Tag: Beauty Standards

Older Women Week: Charlize Theron: Too Hot to Be Wicked?

Film poster for Snow White and the Huntsman
This is a guest post by Katherine Newstead.

When I first heard that Charlize Theron was going to play The Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Huntsman (Sanders, 2012) I thought this was completely ridiculous; Theron is way too young and, frankly, way too hot. However, that was kind of the point.

Ravenna, aka The Wicked Queen, Theron’s character, bases her whole existence on maintaining her beauty and youth and stands as a symbol for women’s supposed fear of ageing and anxiety toward the ageing female body.

Charlize Theron is the Queen of Wicked Hot
In a scene toward the beginning of Snow White and the Huntsman, during Ravenna’s and the King’s wedding night, she tells of how she has replaced his old (emphasis on the “old”) Queen, and how, in time, she too would have been replaced. Thus, Ravenna speaks of the “natural” cycle of youth replacing age and appears to blame patriarchy for this situation, as men “toss women to the dogs like scraps” once they have finished with them.
“When a woman stays young and beautiful forever, the world is hers.”
Mirror, Mirror … er, not on the wall
Ravenna truly believes that the maintenance of age guarantees success. And why not? How many anti-ageing adverts will be shown on television today, promoting the latest magical cure for the horrors of ageing. Such adverts have been labelled as responsible for cultivating a new trend for female narcissism as a form of liberation and emancipation yet, as Douglas writes, it is not patriarchy that women blame for the flaws and disappointments that they see in themselves, but themselves (1995).

What is the most obvious symbol of narcissism? A mirror, naturally. And who has a mirror? The Wicked Queen; I see a connection forming. Ravenna’s somewhat obsessive relationship with her mirror is what ultimately becomes her downfall, not her relationship with Snow White. It is the mirror that goads her, telling her that she is not the most beautiful woman in the land; that would be Snow White, who never looks in the mirror and therefore isn’t haunted by the need to find, and ultimately destroy, perfection. As Waugh states:

Mirrors offer an illusory image of wholeness and completeness, the promise of the security of possession, but they too are agents of oppression and control, enticing us with their spurious identifications. (1989:12)

See, this is what happens when you don’t moisturise
 
Thus, Ravenna’s narcissism is fuelled by her mirror, which has a male voice (funny, that), and reflects (literally) the views of society, a society that is told time and again that to be successful and like, wanted, you have to appear young and beautiful.

So, oppressed by the chidings of the man in the mirror, Ravenna tries to ensure that she remains the most beautiful woman of all, and God help you if you get in her way. Ravenna literally sucks the life force out of any young woman in her path, perhaps a tad symbolic? You may be young and beautiful, but your anxieties about your rapidly ageing body — *points at Ravenna* — will eventually suck all the goodness out of you. Not to mention the years of hard work you’ll no doubt face, what with menstruating, having babies, getting paid less than anyone with a penis … I digress. 

But, seriously, Ravenna stands like a team mascot for post-feminist discourse on doing it for yourself, looking out for number one, revelling in your new found ability to look hot — at whatever the cost — and mow those bitches down who dare get in your way. Oh, and the whole thing about women becoming invisible once they reach a certain age and being overlooked by a society that sees them no longer economically viable? Yeah, Ravenna is far from invisible, what with all the shouting, killing, turning into a murder (right?) of crows. It’s like she’s saying, “HELLO? I’m still here, I still exist. I can be beautiful (and economically useful to society) toooooooooo!”
Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman
Yeah, so Charlize Theron as The Wicked (though not so old) Queen? PERFECT casting. Wish I’d thought of it myself.

Bibliography

Douglas, S. (1995) Where the Girls Are: Growing up Feminine with the Mass Media, Times Books: United States.

Waugh, P. (1989) Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern, Routledge: London.

Katherine Newstead is a 27 year-old Film Studies postgraduate, from the University of Exeter. After completing her Masters dissertation on the representation of girlhood in the Disney fairy tale, she has returned to the University of Exeter to write her PhD thesis on the “Othering” of older women in the contemporary cinematic fairy tale.

Wedding Week: You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You: ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ and the Promise of Bridal Transformation

This is a guest post by Jessica Freeman-Slade. 
As much as they contain all the elements of great cinema—gorgeous photography, lighting, costumes—weddings are hard to capture on film because their machinations and motivations are so terribly complicated. Even a film like Father of the Bride can’t distance itself from the fact that weddings are logistical nightmares, fraught with overblown expenses and political negotiations. And what wedding film would be complete without a slightly bonkers bride—a woman whose obsession with bridedom belies a slightly unstable mind? Nowhere is this more the case than in Muriel’s Wedding, the 1994 Australian film by P.J. Hogan that made Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths into major stars and prompted women everywhere to ask the question, “When I get married, who will I become?”
Muriel depressed at home

Muriel Heslop (Collette, in her first major role) has very little going for her as a wedding movie heroine. According to her friends from her banal suburban hometown of Porpoise Spit, Australia, she is beyond help—as one of them tells her, “You never wear the right clothes. You’re fat. You listen to 70s’ music. You bring us down, Muriel. You embarrass us.” Even if their criticisms are over the top, it’s plain that Muriel is uncomfortable in her own skin—the only moment where she looks relaxed is when she tunes out to Abba music in her bedroom, the walls of which are plastered with pages torn from bridal magazines. “I know I’m not normal,” she says to her bitchy friends, “but I’m trying to change.” “You’ll still be you,” they counter.

Muriel at resort

Their criticisms sting as badly as those from her father (Bill Hunter) a local celebrity clinging to his former political glory and doling out heavy psychological abuse to everyone in his family, including his meek and scatterbrained wife Betty (Jeanine Drynan, in a heartbreaking and subtle performance). Muriel yearns to escape from Porpoise Spit, and when her father’s mistress snags her a job as a cosmetics saleswoman, she cashes in her start-up money for a resort vacation to spite her old friends. There she reconnects with a former high school classmate Rhonda (Griffiths), who is nothing like Muriel’s former crowd.

Rachel Griffiths as Rhonda

Watching Rhonda and Muriel’s first conversation, you can see Muriel peeking out of her shell, as a brand new friend expresses real interest and enthusiasm in her life. Rhonda tells it like it is—she delivers the swift kick to the groin that the terrible Porpoise Spit girls deserve, and we immediately see what a friend like her does to liberate Muriel’s sense of self and fun. Is there anything more satisfying than watching Muriel and Rhonda triumph with their Abba number while the girls tear each other apart?

 Waterloo number

This is what triumph looks like—not a march down the aisle (we’ll get there later), but a victory dance with someone who matches you, white lame costume and all. The most romantic moment in the movie isn’t between Muriel and her new husband, it’s between Rhonda and Muriel as they celebrate their last night at the resort. Rhonda genuinely admires Muriel—partly for Muriel’s lie about a fiancé, but mostly because she is starting to stand up for herself. “In high school, you were so quiet you could hardly talk,” Rhonda tells her. “You were too shy to look at people . . . You’re not nothing, Muriel. You’ve made it.”

Rhonda and Muriel

It takes making a true friend like Rhonda to get her to leave her parents’ house and strike out for Sydney, where she gets a job as a video store clerk (right across the street from Rhonda’s job), finds a bit more of her own style, and begins dating. “This is my new life, I’m a new person—I’m changing my name, to Mariel.” Muriel/Mariel finds herself leaping fully into life—and into romance, without hesitating or fearing embarrassment. Even her first sexual encounter is full of joy—especially when she realizes the guy is even more eager to please than she is.

 Muriel’s first time

For a brief period, Muriel doesn’t count on Abba or wedding photos to feel good about herself. “Since I’ve met you and moved to Sydney, I haven’t listened to one Abba song,” she tells Rhonda. “That’s because now my life’s as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as ‘Dancing Queen’.” This confidence wanes, however, when Rhonda gets a scary diagnosis that leaves her in a wheelchair. Despondent, Muriel stops into a nearby bridal salon in hopes of comfort, in one of the most fetishistic wedding dress scenes of all time.

