Tag: Daughters

World Champion Eaters: The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in ‘Gilmore Girls’


Guest post written by Amanda Rodriguez.

The long-running TV series The Gilmore Girls followed the lives of a single mother who got pregnant at 16 and her daughter as they live and grow in a small town. The mother and daughter duo (Lorelai& Rory) are unconventional, confident, independent, smart, capable, and fun-loving. In Lorelai’s words, “That’s because I’m not orthodox. I’m liberal with a touch of reform and a smidgen of zippity-pow.” The way in which Lorelai and Rory relate to food, however, is a complex issue that can function as a microcosmic reading of the entire show.

First of all, it’s important to establish Rory and Lorelai’s eating habits.
The Gilmore Girls like junk food.

The pair is infamous for not knowing how to cook and always ordering take-out or going out to eat. They eat burgers, pizza, or Chinese food for dinner nearly every night. For breakfast, it’s donuts, pancakes, bacon, pop tarts, or four bowls of cereal. They avoid vegetables at all costs. When they have movie nights (which is often), they stock up on a bevy of sugary snacks, including (but not limited to) Red Vines, marshmallows, cheesy puffs, potato chips, tater tots, and mallowmars. Not only that, but they drink copious quantities of coffee. Refusing to eat any sort of healthy food while indulging consistently in junk food is only half of it…
The Gilmore Girls can seriously eat.
This mother/daughter team has the capacity to consume mass quantities of food, out-eating their much larger male counterparts. They’re always up for round three or even four when the boys have thrown in the towel. In addition, they despise exercise and ridicule other women who either enjoy or feel compelled to workout.

Other characters constantly crack jokes that revolve around their disbelief surrounding the quality and quantity of the food the Gilmore Girls consume. The Gilmore Girls themselves refer to their eating habits with startling frequency. In fact, their diet is referred to in one way or another in nearly every single episode. Why is this theme so central?

Ostensibly, the way the Gilmore Girls eat is intended to be commensurate with the way in which they live their lives. Lorelai is not a traditional mother. She doesn’t grocery shop for healthy foods; nor does she prepare meals.
Lorelai’s refusal to conform to what society expects a mother to cook is symbolic of her rebellion against society’s expectations of what a mother should be. Instead, Lorelai is a hot, fast-talking, coffee guzzling, career-oriented woman whose relationship with her daughter is more like that of a friend than a parent. She encourages her daughter to think for herself and to make her own decisions. Both Lorelai and her daughter are extremely successful and well-respected with an intense emotional bond, proving that their unconventionality is not only endearing, but it works.

The pair’s notorious consumption habits act as a rejection of the notion that women must be so body obsessed that they strictly monitor their food intake, which can devolve into an unhealthy eating disorder and/or suck the enjoyment out of food and of life. These two women flaunt a freedom, self-acceptance, and pleasure-seeking attitude that are all expressed through their love of food. 
Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls
Rory and Lorelia embrace the lowest common denominator types of food, preferring high quantity and low quality. Though Lorelai was raised in a wealthy household, she has rejected the upper class lifestyle. When eating their weekly Friday night dinners with Lorelai’s parents (Emily & Richard Gilmore), Lorelai and Rory often have trouble eating or enjoying the gourmet delicacies that they’ve been served. This is an expression of the way in which they’ve embraced their working class status.

Unfortunately, this is where the positive interpretations of the Gilmore diet end. On the surface, eating junk food and tons of it may seem subversive in its rejection of traditional values surrounding womanhood, motherhood, and class, but it is, in truth, an enactment of the male fantasy of the beautiful, slender woman who loves to eat and doesn’t worry about her weight. Within this context, their eating habits seem more in-line with an idealized concept of womanhood rather than a dismissal of it.
Gilmore Girls

 

