#SarahSilvermanHostOscars

Posted on February 25, 2013 by margotmagowan

I’m HUGE fan of Silverman. Not only is she a great performer, she’s a fantastic writer.

Here’s what I blogged about her memoir, Bedwetter, a couple summers ago:

Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman. Silverman, you probaly know, is a comedian; this book is hilarious but also poignant. She wet her bed until she was sixteen years old. One passage totally sticks in my head: Silverman is just back from sleepaway camp, a traumatizing experience for a bedwetter; she secretly wore diapers at night. When she gets off the camp bus, full of shame, her mom is frenetically taking pictures of her. Silverman has a strange feeling of getting attention yet being completely ignored. When I read this, I thought it was a great way to describe the experience many women have of being looked at but not being seen. I blogged about the book here.

I’ve been reading some great posts from around the web about how horrible Seth MacFarlane was last night. From the New Yorker:

Watching the Oscars last night meant sitting through a series of crudely sexist antics led by a scrubby, self-satisfied Seth MacFarlane. That would be tedious enough. But the evening’s misogyny involved a specific hostility to women in the workplace, which raises broader questions than whether the Academy can possibly get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host next year. It was unattractive and sour, and started with a number called “We Saw Your Boobs.”

“We Saw Your Boobs” was as a song-and-dance routine in which MacFarlane and some grinning guys named actresses in the audience and the movies in which their breasts were visible. That’s about it. What made it worse was that most of the movies mentioned, if not all (“Gia”), were pretty great—“Silkwood,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Monster,” “The Accused,” “Iris”—and not exactly teen-exploitation pictures. The women were not showing their bodies to amuse Seth MacFarlane but, rather, to do their job. Or did they just think they were doing serious work? You girls think you’re making art, the Academy, through MacFarlane, seemed to say, but all we—and the “we” was resolutely male—really see is that we got you to undress. The joke’s on you.

Vulture.com posts:

the relentless commentary about how women look reinforced, over and over, that women somehow don’t belong. They matter only insofar as they are beautiful or naked, or preferably both.

Please Tweet #SarahSilvermanHostOscars

Seth MacFarlane, you’re a loser

Posted on February 25, 2013 by margotmagowan

After Tina Fey and Amy Poehler rocked the Golden Globes last month, I hoped Hollywood producers would catch on: putting women in power positions means a high quality show with good ratings. But then, Seth MacFarlane. Last night’s Academy Awards featured the the most sexist, worst Oscars hosting I’ve ever seen.

I get that MacFarlane tried to pre-empt this blog, and many like it, with his boring, stupid, Captain Kirk snore-fest-skit. But, Seth, your fake headlines last night don’t get close to describing what a pig you are. Best Actress nominee Quevenzhane Wallis is nine years old. She was so proud. That was the biggest moment of her life, and you called her George Clooney’s girlfriend? Why would you do that to a kid? How is she supposed to feel when you say that? Are you that insecure that you want to cut down a little girl?

Jessica Chastain had the rare opportunity to play a heroic, female protagonist and you trivialized her character, transforming her lifetime accomplishment into nagging, saying she possessed the innate female ability to never let anything go.

You sang a “boob song” that was more repetitive than my three year old, and you made jokes about domestic violence. That’s all I saw, but apparently, I missed some sexism.

Where were your jokes about men? Part of the reason your jokes were not funny is because women get demeaned and trivialized every day in this country, especially in Hollywood. All you did was jump on the bandwagon and push things a little further in the same, old, tired direction. Watching you tell your sexist jokes at a venue where in 85 years, only 4 women have been nominated for Best Director, was like watching someone point up and say, “The sky is blue,” for three and a half hours. Seth MacFarlane, you are such a bore.

Your performance did help me to explain the meaning of the term “bully pulpit” to some children. So, thanks for that, I guess.

Here’s to hoping Sarah Silverman hosts the Oscars in 2014.

Please Tweet #SarahSilvermanHostOscars

Star Wars, where are the women?

Posted on February 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

Love this post from Laura Hudson on Wired.

If you’ve never really noticed the absence of women in Star Wars (or movies at large), consider yourself living proof of how the limiting narratives of culture and media can warp our expectations, to the point where the presence of one woman in a cast of dozens of memorable male characters can seem like perfect equality.

