Category Archives: Books

‘The mother-daughter bond has been one of patriarchy’s most effective means of reproducing itself through generations’

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—Bethany Webster, author of Discovering the Inner Mother

‘The mother-daughter bond has been one of patriarchy’s most effective means of reproducing itself through generations’ —Bethany Webster, author of Discovering the Inner Mother

What do you feel when you read that quote? What does it even mean?

I’m the mother of three daughters. I’ve also been coached by Bethany, and when I read her words, again and again, my needs to be seen, heard, understood, and to matter are met. Her analysis, in my experience, is so rarely articulated and so true.

The simplest way I can explain the significance of Bethany’s quote is through describing my eating disorder and recovery from it. When I was obsessed with counting calories (I grew up in the 80s) I had a lot of clarity on what was good and what was bad: cookies were bad, cottage cheese was good; Republicans were bad, Democrats were good; William Faulkner was a great writer, Jackie Collins was a bad writer. I was a teenager, the world was easily divided into binaries, I knew who I was and where I was going.

In my twenties, when I started to try to give up the bulimia, I tried so many modalities to stop the behavior. I went to private therapy, group therapy, nutritionists, 12-step programs, and nothing worked until I started to practice what today would be called intuitive eating. I got help from an organization called Beyond Hunger in Marin County that supported me to eat when I was hungry, eat whatever I wanted, and stop when I was full. To be clear, this was not an eat when-hungry-stop-when-full “diet.” Many times, as I was learning, I would finish a bag of chips when they stopped tasting good, just because I had the urge to keep crunching, but the difference was I became aware of when I was continuing on past my pleasure point. I was conscious of my choices and I learned to be self-compassionate.

But here’s the really weird thing that happened as I recovered from bulimia. Initially, I lost my orientation of right and wrong. I no longer connected with other women as easily as I had in the past. When I stopped criticizing my body, I got confused. When I stopped eating because it was lunch time or dinner time, and ate when I actually was hungry, I didn’t know how to schedule my day. When I was served a plate of food and I only wanted half of the portion or I wanted seconds, when I was in the mood for salad and not the steak that was served, when I ate because I actually wanted the food and not to protect someone’s feelings, a waiter I didn’t even know or a man who cooked for me, I felt a rush of guilt, shame, and fear.

For so many women, having an eating disorder, being sick, is easier than being healthy. Eating what I wanted, when I wanted felt so rebellious and strange. I felt like how I imagine those tigers do, like the one Glennon Doyle wrote about in her book Untamed, who was free of her cage and still couldn’t run. She was paralyzed,

I was 28 years old when I got better from bulimia and I was 34 when I had my first child. I thought I was ready. Not only had I recovered from a vicious eating disorder, I was sober. I was deeply in love with my smart, sweet boyfriend. I had a career that excited and fulfilled me, I produced talk radio programs, co-founded a non-profit that taught young women ethical leadership skills, I published commentary on politics and culture, and I advocated for women’s issues on national television. Who could be more ready for motherhood than me?

I raised all three of my daughters to be intuitive eaters which for me meant I never gave them rules about what to eat and when to eat it. I never made them finish a plate of food or rewarded “good” behavior with something like ice cream or told them not to “snack” before dinner. I filled the refrigerator and low cupboards with food that they could reach on their own. If they wanted ice cream for breakfast, they was fine with me.

This post is not about how in spite of my efforts, my daughters still grew up with disordered eating. All of them are “healthy” eaters. They eat what they want when they want, they’re adventurous with trying new kinds of food, they’re all “normal” weight.

But when my kids were little, the other moms had a really hard time with how my kids ate. When friends came over, often parents joined, and they were shocked and disapproving that my kids could eat candy whenever they wanted. I honestly believe that part of the reason these parents accepted my family’s intuitive eating, is because neither my kids or I were “overweight.” Once again, I learned, not having an eating disorder separated me from community and incited disapproval, judgement, and confusion.

In my own family, being a “healthy” eater (how I define healthy which is not controlling food, I’m not talking about eating your veggies) caused more conflict, upset, confusion, and judgement. When my kids were allowed to eat whatever they wanted and my nieces and nephews weren’t following the same “rules,” new flexibility and openness had to be reached and that path is never smooth. That journey to a different way of being and relating isn’t so so different from the readjustment sobriety can create in a family that connects and bonds at cocktail hour.