The most disturbing and possibly damaging facet of the Gilmore diet is that it is patently unrealistic. Yes, there are thin women out there who have naturally high metabolisms or don’t exercise or prefer junk food. The combination of all three, however, is rarer. Regardless, there is a distinction between weight and health. For example, someone can be“underweight” or at “optimum weight” and be unhealthy, while another person can be “overweight” and still be healthy. It’s hard to imagine a nutrient deficient lifestyle like the one the Gilmore Girls practice resulting in copious energy, brain power, and a healthful appearance.
If so much focus wasn’t placed on Rory and Lorelai’s diet, we could chalk all this up to the combination of “good genes” (as often claimed on the show), a cute personality quirk, and Hollywood magic. The emphasis on the Gilmore diet, however, ends up creating yet another unrealistic expectation of how women should be and look. Many women lament online that they wish they could eat like the Gilmore Girls and not gain weight. Blogger with the handle“Leah (The Kind of Weight Watcher”) even created something she calls “The Gilmore Girls Diet” where she lays out her plan to eat like the Gilmore Girls in an attempt to lose weight. Even Lauren Graham (the actress who portrays Lorelai) struggles with food, her weight, and self-confidence. Not only that, but she loves being athletic and relies on exercise to keep her body healthy and within the Hollywood ideal. This underscores the fact that the Gilmore diet isn’t even realistic for the Gilmore Girls themselves.

For countless women around the world suffering from eating disorders and unhealthy relationships with food, the Gilmore diet is another detrimental example of the paradox insisting women should be naturally thin and beautiful while not paying attention to what they eat or how they take care of their bodies. This paradox contributes to many women’s struggles with body image and self-worth. It also promotes a negative relationship with food, where some women no longer view food as simply life-sustaining sustenance, but as a huge force in life. Some may see food as an enemy to be managed or starved, or, conversely, some women may develop an emotional dependence on food so that they must indulge in order to derive comfort. All the positive facets of the Gilmore diet are washed away in the face of its reinforcement of unhealthy body and food issues.
Now consider how unconventional the Gilmore Girls really are. They’re well-dressed, slender, and typically attractive. They live in a quaint, small town that they adore. Rory receives an Ivy League Yale education. Lorelai has no mechanical or home repair skills so must always ask Luke (the local diner owner) to be her handyman. Even their eschewing of the upper class lifestyle has its limits; they often enjoy the benefits of having wealthy family (expensive gifts, education, trips, etc), and the two generally fit in quite well at Emily and Richard’s upper crusty social functions. They obsess over boys and men, and both of them seek traditional heterosexual romances that will lead to traditional marriage and a traditional family.
In the end, the Gilmore diet says the same thing the show itself is saying: Yes, the Gilmore Girls are quirky, independent, and smart. Yes, the Gilmore Girls refuse to bend to society’s ideas of how a woman should be and what should be expected of her. At heart, though, the Gilmore Girls want that traditional life, and by the end of the series, they have that traditional life. Though the Gilmore Girls claim to be nonconformist, though they take an unconventional path to get there, they end up in the same place with the same kind of traditional life as other, less rebellious TV heroines. Their diet, like their lifestyle, may seem subversive at first glance, but instead reveals itself to be another expression of their internal acceptance of ideal, traditional womanhood.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Gender & Food Week: Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in ‘Gilmore Girls’

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Guest post written by Brianna Low.

Throughout Gilmore Girls’ seven seasons, mother and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore are often seen eating vast quantities of junk food and ordering copious amounts of take out, which they consume together, often in front of the TV. From the series’ pilot episode it is made clear that neither Lorelai nor Rory have any interest in cooking, and the only things in their refrigerator are frozen fish sticks and leftover take out boxes. Their idiosyncratic approach to food is framed as just another endearing quirk instead of irresponsible, unhealthy, or an example of bad parenting.
While it could be argued that it is somewhat progressive of the Gilmore Girls series to portray two women who have no hang-ups about publicly consuming large amounts of food, it is important to remember that despite their voracious appetites, Rory and Lorelai are still conventionally attractive, thin, white women. Living in the quirky, depoliticized utopia of Stars Hollow, there is no real examination of the way in which the Gilmore’s racial and class privilege exempt them from the social condemnation that is frequently directed at poor single mothers and women of color whose food choices or weight are often criticized without any real consideration to the inequalities in accessibility to healthy, affordable food. Poor single mothers who rely on social programs like food stamps and have children who suffer from obesity and other related health problems are often publicly vilified for being irresponsible, unfit mothers despite the well-documented structural inequalities in food access and affordability.
Despite their objectively unhealthy diets, Rory and Lorelai manage to escape this specific stigma, both within the context of the show and in its outside criticism; this is due largely, I would argue, to their privilege and even the size of their bodies. While I don’t personally find it problematic that Rory and Lorelai are allowed to eat whatever they want with relative impunity, I do think it is important to place their unhealthy-diet-as-plot-device into a larger social and political context when critically examining the relationship between gender and food within the series.