Women accounted for a mere 33 percent of the roles in the top 100 Hollywood films in 2011, according to a study commissioned by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. When it came to the leading characters, women were even more dramatically under-represented, comprising only 11 percent of identifiable protagonists.

It gets even worse when you look at all-ages entertainment. Women — who, by the way, make up half the human population — comprised only 28 percent of speaking roles in top-grossing family films last year. And when women did appear, they were far less likely to hold roles of power or influence: making up only 3 percent of executive portrayals, for example, compared to 25 percent in real life….

Criticisms about representations of gender (or race and other diversity) are often countered in fandom by sociological or scientific analyses attempting to explain why the inequality happens according to the internal logic of the fictional world. As though there is any real reason that anything happens in a story except that someone chose to write it that way.

What are kids learning about gender when they watch “Star Wars” again and again and again? All those fantastic creatures the creators of “Star Wars” came up with, but their creativity screeched to a stop when it came to imagining females.

Please read the whole, great post here:

In 85 yrs, 4 women nominated for Best Director

Posted on February 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

From Women and Hollywood:

It’s Academy Awards week and the ballots are closed. While we don’t know the winners yet, one thing we know for sure is that no women have again been nominated for best director.This is one of the only times of the year when the world is paying attention to the film business, not just movies. The entire industry is on display this weekend and it is still extremely imbalanced.

This is the second year we have created a video to help make people think about the gender imbalance in Hollywood, especially in the area of directing.

Please share this far and wide.

When girls go missing in children’s media, a new generation learns to accept sexism

Posted on February 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

I posted a comment on Reel Girl from 14 yr old Jessica who wrote about how when she calls out sexism, people say she’s bonkers. A 13 yr old replied to her:

You are definitely not alone or bonkers! In fact, you are intelligent enough to know that sexism is still present in our society. I am 13 and I share the same experiences with you! I never tried to advocate feminism openly in public because I know how ignorant, oblivious , and stubborn people are that they would not accept the truth, or flatly deny the existence of sexism. I would have had the courage if there was such a thing such as a feminist campaign club in my country. At least my sister and all of you here understand sexism!

It makes me so mad and frustrated that neither of these girls, 30 years younger than me, feels like she has a public voice to tell her story. I am happy that they wrote on this blog, and I hope that they will continue to write and refuse to believe that the sexism they experience in their world is trivial and doesn’t matter.

If this isn’t sexist:

And this isn’t sexist:

Is this sexist?

This photo of Obama’s inner circle is from the March issue of Vogue magazine.

When girls go missing in children media, it acclimates a whole new generation to expect and accept sexism. It’s an annihilation of half of the population. So why do parents accept sexism in a fantasy world created for children? When did it become normal to us? And why are teenage girls afraid to talk about what they see?

Innocent man exonerated from Oakland shooting

Posted on February 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

From SFGate:

A man who has spent nearly seven years in prison for a shooting in West Oakland is on the brink of being released after his attorneys argued he was the innocent victim of shoddy police work and lying witnesses who have since recanted.

Alameda County prosecutors, who put 51-year-old Ronald Ross in state prison for attempted murder and assault with a firearm, conceded Friday that his conviction should not stand and said they would ask a Superior Court judge to free him.

“The district attorney doesn’t have confidence the verdict was fully supported given all of the circumstances,” said Assistant District Attorney Micheal O’Connor.

Friday’s developments mean that Ross, who has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life at San Quentin State Prison, is probably days away from the end of an unusual and lengthy legal saga.

Ross, who had no record of violence, was arrested by Oakland police after the shooting victim, Renardo Williams, picked him out of a lineup of six photos, Ross’ attorneys said.

Here is Thelma Ross, mother of Ronald, waiting for the hearing:

Here is Ross’s attorney, my cousin, Jo Golub (named for Jo March of Little Women.)

Jo has been working on this case since 2008.

Here is to hoping our justice system stops putting innocent people behind bars.

FREEDOM FOR RONALD!!!!

Toy companies start marketing sexism as progressive

Posted on February 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

I’ve blogged about the Nerf’s new, idiotic toy line “for girls,” Rebelle, which includes a pink bow and arrow called the Heartbreaker. What’s remarkable is that the toy makers are marketing this line as progressive.

First, the headline on CNN: “Barbie, Nerf, redefine ‘girl’ toys.”

Isn’t that great? Leaders in breaking gender stereotypes! Read on.