Muriel in wedding dress

Muriel’s yearning is palpable—she tears up as she’s swathed in silk, completely obsessed with the vision of herself as a beautiful bride. The illusion of desirability is enough to make her happy—for Muriel seeks transformation above all, the ability to feel beautiful and loved and to become Mariel, a bride, anyone except her old self.

 Bridal shop breakdown

When that transformative wedding presents itself, Muriel seizes the opportunity—even if it means marrying a foreign Olympic-level swimmer, David van Arkle (Daniel Lapaine), to help him gain citizenship. The marriage is predicated on a lie, and yet Muriel slips into the arrangement willingly, trading perfect love for a perfect wedding. Because she has such an extreme investment in this new version of herself, she leaves Rhonda behind, and as she walks down the aisle at her wedding (to an Abba tune, of course), she grins so broadly that she looks maniacal.

 Muriel’s wedding march

The wedding, in Muriel’s eyes, is a triumph—but when Rhonda, wheelchair-bound and stuck back in Porpoise Spit confronts her, the victory is suddenly very hollow. “I showed them,” Muriel beams. “Showed them what?” Rhonda asks. Muriel replies, “I’m as good as they are.” Rhonda is appalled. “Mariel van Arkle stinks. And she’s not half the person Muriel Heslop was.”

Muriel at altar

What is marriage supposed to do for a woman who doesn’t know her worth? Does a wedding dress make an ugly person beautiful? Does speaking vows equal promising love? Muriel epitomizes the kind of person who, in lieu of other prospects in her life, waits for the transformative power of her wedding day to find her true self. But this self wasn’t the one who blossomed with Rhonda and a new city—Muriel wanted to have the same success as that of her old friends, to be called successful because she had the marriage and the new name and the status of a beautiful wedding. But on her first night as a married woman, she sleeps alone, her husband a stranger, her friends all absent.

Betty (Muriel’s mom)

Muriel’s Wedding is basically a cautionary tale about valuing status and reputation over real connection. Muriel knows that she’s happy with Rhonda in Sydney, but by fulfilling her fantasies of beauty, wealth, and romantic achievement, she forgets her real strength: her honesty, decency, and kindness. These strengths were all there in her mother, Betty, whose cruel fate turns the movie from a girly romp into something much more meditative. She is talked over, pushed around, and utterly ignored, invisible even in her own home. Betty barely gets a moment of self-determination before she commits suicide, and her presence is felt most deeply in the frightening image of the Heslop backyard: a swath of literally scorched earth, where nothing can grow if nothing is tended and cared for.

Muriel in bed

Early in the film, Muriel tells her mom, “I’m gonna get married, and I’m gonna be a success.” And yet, weeping to her unfamiliar husband, Muriel realizes that her success is as thin and insubstantial as bridal organza. Speaking of her father, Muriel wails, “I thought I was so different—a new person. But I’m not. I’m just the same as him.” It takes retreating back to her true self, to calling herself Muriel once more, to actually feel loved, beautiful, and ready to take on the world. And Hogan delivers a finale that satisfies all those cravings.

 Finale

So ultimately putting Muriel’s Wedding in the wedding movie category is a bit like calling Thelma and Louise a crime thriller. Because the film skewers the narrow way a woman can view her wedding as a Cinderella-like escape, it may be one of the sharpest and smartest satires of our wedding-obsessed culture ever captured on film—and one of the best female empowerment movies ever made. While Muriel may have been a beautiful bride, she makes an even better heroine for single, married, and engaged women everywhere when she ditches the veil, the bouquet, and the bridesmaids, and finally learns to rely on herself.

Muriel at end


Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.

Wedding Week: ‘Shrek’: Happily Ever After Gets a Green Makeover

Princess Fiona

This is a guest post by Megan Wright.

When I first watched Shrek, I can’t really remember how I felt about Fiona, aside from the fact that I thought it was fantastic that she was fighting Robin Hood and his Merry Men. As the years passed, I bought the movie, and it was also broadcasted on several channels. It was almost impossible to go a year without seeing it. So, as I watched it more and more, I could figure out the underlying themes in Shrek: appearances don’t matter, the locking away of those perceived as different is wrong, and that talking donkeys are awesome. But the most important theme of the movie is how a strong woman almost gets tricked into a loveless marriage because of her low self worth, all due to the standards of beauty society imposes on her.

I’m talking, of course, about Princess Fiona. Fiona is meant to be a deliberate contrast to the stereotypical princess. Her elaborate way of talking is forgotten in favor of insulting Shrek. When Robin Hood tries to rescue/abduct her, she promptly beats the crap out of him. She sings, but when she does, she accidentally blows up a bird. During her years in a tower, Fiona hasn’t simply gazed out a window, but instead taught herself first aid and martial arts. She doesn’t take Shrek’s plan to get her back to Farquaad happily. When Shrek complains that it’s his job, she replies “Well, I’m sorry, but your job is not my problem.” She knows the way she wants this rescue to go, damn it, and she’s not going to go along with Shrek’s plans simply to make it easier on him.

Princess Fiona, not in Ogre form

So why does she get bullied into marrying Farquaad?

The problem is that Fiona lives in a world that tries to separate anyone who doesn’t fit the ideal representation of perfection. Lord Farquaad first talks about it, saying that the fairytale creatures are ruining his “perfect kingdom.” Shrek shows a world that really isn’t too different from our own. Sure, the segregated group includes talking pigs, wolves that enjoy dressing like grandmothers, witches riding on broomsticks, but their problems are still similar. The fairytale creatures are kicked off their land and moved into an inhospitable area (Shrek’s swamp) simply because they don’t fit the norms of Farquaad’s perfect kingdom. It’s not that far off from real world situations.

Here’s an example of how much beauty means in this world–in the beginning of the movie Farquaad uses a magic mirror and is given a list of several princesses to choose from to make into a queen. One of those princesses is Snow White, who later shows up in Shrek’s swamp, exiled with the dwarfs. This sends the message that if magic can help him obtain a beautiful wife, then he’s fine with it. It’s only the “undesirable” fairytale creatures that we see Farquaad hates. Throughout the movie we think that Farquaad hates fairytale creatures, but he doesn’t. He hates the fairytale creatures that don’t match up to his obsessive standards of beauty.

It’s almost no wonder that in this world, Fiona would be desperate to become someone who wasn’t ostracized, or excluded. Fiona’s sole reason for getting married is that she wants to fit into society.

Fiona’s been raised on traditional fairytales, on handsome princes rescuing fair maidens from curses. Her parents stuck her in a tower for almost all of her life, keeping her from realizing that, just maybe, being an ogre isn’t the worst thing in the world. Fiona’s strong and capable, but she’s also been extremely sheltered. She’s constantly been taught that being anything other than the princess in the traditional fairytales is wrong, and she’s never seen examples to prove otherwise.

That’s why when Shrek walks into her life, she starts to come out of her shell. Here is someone different from society, someone like her, and he’s kind and warm (to her, at least). He’s not even lacking in companionship–he’s got Donkey for a friend. With Shrek, Fiona slowly begins to realize that it’s okay to be an ogre.

Princess Fiona and Shrek

Still, Fiona’s self-loathing over her ogre self goes extremely deep. When she confesses that she’s an ogre to Donkey, she says that no one would want to marry a beast like her. Shrek overhears this, and believes she’s talking about him. When he confronts her about it, and throws her words back in her face, she immediately assumes he’s talking about her. Fiona has overheard Shrek make comments about his identity as an ogre and the issues that come with it, so it wouldn’t be a huge leap for her to consider the possibility that Shrek overheard her and thought she was talking about him. But Fiona’s self loathing runs so deep that she doesn’t even consider the possibility.

Ironically, Fiona doesn’t even seem to focus on the fact that if Shrek is rejecting her, he’s also rejecting himself. After all, he’s an ogre just like her. But, again, she loathes herself so much that she doesn’t even think of that.

