New Moon Girls is a very cool magazine created by girls and for girls. These young writers and editors don’t sit around complaining about sexist media; they create their own.
Right now New Moon is conducting its first ever Girls Choice Best Movies for Girls Award.
New Moon is asking any and all girls to nominate movies that feature girls and women in empowering, fully human roles. So girls, please fill out this survey by May 1. Your recommendations will be featured in the July/August 2012 issue of the New Moon, on the website, and disseminated through Facebook and other outreach to parents and girl advocates.
This is a great opportunity for girls to come together to amplify their voices and opinions. It’s also a good way to focus on the positive images and role models that are out there. If you are a parent or teacher or know a girl who you think would like to fill out this survey, please share it with your networks.
Also, adults, there is another survey just for you as well. Please take a few minutes to list your own recommendations. New Moon’s survey for adults is here.
If you”d like to take a look at Reel Girl’s list of favorites, you can find that here. (Picture above is a hint.) Reel Girl also has a separate list of awesome female characters. I created this list because there are some great females who make appearances in male dominated movies i.e. Princess Leia (Star Wars) Kitty Softpaws (Puss in Boots) Colette (Ratatouille). That list is pretty long and I desperately wish these characters would get their own films.
I finally saw the much hyped ‘Girls,’ and I’ve got to say: believe that hype.
I was riveted. I’m also totally impressed that Lena Dunham in twenty-five years old and she is the writer, producer, and star of the show.
I’ve read criticism about the all white foursome and agree completely. There should be women of color on the show. Not just for some kind of cosmetic diversity. By leaving out women of color, the show is missing out on an important part of depicting being young, struggling, and twentysomething in NYC. That is my only negative so far.
Looking forward to watching more and reporting back.
‘Girls’ is for adults, not girls. Reel Girl rates it ***HH***
I have seen the excellent Miyazaki movie “Howl’s Moving Castle” starring the intrepid Sophie, but I never realized that the film was based on a book. My daughter came home with it yesterday afternoon; her Granny bought it for her. Here she is this morning. This picture tells me all I need to know.
I just saw it. LOVED it! The acting is so great. It is perfectly cast from Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss to Wes Bentley as the gamemaker to Donald Sutherland as President Snow.
I was concerned that Hollywood would mess up the book somehow, but I was so impressed with this adaptation. Here are some aspects of the movie that I was especially grateful for:
Hollywood does not sexualize Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss in any way: When I was reading the book and came across certain scenes, I was sure this would happen. When Katniss strips down before she meets her stylist, Cinna (another perfect casting, played by Lenny Kravitz) I thought to myself: Here’s where they’re going to show her naked. But they didn’t. Not even a bare shouldered camera shot to hint at nudity. In that particular scene, she’s shown wearing a hospital gown. In the book, where a female tribute traces Katniss’s lips with her knife, I thought: In the movie, there’s going to be some kind of S & M lesbian vibe going on. Negative thoughts, I know, but so many great books have been ruined on the screen. Turns out, in the movie this knife scene is only frightening.
They are an equal number of male and female tributes: A male and female are chosen from each district. I thought about this because when I get upset about the lack of females in Hollywood roles, I get comments all the time like: Do you want equal rights in drafting? Do you want equal rights for characters who play dumb people? Yes and yes. I’m against drafting, but also against men being drafted and not women. As far as men playing more dumb people (I just got this comment again in response to my criticism about the lack of female characters in the upcoming, animated “Pirates!”) I don’t want females to be only portrayed as smart, brave heroines. Women are no better than men. I want women portrayed as the complex characters that they are. In movies, often different character traits get assigned to different characters. I want women to get to play all the parts. I want women to exist. In “The Hunger Games” females span the spectrum: they are lethal, kind, cruel, weak, brave, shy, serious, superficial and complicated.
There is no mention in the movie that Katniss is the exception of her gender: So often when you see a female protagonist who you could call a feminist, she is portrayed as the exception of her gender. You’ll see her surrounded by males or even see her dressed up as a male, Mulan style. I don’t mind this once in a while, but it happens too often. Never in “The Hunger Games” does any character say that Katniss can fight as well as a boy, is as smart as a boy, acts like a boy, or can do anything a boy can. No character reacts to her skill or bravery with: “Wow, a girl can shoot!” In this way, “The Hunger Games” breaks free of Hollywood’s gender matrix to create a truly feminist movie.