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) in Gilmore Girls; image via Emily Grenfell
Lorelai and Rory are not the only ones in the Gilmore Girls universe that have well-documented relationships with food. The diets of many of the supporting cast are intrinsic parts of their identities and function as important aspects of their characterization. The mother of Rory’s best friend Lane, Mrs. Kim, is a strict vegan who makes her daughter drink salad water instead of soda. Michele Gerard, concierge of the Independence and Dragonfly Inn, is a health nut that exhibits an almost fanatical devotion to calorie counting and exercise. The diets of these characters in contrast to Rory and Lorelai’s junk food addiction seem to highlight the drastic differences in the way the Gilmore girls like to eat.

Of all of the supporting characters that are connected in some way to food, two of the most notable examples are Lorelai’s best friend and business partner, Sookie St. James, and Lorelai’s friend and romantic interest, Luke Danes. Sookie, played wonderfully by Melissa McCarthy, is the head chef and co-owner with Lorelai of the Dragonfly Inn. She is an extremely talented cook and a compassionate and loyal friend to Lorelai. Her scenes often take place in the kitchen, where she is seen cooking and dispensing advise to Lorelai. While the kitchen has always been a stereotypically feminine space, Sookie’s fixture there does not come off as regressive. Socially, the world of cooking has been sharply demarcated along gender lines, with the personal and domestic sphere belonging to women and the public and professional sphere being dominated by men. Sookie, a master chef and a woman, is portrayed as a highly skilled and respected cook who demands perfection from herself and her employees.

Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) in Gilmore Girls

Much has been said about the fact that the character of Sookie, a fat woman who is often surrounded by food, is never reduced to her body-size. It’s true that Sookie is never once shamed for her size or subjected to lazy fat jokes, nor does she express any self-hatred or desire to lose weight. It is somewhat sad and telling that Gilmore Girls has received so much praise for treating a plus-sized character with humanity and compassion, but Sookie’s portrayal is indeed remarkable in a popular culture landscape that almost always essentializes fat women to their bodies and positions those bodies as barriers to happiness and love. Sookie is portrayed as an attractive, confident, and competent woman who is deserving of both romantic attention and respect. Her burgeoning relationship and eventual marriage to Jackson, a vegetable farmer, is fully explored and is not framed as some sort of miracle or only chance at love.

Luke Danes, the gruff and grumpy owner of the local diner, possesses many stereotypical markers of traditional masculinity. Seemingly unsentimental, he is often shown shouting angrily at his neighbors and even his customers, he never changes out of his flannel shirt and backwards baseball cap, and often escapes Stars Hollow on fishing and camping trips in order to relieve his stress. Despite this potentially flat characterization, Luke emerges as a complex character that does in fact care deeply about his friends and his community despite his gruff exterior. Luke is an interesting study when looking at the presentations of masculinity and food in the fictional world of Stars Hollow, particularly in the way he is cast as a nurturer who uses food in order to reach out to and comfort his friends and neighbors.