Moms want so much to keep our kids safe, and the way I was raising my daughters seemed dangerous, scary, and chaotic to so many parents. I get that because when I went through a new way of eating, that process could feel dangerous, scary, and chaotic.

Mothers pass on eating disorders, generation after generation, out of concern, love, and a desire to protect. As a woman, when you stop monitoring what you eat, when you let your own body determine what you want and when you want it, you are making a radical choice to trust yourself.

It turns out, at 34, I was not “ready” to be a mom, because no one is ever ready and there’s no perfect time. My oldest daughter never had food issues, but she struggled with behavioral challenges that I’ve written about before and what I learned from supporting her through recovery is that my insights about food didn’t go nearly far enough. It wasn’t just at the dinner table that I needed to follow the wisdom of my body, my intuition, my own unique path instead of the systems that rewarded compliance. As a woman, as a mom, as a mom of daughters, time and time again you’re confronted with a choice: Do I do what the “expert” tells me, the psychiatrist, the teacher, the lacrosse coach, the college adviser, or do I deeply listen to the needs of my daughter?

For example, it never once occurred to me, and I now I realize this lack of awareness was partly because I was born white and to a privileged family, that my daughter wouldn’t go to college. I may have been a Democrat, but I believed in all the rules and status and hierarchy of academia. While I wasn’t dependent on how much money or how much I weighed to determine my status and worth, I was still looking for external validation in my daughter’s grades and test scores. Those numbers told me if I was a good mom, if my daughter would be “safe” and “successful” in the world.

What I know now is that helping my daughters thrive in the world means prioritizing connection with them, listening to them, meeting their needs to be seen, heard, and to matter, not just in what they eat but in every aspect of their lives.

Listen to Laurelee Roarke’s podcast It’s Not About Food where I spoke about recovery and raising daughters free of disordered eating

If you want to learn more about Nonviolent Communication or my parent coaching visit listen2connectcoach.com or follow me on Instagram @listen2connectcoach

Unfawning in 2026! Who’s with me?

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You’ve heard of the trauma responses: fight, flight, and freeze, but have you heard of fawning? I’m obsessed with the new book: Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton. Every person—but really, urgently, every woman—needs to read it.

Dr. Clayton quotes psychotherapist Pete Walker defining fawning as “a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat.” In her book, she writes that fawning isn’t a gendered response, anyone can fawn, which I agree with, but Walker’s definition—becoming more appealing to the threat—seems to describe exactly how women are trained to be “safe” in a patriarchy. Dr. Clayton elaborates her definition throughout the book, but here it is in a nutshell: “Fawners mirror or merge with someone else’s desires or expectations to defuse conflict rather than confront it directly.”

I’ve actually read a lot about trauma, I read Pete Walker’s books years ago, and so I’d heard of fawning. But when I read Dr. Clayton’s in-depth analysis, I understood for the first time that fawning is not a conscious response, something you decide to do. Instead, your nervous system activates a fawning response. This understanding helped me be more aware and compassionate when I fawn, as opposed to getting angry at myself, or judging or shaming myself.

As a feminist, as someone who speaks out for causes she believes in, who debates Tucker Carlson on national TV, I may appear to be someone who doesn’t fawn. But now I see my endless arguing, debating, explaining, is in some ways, an attempt to win others over, to get them on my side, “to connect to protect,” as Dr. Clayton describes fawning.

That is not to say debate, arguing, explaining is wrong, it can be necessary and useful. But it’s also helpful to be aware of when and how I’m choosing to spend my precious time, energy, and brain cells.

But how I find Fawning most helpful and enlightening is in supporting me to be a cycle breaker as a mom of three daughters living in a capitalist patriarchy. The unpaid, unappreciated labor of being a mom, from endless scheduling to filling out forms to driving your kids everywhere, even just the energy and skill you need to value emotions and emotional regulation skills, in a society that doesn’t believe feelings matter, is kind of shocking. At least it was for me.

