New Moon Girls is a very cool magazine created by girls and for girls. These young writers and editors don’t sit around complaining about sexist media; they create their own.
Right now New Moon is conducting its first ever Girls Choice Best Movies for Girls Award.
New Moon is asking any and all girls to nominate movies that feature girls and women in empowering, fully human roles. So girls, please fill out this survey by May 1. Your recommendations will be featured in the July/August 2012 issue of the New Moon, on the website, and disseminated through Facebook and other outreach to parents and girl advocates.
This is a great opportunity for girls to come together to amplify their voices and opinions. It’s also a good way to focus on the positive images and role models that are out there. If you are a parent or teacher or know a girl who you think would like to fill out this survey, please share it with your networks.
Also, adults, there is another survey just for you as well. Please take a few minutes to list your own recommendations. New Moon’s survey for adults is here.
If you”d like to take a look at Reel Girl’s list of favorites, you can find that here. (Picture above is a hint.) Reel Girl also has a separate list of awesome female characters. I created this list because there are some great females who make appearances in male dominated movies i.e. Princess Leia (Star Wars) Kitty Softpaws (Puss in Boots) Colette (Ratatouille). That list is pretty long and I desperately wish these characters would get their own films.
I finally saw the much hyped ‘Girls,’ and I’ve got to say: believe that hype.
I was riveted. I’m also totally impressed that Lena Dunham in twenty-five years old and she is the writer, producer, and star of the show.
I’ve read criticism about the all white foursome and agree completely. There should be women of color on the show. Not just for some kind of cosmetic diversity. By leaving out women of color, the show is missing out on an important part of depicting being young, struggling, and twentysomething in NYC. That is my only negative so far.
Looking forward to watching more and reporting back.
‘Girls’ is for adults, not girls. Reel Girl rates it ***HH***
Anyone listened to “Slipstream” yet? I picked up Bonnie Raitt’s first CD in seven years at the check out line in Whole Foods and it’s worth the wait. I love her voice, her lyrics, and the music. There is nothing not to like about this awesome CD.
Last week, I found myself in Golden Gate Park with an hour of time to kill, and I wandered into the de Young. The current show is about Jean Paul Gaultier, and though the subject didn’t interest me, I so rarely get to museums these days that I bought a ticket.
Going to this exhibition was like entering another world. I lost track of time, space, and reality. The exhibition is a visual, sensory, heady experience that blew my mind.
When you enter the show, the lighting is dimmed. You are surrounded by mannequins lit up and looming over you. My perspective was immediately altered. As I tried to get my bearings, I realized that the mannequins lips and eyes were moving. One looked down and smiled shyly at me. Then he started to sing in French. Was he real? I looked down at his naked torso which was clearly plastic. Turning around, I surveyed the other mannequins. They were everywhere, twitching lips, bursting into toothy grins, and talking. It was like being in a room full of zombies. And there was room after room after room of them.
Finally, I noticed the clothing: layers of sequins, lace, and feathers. As I looked at the fashion, I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was seeing/ experiencing clothing as art. It occurred me that Jean Paul Gaultier is not an evil man who wants to keep women down by creating expensive dresses for anorexics. His intention, though the effects are not so great, isn’t bad. Women’s bodies are his canvases.
That’s not such a great position for women, of course. And the notion goes back to John Berger’s great book about art, Ways of Seeing, where he writes: “Men watch. Women watch themselves being watched.” That analysis applies not only to visual art but literature as well, where women mostly exist mostly through men’s eyes. This has happened to women for so long that it has become how we think about ourselves as well: from a male perspective. I’ve blogged about this a lot: men aren’t bad, they’re just self-centered like all humans are. That’s why we need more women artists to tell their own stories. The problem is that all art is derivative, so at this point, I don’t think its possible to tell a story without it being influenced by the thousands of years of that male perspective.
I escaped the zombie rooms for a few minutes, walking into an area with a giant, pink, quilted cube in the center. On each face of the cube was an open window with garments on faceless mannequins. I realized I was looking at the bustier Madonna wore in her Blonde Ambition tour. She is quoted:
“Gaultier’s corsets are very sexy looking, and I consider wearing them a form of personal expression. The practice is oppressive only if it is forced, and women today can choose to wear them or not; it is up to them. Plus I wore those corsets as garments–-on the outside–not as underwear hidden beneath my other clothes, the complete opposite of the way they were traditionally worn in order to achieve a certain shape. I think that inversion of the concept of the corset is what turns it into a symbol of feminine power and sexual freedom.”
I don’t agree that women have the free choice to wear what they want. Figuring out what we want can be like walking through a labyrinth. I sound like Freud here, but with so many images marketed to us and because when you look a certain way you are more easily rewarded with success and power, how can we really choose freely? Even if we choose not to “fall into that trap” is that really what we want? Rebellion adheres to the same rules as conformity if you are systematically breaking all the rules that you would otherwise be following. That’s not “free choice” either. Which brought me full circle: because we don’t really know and can’t possibly tell what free choice is given our culture and how we all internalize it, I appreciate Madonna playing with the images. Madonna’s performance– and Gaultier’s– makes you think, makes you see fashion, physical bodies, and gender in a different way. That’s pretty cool.
Under another corset, Madonna is pretty much quoted as saying just that. She explains her goal in asking Gaultier to redo the velvet cone bras for her “Vogue” video: “Playing with the idea of gender and what is masculine and feminine, and giving it a theatrical, humorous twist–it was a kind of political statement.”
