Open Letter to Hillary Haters: Misogyny, Madam Secretary, and the Marquise de Merteuil

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This is a guest post for Reel Girl by Melissa Duge Spiers

To all women who loathe Trump but don’t like Hillary:

In the past week or so we have heard and seen an avalanche of (even more) unspeakable things come out of Donald Trump. Most of us are justly outraged by his attitude and actions toward women: Trump has proven he views us purely as sexual objects, reduced to—and rated ruthlessly on—how we look and our sexuality. Every day hundreds of women give myriad reasons they will not vote for him, and this is one of them.

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Many of these same women also give reasons for disliking Hillary, however: she’s nauseatingly smug, she’s cold, she dresses like crap, she must be secretly lesbian. I have heard everything from “I hate those dorky headbands she used to wear” to “why can’t she stop making that awful grin-grimace?” And the number one reason I hear, time and again: I can’t vote for Hillary because she stood by her cheating husband.

At best the above statements would be right at home when judging a beauty pageant; they are all based on rating her appearance or sexuality. At worst, they’re the feminine equivalent of the oldest, most patronizing and paralyzing harassment we’ve each been exposed to forever: why don’t you give me a smile? Why don’t you dress like a girl? You think you can make [X] sexual choice? You asked for it! You’re a cold bitch, you’re a lesbian!

My fellow women: we have a chance to elect a female to the biggest power position in the world, and yet we are picking at her clothing, her smile, her sexual choices. We are basing our votes and the future of our country on our reaction to how she maintains her looks, her facial expressions, and her marriage.

Why do we do it? The simplistic answer is that sexual competition and judging – tearing down or eliminating other women – was traditionally our only source of power in most societies. Two-hundred and fifty years ago Laclos’ “Dangerous Liaisons” villainess, the Marquise de Merteuil, perfectly captured this primal female urge in her personal motto: “win or die.” For the few who have not read the book (or seen one of the film adaptations), the story can be summed up simply: women viciously destroy each other and the man wins. “When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses,” the Marquise flatly informs the Vicomte de Valmont, “and the wound is invariably fatal.” Indeed, all of the women lose big in Laclos’ tale, in particularly sexually-damning ways—Cecile, defiled, returns in shame to a convent; the Marquise is disfigured and humiliated into never showing her face or using her body again; and Madame de Tourvel is so shame-stricken and humiliated she simply dies (the ultimate sexual give-up) — while the man walks away, smirking, with all of the power in the palm of his hand.

Earlier in the 2016 election season, already disgusted with the playground taunts passing for politics, I tweeted a personal vow (which now seems hopelessly dated and innocent, given how things have circled the drain since): I will not talk about how women look for the rest of the season. I will not join in comparing Heidi Cruz to Melania Trump, I will not weigh in on Megyn Kelly, I will not critique the Trump surrogates’ clothing and makeup choices, I will not discuss Hillary’s wardrobe or everyone’s possible plastic surgery or the attire or looks of any of the reporters who are covering them. (Just to be fair, I am also not going to discuss Donald Trump’s hair, skin color, or hand size either, although I did relish that whole ridiculous defend-my-manhood exchange with Marco Rubio.) I confess: I fell off the wagon once and gleefully tweeted about Melania’s choice of the Pussy Bow blouse after her husband’s big sexual assault bomb dropped—but I have otherwise found the self-enforced ban to be very illuminating. I constantly have to censor myself: we are so conditioned to comment on and tear down other women it leaves one often speechless in finding another topic.

Once Trump paraded Bill Clinton’s accusers through the second debate and we were all newly reminded of Hillary’s marital issues I added an even more important personal ban to my list: I will not weigh in on another woman’s sexuality. Period. Does Hillary love Bill, or is it a marriage of convenience? Did she stay with him because she forgave him, because she secretly likes women better, or because she saw him as a stepping stone for her ambition? I personally hope Hillary has a rotating stable of pool boys at the local Country Club, but I will never say another word about it. I will not pass judgement on any woman’s marriage, I will not speculate on who or what gender she sleeps with, I will not entertain reports of her fidelity or lack thereof. Unless she (not her husband, her aide’s husband, her ex-husband, or any other man in her life) has broken a law with her own sexual behavior I will not form or voice an opinion. Women are not the keepers of morality, we cannot hold them responsible for any man’s sexual actions, attitudes, or behaviors. Furthermore, we cannot assume to know what goes on in their relationships. Most of us would never judge another woman for electing to divorce a cheater; why do we all feel we can condemn one for electing not to? How dare we judge any woman on who or how they choose to love, to divorce, to stay, to marry.