In her book Discovering the Inner Mother, Bethany Webster writes:

“I once saw a video on Facebook that was geared toward mothers who are feeling stressed, sleep deprived, and unappreciated. At the end it said, ‘Look into the eyes of your child and know that you matter.’ Line after line expounded upon how the mother is elevated in the eyes of the child, implying that should be enough to get you through. The entire point of the video was that a mother need only look into her children’s eyes for validation. I found it odd that it didn’t mention the support of friends, partners, or communities to help women through the tough times as mothers. It didn’t mention self-care. It didn’t help women see themselves as inherently valid and important.

At first glance, this can seem like a harmless video with the intention of honoring the ceaseless work mothers do. It was ‘liked’ by thousands of people. But I found the video disturbing for many reasons. For mothers, it perpetuates the illusion that the approval of one’s children should be compensation enough for the brutally unending, thankless, isolating work of motherhood in the modern world. And it sets up the child for bearing the emotional burden of a mother’s struggles and learning how to overfunction as an emotional caretaker. It sets up the child to feel that she “owes” her mother a version of herself to protect her from her pain…

Our culture, with its hostility toward women as expressed in diminishing access to reproductive healthcare, the wage gap, lack of ample maternity leave, and male violence against women as well as systemic barriers like institutional racism, all combine to isolate the mother and to coerce the child into carrying the burden of emotionally validating the mother in the absence of support from partners, adults, institutions, and society in general. This is a void that a child can never fill.”

Webster is describing how mothers and daughters are locked into a fawning trauma response that can continue for generations unless we forge a different path.

In some ways, when I had kids, I thought I was going to get a fan club! Part of me was surprised that healthy kids are usually not showering moms with love and gratitude.

Dr. Clayton writes: “Those of us with an overactive fawn response might unconsciously want our children to fawn. That is how we survived so it can feel like our children won’t be safe in the world without learning to appease, get quiet, and comply, all under the guise of respect. When our children don’t shapeshift for our benefit, we simply don’t have the skills to help because we haven’t learned regulation ourselves. It’s so important for parents to address their own fawning. By doing so, we take responsibility for our dysregulation and break the cycle of living in survival mode, teaching our children a different path forward.”

My New Year’s resolution for 2026 is to unfawn. Are you with me?

Tired, sexist tropes in Elin Hilderbrand’s The Academy

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Mostly, I bought The Academy because the novel is based on my former high school, St. George’s, but I’ve also been kind of intrigued by the author, Elin Hildrebrand. She’s written so many books and I hadn’t read any yet.

So first, what I liked:

This book is a total page-turner. My wandering mind didn’t wander at all. If you’re longing for a break from stress, reality, or doom scrolling, The Academy is a reliable, entertaining choice. It requires just enough brain cells to keep you focused.

HIlderbrand wrote the book with her college age daughter, Shelby Cunningham, and I think that’s pretty cool for them to partner and publish together.

The authors do an expert job weaving multiple storylines and characters into a perfectly paced, thematically connected plot, not an easy balance to pull off.

There are many female characters in this book with dialogue lines and page time that far out numbers the male characters. If you read Reel Girl, you know I call the too-often-too-few girl characters in book, movies, streaming etc the “Minority Feisty” and no need to worry about that criticism here.

But here’s what I didn’t like:

Those many female characters? They mired in shallow and sexist tropes. Charley Hicks, a fifth former/ junior is a brilliant misfit student with glasses and braids who gets a makeover and goes on to win the hottest guy of the school. If I never again in the rest of my life I read one more book or see another movie or series where a supposedly homely girl transforms into a smoke show— from Eliza in “My Fair Lady,” Sandy in “Grease,” Tai Fraser in “Clueless” (of course is based on Harriet in Austen’s Emma) Laney Boggs in “She’s All That,” “Mean Girls,” “House Bunny,” “Devil Wears Parda,” Cinderella for God’s sake— I would not complain.

And something else I’d be happy to never see again? A shallow woman punished for her sexuality. Simone Bergeron, a young history teacher seems straight out of the horror film genre in that her short skirts and over active libido, we readers know, spell her downfall. Sadly, there’s nothing compelling about Simone’s character, no particular ambition or passion, she doesn’t seem much interested in the subject she teaches or teaching at all. She just wants to be popular. I won’t give away the ending of the book but it’s pretty clear early on that no good will come to such a slut.

Another trope that shows up in the book is the “Gossip Girl” framework: an app called “Zip Zap” which posts secrets about students. Not only have we all seen this before in this same genre of rich, high school kids, but, at least for me, the secret identity mystery fell flat.