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) in Gilmore Girls

Throughout all seven seasons Luke is often shown bringing food to the Gilmore’s when they are in need. For example, when Lorelai’s father is hospitalized after a heart attack, Luke brings food to Lorelai and her family at the hospital. Inasmuch as food can be gendered, diners and diner food fare with its burgers, fries, and malts often tend to be coded as masculine, however Luke is an interesting case in that he refuses to eat his own food. Although he is never explicitly referred to as a vegetarian, Luke is shown refusing to eat hamburgers and often refers to meat as “dead cow”. When Luke and Lorelai start dating and eventually move in together, Luke is decidedly more active in their domestic affairs, taking charge of the cooking and their home remodel. While this might not be the most shocking or unheard of example of stereotypical role reversal in heterosexual relationships, it’s definitely interesting when examining Luke and Lorelai’s relationship with food and each other.

Luke’s Diner itself is also integral to the series as it serves as the physical and communal space in which much of the community gathers. Episodes often open with Lorelai and Rory sitting and eating together in Luke’s Diner. Throughout the series, food serves as the unifying agent that brings people together. When Lorelai is unable to afford private school tuition for Rory, she goes to her wealthy parents, Emily and Richard, in order to ask them for a loan. The elder Gilmores agree to the loan, their only stipulation being that Lorelai and Rory attend weekly “Friday night dinners”. These dinners are an attempt to fix the strained relationship between Lorelai and her parents.
Gilmore Girls
Like their daughter, neither Emily nor Richard Gilmore are ever shown cooking, instead the extremely wealthy Gilmore’s have their food prepared for them by personal chefs. The class distinctions between Lorelai and her parents are blatantly obvious and are exhibited in the type of food they consume and the way in which they consume it.

Throughout its seven series run, food plays an integral role in the Gilmore Girl’s universe. While representations of food within the context of the show seemingly transcend stereotypical gender division, food and diet choice are still used to identify and characterize the different personalities that make up the world of Stars Hollow. In the words of Lorelai herself, “It takes years to learn how to eat like we do.”
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Brianna Low is currently a student living in Chicago. She enjoys watching movies and reading about feminism.

Will ‘Brave’s Warrior Princess Merida Usher In a New Kind of Role Model for Girls?

Brave‘s Merida (Kelly MacDonald) via Disney Pixar

 Originally published at Fem2pt0.

I loved Brave. 
I literally did a happy dance the moment I heard Pixar would feature a female-centric film. Out of their 13 movies, Brave marks their first female protagonist. Pretty shameful. But hey, they finally got their act together and created a kick-ass heroine. But will Merida spark a new kind of role model?

Merida (Kelly MacDonald) is a feisty Scottish highland princess. Her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson – is there nothing she can’t do??), wants her to be poised, articulate, and reserved – a proper princess. Merida wants none of that. A fierce archer, echoing Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen, she would rather ride horseback and explore. Her mother wants her to obey the rules and follow tradition. Merida wants the freedom to create her own destiny.

When we see a female lead, they’re usually the only girl or woman, surrounded by dudes as friends or love interests. We rarely see women working together in films, particularly children’s films. Yes, Queen Elinor wants Merida to get betrothed in an arranged marriage. But Merida defiantly rebels against this tradition. There’s no love interest. No romance. No winning the affection of a man. Instead, Merida competes for her own hand in marriage.

Passing the Bechdel Test, Brave captures the loving yet sometimes contentious relationship between mothers and daughters. Director Brenda Chapman was inspired to create the story by her own relationship with her daughter. Often in children’s films, the mother is absent or dead. As if the daughter just sprang from her father the way Athena emerged from Zeus. Now I’m all for single parents. I was raised by a single mom. But it’s disturbing we don’t see mothers. Queen Elinor was never villainized. Both Merida and her mother just want to be heard.

Merida (Kelly MacDonald) and her mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson)

Something else unusual — something that shouldn’t be strange – you see Merida eat apples. Now, women and girls obviously eat. But you don’t normally witness female characters eating. Due to the media’s policing of female bodies, women and girls have an antagonistic relationship to food. Granted, Merida is still thin. But at least she’s athletic…and eating.

Chapman said she “wanted to give girls something to look at and not feel inadequate.” We’re told as girls and women we’re not pretty enough. We must lose weight or gain weight. We constantly have to control our bodies and ultimately ourselves.