Which brings me back to “Dangerous Liaisons.” I do not think all women should automatically vote for Hillary because she’s a woman; that’s reductive and ridiculous. But every one of us needs to carefully examine our reasons if we choose not to vote for her: is our decision intellectually defensible, or are we allowing our Neanderthal brain, our vestigial sexual competitiveness to drag us into knee-jerk bitchiness? Do we disapprove of her policies or doubt her experience…or do we just dislike her marital situation, her sartorial choices, her personal presentation? And can we live with ourselves and our country if we let this particular man walk away, smirking, with all of the power in his tiny, little…ahem, with all of the power in his hands?

Melissa Duge Spiers is a freelance writer based in Watsonville, California, and a frequent contributor to Reel Girl. You can follow her on Instagram @mdugespiers or Twitter @MDugeSpiers.

 

 

Back to school: Teach your kids healthy risk-taking instead of self-sabotage

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. — Marianne Williamson

When I was in my twenties and first saw the words above, they were misattributed to Nelson Mandela. I’m grateful for the mistake because at that time, I don’t think I would’ve have listened to a middle-aged white woman spiritualist. Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, was a hero so I got teary eyed. I felt the truth of what “he” said, maybe for the first time in my life.

Today was the first day back at school for my kids, and last night our house full of the annual excitement and anxiety. Along with my kids’s emotions, my husband and I were dealing with The Schedule, which, like for all parents I think, is a source of unending, brutal calculation and miscalculation.

So here’s how a typical conversation went  about setting up the schedule with one of my daughters who loves art.

Me: Would you like to take an art class?

Daughter: I suck at art.

Stab in my heart Me: No, you don’t!

Daughter: I want to be good but I suck.

More stabbing Me: Why do you say that?

Daughter: I’m bad at art!

I really fucked up.  How did I fuck up so badly? My10 year old daughter is convinced she’s bad at art. Something as subjective, as dynamic, as unfixed as art. All art? How can this be? How can she love it and think she’s bad at it? And then I looked at her, and I saw fear in her face. I remembered Williamson. I thought she’s afraid to take a risk. What is making art about if not risk?

Me: Why don’t you try the class and see if you like it?

Daughter: I told you, I’m bad at art.

Me: Can I tell you something it took years for me to learn?” I said. “It may not be true for you, but it was true for me.”

Daughter: Okay.

Me: Saying or just thinking I was bad at something was a really safe place to be. When I put myself down, there was nowhere to fall. But if ever I was feeling good about myself, someone could always come along and knock me down.

She nodded.

Me: Here’s what I know now. Putting yourself down isn’t cool or modest, it comes out of fear, because you’re scared. And I totally get being scared. But trying something new is a much more helpful way to deal with fear. Maybe you won’t like this art class, but you could meet a kid in the class who will become your best friend, or maybe you’ll discover you like horses from drawing horses. Maybe you’ll find out you love pastels and not water color.  You don’t know what will happen, but anything could and that makes scary but exciting.

She was looking at me, not talking.

Me: When you try something new, there will times when you’re going to fail. Guaranteed.  hundreds, thousands of times, and that’s a great sign. Failure means you’re learning. If you’re not messing up, you’re not learning anything.

She told me she wanted to try the class. I hope she got the message I was trying to convey. When adults think about taking risk, we often think of dramatic behavior: climb Mount Everest, fly a plane across the Atlantic, but for a kid, a huge risk can be trying a new food or saying hi to a classmate. The truth is adults feel the same way about risk, because when it comes down to it, risks are emotional. I hope to teach my kids to risk experiencing the full range of their emotions, to understand humans are verbs, dynamic and ever-changing instead of pigeon holed, stagnate, and “safe.”

Please feel free to add any personal stories in the comment section about your family stays emotional healthy. I always want to learn more.

 

 

 

Judge Persky isn’t the problem, you are.

