2013 Golden Globes Week: The Roundup

Cecil B. DeMille Award: presented to Jodie Foster

“Cecil B. DeMille Award Recipient Jodie Foster: Credibility Over Celebrity” by Robin Hitchcock




Lincoln: nominated for Best Picture, Drama; Best Director, Steven Spielberg; Best Actor, Drama, Daniel Day-Lewis; Best Supporting Actress, Sally Field; Best Supporting Actor, Tommy Lee Jones; Best Screenplay, Tony Kushner; Best Original Score, John Williams

“In Praise of Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln” by Robin Hitchcock


Les Misérables: nominated for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy; Best Actor, Musical or Comedy, Hugh Jackman; Best Supporting Actress, Anne Hathaway; Best Original Song, “Suddenly”

Les Misérables: The Feminism Behind the Barricades” by Leigh Kolb

“Extreme Weight Loss for Roles Is Not ‘Required’ and Not Praiseworthy” by Robin Hitchcock

Les Misérables: Sex Trafficking & Fantine as a Symbol for Women’s Oppression” by Megan Kearns


Hitchcock: nominated for Best Actress, Drama, Helen Mirren

“Too Many Hitchcocks” by Robin Hitchcock


The Sessions: nominated for Best Actor, Drama, John Hawkes; Best Supporting Actress, Helen Hunt

“On Sex, Disability, and Helen Hunt in The Sessions by Stephanie Rogers


The Master: nominated for Best Actor, Drama, Joaquin Phoenix; Best Supporting Actress, Amy Adams; Best Supporting Actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman

The Master: A Movie About White Dudes Talking About Stuff” by Stephanie Rogers


Hope Springs: nominated for Best Actress, Musical or Comedy, Meryl Streep

“Can Hope Springs Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?” by Molly McCaffrey


Cloud Atlas: nominated for Best Original Score, Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimet, and Reinhold Heil

Cloud Atlas Loses Audience” by Erin Fenner


The Hunger Games: nominated for Best Original Song, “Safe and Sound”

“‘I’m Not Very Good at Making People Like Me’: Why The Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen Is One of the Most Important Heroes in Modern Culture” by Molly McCaffrey

The Hunger Games Review in Conversation: On Jennifer Lawrence, Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food” by Megan Kearns and Amber Leab

“The Princess Archetype in the Movies” by Laura A. Shamas


Skyfall: nominated for Best Original Song, “Skyfall”

Skyfall: It’s M’s World, Bond Just Lives in It” by Margaret Howie

“The Sun (Never) Sets on the British Empire: The Neocolonialism of Skyfall by Max Thornton


Brave: nominated for Best Animated Feature

“The Princess Archetype in the Movies” by Laura A. Shamas

“Will Brave‘s Warrior Princess Marida Usher In a New Kind of Role Model for Girls?” by Megan Kearns

“Why I’m Excited About Pixar’s Brave & Its Kick-Ass Female Protagonist … Even If She Is Another Princess” by Megan Kearns


Wreck-It Ralph: nominated for Best Animated Feature

Wreck-It Ralph Is Flawed, But Still Pretty Feminist” by Myrna Waldron


Anna Karenina: nominated for Best Original Score, Dario Marianelli

Anna Karenina, and the Tragedy of Being a Woman in the Wrong Era” by Erin Fenner


Django Unchained: nominated for Best Picture, Drama; Best Director, Quentin Tarantino; Best Supporting Actor, Leonardo DiCaprio; Best Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz; Best Screenplay, Quentin Tarantino

“The Power of Narrative in Django Unchained by Leigh Kolb

“From a Bride with a Hanzo Sword to a Damsel in Distress: Did Quentin Tarantino’s Feminism Take a Step Backwards in Django Unchained?” by Tracy Bealer


Girls: nominated for Best Television Show, Comedy or Musical; Best Actress, Television Comedy or Musical, Lena Dunham

Girls and Sex and the City Both Handle Abortion With Humor” by Megan Kearns

“Lena Dunham’s HBO Series Girls Preview: Why I Can’t Wait to Watch” by Megan Kearns


Modern Family: nominated for Best Television Show, Comedy or Musical; Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Sofia Vergara; Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Eric Stonestreet

“‘Pregnancy Brain’ in Sitcoms” by Lady T

“2011 Emmy Analysis” by Amber Leab


Breaking Bad: nominated for Best Television Show, Drama; Best Actor, Television Drama, Bryan Cranston

“Seeking the Alpha in Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy by Rachel Redfern

“‘Yo Bitch’: The Complicated Feminism of Breaking Bad by Leigh Kolb


Boardwalk Empire: nominated for Best Television Show, Drama; Best Actor, Television Drama, Steve Buscemi

Boardwalk Empire: Margaret Thompson, Margaret Sanger, and the Cultural Commentary of Historical Fiction” by Leigh Kolb

“Max’s Field Guide to Returning Fall TV Shows” by Max Thornton

Boardwalk Empire by Amanda ReCupido


Downton Abbey: nominated for Best Television Show, Drama; Best Actress, Television Drama, Michelle Dockery; Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Maggie Smith

“A Gilded Cage: A Feminist Critique of the Downton Abbey Christmas Special” by Amanda Civitello


Homeland: nominated for Best Television Show, Drama; Best Actress, Television Drama, Claire Danes; Best Actor, Television Drama, Damian Lewis; Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Mandy Patinkin

“The Best of 2012 (I Think)” by Rachel Redfern

Homeland‘s Carrie Mathison” by Cali Loria

Homeland‘s Carrie Mathison: A Pulsing Beat of Jazz and ‘Crazy Genius'” by Leigh Kolb


Mad Men: nominated for Best Actor, Television Drama, Jon Hamm

“Emmy Week 2011: Mad Men Week Roundup” [includes links to 9 pieces written about Mad Men]

Mad Men and The War on Women, 1.0″ by Diana Fakhouri


New Girl: nominated for Best Actress, Television Comedy or Musical, Zooey Deschanel; Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Max Greenfield

“Why I’ve Fallen in Love with New Girl by Lady T


30 Rock: nominated for Best Actress, Television Comedy or Musical, Tina Fey; Best Actor, Television Comedy or Musical, Alec Baldwin

“Max’s Field Guide to Returning Fall TV Shows” by Max Thornton

“The Casual Feminism of 30 Rock by Peggy Cooke

“Liz Lemon: The ‘Every Woman’ of Prime Time” by Lisa Mathews

“Jane Krakowski and the Dedicated Ignorance of Jenna Maroney” by Kyle Sanders


VEEP: nominated for Best Actress, Television Comedy or Musical, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

“Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s VEEP by Rachel Redfern


Parks and Recreation: nominated for Best Actress, Television Comedy or Musical, Amy Poehler

“Why We Need Leslie Knope and What Her Election on Parks and Rec Means for Women and Girls” by Megan Kearns

“Max’s Field Guide to Returning Fall TV Shows” by Max Thornton

“Ann Perkins and Me: It’s Complicated” by Peggy Cooke

“I Want to Establish the Ron Swanson Scholarship in Women’s Studies” by Amanda Krauss

Parks and Recreation Seasons 1 & 2″ by Amber Leab

“Leslie Knope” by Diane Shipley


Louie: nominated for Best Actor, Television Comedy or Musical, Louis C.K.

“Listening and the Art of Good Storytelling in Louis C.K.’s Louie by Leigh Kolb


The Girl: nominated for Best Miniseries or Television Movie; Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Sienna Miller; Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Toby Jones

“Too Many Hitchcocks” by Robin Hitchcock



Argo: nominated for Best Picture, Drama; Best Director, Ben Affleck; Best Supporting Actor, Alan Arkin; Best Screenplay, Chris Terrio; Best Original Score, Alexandre Desplat

“Does Argo Suffer from a Woman Problem and Iranian Stereotypes?” by Megan Kearns


Moonrise Kingdom: nominated for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy

“An Open Letter to Owen Wilson Regarding Moonrise Kingdom by Molly McCaffrey


The Deep Blue Sea: nominated for Best Actress, Drama, Rachel Weisz

The Deep Blue Sea by Eli Lewy


The Big Bang Theory: nominated for Best Television Show, Comedy or Musical; Best Actor, Television Comedy or Musical, Jim Parsons

“The Evolution of The Big Bang Theory by Rachel Redfern

“Big Bang Bust” by Melissa McEwan


Zero Dark Thirty: nominated for Best Picture, Drama; Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow; Best Actress, Drama, Jessica Chastain; Best Screenplay, Mark Boal

“Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof Zero Dark Thirty by Candice Frederick

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Raises Questions On Gender and Torture, Provides No Easy Answers by Megan Kearns


The Newsroom: nominated for Best Television Show, Drama; Best Actor, Television Drama, Jeff Daniels

The Newsroom: Misogyny 2.0″ by Leigh Kolb


Sherlock: nominated for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television, Benedict Cumberbatch

“‘I Misbehave’: A Character Analysis of Irene Adler from BBC’s Sherlockby Amanda Rodriguez


The Impossible: nominated for Best Actress, Drama, Naomi Watts

“It’s ‘Impossible’ Not to See the White-Centric Point of View” by Lady T


 
Silver Linings Playbook: nominated for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy; Best Actor, Musical or Comedy, Bradley Cooper; Best Actress, Musical or Comedy, Jennifer Lawrence; Best Screenplay, David O. Russell

Silver Linings Playbook, or, As I Like to Call It: fuckyeahjenniferlawrence” by Stephanie Rogers


2013 Golden Globes Week: Big Bang Bust

This is a guest post by Melissa McEwan and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Shakesville
I have never been a great lover of sitcoms. Despite their ubiquity in American primetime television, especially when I was growing up, there just weren’t a lot of them for me to love. So much of the com always relied on sits that mocked or belittled or straight-up hated the characters in the show with which we were meant to identify. I have only ever been able to love sitcoms that loved their characters.

