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?
To learn more about Alice’s book or to buy it click here.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
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
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:
Call them:
1.800.978.9468
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.
I miss you guys! I know I’ve been blogging for a couple years that I’m almost done with my book, but I’m REALLY almost done now. Finishing a book (finishing anything?) is so challenging, tying up all the loose ends, letting it go, but I could not be more excited about what I’m writing so that’s pushing me to the end. I haven’t had any time to blog, and I don’t just mean the time it takes me to write these words, but once I pound it out, I get engaged with the whole Internet world and I can get lost for hours on line, it’s a shift of energy and brain cells I can’t afford. I think I’ve written this before but being a mom has truly made me realize how carefully I have to choose where to put my energy. I get how Obama says he wear the same thing every day because his decision making reservoirs are used up. I wish more women could get away with not putting so much time and money and brain cells into how we look without getting mocked or put down, but I’m going off on a tangent here. There is one blog I’m dying to write about Roald Dahl’s BFG which I’m reading with my 7 year old daughter, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I got this amazing comment that I have to repost. The commenter encapsulates why I started my blog, the Minority Feisty, and the issue I have with most stories for kids featuring ” a strong female character” or two or three. Her comment is in response to my blog: If we can imagine talking bunnies as police in ‘Zootopia,’ why can’t we imagine gender equality? Here it is, from sellmaeth:
“Realism? You mean, like lionesses doing all the hunting (lead by a lioness) while the lazy males just eat what the lionesses bring home and murder the cubs fathered by other males?
Or male bees and ants only existing for breeding, and only being about, l don’t know, five animals in the whole hive?
Or … the daddy clownfish in “Finding Nemo” changing to mommy clownfish because that’s what that kind of fish does …
Oh, or anglerfish … tiny males have their mouths fused to the big female.
Haha. You’ll never see that in a movie.
I can imagine equality of the sexes. But I am not paid to write movie plots, I just write fanfic.
You are right, this “lone woman fights bad sexism” is getting old, and an excuse to feature sexism in the first place.
Once played pen&paper roleplay game with a dude who wanted to force me into the “token female who has to fight sexism all the time” role … in a setting that’s explicitly not sexist. (He changed the original game to suit his tastes)
He was a sexist in more ways than that. You are definitely on to something there.”
This happened downstairs.
Aragog’s web, strung across my living room. In case you didn’t know, he’s a giant spider (Harry Potter, Book 2, Chamber of Secrets.)
You may be wondering if I affirmed my daughters’s creativity (all 3 made this) or tore out my hair. I took the picture, crept upstairs, and shut my office door. Soon, their dad will be home.
Yesterday, I saw “Zootopia” with my three daughters (ages 6, 9, and 12) and we laughed through the whole movie. The animation is spectacular. Zootopia is a city populated by all types of animals and the details of every single species, from the curved horns of the buffalo long noses of the moles are exquisite to watch. This movie is art.
The protagonist is Judy Hopps, a rabbit who longs to leave the boonies of her farm, go to the big city, and make the world a better place. She’s forced to encounter prejudice, being labeled “a dumb bunny.” Not a predator, she’s considered too weak for the police force. Assigned meter maid duty, Judy longs for more challenging work. She overcomes her own biases to pal up with a fox and solve the mystery of a slew of animals gone missing.
Not only did I love this movie because of Judy’s actions but also her looks. We know she is female mainly because of her voice. She doesn’t have long, curly eyelashes or a hot pink bullet proof vest. Her upper uniform is truncated in a way I think they were trying to feminize it, but even so, her physical self is unusually ambiguous for an animated character in contemporary media.
ZOOTOPIA – JUDY HOPPS, an optimistic bunny who’s new to Zootopia’s police department. ©2015 Disney. All Rights Reserved.
Judy becomes best friends with a male fox. These two come no love each other. No romance involved. No romance in the entire movie. “Zootopia” is literally a poster for cross-gender friendships, something rarely seen in children’s media.