I highly recommend this show but it has adult themes so don’t bring kids.
Reel Girl rates Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk ***H***
PBS is “educational television,” so why are its programs for kids as male dominated as animated films from Disney or Pixar?
Every morning, my two older kids go to school a couple hours before the youngest one. In those morning hours, sometime between 7:15 and 8:30, the three year old gets to watch PBS while I do morning chores.
The morning animated programs are charming, sweet, and share something else in common: they star male characters and are titled that male character. The shows are Arthur, Caillou, and Curious George.
This trifecta of male-centered shows is obviously supposed to appeal to both boys and girls. That’s fine, why not put on “WordGirl” during this popular hour? Don’t even tell me that a three old would refuse to watch females. The kid is three!
If I want girl centered shows, I can use On Demand to seek them out. Often, I have to re-order episodes every 12 minutes. Just like with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish or LEGO minifigs, I can find females, but why do parents have to put in extra work to find girl-centered shows?
Wordgirl is amazing, Reel Girl rates it ***HHH***
Another female centered show is “Chloe’s Closet.” Chloe and her best friend, Tara, dress up, and become whatever they dress up as.
As you can see, it’s a little heavy on hearts and rainbows. There are things I like this show: she dresses up as a mermaid, pilot, scuba diver, and engineer. But I am troubled that one of the few shows starring a girl gets a dress up theme. I might be less annoyed by the gendered theme if PBS at least put the shows in the morning program hour so boys and girls would see them. Most kids like to play dress up, but most parents encourage their daughters and not their sons. “Franny’s Feet,” another PBS girl-centered show also depicts adventure through outfits: Franny tries on different shoes and then travel to different place around the world. Reel Girl rates Chloe’s Closet and Franny’s Feet ***HH***
“Angelina Ballerina, ” the third girl-centered show, gets on my nerves. As you can tell from the title, Angelina is into ballet, and she whines all the time. I can’t even listen to this show in the background. Reel Girl rates Angelina Ballerina ***H***
Tell me if I’ve missed a PBS show titled for its female it stars, but I think that’s it.
Male-centered “educational TV” teaches our kids the same gender stereotyping they see everywhere else in the world: boys are more important and get to do more things than girls.
For about one year, I’ve been doing 8 simple things that make me feel happy and calm. I gleaned these, of course, from several different books and these activities have literally changed my life.
Here they are:
(1) Sunshine: Get 20 minutes of bright light every day. Light activates Vitamin D which is essential for your body, especially skin. If you don’t live in California like me, there are special lights you can get that give you the same result. Our skin and bodies get all kinds of cues from light. Getting light regularly will make you sleep better and make you happier. I don’t know exactly why it works but it does.
(2) Vitamins: Fish oil is my favorite but I also take a multi vitamin, vitamin D, and C. My skin is glowing, seriously. It looks better than it ever has and I’m 43. By the way, I used to think vitamins were a waste of money and never took them before last year.
(3) Walk: You don’t need hardcore exercise. Don’t walk to lose weight or look better. Do it for your mental health, 45 minutes a day. (If you do live in California or somewhere else sunny or its the right season, you can kill two birds with one stone getting your light this way.)
(4) Sleep: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. An hour before sleep, dim your lights only do things that relax you. Don’t do anything that might stress you out once your quiet time starts (difficult conversations, checking email etc.) I think making sleep a priority is maybe the most important change I’ve made, and also why my skin glows: )
(5) Social interaction: If you’re introspective like me, it may be hard to get yourself out there. If you’re a mom with little kids and introspective, you may not realize you need to be around people. You do. Every day, not your kids. It doesn’t even matter who so much. When you socialize, just be careful not to use other people to ruminate with (see “don’t ruminate” below.)
(6) Engaging activity: What do you do that makes you lose track of time completely? Do it! Ideally, this engaging activity has something to do with your work but it doesn’t have to.
(7) Meditate: This activity trains you to stay in your body, not your head. I meditate ever morning.
(8) Don’t ruminate: This was the hardest activity for me to stop. I thought that ruminating was insightful and key to my personality, and if I stopped, I’d be the hole in the doughnut. What convinced me to risk trying is that I realized I could always go back to obsessive thinking if I wanted to. Here’s what I learned: if you’re going to get to an insight, it happens in the first 10 minutes or so. The rest of the time, you’re just stuck. Here’s another incredible surprise: happiness is insightful.
I have seen the excellent Miyazaki movie “Howl’s Moving Castle” starring the intrepid Sophie, but I never realized that the film was based on a book. My daughter came home with it yesterday afternoon; her Granny bought it for her. Here she is this morning. This picture tells me all I need to know.
Romney keeps telling us that the economy is the issue of his campaign, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about the Lilly Ledbetter Act: Equal pay for equal work.
As governor, Romney vetoed a bill that would have given rape survivors access to emergency contraception. As a presidential candidate, he’s promising to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate federal funding for birth control.
When you don’t care about the earning power of 51% of Americans, how can you claim to care about jobs and the economy?
On the Ms. Blog today there is a post about the musician Dar Williams who I love. Her new CD “In the Time of Gods” was inspired by the Greek gods and goddesses.
Here’s what she says:
“I like Artemis the best. I’ve met that woman, and she is reviled in our society. She lives in the woods and she feeds squirrels and she has a shot gun and she hates your guts. I love her.”
Does that sound like Katniss or what?
Read the interview here. I can’t wait to hear the CD.
Here’s to hoping we run into more goddesses in books, on screens, and in music in 2012.