The earliest sitcom I remember loving—I mean really loving—was Good Times, a show about a black family who lived in the Chicago projects, the central feature of which was their struggle to navigate life in poverty. It was an imperfect show: There was a strong message of bootstraps, which simultaneously challenged narratives about the Welfare Queens to whom Ronald Reagan had not yet given a name, and indirectly entrenched judgment of anyone who would accept “a hand-out.” But it was an important and challenging show, which did not shy away from discussions of racial and feminist justice. And it loved its characters deeply.

The next sitcom I remember really loving was The Golden Girls, for so many reasons, but chief among them that the show loved its characters. There were jokes at the women’s expense, but they were delivered by one another (usually Sophia), and thus was it ever unmistakable these were in-jokes of a loving group. We weren’t invited to laugh at them, but with them.

There have been other shows I’ve loved along the way, some very much. But something about these not quite as lovable shows held me (or obliged me to hold myself) at a distance. I deeply dug The Cosby Show as a child, but there was always a thread of one-upping—between Cliff and Claire, between Cliff and the kids—that put me at unease. Someone was always getting the better of someone else, which never sat precisely right with me. I loved Family Ties, but there was always a weird hostility toward Mallory’s girlyness that alienated me.

It is a subtle difference, but I have always been most strongly drawn to the shows that invite me to love their characters because of their flaws, rather than in spite of them.

For all the times Parks and Rec has made my teeth grind with its Jerry bullying, I have known, always, that the show loves Jerry, and wants us to love him—and when the other characters are thoughtless or cruel to him, it is they who are wrong. It is their flaw, their envy, their self-involvement—not anything wrong with the inimitably lovable Jerry.

It is so rare that I love, really love, a sitcom that I feel overwhelmed with a bounty of riches that there are two shows currently airing that I adore: Parks and Rec and New Girl, about which I have written before that “the thing I like most is that it loves its characters. It asks me to root for them, and I do!”

All of which is prelude to this: The Big Bang Theory doesn’t like its female characters anymore, and so I don’t really like The Big Bang Theory anymore.

I didn’t like TBBT the first time I watched it, which was just some random episode in the middle of the series. But then I watched it from the beginning, when it went into syndication, and I liked it a lot. It’s never been a show I’ve loved like the aforementioned shows, but it was a show I enjoyed quite a bit, anyway—and I thought it did a pretty swell job of exposing Nice Guyism for the garbage that it is.

Mostly, I liked Penny.

I really liked this female character, despite her tokenism, who was routinely drawn as a complex human being despite the guys’ objectification of her. I liked that she was allowed to be funny, and clever, and have sexual agency, and teach the guys by example how to stand up to bullies.

The show, I thought, liked Penny, too.

And I really liked the additional female leads that were added in time. I liked Bernadette—even though she has a terrible case of Bailey Quarters which compels us to pretend that she’s not beautiful because she wears glasses and someone else is supposed to be the sexpot on the show—and I loved Amy Farrah Fowler. (I really like Leslie Winkle whenever she shows up, too.) I liked most of the scenes between the girls, and I was glad Penny wasn’t isolated in a tower of Exceptional Womanhood anymore.

But then something changed. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the show lost its respect for Amy Farrah Fowler. Once a formidable complement to Sheldon Cooper, she has been reduced to an unwanted trophy—he gets a girl (that he doesn’t even seem to want) and she has to settle for a shitty relationship because, hey, she’s a nerd; it’s not like she could do (or deserves?) any better.

And, this season, the show seems to have lost every trace of the love it once had for Penny.

Penny isn’t allowed to be good at anything anymore. She can’t accomplish this, she can’t understand that, she’s not even smart enough to take science classes at community college. This is the same character who used to (literally) kick ass on earlier seasons, and now her entire oeuvre consists of drinking wine and making sure Leonard still thinks she’s sexy.

There was an episode earlier this season, in which Penny was taking a history course, and couldn’t even write a decent paper on her own. Leonard was being a complete asshole about it, and, watching the show, Iain and I were bitterly complaining that the show had rendered Penny incapable of writing a 101-level essay. When at last Penny presented Leonard with a B+ paper, we were so happy—only to be immediately crushed by the reveal that Bernadette and Amy had helped her, and only helped her enough to get a B+, because they wanted it to be “realistic.”

Every time Penny trudges by in her waitress uniform, I now cringe. Because it’s just a reminder about how the show won’t let her succeed. At anything.

Which certainly doesn’t make for a better show. I would have found an episode about Penny and Leonard trying to navigate their relationship while she’s taken away by a movie role (professional success! yay for Penny!) exponentially more interesting than the last episode, where I instead watched Penny put on sexy glasses to give Leonard a boner to assuage her insecurity after another woman flirted with him.

The fact is, TBBT has officially fallen out of love with Penny. And that makes TBBT pretty damn unwatchable for me.

Take note, sitcom writers: I can’t love your characters more than you do.

———-

Melissa McEwan is the founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, which she launched as Shakespeare’s Sister in October 2004 because George Bush was pissing her off. In addition to running Shakesville, she also contributes to The Guardian‘s Comment is Free America and AlterNet. Liss graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups. An active feminist and LGBTQI advocate, she has worked as a concept development and brand consultant and now writes full-time.

She lives just outside Chicago with three cats, two dogs, and a Scotsman, with whom she shares a love of all things geekdom, from Lord of the Rings to Alcatraz. When she’s not blogging, she can usually be found watching garbage television or trying to coax her lazyass greyhound off the couch for a walk. 
 
 
 

2013 Golden Globes Week: Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

This is a guest review by Candice Frederick and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Reel Talk.
Zero Dark Thirty teaser
With her latest film Zero Dark Thirty, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow continues her charge of completely eliminating any doubt that she’s going to be to that type of female director. You know the kind, the one that purposely tries to connect with her female audience by yanking tears from them or providing any real nuance or connectivity.

And she has beaten any expectations to the contrary out of the audience with this movie that exhausts the hunt for and ultimate death of terrorist Osama bin Laden. Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a smart CIA operative who’s made it her sole mission to lead the search for bin Laden and ensure that he will no longer be a threat to anyone ever again. When we first meet her, however, she’s squeamish at even the sight of blood as she watches her male counterpart (Jason Clarke) brutally interrogate a possible terrorist lackey.

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
But when it seems like she’s played all her cards, she’s the single woman left standing among a weary team of men and bravely rises to the occasion. Though the audience follows her decade-long ordeal to capture and eliminate bin Laden, not without witnessing many innocent deaths, rarely does she ever emit any emotion from the audience. In fact, with the exception of Chastain’s emotionally spent final scene, which is more of a release than anything else, few areas in the film waste time tugging at the heartstrings. Rather, Maya’s relentless journey seems more stressful and high-pressured than wrought with emotion and painful to endure. There could have been more of a balance, rather than a ruler-sharp portrayal of a woman tackling her position. Granted, this is expected from a character in this line of work, but it made for a very detached commitment to the character from the audience. Just when we get to see a trace of personal struggle from Maya, Bigelow quickly snaps us back to the matter at hand.

Even though that’s just not Bigelow’s style, she surprisingly grips audiences in the first few minutes of the film when they listen to the barrage of frightful phone calls to 911 during the September 11th attacks. Reliving those tragic moments, then following it with the scene to Chastain huddled in the corner of the interrogation room sets the tone of the movie and leaves no questions about the intentions of the story. It’s clear, steady and deliberate retaliation. And there is simply no time for fear.

Chastain leaps into the role, completely shedding any remnant of every other character she’s played, and attacks it with the vigor and confidence it needs. Think Carrie on TV’s Homeland minus the glimmer of insanity (though it would have been understandable given her circumstances).

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Unfolding like a timetable of harrowing events during this time, the movie might not elicit much empathy but it does successfully manage to push audiences to the edge of their seats, creating a heart-pounding thriller that is suspenseful despite the fact that you know what’s going to happen. Alexandre Desplat’s affecting score further heightens that effect. Bigelow’s stark but realistic approach to Mark Boal’s (with whom she first collaborated on The Hurt Locker) story is gritty and firm, leaving no room for fluff scenes (though the fleeting scene between Chastain and Jennifer Ehle, who plays a member of the retaliation crew, is much welcomed).

With a cast, which include James Gandolfini, Kyle Chandler, and Mark Strong, that’s committed to the increasingly tense dialogue and demanding story, Zero Dark Thirty offers audiences a look at the much meticulous investigation that was shrouded in secrecy, one which led to the ultimate capture of bin Laden. But it is Chastain’s performance, as restrained as it is powerful, that may just be the cherry atop this massive and meticulous film.

———-

Candice Frederick is a former NABJ award-winning journalist for Essence Magazine, and the writer for the film blog, Reel Talk. She is also the TV/Film critic for The Urban Daily. Follow her on Twitter

Gender and Food Week: The Roundup

Pop-Tarts and Pizza: Food, Gender, and Class in Gilmore Girls by Brianna Low

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.

Life is Sweet by Alisande Fitzsimons

A young woman with an eating disorder lashing out at everyone around her but never hurting them more than she does herself? Check. A mother desperately trying to stay strong and support her mentally ill child, in spite of the frustration that child’s self-destructive tendencies cause? Check. A closeted lesbian dreaming of escape but ultimately remaining stable and strong for everyone around her? Check.

A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man by Jessica Freeman-Slade

Young women have heard throughout time that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and film and television have done an excellent job of backing up this assumption. Not all women who can cook were taught to do so at the behest of future matchmakers, but the prevailing attitude, taught to us in women’s magazines and through the constant refrain of mainstream narratives, is that if you catch a man, you’d better make a decent meal. The loathsome popularity of dishes such as “engagement chicken” carry with them the promise that women need only master the kitchen to hook a man. DIY domesticity, maybe, or just cooking to couple up, but either way, it’s an uncomfortably old-fashioned message.