Parents have gotten more open minded when it comes to how children play and what kind of toys are appropriate for their kids, according to Maureen O’Brien, a developmental psychologist who consulted with Mattel (MAT, Fortune 500) on its Mega Bloks set.

More open minded? I guess open-minded means going to a mega store chain like Target and shopping in a “girl” aisle full of pink. Gender segregated toys have never been so homogenized and mass-marketed and cross-marketed through movies, clothing, videos, apps and diaper icons as they are today. Here’s an ad for LEGO ‘for girls’ from 1981, when I was a kid.

Here’s an ad for LEGO for girls, literally, today:

The CNN post rewrites history and misleads further here:

“There has always been this artificial gender distinction when it comes to play, but now it’s falling away as we learn more about the advantages of different toys,” said O’Brien.

It’s not falling away. It’s getting so defined, kids can hardly cross it.

Here is the “to be sure” paragraph. When I teach Op-Ed writing, I always talk about the “to be sure” graph writers must include to anticipate counter-arguments. You’re not supposed to actually use the cliche phrase as this writer does here:

To be sure, the new toys continue to play into some stereotypes. A Barbie construction set lets children build a fashion boutique, Lego Friends sells a pet salon, and the Nerf Rebelle comes in shades of hot pink and purple.

Except for that little, tiny issue, everything is cool, right?

Here’s the hilarious thing about the post. Toy companies actually admit that gender segregation is about making money.

For toy makers, it is a relatively inexpensive move because they don’t need to develop an entire new line of toys from scratch. In fact, most of them use the same tools and models they use for the traditional toys, says Johnson.

And then again, at the end of the post:

“It’s driven by a simple fact,” said Sean McGowan, a toy analyst with Needham Co. “If you can get a product targeted to one gender to be appealing to the other, you can significantly increase sales.”

The reason these “experts” have the guts to confess the drive isn’t “nature” but capitalism is because the post frames the choice under the umbrella of a bold and non-traditional move.

In her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein is more clear:

Splitting kids and adults, or for that matter, penguins, into ever tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits. So where there was once a big group called kids we now have toddlers, pre-schoolers, tweens, young-adolescents and older adolescents, each with their own developmental and marketing profile…One of the easiest ways to segment the market is to magnify gender differences or invent them where they did not previously exist.

Get it? Instead of buying one, you buy 2. Or you’re supposed to pick this one, instead of some other brand, because it’s made especially for YOU.

This image, via The Society Pages, is so stupid its almost funny. If this product looks ridiculous to you, so should Nerf’s Heartbreaker bow. Not only that, you should help your kid see how stupid gender segregation is. We now understand that kids learn gender the same way they learn language, meaning they are born full of potential for a wide range of behavior, and based on learning, specific wiring is developed. Do you want multi-national companies whose main goal is to make money to have this level of influence in shaping your child’s brain?

14 yr old girl writes when she calls out sexism, people call her bonkers

Posted on February 19, 2013 by margotmagowan

I get a lot of people telling me the issues that I blog about are stupid, irrelevant, or don’t exist at all and how miserable my children must be to have me as a mother. Then, once in a while, I get a comment like this from Jessica. Thank you, Jessica! You rock.

Hello, I’m only 14 but I’m just commenting here to express how so so so grateful and relieved I am to FINALLY find out that I’m not the only one who pays attention to all the sexism that is really all around us, even when everyone else I know thinks I’m over reacting and have gone bonkers. Especially people my age.
Whenever my little sister turns on the TV to watch cartoons, I can’t help but start counting how many female characters there are, yet only to groan in frustration afterwards because there are always more male characters. And the main characters are never females. That is, unless the show’s target audience are girls.
Or whenever I read a book, or watch a movie. It’s always the same. Always.
Even the fact that we’re supposed to use our Dad’s surname as our own, instead of our Mom’s.
I feel truly angry about all this. I wish there were something I could do.
Yet I’ve learned keep it to myself, because whenever I tell someone, anyone, they just roll their eyes like I’m crazy. I’m just a stupid little girl. No one takes it seriously. No one takes ME seriously But they should. Because all this has to change.
It’s really sad how other girls/women don’t even seem to care. I honestly don’t understand. How could anyone think that sexism is “gone”?!
Anyway, I’m so grateful that I have found this blog. Thank you so much. I’m sure you are a very, very good mum.

Thank you again,
Jessica

Who is Julia Morgan?