Fiona’s marriage to Farquaad is, even from the beginning, one of desperation, not love. She wants to love him because she wants to believe that his kiss will break her spell. When she later realizes that he’s a jerk, she still goes along with the marriage because she wants to have the curse removed. It’s been so ground into her that being different is horrible, that she believes, even though she doesn’t love Farquaad, the kiss of someone “normal” will make her better.

In the short amount of time that we see Fiona engaged to Farquaad, we see that she loses a lot of the character traits that she shows throughout the movie. She reverts back to the eloquent talk that she had in the beginning; she passively sits around waiting for the wedding to start; and she doesn’t speak up for herself, even though she’s clearly miserable. By reverting to the expectations society has for her, she’s “normal” but unhappy.

That’s why the climax of the story, where Fiona reveals that she’s an ogre, is so powerful. By revealing herself to Shrek as an ogre she’s saying that she can’t let him love her, if he can’t love all of her.

Shrek and Princess Fiona

It’s symbolic that Fiona’s ogre self, the self that has been rejected by society, is Love’s True Form. It doesn’t match up to society’s standards (which makes sense, because society’s standards told her to marry the heartless Farquaad), but it’s the best version of Fiona.

Fiona’s rejection of Farquaad’s marriage proposal is a rejection of the conventional life she’s been taught to want. When Fiona accepts Shrek’s love, she also accepts herself. By Fiona embracing Love’s True Form, she embraces the life that she secretly wants–a life as the best, truest version of herself, no longer in hiding.

Megan Wright is a TV reviewer and co-editor for Watch It Rae! She can be found glued to her computer blogging about her favorite TV shows, movies and books.

Travel Films Week: Protecting Olive in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’

Movie poster for Little Miss Sunshine
This is a guest review by Melissa Richard.
Look around… this place is fucked! I don’t want these people judging Olive—fuck them! You’re the mom—you’re supposed to protect her! Everyone is gonna laugh at her, Mom… please don’t let her do this. Look, she’s not a beauty queen. She’s just not.

So says Dwayne to his mother Sheryl moments before his sister Olive hits the stage for the talent portion of the pageant that gives Little Miss Sunshine its title. Olive and Little Miss Sunshine are who and what pile the extended Hoover family into a yellow VW van and carry them across 800 miles from New Mexico to California. In the process, the Hoovers lose dreams and careers, gear clutches and horn capabilities, not to mention the heroin-snorting Grandpa. Dwayne’s outburst comes at the near-end of a trip filled with heartache and disappointment (often simultaneously gut-wrenching and hilarious), and not only because he recognizes the damage participating in the contest might cause to his younger sister. He also expresses the collective fear of the male Hoovers who have generally, through their own failures, come to see (and protect) Olive as a symbol of personal redemption.
Sheryl checking in with Olive before her talent act, with Richard and Dwayne looking on
Little Miss Sunshine is like many classic road trip films in that the trip itself is a vehicle (pun intended) for the characters to learn something about one another, about themselves, and/or to come to a kind of acceptance of one another, and of themselves, by the film’s end. And Little Miss Sunshine’s characters certainly have a lot to learn because, like most of us, they are deeply and, in some cases tragically, flawed.

Olive’s dad Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) is a failing motivational speaker (a complete contradiction); brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) is in teenage-boy training to become a jet pilot (which later goes down the tubes when it’s discovered that he’s colorblind); Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), the “number one highly-regarded Proust scholar” in America, is recovering from an attempted suicide after his love interest, a graduate student, dumps him for the “number two highly-regarded Proust scholar” in America; Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) is a heroin addict who’s been kicked out of his retirement community and has an abiding love of women, porn, and Rick James (and has, possibly, a knack for choreography); and then there’s mom Sheryl (Toni Collette), whose only major flaw seems to be furtively smoking cigarettes (and possibly marrying a failed motivational speaker). Olive (Abigail Breslin) and the pageant represent the movement toward something better, something successful (by literally moving toward the land of sunshine, California), even when it’s clear to everyone that Olive is just not a beauty queen, as Dwayne says. It’s not that she is a real contender that drives the Hoovers toward redemption. It’s the symbolic value of her possible success in the type of contest that society sanctions as a visible indicator of success (however troubling or, well, foolish a beauty contest is as an indicator of success for young girls and women). In other versions of these contests—careers, dreams of careers—Richard, Frank, and Dwayne, in particular, have failed.

Olive as a symbol of redemption (and the need to protect her as such) is established early in the film, when the frazzled Sheryl arrives home with Frank, and the family sits down to a working-mom meal of a bucket of fried chicken, salad, and Sprite Zero. Everyone else seems suited (or apathetic) enough to ignore the bandages on Frank’s wrists, but not Olive. She looks at Frank, gasps, and exclaims, “What happened to your arms?” Richard changes the subject to Olive’s pageant dance routine, but Frank interrupts, saying he’s had an accident and shifts the conversation to Dwayne’s vow of silence. Olive, however, insists. Frank says it’s “okay” to talk about it, which leads Sheryl to indicate that she’s “okay” with talking about it (she’s “pro-honesty”) if Frank is. After Frank permits Sheryl to tell Olive that he attempted suicide, which she does, Richard flips, suggests that it’s not an appropriate conversation to have at dinner, and “shushes” Olive. She’s nonplussed, however, and poignantly asks why Frank would want to kill himself.

Richard explaining to Olive why Uncle Frank may be a loser, but she’s going to be a winner, in the dinner scene
Professional pusher of motivational success that he is, Richard is having none of it. After listening to Frank’s building tale of unrequited love and academic failure, he spins the story into his own type of motivational-speak, interpreting Frank’s narrative as a series of “foolish choices” and “giving up on himself” for Olive. On the one hand, the interpretation is a way—albeit a clumsy, ineffective, and completely ridiculous one—to package the “why” of an attempted suicide to a seven-year-old. On the other hand, it’s a clear reflection of the underlying fear of failure that Richard himself is facing in the attempted sell of his “Refuse to Lose / 9 Steps” program (which does, indeed, fail). Richard may not realize this consciously, but as he spins Olive’s desire to compete into a similar “winner or loser” narrative to that of Frank’s, the family, as well as the audience, does—especially since the Hoovers can hardly afford to take the trip. Green-lighting the road trip is Richard’s way of explicitly protecting Olive’s dream and implicitly protecting his own.

The reasons for the Hoovers to protect Olive are not always as selfish as those that Richard might have for protecting her (and, on occasion, they have to protect Olive from her father’s philosophy). In fact, the literal protection of Olive from the social pressures that break us down as adults is often incredibly touching, as it is in the diner scene wherein Olive orders her waffles “a la mode-ee.” Although Sheryl questions Olive’s choice of ice cream on the grounds of it being so early in the morning, Richard objects because he’s still got his eye on her success (as a beauty queen specifically, but replace the pageant with anything else and he’d likely have a similar objection). He breaks into a patronizing lesson on how ice cream comes from cream, which comes from cows, and notes that “cream has a lot of fat in it.” Sheryl, bless her, knows where he’s going with this and mutters under her breath “Richh-eerd.” As usual, Richard turns Sheryl’s earlier “pro-honesty” defense of telling Olive about Frank’s suicide attempt against her (“she’s gonna find out anyway”). When Olive asks what she might find out, Richard replies, “Well, when you eat ice cream, the fat in the ice cream becomes fat in the body.”

The Hoovers at their first pit stop on the road, looking totally enthused as Richard explains to Olive how cream makes you fat
To her credit—and displaying the role she plays in the protection of her daughter—Sheryl looks at Olive and says, “I just want you to understand that it’s okay to be skinny and it’s okay to be fat, if that’s what you wanna be. Whatever you want, it’s okay.” While Olive is processing this, Richard asks Olive to consider whether beauty queens are “skinny or fat,” to which she quietly replies “They’re skinny, I guess.” And Sheryl shoots Richard a death-ray stare as the waitress comes over and serves Olive her “a la mode-ee” side dish.

“Does anyone want my ice cream?” Olive sadly asks.