Hair showcases the women’s identities. Merida’s unruly but gorgeous crimson hair symbolizes her rebellious spirit. When her mother dresses her to meet her suitors, she shoves Merida’s hair under a cap. While Merida struggles to loosen at least one curl. Merida doesn’t want to be groomed, perfect or pretty. She wants to be free like her curls. Merida also rips the seams of her confining dress in order to shoot her bow, symbolically breaking free from constrictions and defying tradition. Originally, Queen Elinor’s hair was groomed in thick braids. By the end of the film, her hair flows free and she’s riding a horse with Merida, symbolizing the loss of her rigidity.

Is Brave reducing women and girls to their physical appearances? No, I don’t think so. Instead, by utilizing visual cues (although sometimes the symbolism is a little too on the nose), I think Brave showcases the constraints of gender norms and patriarchy. And more importantly, how we need to break free. Being true to yourself, voicing your opinion and going after your dreams – these are the messages little girls (and boys) need to hear more often. 

Is Brave perfect? No. It devolves into a lot of slapstick humor, not really my thing. But the legions of kids attending the 10pm Saturday night showing (really? Isn’t it past their bedtime?) emitted fits of giggles. I also wasn’t thrilled with the gender stereotypes. I appreciated King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor’s marriage dodged chauvinism and was fairly egalitarian. But men fight and behave buffoonish while women are supposed to be reserved and docile. Both were leaders – the King in battle, the Queen respected in negotiations – but in their gendered spheres. But perhaps that’s the point. It conveys the tradition of patriarchy and how we need to shatter these gender tropes.

But my biggest problem? Brave is still a fairy tale and Merida is still a princess. Are we ever going to get away from princesses? Ever??

Why must we still package female characters for girls in this princess box? Princess culture has saturated – no, make that dominated – our society. Little girls are obsessed with princesses, tiaras, girlie-girl hues of pink and ball gowns.

 In her fantastic book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein dissects princess culture and its insidious message of hyperfemininity, sexualization of girls, rescue fantasies and obsession with finding Prince Charming. While princesses don’t necessarily lead to passive girls, they cause girls to feel – not that they can have it all – but that they must be everything to everyone. It’s this pressure of perfection which weakens their self-esteem.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with little girls wanting to look pretty and wear fun clothes. And of course everyone wants to feel special. But it’s problematic princesses are the only role models little girls see in media. Princess culture ultimately objectifies girls, telling them their self-worth lies in their beauty and ability to snag a man.

It’s a huge problem Pixar’s first female protagonist must still be a princess. Don’t get me wrong. Merida is a badass warrior princess who’s defiant, caring, brave and smart. And that’s awesome. But we need to eventually diverge from this princess paradigm and showcase more diversity in female characters. 

In her groundbreaking book Enlightened Sexism, Susan J. Douglas deconstructs warrior women in media. They appeal to many of us because they offer a strong female narrative with powerful, intelligent, assertive women. They challenge patriarchy. But Douglas argues that while they transgress gender roles, they simultaneously conform. Yes, they kick ass. But they must look thin, feminine and sexy while doing it.

 With the rise of the warrior princess, a fusion of two female archetypes, I hope Brave bridges the old princess movies with a new narrative for girls. Thankfully, Merida herself challenges the princess label and notion of perfection. She’s outspoken, independent and opinionated. We see Merida make mistakes and figure out solutions herself. While she gets help, no one rescues her. Merida doesn’t want to be told how to look, who to marry, or how to behave. She wants to make her own choices. But I worry Hollywood will simply reinforce and perpetuate the princess paradigm, leading to female protagonists who appear empowered but aren’t really.

Brave is absolutely wonderful. Touching and sweet, it brought me to tears, my personal barometer for a great film. And it’s a huge step in the right direction.

A film that reads as a condemnation of patriarchy, I hope Merida leads to different kind of heroine; a truly empowered one. We need to see intelligent and emotionally strong female characters. Who possess career goals and go after their dreams. Who aren’t objectified and whose lives don’t revolve around finding a man. 