Females work together to save each other: It is so rare in Hollywood to get to see two females in an action adventure movie act bravely in order to save each other. The scenes with Katniss and Rue were my favorite in the book and my favorite in the movie. (Part of what is so great about these scenes is also the lethal Tracker Jackers, genetically engineered wasps whose poison stings make the victim go mad with hallucinations before she dies.)
Besides my own personal feminist take on everything, this is such a great movie. All of the acting was impressive. I’d read the book so I knew what was going to happen, and I was still on the edge of my seat. The filming was engrossing, it was done with lots of close camera shots; everything seemed so close and real, it was terrifying. I loved the scenery, watching how the Capital was depicted as well as the Districts and the arena. The whole commentary on reality TV and selling out to please the crowd is well communicated. Hollywood added just a little more perspective from the Gamemakers than is in the book, and I thought those scenes were also really well done. If you’re concerned about violence, the movie is not gory. Also, please remember that violence in the imaginary world is metaphorical. Don’t take that metaphor away from females. Katniss shows us how to be a survivor without losing your soul, how to play to win but keep your morals. That’s a universal, human lesson. Katniss is a great heroine, a modern day Artemis. I can’t wait for the next two movies.
Reel Girls rates “The Hunger Games” ***HHH*** (I’m replacing Gs for Girlpower with H for Heroine in Reel Girls’ rating system. Girlpower seems over used and to have lost its meaning to me; I’ll change it throughout Reel Girl when I get a chance)
I finally finished The Golden Compass. This books features a couple of the most excellent female characters that I have ever read about. Lyra kicks ass. So does the witch queen, Serafina Pekkala.
About half way through the book, I posted on how all of the male characters were annoying me somewhat. Lyra was appearing to be too much of a Token Feisty for me, the lone female allowed to interact with several sexist groups: the Oxford scholars, the gyptians, and the bear community where the males are polygamists. Frustrated, I posted: Are there imaginary worlds where sexism doesn’t exist? Mrs. Coulter, the evil mother character, is powerful but she was also used to show how she was the exception to the other females in the story. It just irritates me that so often, when kids finally get to see a girl being brave, it’s woven into the narrative how she’s the exception of her gender.
But two things changed for me as a I read along to make me a die hard fan of The Golden Compass. The first is I absolutely fell in love Iorek Byrinson, the armored bear character. He’s male of course, but once he came on the scene, the book really came alive for me, and it kept getting better after that. Then came the witches. The witch clans are all female, magical, mysterious, and powerful.
While flying to the armored bear’s palace in a balloon through a starry, cold winter night guided by the witch queen, Lyra ask her: “Are there men witches, or only women?” Here is Serafina’s response:
There are men who serve us, like the consul at Trollesund. And there are men we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you’ll understand later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies. creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, powerful, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in a blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn’t. each time become more painful until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka coems for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps for her, witches lives are as brief as men’s are to us.
Wow, how’s that for an alternate narrative? Clearly, Serafina Pekkala needs her own series. And I no longer mind polygamous bears when kids get to see females in power too.
As you read this book, the writing gets better and better until the end (not the movie ending, the book ending; they are different) which is so dazzling and stunning, it gave me chills.
My children love card games, and even though I don’t, I’m learning to. Cards are a great activity for the whole family to do together. Playing them also teaches kids math, how to follow rules, strategy, and how to win and lose gracefully.
But what are the card games that we play with our kids also teaching them about gender?
So the all time worst has got to be Old Maid. Ugh. Horrible. Even before I knew I was a feminist, I was offended by this game that teaches kids no one wants to be stuck with the lone female card. I thought this game was so weird when I was a child and I still do. A racist card game would never be allowed to be sold to children. It’s not funny. As far as I’m concerned, Old Maid should be banned for its sexism. Reel Girl rates Old Maid ***SSS*** Do not play this game with your kids, or call it something else and use different cards.