Grandpa to the rescue. “Yeah, I’d like a little…” he says, and then he invites everyone else to have some, as well, until Olive protests “Wait! Stop! Don’t eat it all…” and digs in. (And Sheryl cuts Richard’s attempted interruption of this as Dwayne shoots a spitball through a straw directly into Richard’s face.) Taking their cue from Sheryl, Grandpa, Dwayne, and Frank are not only protecting Olive’s desire to eat ice cream; they are ultimately protecting her right to make her own choices and to disregard what society (a patriarchal society represented by Richard, maybe?) tells her to choose.

This particular scene foreshadows the protection the Hoover men give Olive during her dance performance during the talent portion of Little Miss Sunshine. Having made it to California and only losing one person (poor Grandpa), the Hoovers have everything invested in Olive, including the emotional toll their own failures have taken on them. Olive’s routine to Rick James’ “Super Freak,” choreographed by the recently departed Grandpa, is the film’s true highlight because it does so much in a few minutes: it makes explicit the sexualized undertones of the child glitz pageant world (Olive might be shaking her bootie and doing the ever-lovable “growl crawl,” but the little dolls in their make-up and teased hair represent something similar on a different frequency); it provides the context through which the Hoovers are able to pull together and to accept themselves as they are; but it also provides the moment when Richard, as well as Frank and Dwayne, are really able to protect Olive for who she is and what she’s chosen. With the head pageant judge in a tizzy over the routine, Richard jumps on stage to protect Olive from being pulled off, but instead of quietly suggesting to his daughter that it’s time to go, he begins dancing with her (and is joined by the rest of the Hoovers in quick succession).

Frank, Richard, and Dwayne rockin’ out on stage with Olive
The Hoover boys may not like what the pageant represents, which they become clearly aware of once they arrive, and it’s not about protecting Olive as a symbol anymore. It’s about representing her choice to be in the pageant, whether she’s truly a contender or not.

Which brings me back to the quotation from Dwayne I opened with.

Dwayne and Richard are now mentally awake enough to be concerned about Olive competing in the show; they’ve now seen the polished contestants strut and pose for the judges, and they know she’s not made of that stuff. As Dwayne points out, she’s just not. At first flustered by the sudden concern toward Olive, Sheryl finally explains to them: 

Olive is who she is. She has worked so hard, she’s poured everything into this. We can’t just take it away from her—we can’t! I know you wanna protect her… but we gotta let Olive be Olive. 

Like in the diner scene when she tells Olive she can be skinny or fat or whatever she wants to be, Sheryl has been protecting Olive all along—not because she herself is missing something, not because she’s failed personally, but because she recognizes the importance of a little girl being able to be, well, who she is. Sheryl isn’t your typical pageant mom… she’s not a “pageant mom” at all. She’s far removed from those types of moms you see on shows like TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras, women who put out big bucks for high-teased hair pieces, spray tans, and “flippers” that transform mere babies into miniature adult likenesses, who act out routines for their daughters to follow from the audience, who train, coach, and, sometimes quite literally, push these girls toward the stage. In fact, Sheryl is clearly removed from the process in a positive sense: from the moment she hears the phone message from her sister, Cindy, indicating that Olive is eligible to compete in Little Miss Sunshine (and rolls her eyes at the revelation that the first-place winner set to compete was disqualified because of “diet pills or something”), Sheryl is proud and supportive of Olive no matter what. She’s not pushy, but she’s not disconnected, either. She is being what Dwayne reminds her she is—“the mom”—by allowing Olive the freedom of her own choices.

Letting “Olive be Olive”—and learning to protect the choice Olive can make to be herself—is ultimately what allows the Hoovers to accept themselves and one another. We don’t know what life will be like for the Hoovers once they return to New Mexico, but one thing is for certain by the film’s end: they’ve broken through a lot more than the barrier gate in the parking lot of the Redondo Beach Inn.

Melissa Richard is a part-time English instructor at High Point University in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina. She writes about work and women in nineteenth-century Britain (as well as less esoteric topics), likes to take photographs of things and stuff, and thinks that dancing is really fun.



The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?

The beautiful Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty

This was originally posted at The Funny Feminist.

David Clennon does not want you to vote for Zero Dark Thirty for any single Academy Award.

Who is David Clennon, you might ask? An actor and activist who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He does not want you – and by “you,” I mean other members of the Academy – to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the five categories which the film was nominated. He does not want anyone to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the Best Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, or Sound Editing categories.

Kathryn Bigelow? NO MORE OSCARS FOR YOU!

He does not want anyone to do this because he believes Zero Dark Thirty promotes torture. He also believes that Jessica Chastain should not be rewarded for her performance in the film because actors have moral obligations to choose their projects well. He writes on truth-out.org:

“Everyone who contributes skill and energy to a motion picture – including actors – shares responsibility for the impressions the picture makes and the ideas it expresses. If I had played the role that was offered to me on Fox’s 24 (Season 7), I would have been guilty of promoting torture, and I couldn’t have evaded my own responsibility by blaming the writers and directors. So Jessica Chastain won’t get my vote for Best Actress. With her beauty and her tough-but-vulnerable posturing, she almost succeeds in making extreme brutality look weirdly heroic.”

There are many things about this piece that are reactionary and completely misinterpret the point of Bigelow’s complicated film, and many things about the extreme backlash to Zero Dark Thirty that are ill-considered.

For now, though, I have only one question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

The gorgeous Jessica Chastain

Clennon mentions Chastain’s beauty later in the piece as well:

“Later, the female interrogator (and Zero’s heroine Maya [Chastain]), supervises the beating and near-drowning (aka waterboarding) of another detainee, Faraj; he gasps for air, gags, shudders and chokes; director Kathryn Bigelow then shows Chastain in a clean, well-lighted restroom, looking pretty, but tired and frustrated; Bigelow does not give us a view of Faraj after his ordeal.”

Again, I ask the question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

The lovely Jessica Chastain

It seems strange to me that her looks are mentioned twice in an article that has a count of fewer than 600 words.

Clennon isn’t the only one who uses that adjective in describing Chastain’s character. Marjorie Cohn’s piece at The Huffington Post also calls Maya the “beautiful heroine” – a beautiful heroine who says that she’s “fine” in response to watching a detainee get tortured:

“Torture is also illegal and immoral — important points that are ignored in Zero Dark Thirty. After witnessing the savage beating of a detainee at the beginning of the film, the beautiful heroine ‘Maya’ says ‘I’m fine.’”

Once more, with feeling: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

Did we mention she’s a hottie?

I don’t think Jessica Chastain’s physical attractiveness is remotely relevant to the film’s stance on torture, but apparently, these writers do. They link her beauty with her supposed heroism. Clenon does this most blatantly by stating that Chastain’s beauty, combined with her tough-yet-vulnerable personality, almost makes torture seem heroic.

It seems to me that these writers, Clenon particular, has swallowed the Beauty Equals Goodness trope hook, line, and sinker. At the very least, they’ve been conditioned to believe that “beautiful woman = heroic woman” in a Hollywood movie, that Chastain’s beauty is the director’s way of telling the audience that we’re supposed to see her as the moral center of the film.

This is a sign, to me, that much of the criticism surrounding Zero Dark Thirty has roots in a very latent, subtle form of sexism. Jessica Chastain is a beautiful woman, and therefore her character must be the moral center of the film, a spokesperson for both the film’s message and the director’s beliefs. Beautiful women only exist in mainstream film to be rescued, to be prizes for the male characters, or to be the film’s moral center. Maya does not need to be rescued and is no prize for a male lead (because there isn’t one), so therefore she’s the moral center, and omg this movie supports torture!

Girl purdy, ergo she must be stating the film’s message

 
Am I reaching with this theory? Perhaps. But I can’t help notice that, even though Clenon cautions the Academy to avoid awarding any Oscars to Zero Dark Thirty, Chastain and Bigelow are the only two people he mentions by name. He never once mentions the name of Mark Boal, the screenwriter who penned those torture scenes he found so offensive and morally wrong. He never says “the screenwriter,” period. All of the attention is on either Chastain or Bigelow, not writer.

He mentions that when he was choosing parts, it would have been unfair of him as an actor to put all the blame on the director and writers for their material. Yet in his article on Zero Dark Thirty, he does put some blame on the director – yet not the writer.