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While I’m relieved to see America’s outrage at Judge Persky’s ridiculously light sentence for rapist and Stanford athlete Brock Turner, we’re reacting to one case of epidemic sexual assault in this country. Turner’s sentence is not an anomaly. In America, we accept rape culture. It’s normalized, and Persky acted the way judges do every single day.

On Reel Girl, I recently posted this T-shirt that reads: Two Beers Three Margaritas Four Jello Shots Taking Home The Girl Who Drank All the Above PRICELESS

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I got a minimal response to my post.

It was two Swedes who reported Turner’s rape of this woman. Do you think two American frat boys would’ve done the same?

I’ve been reading Peggy Orenstein’s fantastic new book Girls and Sex in which author repeatedly references how the sex education programs in other countries are far superior to America’s curriculum, if we can call it that. One of the finest examples Orenestein cites is Sweden. How do most American kids learn about sex? Orenstein tells us the source of their education is porn.

What are American parents teaching their children about sex? What about violence against women?

I think we all know that Brock’s father argued his son’s life should not be ruined for “20 minutes of action.” Instead of teaching girls how not to get raped, when are parents going to teach their sons not to rape? How are parents going to teach kids to respect girls and women? What are you doing today to teach your kids about gender equality?

If you want to protest this shirt, it’s made by Iron Horse Helmets You can Tweet them: @IronHorseHelmet Call them: 1.800.978.9468

 

Wow, People Magazine addresses trivialization of Taylor Swift and women artists!

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When news broke a couple days ago that Taylor Swift broke up with boyfriend Calvin Harris, the internet brimmed with snark: How long until she sings about this breakup? Swift’s lyrics have long been criticized and trivialized, reducing her to a boy crazy one note.

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Today, People Magazine posts a headline: 8 Breakup Albums by Male Artists That Didn’t Earn Them as Much of a Rep as Taylor Swift with a list including musicians generally regarded as geniuses and poets: Bob Dylan,Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, and Kanye West. Guess what? All those dudes wrote about break ups multiple times in multiple albums like most artists do.

I am so fucking sick of women artists being relegated to “confessional” or “chick lit.” It starts when kids are young, babies, in the whole “just for girls” “special interest” category of children’s media. Literally, from birth, we train kids that stories about girls are not important, are less interesting, are less than. I can’t tell you how many parents have responded to me, when I tell them about this blog: “Oh, I don’t have to worry about that, I have boys.” Yes, mom and dad, you do have to worry about that. It’s up to you to seek out media for your kids– your kids— with female protagonists. It’s up to you to avoid inundating your child’s imagination with narratives and images that repeatedly teach that females belong on the sidelines. And even if you work your ass off to show your children alternatives, they’re still going to suck up gender stereotypes which are literally everywhere. So try. Try harder. Change the world, don’t be a bystander. I’m going off on a tangent. The point of this blog was an optimistic one, to congratulate People Magazine. I wrote almost the exact blog People did today on Reel Girl, years ago. The Bob Dylan song I cited wasn’t “Don’t Think Twice” but “Idiot Wind.” There are scores to choose from. Ask yourself: What can you do today to support women artists?

‘So tragic a woman has to share a picture like this to be believed #AmberHeard’

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In the latest case of woman tried by internet mob, Amber Heard is branded a gold-digger for saying Johnny Depp abused her. A few voices support Heard, I had to seek them out. There’s this Tweet from feminist writer/ producer Elizabeth Plank:

So tragic a woman has to share a picture like this to be believed.

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and this one from Plank as well:

Why didn’t she report the assault, says the person calling her a liar after she reported said assault

Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Johnny Depp are all talented men who I admired. I stand with Amber Heard. I’m grateful she has the courage to her her story. Every woman who dares to speak publicly helps all women. Thank you, Amber Heard.

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?

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

Like sexist ‘Minions,’ giants in ‘The BFG’ are all male

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Like the all male “Minions” featured in no less than 3 blockbuster movies, Roald’s Dahl’s giants in his book The BFG, coming out as a movie directed by Steven Spielberg in July, are 100% male.

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My 7 year old daughter and I were reading The BFG when we came across the first illustration of 8 giants, all hairy and shirtless, sporting a distinct caveman look. “Are there no girl giants?” we wondered. “There must be!” insisted my daughter. “The moms.” Not thrilled that the mother role could be the only way female giants were essential to the story, I took her point. Still, I was pessimistic about the appearance of any female giants. I’d been burned in the past. I held on to the same hope that the minions weren’t all male until, in the last movie a male narrator confirmed for me, and all the kids watching, that minions have no mothers as well. They evolved from amoeba-like creatures. They came out of the sea.