One more thing I want to note, just because I went to this school and I am kind of fascinated by this particular subplot. Director of Admissions, Cordelia Spooner, gets “Zip Zapped” for her secret policy of admitting students based on how attractive they are. Cordelia trolls the kids and their parents to get a good look at them. The book mentions St. George’s is also called St. Gorgeous, supposedly for its stunning architecture and scenic location but that everyone knows the reference is really about the student body. While I hadn’t heard the nickname before, the values at this school, when I went back in the 80s, were ridiculously focused on appearance and reputation. Back then, new girls— and that means fourteen and fifteen year olds—were expected to dress up as Playboy bunnies on what was affectionately “Casino Night.” My hope would be that the school had evolved since then but reading The Academy tells me it may be just as superficial (and sexist) as ever.

Here’s a link to my Tik Tok about The Academy”

Follow me on IG @margotmagowan

Anyone read “The Academy”? And what do you think of the rich-people-on-islands streaming genre?

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Scrolling through Tik Tok, I saw a video where best-selling author Elin Hilderbrand was interviewed about the new novel she co-wrote with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham, The Academy. The book is inspired by stories Cunningham told her mother on long phone calls while she was a student at St. George’s, a boarding school in Newport Rhode Island where I also went to school.

I’ve blogged quite a bit on Reel Girl about St. George’s, how my “privileged” education there was the introduction into so much sexism and racism, how all the freshman girls “newbies” had to dress up as Playboy bunnies, how I got expelled sophomore year, that Tucker Carlson was my in my class and that Billy Bush is also an alumn, and of course Reel Girl followed the sex abuse legal case. I’ll put the links at the end of this post and above is a photo I just dug up. I apologize for the quality, I’m trying to get this up before I start cooking for the holiday and even though it’s not a great image, it’s so 80s! The Levi’s jean jacket, that bandana!

I love that HIlderbrand wrote a book with her daughter, I’ve never read anything by her before and so far, it’s a page turner, I’ll post a review when I’m finished. I’m wondering if anyone has read it or read books by her, and I’m also wondering what your favorite novels inspired by prep schools are? In her acknowledgements, Hilderbrand references Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld and A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

My kids and I watched “The Perfect Couple” last summer, a Netflix series based on another Hilderbrand book, so that’s all I know of her work do far and a TV adaptation isn’t really a fair assessment. I think most of all, it was fun for me talking about the plot with my kids and guessing who the killer was. We also watched “Sirens” and “We Were Liars,” all three shows were about rich people living on islands. “We Were Liars” was by far, my favorite, though—and I know this is a total cliche—the book was SO much better. “We Were Liars” has a twist ending so it’s almost impossible for me to imagine how it would’ve been to watch the show if I didn’t know the plot.

Have you read The Academy or anything by HIlderbrand? Have you watched any of these three series and do you have any other rich-people-on-an-island shows to add to the list from this popular genre? And finally, what’s your favorite boarding school novel? Let me know anything you’d like me to review, especially anything with female protagonists.

Open letter to Bishop Knisely about sexual assaults and cover ups at St. George’s school

Why is a justice who argued against statutory rape laws on the R. I. Supreme Court?

St. George’s school continues to hold back information in sexual assault investigation

St. George’s releases report on sexual assaults at the school

St. George’s alumna creates fund for survivors sexually assaulted at school

Comments on petition asking St. George’s for fair investigation into assaults make me cry

St. George’s School continues to flub investigation into sexual assaults

Lawyer investigating St. George’s sexual assaults is partner of school’s legal counsel

‘There’s no sense of why so many assaults happened at St. George’s, what the school did to create cultural backdrop that allowed and encouraged rape.’

Prep school alumni respond to St. Paul’s rape trial verdict

Women, class, and the problem of privilege: Everything I learned about sexism, I learned at boarding school

Tucker Carlson, Jerry Garcia, and me

It’s been a minute!

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Hi Reel Girl fans!

I’ve missed you. The world has been insane and so have I and I’m guessing you have too.

First of all, let’s celebrate that Reel Girl began long before #Metoo and everything written here, talked about here, discussed here, became FINALLY a national, an international conversation on sexism, misogyny, and the film industry. People finally seemed to make the link between men running Pixar and Disney and the plots of the movies created “for kids” being rooted in patriarchy.

