Just back from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the free three day music festival in Golden Gate Park. Patti Smith is one of the all time best performers I’ve ever seen. She is a total rockstar, swaggering on stage like Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison, so in control of everything, with her callbacks and clapping, she played the audience like an instrument. When she covers songs you think you know well, they sound like nothing you’ve heard before; she slows it all down, savoring every word. Her “Play With Fire” was intense and beautiful with two stanzas of her own lyrics inserted in the middle. If anyone recorded it (I saw you all!) please post. Smith told everyone how lucky we were to live here and then she recited the prayer of St. Francis, reminding the audience to “Be happy, work hard, love one another.” Listening to her under the swaying eucalyptus, the fog wisping in around us, was a great San Francisco moment.
www.sfexaminer.com
Elvis Costello and his band the Sugarcanes may have been my favorite this year, probably the tightest band I saw. They had great energy.
Emmylou Harris closes the show ever year and her voice is so incredibly pretty. Yesterday, when I saw Guy Clark I thought his lyrics and voice are just as beautiful as hers. Yesterday, I also saw Richard Thompson who was rocking out more than expected and great. I heard Joan Baez sing “Diamonds and Rust” which is one of my favorite songs. She also did her hilarious Bob Dylan imitation. After Baez, I saw the incredible Gillian Welch who amazes me everytime she performs.
Right as Elvis Costello was finishing playing, about six miles away in one of America’s most beautiful ballparks, the Giants won the NL West pennant. When the announcer gleefully told the audience about the victory, many already knew because they’d been clutching radios to their ears, reciting the score to each other inbetween sets all afternoon.
Shivering in the dark and fog, we got in our warm car. To avoid traffic after Saturday night’s turtle pace, we drove home along the Great Highway. After passing by dense hills of red and green succulents, suddenly there was the foamy ocean, white and bright as a light, my husband saying, “I can’t believe this is right here!” Back in Potrero Hill with the stunning view of downtown and the Bay, we could see all the lights of traffic crossing the bridge, everyone traveling home; we were grateful to be already there.
To put on this show, the jury reviewed works by 150 artists who responded to an international call for submissions. In the end, 20 artists were selected: 6 from the Bay Area, 4 additional U.S. artists, and artists from Japan, Kenya, Brazil, the Netherlands, China, India, Iran, and Canada. The subject matter ranges from teen community leaders in Richmond to opera singers in Brazil to seaweed farmers in Zanzibar.
www.sfartscommission.org
Seaweed Farmers of Zanzibar, Joanna Lipper
This is an absolutely stunning exhibition. Looking at the gorgeous photographs, I felt as if I were visiting all the countries featured, getting an intimate look at women’s everyday lives while I traveled around the world. You will leave this show inspired and impressed by the strength of these women, and convinced that investing in them will help to change the world.
Here are some stats on the global status of women, dry numbers that these photographs illustrate in a deeply personal way:
Women make up 70% of the world’s poor, those who live on less than $1 a day.
Women work 2/3 of the world’s working hours, yet earn only 10% of the world’s income.
Women are responsible for producing 60 – 80% of the world’s food, yet hold only 1% of the world’s land.
Worldwide, over 60% of people working in family enterprises without pay are women.
The total value of women’s unpaid house and farm work adds 1/3 to the world’s GNP.
One of the winning photographers, Joanna Lipper, along with being a filmmaker, author, and a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the W.E.B Du Bois Institute For African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is also a Fellow of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization I co-founded that trains young women to be leaders and change agents.
www.sfartscommission.org
Seaweed Farmers of Zanzibar, Joanna Lipper
Lipper’s series is Seaweed Farmers in Zanzibar. Her photographs are so serene and beautiful, they look like paintings, evocative of art from past centuries of other women working, like Van Gogh’s Two Peasant Women Digging. The aqua colors of the sea against the horizon are mesmerizing, and the photos have an incredible grace; the women working together and the water’s movement looks like a dance. The lighting in the photos is beautiful, showing the passage of time, is reminiscent of a series like Monet’s haystacks.
Lipper says that her art, and the whole show, presents “photographers as social activists, provoking engagement on an individual level.” Because this is a free exhibition in public space, the nature of the show further underscores the political nature of the art; everyone has access. The show’s existence illustrates not only that art influences politics, but also that we are all interconnected– to each other, to the economy, and to the environment.