The Hunger Games Review in Conversation: Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food by Megan Kearns and Amber Leab

I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.

Simply Irresistible by Janyce Denise Glasper

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.

James and the Giant Peach by Libby White

The Aunts are horrific caretakers; starving, beating, and emotionally abusing James relentlessly. Mind you, this is a movie for children. And like in most children’s movies, the Aunts’ outward appearance reflects their inner evil. Both women are made to look terrifyingly cruel and yet simultaneously clown-like, dressed in orange-red wigs and slathered on make-up. During their first 20 minutes on screen, the two women participate in dozens of morally reprehensible practices, everything from shameless vanity to verbally attacking a woman and her children.

Extreme Weight Loss for Roles Is Not “Required” and Not Praiseworthy by Robin Hitchcock

But it is bad for women, and bad for our culture. More diet talk, more body talk, perpetuation of the myth that weight loss is a noble pursuit and merely a matter of dedication. Voluntary adoption of disordered eating is not praiseworthy. These types of body transformations are not artistically necessary, and certainly not “required.” So let’s hope actors stop endangering their health for roles. We can suspend our disbelief over a few dozen pounds.

Cake Boss: A Sweet Confection with Dark Filling by Lauren Kouffman

Interestingly, though Carlo’s Bake Shop seems to employ a fleet of women as “cake decorators” (the distinction is clearly drawn here, in contrast to the male bakers), more screen time is paid to the colorful personalities of the few men that work there: Mauro the number two, Hothead Joe, Danny “The Mule”, and Cousin Frankie. Their characters have been fleshed out enough to act as Buddy’s consigliere, while the women are granted occasional group reaction shots. Moreover, all of the male bakers wear chef’s coats and white pants — even the delivery boy is dressed in all white — and none of the women are required to be in uniform. In Carlo’s Bake Shop, baking is a serious business, and the visual and social cues here reveal that women are neither taken seriously, nor considered a real asset to the business. 

World Champion Eaters: The Paradox of the Gilmore Diet in Gilmore Girls by Amanda Rodriguez

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.

Arresting Ana: A Short Film About Pro-Anorexia Websites by Amber Leab

Fighting eating disorders is important work, and the fact that the subject is being discussed at all in France’s legislature is a good thing. However, criminalizing illness isn’t. Better reforms seem to be the ones directed at body image: banning excessive photoshop use in magazines and advertisements, requiring models to be at a healthy weight, and speaking out against body policing and shaming–whether it happens in media or in our private conversations.

The Princess and the Frog by Janyce Denise Glasper

Charlotte and her daddy make Tiana’s family work like slaves even though they are paying for them. Much too docile and meek, Tiana and her mother take this dominating behavior and its sickening, even for an animated cartoon.

The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick by Jessica Habalou

What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears).

Eclairried Away: Is It Love or Sugar Shock in Simply Irresistible? by Carleen Tibbetts

Amanda’s cooking has gone from abysmal to five-star. She’s thinking positively about her chosen profession. The restaurant is thriving. The place is hopping. She’s a success. She’s a genius. She’s a successful businesswoman. She done her momma proud. She’s a sister doing it for herself. BUT WAIT, SHE’S SINGLE AND THUS INCOMPLETE!

Trophy Kitchens in Two Nancy Meyers’ Films, Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated by Emily Contois

Food and cooking serve as symbols and narrative devices in these two films, representing and communicating the multidimensional nature of middle-aged women in not only the traditionally feminine roles of mother and housewife, but also the pro-feminist roles of career woman and lover. These different roles need not be in conflict within Meyer’s leading women, however. The “older bird” genre tells stories of sexual reawakening, a process that thus shifts the balance and requires ongoing negotiation of the self within the characters’ heretofore established identities.

Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions by Megan Kearns

Johansson has spoken in favor of feminism (yet doesn’t necessarily call herself a feminist) and female friendship, supports Planned Parenthood and condemns Hollywood’s ageism against women calling it “a very vain, vain industry.”  So it’s no surprise she calls out this bullshit. I only wish more actors and members of the media would follow her lead.

Bridesmaids: Brunch, Brazilian Food, Baking, and Best Friends by Laura A. Shamas

In the hierarchy of a wedding, a bride and groom are the most important roles. Bridesmaids, taken as an archetypal female construction, may be seen to represent “sisterhood,” a unified group of female attendants to the bride. If so, the dysfunction of this specific collective, as revealed in Act Two, serves as wry, hilarious commentary on aspects of the dark feminine and our wedding rituals from the female gaze.

Popular Posts of 2012

Last year, we published the Top 10 of 2011, with the only criteria being the number of page views each post received. This year, we’re publishing the most viewed post in each month of 2012. The list, of course, would be entirely different if we published the 10 most viewed posts in all of 2012, but those posts usually occur earlier in the year, and we want to make sure some of the posts written within the past few months also get a shout out. So, enjoy the list, and be sure to click on the post title in order to read the entire piece!
We’d also like to thank the lovely people at Shakesville, Women and Hollywood, Bitch Media, Ms. Magazine, and Feministing for driving so much traffic to our site in 2012, and thank you to ALL our readers for sharing the work we do at Bitch Flicks.

December: “Pregnancy Brain” in Sitcoms by Lady T

Two sitcom episodes, less than a year apart from each other, both dealing with forgetful pregnant women who don’t know how to manage their lives without help, but the message of each episode is very different. The How I Met Your Mother episode is sexist and cliched, while the Modern Family episode attempts to treat the pregnant character with humanity, and mostly succeeds.

November: The Last Unicorn Is the Anti-Disney Fairy Tale by Myrna Waldron

I was probably 6 or 7 years old the first time I saw The Last Unicorn. And while I thought it was pretty, I found it incredibly boring. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I rewatched it and understood why it was so boring to Little Girl Me – this is not a film for children, and never should have been marketed as such. Such is the major pitfall of an animated film – unless it explicitly says it’s pornography (and sometimes not even then – people are stupid), people assume it’s for children. What makes The Last Unicorn so special is it might be one of the most bittersweet and poignant fantasy movies ever made. It is the Anti-Disney film – everything that Disney fairy tales are not.

October: Pitch Perfect and Third-Wave Feminism by Leigh Kolb

As the two matriarchs of the group–Chloe (Brittany Snow) and Aubrey (Anna Camp)–recruit young women to audition at the back-to-school activities fair, Aubrey makes it clear that they are looking for women with “bikini-perfect bodies.” Chloe responds quietly with “How about we just get good singers?” Thus begins the Bellas’ journey into a new world filled with women of color, overweight women, “alternative” brunettes with lots of eyeliner and lesbians.

September: Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Little Mermaid by Ana Mardoll

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.

August: “Yo Bitch”: The Complicated Feminism of Breaking Bad by Leigh Kolb

These passing comments and the clear symbolism of female repression and underlying power make it clear that Breaking Bad isn’t simply a tour de force of masculinity. The negative reactions to the female characters reveal misogyny in the audience, not in the series. The fact that we are exhilarated by men plotting and killing, and are nervous or annoyed when the female characters attempt to navigate their lives tells us more about ourselves than the characters.

July: The Feminism of Sailor Moon by Myrna Waldron

This has been a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I’m an absolutely die-hard fan of Sailor Moon, and part of that is because it served as my childhood introduction to feminism. That might be a little bit hard to believe, considering the superheroines of the show are known for outfits not much more revealing than Wonder Woman’s. Silly outfits aside (you get used to them), this show was absolutely groundbreaking. Its protagonists are 10 realistically flawed, individual and talented teenage girls (and women) who, oh, you know. Save the world.

June: Lola Versus Not Your Average Romantic Comedy: Bad Love Life Decisions, Finding Happiness … and One of the Best Film Endings Ever by Megan Kearns

But isn’t that life? Isn’t that what people do when they’re dumped? They obsess over their exes, retracing the steps of their relationship, trying to deciper the clues that led to the relationship’s unraveling. They pine for them. They strategize ways to accidentally run into them (or avoid them like the plague). Either way, there’s a lot of strategizing involved. I wanted Lola to be empowered. To stop obsessing over nice but douchey guys who didn’t appreciate her or who weren’t right for her. I wanted her to hang out with her female friends. But the way the plot unfolded rang more realistic and way more uncomfortable.

May: The Avengers: Are We Exporting Media Sexism or Importing It? by Soraya Chemaly

Where does this global growth leave characters like Black Widow and movies with female centric stories or leads? What happens when Hollywood produces movies to meet the needs of the world’s fastest growing and most populated countries – which also happen to be those with the most skewed gendercide-based birth ratios? Cultures that habitually accept the elimination of females aren’t going to be that interested in stories about women and girls, especially those that feature powerful, culture-threatening, transgressive characters.

April: The Hunger Games Review in Conversation: Part 1 on Jennifer Lawrence, Female Protagonists, Body Image, Disability, Whitewashing, Hunger & Food by Amber Leab and Megan Kearns

I didn’t really have a problem with Lawrence being older than Katniss. Although I totally agree about the concern for girls “conflating girlhood with womanhood.” But I suppose it didn’t bother me so much because Katniss is never sexualized. She cares about archery, not what she’s wearing. While Katniss receives a pageant-style makeover, so do the male tributes. While it hints at it, I just wish the movie had conveyed the book’s satire of toxic beauty standards.

March: Biopic and Documentary Week: The Blind Side: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made by Nine Deuce

I’m sure that the Tuohy family are lovely people and that they deserve some kind of medal for their good deeds, but if I were a judge, I wouldn’t toss them out of my courtroom should they arrive there bringing a libel suit against whoever wrote, produced, and directed The Blind Side, because it’s handily the dumbest, most racist, most intellectually and politically insulting movie I’ve ever seen, and it makes the Tuohy family — especially their young son S.J. — look like unfathomable assholes. Well, really, it makes all of the white people in the South look like unfathomable assholes. Like these people need any more bad publicity.

