Coach Morra’s self-righteous misogyny: He’s scum, he’s a coward, he’s…a girl!

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In a public rant, UCLA Coach Jim Morra let his misogyny flag fly and no one called him out on it.

When UCLA safety Randall Goforth’s Twitter account was hacked and the imposter insulted rival players, Gorforth’s coach, Jim Morra, was beyond furious. In a media conference to clear Goforth’s name, Morra let out a deluge of insults, within 2 minutes and 47 seconds calling the hacker: knucklehead, idiot, sickening, lowest form of lifeform, scumbag, coward, and a girl.

Wait…a girl?

Let me get this straight: Morra is thinking of the absolute worst names he can call someone, “lowest form of lifeform” included, and “girl” is his finale? Morra says this in a news conference, no less, and everyone just lets that fly by. Is misogyny that normal in 2012, in America? Not only in the football world but to everyone listening?

Sports talk radio is on frequently in my house. Not to mention regular talk radio. I don’t want my kids hearing an authority figure think of the absolute worst things he can call someone, right after saying the guy should go to jail, and then calling him a girl. What are they supposed to think about that?

Hey, Coach Morra, I understand that you’re angry. But don’t equate unethical behavior and cowardice with femininity. There is no connection. Don’t proclaim your misogyny publicly and self-righteously. That is really scummy.

Good morning. I just want to address one thing and that’s the false twitter stuff going on there that someone attributed to Randall Goforth. It is absolutely 100% not Randall. I’ve talked to Lane Kiffin. He’s talked to his guys. I’ve talked to my guys. It’s a total non-issue. Some knucklehead’s out there trying to stir it up So it’s been shut down. Randall was in tutoring session when this idiot was tweeting. It’s ridiculous. The power of the social media is amazing and when it’s used for negative, in a negative way it’s sickening. So that’s it

(Media – Chris Foster: How do you really feel about it?)

I think it’s a frickin’ joke that somebody would do that. I think you’re the lowest form of lifeform if you would portray yourself as a young man, an 18 year old young man trying to do his best. Trying to stir it up like that. Attributing comments to him that aren’t his. I think he ought to go to jail. That’s how I feel. I think you’re a scumbag.

(Media: what do you think would be an appropriate sentence?)

Bring his ass out here.

(Media: You’ll put him to work?)

We won’t put him to work. He won’t make it very far with this team.

(Media – Foster: I think you’re limiting your chances of him actually showing up)

Yeah, because he’s a coward That’s what cowards do, cowards hide behind print.

(Media – Foster: Print? Excuse me?)

That’s what Twitter is, right? It’s print.

(Media – Foster: Maybe be a little clearer on that , please)

You know what I meant

(Foster laughing: I know)

Yeah, I challenge that guy to come on out here. Whoever he is. He won’t though. He’s a coward. Or a girl, whoever it is.

A day later, Morra acknowledged he went overboard, not with the sexism but in saying the hackster should go to jail. In reporting that, ESPN.com along with everyone else, still didn’t mention the misogyny at all.

Muscle bound superheroes not bad for kids like skinny Barbies

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I get a lot of comments on Reel Girl about how muscly superheroes promote idealized, unattainable body types for males in the same way that skinny, big-breasted Barbies do for females.

I’ve written about how rigid gender boxes are bad for everyone. They are limiting and repressive. That said, the toys and narratives around muscle-bound superheroes aren’t anything close to damaging the way the beauty based toys of girlworld are.

Muscles symbolize strength and power. Superman does not spend his time, in toys or narratives, brushing his hair, putting on make up, or gazing at himself in the mirror. Superman doesn’t come with a plastic comb or even plastic a gym set. Superman has muscles because he, like all supeheroes, is known for what he does, not for how he appears.

As a kid– or as an adult– what would you rather be valued for: your actions or your appearance? Which would make you feel inspired and which would make you feel insecure? Would you prefer that your heroic actions, bravery, courage, and your accomplishments helped to make you attractive to the opposite sex, or your weight and your outfit?

The related topic that comes up on Reel Girl is violence. Games marketed to boys are violent and that’s bad.

I don’t like gore; I don’t like how movies and toys marketed to boys predominantly feature war and battles. Toys should be marketed to all kids and have diverse themes and characters. But violence in imaginary play isn’t bad; it’s natural.