Lipper explains that what’s valuable about the seaweed that these farmers work so hard to obtain is the algae it contains. The seaweed is sold to local brokers an then exported to Europe and Asia where the algae is extracted. Not only is the algae used in products like shampoo and mascara, but preserved algae turns out to be one of the best alternative green biofuels and best aborbants of carbon dioxide.
Lipper goes into further detail of the seaweed farmer’s world role on her site:
Zanzibar is at a disadvantage when it comes to profits derived from Seaweed cultivation because the islands lack the large-scale infrastructure and hardware needed to process seaweed and extract valuable algae. Therefore the raw materials are shipped abroad. Without microfinance loans, improved education, and community organization amongst laborers, there can be no further growth for seaweed farming as a cash-generating economically empowering occupation for rural village women and this form of labor runs the risk of becoming obsolete in Zanzibar.
Other incredible photography includes work by Brenda Paik Sunoo who photographed the “diving grannies” Vietnamese women in their eighties who hunt for Octopus. The salt mining pictures were also breathtaking, all black and white, women mining pillars of salt. There was a series of photos of girls in Tehran that made me feel as if I were inside their house and part of their family. There was a moving portrait of a woman soldier from the Middle East.
There is a Community Choice prize you can vote for here. The International Museum of Women is an online art gallery and all of the photos can also be seen here.
I worship Sarah Silverman. I’m bummed I missed her local performance this week at Palace of the Fine Arts where she was promoting her hilarious new book The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee.
www.harpercollins.com
I had jury duty the same day as Silverman’s show and brought her book with me down to McAllister Street. Little did I know having three small kids would excuse me after 2 1/2 hours. I was worried because every time I have jury duty, they pick me which always shocks me because I’m kind of opinionated and judgmental, but nevertheless, that’s the California justice system at work. I was pretty psyched, actually, to get almost three hours of quiet reading time, something that almost never happens with 3 kids, causing me to now add jury duty to a list of events I used to dread, but now enjoy including long plane rides (more quiet reading time) and dentists visits (drugs and DVDs.)
While I was doing my civic duty, I was unable to put Silverman’s book down or stop cracking up, even during the (impossibly long) jury duty orientation video. Thinking I was rude or crazy, maybe contributed to why they excused me so fast this time. But I couldn’t help it, the book is so funny.
I’ve been following Silverman’s career for about 10 years. The first time I saw her, I was struck both by how funny and how pretty she was. Ten years ago, before Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler became household names, with Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers as comedienne icons, it was rare to see a woman be allowed to be funny and attractive all at once. Even when it comes to boys, a sense of humor is usually high on a girl’s wish list for what makes him appealing, but for girls, being funny has been more like a subtraction factor in the sexuality equation. I seriously look at the progress female comedians have made in the last decade, with their own TV shows, books, and a little tiny bit in movies, and being able to go beyond jokes about how ugly or fat they are or how much plastic surgery they’ve had, as one the biggest advances for women in media in my lifetime. Silverman jokes frequently about how cute she is and thinks she is, and just that too, a woman joking about her attractiveness instead of unattractiveness (so sick of the ubiquitous supermodel quote about how ugly she always felt) is a radical change.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t get Silverman and are offended by her “rape” jokes and “racist” jokes. I don’t understand this at all. Silverman usually plays a character that is incredibly ignorant and incredibly arrogant– the all too common human characteristics that create racism. When Silverman says silly, stupid things (her jokes) her character “misses the point” completely, an obvious point, thereby illuminating, as many comics do, all kinds of biases in our society we too often take for granted. Silverman’s jokes are not perpetuating racism or sexism but calling it out. Get the difference? It’s like the show “Mad Men” is about sexism, but it’s not sexist.
In Bedwetter, Silverman elaborates on some controversies of her career, for example the infamous joke she told on Conan O’Brien:
Here’s the joke (which, remember, I was reading while at jury duty):
I got a jury duty form in the mail, and I don’t wanna do jury duty. So my friend said, “Write something really racist on the form so they won’t pick you, like ‘I hate niggers.’ I was like Jeez- I don’t want people to think I’m a racist, I just want to get out of jury duty. So I filled out the form and wrote, ‘I love niggers.”