Screenwriter Mark Boal. Attractiveness level irrelevant.

It doesn’t take a genius to play “one of these things is not like the other” with Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, and Mark Boal. Anyone with a background of watching Sesame Street can guess why Boal’s name was left out of this plea to other members of the Academy, why the screenwriter let completely off of the hook.

Bigelow, on the other hand, is apparently no better than Leni Riefenstahl.

Pictured: Leni Riefenstahl. Not Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow, like Chastain, is also an attractive woman. So attractive that prominent writers (or writers who were once prominent ages ago) believe that she only receives acclaim because of her physical beauty.

It appears that when women step out of their designated roles to be moral centers of a story, they are no better than Nazi propagandists.

When beauty fails to equal goodness, Beauty is Bad.

The face of evil, apparently

Interestingly enough, Jason Clarke, the actor who plays the torturer CIA agent Dan in Zero Dark Thirty, is a handsome man. I never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was handsome.

I also never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was a man.

It’s a shame that Bigelow didn’t cast an ugly woman or a man in the lead role of Maya. Then the audience would have known right away that the protagonist was not necessarily meant to be a hero, and this confusion over the film’s stance on torture would never have occurred.

Actor Jason Clarke. Attractiveness level also irrelevant.

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?

The beautiful Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty

This was originally posted at The Funny Feminist.

David Clennon does not want you to vote for Zero Dark Thirty for any single Academy Award.

Who is David Clennon, you might ask? An actor and activist who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He does not want you – and by “you,” I mean other members of the Academy – to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the five categories which the film was nominated. He does not want anyone to vote for Zero Dark Thirty in the Best Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, or Sound Editing categories.

Kathryn Bigelow? NO MORE OSCARS FOR YOU!

He does not want anyone to do this because he believes Zero Dark Thirty promotes torture. He also believes that Jessica Chastain should not be rewarded for her performance in the film because actors have moral obligations to choose their projects well. He writes on truth-out.org:

“Everyone who contributes skill and energy to a motion picture – including actors – shares responsibility for the impressions the picture makes and the ideas it expresses. If I had played the role that was offered to me on Fox’s 24 (Season 7), I would have been guilty of promoting torture, and I couldn’t have evaded my own responsibility by blaming the writers and directors. So Jessica Chastain won’t get my vote for Best Actress. With her beauty and her tough-but-vulnerable posturing, she almost succeeds in making extreme brutality look weirdly heroic.”

There are many things about this piece that are reactionary and completely misinterpret the point of Bigelow’s complicated film, and many things about the extreme backlash to Zero Dark Thirty that are ill-considered.

For now, though, I have only one question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

The gorgeous Jessica Chastain

Clennon mentions Chastain’s beauty later in the piece as well:

“Later, the female interrogator (and Zero’s heroine Maya [Chastain]), supervises the beating and near-drowning (aka waterboarding) of another detainee, Faraj; he gasps for air, gags, shudders and chokes; director Kathryn Bigelow then shows Chastain in a clean, well-lighted restroom, looking pretty, but tired and frustrated; Bigelow does not give us a view of Faraj after his ordeal.”

Again, I ask the question: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

The lovely Jessica Chastain

It seems strange to me that her looks are mentioned twice in an article that has a count of fewer than 600 words.

Clennon isn’t the only one who uses that adjective in describing Chastain’s character. Marjorie Cohn’s piece at The Huffington Post also calls Maya the “beautiful heroine” – a beautiful heroine who says that she’s “fine” in response to watching a detainee get tortured:

“Torture is also illegal and immoral — important points that are ignored in Zero Dark Thirty. After witnessing the savage beating of a detainee at the beginning of the film, the beautiful heroine ‘Maya’ says ‘I’m fine.’”

Once more, with feeling: what does Jessica Chastain’s beauty have to do with it?

Did we mention she’s a hottie?

I don’t think Jessica Chastain’s physical attractiveness is remotely relevant to the film’s stance on torture, but apparently, these writers do. They link her beauty with her supposed heroism. Clenon does this most blatantly by stating that Chastain’s beauty, combined with her tough-yet-vulnerable personality, almost makes torture seem heroic.

It seems to me that these writers, Clenon particular, has swallowed the Beauty Equals Goodness trope hook, line, and sinker. At the very least, they’ve been conditioned to believe that “beautiful woman = heroic woman” in a Hollywood movie, that Chastain’s beauty is the director’s way of telling the audience that we’re supposed to see her as the moral center of the film.

This is a sign, to me, that much of the criticism surrounding Zero Dark Thirty has roots in a very latent, subtle form of sexism. Jessica Chastain is a beautiful woman, and therefore her character must be the moral center of the film, a spokesperson for both the film’s message and the director’s beliefs. Beautiful women only exist in mainstream film to be rescued, to be prizes for the male characters, or to be the film’s moral center. Maya does not need to be rescued and is no prize for a male lead (because there isn’t one), so therefore she’s the moral center, and omg this movie supports torture!

Girl purdy, ergo she must be stating the film’s message

 
Am I reaching with this theory? Perhaps. But I can’t help notice that, even though Clenon cautions the Academy to avoid awarding any Oscars to Zero Dark Thirty, Chastain and Bigelow are the only two people he mentions by name. He never once mentions the name of Mark Boal, the screenwriter who penned those torture scenes he found so offensive and morally wrong. He never says “the screenwriter,” period. All of the attention is on either Chastain or Bigelow, not writer.

He mentions that when he was choosing parts, it would have been unfair of him as an actor to put all the blame on the director and writers for their material. Yet in his article on Zero Dark Thirty, he does put some blame on the director – yet not the writer.

Screenwriter Mark Boal. Attractiveness level irrelevant.

It doesn’t take a genius to play “one of these things is not like the other” with Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, and Mark Boal. Anyone with a background of watching Sesame Street can guess why Boal’s name was left out of this plea to other members of the Academy, why the screenwriter let completely off of the hook.

Bigelow, on the other hand, is apparently no better than Leni Riefenstahl.

Pictured: Leni Riefenstahl. Not Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow, like Chastain, is also an attractive woman. So attractive that prominent writers (or writers who were once prominent ages ago) believe that she only receives acclaim because of her physical beauty.

It appears that when women step out of their designated roles to be moral centers of a story, they are no better than Nazi propagandists.

When beauty fails to equal goodness, Beauty is Bad.

The face of evil, apparently

Interestingly enough, Jason Clarke, the actor who plays the torturer CIA agent Dan in Zero Dark Thirty, is a handsome man. I never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was handsome.

I also never assumed that I was meant to find his actions morally correct, or view him as a moral authority, because he was a man.

It’s a shame that Bigelow didn’t cast an ugly woman or a man in the lead role of Maya. Then the audience would have known right away that the protagonist was not necessarily meant to be a hero, and this confusion over the film’s stance on torture would never have occurred.

Actor Jason Clarke. Attractiveness level also irrelevant.