February: Indie Spirit Best Supporting Female Nominee: Shailene Woodley in The Descendants by Martyna Przybysz

I have no clue how Shailene Woodley managed to stay in the shadows until now (because let’s face it, The Secret Life can hardly be counted), but it’s been said that she’d given “one of the toughest, smartest, most credible adolescent performances in recent memory” as Alexandra. Rawness and realness of her talent are visible throughout the film, and she definitely sets the bar high, both for herself, and other young actresses. If Alex King could say something to this, it would probably be ‘Fuck, yeah!’.

January: Top 10 of 2011: Rom-Coms Don’t Suck by Amanda Krauss

And “guy” comedies (e.g. Knocked Up, Superbad, I Love You, Man) are exactly the same, predictable genre. I’ll even grant you that they’re technically funnier, mostly because the quantity and transgressiveness of the jokes is greater. There’s a complicated set of reasons for this, involving gender, comedy, and socialization. But suffice to say that gendering rom-coms as “chick” entertainment is a relatively recent phenomena and that we’re all socialized to think women are less funny, so I’d really appreciate it if critics would take a little step back when they did their sexist stuff.

Gender and Food Week: Trophy Kitchens in Two Nancy Meyers’ Films, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and ‘It’s Complicated’

Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give
Guest post written by Emily Contois, originally published at her blog. Cross-posted with permission.
Nancy Meyers’ “older bird” chick flicks, Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and It’s Complicated (2009), provide both escape and hope to middle-aged female audiences, whose views on love, sex, and relationships are both informed and complicated by life experience — including marriage, motherhood, and divorce — and the stereotypes that accompany being middle-aged.
Something’s Gotta Give is the story of fifty-three-year-old Erica (Diane Keaton), the successful, divorced playwright who in the setting of her luxurious Hampton beach house falls in love with both her daughter’s sixty-three year old boyfriend, Harry (Jack Nicholson) and a handsome thirty-something doctor, Julian, (Keanu Reeves). It’s Complicated also tells the story of an accomplished, divorced woman in her fifties, Jane (Meryl Streep), but in this version of the story, she is caught not between a man her own age and a younger man, but between her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), and her new boyfriend, Adam (Steve Martin), the architect she has hired to build her dream home.
Food and cooking serve as symbols and narrative devices in these two films, representing and communicating the multidimensional nature of middle-aged women in not only the traditionally feminine roles of mother and housewife, but also the pro-feminist roles of career woman and lover. These different roles need not be in conflict within Meyer’s leading women, however. The “older bird” genre tells stories of sexual reawakening, a process that thus shifts the balance and requires ongoing negotiation of the self within the characters’ heretofore established identities.

Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated
In a delightfully palatable twist, this process is played out through the sub-text of food. In scene after scene, food, cooking, eating, feeding, and food-centered settings progress each film’s narrative and provide depth to the exploration of middle-aged female identity. Kitchens in particular serve as both symbols of identity transformation and meaningful settings for significant narrative action, specifically as spaces for romantic relationships to progress. The kitchen in each film personifies the female lead, transcends the screen to capture the aspirational hearts of viewers — and the professional eye of designers and bloggers — and finally, embodies Meyers own life experience and trademark visual style.
Kitchens that Personify Female Leads 
When surveying sets for Something’s Gotta Give, Meyers noted that homes in the Hamptons all featured “blowout kitchens” — large kitchens equipped with commercial appliances, custom cabinetry, granite countertops, and other high-end, expensive features. Thus, Erica’s magnificent kitchen is realistic for her character. Beyond fact-checking realism, however, Meyers also says, “The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s” (Collins 2003). Meyers describes the kitchen itself, saying, “It was a cook’s kitchen, a bountiful kitchen” (Green and Baldwin 2006) and “a little too big” (Collins 2003).
Kitchen from Something’s Gotta Give
Just as Meyers herself finished her dream home following her divorce from Charles Shyer, Meyers outfits both Erica in Something’s Gotta Give and Jane in It’s Complicated with their own “blowout kitchens” that serve as self-gifts for achieving professional success and surviving divorce. In addition, while some individuals furnish lavish kitchens for show, both Erica and Jane love to cook, making the kitchen a space where what is a domestic chore for some women, is elevated as a hobby and creative endeavor for Erica and Jane.
Beyond markers of status and functional spaces for cooking, Scott Rudin, a producer of It’s Complicated, suggests that Meyers’ sets also reveal meaning and further develop characters. He says, “Everything — the silverware, the food in the fridge — is part of the narrative” (quoted in Merkin 2009). Indeed, Meyers represents and negotiates character identity within kitchen spaces. For example, while Erica’s preference for all white clothing and white stones are construed as part of her controlling personality, her gleaming white kitchen bursting with sunlight is an ideal representation of who she is. As she negotiates her newfound sexual self, she is always comfortable and in control within her kitchen.
Rudin also discusses the set design for It’s Complicated, saying, “We had a lot of conversation about the size of Jane’s house. Her bedroom is a small bedroom and her kitchen is a small kitchen that’s falling apart. She’s saved for 10 years to change it. Nancy’s worked hard to [create a kitchen that would] justify the plot” (Merkin 2009). Jane takes a longer road than Erica to establish her identity and develop self-worth after her divorce. This state of prolonged negotiation and struggle is personified in her “small kitchen that’s falling apart.”
Kitchen from It’s Complicated
Kitchens that Transcend Film: Viewer and Blog Attention 
These two set kitchens not only progress the narrative and support character development, but also provide fecund fodder for design enthusiasts and aspirational viewers. The kitchens in both films garnered significant attention from viewers, home décor magazines, blogs, and designers alike. The attention garnered by the It’s Complicated kitchen reveals that Meyers may have missed the mark creating Jane’s “before kitchen,” which many viewers actually enjoy and aspired to as it appears. For example, the design website, Remodelista, highlighted the kitchen in its “Steal This Look” feature, applauding it for its attention to detail. Following the blog entry are 122 comments that have been posted since it was published on December 22, 2009 that share a desire to copy the look and feel of Jane’s kitchen, which Meyers tries to portray as too small and requiring renovation.
While some viewers desired Jane’s “before” kitchen, the gleaming white English Colonial kitchen in Something’s Gotta Give all but revolutionized kitchen design. The Fran Jacoberger blog describes it as, “flooded with milky white hues, soft finishes and subtle detailing, its clean design packs universal appeal.” Erica’s kitchen is called the “most copied kitchen of all time” (Killam 2010) and Lee J. Stahl, president of the Renovated Home, a design-and-build company serving Manhattan’s most posh ZIP codes, confirms, “It’s the No. 1 requested style” (quoted in Green and Baldwin 2006). “Julia” the blogger responsible for Hooked on Houses, agrees, saying, “I copied as much of it as I could! I later found out I wasn’t the only one inspired by it. Every home show I went to the following year seemed to have its own version of this look.”
The set home, including the kitchen, was even featured in an issue of Architectural Digest, after which the set’s kitchen became one of the most searched features on ArchitecturalDigest.com (Friends of the Kitchen…). Meyers claims to have been annoyed by this set-centric press, saying:
“It got to the point where I started to resent the whole house. It seemed like people were giving it more attention than the movie (quoted in Green and Baldwin, 2006).”

Unpacking the Meyers Mark 
But perhaps Meyers ought not to have been surprised by this attention. In her New York Times cover story, Daphne Merkin chronicles the evolution of Meyers’ “trademark aspirational interiors,” which take center stage in both of these films. This Meyers mark has also been termed “architecture porn,” the “gracious home aesthetic,” and “the cashmere world of Nancy Meyers” (Merkin 2009). Merkin concludes that Meyers “prefers for her movies — for life itself — to have a rosy, unconflicted presentation. My sense is that whatever warts exist, she airbrushes out, the better to come away with a happy ending” (2009).
Living room in Something’s Gotta Give
And this is indeed part of the fantasy that Meyers creates within the “older bird” chick flick genre in which she is building a monopoly. Meyers creates not only romantic fantasies, but also magazine-worthy dream homes in which these fantasies unfurl. Even Harry utters, “Wow, it’s the perfect beach house,” when he first arrives at Erica’s home in Something’s Gotta Give. Merkin’s word choice is interesting, however, as she attempts to pin point what it is about Meyers’ films that appeal to “older bird” audiences, saying:
“But in the end she’s dipping deep into the bourgeois mainstream, with its longing for Oprah-like ‘closure,’ its peculiarly American belief in personality makeovers and its abiding love for granite kitchen counters (2009).”
The symbol of the trophy kitchen and the luxe life that Meyers incorporates into her films are certainly part of the equation.
Conclusion
As Meyers creates fantasies in which older women have it all — including career, family, financial success, love, and sexual fulfillment — this state of fantastical bliss is manifested within the film sets, particularly within the kitchens, which her viewers love as much, if not more so, than the films themselves. With so much emphasis placed on the kitchens, these two films function as food films where food is far more than a prop, but rather an element of characterization, plot development, and social critique. Through food — and juxtaposed with food — socio-cultural beliefs about middle-aged love and sexuality are explored in new ways. While Nancy Meyers’ packaging of middle-aged love includes considerable fantasy, it also reveals and affirms the very real conditions, desires, and hopes of a growing demographic of American women. As foodie culture and food films also continue to garner increasing attention, food-centered narratives provide unique sub-text to explore the multidimensionality of women of a certain age.
References
———-
Emily Contois works in the field of worksite wellness and is a graduate student in the MLA in Gastronomy Program at Boston University. She researches all things food in popular culture and blogs on food studies, nutrition, and public health at emilycontois.com.