My favorite card game right now is Slamwich. It’s really fun to play for my 8 yr old and 5 yr old. The cards are diverse in the gender representation. Most of the cards are food (the idea is to build your own sandwich) but there are also “muncher” and “thief” cards, three females and two males types. As far as amount, there is one more male thief card than female thief card. Reel Girl rates Slamwich ***GGG***
Another game we play is called Sleeping Queens. Can you tell by the name I have a problem with this game? At least it’s not called Sleeping Princesses, right?
The game was invented by a little girl, so that’s cool, except I wish she wasn’t influenced to play to this “female get rescued” script. It makes me sad about her imagination. The idea is to wake up the Sleeping Queens which you can do by picking a king card or rescuing her with a knight. Not so great. A dragon can block a knight from stealing a queen (we refer to the dragons as she). Playing a sleeping potion puts a queen back to sleep and that can be blocked with a magic wand. Queens are the power cards, the goal of the game is to get them, but they can’t wake themselves up. This game is pretty fun to play. Reel Girl rates Sleeping Queens ***G/ SS***
JoJo’s Flying Side Kick is about a Tae Kwon Do student who must break a board with a flying side kick in order to win her yellow belt.
JoJo is nervous about the test, telling her Grandaddy: “I’m freakin’ out!” He helps her by giving a tutorial on fancy footwork from his boxing days. JoJo experiences other fears– a creepy-looking tree, the swing that hangs from it, a boy from her class tells her she “yells like a mouse.” In order to nail the side kick, JoJo uses the footwork, imagines the board is the tree, and gives a giant yell: “KEEEYAAAHHH!”
This book is really fun to read out loud. I love how all of the protagonist’s fears are woven together and then conquered in unison. The story teaches kids the great lesson that courage doesn’t mean having no fear but doing something even when you’re terrified. Reel Girl rates JoJo’s Flying Side Kick ***GGG***
Adelaide is the story of a kangaroo born with wings. She knows she doesn’t quite belong in her family of wingless creatures, so she hooks up with a pilot and travels the world, exploring and having adventures.
She decides to stick around Paris where she loves the art and culture but misses kangaroos. One day she saves two children from a burning building but is seriously hurt in the fall. (Her wings can’t carry all that weight.) After a hospital stay, she decides to visit the zoo where she meets and falls in love with a kangaroo named Leon. I really like how this story ends with a wedding and then baby kangaroos but its an unexpected surprise. The “happily ever after” finale isn’t the focus of Adelaide’s quest, but its nice that she finds her soulmate showing heroic, powerful females can fall in love, too. Reel Girl rates Adelaide ***GGG***
Shrek the Third: Fiona’s Fairy-tale Five is kind of chesey, and a cheaply made, stapled together book, but I adore it. There is much to love about the first Shrek story/ movie: how Fiona transforms at the end from “beautiful” princess to fat, green, troll to find true love. How great is that? So much potential here to flip fairy tales– and the notion of what it is to be “happily ever after” and what beauty and love is too– on its head. Not to mention that so much of the Shrek franchise is about making fun of Disney.
But as the far as the big screen, the female potential for greatness in this epic remains tragically unexplored. All three movies are Shrek’s stories, not Fiona’s. Fiona is only the Token Feisty, the strong female character included in many contemporary animated films so the audience won’t care or even notice that all of the other characters in the film are male, including the star who the movie is often titled for.
Fiona’s role is the love interest. The Shrek movie sequels are even more disappointing with the third one morphing into another animated father-son type saga (and Justin Timberlake vehicle) where Shrek must find an heir– male, of course. Fiona’s part is reduced to nothing. Where did she go? It sucks to see “Shrek 3” with your daughters, to say the least. But luckily, there is this cheap, little book. From the back of Fiona’s Fairy -tale Five:
“When Shrek is off finding an heir to the throne, Fiona must watch the kingdom. But soon Prince Charming and his band of villains storm the castle. Fiona has little time to turn a group of prim and proper princesses into lean, mean fighting machines. Can the fairy-tale five come together to take back the castle?