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

LGBTQI Week: "I’m Not Running, I’m Choosing": ‘Pariah’ and Gender Performance

Warning: spoilers ahead!!
“Who do you become if you can’t be yourself?” Pariah, my absolute favorite film of 2011, tackles that question. 
Written and directed by Dee Rees and produced by Nekisa Cooper, the powerful Pariah tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye in an astounding performance), a 17-year-old black lesbian in Brooklyn. Studious, artistic and sensitive, Alike is a writer who knows who she is but hides her sexuality from her family. We so rarely see positive portrayals of black women and queer women on-screen. Here, we have the privilege to see both. With subtlety and grace, it’s an exquisite and achingly beautiful female-centric coming-of-age film about a young woman discovering her sexuality and asserting her identity. 
Carrie Nelson already wrote an articulate and intelligent review of the award-winning film. You should seriously go read it! But I want to touch on a few points that particularly struck me while watching, particularly about gender performance and identity. 
Most films don’t address teenage sexuality. Sure they may objectify women or poke fun at raging hormones. But they don’t often explore how teens’ discover their sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, people of color’s sexuality, or queer sexuality.
Throughout the film, we receive visual cues to Alike’s gender performance. When we first see Alike in a club, she’s wearing a loose men’s jersey, baggy jeans and a baseball cap. She’s emulating her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker). On the bus home, Alike removes her hat and shirt, revealing a form-fitting top. She puts on earrings. All for her overprotective, lonely and overbearing mother Audrey (Kim Wayans). When she’s around her mom, Alike wears stereotypically feminine clothing. Flouncy skirts, dresses, snug blouses – all clothing that “shows off her figure” like her mother wants. Her mother buys her these clothes, knowing full well that Alike abhors wearing them. Yet refusing to accept her daughter, she tries to orchestrate her daughter’s identity.
Alike’s mother can’t handle the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. Audrey shows a colleague at lunch a fuchsia sweater she bought for Alike. She tells Arthur (Charles Parnell), Alike’s father, that she’s “tired of this tomboy thing she’s doing.” Yet Alike tries to express herself, telling her parents that the sweater “isn’t me.” Alike’s identity contradicts her vision of her daughter that she imposed on Alike. Alike’s father is more protective of her as she’s a “daddy’s girl.” Yet he refuses to admit or see the signs that Alike might be a lesbian. Between the two is Alike’s sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) who knows about her sexuality and loves her regardless. 
Whenever Alike leaves home, she transforms herself into the identity she chooses. At school, we see her rush to the girls’ bathroom to change. She adopts a more masculine appearance to coincide with her gender non-conformity. Laura buys Alike a strap-on to have sex with a woman. But Alike’s uncomfortable wearing it (it’s white, it pinches her) and ends up throwing it away. 
For Alike, both sets of clothing – the hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine – are a costume. She rebels from the princess wardrobe her mother wants for her by going to the other extreme, exploring if it’s who she is. But neither appearance encapsulates Alike. Both the butch and the femme identities are disconnected from her personality. 
“Alike’s a woman who knows she loves women, and is sure in that, but her struggle is how to be. Her struggle is a more nuanced struggle of gender identity within the queer community. She’s not the same person that (her friend) Laura is, neither is she this pink princess that her mother wants her to be. She falls somewhere in between. Finding the courage to carve out that space is her journey.” 
Audrey suspects her daughter is a lesbian or at the very least is attracted to women. But she tries to derail Alike’s sexuality. Audrey forces Alike and the charismatic Bina (Aasha Davis), the daughter of a work colleague and one of Alike’s classmates, to spend time together in a vain attempt to separate Alike from hanging out with Laura, who’s own mother has disowned her for being a lesbian. Alike tells her mother that nothing is going to change, Audrey replies, “God doesn’t make mistakes,” as if homosexuality is a mistake. But Audrey’s plan backfires as Alike and Bina bond over music and share a growing attraction to one another. 
Drawn to one another, Alike and Bina have sex. Despite their shared intimacy, Bina rejects Alike. Breaking Alike’s heart and devastating her, Bina tells her she’s not “gay-gay” and asks her to keep their encounter secret. We see that Bina possesses sexual fluidity yet is afraid to commit to a woman, perhaps due to society’s heteronormative standards. Or maybe she doesn’t want to commit to anyone, male or female. Or maybe she’s an insensitive asshole. 
Whatever Bina’s motivations, Alike’s heartbreak ushers in her refusal to bury her identity any longer. Amidst a huge fight between her parents, Audrey angrily tells Arthur, “Your daughter is turning into a damn man right before your eyes.” Alike tells her parents she’s a lesbian, which enrages her mother. Audrey hits her repeatedly, her father trying to restrain her, after Alike finally confirms what her mother already knew. 
Alike turns to Laura (who tries again to reach out to her mother after she earns her GED) for solace and support. Both women are able to commiserate as friends and as lesbians rejected by their mothers’ gendered expectations. 
By the end of the film, we see Alike’s clothing change again. Adopting some of Bina’s style fused with her own – perhaps to convey that she’s learned from her heartache or it may be her acknowledgement of her sexual transformation – she wears scarves and earrings with jeans. No longer shadowing Laura and no longer conforming to her mother’s gendered expectations, Alike rejects the gender binary of butch and femme, a symbolic balance of her identity, a unison of femininity and masculinity. 
Alike divulges her feelings through spoken word. Her poem at the end of Pariah is hauntingly stunning (making me weep uncontrollably), echoing her painful yet ultimately freeing journey towards self-acceptance: 
“Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free.” 
Pariah shattered my heart with its aching beauty, uplifting my soul. We are allowed a window to witness her journey and self-discovery. Through her wardrobe and poetry, Alike eventually expresses herself as a lesbian in the way that she wishes. Alike insists she’s not running, she’s choosing. While she means this literally, there’s  meaning beneath the surface. No longer running from who she is, Alike chooses to embrace her identity. Watching Alike discover and assert herself is beauty, poetry in motion.

Guest Writer Wednesday: A Feminist Review of ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Guest post written by Rachel Redfern originally published at Not Another Wave. Cross-posted with permission.

The fairy tale redux is the latest vogue in Hollywood and poor Snow White has been remixed and redone twice in the past year. I didn’t see the Julia Roberts and Nathan Lane adaptation, about which I heard unpleasant things (I wonder though, can anything with the brilliant Nathan Lane ever be that bad?), but the trailer looked promising, despite the presence of Kristin Stewart.

I’m going to go off on a tangent here about Kristin Stewart: really, Hollywood? You like Kristen Stewart that much that you’ve decided to continue to feed her roles? Can’t you just admit that she’s a horrifically, terrible actress? She has literally one expression she uses: surprised fear. I have stuffed animals with a greater range of displayed emotion.

That tepid, surprised fear bleeds its unfortunate paralysis into the rest of the film, which had an otherwise legitimately promising cast and a script with some real potential. The film, and most notably Stewart, fails to commit to anything. Is Snow White a herald of action hero bad-assery intent on her destiny to kill the wicked witch? Or is she an angelic innocent saint, so pure that her goodness can overcome the queen’s toxic, kingdom-killing evil? Stewart definitely has no idea and so neither do the characters who interact with her, making her role (the title one) the most boring and confusing part of the film.

This leads into one of my main feminist concerns with the film, the fact that Stewart’s Snow White is supposedly only powerful because of her “innocence and purity.” Again we have to go back to ideas of innocence and purity for women, without which, we can apparently accomplish nothing, nor be of any value. This is, of course, in direct opposition to the male characters in the film who are drunk, unethical and constantly killing something. This kind of clichéd, stereotype reinforcing portrayal of the wounded, nasty, albeit powerful warrior, who falls in love with the gentle, sweet maiden (always pure), is without a doubt the most annoying thing ever. 
In a supposedly “enlightened” society, why do we insist upon returning to Victorian ideals of female purity and a demeaning “innocence” (meaning lacking in life experience and child-like)? I am neither pure nor innocent, yet I manage to hold my own in life and (hopefully) do some good. 
However, that doesn’t mean that the film is wholly without any redeeming qualities; the film has a strong focus on the evil queen and gives her a powerful back-story, one that explains her obsession with youth and beauty. The reason she’s so obsessed with beauty? It has been her only means of gaining power and protecting herself from men. This plotline made a great parallel to our own rich and famous and their fascination with cosmetic surgery: in order to stay powerful and current, they must stay young and beautiful or be eviscerated by the media and potentially lose their jobs.