Gender and Food Week: Eclairried Away: Is it Love or Sugar Shock in ‘Simply Irresistible’?

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible

Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts
The 1999 romantic comedy Simply Irresistible begins with the female lead, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar), milling around a New York City farmer’s market (decked out in Todd Oldham! So 90’s!) searching for ingredients for what she believes is the last service at her restaurant, Southern Cross. A mysterious shaman in the guise of a market vendor convinces Amanda to buy a basket of crabs (totally legit), one of which scampers away and leads her to painfully handsome department store executive Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Tom is in charge of a new restaurant venture opening in Henri Bendel’s. Flustered, smitten, and clearly playing into the “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” cliché, as Tom is leaving, Amanda tells him she can cook Crab Napoleon. If this is starting to sound improbable, here’s the trailer:
However, we quickly learn that Amanda’s a bit of a culinary flop. She’s struggling to hold onto her late mother’s restaurant whose only patrons are an elderly married couple and a man who brings his own sack lunch every day. Amanda’s wrestling with her own professional and personal inadequacies: she’s losing the family restaurant, she will never be the caliber of cook her mother was, she’s failed as a daughter, she’s failed herself, etc. At least she’s failing wearing Todd Oldham, right? Is that where the restaurant’s rent checks have been going?
After breaking the news of the restaurant’s last service to her loyal regulars, Amanda goes outside for a cry. As fate would have it, a taxi (driven by this mysterious spirit guide from the farmer’s market…) pulls up in front of the restaurant and out tumbles Tom Bartlett and his high-class girlfriend (Amanda Peet). Fate has literally dropped Tom on Amanda’s doorstep and given her the chance to prove herself as a cook and girlfriend material. Or whatever. Amanda begins to panic, realizing that she has no idea what goes into the Crab Napoleon Tom orders. Her sioux chef cooks all the crabs with the exception of special, all-knowing crab that led Amanda to Tom earlier. This crab hears Amanda’s pleas for success, and things start to turn around. Right . . .
While making the Crab Napoleon, Amanda wishes for everything to come together so that one bite is ecstasy. She asks her chef if he’s noticed all the words there are to describe something delicious: savory, tasty, scrumptious, delectable, mouthwatering (all of which are also used to describe a woman’s attractiveness) and then after she’s done listing these, the Crab Napoleon, done to perfection, suddenly materializes on the plate (No kitchen cleanup required! Thanks, magic crab for making me talented! There’s no way I had the self-esteem to pull this off solo!). Amanda refers to this woman as “the mistake” Tom is with, but the male chef comments that the woman is perfect, with skin “like butter” (the lines between culinary and sexual ecstasy get quite blurred throughout this film), and Amanda is convinced this Barbie-esque woman isn’t right for Tom.
Let’s backtrack a minute. Tom’s no saint. He takes his Barbie to lunch for date number four, the date on which he routinely dumps every woman he dates (after the third date, which suggests they’ve slept together). Also, very classy to dump someone over a meal in a public place where he assumes she won’t cause a scene, right? Pre-lunch, Tom tells his assistant, Lois (Patricia Clarkson) how everything seems to turn sour after the third date. Women start to get clingy and expect things. His flavor-of-the-week wants more, and it makes him uneasy. He even drafts a “happiness chart” demonstrating how things taper off and fizzle after the conjugal third date (how much time does a restaurant exec for a high-end department store have on his hands?). Lois turns the curse of the fourth date around on Tom and asks him what role his behavior plays as the relationship fizzles. Tom has commitment issues. Big surprise. But, back to lunch . . .

Simply Irresistible
Upon eating Amanda’s Crab Napoleon, Tom blisses out. He completely forgets about breaking up with his Barbie. Instead, the Barbie tells Tom she’s too perfect for him, and proceeds to trash Amanda’s restaurant. Amanda needs new plates, and Tom is single again. Amanda dresses up and heads uptown to Henri Bendel to pick out new place settings with a box of éclairs in hand, because she believes “dessert is the whole point of the meal.” Tom eats one of the éclairs, feeding bites of it to Amanda, and what ensues is some hallucinatory, mutually orgasmic sexual fantasy in which he shows her the space for the store’s new restaurant and they dance. Or, they think they danced . . .
Amanda’s cooking has gone from abysmal to five-star. She’s thinking positively about her chosen profession. The restaurant is thriving. The place is hopping. She’s a success. She’s a genius. She’s a successful businesswoman. She done her momma proud. She’s a sister doing it for herself. BUT WAIT, SHE’S SINGLE AND THUS INCOMPLETE!
Amanda falls into that mind game abyss and tries to decode Tom’s behavior, fretting over why he hasn’t called since their sugary rendezvous. She call and invites to cook him dinner after she’s closed up shop for the night. He comes up with some lamely vague “I’m busy” excuse but wants to come by later. As in LATER. Clearly a booty call. Don’t be a doormat, Amanda! He shows up with flowers, and she cooks him dessert using the vanilla orchid he brings her. In what must be the most ridiculous scene, even in a film remotely dealing with the supernatural, some otherworldly fog boils out of the dessert cauldron and envelops them. He licks her skin, tells her she tastes good, and they disappear under what looks like dry ice covering the entire restaurant.
At this point, Tom is craving Amanda, or is it her food he’s after? He has some sort of post-coital glow after eating her baked goods. He begins to panic, wonders what has come over him, and when next he sees her, they float as they’re making out. The dizzying love-rush feelings freak Tom out, he feels trapped, pinned (literally, to the ceiling) and accuses Amanda of witchcraft. Confronted with commitment and serious feelings, Tom bails.

Simply Irresistible
Meanwhile, the French chef decides to walk out before the restaurant at Henri Bendel opens. At the request of his boss, Jonathan (the ever-creepy Dylan Baker), Tom grudgingly asks Amanda to fill in. Jonathan and Lois have also fallen into lust together after Lois literally shoved Amanda’s treats down his throat, and Jonathan wants this venture to be a success.
Amanda manages to shove aside all her neuroses and hang-ups about her talent, or lack thereof, and commandeers a successful multi-course meal as Henri Bendel’s lead chef. Amanda’s emotions are fused into her cooking, and all the patrons travel her peaks and valleys with each course that is served. Tom refrains from eating her food, both out of nervousness for the restaurant’s success, and to test whether or not his feelings for Amanda stemmed from her food.
Tom realizes he’s an emotional infant. How does he win her back? With diamonds and a dress, duh! He leaves a tiara and a pink dress on a Bendel mannequin with a “wear me” note. They dance, for real this time, in the restaurant where Amanda is now chef supreme. She got the notoriety. She tamed a renowned lady-killer. She got the man. She got the fairytale ending. What will become of Southern Cross? Of Amanda and Tom? Of the mystical crab? Who knows, we’re all to busy riding the sugar high to care about anything beyond the ephemeral.

Simply Irresistible
Simply Irresistible both perpetuates and slays gender stereotypes surrounding food, cooking, sex, and their interconnectedness. Sure, Amanda becomes a capable, self-assured cook capable of holding her own in a traditionally male-dominated profession, but was it because she was truly talented or because Tom got her the gig? Why is food (especially baking) almost always used as an aphrodisiac when a woman “seduces” a man and not vice-versa? Why does Lois deliberately set out to entrap Jonathan with Amanda’s desserts? Would he have been interested in her at all otherwise? Would Amanda have had the strength to stay clear of Tom after his man-child temper tantrum?
So much importance is still placed on whether or not a woman can cook, and no matter how enlightened we think we are, a woman who isn’t successful at the whole domestic bit isn’t as desired. Look at all the ads that deal with cooking and cleaning. The vast majority of TV and print ads are still targeted toward women! In 2012! Granted, this is not the Cold-War-Have-a-Martini-in-Hand-For-Your-Husband-When-He-Gets-Home-From-Work-Era, but mothers who work are still expected to shop, cook, and clean up after it all. We can’t all be Nigella Lawsons, but we shouldn’t have to be beautiful baked goods goddesses to be “complete.” As women, we need to follow our passions and creativity and not get caught up in the notion that emotional fulfillment and validation come from whether or not we’re single. Amanda should have thrown that tiara in Tom’s face, handed him a box of her desserts, and told him to get bent.
———-
Carleen Tibbetts lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, , and other publications.

Gender and Food Week: The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick

Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert in Eat Pray Love

 
Guest post written by Jessica Habalou, excerpts from her unpublished Master’s thesis. Reprinted with permission.

“Every word in Italian is like a truffle:” Eat Pray Love and Food for Pleasure 
Based on the extremely popular memoir of the same name, Eat Pray Love is the story of Liz Gilbert, who embarks on a year-long stint abroad to help her recover from a bitter divorce and torrid love affair. Her marital malaise is a prime example of the Friedan’s “problem with no name;” she knows that having a big house and being a good wife and one day mother is not enough to satisfy her, and in fact render her desperately unhappy. So she leaves her husband and tried to discover what will bring her satisfaction. Initially, and under the influence of her new lover, Liz turns to religion to help ground herself. She devotes newfound time and energy to meditation, ruminating on God and studying the teachings of an Indian guru. But her holy immersion is misguided, for as Liz’s friend notes: “[Do] you remember a couple years ago when you threw yourself into the renovation of your kitchen? You were completely consumed with being the perfect wife and cook? Well, I think chanting and meditation are the same thing in a different costume.” Tapping into her innate wander-lust, Liz decides to travel to Italy, India and Bali. She announces in her friend’s office the full extent of her unhappiness: “I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it’s just gone. I wanna go someplace where I can marvel at something. Language, gelato, spaghetti, something. I have not given myself two weeks of a breather to just deal with, you know, myself.”