Now if only girls (and boys) could see more female characters on-screen who shed the princess persona.

‘Girl in Progress:’ Female-Centric Film Tackles Strained Mother-Daughter Relationships, Single Motherhood and Navigating Adolescence

Cierra Ramirez (Ansiedad) and Eva Mendes (Grace) in Girl in Progress

When I was growing up, I never felt like a child. With her continuous string of bad boyfriends, I always felt like I was the one taking care of my single mother and myself. I couldn’t wait to leave home and start a new life. So I can relate to the female-centric film Girl in Progresswhich tackles the topics of navigating adolescence and strained mother-daughter relationships. 
Directed by Patricia Riggen (La Misma Luna aka Under the Same Moon) and written by Hiram Martinez, Girl in Progress features Eva Mendes as Grace, a struggling single mom. After reading coming-of-age books in school, her teen daughter Ansiedad (whose name means “anxiety”) decides to take a “shortcut to adulthood” and stage her own coming-of-age story. Ansiedad strives to forge her identity and chart her own course in the world.
Wait, a film focusing on women or girls? Directed by a woman? With women of color as characters?? Yes, yes and yes!
Vivacious, flawed and cavalier, single mom Grace left home after having Ansiedad at 17. Working two jobs, she struggles to pay the bills, including Ansiedad’s expensive private school tuition. Grace often seems like a big kid herself — eating all the cereal, misplacing money, forgetting to buy shampoo. She tries her best but it’s very clear early on she has no clue how to be a mother to her precocious teen. 
Played by newcomer Cierra Ramirez, Ansiedad is smart, perceptive, sarcastic and self-aware. She takes care of her mother, doing chores while her mom plays dress up in her bedroom. When her mom passes out after coming home late with her married boyfriend, Ansiedad carefully takes her shoes off. She knows (and tells) her mom she has terrible taste in men. She pushes her mom to pursue her dreams and go back to school. The roles have reversed. Even at her young age, Ansiedad is the responsible one, begrudgingly mothering her mom.
Exasperated by her childhood, Ansiedad decides it’s time to move on and grow up. But in order to do that, she believes she must reach certain milestones first. With the help of her best friend Tavita (scene-stealing Raini Rodriguez), Ansiedad plots her coming-of-age — winning the chess tournament, becoming rebellious, drinking, transitioning from a “good girl” to a “bad girl,” having sex for the first time — all so she can leave the mantle of girlhood behind. 
Cierra Ramirez and Raini Rodriguez
Through her appearance, Ansiedad tries out various identities — nerdy, Hot Topic-esque punk, quirky preppy — all in an effort to find herself. Butterflies are a common symbol throughout the film, a metaphor for Ansiedad’s metamorphosis from girlhood. She yearns to grow up and escape her disappointing mother, who fails to give her the guidance and support she so desperately craves.
There’s a subplot of Tavita struggling with her weight. When Ansiedad tries to fit in with the cool girls, she betrays her best friend, cruelly taunting her weight. Later Tavita swallows diet pills in an effort to conform to thinness. A huge part of adolescence, a negative body image paralyzes many girls’ self-esteem. I just wish the message “you’re beautiful the way you are” rang louder.
Beyond scenes of fat-shaming and slut-shaming, the jarring utterance of the R word made me cringe. Granted, teens say assloads of inappropriate and offensive things. But no one corrects them. There’s also a horrific “joke” about domestic violence (WTF??). Grace’s boss tells one of her co-workers she can’t be a restaurant manager because her husband beats her (someone seriously laughed at that in my theatre). He later tells Grace the server quit because she had a “fight with her stairs.” I’m not sure if the filmmakers were trying to convey characters’ douchebaggery or if they just thought ableism and abuse were funny. Newsflash, they’re not. Either way, the issues are treated nonchalantly, never given the exploration they truly need.
