Tag: Previews

Documentary Preview: ‘The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men’

The Bro Code: a new documentary from MEF
The Media Education Foundation recently announced their newest documentary, The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. The MEF makes some very good documentaries aimed at educating people to become more media literate–which is one of the most important cultural issues of our time, in my opinion.
Men are not born devaluing women, or objectifying them, or loathing them to the point that the worst possible insult is to be called feminine. No, men (and women) learn these attitudes from a culture that constantly reinforces the supremacy of the male and closely polices masculinity (the recent “Man Up!” ads from Miller Lite come to mind, as do the less-recent calls from some female politicians that their male counterparts, again, “Man up!”).
Here’s the trailer:

TRAILER: The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men from Media Education Foundation on Vimeo.
I’m planning to watch The Bro Code (you can watch a free preview of the full-length film on MEF’s website) and check back in with my thoughts. Has anyone watched it yet? What do you think?

Preview: Miss Representation

Miss Representation (2011)
Back in February of this year, we were fortunate to attend the Athena Film Festival and see the documentary Miss Representation. Since then, the film has traveled to different festivals and been shown at numerous screenings around the country. If you haven’t been able to attend one of these showings, however, you have the opportunity to watch the film on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), as part of the OWN Documentary Club, on Thursday, October 20th at 9 PM EST.

I love the tagline for this movie: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” That idea is very similar to the driving force for this site–the way women are represented in film, television, and media in general has a dramatic effect on how women are actually perceived in our culture. The (mis)representation of women directly contributes to the inequality of women and to violence against women. It’s no coincidence that in a culture where women are systematically devalued in media, we have abysmally low numbers of women in positions of power (women represent only 17% of Congress, making the U.S. “90th in the world in terms of women in the national legislature”).

Here are some stats from the movie worth considering:

  • At age 7, and equal number of boys and girls state that they want to be President of the United States. At age 15, this is no longer the case.
  • The 2010 mid-term election is the first time since 1979 that women haven’t made gains.
  • Women comprise only 16% of all writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, and editors.
  • Teenagers in the U.S. consume 10 hours and 45 minutes of media (television, Internet, music, movies, magazines) every day.
I can’t recommend Miss Representation highly enough. If you have cable (and get OWN), I encourage you to watch–and to watch with others, especially teenagers. Here’s an extended preview, for those of you not familiar with the movie.

Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.
 
 
 

Beware ‘The Ides of March’

How many times will that title be used when discussing The Ides of March? I couldn’t resist.
Directed by George Clooney and opening this weekend, Ides is a political thriller centered on a presidential candidate’s press secretary. And SCANDAL.
This is the kind of movie that gets Oscar buzz. What kind of movie? Clooney-directed political statement? Story about power and political corruptions? Sure, maybe. There’s precedent for that. White-male directed movie about powerful white men, and politics, with a dash of sexy lady and serious lady? Definitely.
Watch for yourself:

Now, as I haven’t seen The Ides of March, or read much about it yet, I could be totally wrong. Marisa Tomei as Black Glasses Serious Reporter could be the center of the film, the only person in Ohio (or the national press) with enough smarts and courage to investigate the SCANDAL. The movie could completely center around her work to uncover and expose the SCANDAL (although she gets one or possibly two lines in the trailer). My snarky “sexy lady” comment could also be completely off base; Evan Rachel Wood’s character in the trailer might claim to not be able to tie a tie, and might joke about being a “lowly intern” just to cover up her power. Right? RIGHT?!
You might scoff at my annoyance specifically with this movie, because politics in the United States is dominated by white men, and women don’t have much power in the political game, so in that sense, the movie is “realistic.” But you can’t look at this movie (or any movie) in isolation. Judging from the trailer, Ides follows a well-established pattern for Serious Movies That Become Oscar-Nominated Films (see our reviews of Oscar-nominated movies from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 for some examples), or, Important Movies About Important Things (read: not things that particularly involve women).

Instead of seeing Ides of March this weekend, I want to watch a political thriller in which women take center stage. Give me some ideas.