Eat Pray Love

In Italy, Liz treats herself with complete abandon to the gastronomic pleasure therein, and in so doing, makes strides in her attempt at personal growth. Food and eating come to replace some of her vices and offer her the comfort of friendship and self-preservation. The visualization of food and the act of eating in the film go to great lengths that they are her supplement to sex. Through close shots of her eyes rolling back in delight as she takes her first bite of a Napoleon, extreme close-ups of her lips wrapped around a forkful of pasta, or detailed shots of her cutlery probing into a plate of fried prawns to release a mini-explosion of juices, there is little subtlety applied to the sensual and erotic role of food. In one scene, Liz is at an outdoor cafe, and the camera cuts between a young couple kissing and fondling each other and Liz at her table, watching them, then her plate of spaghetti appear. The camera continues to shift between the couple and Liz advancing on her plate, grinning with each bite. When the plate is cleaned and the couple is gone, Liz smiles deeply as if she has a secret – the act is finished. Visually, food is heavily sensualized, in a way rivals and often surpasses the sensual display of food on the Food Network. While this is likely do in part to the film appealing to the Food Network demographic, and therefore complying with a certain expected visual aesthetic, the eroticization of food in Liz’s Italy also helps to emphasize that she is single, celibate, and finally experiencing pleasure outside of romance. 

The sensual connection to Italian food and Italian language is another important component of Liz’s experience in Italy. Before her departure, she declares to her friend after studying an Italian dictionary that “every word in Italian is like a truffle.” She finds and becomes friendly with an Italian language tutor, with whom she is often seen at a cafe, eating and drinking. In one scene, the two are at an outdoor cafe (a common motif), eating and sipping red wine. At this point, her tutor introduces her to an idiom meaning “to cross over:” “attraversiamo.” Student and teacher repeat the word several times, and each time to camera zooms tight on the lips of the speaker, similarly to how Liz is shown eating on camera. The word itself, then, and the language, are like food in the sense that they fulfill her physical, emotional and sensual desires.

Eat Pray Love
What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears). But all told, she enables her own self-worth through food, and that of her friend’s as well. All the talk about eating and indulging is not without commentary about the effects it has on the figures of the women doing most of the indulging, Liz and her friend, Sofi. In a scene depicting a day trip to Naples, Liz and Sofi are seated across from each other at a crowded, chaotic pizza shop. Per usual, Liz takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure, saying “I am having a relationship with my pizza.” Seeing Sofi with her hands in her lap, she says “You look like you’re breaking up with your pizza. What’s the matter?” “I’ve gained, like, ten pounds,” she says, her eyes shifting guiltily. Rather than trying to amend the situation by offering to start dieting or visiting the gym with her tomorrow, Liz says: “I’m sick and tired of saying no and waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before . . .so I know how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it . . . I’m just through with the guilt.” Sofi smiles and eats. Afterward, the scene cuts back and forth between split shots of the women at a crowded bar watching the soccer and in a dressing room attempting to button multiple pairs of jeans. The scene culminates in a Lucille Ball-style moment of comedic excess, with an aerial shot of Liz on the floor of the dressing room, Sofi hovering over her and successfully snapping the button into place, and the image of men at a bar cheering at the soccer game while Liz and Sofi applaud their own “victory.”

Eat Pray Love

Liz’s chapter in Rome concludes with a Thanksgiving celebration with her Italian community of friends. The scene is shot in the cozy quarters of her Italian tutor’s mother’s house, somewhere recessed from the hubbub of the city. It is evening, and the group is preparing vegetables, talking and laughing, when they discover that the turkey is not thawed to roast. In the same “devil-may-care” attitude of which Liz has become so fond, they eat the rest of the meal and save the turkey for later. Around the table, Liz instructs her friends on the American Thanksgiving custom of announcing one’s gratitude. “This,” says Liz, gesturing to the table, “all makes me feel so grateful.” The next shot depicts the friends strewn across the living room, sleeping with heads on laps, across couches and chairs and the floor. Early morning light creeps in the windows, revealing bottles of wine and half-finished plates about. The scene is tranquil. An alarm rings, and Liz wakes to remove the turkey from the oven. The group gathers again around the table for the breakfast bird, and Liz arrives as if out of the Rockwell painting, holding an archetypically dressed bird on a platter. Through her divorce (and severance from marital and familial obligations), she has found all the normative, American comforts of home and family.

“What is it you really like to do?” Julie & Julia and Domestic Ambition 

Amy Adams as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, is based on two textual, real-life accounts: Julie Powell’s weblog project where she spent a year cooking ever recipe in Julia Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Child’s My Life in France, co-authored and published posthumously by her nephew Alex Prudhomme. The film garnered popular and critical acclaim, particularly for Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia Child, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Since Julia Child’s life was so publicly oriented around food, one might expect the “Julia” portion of the film to be as well. On the contrary, food is a secondary function to Julia’s relationship to her husband and professional ambition, particularly when compared to the Julie narrative. No doubt that Julia’s love for food is a driving force in the film – when musing with her husband Paul in a Paris restaurant over how to fulfill her personal void, Paul asks “what is it you really like to do?” “Eat,” she replies, with gusto. Julia’s seemingly charmed life – replete with a loving husband, a girlish exuberance, and a steadfast resolve in the face of setbacks – is surrounded by food. The viewer sees that Julia’s time in Paris is played against the background of crowded outdoor markets brimming with bright, fresh produce and pigs’ heads. She stops at street vendors for chestnuts, hosts dinner parties with friends, and doggedly chops, flips, dices, and whisks her way through her education at the esteemed and deeply traditional Le Cordon Bleu. She is seen offering Paul a plate at lunchtime before he whisks her off to the bedroom. But more important than the food in these sequences is her relationships with the characters – she charms the vendors, listens to her instructor, plays a proper hostess while images of plates and the sounds of clicking silverware occupy the backdrop, and a good wife who both offers food to her husband and forgoes it in the interest of satisfying their sexual desires. In this sense Julia is a free spirit, a professional, a lady, and a lover. She is motivated by food, but not controlled by it.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

While food supplements Julia’s already rich life experience, it seems to define Julie’s. Food serves to enrich a visual backdrop in Julia’s world, it is a primary focus in Julie’s. Julia’s time in the kitchen cooking her way through Mastering the Art is visually expressed through multiple tight, close-up shots of the ingredients she is prepping, the food in various stages of cooking, and the finished product. These are much like the shots viewers are accustomed to seeing on the Food Network, with food shown in stages of preparation: butter sizzles in the pan, mushrooms turn in the butter, cream and port gush into the works, chicken browns in the fat, all to the soundtrack of sizzling and cracking. In fact, Susan Spungen, former art director or Martha Stewart Living magazine directed the food styling in both Julie and Julia and Eat Pray Love (Kingston 2010). In these tight, close shots, food is the focus, and occasionally the hand that cooks it. The viewer becomes completely engaged in the cooking, much like Julie is completely immersed in her project.

Julie’s obsession renders her more flawed than Julia’s character, even to the point of being unlikable. As Benson-Allott suggests, “[b]ecause Child is an idealization…Powell seems deeply flawed in contrast.” She concedes that “Adams makes a bold choice to allow her character at times to become quite annoying” (85). She bumbles her way through her marriage as she becomes selfishly consumed by the popularity of her blog. The couple fights over her selfishness, prompting him to storm off in a rage. In a separate incident, her husband diagnoses their marital problems as being symptomatic of “too much food, not enough sex,” as if to suggest that she is neglecting her conjugal and marital obligations in the interest of pursuing her own gain.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

Julie’s obsessive relationship with food manifests itself not only through her marriage, but physically as well. In one scene, Julie goes on a spending spree at the gourmet goods store Dean and Deluca. She wedges herself and her parcels through a turnstile, then lugs her bags and parcels with her down the subway stairs, bangs into exasperated commuters and runs to catch a train while her voiceover explains “[I was] sweating like a pig, which is not surprising because I’ve been way too busy cooking fattening foods to bother exercising.” This claustrophobic environment reveals some of the ill effects of her personal and gustatory indulgences. The frustrated looks on commuters’ faces while she tries to navigate her way through rush hour while bearing the load of consumerism both on and in her body is like society’s judgmental gaze at a women’s overindulgence. Like the characters of Sex and the City and post-9/11 New York-based chick flicks that Negra analyzes, Julie is navigating through the anxious, often dissatisfying climate of “cultural dilemmas and stigmas.”

Julie & Julia

Julie’s high points are reflected in the success and visual quality of the food she produces – and vice versa. When she initially hatches her blogging idea, she is making bruschetta. Hunks of bread sizzle and brown, and she chops impossibly red tomatoes and verdant basil leaves. The combined dish is a food stylist’s masterpiece, as if to verify that Julie not only has the chops to take on her idea, but that only good, delicious things will come as a result. Things are looking up when she learns that Knopf’s powerhouse Judith Jones will be dinning at her house; in preparation, Julie prepares boeuf bourguignon, a dish whose rustic charm is deliberately revealed in a close shot, exposing the parsley-flecked stew’s deep, earthy tones, enrobed by a Le Creuset pot. The shot radiates authenticity and perfection. Of course, as evidenced above, Julie’s ambition is not without its flaws. Her short-tempered in the kitchen coincide with some of the ugliest food in the film: aspics. As the brown, gelatinous mess slips off the plate and into sink, she rails against the inadequacies of the kitchen space in her apartment. And after a raw chicken stuffed with liver and cream cheese hits the floor with a sickening splatter, she splays out on her back on the tile, kicking her feet and weeping like a petulant child. Despite her blog despite her self-conscious weight gain, her strained marriage, her overwrought schedule, her tenuous start, she continues to blog. Interestingly, she maintains a generally ambivalent attitude toward eating itself. Her husband, her friends, and her guests are the ones who seem to enjoy the fruits of her labor. For Julie, the satisfaction is in the effort, and the perceived control. “I love the after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing I mean nothing you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” The pleasure for Julie is not in consuming, but in producing. The act of production is what fulfills her, and for it she sacrifices conventional domestic obligations.