Judy is a Minority Feisty. Even though her character is wonderful, female parts are outnumbered by male ones. In a recently published study on gender and children’s media, researchers found that even when a film features a female protagonist, such as “Frozen” female speaking time is still less than male speaking time. I don’t think “Zootopia” will be an exception due to the majority of male characters. The movie does feature another compelling female character with a big part, a sheep named Dawn. There’s also a character that really bugged me. Gazelle is a singer played by Shakira.She prances and dances wiggling a bare midriff and teetering in sky high heels. She’s a singer but seems to be admired mostly for her looks. Apparently, Shakira requested that artists enlarge her character’s hips, but she’s still stick skinny. I already blogged about Gazelle because, exemplifying typical sexism, she is the female character used in the marketing. Here’s the ad I saw in my People Magazine.
Judy Hopps, the protagonist, is missing from this ad campaign. WTF? I suppose she’s left out since she’s not gazellegant or always stylish. The good news is that Gazelle’s actual part in the movie is tiny, her scenes are minimal and she’s also inconsequential in the plot. If she were the only female, I’d be pissed.
Grown-ups, you’ll love the scene in the DMV office populated by sloths. I’ve rarely seen a moment so hilarious and true-to-life in animated film. Everyone, proceed to your local Metereon. I’d be surprised if there’s a kid out there of any age who doesn’t adore this movie.
Reel Girl rates “Zootopia” ***HH***
SGS for Healing posted a shocking police report from 2011 revealing rape and subsequent cover ups at St. George’s school may not be, as the school seems to claim, events that only happened 30 years ago.
The report states that a St. George’s campus security officer, Christopher Simanski, called 911 when he saw a male climb out the window of an all girls dorm and run towards the road with no shoes on. When Middletown police officer David Hurst arrived on the scene, Simanski told him he’d chased the male but couldn’t catch him. Simanski returned to the dorm, went to the room with the window, and saw a girl sitting on her bed crying, another girl sitting next to her. He wrote that she was upset, visibly shaken, and “indicated there had been a male in her room and on her bed.”
While Simanski was recounting the events to Hurst, the dean of students, Katie Titus, came out of the dorm and approached them. What do you think happened next? She helped them investigate a possible crime, right?
Here’s how Hurst tells it:
I asked Titus where the alleged victim was and Titus ignored my question and only replied by telling me that the girl was upset. I asked Titus again where the alleged victim was and again she did not answer me. I reiterated to Titus that I was there to investigate a possible assault or sexual assault and that I would need to speak to the victim to determine the nature of the incident and obtain crucial information for any possible suspects.
Titus still refused to let Hurst investigate, insisting that she would speak for the victim. She would speak for the victim? Hurst continued to press her, letting her know that he needed vital information. Titus gave him some information of her own. She said she knew the male who ran from the window. He was student who had just graduated. But then, she refused to give the officer his name or any other facts about him.
SGS for Healing writes:
When 911 is called and there’s a report that a girl may have been sexually assaulted, how the adults around her respond makes a world of difference. They can ensure that she gets immediate professional treatment and care, optimally provided by a team that includes a medical provider, a sexual assault examiner, and a rape crisis counselor. They can facilitate police evidence collection, which depending on the jurisdiction, needs to happen within days following the incident. This kind of rapid response leads to better health outcomes for victims and an increased chance that associated criminal charges are filed.
So what happened next?
According to the report, Titus told Hurst that she’d reached the recent graduate on her cell phone. (She had his number on her cell? Maybe that’s totally normal for a dean’s contact list in these digital days?) The nameless male assured Titus that he hadn’t been on campus. Hurst writes in his report: “Titus apparently accepted the alibi at face value.” Again, she refused to give Hurst any more information about him. I haven’t read many police reports but this seems like an odd order of events. Was Titus trying to pacify the officer at first, saying she knew the male, thinking he’d leave it all alone, let her take this mess over? Then, when Hurst asked for more information, did Titus regret telling him she knew his identity? We’ll never know because just at that moment, Titus was called away for a family emergency.
Assistant dean, Lucy Goldstein, arrived on the scene to take over. More police officers also arrived, including a lieutenant who insisted on speaking to the girl to confirm the chain of events. At that point, Goldstein went and talked to the girl for 20 minutes before allowing the lieutenant to speak with her. The girl told him that she let the male into her room, they started kissing and he wanted it to become more intimate. She “declined” and he “agreed not to press the issue and left through the window.”
The report ends with:
Having no further evidence of a crime or witnesses to come forward to contradict the series of events, all units cleared from the scene. School safety supervisor Lombardi advised that he would follow up in the morning regarding how the school staff handled the initial investigation and its cooperation or lack there of in the investigation conducted by this department.