Documentary Preview: Women in the Dirt

Directed and produced by Carolann Stoney.
Okay, this documentary just looks cool.
Women in the Dirt is a new film that showcases seven landscape architects in California: Cheryl Barton, Andrea Cochran, Isabelle Greene, Mia Lehrer, Lauren Melendrez, Pamela Palmer, and Katherine Spitz. 
From the Web site: “Through conversations with the landscape architects in their offices, or in the stunning spaces they’ve designed, the film explores each woman’s personal aesthetics and approach to their discipline. Women in the Dirt shows how these ‘masters of the obvious’ create the sublime.”
An excerpt from a review by Lydia Schrufer:
Women in the Dirt reveals landscape architecture’s unique status as a modern profession founded by both men and women. This history is graciously deepened by vignettes of seven contemporary women landscape architects. Director Carolann Stoney has selected top landscape architects whose contributions to American landscapes will now receive their due. ‘Just as anyone can enjoy histories of women artists, Women in the Dirt is gendered in its subject, but not its audience,’ observes Katie Kingery-Page, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Kansas State University.

The above is only one of many testimonials to which I wholeheartedly add my own; kudos to Carolann Stoney for an aesthetically challenging, thought-provoking, beautiful film.

Urban Gardens featured the film on their site back in January:

Women, the film demonstrates, are influencing the profession of landscape architecture more today than ever before. Though each of the landscape architects featured has a unique body of work, ‘their concerns overlap in the realm of sustainability and enduring design.’

By shaping our lives, transforming our cities, and nourishing the environment, landscape architecture, as the film shows, is more than the ‘simple arrangement of plants and flowers for corporate spaces and the gardens of rich people.’

The press photos on the site are breathtaking–definitely check them out. While the film appears to be screening in theaters, you can also purchase the DVD here.

Movie Preview: Life, Above All

 

I saw a preview for Life, Above All when I went to see Woody Allen’s latest misogyny-fest, Midnight in Paris. For the record, I mostly hated Midnight in Paris–and should review it as the sexist piece of crap it is–but I’m trying to find examples of positivity in the film industry these days. The only truly great thing about attending Midnight in Paris was discovering the upcoming Life, Above All (now playing in New York and L.A.) and the upcoming Take Shelter–holy crap that’s a freaky trailer.

Michael Shannon scares me.
Anyway, the official Web site synopsizes Life, Above All as follows:
Just after the death of her newly-born sister, Chanda, 12 years old, learns of a rumor that spreads like wildfire through her small, dust-ridden village near Johannesburg. It destroys her family and forces her mother to flee. Sensing that the gossip stems from prejudice and superstition, Chanda leaves home and school in search of her mother and the truth. Life, Above All is an emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community … Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz (Mapantsula), it is based on the international award winning novel Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton.

The trailer itself gets me teary-eyed. I watched it and realized how rarely mother-daughter relationships grace the screen in a way that doesn’t portray the mother as smothering and ridiculous and usually insane, and at the very least, just … shitty. (See: Black Swan, Carrie, Mommie Dearest, Phoebe in Wonderland, Gone Baby Gone, Fish Tank, and the upcoming Ansiedad. Add screen portrayals of the Mother-in-Law to the list, and it’s a disturbing clusterfuck of epic proportions.) 

While a few reviewers argue that Life, Above All ignores the government’s responsibilities in the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa (like the film failing to mention former president Thabo Mbeki’s sympathies with AIDS denialists in the 00’s), I’m excerpting from several positive reviews that focus on the interpersonal relationships in the film:

By Liz Braun:

Life, Above All is an historical snapshot of the AIDS crisis in Africa and an indictment of sorts of the government bungling that allowed the epidemic to overwhelm South Africa. The culprits (ignorance, poverty, big pharma, religious and political leaders, etc.) are not so much the focus; the point of this quiet, heartbreaking drama is all those children left to cope, especially the orphans.