Sadly, we also of course got Donald Trump and some of the most blatant and disgusting grab-her-by-the-pussy hatred for women in America than we have seen in decades. I guess some would argue, and this would include me, the hatred for women has always been here and right now, it’s less white washed. Overturning Roe v Wade obviously goes way beyond window dressing and having Trump and his followers in power rolls back rights so deeply, recovery will take a long time for us to overcome. But we will overcome it. We will overcome it together and we are going to start here by imagining gender equality in the fantasy world, because if we don’t have our imaginations, we have nothing.

Who is with me?

Welcome back. Reviews start soon. And we’re going to begin with favorite celebrations of fantasy books with female protagonists and female casts.

Let me know what you’d like to see me review. I’m planning on starting with:

*A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

*Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

*The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison

Let’s get going. We have work to do.

Please follow me on my new Tik Tok, @reelgirlblog and IG reelgirlblog

Reel Girl’s Top 10 List Of ‘Progressive’ People, Places and Things That Are Sexist

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Because I’m so sick of the public referring to sexist people, places, and things as progressive or liberal, because sexism is everywhere and women are trapped in double-bind that is hardly acknowledged, getting little or no support from our “allies,” staying stuck in a matrix that doesn’t allow us to achieve real power, I came up with this list.

Reel Girl’s Top 10 List Of “Progressive” People, Places and Things That Are Sexist:

  1. Hollywood Hopefully, the stories of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults will be a turning point for Hollywood and the beginning of the end of the misogyny that runs rampant in the movie industry. My blog, started in 2009, is dedicated to reporting on sexism in Hollywood with a focus on children’s media and the toys and products that come from that media. Actress Emma Thomson just did a great job summarizing the systemic misogyny in ‘liberal’ Lala Land in reference to Weinstein’s behavior.
  2. The New York Times When this publication broke the story about Harvery Weinstein’s chronic sexual harassment and assault of women, the report was illustrated with a photo of Hillary Clinton with Weinstein. That’s right, Weinstein’s behavior is Hillary’s fault. The NYT is also the publication that kept stories going about Hillary’s emails and the “corruption” of the Clinton foundation throughout Hillary’s campaign. Aside from Hillary, I’ve blogged extensively about the many instances of sexism in the stories of the NYT, from what they choose to cover to the sources they use to cover it. My complaints have been posted in Letters to the Times. Just do a search on Reel Girl to see my posts on sexism at the Times.
  3. PBS I’ve blogged on Reel Girl about the lack of female protagonists on PBS shows  for kids including the dominance of male characters on well-loved programs like “Sesame Street,” and how the “educational station” can be more sexist than the Disney channel.
  4. Gandhi Twisted views about sexuality, bodies, and menstruation led Gandhi to treat women as lower than men, including his own wife, and to put the blame on women when they were raped or assaulted. I include Gandhi in my list to emphasize how crucial it is for women (and men) to have women leaders who fight for women’s rights around the world if we want to achieve equality.
  5. Martin Luther King Jr Like Gandhi, MLK focused on the misdeeds of women when it came to men’s sexual behavior. He didn’t allow women to be real leaders in his organization.
  6. Dr. Seuss With all of Dr. Seuss’s amazing creativity, the crazy-beautiful characters he drew, the names and the entire language he came up with, his spectacular imagination failed to stretch to include gender equality. Seuss’s characters are mostly male with even his crowd illustrations rarely featuring female characters. I’ve blogged a great deal on Reel Girl about Seuss’s sexism and though my blogs have been picked up and quoted by Jezebel  (a “women’s news” site) Seuss’s sexism is rarely acknowledged. Seuss is a huge influence on childhood and it’s tragic that along with learning to read, kids are learning sexism, that it’s normal for girls to go missing. Recently children’s author Mo Willems signed a letter condemning Seuss’s racism but sexism isn’t mentioned in the letter.
  7. Rock and roll and the music industry Men dominate the songs on Billboard’s Hot 100, get paid more, get covered seriously by more media, headline more concerts, objectify and degrade women in their lyrics, get called poets instead of boy-obsessed, don’t have to appear naked to sell music, and aren’t frequently sexually assaulted. Like Hollywood, the music industry is systemically sexist and misogynistic, exposed publicly most recently when singer Kesha fought in court to break her contract with producer Dr. Luke. Kesha’s story is only the beginning of tackling the unfair treatment of women performers.
  8. College campuses Right wings think tanks were started as an alternative to “liberal” and “progressive” college campuses, but these places are dangerous for women: 1 out of 5 female students is sexually assaulted at college.
  9. Museums Art is progressive, right? Once again, creativity is limited by sexism. Male artists earn more money, have more shows in galleries, and totally dominate museum shows and the permanent collections in the “great” museums around the world. And I thought girl children were supposed to be the artsy ones!
  10. My “progressive” male friends on social media: The men of Hollywood aren’t coming out to condemn Harvey Weinstein in the numbers that they should be, but what about my own male friends? While men I know and love regularly post about racism, police violence and other issues dear to their hearts, they rarely post about sexism and misogyny. My own posts about sexism rarely receive likes or shares or retweets from my male friends. Until our male friends join the fight for gender equality, prioritize it, consider it important, take action to support it, and stop being passive bystanders, women won’t get as far as we need to go.