By the time my daughter and I reached to page 51, Dahl let us know for sure: There are no female giants in the story at all. Disturbed by his poor grammar and vocabulary, Sophie, the girl kidnapped by the giant, asks the BFG he had a mother to teach him. The BFG responds in shock, almost disgust:

“Giants don’t have mothers! Surely you is knowing that.”

“I did not know that,” Sophie said.

“Whoever heard of a woman giant!” shouted the BFG, waving the snozzcumber around his head like a lasso. “There never was a woman giant and there never will be one. Giants are always men!”

Sophie felt herself getting a little muddled. “In that case,” she said, “how were you born?”

“Giants isn’t born,” the BFG answered. “Giants appears and that’s all there is to it. They simply appears, the same way as the sun and the stars.”

How very minion-like.

I hope Spielberg’s adaptation lacks this sexism and that at least half of the giants in the movie are depicted as female. I especially hope that millions of kids don’t hear the line: “Whoever heard of a woman giant! There never was a woman giant and there never will be one. Giants are always men!” I’m not optimistic. In the trailers for the movie, I’ve seen only male giants.

Why do I want half the giants to be female? After all, they’re villains. They eat children. They’re ugly and brutal and mean. Don’t I want females to be heroes?

Yes, but that’s not all I want females to be.

Defending his sexist minions, creator Pierre Coffin said: “Seeing how dumb and stupid they often are, I just couldn’t imagine Minions being girls.” Simon Ragoonanan of Man vs Pink responds, “I read Pierre’s comment as ‘I just couldn’t imagine girls being funny.” Not only do I agree with him, I want females to be depicted in the incredible range that males are: funny, serious, fat, thin, old, young, good, bad, geeky, heroic and on and on an on. Once you put female characters in a box, they’re always in a box, limited, stereotyped, and hardly there at all. Because all of the giants are male, females get far less lines than males. Earlier this year, a study was released that shows in children’s movies, even when there is a female protagonist, males almost always get more speaking time.

The BFG has “a strong female character” in Sophie, but besides the queen, those two are the only major female characters in the whole story. The queen is only in about a quarter of the story. Besides the all male giants, there’s an all male army. Sophie is a Minority Feisty, a sexist phenomenon that often fools parents into thinking they’re watching a feminist movie when they’re watching a sexist one. I define Minority Feisty as this:

If you see an animated film today, it will usually include a strong female character. Or two. Or maybe even three. But however many females there are, there will always be more males. Females, half of the human population, will be depicted as a minority. The token strong female character (or two or three, you get the point) reviewers will call “feisty.”

The problem is that because Pixar or Disney has so magnanimously thrown in this “feisty” female (who may even have some commentary about sexism or male domination) we’re no longer supposed to care that almost all of the other characters in the film are male.

If the male dominance in The BFG was about one book (or one movie) it wouldn’t be a problem, but this sexism is part of a pattern that is so repeated and normalized, we don’t even notice it. With so many girls gone missing from children’s media, we’re training a new generation to expect and accept this sexism. We’re missing a huge opportunity to use creativity to show them that the world could vbe another way. Once again, I ask: Why does the imaginary world have to be sexist at all? If rats can cook, unicorns prance around, and lions befriend warthogs, why can’t we picture gender equality?

Thank you, Fernanda Lopez Aguilar, for the courage to tell your story of sexual harassment at Yale

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I read horrible shit every day as I know you do too, but this story of sexual harassment by a famous ethics professor at Yale made me cry. So hypocritical of Thomas Pogge, an intellectual star in the field of global ethics, and reminiscent to me of how “progressive” and “lefty” men– political leaders, professors etc– can be just as sexist and dismissive of women as anyone else. We need more women in power. Below you’ll find some quotes from the post, but please read the whole thing on Buzzfeed and share it.

 

In the 1990s, a student at Columbia University, where Pogge was then teaching, accused him of sexually harassing her. In 2010, a recent Yale graduate named Fernanda Lopez Aguilar accused Pogge of sexually harassing her and then retaliating against her by rescinding a fellowship offer. In 2014, a Ph.D. student at a European university accused Pogge of proffering career opportunities to her and other young women in his field as a pretext to beginning a sexual relationship.