Good art evokes emotions in the reader, the observer, or the listener. All kids– and adults– experience intense emotions. Our internal, emotional world is dramatic. Art depicts that internal world, in part, though narratives and dramatic play. A child is ordered to share a toy and she may collapse in tears on the floor. She feels like her world is caving in. A narrative or a game will actually show the world caving in. You may feel like you had “the wind knocked out of you,” or feel like you are “being attacked.” Art shows that. Not only does art make emotional experience visible, but to be effective, it has to do so in a way that is universal. That is why, in art, you’ve got to raise the stakes. For example, for me, cleaning my closet is a monumental task. I approach it with fear and when I’m done, I feel as if I’ve scaled Mount Everest. But if I were to write a story about cleaning my closet, most of my readers would be bored to tears. Art creates a dramatic metaphor around an emotion that everyone can relate to. Instead of cleaning a closet, there is the Greek myth of Psyche sorting seeds.

People feel like the walls are caving in on them for different reasons, but every human experiences that feeling at one time or another.

As far as “boys make sticks into guns, girls make trucks into beds for their dolls,” I just think that’s bullshit. There are so many ways– books, toys, movies, TV, parents, teachers, doctors, and dentists– kidworld encourages and validates “boy” behavior or “girl” behavior. Wouldn’t it be great if all kids were allowed to be human?

How to protect your child’s imagination

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I’m still thinking about blue milk’s post and those damn bananas. What is fascinating to me, as blue milk posted, is that the act of covering up reality to protect the child’s imagination, is such an important part of parenting. That’s why routine is so great. If your child has safe boundaries, she feels brave enough to take healthy risks. That this episode put that burden on the girl children is remarkable and sad.

Psychologist Stephen Mitchell in his book, Can Love Last: the Fate of Romance Over Time said all of this better than me:

One of the things good parents provide for their children is a partially illusory, elaborately constructed atmosphere of  safety, to allow for the establishment of “secure attachment.” Good-enough parents, to use D. W. Winnicott’s term, do not talk with young children about their own terrors, worries, and doubts. They construct a sense of buffered permanence, in which the child can discover and explore without any impinging vigilance, her own mind, her creativity, her joy in living. The terrible destructiveness of child abuse lies not just in trauma of what happens but also the tragic loss of what is not provided– protected space for psychological growth.

It is crucial that the child does not become aware of how labor intensive that protracted space is, of the enormous amount of parental activity going on behind the scenes.

A Cat in Paris ***HH***

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It’s been a while since I’ve done an actual movie review. The TV ads and the posters I’ve seen are so sexist, its been hard for me to get myself to an actual theater. But I’ve wanted to see “A Cat in Paris” ever since it received an Academy Award nomination. (I was so thrilled that “Tintin” didn’t get nominated.)

I really liked “A Cat in Paris.” So, for the most part, did my kids (ages 3, 6, 9)

Here’s the summary from imdb.com:

In Paris, a cat who lives a secret life as a cat burglar’s aide must come to the rescue of Zoe, the little girl he lives with, after she falls into a gangster’s clutches.

The cat, the star of the movie and the character in the title, is male. But the movie has three strong female characters: the mom, her daughter Zoe, and her Nanny. They still are a Minority Feisty because the whole band of bad guys, led by the evil Costa, are all male. The hero cat burglar is also male.

I was particularly fascinated by the mom character. She is a superintendent, a police detective who is definitely the boss in this movie. I loved that my kids got to see a professional woman be smart and in charge, take risks and engage in all kids of brave acts. There are fantasy sequences where the mom fights a giant, red octopus that are really cool. I did have some issues: there is the cliche of working mom neglecting her child and the evil nanny. The mom’s breasts were also distracting to me, though my kids, who often comment on the the way females– animated and actual–  wiggle their butts on TV, didn’t mention anything about the mom’s anatomy. There is also an idol, a piece of art, with a distracting penis. Don’t get scared. The movie is French, people. My kids didn’t mention the phallic symbol either.

Zoe doesn’t speak for most of the movie, and at first that annoyed me, and annoyed my three year old as well. (MAMA, WHY DOESN’T SHE TALK? followed by frustrated tears.) But by the end of the movie, Zoe is speaking, so I look at “A Cat in Paris” as the story of how she gets her voice back, and that’s pretty cool.

The animation in this movie is spectacular and the images of Paris are gorgeous.

This movie was just released on DVD, and I liked it so much that I bought it.

Reel Girl rates “A Cat in Paris” ***HH***

Boys will be boys, girls will clean up

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blue milk blogger saw her three year son watching the Australian animated show for toddlers “Bananas in Pyjamas.” She blogs:

I was so bewildered by it that I ended up watching the whole episode again on iview to be sure about what I was seeing.”