Silverman writes in The Bedwetter:
Conan O’Brien’s segment producer says I can’t say ‘nigger’ on the show even though it’s obviously not a racist joke. It’s a joke about an idiot–me– but no way would that word be uttered on NBC.
Silverman asked to say “chink.”
Frank said no, she could say “spic.”
Silverman said it didn’t make any sense that she could say spic but not chink. Chink was a funnier word than spic. She would say chink. The producer says OK.
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair cover 2008
Silverman tells the joke and thus begins her war with NBC and Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. Aoki complained about her joke the next day, Silverman saw the complaint on the internet, and immediately wrote Aoki an apology. She apologized for any hurt she caused and wrote she wanted to address it. “The joke is satirical and the intended point of view is to underline the ignorance people demonstrate when they employ racial epithets.”
Silverman then meets with her agent who tells her NBC issued a formal apology to Aoki stating that the joke should’ve been edited out by their standards and practices department. NBC wrote it would cut the joke from all re-runs of the show. Silverman’s agent told her she was no longer wanted on any current NBC shows including the low-level, all comedian “Fear Factor.”
Silverman writes:
Guy would have thrived in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. A man like him, with moderate intelligence and maybe a good helping of courage and tenacity, could have made a name for himself attacking the networks and studios who delivered Stephen Fetchit, Amos and Andy, and Al Johnson to American audiences. But in recent decades, an effective cultural crusader requires a more nuanced perception of irony and context.
I grew up watching Archie Bunker, the ignorant racist character created by Norman Lear, who was, himself, famously devoted to advancing racial tolerance and progressive cultural values. Archie Bunker’s racism was Lear’s vessel for delivering comedy with a social message. Had Guy Aoki been operating in the 70s, he might have attacked Lear as a racist. The bad news for guys like Aoki is that not only are the progressive messages out there today more refined and sense-of-irony dependent, but racist messages are more oblique, too. Right-wing Americans who appear in mainstream media are not calling black people niggers or saying “the Klan has good ideas.” Instead, they’re questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency, by accusing him of being born in Africa, or of being a Muslim. They’re having “tea parties” and calling Obama a communist and a Nazi. The entire Fox News Channel is a 24 hour racism engine, but its all coded, all implied. Lou Dobbs used to scream about immigration not the “filthy Mexicans.” I suspect the racist messages about Asians that permeate the media are even subtler and harder to combat.
I relate to Silverman’s struggle and frustration. I feel like I spend much of my time trying to show people where sexism exists, how sometimes it’s become so “normal” we’re blind to it and accepting of it.
Here’s another subversive thing Silverman did. When Sarah’s character on the “Sarah Silverman Program” is told on the show by her sister that she was born with a penis and a vagina, Sarah’s line is:
“Were the penis and vagina in separate peices, or was it like the penis itself was the vagina, but split down the middle with labia?”
http://stopthecap.com/
Archie Bunker
According to the censor, “labia” in this instance was too graphic and we were asked to remove it. We can say “penis” and “balls” until the cows come home, but labia?” I asked our censor if this is what she wanted to teach young girls– that penis is fine and balls is fine but labia– your own body part– is dirty. I expressed these views to the censor and prepared to dig in for a long battle. But to my surprise, she saw my point and acknowledged that she had grown up in catholic school where female sexual organs are viewed as taboo. I was s impressed by her willingness to admit that her upbringing was clouding her judgment. So congratulations, womankind: Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House and by the time this book is published, ‘labia will have been in prime time.”
So Silverman’s being kind of sarcastic there, but also she isn’t. She’s taking on the catholic church, no small foe, and also the human id. She’s insisting on speaking up and staying in control of what she says. It drives me crazy when people want to censor the wrong things. This misguided intention is why I started my blog ReelGirl, to rate kids media, because G-rated kids movies are some of the most offensive things out there, often perpetuating the worst kinds of stereotypes for kids. I mean, has anyone seen Disney’s “Peter Pan?” Where the lost boys hunt the redskins? And Wendy, a kid, just wants to be a perfect “good mom” to all those boys, and she and Tinkerbell hate each other over Peter? And, no, I don’t think Disney is that much better today, just more subtle and ingrained sexism, as Silverman says.