The film feels choppy as it vacillates between humorous moments of clarity along with bittersweet earnestness and stumbles of forced melodrama and clunky acting by some of the supporting cast. Despite the missteps and histrionics, moments of brilliance shine through. The opening scene, Ansiedad’s class presentation in which she shares her mother’s mistakes was funny and captivating. I adored Ansiedad and Tavita’s camaraderie. Mendes gave a great performance as the immature mom. But hands down, the absolute best moments in the film belonged to the fantastic Rodriguez. Her nuanced portrayal of a teen finding her way mesmerized and captivated.
With several Latino/a characters and Latinas in leading roles, the Girl in Progress effortlessly weaves class and ethnicity throughout the story. Ansiedad’s mother struggles to make ends meet while Tavita lives in a mansion with her mom sipping cocktails. Riggens said she liked setting the film in Seattle (filmed in Vancouver) as it’s not a border state or city, where most movies with Latinas take place. 
Eva Mendes and Cierra Ramirez
One of the best scenes occurs between Grace and Ms. Armstrong (Patricia Arquette), Ansiedad’s English teacher. Ms. Armstrong tells Grace that Ansiedad is planning to run away and force herself into adulthood. We see race and class dynamics subtly play out as Grace believes the white educated teacher judges her and lack of education. In their exchange, we witness Grace’s insecurities about not finishing school and how her mother didn’t provide her with needed support. While we feel the sting of Ansiedad’s understandable resentment towards her mother, Grace’s ineptitude isn’t demonized. Rather we begin to understand she failed to receive support from her mother too. Grace just doesn’t realize she’s replicating the same toxic pattern of neglect with her own daughter.
Ansiedad desperately tries to take a different path than her mother. But she realizes (interestingly when she mimics her mother’s hairstyle in a scene), that she’s shadowing her mother, reenacting the same shitty mistakes. But with a feel-good ending wrapped up too neat and tidy, the resolution of Grace and Ansiedad’s mother-daughter dynamic felt inauthentic. It was like, “Why are you never here for me?!” “Okay I’ll be here for you.” Ta-dah…the end! Wait, what??
I wished Girl in Progress delved deeper, exploring the role reversal and tangled relationship between Grace and Ansiedad. It does however perfectly capture that frustrating push pull of adolescence — the desire to want your mother to support and be proud of you yet the simultaneous craving for independence and freedom.
With women only comprising 33% of speaking roles and even fewer films featuring women of color, we desperately need to see and hear more diverse women’s voices behind the camera and on-screen. Riggens said Girl in Progress “is really about females, about women” of all ages. Repeatedly passing the Bechdel Test, the movie isn’t about Grace’s search for love or Ansiedad finding a father figure. Despite a number of male characters, they exist peripherally; the women and girls take center stage. Ultimately, Ansiedad realizes her mother truly loves her. She also discovers the value of female friendship, something we don’t nearly see often enough in film.
No matter how nurturing, mother-daughter relationships are often fraught with tension, a complicated web of emotions. To this day, I still grapple with issues surrounding my mother, as many of us do. But Girl in Progress reminds us adulthood isn’t a destination. Rather it’s an ongoing journey where we (hopefully) continually evolve and grow.