This book would make such a great movie, it kills me. Imagine the princesses voiced by Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph joining Cameron Diaz’s Fiona. This little story is so subversive too, because Disney absolutely forbids its princesses to interact with each other. (Or even look at each other, embossed on diapers, T shirts, or coloring books each one gazes off in a different direction, ignoring the other. Great model for female friendship, huh?)
Reel Girl recs this week feature super passionate heroines. All three Reel Girl rates ***GGG*** Triple Girlpower. Make sure you read these to your sons as well as your daughters!
Knuffle Bunny is one of my all time, absolute favorite books for kids. How do I love thee, let me count the ways…
First, the book begins with my total as yet unrealized fantasy: Father and child do the laundry (they go off to a launrdomat in Brooklyn) while the mom sits on the steps, a book you know she’s about to crack open held lovingly on her lap.
Next amazing thing about this book? Our main character, who I think is younger than two, sports no bow or curly eyelashes (just like the female Red Wolf of Reel Girl’s last recs.) With her overalls, Trixie wears a pink T shirt, but it’s no big deal. I’m not against pink for God’s sake, just Pink World Domination.
One of my favorite illustrations is in the laundromat when Trixie puts pants on her head and waves a bra in the air, her dad watching and smiling at her. Maybe I’m reading too much into this picture, but I think it’s a lovely commentary on adulthood and the various costumes we all wear.
Next is the best part of the book: When Trixie and her dad walk home and she realizes that she’s lost Knuffle Bunny, her big eyed, terrified expression is priceless. This picture communicates terror better than Munch’s Scream. Trixie tries desperately to communicate the disappearance to her to her dad (“Aggle flaggle klabble!”) but he’s oblivious.
At this point in the reading, I have never seen a kid not be totally wrapped up in the story, relating to what it’s like to lose a favorite animal and to have your parents not understand what’s going on. Both parent and child become increasingly frustrated which leads to my favorite sentence in the book (that my husband and I have used ever since to describe a tantruming child) “She went boneless.”
I won’t tell you how this story ends, but I have no doubt Knuffle Bunny will be one of your kid’s favorites.
Mary Had a Little Lampis a funny book about a heroine who follows her heart and couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks of her.
This is a great book to read to your kid if she feels uncomfortable around her peers for liking a toy or outfit or anything that the rest of them aren’t into. Kids will also relate to this book because, like Knuffle Bunny, it’s about an attachment object. It’s impossible to read this without a huge grin on your face at the end.
The Old Woman Who Named Things is about another passionate female, but this one starts out afraid of her strong feelings.
She’s elderly so doesn’t want to get attached to something that might die or fall apart, including old furniture or cars. She only wants to get attached to objects she can trust will be there forever. But when a stray puppy befriends her, she can’t help but care for it. (The genderless puppy is either called “it” or “shy brown dog” which I like.) The old woman refuses to name the puppy to try to control her attachment to the animal, but when the dog disappears, she finally starts to take some risks that help to make her feel more alive.
Ever since her fifth birthday last July, I’ve been trying to get my daughter, Alice, to ride a big girl bike.
She wouldn’t do it. She wanted to stay with the training wheels. Alice is often reticent to try things, from sharing a new idea to exploring physical activities. If I can convince her to attempt something different (soccer, monkey bars) she usually ends up loving it and excelling as well, but the first push is often hard.
When I pushed with the bike, she just resisted. She was scared. She’d seen her sister fall and scrape her knees. I think healthy risk-taking builds real self-esteem, and I want my kids to learn how to take risks. And that you can fall and get up again and all that. But I didn’t want to push too hard, making her resist even more. Every time I asked her if she wanted the training wheels off, she’d yell “NO!”
Then last Saturday night, I read her one of a pile of new books I’d collected with female protagonists to read to my kids and review on Reel Girl: Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen. Sally Jean starts out as a baby in a seat on the back of her mama’s bike, progresses to a tricycle, training wheels, a two-wheeler, and by the end of the book can build her own bike. This kid is supercool.