The same kind of misguided censorship that happened to Silverman also happens when white guys get all upset about the sexism in hip-hop. White guys who normally don’t seem to care much about the status of women or do anything to improve things suddenly get all riled up about rap music. I’ve never seen anything like it. I wish these guys would show the same kind of furor about getting women and men equal pay for equal work. Here’s something I wrote about censoring hip-hop music for the Chronicle, back when Eminem was offending people.
MARGOT MAGOWAN
Wednesday, July 12, 2000
I LIKE hip-hop music. I know I’m not supposed to because so many of the songs have horrifyingly violent, sexist or homophobic lyrics.
Hip-hop is also the most innovative thing to happen to music in a long time.
When you compare hip-hop to its biggest rival for domination of the music charts – the corporate-created Backstreet Boys and N’sync, and pop-pincess clones Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera – rappers/ producers like Dr. Dre and Method Man are infinitely more talented. Hip-hop is captivating precisely because it tells a story, overlaying lyrics on top of familiar backbeats, creating songs that are at once new and familiar.
The story hip-hop tells may be disturbing or degrading, but that’s no reason to shun it. As art has always done, hip-hop describes our times, exposing a sometimes ugly world- of drugs, sexism, poverty and violence- that middle-class America may prefer to hide away.
In the ’60s, Bob Dylan enraged those who upheld the status quo. Today, we have a whole new slew of musical poets.
Just like they did with Dylan, the older generation asks, “How can you listen to this awful music? There’s no melody! And those lyrics!”
Baby boomers protest that THEIR songs were about peace and love, while hip-hop celebrates killing and humiliates women.
But surely rock ‘n’ roll stars have never been known for their kindness to women. The Rolling Stones cranked out hits like “Under My Thumb,” “Brown Sugar” and “Little T & A,” sneered through lyrics like “You make a dead man come” and glorified violence in songs like “Midnight Rambler.”
Sexual violence in lyrics wasn’t limited to bad boy bands either. Old peaceniks Jerry Garcia and Neil Young sang songs like “Down by the River” about murdering a lover. Ever since Elvis shook his pelvis, music has shocked, and the older generation just didn’t get it.
Critics charge that hip-hop crosses a line, most recently fingering rap sensation Eminem, who sings about raping his mother and slicing up his wife in front of their daughter.
Freud (looking like Archie)
But Freudians would tell you Eminem’s mother rage and sexual fantasies are pure id, the uncensored subconscious struggling for self expression. The views of Sigmund Freud, of course, are infamous for his distorted views on women, though that doesn’t stop us from studying him in our best educational institutions. Nor should it.
Hip-hop may be more shocking and graphic than your run-of-the-mill shapers of Western thought, but I prefer my misogyny straight up. Movies like “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts plays a prostitute with a heart of gold, may be prettier packaging, but if you think women are “hos,” just tell me so.
Tales of sex and violence aren’t limited to male artists. “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks and Macy Gray’s “I Committed Murder,” two recent hits by women artists, both detail violent killings with unrestrained glee. Angry young women muttering obscenities include Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love and Ani DiFranco.
Nor is disdain for men by women artists a new fad. Sylvia Plath, the late poet and darling of English lit majors, famously compared male genitalia to turkey necks and gizzards. Never one to shy away from sex or violence, she once said she “eats men like air.”
The difference, of course, is when women say these things, it really is just art. Because men are the guys with power, their expressions of domination, violence and sexual exploitation contribute to a culture where women really are forced into limited categories of queens or hos, where masculinity is defined by how many babes you score, and where women often are left powerless and exploited.
But sanitizing music is just shooting the messenger; it can’t transform a sexist culture. Warning stickers on CD covers are no protection from the deeply entrenched social realities that hip-hop pushes right in your face.
Women won’t feel threatened by lyrics when they overcome real inequities and get real power. Women will then be too busy making art and making deals to waste time wondering if they should side with the radical right, clamoring to keep obscenities out of Wal-Mart.