My list is just a beginning, hopefully to publicize the wide reach of sexism and misogyny into almost every aspect of our lives. Feel free to add in my comment section your items of “progressive” people, places and things that are actually sexist.

Update:

#11 Joe Biden

Read today’s post on Biden’s hypocrisy.

Will Reel Girl’s official list grow to Top 20? Top 30? Top 100? Ugh.

 

 

Beware of flattery, it’s probably manipulation

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Hi Reel Girl fans,

You haven’t heard from me for a while. That’s because when I went back and read the draft of my middle grade fantasy-adventure novel, I realized I’ve become a much better writer. The good news is I’m a better writer! The bad news is I’ve had to rewrite the beginning of the book. While I’ve written for my whole life, I’ve never done this genre before, and I’ve gotten pretty good at pacing. While my earlier draft was bloated, so far, I’ve shaved 50 pages off of Part One.

Whatever happens with this book, writing it has changed my life. I’ve learned so much. Now, I understand optimism is essential to creating art for me. While this lesson contradicts the stereotype of the suffering artist, I’ve run into plot hole after plot hole, and now I see that with creativity, I can find solutions to my problems. I think this process may also involve what people call “grit” or just plain resilience.

Here’s another big lesson I’ve learned that has rippled into every aspect of my life. Beware of flattery. I’m not talking about being suspicious if someone gives you a compliment, but if someone compliments you repeatedly for specific character traits, how great you are at something and how essential you are in their life, how special, how necessary, how important, how amazing you are, it’s likely you’re not being loved; you’re being used. I’ve learned that this type of flattery keeps you locked in a role that you’re performing for someone else. Flattery such as this is the enemy of growth and growth is essential to making art.

One example of how “flattery” can facilitate confinement is how women are “flattered” for being “beautiful.” We get to be on covers of magazines if we’re “pretty,” but often what’s really happening is our lives are being limited to serve others. We’re being kept small.

To write this novel, I’ve had to risk doing things I didn’t feel I was good at, to fall on my face and get up again. I hope I’m still doing that when I’m an old, old lady.

I can’t wait to share my book with you!

Margot

 

White Oleander, Medea’s Pride, and the mother-daughter book club

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I published my draft by mistake. Here’s the completed post:

 

Because my oldest daughter is 13, we don’t read together anymore, and I miss it. She thinks reading with me is babyish, and I decided a way to lure her back in would be to pick an adult book that would appeal to kids, so I chose White Oleander.

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At the start of the book, the protagonist, Astrid, is 12 years old. She spends much of the book in juvenile hall, an institution that fascinates my daughter. We drive by a “juvie” building on her way home from tutoring and she’s always peppering me with questions about it, so perfect, right?

Holy shit, White Oleander is a chilling book. It’s about a narcissistic single mother, Ingrid, who murders her ex-boyfriend leaving Astrid alone to navigate LA’s brutal foster care system. The kind of abuse Ingrid heaps on Astrid is so manipulative and insidious, at times, I felt nauseated reading the story. Part of the mind-fuck Ingrid inflicts on her daughter is she acts as if she’s a free-thinker who encourages her daughter to think for herself and make her own choices as well. Ingrid is a poet. But really, all Ingrid wants is a sidekick, a shadow, an echo, a carbon copy of herself. Ingrid uses her daughter and only connects with Astrid when she can use her. If Astrid is not useful, Ingrid dismisses her.