In the series, there are two banana adult figures and three bears, 2 girls and 1 boy, all friends. In the episode blue milk saw, the boy bear buys a Super Bear costume and then causes all sorts of trouble, getting caught up in his imagination and believing he really is a superhero. The bananas try to help out a little, but don’t get too involved, knowing they get to return home soon. So the clean up is left to the girl bears.

blue milk goes on:

Tellingly, the little girl bears deal with these problems in a way that doesn’t involve Super Bear having to know about it because he would only cause more mess if he tried to help and because they do not want to hurt his dignity or spoil his fun. Worse still, his fun interrupts their own fun and plans and when they express some irritation about it all the Bananas encourage them to be careful not to ruin the boy bear’s illusion of himself as a superhero. It wouldn’t have particularly disturbed me as a story if it was about a parent or uncle cleaning up after the little boy teddy bear…But the sight of two little girls doing the cleaning up and taking care of, instead of  having fun and adventures themselves? And the idea that the little boy got to experience the thrill of danger while the little girls got to worry about him? It all struck me as so, so wrong.”

First of all, I am amazed, once again, though I know I shouldn’t be, how universal sexism in kidworld is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid in Australia or a kid in the USA, if it’s PBS or Disney, if it’s a movie or TV: except for the Minority Feisty, boys will be boys and girls will clean up.

The TV show blue milk describes really irks me because my whole blog, Reel Girl, is about protecting the imagination of children (and hopefully, eventually, the adults they grown into.) I guess you could look at this episode as enlightening: Look, this is just what happens in real life. Males are encouraged and supported by the world to imagine and act; females are not. But somehow, I suspect three year old children don’t get irony.

Fergie’s truly nauseating Halloween costume

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Last night, like almost every Thursday night due to my tabloid addiction, I crawled in bed to relax with my new issue of Us Weekly. In a photo spread titled “Klum’s Favorite Halloween Costumes,” featuring pics from Heidi Klum’s annual party, I saw this picture of Fergie’s Halloween costume. I, literally, felt nauseated.

If you care at all about the sexualization of  little girls, why would a grown woman dress up as a little girl dressed up as a woman (assuming little girls with their make-up and curled hair aspire to imitate older beauty queens and not Martians.) Talk about blurring boundaries between sexualizing little girls and adults.  I just blogged about the conundrum of Batgirl, and I can barley get my mind around this costume. The bobby socks and the teddy bear? Ugh.

But here’s what Heidi Klum has to say about it: “Accessories can put a costume over the top! Fergie couldn’t have looked any better as a pageant girl.”

Right now, all I can say is GROSS. Bad move, Fergie, Heidi Klum, and Us Weekly.

Madeleine Albright’s letter to me

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Margot —

If you’re reading this email, you’re a woman, or you care about someone who is.

This year, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the backers behind their ticket are not running on what one would call a pro-women agenda. They are running on a platform of paternalistic, outdated, chauvinistic ideas — and in practice those ideas are genuinely harmful to women.

Here’s what women can expect if Romney-Ryan and the Republicans win:

A repeal of Obamacare and the free preventive screenings it covers. A return to discrimination against women by insurance companies. No support in the fight for equal pay for equal work. Supreme Court justice nominations based on radical ideology.

Every election is important, but I think this one will truly define what America is about.

I’m calling on you today because you are one of the people who can make the difference in this election. Democrats like us must, with no exceptions, speak up for women, for our children and grandchildren.

This election will be close, and your donation of $375 or more is crucial to this fight:

https://my.democrats.org/Womens-Rights

This election is ours to win or lose — and a win for Mitt Romney and Republicans is a big loss for America’s women.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Madeleine Albright

For my thoughts on a Romney presidency and sex discrimination read here.

Girls go missing in new Christmas movies for kids

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Last night on TV, while watching World Series Game 2 with my three young daughters, we all saw a commercial for “Rise of the Guardians,” the Christmas-themed animated movie coming out November 21. Guess who was missing from the multitude of characters in the preview?

Females. Not one damn female voice. Seriously.

A Google search tells me there is, in fact, a Minority Feisty (the tiny minority representation of strong females you can usually find in animated films for kids): the Tooth Fairy.