Works Cited 

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Mastering the Art of Feminist Mentorship.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture. Spring 2010: pp. 83-85. Print.

Negra, Diane. “Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO.” Genders Journal. Issue 39, 2004. Web. Google Scholar.

———-

Jessica Habalou works with food and wine at Boston University, and is a degree candidate for BU’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. Her research interests include food, feminism, and popular culture, which involves lots of eating, drinking, and watching movies.

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.

———-

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: ‘James and the Giant Peach’

James and the Giant Peach
This guest post written by Libby White previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films and our series on Women and Gender in Musicals.

Based on the book by Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach has been a favorite movie of mine since childhood. After all, what kid wouldn’t love a cast of singing and dancing insects?
(Before I go into a review of the movie, I must state that I have never read the book, and do not know how closely the movie follows. Any comments I make are on the film alone, not the book.)
Directed by Henry Selick, the story revolves around a boy named James, who after the death of both parents, ends up a slave to his two cruel aunts, Sponge and Spiker. After an encounter with a strange man promising him “marvelous things,” James receives a bag of magical sprites, (crocodile tongues boiled in the skull of a dead witch for 40 days and 40 nights, the gizzard of a pig, the fingers of a young monkey, the beak of a parrot and three spoonfuls of sugar to be exact),  that inadvertently end up planting themselves within a barren peach tree. An enormous peach sprouts from the tree at contact,  which James later escapes into, turning into a claymation version of himself. Alongside a band of personified insects, the group sail across the ocean on the peach, encountering various trials as they head towards their destination in New York City.
The aunts, Sponge and Spiker, are two of the worst people to ever grace the silver screen, with their terrible abuse of young James setting the stage for the adventure ahead. They serve as the main antagonists of the story, chasing James across land and sea to recapture him.
The Aunts are horrific caretakers; starving, beating, and emotionally abusing James relentlessly. Mind you, this is a movie for children. And like in most children’s movies, the Aunts’ outward appearance reflects their inner evil. Both women are made to look terrifyingly cruel and yet simultaneously clown-like, dressed in orange-red wigs and slathered on make-up. During their first 20 minutes on screen, the two women participate in dozens of morally reprehensible practices, everything from shameless vanity to verbally attacking a woman and her children.
The fact that the villains are female does not bother me, nor that they are portrayed as greedy, selfish people. After all, women are just as capable as men of committing child abuse. However, while the style of the movie is very dark and Tim Burton-esque, I can’t help but wish that the Aunts’ appearances were not related to their evil.  Too often in the world of children’s movies a villain need only be identified by their ugly appearance, as if that is a symptom of inner ugliness. Just look at most Disney movies from the past century!
The women’s abuse of James was also very dramatic and purposeful, most likely so that the children watching the movie could understand James’ need for immediate escape. The film could have used the Aunts as an opportunity to delve into the other types of child-abuse, but instead meant to focus on the strong atmosphere of fantastical adventure. (With a story that involves death by Rhinoceros, skeleton pirates, and mechanical sharks, it is easy to understand why the people themselves are wildly unrealistic. The world itself is wildly unrealistic.) 
Transformed by the sprites themselves, James finds a group man-sized insects living within the giant peach, each with a unique personality that relates to their species. There is a smart, cultured grasshopper; a kind, nurturing ladybug; a rough-talking, comedic centipede; a neurotic, blind earthworm; a poetic, intelligent spider; and a deaf, elderly glowworm.
The spider, glowworm, and ladybug are all female, each very different and yet immensely likeable. It’s great to see several types of female personalities represented, though perhaps they are a little clichéd. Miss Spider is the typical sensual seductress, the Ladybug a doting mother-figure. The glow-worm has no real part except serving as a lantern inside the peach, and occasionally mishearing a phrase for laughs.
James: “The man said marvelous things would happen!”
Glowworm: “Did you say marvelous pigs in satin?”
Miss Spider in particular is a great female character; strong, smart, and willing to stand up for herself and those she cares about. Despite her reputation as a killer and cave-dweller, she repeatedly defends James and wards off the assumptions the other insects have made-about her.  From the moment she is introduced in her personified form, you can’t help but like her. She doesn’t take anyone’s crap.
Ladybug comes off as an older, traditional woman, complete with a flowered hat and overfilled purse. She is kindly, though strict about manners and being polite. When describing what each bug hopes to find in New York City, Ladybug is most concerned with seeing flowers and children. And while Ladybug does resemble an Aunt of mine to disturbing proportions, I felt like she had no purpose in the story other than to serve as James’ replacement mother/grandmother. While the other insects are having swashbuckling adventures and near death experiences, Ladybug is just scenery, screaming and cheering in the correct places. Which is odd, because every insect has a large amount of screen time devoted to their stories and transformation, minus the glowworm and ladybug. Both female characters. In the end, it was James, Miss Spider, Centipede, Earthworm, and Grasshopper who repeatedly saved the day. Ladybug was just there to reassure James of himself whenever fear or doubt overtook him.

Despite this unfortunate exclusion, I still would highly recommend the film to anyone who is interested. It is visually stunning, undoubtedly original, and teaches a lesson about family that is quite touching.
From a feminist perspective, my favorite thing about the film is that it doesn’t pay any attention to sex at all. At no point are the Aunts’ criticized for being a disappointment to the name of maternal women. At no point is Miss Spider treated differently because she is female. No, almost every character has an inner and outer struggle, each reaching a defining moment in the plot where they must test themselves to save those they love. Together, the insects and James form a makeshift family, each working equally with one another to build a happy life in their new home. (And the boy who plays James is too cute for words, all his emotions and inner growth come off as genuine. You can’t help but cheer for him as he finally stands up to his aunts.)
Overall, James and the Giant Peach is an excellent movie, and I would suggest it to any parent or person who likes stories of adventure and fantasy. Any warnings I would give would refer only to the dark nature of the beginning of the film, and to any people who may be afraid of giant, rampaging rhinoceroses.
———-
Libby White is a senior at the University of Tennessee, studying Marketing and Spanish full-time. Her parents were in the Navy for most of her life, so she got to see the world at a young age, and learn about cultures outside her own. Her mother in particular has had a huge influence on her, as she was a woman in the military at a time when men dominated the field. Her determination and hard-work to survive in an environment where she was not welcomed has made Libby respect the constant struggle of women today.

Gender & Food Week: ‘Simply Irresistible’

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.
Simply Irresistible was one forgotten film of the late 90’s. It’s bewitching story failed to spark box office or critical praise thanks to a weak script dropping many unexplained plot points — who the heck was Gene O’ Reily, why did Amanda buy expensive crabs from him, and what was up with the freaking animated crab?
And those were just the introduction problems. However, let’s forget about all that for a moment and talk about food romance.

At the film’s beginning, handed down the reins and lacking the expertise that her deceased mother had to make the restaurant Southern Cross thrive, Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a terrible chef (or in her words “shitty”) and because of that, the financially troubled restaurant will be closing.

Enter Harry Bendel’s savvy businessman Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Earlier introduced to Amanda by the strange Gene O’Reily who also moonlights as a taxi cab driver, Tom and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Chris (Amanda Peet) are unceremoniously dropped off at the Southern Cross.

Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Amanda Shelton (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible
When he comes into the restaurant with the crisply dressed, superior quality female, suddenly jealous Amanda’s cooking skills come out to play. With the snap of a whip, she has the ability of a kitchen ninja making a fantastic crab napoleon and chicken paillard for the couple on her first try.
To the sounds of jazz and upbeat pop, soon after Tom’s visit and success at crafting a pleasant meal, Amanda looks very happy, bursting out deliciously appealing cuisine that have nothing to do with southern comfort. That “old black magic” is supposedly the reason for Amanda’s glory as the newly hopping restaurant has boasting customers shuffling in and out, possibly by word of mouth, claiming that she makes exceptional food.
Amanda thinks otherwise.

Tom, the commitment phobic rich man, is much too practical and considers dating a business deal, often relating the two together in a creepily obsessive manner. He takes an immediate shining to Amanda, complimenting that crab napoleon, but the magic starts to wear off fast.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Tom (Sean Patrick Flanery) in Simply Irresistible
For as Amanda and Tom discover each other in a magical way — imaginary dancing on a striped ballroom floor high on caramel éclairs, sharing kisses on a vanilla fogged ground, and unpeeling oranges that cause floating up to ceilings — she is stuck on him, he is bothered by it, dumps her, and she doesn’t take the “breakup” too well. In other words, she feels that he is responsible for her sudden rise to culinary fame. “I don’t know if I need you to keep that feeling,” she says wretchedly, desperate to keep him around.
The worst way to upset the female audience is to imply that a woman needed a man. Unless Judith Roberts is the new masculine name, I didn’t understand why the screenwriter had Amanda clinging to Tom in an almost sickening manner. She isn’t given an opportunity to truly relish in her food joy because she is constantly thinking about Tom. Yes, the viewers are aware that before Tom she lacked kitchen talent, but wouldn’t it have been far more amusing if Amanda’s bad cooking was just a mental barrier from her realizing her potential stemmed from trying to live up her mother’s expectations? Why else was her mother mentioned much, but not fully illustrated? 
But no. Tom is the reason Amanda can cook. 
That is what we and the two of them are supposed to get. If Tom left, Amanda’s passion would dwindle away and the Southern Cross would be back up on the reality market. Sadly enough, Amanda doesn’t have any female friends or a motherly figure to socialize with. Often she asks her sous chef, Nolan (Larry Gilliard Jr.) for advice, especially when it came to her relationship with Tom and that became a problem. Nolan didn’t even believe in her talents after the first meal, jokingly stating that she should stick with making sugar cookies.