By Nora Lee Mandel:

Rather than focusing on the usual corrective lessons on the transmission and treatment of HIV/AIDS, the family’s struggles play out within systems of traditional care and limited modern medical facilities that are strained to the breaking point. Chanda rails against the stoic comforts of religion and receives only discouraging advice at an overcrowded clinic. Her illiterate and exhausted mother falls prey to the greed of a charlatan doctor, a demon exorcism, and horrific neglect by her revengeful sister, who has not forgiven Lillian for her flouting of tribal marriage traditions for the sake of love.

By Manohla Dargis:

Chanda’s silence is unnerving, as is the absence of tears, and while her calm conveys a preternatural strength of character it also suggests a lifetime of pain. No child, you think, should have to pick out her baby sister’s coffin. But she does, taking in the horror of the funeral home and its metal table without flinching and then pushing forward, still dry eyed, still determined, taking on life with an appealing (and enviable) toughness and grace that make this difficult story not just bearable but also absorbing. As the weight of the world bears down on her slender frame, she becomes the movie’s moral compass and its authentic wonder: the child who is forced to be an adult yet remains childlike enough to feel real.

By Mary Corliss:

Two years ago, a drama with a seemingly forbidding subject — an illiterate teenage girl, pregnant with her father’s child and hellishly abused by her drug-addicted mother — won over critics, audiences and the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The film was Precious. Now comes Life, Above All, which deals with the tragedy of AIDS in South Africa, as seen by a 12-year-old girl named Chanda. At the end of its world premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, critics cheered like schoolkids, giving it a 10-minute standing ovation.

By Alison Willmore: 

… when its focus narrows onto Manyaka and her mother (Lerato Mvelase), their deep mutual affection and the terrifying sacrifices they’re ready to make because of it, the film sings, becoming a moving tribute to love holding fast against suffering. The ending, which offers a hint of relief, is unfiltered, frankly unbelievable melodrama, but something grimmer and more measured would be intolerable after everything that comes before.

Documentary Preview: Dark Girls

Dark Girls (2012)
Set to premiere this October at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Dark Girls is a documentary by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke that explores the prejudice against and the often-internalized feelings of self-hatred experienced by dark-skinned Black women in the United States.
The light-skinned bias is easily recognized in film and media, but rarely do we get to hear from women who experience this bias in their lives, workplaces, and relationships. I’m looking forward to watching this documentary, and hope it gets a wide release after its festival showings.

Writing for Clutch, Jamilah Lemieux says:

While many people would love to believe that color is no longer an issue, and that we are post-racial, post-color struck–post-anything that forces them to admit that all things are not even in this world, and that we have much work to do–the many subjects interviewed for the film sing a very different tune.

[…]

Though we know that not all darker sisters suffer great indignities or issues with self image, nor is life a crystal stair for those of us who are lighter, this film continues a long conversation that is still very important. So long as we have people amongst us who gladly uphold the damning “White is right” standard–assigning favor to people based upon their proximity to it, we can’t let this one go. This is something we can get past, this does not have to continue.

Watch the trailer and share your own experiences on the official film website:

Movie Preview: Horrible Bosses

This guest post by Melissa McEwan also appears at her blog Shakesville. 

[Trigger warning for rape “humor,” fat hatred, sexual assault, violence.]

Deeky texted me last night after he saw a new TV spot for the previously discussed upcoming film Horrible Bosses, in which murder and sexual assault are central “comedic” themes. This spot ran during a primetime re-run of NCIS.

“Tool Boss” Colin Farrell tells “Disrespected Employee” Jason Sudeikis, “We’ve got to trim some of the fat around here.” Sudeikis says, “What?!” to which Farrell replies, “I want you to fire the fat people.”

“Maneater Boss” Jennifer Aniston, who is a dentist, suggests to “Harassed Employee” Charlie Day that they have sex on top of an unconscious female patient. “Let’s use her like a bed,” she says, to which Day exclaims in response, “That’s crossing the line!”

“Psycho Boss” Kevin Spacey tells “Abused Employee” Jason Bateman, “I own you, you little runt,” to which Bateman sheepishly replies, “Thank you.”