The plotline can be taken even further though. Not only is she conscripted into a life of damaging narcissism because of her beauty, but other women are similarly used. Recognizing that their beauty is both their power and their undoing, we meet a commune of women who have scarred their faces in order to protect themselves from the queen, a plot line that reminded me of the current situation in the Middle East where rules governing women and their clothing have reached new heights. There, some people believe that women should hide their tempting eyes as a way to save men from being forced to ravish them in the streets. 
Instead of exploring that plotline further however, the filmmakers decided to move on to another nonsense scene of Stewart looking scared and confused while running through a field. 
However, the costume design was amazing, the sets inspiring, the music beautiful (I can say with absolutely certainty that the new Florence and the Machine song, “Breath of Life,” which was created for the film, is awesome), and the cinematography inspiring. 
Charlize Theron did a good job as the tortured queen and Sam Spruell as her creepy brother was excellent; their relationship was one of the best parts of the film in my mind. Chris Hemsworth was fairly bland, but nice to look at, so I personally forgive him for being a bit boring.
All in all, the film was a gold mine of good-filmmaking and feminist potential, but which came up short because of it’s inability to either fully embrace its traditional fairy tale values or its modern ones.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Up with Chris Hayes: News Program Has a Conversation about Women and Media That Lasts Longer Than 90 Seconds

Last week Megan wrote an excellent post in response to Ashley Judd’s op-ed piece in The Daily Beast and the national conversation started by the actor speaking out about the treatment of women’s bodies, in particular, in the media. 
Of the many conversations sparked by Judd, this roundtable discussion on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes strikes me as particularly good. As alluded to in the title, the program focused on the issue of women and media longer than the usual sound bite allows. While the entire show wasn’t dedicated to the topic, the group did discuss cultural expectations for women and the treatment of women in the media for more than 15 minutes. Included in the discussion are writer, director, and producer of Miss Representation, Jennifer Siebel Newsom; director of Washington public policy center Demos, Heather McGhee; and Princeton University professor Betsey Stevenson.
Watch the clip here, and please share it widely!

Quote of the Day: Actor Ashley Judd Takes on Bodysnarking Media

ashley-judd

Written by Megan Kearns.

After media speculation over her allegedly “puffy face” caused a “viral media frenzy,” actor Ashley Judd decided to speak out against the media’s misogynistic accusations. Beyond her career as an actor, Judd is a humanitarian and philanthropist, a global ambassador for YouthAIDS and a Harvard graduate. The feminist activist — who dialogues about rape culture and proudly supports reproductive justice — confronted sexism, patriarchy and the media’s incessant scrutiny of women’s faces and bodies. In Judd’s must-read post for The Daily Beast, she writes:

“The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.”

Love, love, LOVE this! I mean, who the hell cares if an actor has gained weight? Judd shouldn’t have to justify or defend her appearance. The media needs to cease the destructive commentaries and obsessive deconstruction of women’s bodies, debating whether or not a celeb has gained weight or had plastic surgery. And don’t even get me started on those god awful “baby bump patrols” in the tabloids. Bleh.

Controlling women’s bodies consumes our sexist and ageist society. Women obsess over their appearance because they see unhealthy and unrealistic depictions of female actors and models in film, TV, magazines and on billboards. Photoshopped faces and bodies saturate the media, creating unattainable images of beauty. We’re supposed to wax and tweeze body hair, slather on age-defying creams, diet and exercise curves into submission. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women. On the flip side, the media chastises women for being too bony or thin. The media constantly dissects, critiques and polices women’s bodies.

In her Daily Beast article, Judd also succinctly defines patriarchy, reminding us that men aren’t the sole perpetrators of sexism. Women are too:

“That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.”

Judd couldn’t be more spot on. Patriarchy puts the needs of white men and boys first. Patriarchy silences and constrains women and girls yet makes them culprits in policing other women’s bodies and behavior. Women need to stop tearing down other women.

It’s interesting Judd’s patriarchy media manifesto comes out right after some asshole critics deemed Jennifer Lawrence’s body too fat, too curvy and not emaciated enough to play Hunger Games’ Katniss from the starving and impoverished District 12.

The New York Times’ Mahnola Dargis claimed “her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy commented on her “lingering baby fat,” Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells accuses Lawrence of being “big-boned” and “seems too big for Hutcherson” as male romantic partners should at least be as tall as their female counterparts (I shit you not).

Thankfully, others like Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood, Slate’s L.V. Anderson, LA Times’ Alexandra Le Tellier, LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, as well as many others have called out this bullshit bodysnarking. Jennifer Lawrence, who chose not to diet for the role (good for her), has also apparently laughed off the media’s criticism of her body.

And of course there’s been an onslaught of racist commentary surrounding Rue. Her character’s innocence and purity and the audience’s ability to empathize with her apparently went out the window the minute racist filmgoers saw a Black girl.

Sophia Savage for Thompson on Hollywood points out that audiences called Kate Winslet “too fat” for the 3-D rerelease of Titanic. Winslet “responded that she’s now thinner than co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.” Winslet has spoken out about her weight and body image before, particularly her disdain for magazines’ overzealous photoshopping to make her look unrealistically thin. And I remember when Titanic originally premiered in 1997, audiences and film critics taunted Winslet’s weight. Clearly some things don’t change. Sigh.

But cruel commentary on women’s appearances isn’t just reserved for those in Hollywood. And not everyone can just shrug off the media’s mockery. Conservative pundits Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham as well as others in the media have skewered columnist and blogger Meghan McCain for her weight and appearance. McCain said that it’s as if “all women in the media should lose a bunch of weight if they want to go on television to talk about anything.” She admitted she’s seen a therapist because of the media’s “really weird reaction” to her body. Omg I don’t blame her — I freak out when someone doesn’t like one of my blog posts! And of course I’ll never forget the horrific misogynistic dissection of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin (their clothes, hair, bodies, faces, sexiness) during the 2008 presidential election.

We don’t see this level of relentless scrutiny and bodysnarking of male bodies. Women and girls are continually held up to unattainable toxic beauty standards, punished and criticized if they transgress these warped norms. A positive body image eludes many of us as a result. We can be anything we dream of, so long as we’re thin and sexy — and of course “sexy” means white women with long-flowing hair. Society continually places importance on womens’ and girls’ appearances over their merit and intellect, reducing us to sex objects. The media tells us our value and self-worth reside in our beauty.

We’re teaching future generations to wage war with their bodies. Nearly half of all 3- to 6-year-old girls worry about being fat and “eating disorders having risen steadily in children and teens over the last few decades.” According to the documentary Miss Representation, the average age of plastic surgery is 17 years old. Girls internalize self-hatred. They grow up thinking they must alter and transform their appearance in order to achieve acceptance and happiness.

Having met Ashley Judd on a few occasions, I can say she is every bit as impassioned in person as she appears in-print or on-screen. We need more celebs — like Judd, Geena Davis, Kerry Washington, Martha Plimpton, Margaret Cho, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Roseanne Barr — who are outspoken staunch feminists, unafraid to call out sexist bullshit. We all need to challenge the media’s misogynistic attacks on women’s bodies.

Image by the U.S. federal government via the public domain in the U.S.

 

Why We All Need to See Young Adult, a.k.a. How Diablo Cody Shines a Light on the Cost of Beauty

This guest review by Molly McCaffrey previously appeared at her blog I Will Not Diet. 

I’m thrilled that it’s finally Oscar season, and I get to see DOZENS of outstanding movies between now and Sunday, February 26th when I’ll walk the red carpet with The Help‘s Viola Davis and The Ides of March‘s Ryan Gosling (also of Feminist Ryan Gosling fame).

Okay, so I won’t really be walking the red carpet, but a girl can dream, right? And who knows? Maybe I’ll spring for a long roll of red tissue paper and unroll it in front of my flat-screen.

I’ve already seen The Descendants (loved it) and Hugo (bleh—too slow for me), and last night I also got to see Young Adult from the Juno writing-directing team of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman.

First, let me say that Young Adult is an outstanding piece of filmmaking—it’s dark and funny and intelligent and honest in a way that not many films are anymore when they’re this entertaining.

But the reason I want you all to see Young Adult is not only because it’s such a good film, but also because it’s an important film for woman—a film that explores issues central to our identity such as beauty, gender, marriage, motherhood, and family among others.

Of course, the issue most relevant to this blog is beauty, which is one of the main themes of the film. Without giving anything away in terms of plot, I can tell you that the main character, Mavis—played with heartbreaking gravity by Oscar winner Charlize Theron—is obsessed with the way she looks and seems to gather a good deal of her self-worth from her looks.