I know, I know, “Rise of the Guardians” is derivative. Mythical characters throughout history are males. “Rise of the Guardians” features the Easter Bunny and Jack Frost, just like “Hotel Transylvania” features famous monsters like Dracula and Frakenstein or  the bad guys of “Wreck-It Ralph” are based on pre-existing video games. What can Hollywood do about that?

Hmmm..what about not being so lazy and using a little imagination? Why not conceive of previously male characters as female? Or what about creating some brand new female characters? Ever heard of Santa Claus’s evil sister? If that use of imagination is too challenging for Hollywood, why not make the Tooth Fairy the star of the movie instead of Jack Frost?

But come on Hollywood, aren’t stories for children supposed to be imaginative?

Here is the crazy irony. This is imdb.com’s synopsis of “Rise of the Guardians:”

When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children all over the world.

Protecting the imaginations of kids is the whole reason I started this blog, Reel Girl. After having my three daughters, I was blown away by the gender stereotypes marketed to my kids through animated movies. These images and narratives in children’s movies repeatedly teach little kids that males are the adventurers, the risk-takers, and the stars, while females– half of the kid population– are continually limited to a sidelined minority.

Anyone remember 2011’s holiday movie, “Arthur Christmas?” Can you find the lone female here?

I honestly don’t know if you can even say that “Mrs. Claus” qualifies as a Minority Feisty.

And by the way, if you scoffed at my reference to Santa’s evil sister above, isn’t Santa’s son Arthur, the star of this movie, a newly made-up character? Why not put Santa’s daughter at the top of an elf-girl pyramid?

Can you imagine that? Try hard to think up a poster for an animated movie in 2012 that shows this gender ratio here but reversed. Would you do a double take? Would parents think “Fantastic Ms. Fox” was some crazy lesbian movie? Is that the concern here?

There is no good reason for the imaginary world to be sexist like this. It’s the imaginary world! Anything should be possible, even equality.

How do you think seeing these stereotyped gender roles repeated again and again is affecting your child’s imagination? Her aspirations?

Here’s an interesting “coincidence:” 16% of characters in movies for kids are female; in 2012, in top positions in professions all across America, women rarely make it past 16%.

Tell your kids that it shouldn’t be normal for females to go missing, either in movie poster after movie poster or in a boardroom.

In November, are you voting for embryo rights or human rights?

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Richard Mourdock, a Republican running for Senate in Indiana, said yesterday that when a woman becomes pregnant by rape, “it is something that God intended.”

USA Today reports:

Asked whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest, Mourdock said during Tuesday’s debate, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God.”

Of course Mourdock “struggled” with the rape/ incest/ life of the mother abortion exceptions that some pro-life Republicans support. If you believe that the embryo has human rights, no abortion exception makes sense. If abortion is murder, you can never justify that murder, regardless of how that embryo came into being. That’s just logic.

You’d think, logically, at the very least, pro-life candidates would be fighting like hell to make sure all women have access to contraception so at least raped women would have a better chance of not getting pregnant.

Mitt Romney, who is pro-life, is trying to differentiate his position from Mourdock’s controversial statement. Unfortunately, it’s Romney’s position, which, on a good day allows three abortion exceptions, that is, once again, unclear, inconsistent, and illogical. If you are pro-life, embryo rights must supersede women’s rights. Eventually, Romney will admit that.

Forcing a raped woman to give birth affects her economic well-being

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Richard Mourdock, a Republican running for Senate in Indiana, said yesterday that when a woman becomes pregnant by rape, “it is something that God intended.”

Regardless of God’s will, can we at least all agree that forcing a raped woman to give birth radically affects her economic well-being?

Pregnant women need health care. What if the raped woman is lower-income? How will she afford her monthly and then weekly ob-gyn visits? What about the cost of the birth? What if she has a c-section? What if she has an ectopic pregnancy? What if she hemorrhages during the birth? If she has a job, how much maternity leave will she get? Will she be able to stay at her job when she has a baby to take care of? How will she afford childcare? What about her child’s education? Will she be able to send her child to a safe school with good teachers? How will the raped woman afford health care for her child?

I am so sick of Republicans who are against reproductive rights, health care that covers contraception, and adequate funds for public education claiming that they care about improving the economy and jobs for everyone. Clearly, the only economy and the only jobs Republican policies support are those of high income males. Romney’s economic strategy comes down to this: If male breadwinners do well, America will do well. So if your financial health depends on a rich guy, Romney may be your candidate. But if it doesn’t, or if you’d rather is didn’t, consider voting for Obama in November.