Ingrid, like many narcissistic mothers, abuses her daughter by “gaslighting.” Gaslighting is a term coined from a movie with Ingrid Bergman, where her partner dims the lights and when she mentions it, he tells her she’s imagining things. Gaslighting is when someone tells you that your thoughts aren’t based in reality to the point where you start to doubt your perceptions. This kind of abuse is often used with partners, but it’s especially horrific if a mother inflicts a child, because she’s so vulnerable to having her reality shaped by a parent.

A big part of a parent’s job is to validate and mirror her child’s emotions. I love this passage in Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen Mitchell:

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 narcissistic, gaslighting parent uses her child as a receptacle for her thoughts and emotions. When a narcissistic parent is challenged by her child, she either goes into a rage or dismisses her, both are terrifying for a kid. The kid usually complies, becoming what her mother wants her to be, useful, and displays only the traits that her mother wants her to possess. Worst of all, the child believes this is who she really is.

A narcissistic mother dismisses her daughter’s emotions or concerns as petty,  not valid, or not even real. To recognize gaslighting, a child has to be confident in her own vision and emotions.

White Oleander is one if the best books I’ve ever read about the complex dance of narcissistic abuse. I won’t tell you how Astrid recovers but thank God she does. At the beginning of White Oleander, Ingrid bets on a horse called Medea’s Pride to win a race. Ingrid is a Medea who tries to murder her daughter’s soul with her self-absorption, all under the guise of her devotion to her kid.

My daughter, by the way, has not stuck with me past chapter one. I’ll have to search for another way to connect.

Join artist-warriors at the Bay Area Book Festival June 4 – 5

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Are you coming to the Bay Area Book Festival June 4 – 5?

Here’s the poster my 9 year old daughter’s cartooning teacher, Aaron Southerland, made for the event. I love how it shows my daughter, her best friend, and her teacher wielding writing tools instead of weapons, because, truly, when it comes to changing the world, is there anything more powerful than art?

bookfest

To learn more about Alice’s book or to buy it click here.

Sick of sexism in cartoons? Inspiring course teaches girls to create and publish comics

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When my 9 year old daughter, Alice, and her best friend Jenna took Aaron Southerland’s cartooning class, he inspired them to get passionate about creating their own cartoons. Aaron teaches boys and girls, but it was these two students who pushed him take their ideas further as you’ll see when you read his post. Alice and Jenna are so proud to publish their first book and are already brainstorming the next one. With more experiences like this one, the next generation of girls may take us leaps and bounds closer to achieving equality in the comic world. At the end of the blog, there’s a link to buy  Alice and Jenna’s creation, The Muji Story (only $2.99!)  Here’s how it all went down. This blog is by Aaron Southerland and first appeared on Blue Aura Oasis. 

There are many times in which the Winds of Fate will pull you in a direction that doesn’t quite meet your game plan. Usually, it’s by nature that we all will plan against reality since we believe it’s ALL in the palm of our hands.

Thankfully, that’s not the case!

Once my two Cartooning classes were underway in autumn of 2015, I dipped my bare cold feet into rather warm water. Both classes were composed of deeply impressionable elementary school students, all of which had either an inkling or fine reasoning as to why they wanted to learn the ways of the Cartoonist. Take it from this slim fit jazz buff; I was impressed.

While my K- 2nd grade group took a few weeks to warm up to my existence, my 4th- 6th grade group couldn’t help but peek at my book projects -especially SolForce– at least once a class for inspiration. Midway though the semester, I noticed that I was slowly but surely giving the students revised character designs, story ideas and even comic titles! Of the ten students, only a few of them produced concrete ideas to take them a step further.

Allow me to introduce you to two of my Cartooning proteges: Jenna and Alice!!