Yale has known about these allegations, and others, for years. When Lopez Aguilar first reported Pogge for sexual harassment, she said, Yale offered to buy her silence with $2,000.

Eventually, a hearing panel did find “substantial evidence” that Pogge had acted unprofessionally and irresponsibly, noting “numerous incidents” where he “failed to uphold the standards of ethical behavior” expected of him. But the panel voted that there was “insufficient evidence to charge him with sexual harassment,” according to disciplinary records…

In October 2015, Lopez Aguilar filed a federal civil rights complaint, alleging that Yale violated Title IX, the statute that holds schools responsible for eliminating hostile educational environments caused by sexual harassment. Lopez Aguilar is asking the government to investigate whether Yale has ignored the “exhaustive attempts” she and others have made to prove Pogge is a danger to female students.

Her complaint also accuses Yale of violating Title VI, which prohibits race discrimination, on the grounds that Pogge specifically targets foreign women of color who were unfamiliar with how to navigate power in the United States.

The claims against Pogge pose critical questions about how universities manage the power dynamic between faculty members and students…

Lopez Aguilar grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She was a star student who published a book of poems about social justice at the age of 13; when she applied to college, her high school adviser wrote that she would one day be president. She enrolled at Yale in 2006, and took one of Pogge’s classes as a junior. When he agreed to supervise her senior thesis the following year, Lopez Aguilar was thrilled…

“He was my mentor,” Lopez Aguilar said. “Now I see that I was naive, but I thought he actually appreciated me for my intellect. I was flattered that he saw promise in me.”…

Only Pogge and Lopez Aguilar know what happened in that room, and Pogge has insisted to Yale he never made sexual comments or advances to her. But she later told the university that he asked her to join him in his bed to watch a movie, The Constant Gardner, on his laptop, with the lights off. That he said he couldn’t look at her in a black dress she wore because it was too “dangerous.” That he said perhaps she would consider marrying him someday. That he told the hotel staff to call them “Mr. and Mrs. Pogge.” That he mentioned he had been accused of sexual harassment at Columbia, and said she was “the Monica Lewinsky to his Bill Clinton…”

Eventually, Yale offered her a $2,000 settlement, on the condition that she sign away her right to pursue further claims against Pogge or the university — or to tell anyone about Pogge’s behavior from “the beginning of the world to the day of the date of this Release.”

The federal government has said that it’s illegal to use conditional nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases. But Yale treated Lopez Aguilar’s report as a workplace dispute, ignoring her claims of sexual harassment, her recent complaint states.

She signed the agreement. She said she didn’t think she had any recourse…

The following spring, however, 16 other current and former students filed a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education claiming that Yale had failed to properly address their sexual misconduct claims. A formal investigation was opened. (It concluded that Yale had underreported incidents of sexual violence “for a very long time,” among other violations.) Their complaint had nothing directly to do with Pogge, but it motivated Lopez Aguilar to try again…”

Read the whole story here.

Another day, another pro-rape T-shirt on my Facebook feed

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Today, on my Facebook feed I saw a photo author Rebecca Hains posted of a T-shirt that reads:

Two Beers Three Margaritas Four Jello Shots Taking Home The Girl Who Drank All the Above PRICELESS

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I’m exhausted by responding to endless images and narratives that normalize rape and the oppression of women. But I guess that’s the point, right? You just run out of energy. We can’t let that happen so I did some research. Turns out the shirt is made by a company called Iron Horse Helmets. Though it can be difficult in these instances to figure out who created the thing you’re trying to protest, a quote on the Iron Horse site makes it pretty clear:

Not afraid to express yourself? Good, our Tees got attitude and something to say. Make a statement or make ’em laugh with T-shirts from Iron Horse Helmets. Got a great idea for the next Iron Horse Helmet T-shirt, send it to us – we won’t give ya nothing for it, but we might use it and will be sure to take all the credit for it.

Please contact Iron Horse Helmets and tell them you’re #NotBuyingIt. Let them know promoting rape isn’t funny, it’s dangerous. I can’t believe that statement is the radical one.

Tweet them:

@IronHorseHelmet

Call them:

1.800.978.9468

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.