic reproductive rights.

Please explain to Americans that if embryo rights supersede human rights, women have no rights at all.

Obama said all of this in the debate and more.

Whereas when “women’s issues” come up on any TV show, talk radio program, or political speech, Republicans keep saying that all women care about is jobs. Abortion is a “single-issue,” important to a minority of “single-issue voters.”

But there are no jobs, there is no economy for women without reproductive rights. That would be like asking men, if you don’t have human rights, what are your thoughts on health care? What do you think about education? What about foreign policy?

It makes no sense.

The whole “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” category makes no sense either. For women, for families, and therefore, you’d think, for men: fiscal issues are “social” issues. Mitt Romney is “socially conservative,” and therefore, “fiscally” his policies are really bad for women. And for families.

Perhaps, if families are structured around a male breadwinner with a large income who has the support of a stay-at-home mom who wants lots of kids, Romney’s categories and policies apply. But how many families in America fit that description in 2012? How many parents want their kids to grow up in and into replicating that model?

It comes down to this: the political categories created and enforced by power structures dominated by men are anachronistic and no longer apply to Americans as they are currently structured in polls and so many debates. All issues are “women’s issues.” That should be obvious to any President of the USA. Reproductive rights are human rights, because, once again: if embryo rights supersede human rights then women have no rights at all.