At a bar, with “murder consultant” Jaime Foxx, one of them says, “I guess we’re just gonna be miserable for the rest of our lives,” and Foxx offers, “Why don’t you kill each other’s bosses?” Sudeikis says, “That’s actually a good idea.”

Montage of someone flying out the window of a highrise building; the three men in a car spinning out of control; police cars with sirens blaring.

Cut to Sudeikis and Bateman walking down the street together, evidently discussing the murder plan. “I can’t go to jail,” Sudeikis says. “Look at me, I’ll get raped like crazy.”

“I’d get raped just as much as you would, Kurt,” says Bateman, in a sort of hurt voice because rape is totes a compliment.

“No, no—I know you would,” Sudeikis reassures him.

Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

And, no, the fact that it is a prison rape joke between men does not make it funny. There is nothing funny about prison rape.

Call Time Warner and let them know that you don’t think rape jokes, especially rape jokes that suggest rape is a fucking compliment, are funny.

If you’re on Twitter, you can tweet directly at Warner Brothers Pictures: @WBPictures.

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. Melissa 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.

Preview: !Women Art Revolution

!Women Art Revolution

From the official movie website:

!Women Art Revolution elaborates the relationship of the Feminist Art Movement to the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements and explains how historical events, such as the all-male protest exhibition against the invasion of Cambodia, sparked the first of many feminist actions against major cultural institutions. The film details major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, including the first feminist art education programs, political organizations and protests, alternative art spaces such as the A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Los Angeles Women’s Building, publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies, and landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the entire direction of art.

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson claims to have worked on this project for 40 years, and the film has been picked up for distribution by Zeitgeist. It is currently playing at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I know very little about the Feminist Art Movement, aside from some of the Guerrilla Girls‘ work, and can’t wait to see this film.

Watch the trailer:

Just for fun, here’s the other poster:

Let us know if you have seen or plan to see this film!

Preview: Pariah

Pariah (2011)

Pariah, written and directed by Dee Rees, debuted this past January at Sundance, and Focus Features purchased distribution rights. The film is Rees’ feature debut, and centers around 17-year-old Alike, who is coming to terms with her sexuality and identity as a black lesbian. Gregory Ellwood describes Pariah:
Based on a short film Rees originally premiered at Sundance in 2007, “Pariah” centers on Alike (an excellent Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old Brooklyn girl who is struggling to find herself as a lesbian and, just as importantly, a young woman.  She know’s she’s gay, but is she the more masculine, boyish dyke who hits the underage dance hip-hop dance clubs that her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) wants her to be?  Or, is she the more socially conscious hipster poet her new friend Bina (Aasha Davis) sees in her?  These are the rarely depicted voices in America that Rees embraces as common place which is one of the reasons “Pariah” feels so special.
Allison Loring provides a detailed plot summary in her post-Sundance analysis of the film, and offers praise for the film’s quiet brand of storytelling:
As we delve into Alike’s world, which is meticulously painted by director Dee Rees, from the standout music selections to the infuriating control Audrey insists on lording over her daughter, we discover nuanced performances from each member of the talented cast. Nothing in Alike’s life is black or white and it is those precarious gray areas that Rees navigates so beautifully as we go on this journey. PARIAH is subtle in its effect and draws viewers in to the story rather than telling it to them.
I would love to see this film in the theatre, and hope Focus puts some muscle into promoting it (their last Sundance acquisition was Academy Award winner The Kids Are All Right). The film is slated for release this year, but the date–as far as I can tell–remains unknown. If you’d like to see Pariah, visit the film’s official website and click the “Demand Pariah” button. You can also visit the film’s Facebook page.
Watch the trailer:

Fast Five Trailer

Hey, so Fast Five is coming out soon. With Vin Diesel and The Rock! Naturally, I thought we’d take a look at its potential awesomeness. See, it’s a movie about a bunch of guys and cars, so we can certainly count on testosterone-fueled action sequences and all sorts of My Dick Is Bigger Than Your Dick moments, including Hot Babes used as trophies and sex objects. Because nothing says Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis like walking around with partially-clothed women on your arm who don’t say much:

Okay, okay, I’m being unfair. As you can see from the trailer, there are only, like, 25 camera close-ups of women’s asses and bikini-clad bodies–which is very important to include in trailers, so we can know in advance what the movie’s about. But all that objectification of women is clearly balanced out by a shot of a woman jumping off a building and a shot of women sitting around a table. Oh yeah, and the clip of the scared and abused women in the underground dungeon who watch the money go up in flames. 
So, going by the trailer alone, the film’s target audience appears to be young, heterosexual men. Or just heterosexual men regardless. Score! We honestly don’t get to see many films geared toward pleasing the heterosexual men in the audience, especially during summer blockbuster season. End sarcasm. Because the best thing, truly, about movies like this is the occasional flashes of 80s action movie homoeroticism. If by occasional I mean a nonstop orgy of Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis.     
For those who see the film, please report back to us. Because Vin Diesel. And The Rock. You know?

Preview: Meek’s Cutoff – A Feminist Western?

Shirley Henderson, Zoe Kazan, and Michelle Williams star in Meek’s Cutoff

I’ve never really talked about my love for Westerns here, or all of my jumbled ideas about the genre and feminism (someday I’ll write a long post about it, or an essay, or a book). But, let me try to (briefly) sum up my interest here, and express how excited I am about Meek’s Cutoff.
The Western genre is traditionally tied up in all kinds of rugged masculinity, and of all film genres, maybe best exemplifies the dominant way the United States collectively imagines itself: sturdy, adventurous, self sufficient, brave, and, well, pretty butch. The problem is, however, that this narrative leaves out a significant number of people, and a significant portion of the story. The Western (and the story of the U.S. West) tries to be the story of the United States itself, and reveals ideology so clearly where it fails–namely, in its depiction of women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and African-Americans. The genre is, in other words, ripe for retellings and allegory.
Directed by Kelly Reichardt (who also directed Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy), Meek’s Cutoff opens this weekend in New York, followed by a limited-release roll out. The critical consensus is positive, and Reichardt is already being praised for making an artistic and accessible film. Not-so-subtle connections are also being made between the film’s title character and a certain former U.S. president who may have also been overconfident in his ability to lead.

Mahohla Dargis has called the film “unabashedly political,” and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, writes

Having split off from a larger wagon train, the party elected to follow Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), an extravagantly hirsute, self-regardingly loquacious guide who, in his most obvious misjudgment, brings them not to the foothills of the Cascade Mountains but the shores of a great saline lake. Is he “ignorant or just plain evil?” the Williams character asks her husband (Will Patton). “We can’t know. . . . We made our decision,” he tells her. “I don’t blame him for not knowing—I blame him for saying he did,” she replies, establishing herself as the party’s moral compass.

In a NYT piece, “Oregon Frontier, from Under a Bonnet,”  Nicolas Rapold writes

“There was a quote I remembered that I had liked when I was 18 or something, that popped into my head: ‘I’ll go where my own nature would be leading,’ ” Ms. Williams said of her character, Emily Tetherow. The verse, by Emily Brontë, which continues, “It vexes me to choose another guide,” proves peculiarly apt for Mrs. Tetherow, who emerges as Meek’s prime skeptic and becomes an unusually vocal opponent. The actual diaries of women migrating West were also a source of inspiration for Ms. Williams. She said she marveled at the effort spent on writing at “the end of the longest day you could imagine.”

The forbearance and point of view in the journals comes out in Ms. Reichardt’s shading of events through the women’s perspective. Besides the constant visual metaphor of the obscuring bonnets, there are the intervening moments devoted to their chores (laundry, grinding coffee) and wide shots from their point of view that suggest their exclusion from major decision making, like when Meek and the men consult upon arriving at a lake that proves unpotable. But it’s also Mrs. Tetherow who first spies an Indian (Rod Rondeaux) who becomes another competing voice of authority as they drift along in increasing distress and disagreement.

Watch the official preview:

Guest Writer Wednesday: Bridesmaids Preview

Judd Apatow puts on some panties in Bridesmaids
This is a cross post from The Feminist Bride.