The L.A.-based Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is set to release this summer the findings of a lengthy study on gender roles in movies and TV shows aimed at viewers 11 and under. The org is also planning a daylong conference in L.A. this fall. The institute has a programming unit dubbed See Jane that aims to work with execs, creatives and other industry orgs to encourage the inclusion of a wider range of femme characters in kid-oriented programming.
Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis says, “Kids need to see entertainment where females are valued as much as males.”
Here is her institute’s mission:
While watching children’s television programs and videos with her then 2-year old daughter, Academy Award winner Geena Davis noticed a remarkable imbalance in the ratio of male to female characters. From that small starting point, Davis went on to raise funds for the largest research project ever undertaken on gender in children’s entertainment.
The research showed that in the top-grossing G-rated films from 1990-2005, there were three male characters for every one female – a statistic that did not improve over time.
The concern was clear: What message does this send to young children?
I can’t wait for this new study. Thank you to Geena Davis for recognizing the gender bias in kids movies and doing something to change it. Go Thelma!
In the wake of actress Gabourey Sidibe’s Academy Award nomination for her incredible performance in “Precious,” many are saying she’ll never get another part in a Hollywood movie because she’s too fat. But they’re wrong: even if the talented actress lost weight, she’d still be too black for Hollywood.
Gabourey Sidibe
Sidibe doesn’t conform to Hollywood’s narrow beauty requirements for romantic leads and stars: actresses should be white women, preferably blonde.
Until Hollywood’s executives start looking more like Sidibe and less like Harvey Weinstein, the fat, white guy who founded Miramax, Sidibe’s going to have trouble getting roles.
Because Hollywood is run by white men, their counterparts will star in films regardless of their weight (see Jack Black or any Judd Apatow movie) or age (Daniel Day Lewis, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Denzel washington, Pierce Brosnan, the list goes on and on) or acting ability (Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise). In producing films, white men get to play God just like they do on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, creating their fantasies and selling them to the public. There’s nothing wrong with putting your imaginative stories out into the world, but there needs to be some diversity in the power structure so that other people get opportunities to make their dreams come true too.
There is some evidence Hollywood is slowly changing. The reason “Precious” got made at all is because African Americans busted through the racial/ class barrier. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry got successful and got rich, so they were able to make and promote a movie. Successful black women in Hollywood include Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Cicely Tyson, Traji Henson, Viola Davis, and Zoe Saldana.
Harvey Weinstein and Gwyneth Paltrow
There are more to be added to the list, but they remain a tiny minority. A woman couldn’t be much skinner or “conventionally beautiful,” than Saldana, the light skinned, African-American star of “Avatar” and “Star Trek.” Saldana says in Us Weekly: “In Hollywood, you hear things like ‘Oh, they loved you but they want to go more traditional.’ That’s the new n-word.”
But when it comes to race in Hollywood, even shock jock Howard Stern skates the issue, sticking with the socially acceptable bias, making fun of fat people. On his Sirius talk radio show, Stern said of Sidibe, “There’s the most enormous, fat black chick I’ve ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone’s pretending she’s a part of show business and she’s never going to be in another movie. She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she’s never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?” Stern says of Oprah’s speech to Sidibe: “Oprah’s another liar…telling an enormous woman the size of a planet that she’s going to have a career.””
Zoe Saldana
Actress/ signer, Jessica Simpson, no stranger to viscious criticism about her weight, defends Sidibe, but also avoids the race issue, saying of Stern’s comments: “It’s unfortunate because she walked the red carpet at the Oscars and she owned it. She was beautiful. There was no denying that she did not think she was the most beautiful person on that red carpet. She was just owning that moment for herself. She had such confidence and I absolutely 100 percent think she could get anything in the world that she wanted.”
Confidence can only get you so far when white guys run Hollywood. Simpson knows that. Supposedly, in her new show, “The Price of Beauty,” Simpson researched this. I wish Simpson had said something like: “I’ve just done a program abut exploring different standards of beauty around the globe, and here in Southern California, Gabourey has three strikes against her as far as getting part she wants in movies: she’s fat, she’s black, and she’s a woman.”
Here are the Hollywood stats from Martha M. Lauzen’s annual study “The Celluloid Ceiling.” I don’t know what the breakdown is on race.