Amanda (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Simply Irresistible
Oh, it was a beautiful sentiment that whatever feelings Amanda possessed came right into her food and emerged into other people — to the “simple” chicken paillard that had Chris acting like a crazy dish breaking diva to the sexually charged caramel éclairs that had everyone at Bendel’s acting on suppressed sensual impulses. However, towards the ending when she receives the offer of a lifetime cooking up a storm for the influential and the rich, she brings more emotional turmoil to the menu that gets to be a quite bizarre. 
Would anyone want someone drowning out their tears into their food? Highly doubt that. It wouldn’t be considered sanitary. 
As far as performances go, Gellar had a few gem worthy moments, but lacked a certain charismatic chemistry with Flanery, but the witty Patricia Clarkson presented a real scene treat that kept this film from being complete fluffy fodder.

Lois (Patricia Clarkson) in Simply Irresistible

Her supporting character, Lois, a feisty woman pining lustily after Bendel heir Jonathan (Dylan Baker), stole the show and Tom’s box of Amanda’s famous éclairs that he himself had snatched away from an old lady. In this hilarious scene, she relishes her thievery. “Gotta learn to share Tom,” she chirps, devouring the stolen dessert and moaning her pleasure while Tom is left to lick caramel residue from the empty box.

If Clarkson had more scenes with Gellar, Lois would have certainly been a beneficial female companion to naïve Amanda. It seems like the most important element of the film is that Tom’s confidante be a woman and that Amanda’s advisor be a male.

Though Simply Irresistible leaves on a clichéd note and more silly goofiness — like are we supposed to believe that a girl could have her makeup and hair done after hours? — it still serves up a dish of possibilities. Certainly not the best of the romantic genre nor the worst, this film’s minute charm and cheesiness is the stuff greasy pizza is made of.
Well, if women consumed pizza with their chick flick watching that is.
———-
Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Gender & Food Week: A Woman’s Place in the Kitchen: The Cinematic Tradition of Cooking to Catch a Man

Meryl Streep and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated
This guest post is written by Jessica Freeman-Slade.

Early in the 1954 film Sabrina — the original, starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart — the titular ingenue finds herself at a cooking school in Paris. Sent over as a gift from her father’s employer, the wealthy Larabee family, Sabrina continues to nurse her crush on the younger Larabee son, David (William Holden), even from Paris, and it shows in her cooking. The head chef inspects her souffle, and declares it “Much too low.” “I don’t know what happened,” she moans pitifully to herself. “I know what happened,” her colleague, a much older French gentleman, says, “You forgot to turn on the oven.” She cries out, and he guesses that she is in love—unhappily in love. “A woman happily in love, she burns the souffle. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.”

Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina
As centuries of unequal domestic duties have shown us, women who are happy in the kitchen must, by extension, be happy in love. Having fallen in love with the 1995 version of Sabrina long before seeing the original, I had assumed that Sabrina’s (Julia Ormond) maturity and allure upon returning from Paris were indebted to a haircut, long walks by the Seine, and a new passion for photography — not a new talent at whipping up souffles in perfect capris and ballet flats. The ascription of her romantic desirability to her talent with food is an uncomfortable, backward narrative, one that’s hard to escape from even in modern cinema.Young women have heard throughout time that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and film and television have done an excellent job of backing up this assumption. Not all women who can cook were taught to do so at the behest of future matchmakers, but the prevailing attitude, taught to us in women’s magazines and through the constant refrain of mainstream narratives, is that if you catch a man, you’d better make a decent meal. The loathsome popularity of dishes such as “engagement chicken” carry with them the promise that women need only master the kitchen to hook a man. DIY domesticity, maybe, or just cooking to couple up, but either way, it’s an uncomfortably old-fashioned message.

Cooking has always been a creative act, no matter who’s doing the dishes — it requires careful thought, imagination, and precision. It is, in short, one of the most skilled professions that anyone can take on, and also one of the most generous professions, because it requires thinking deeply about another person’s needs and desires. However, when a woman cooks for a man, and in doing so wins his heart, the woman appears conventionally domestic and feminine — traditional in her skill sets, understanding of her appropriate role in the house and in the relationship, and so subservient to the man’s needs. When a woman cooks on film, even when she cooks something extraordinary, there’s something profoundly submissive when she does it to please a man.

Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) and Walter (Sidney Poitier) in A Raisin in the Sun

In the very beginning of the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun, Ruth Younger (Ruby Dee) is trying to stir her husband Walter (Sidney Poitier) to start his day — he wants to talk about his dreams, his ambition, and she keeps reminding him to eat his breakfast. He lambasts her for her intolerance, but her means of affecting change — and her means of keeping the family together — have been limited to the kitchen.

Like Water for Chocolate
But cooking for a man, as shown on film, isn’t without its rewards — for good food is one of the best (and cheapest) means of seduction. When someone takes you into their kitchen, hands you a glass of wine, and promises you a delicious meal, it’s a method of flirtation that’s hard to resist. The pairing of womanly passion and culinary skills has been present as long as women’s emotions were captured in fiction: because a woman’s place has been primarily in the kitchen, her expression of whatever feelings or agency she may have comes by way of what she cooks. Look at the way Tita expresses her passion in Like Water for Chocolate, her emotions dripping into the food and infusing each bite with lust, sorrow, and joy. Her desires, forbidden by her family, cannot help but find their way into her cooking.(When this is later adapted into the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s restaurant chef is accused of being a witch, manipulating her love object with the delicious meals she prepares. Just as women would be kept out of the boardroom for fear of their emotions, so too is she kept from running her own kitchen.)

This impulse, to cook to incite pleasure and admiration, even surfaces in more modern films when women would be seemingly more self-sufficient. As recently as 2011’s It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep’s pastry chef gets to be the object of two men’s lusts, in part, in no small part because she’s a spectacular cook. The scene of her late-night date with a new love interest (Steve Martin), where she makes him chocolate croissants from scratch, shows her at her most ebullient (and sexiest) throughout the film. And it’s only a few scenes later that her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) tells his kids that their mother is the “best cook in the world.” Her talent equals her desirability, displayed in her gift to create a warm, indulgent space for the men in her life.

These scenes aren’t so disquieting on their own—after all, who wouldn’t want to be served a meal infused with lust, or have Meryl Streep bake you croissants at 2am? But the inverted message also comes that, when a woman lacks warmth or compassion, it shows in her cooking.

In Clueless, as Cher (Alicia Silverstone) prepares for a date, her voiceover tells us that “When a boy is coming over, you should always have something baking.” The punchline is then seeing her unwrap an entire roll of frozen cookie dough and dropping it onto a baking sheet. (No surprise later that the entire roll burns to a crisp. “Aw, honey, you baked,” her date condescends. “I tried,” she whimpers.)

The heroine in Mostly Martha, the spectacular 2001 German film, is a good cook, the head chef of a great restaurant, but her cooking doesn’t translate when she has to take care of her niece, Lina. It takes a more genial Italian sous-chef (and Martha’s future love interest) to get the child to eat, and instead of a sophisticated dish, it’s a simple plate of spaghetti that does the trick.

Where Martha’s ambition is rewarded in the restaurant world, it’s punished when she has to act as a surrogate mother (and potential girlfriend). Only once she’s later softened in the film does her cooking — and her parenting — relax to the point of acceptance. But in reality, women don’t just cook for themselves — most of the time, the act of cooking is done as an expression of survival, rather than seduction. Preparing a meal is one indication that a person is fully self-sufficient. It’s a biased opinion, I know, but I raise an eyebrow at anyone, male or female, who tells me that they don’t ever cook for themselves. While making boeuf bourguignon or baking a seven-layer cake takes a greater level of culinary ambition, preparing a series of simple, satisfying dishes show the difference between someone who can take care of themselves, and someone who requires a babysitter.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) in Amelie

The brief scene in Amelie of the heroine preparing her dinner shows us what adulthood looks like — even when adulthood also comes with skipping stones and playing pranks on the local butcher. And no model proves more inspiring than Janette deSautel, the female chef from HBO’s Treme, whose narrative about her New Orleans’s restaurant is entirely without romantic motivation. Even when her restaurant crumbles due to the post-Katrina economy, she rebuilds her reputation in the hard-scrabble New York restaurant scene. By bringing her New Orleans roots to bear in standout dishes at David Chang’s fictionalized restaurant Lucky Peach, she reestablishes herself as a chef to watch — and finds a new avenue toward her culinary career back in her hometown.

Chef Janette deSautel (Kim Dickens) in Treme
Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

And finally, there is Julie & Julia, the story of a modern-day woman (Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams) finding inspiration in Julie Child (Meryl Streep, yet again), and using cooking to dig herself out of her personal and professional ennui. Cooking in this story threatens to tear Julie’s marriage apart — not for her lack of skill, but her preoccupation with what the cooking might mean. Her husband (Chris Messina) doesn’t mind being fed, but he does mind her obsession with letting her cooking skill transform her life. When redemption comes, you know it’s arrived when her husband gives in, asking with a smile “What’s for dinner?” Food becomes a means of personal empowerment, rather than seduction…even if it’s ultimately the husband being fed. And, at least in Julie & Julia, it puts the husband in the role of the sous chef, the kitchen support system, even when the cook is melting down over her lack of trussing ability.

So we’re getting a lot of mixed messages here — can a woman ever cook on film without it looking old-fashioned? Will preparing a meal ever been completely self-satisfying, for the benefit of the chef rather than the diner? Or, like an apron, will the function of cooking on film be forever tied to an expression of gender norms and traditional divisions of domestic labor? I don’t know if we can ever really have much of a distance from Sabrina’s souffle, for depictions of cooking will almost always be expressions of generosity, love, and compassion, no matter who holds the whisk. But for now, I’m hoping for more characters like Janette and Julie, cooking for their own satisfaction and survival rather than someone else’s. That, at least, is a dish that can be served any time of the year.

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.