Having turned 18 at the birth of the Sex and the City era, college and adulthood came at a time when sexual expression and alcohol could be worn like Girl Scout badges, proudly and with accomplishment. It was the best of times (that I could remember) and the worst of times (that were gladly hazy). The graduates of the millennium celebrated leaving the sophomoric comedy of American Pie and blissfully embraced the gratuitous ass shots of Will Ferrell. And just as quickly as we got on “double-secret-probation” in college,” we just as quickly matriculated from it. Now working stiffs and pissed off about having $160,000 in college debt, Judd Apatow appeared to ease our pain with raunchy and outrageous humor.

In the back of my mind, I always noticed the boy’s club atmosphere in today’s comedies, but between attending a college where 70% of the student body were men, being one of the few women on the track team and working in finance, I was always “one of the guys,” so I never paid it much mind.
In appropriate timing, like all comedies, The Hangover came out in the year of my bachelorette party (also in Vegas). Brushing the dust off my Girl Scout sash and admiring a few of my own badges – “Held my own hair back” and “Boot n’ rallied twice” – I reveled in the excitement that this was going to be a weekend of epic proportions, with new badges earned in Seth Rogen-esque fashion. No one threw a mattress from the roof of Caesars Palace, but we would have thrown some rebellious tampons from the Mirage’s windows…if they opened. As ladies, we’ve enjoyed the jokes and vulgarity of Apatow and his predecessors; however, the truth is we’ve been outside the men’s room peering in. Creepy, but true. The film industry has failed to give women a true comedy on par with our male colleagues without the trite themes of dating, childbirth, weddings and fashion. Instead, we’ve resigned ourselves to live vicariously through the mishaps of Jonah Hill and Michael Cera.
So I was more than ecstatic to hear that Apatow was finally putting on a thong and producing a comedy expressly for women. Business Trip, starring Leslie Mann, is set to start production in 2011. Characterized as the female version of the The Hangover, Business Trip features a group of women on a trip where they do anything but business. Having existed in the 9 to 5 world for too long, it’s about time women had their own Office Space; our cubical suffering has reached comical proportions too.
But then my heart sank as I read about the other comedy he’s producing, unimaginatively called Bridesmaids (release date May 2011). Written by and starring Kristen Wiig, the movie is about “a maid of honor trying to please the snobby, eccentric or really awkward bridesmaids at every pre-wedding event before her best friend’s nuptials.” Given Wiig’s successful comedic record, it’s clear she can hang with the funniest of dudes, and I’m willing to bet she lays down some solid jokes in Bridesmaids, but that type of movie has graced the big screen before with lamer jokes and interchangeable blondes and brunettes – cue the bridezilla, bridesmaid dress fat jokes, Vera Wang and a heart warming, seen-the-error-of-our-ways ending.
Around the release of My Life in Ruins (2009), Nia Vardalos revealed that some studios decided to no longer make female-lead movies because of low financial return. If studios continue to produce “chick-shit” movies with a shoddy script and characters limited to romantic roles, sexy roles, marriage roles, mommy roles or nagging wife roles, of course a movie won’t make any money. The question for Wiig and Apatow is “How will this movie differ from similarly themed ones?”
As women, Wiig and Mann have the resume and the resources to set new theatrical standards for women. But to Ms. Wiig, Ms. Mann and Mr. Apatow – be forewarned, you have some huge hurdles to overcome in order to break new ground and old stereotypes. If Gloria Steinem can tell you anything it’s that we’ve had to work twice as hard to prove ourselves. You’d better add some barbed wire to those Manolos before walking down that aisle.

Katrina Majkut is the founder and writer of the website TheFeministBride.com. As a “wedding anthropologist,” she examines how weddings and relationships are influenced by history, pop culture and the media. Her goal is to bring to light the inherent gender inequality issues that couples may not even be aware of within wedding traditions and the wedding “industry,” and to start dialogue around solutions that empower women to take positive action toward equality in their relationships and marriages.