So on Monday, the President’s Day holiday, as we were all heading to the park, Alice asked her dad to take her training wheels off. No prompting from us. We tried to remain calm. I resisted my urge to leap up and down, clapping. Instead, I went ahead to the park with her two older sisters so they wouldn’t rush her. Alice showed up about ten minutes later on a real two wheeler, her dad holding her seat to help her balance. For the next hour, he and I took turns practicing with her until our backs couldn’t take it anymore. She looked so happy and proud afterwards, I wanted to cry.
So coincidence or heroine-influenced?
This event seriously convinced me– as if I wasn’t convinced enough already– how important it is for kids to see girls being brave and taking risks in books, movies, and toys. If you can’t see it, you can’t do it or be it. Or maybe you can, but it’s much harder. You can talk to your kid until you’re blue in the face, but if you show her, she can learn so much quicker. She sees a “peer’ doing what she wants to do, not her mom babbling on about another thing.
Thank you Cari Best for writing Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen. You influenced my daughter’s life. Reel Girl rates Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen ***GGG*** Buy this book for your sons and daughters, especially if they need a push trying out a big kid bike.
When my daughter was seven years old, she turned me on to Taylor Swift. Every time the car radio scanned to a Swift song, she’d call out from the back seat, “I like this!” So last night when Swift sang “Mean” at the Grammys, I got chills. Swift’s original lyrics and radiant performances make her a great role model for girls. She shows kids that, with some creativity and perseverance, you can write your way from victim to hero.
In “Mean” Swift sings:
I bet you got pushed around
Somebody made you cold
But the cycle ends right now
Cause you can’t lead me down that road
And you don’t know, what you don’t know…
Swift’s “Mean” has become a beloved anthem for girls around the world. I think the lyrics resonate with kids in part because the song takes on the false belief that permeates so much of kidworld. Especially for girls, being mean is too often seen as cool or powerful. As you get older, in college, cruelty can continue to be equated with being smart, masquerading as a cynical or skeptical brand of superior intelligence. Whereas being kind can be seen as weak, uncool, or even dumb. Too many grown-ups go on to maintain this warped view.
In contrast, Swift directly challenges the mean-cool dogma with her sweetness, her songs about how she loves her mom, and the devoted way she treats her fans. Swift is also a brilliant lyricist who writes openly about her humiliations and, again and again, turns them into triumphs.
What humiliations? Many involve love and relationships, but some are less personal, more public, and have everything to do with her career.
At the 2009 MTV music awards, after the 19-year-old Swift won Best Female Video for “You Belong to Me,” rapper Kanye West stormed the stage, claiming the award should’ve gone to Beyonce. Both Swift and her mother were reportedly crying backstage. Later that night, when Beyonce won her own MTV award for Video of the Year, she asked Swift to take that time speak (which was cool of Beyonce and a good moment for females supporting each other publicly.)
Swift wrote a song about Kanye West and forgiveness called “Innocent.”
A year later, at the 2010 Grammys, Swift performed a duet with her idol, Stevie Nicks. She sang off key. A well known critic tore her apart, saying that Swift should reconsider her career as a singer.
It was about that experience that Swift wrote “Mean:”
You have pointed out my flaws again
As if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down
Trying to block you out ’cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again…
And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion
But nobody’s listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing…
The chorus goes likes this:
Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?
Here’s my eight-year-old daughter dressed as Swift for Halloween:
Here are all the lyrics to “Mean.”
You, with your words like knives
And swords and weapons that you use against me
You have knocked me off my feet again
Got me feeling like I’m nothing
You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard
Calling me out when I’m wounded
You picking on the weaker man
Well you can take me down with just one single blow
But you don’t know, what you don’t know…
Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?
You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies and your humiliation
You have pointed out my flaws again
As if I don’t already see them
I walk with my head down
Trying to block you out ’cause I’ll never impress you
I just wanna feel okay again
I bet you got pushed around
Somebody made you cold
But the cycle ends right now
Cause you can’t lead me down that road
And you don’t know, what you don’t know…
Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?
And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion
But nobody’s listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing
But all you are is mean
All you are is mean
And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life
And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean
But someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean, yeah
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so?..
Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city (Why you gotta be so?..)
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean, yeah (Why you gotta be so?..)
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me (Why you gotta be so?..)
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?