Posted on February 18, 2013 by margotmagowan

My daughter’s fourth grade poster and oral report on the first female architect certified in California, Julia Morgan.

“Hello, girls and boys. I am the one and only Julia Morgan. Now, let’s start at the beginning. I was born on January 20, 1872 right here in San Francisco. As a child, I wanted to know how everything worked. I loved mechanical stuff.

I went to high school in 1890. Instead of marrying, I tried to get into the University of California. They made me take the test three times even though I passed every time. Finally, they let me in. The men teased me, pulling all kinds of pranks, because I was the only woman there.

I won my first medal in a fancy palace decorated with characters from Greek mythology. I was so proud of myself.

There was a giant earthquake in San Francisco. I helped rebuild the whole city. I made it even better. I designed the wonderful Mills College

and the Fairmont hotel, but my masterpiece is the amazing Hearst castle.

It has an outdoor pool and an indoor pool, and did I mention I also built the Women’s City Club building? I also helped design the YWCA.

One thing I admit, I was a very big perfectionist. I loved architecture. Now here, I have to say good-bye. Today is a sad day. On February 2, 1957, I died. Still, even in my dreams, I love architecture.”

J.R.R. Tolkien heavily influenced by obscure female writer?

Posted on February 17, 2013 by margotmagowan

Ever heard of Marie Corelli? She was a best-selling British novelist whose books sold more copies than the sales of contemporaries Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling combined.

In a remarkable essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, U.C. Berkeley Ph. D. candidate Lili Loofbourow gives extensive evidence that J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by Corelli. Reading her essay, passages of The Hobbit look like plagiarism.

Here Loofbourow compares Corelli’s Thelma to Tolkien’s Gollum:

“Thelma begins with the adventurous Lord Errington, who takes it upon himself to stalk a chaste Scandinavian maiden named Thelma after seeing her emerge mysteriously from a cave. He makes his way to the cave after she leaves. There he finds the dwarf Sigurd, whose entrance is Gollum-like in the extreme:

[W]ith all [Errington’s] bravery, he recoiled a little when he first caught sight of the extraordinary being that emerged from the darkness — a wild, distorted figure that ran towards him with its head downwards, bearing aloft in one skinny hand a smoking pine-torch, from which the sparks flew like so many fireflies. This uncanny personage, wearing the semblance of man, came within two paces of Errington before perceiving him; then, stopping short in his headlong career, the creature flourished his torch and uttered a defiant yell.

Sigurd is described as a scarred, misshapen being, “not quite four feet high, with large, ungainly limbs out of all proportion to his head, which was small and compact […] from under his shaggy brows gleamed a restless pair of large, full, wild blue eyes.” In The Hobbit, Tolkien describes Gollum as

a small black shape […] moving with its thin limbs splayed out […] now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.

The similarities are not only in the structure of the story, but in Sigurd and Gollum’s language. Here is Sigurd:

“Now follow me! Sigurd knows the way! Sigurd is the friend of all the wild waterfalls! Up the hills, — across the leaping stream, — through the sparkling foam!” And he began chanting to himself a sort of wild mountain song.

Sound like anyone you know? Loofbourow writes that the personalities of Sigurd and Gollum are strikingly similar. Both are excellent hunters and woodsmen. She goes into more detail in her essay of the extensive correlations. So why have we never heard of the startling connection between Tolkien and Corelli? Loofbourow asks the same question:

Given how extensive the parallels are between Sigurd and Gollum, it’s hard to understand how they could have gone unnoticed until now. Much as I’d like to claim credit for being an exquisitely sensitive reader, it’s almost impossible to encounter Sigurd without seeing Gollum. And yet no one, to my knowledge, has made the connection before.

Wow, and all this time, I thought “women can’t write fantasy.”

Here’s another question for you: Have you heard of Loofbourow’s Los Angeles Review of Books essay? This scholar deserves massive media attention.

Reel Girl

Imagining gender equality in the fantasy world

Author Archives: margotmagowan

#SarahSilvermanHostOscars

Seth MacFarlane, you’re a loser

Star Wars, where are the women?

In 85 yrs, 4 women nominated for Best Director

When girls go missing in children’s media, a new generation learns to accept sexism

Innocent man exonerated from Oakland shooting

Toy companies start marketing sexism as progressive

14 yr old girl writes when she calls out sexism, people call her bonkers

Who is Julia Morgan?

J.R.R. Tolkien heavily influenced by obscure female writer?