At one point in the film—and the preview—Mavis tells a Macy’s clerk that she wants an outfit to help her seduce her ex. The clerk says, “You want to remind him of what he’s missing,” and Mavis responds by saying something like, “Oh, he knows what he’s missing. He’s seen me.” The implication is that Mavis’ value is completely derived from her looks: her gorgeous, heart-shaped face and her fit, flawless body.

But though other characters see only the physical manifestation of Mavis’ beauty, the viewer is treated to the lengths Mavis must go to to achieve that beauty.

In fact, Mavis spends a good deal of her time (probably a third of most days) primping in some fashion or another—she spends hours styling her hair, applying her makeup, shopping for expensive clothes, shaving her legs, and visiting a salon where she gets manicures, pedicures, facials, waxing, and various other treatments on a daily basis.

Yes, I said daily.

After all this is done, Mavis looks fabulous—almost as good as the real-life Charlize Theron. But when she doesn’t devote that much time to her looks, she is a disheveled mess—she walks the streets in sweats and a t-shirt, gulping from a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and pulling at her matted tangle of hair.

The implicit message is frighteningly clear: a woman doesn’t look this good—at least not at the age of 37 like Mavis—without a hell of a lot of help. And money.

I especially love that these two versions of Mavis—the Mavis who takes hours of time and piles of cash to put together and the Mavis who rolls out of bed in the morning—are shown in such stark contrast to each other.

She is both the former Homecoming queen who has held on to her looks as she approaches forty…

and the lonely, depressed divorcee who can’t be bothered to change out of her pajamas…
I greatly appreciate this depiction of the two sides of Mavis because I think it’s incredibly real.

We all know what it’s like to want to spend the day in our pajama pants and favorite t-shirt, and we all know that some days we want to go to the trouble of getting dressed and made up for a night out on the town. Yes, we know the value of both of these extremes, but most of us—unlike Mavis—also understand that our worth isn’t wrapped up in our ability to do the latter. But Mavis, sadly, is obsessed with this aspect of herself.

It’s equally sad—and interesting—that Mavis is also depicted as a fast food junkie who hits what she calls the local “Ken-Tac-Hut” (a combo Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut) whenever she needs an emotional pick-me-up. I’ve known for a long time that many thin women eat as much as anyone else (even those who are overweight), so it was incredibly refreshing to see a thin and beautiful woman depicted this way—well, refreshing and painful.

But it is Mavis’ slavish devotion to her looks that is one of the more alarming part of this film.

In one particularly gruesome scene, Mavis is shown applying her makeup. I like to wear makeup as much as the next girl, but watching Mavis Gary put on what can only be described as a face-altering mask frightened me so much that I still haven’t gotten the image out of my head. Like a particularly poignant episode of The Twilight Zone, her beauty regime is scary enough to make us rethink our own. Her physical machinations are, in fact, so arduous that only a masochist would embrace them.

Clearly that’s what Mavis is—a masochist, a person who tortures herself regularly and doesn’t know how to be happy. She is like this in more ways than one, but I don’t want to give away the whole film.

In this way, she is a perfect role model for the kind of person we should all not want to be—beautiful, successful, and miserable, reminding us yet again that there is more to life than physical perfection.

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Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Animated Children’s Films: Onions have Layers, Ogres have Layers – A Feminist Analysis of Shrek

Shrek (2001)

Fairy tales are important. A longish history of oral tales modified and set in stone by the likes of Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. They don’t just capture children’s imaginations, they form them, setting them down a path towards developing their values and opinions against the background of certain societal expectations and gender specific behavior. Attempt to strip away the layers and one opens a Pandora’s box of underlying meanings: it may sound like a simple story about deviating from the path but we all know what Red Riding Hood is really about. A retelling of the tale, like in Angela Carter’s brilliant The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, lead to interesting interpretations of the same, giving us a clearer picture of may lurk beneath these innocuous sounding tales.
For children however, simplified cartoon depictions of classic stories, told with the impeccable technique of Disney full length animation, made them easier to swallow. The wicked and usually ugly are punished and the good and usually beautiful get to live happily ever after. So, when Shrek the movie came out, it didn’t just turn the standard fairy tale on its head, it gave audiences something that was extraordinary for popular animation.
Artwork by William Steig
In the original story by William Steig, Shrek the ugly ogre hears of the fabled princess who is reputed to be uglier than he is and goes in search of her, quite sure that he plans to love and marry her, a charming and refreshing story deviating from the fairy tale norm. In the movie, however, Shrek isn’t so figured out and neither is the princess. Both live secluded lives; Shrek’s hermitic existence is self-imposed whereas Fiona’s is the result of a curse. The ogre state, its otherness, is shown to be reprehensible from the beginning of the film, with the local villagers out to burn and kill Shrek, who wants nothing more than to be left alone. He is the titular hero of the film, but towards the end we see that the heroine, Fiona, is more than just a secondary character.
Fiona, imagined by Dreamworks
In Jungian psychoanalysis, the shadow of the mind constitutes our unacknowledged weaknesses and instincts. The curse that turns Fiona into an ogre after sunset is a perfect representation of her wild, repressed shadow, one that Shrek, who has had to live with it his entire life, revels in on the surface for the power it brings him, but secretly, as we see in the course of the film, hasn’t comes to terms with either. Both are caught in a patriarchal mire, both possess desirable masculine and feminine qualities that they are loath to give up: she human beauty (Caucasian, specifically) and he the power and fear he inspires. 
Fiona’s wish to put an end to the curse is also a desire for freedom, for then she will be out of the tower and amongst the normal folk. Trapped in the tower since she was a little girl and out of touch with reality, the fairy tale has become reality to her and when things do not go by the book, she is understandably confused. She is a princess but her royal status makes no difference to Shrek and she is hauled against her will through the forest, but towards her ‘true love’ and the destiny that she hungers for. In the course of time, her more ‘unprincessy’ aspects are revealed. She burps unapologetically, enjoys the savory meal of weed rat and doesn’t flinch at pulling an arrow out of Shrek’s bottom. The scene where she fights off Robin Hood and crew gives no explanation for her amazing martial arts skills except that she had a lot of time on her hands in the tower, but I didn’t feel as if the filmmaker was trying to pander to a young male audience, for though a hot young princess who kicks butt is an attractive addition, her other characteristics fall desperately short of established notions of feminine desirability. 
Along the journey, Shrek and Fiona find out they have much in common. Unsure romantic feelings begin to emerge when they reach outside Farquaad domain and they both convince Donkey that he is sick so they can spend more time together. When the sun begins to set, she hides away in an abandoned barn and Donkey, that adorable creature and their go-between, tries to convince Shrek to reveal his feelings. Shrek is the first to reveal his own insecurities about being an ugly ogre to Donkey. Fiona in turn laments her condition to Donkey, the princess condition (if she reveals her ogre-self, she will lose her princess status). Shrek overhears and thinks she is talking about him. In the morning, Shrek rejects her, Farquaad arrives and Fiona abandons herself to fate. The ever-persistent Donkey pursues Shrek and misunderstandings are settled. Shrek, with no clue about Fiona’s ogre-curse, rushes from his swamp and solitude, everything he ever wanted, to stop the wedding. The sun begins to set and the Fiona’s curse begins to take shape. When she shows her transformation openly, it is a tremendous test of inner strength, for weigh this agonizing decision with the risk of being unloved, by both society and Shrek. She is not giving up, a relief at finally exposing one’s dark hidden aspect, but confronting it in its entirety. Farquaad (fuckwad?), so brilliantly voiced by John Lithgow, expresses his disgust as Fiona’s wild equivalent is revealed. That stuffy little creature is dominant culture, trying to compensate for its own imperfections by eliminating, hiding or surgically modifying its ‘ugly’ and unique members. 

Shrek is chock-full of uglies, reviled and feared, who find each other and embrace their alternate halves. The one who refuses to embrace his shortcomings, no pun intended, is punished and gets swallowed by a dragon. Shrek speaks to the gulf within the self – to have the courage to embrace oneself or change/hide part of it to feel accepted (or feared). Its motley cast of social rejects make their choice, dashing the conformity of the feature length fairy tale to pieces.

Rhea got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/