In Hollywood, women make up:
7% of directors
8% of writers
17% of executive producers
23% of producers
18% of editors
2% of cinematographers
Sidibe does have parts lined up for herself: an upcoming feature film co-starring Zoe Kravitz called “Yelling to the Sky,” and a recurring part in Showtime’s new dark comedy series, “The Big C,” which also stars Laura Linney and Oliver Platt. She also has some powerful people backing her like Winfrey and Perry. But until there are some major changes in the Hollywood power structure, Sidibe will need a back up career
Sadly, just like two of my other favorite childrens’ book authors, Dr. Seus and William Steig, Maurice Sendak often leaves female characters completely out of his stories or gives them tiny parts.
Outside Over There is different–the three main characters are female. it’s a perfect story: strange, scary, and feminist. This book would make a great movie (are you listening Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers– or some female moviemakers out there?) It’s about a brave girl who rescues her baby sister after she is stolen away by goblins.
The prose is classic Sendak– concise and beautiful. It begins, “When Papa was away at sea, and Mama in the arbor, Ida played her wonder horn, to rock the baby still, but never watched.” The accompanying illustrations are creepy and intense. The mother is shown in a daze, staring out to sea, obviously missing her husband horribly, not paying any attention to Ida who holds her crying baby sister. You can feel the aloneness and the abdonment the whole family is experiencing, but especially Ida, who is trying her best to take care of the baby, before she makes her fateful mistake of not watching.
Goblins sneak in the window and steal the baby, leaving one made of ice (an image that’s never completely left me) When Ida turns to hug the baby and feels her melt, she makes a fist: ” ‘They stole my sister away,’ she cried. ” ‘To be a nasty goblin’s bride.’ ” She climbs out her window into “outside over there” guided by the voice of her father from the sea. When she finds the goblins, she plays her horn until they dance into such a frenzy “they quick churned into a dancing stream.” Ida grabs up her sister, and brings her home to their mother, still in the arbor, now holding a letter from their father: “I’ll be home one day, and my brave, bright little Ida must watch the baby and her Mama for her Papa who loves her always. Which is just what Ida did.”
Like his much more famous book Where the Wild Things Are, this adventure story is told in less words than this review. Sendak is amazing. I wish more people knew about his best book.
At first glance, Ladybug Girl doesn’t appear to be the most original of heroines. She’s pictured on the book’s cover in the same frilly-stiff red tutu that two of my daughters wore last halloween, cloned by half the girls in San Francisco; the other half dressed up as butterflies or fairies, only differenciated by tutu/ wing coloring. (Though now, I hope my third daughter shows the same obsession because the costumes cost me $60 each.)
But there is something special about this Ladybug girl. First, full disclosure, my standard bias: as I mentioned in my Princess Hyacinth review– as a brown-eyed, brown haired kid, reading obsessed and deluged with golden haired blue eyed beauties, I give extra originality points for the, still rare, kids’ heroines with alternative coloring.
But there’s something truly wonderful about this story, and something that I never thought of before. This book shows that a girl’s obsession with ladybugs (and by proxy, butterlies) though packaged in the mainstream world as a gender stereotyped attraction to patterns and colors–is, at its heart, a love for bugs, for the outdoors and the creatures of the earth.
Ladybug Girl wanders around her backyard (another great thing about this book is it shows how our overscheduled kids handle free time; one of my favorite scenes shows Ladybug Girl, before making her decision to go outdoors, in her room overflowing with toys, frowning, arms crossed, saying, “There’s nothing to do.”) When Ladybug Girl is playing outside with her dog, she gets muddy and wet, splashing in shark-infested puddles, spying on other creatures including her big brother, buiding stone forts, and rescuing bugs.
Reading Ladybug Girl reminded me of my daughters, and the many ways they have shown me their fascination with bugs and insects (and tiny frogs–ugh) and how it’s not an interest I’ve ever encouraged or reinforced with toys, games or my own excitement– except by buying them silly frilly costumes.
I’ve often discovered Lucy and Alice quietly spying on long-legged spiders they find in the bath or mesmerized by fuzzy, slow-moving bumble bees flying low in our backyard. And their favorite thing to do, every time we leave the neighborhood park, is to visit the “ant tree,” where a trail of ants march up and down the trunk. The girls each let an ant crawl onto their finger, and then they literally love that ant to death. Then they cry and ask me to bring it back to life.