In Appreciation of Fathers Who Have Daughters

Joel and Heather, New Year’s
Releasing Balloons for Joel
On Wednesday, May 25th, my brother-in-law committed suicide. (Yes, I know the obituary says he died on March 25th, and if Joel were here, we’d be laughing our asses off at that completely unacceptable typo. He’d be like, “Did the funeral home seriously screw up my date of death?”)
The real tragedy, though, is that he left behind his wife—my younger sister, Heather—and three amazing daughters: Sophia, age 6; Chloe, age 4; and Penelope, age 2.
Joel and Penelope
I’ve wondered if Bitch Flicks is really the right place to talk about something like this. And I’ve decided it is—because Joel was a huge fan of Bitch Flicks. He constantly encouraged me to keep writing, even when our site was in its baby stages with no real traffic to speak of, and some of my favorite conversations with Joel surrounded how films, particularly the animated crap Disney and Pixar churn out, impact his daughters.
Joel and Heather and I (and my whole family) grew up in Middletown, Ohio (which recently made the Forbes top ten list of fastest dying towns). To say it’s a conservative town is like saying George Bush was a shitty president—I mean, duh. Joel was a self-proclaimed jock-type who went to a conservative, Christian high school (he and my sister were high school sweethearts), and who never really thought much about women’s lack of equality—until he became the father of three girls.
Heather and Joel
He called me often with stories about his language slip-ups. Once, he said he and Sophia were discussing the origin of mankind. (Because she’s 6 and a genius and wants to know about these things.) So Joel talked to her for a while about evolution, and summed it all up with, “Basically, man has been around for a long time.” Sophia looked at him and said, “Daddy, how long has woman been around?”
I love that. Because when he told me that story, he felt actual shame and became even more conscious of how those little things were a huge deal in the way his girls thought about themselves and their place in the world. As a result of his awareness, the girls and I often have conversations about the movies they watch—with Sophia saying things like, “Why are there so many boys in this movie?” and Chloe asking, “Why does a boy save Coraline at the end?”
Joel and Chloe
Chloe and Sophia Sleeping Last Night
They think critically about gender and representations of girls and women in the media (at ages 6 and 4), and that’s because of Joel, who was such a wonderful dad to those girls, and because of their mom, Heather.
In fact, Heather just told me about an adorable interaction. Chloe was riding in the car with her and said, “I have a girlfriend at school. And I want to marry Kelly Clarkson when I grow up. She’s a girl too, though.” Heather said, “Honey, by the time you’re old enough to get married, you’ll be able to marry a girl if you want to.”
Then, when I was in Ohio for Joel’s memorial service, Chloe told me she had a boyfriend (but that “it’s a secret to him”—omgcuteness). I said, “That’s awesome, but what about your girlfriend?” And she said, all exasperated, “I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend.” I can’t tell you how happy it made me that she spoke to me like I was a complete dumbass for asking her that.
Joel and Sophia
Penelope, who’s 2, just runs around like a rambunctious toddler and is inevitably dirty and messy and muddy and scraped and fearless, and that, too, is a credit to her parents, who have never encouraged their girls to sit up straight and keep their legs closed and say please and thank you and smile and all that other crap girls are supposed to learn when they’re little. Sure, Penelope likes to sleep with her baby doll, but she also likes to sleep with her shoes (seriously) and her books and the occasional pair of 3D glasses (WTF).
In one of the last email correspondences Joel and I had, he wrote:
Sophie and Chloe Meeting Penny

“I have learned so much from you; you have completely changed my worldview, and that has helped me be a better father to my three daughters and recognize the hurdles they will face as they grow into their adult selves. I want to say thank you for that.”

One of the things that upsets me most is that I’m not sure I ever really expressed to Joel how much I respected and appreciated him, especially as a father to three daughters. He didn’t treat them like “girls” … he treated them like kids. If Chloe wanted to watch Handy Manny all morning, he bought her a Handy Manny toolkit and pretended things were broken in the house so that she could “fix” them with Squeeze (the name of Manny’s wrench) and Turner (the name of Manny’s screw driver).
Penelope’s Collage
Heather and The Girls on Halloween
Joel had a ton of experience in that realm because he was a stay-at-home dad for two years (and believe me, the two of us had many conversations about the bullshit, outdated ideas surrounding gender roles, particularly those pertaining to the domestic sphere). Sophia, Chloe, and Penelope worshipped their dad, and I know when they get older, they’ll struggle to understand his suicide. But right now, they’re at home with their mom, making picture collages of Joel, and celebrating Father’s Day.
Girls, I want to tell you how much Daddy loved you. And Heather, I want you to remember, always—you were the love of Joel’s life.
So, Happy Father’s Day, to all the dads out there who teach their daughters that they’re important, and who learn from their daughters, too.

An account has been set up in Joel’s name, for his three daughters, if anyone would like to donate.