Starting out as close friends since the 1st grade -their words, not mine-, Alice and Jenna joined my first Cartooning class already in love with three things: animals, magic, and comedy. When asked on the first day of class what were their favorite comic or cartoon characters, both replied Calvin & Hobbes; I almost teared up. Oddly enough, talking with them both together made me consider how much in common they have with my 5th grade- self. In the olden days of my youth, Pokemon, Harry Potter, and SpongeBob SquarePants were my pop culture obsessions. They ended up having a huge pull on my art style and storytelling, just as much as the Looney Tunes, Pink Panther and Garfield comics had on me since I picked up the Crayola crayons in pre- K.

Working alone for the first seven weeks of class, Jenna created an assortment of animal characters for a household setting that included a trouble-making beagle, a wildly sweet cockatoo and a shy kitten. Me and her often debated on names; the cockatoo’s name being Snowy was fitting, but Spot for the beagle I thought was too… common! So, I suggested a name with more weight on it like Magnus! Jenna brings that incident up every chance she gets. Oh, the hilarity.

Alice created characters more for the forest. Her first was a rascally rabbit named Flora. The others were a wildcat, a bluejay bird and a fish that I redesigned as a mud-skipper. Look; when I meet anyone of any age with a genuine love for animals, I try to expand to expand their vocabulary even if the next sentence is ‘I DON’T WANT HER TO BE A DOG. SHE’S A PUPPY!’

Fast forward to week eight of the class, the duo told me that they wanted to make a comic together. I assumed that they wanted to make new characters, so I let them roam free for 30 minutes. And this is what they came up with:

Yes. Within 40 minutes, this character concept and story summary were drawn and written by them! What I managed to get out of them was this: there’s a school of monsters that all look and act similar, but out of the blue an evil sorceress casts a spell on them all which causes the monsters to mutate with differing animal body parts. Now, they embark on a quest to find that sorceress to reverse the spell!

Huh!…. The idea hooked me, especially for a comic that can have continuing stories. So, I told the girls that I’m taking home their summary and character for some editing. -they hate that word, by the way- Later that Thursday night, this ended up being the revised summary and character design.

At first, I thought I took too many liberties with the character design. “How can two 4th graders draw something like this?!” I thought in the WAY back of my cynical adult brain… But after witnessing the passion Alice and Jenna had for creating something original content and telling a story, all of those doubts were dropped that night. And I even helped give the monster species a name: the Muji. The main character I thought should have a name that youthful and connecting like its creators, so I named him Kee! His circular spiked body type and bat wing- crab arm fusion served as the basis for the Muji designs.

Next week, I presented them the revisions… and their excitement flew sky high. Within minutes, we were drawing out comic thumbnails! As a parting gift for the semester, I drew them a visual concept of the Muji comic:

This, of course, led Jenna to asking a very peculiar question when all of the other students left the room: “Can we, like, make this into a book like your stuff?!”

I looked at her mom with a big smirk and asked ‘When can we start?’

Folks, this is what led to Alice and Jenna being my “first clients” in comic creating. After a few weekend classes thanks to their mothers, Margot and Noelle, and another full ten week semester, I’m happy to present their first book, The Muji Story!

Donned with 24 black and white pages, the three- chapter book follows the band of parasite- like creatures that after exposed to a hex casted by Ali- Tabada, an evil sorceress-in-training, mutate as combinations of animals, and now must find a remedy to reverse the hex!

The Muji Story, according to the duo, was only the beginning. Over their summer break, not only do we plan to work further on “Book 2” of the Muji series, but they’re also joining me at my first book expo in the Bay Area: the Bay Area Book Festival!! We’ll be located in Teen Town, since our projects are all- ages graphic novels. I’m beyond excited to see what the future has in store for my students and I.

Or… just call us “AJA” if we’re all spotted together.

 

Buy a copy of Alice and Jenna’s book! To purchase The Muji Story click here.

 

Aaron’s bio:

Feeding into his undying love for cartooning and animation since pre- K, Aaron Southerland is a helpless cartoonist and writer from Brooklyn, NY. Over the past few years, Aaron has been reaching into the untapped potential of creativity he saw within elementary school children through various volunteer work as an art teacher and it even led to many of his students creating their own cartoon characters! Currently, Aaron lives in Emeryville, CA and completed a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in Computer Graphics from the New York Institute of Technology. After attending the Academy of Art University as a Visual Development and Screenwriting major for a brief period, he decided to finally put his passion into gear by going into book publishing between his travels. Aaron is the sole owner and artist behind his blog, Blue Aura Oasis.