I’ve never once bought the girls the ant homes marketed to little boys, or insect puzzles, or rented A Bug’s Life, or asked them if they wanted to go dig for potato bugs when we had nothing to do–even after Lucy brought one home from school in a tiny cardboard box complete with a bed and play area.
Reading this story about a bored girl freely playing outside and getting dirty made me think of how many times I’ve warned my daughters not to get messy, as if it were the most horrible thing in world. I’m thinking, of course, that I’ll have to wash their clothing or they’ll track mud through the house. But Ladybug Girl taught me to mellow out and not get so worked up. (I’m not even a neat freak– far from it, and it was still hard for me to let it go) We have a backyard, always in flux, always muddy; there’s a hill they call a mountain they love to climb and dig around in. Now I just let them, stopped worrying so much about them fallling (into what? more mud) Now they climb and explore far more bravely, both at home and in parks. They ask me to take them on hikes.
I also hope that letting then get messy when they play outside, and really acting like it’s no big deal takes back some emphasis from the frequent visual reaction they get: “What a beautiful dress you are wearing!” They love to get special attention for anything, of course, but hopefully exploring and getting dirty can be more fun than even that.
A final cool thing about the book– and I think this is the author’s winking about the generic costume featured on the cover: the illustrations on both the front and back inside covers show Ladybug Girl is in a variety of costumes including a pirate, ballerina, witch, movie star, artist, astronaut, unicorn, pilot etc; the point being, of course, girls can be anything. I’d love to get a blow this up and frame it. ***GG***
(P.S. The extra ladybugs in the photo are pistcachio half-shells Lucy painted for a math counting school project)
Brave Margaret is one of the best kids books I’ve come across. It’s a Celtic fairy tale, a true adventure story– exciting and beautifully illustrated. Margaret faces stormy seas, a terrifying serpent, and a self-serving sorceress. The story is completely centered on Margaret’s journey, though it does end in a happily ever after scene with a prince. Still, Simon is a hottie (I have a soft spot for Irish men) who obviously loves and admires Margaret for her bravery and her brains which makes the story romantic enough so the ending fits. Also– I love Margaret’s look. Yes, she has long flowing hair but it’s all kinds of shades of fiery red. One of my pet peeves with children’s books is that even when there is a girl in constant action, the pictures are of the moments she happens to be stationary: smiling, hugging, sitting, whispering, or brushing her hair (this is true even if the girl characters happen to be ponies, cats, fairies, bugs etc). Not so with Brave Margaret– most illustrations are action shots: Margaret galloping on her black horse, brandishing a sword; rowing a boat on her own in the stormy sea; swinging an ax by a serpent’s mouth. My friend who recommended this book bought it at a garage sale for $1. It’s copyright is 1999. I hope it’s still available, I want to get my own copy. Please give suggestions for girl power kids books you love. They don’t have to be new.
Awesome. I adore this guy. He’s the best– both in animation and girl power. I know he’s a guy, so that’s the only drawback I guess, but that can be a plus too, that he has that kind of insight. Spirited Away, his classic, is my favorite. It’s just beautiful to watch. And Sen, the main character, is brave and cool and also emotional and real. Her parents turning into pigs did freak my kids out, it freaked me out; that scene is intense. I also love Kiki’s Delivery Service. recently, I saw Ponyo in the movie theatre whichw as such a great, powerful take on the lamest of movies– The Little Mermaid. My only issue with MIyazaki is you have to be in the mood, it s a commitment to watch one of these epic films and sometimes my mind drifts. And I suppose, with Ponyo, it really was much more about the animation that the story, there wasn’t much tension or conflict. The boy– I forget his name right now– is in love with Ponyo the fish, and his love is tested but you never doubt that this earnest, sweet boy’s love is true. Miyazaki gets my highest rating GGG.
www.sfexaminer.com
www.sfartscommission.org
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www.imow.org
www.harpercollins.com
Vanity Fair
http://stopthecap.com/
Freud (looking like Archie)
Gabourey Sidibe
Harvey Weinstein and Gwyneth Paltrow
Zoe Saldana