I don’t see any information that a follow up actually happened.
SGS for Healing writes that the report raises a number of questions including: Why didn’t the SGS Dean Katie Titus immediately allow the officer to see the female student? Why did the Middletown police call Ms. Titus uncooperative? Why did Ms. Titus call the adult male? Why didn’t she help the officer talk with him and why did she refuse to give the adult male student’s name and telephone number? Sometime after the Middletown Police were on the scene, a female sexual assault officer from Newport arrived. Why did the school continue to refuse to allow her access to the alleged victim? How did the school help the student get professional treatment and care? How were the police aided in gathering physical evidence?
Last night, I saw “Spotlight,” the movie about the sexual abuse and the Catholic church that just won the Best Picture Oscar. There’s a great line: “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them.” This story is so much bigger than St. George’s. It’s about how when institutions (whether its the church, the government, businesses, or schools) are put before individuals, children suffer. Ultimately, we all do because this pattern of abuse happens far too often and isn’t symptomatic of the kind of world healthy people have the great potential to create.
Katie Titus left St. George’s school this year. She’s about to start her new job as head of Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania.
Reel Girl’s posts about St. George’s are below. If you read them, you will see that as an alumna of the school, I started to write about the institutionalized sexism I witnessed there long before I learned about the rapes and cover-ups.
In a disappointing opening monologue at the Academy Awards, Chris Rock claimed there was no need for male and female categories and mocked #AskHerMore.
For the first time in possibly 20 years, I’m watching the Oscars at home and not at a party. Last year, I was at a viewing event, Tweeting about #AskHerMore and people around me either didn’t get it or made fun of me. It was such a frustrating and uninspiring experience for me that I decided not to venture out tonight. This year, while lying in pajamas on my couch, I was thrilled to see Ryan Seacrest actually ask women about their roles and give actresses an opportunity to discuss their craft. His questions about clothing were limited and always came at the end of the interview so it was impossible to go on and on about jewelry and shoes. Progress, I thought.
Then Chris Rock came on. He addressed racism in Hollywood, which is hugely important for the whole world to see him do. He opened with a great point: racism has been going on since the Oscars began, so why is everyone upset now? When people asked me about racism at the Oscars this year, I replied I’m happy that, at least, people are finally discussing this bigotry in mainstream media. Racism in Hollywood has become part of a national conversation. The first step in changing something is recognizing that it exists. That’s why I’m pissed about Rock’s monologue. Fury about sexism at the Oscars has not garnered much media attention. #OscarsSoWhite is taken seriously. It is a political act. #AskHerMore, on the other hand, is mocked. Rock referred to the latter in his monologue:
Another big thing tonight is you’re not allowed to ask women what they’re wearing anymore. It’s a whole thing: “Ask her more.” You have to ask her more.” Well, you know, you ask the men more. Hey, everything’s not sexism. Everything’s not racism. They ask the men more because the men are all wearing the same outfits, OK? Every guy in here is wearing the exact same thing. If George Clooney showed up with a lime green tux on and a swan coming out his …, someone would go, “What you wearing George?”
A Reel Girl fan comments:
Chris Rock basically said “She was asking for it because of what she was wearing.” Good job.
Categories for female and male actors create an illusion of equality. Never mind that the roles for women are far more limited as far how old the actresses are allowed to be, how complex the characters they play are, and what kind of heroes are depicted in the narratives. Behind the scenes awards including producing, directing, screenplay writing, adaptations (I could go on, see chart below) the male nominees, and of course winners, far outnumber women. Instead of recognizing this inequality, again Rock acts as if sexism doesn’t exist.
Hey, if you want black nominees every year, you need to just have black categories. That’s what you need. You need to have black categories. You already do it with men and women. Think about it. There’s no real reason for there to be a man and a woman category in acting. There’s no reason. It’s not track and field. You don’t have to separate them. Robert De Niro has never said, I better slow this acting down so Meryl Streep can catch up.
I didn’t expect Rock to deal with sexism, but I was surprised he made fun if it. His reaction put me in a weird space. He calling attention to racism, basically saying it’s not “bring me lemonade” racism; it’s subtle, but its pernicious. For example, he said Leonardo DiCaprio gets a great role every hear. Jamie Foxx is a stellar actor, but great roles for him are rare. Does Rock not get the same situation exists for women?
All right, back to the show. More later.
