Tag: Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day from "When TV Became Art: What We Owe to Buffy" by Robert Moore

Buffy on the verge of killing a vampire

In an article published way back in 2009, Robert Moore made the case in PopMatters for why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is such an important television show:

Without any question, Buffy revolutionized the role of women on television, more even than Mary Tyler Moore or Cagney and Lacey or Murphy Brown or Ally McBeal. If you look at female heroes (as opposed to hapless heroines–I have always thought that the definition of heroine should be “endangered female in need of rescue by male hero”) in the history of TV, you will be astonished at how few there are prior to the nineties. You have Annie Oakley in the fifties and Emma Peel on The Avengers in the sixties, and to a degree Wonder Woman (who spent a great deal of her time worrying about impressing her boss Col. Steve Trevor) and The Bionic Woman (the weaker spin off to The Six Million Dollar Man). This all changed in the nineties, first with Dana Scully on The X-Files and then with Xena. But the former, as competent as she was as an FBI professional, was not sufficiently iconic to change TV, while the latter, sufficiently iconic, was too cartoonish to inspire future female heroes. Buffy was the turning point. You can write the history of female heroes on TV as Before Buffy and After Buffy. It is not a coincidence that most of the female heroes on TV arose in the wake of the little blonde vampire slayer. Look at the roster: Aeryn Sun (Farscape), Max (Dark Angel), Sydney Bristow (Alias), Kate Austin (Lost), Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (along with a plethora of other strong women on Battlestar Galactica), Olivia Dunham (Fringe), Sarah Connor and Cameron (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Veronica Mars, and an almost uncountable number of lesser characters. Buffy made TV safe for strong women. This isn’t art, but it is the content of art. Buffy guaranteed that TV as art would make a place for heroic women.
While I recognize that we can go back and forth for the end of time about whether Buffy (the show and the character) is feminist or antifeminist, I think we can at least agree that the simple statement “Buffy made TV safe from strong women” is pretty compelling and hard to entirely disagree with. 
My seven-year-old niece Sophia visited me recently in New York. When it was bedtime, and we were browsing through Netflix to find something to watch before we went to sleep, she wanted Buffy. The next day when we woke up, she immediately asked if we could watch Buffy while we ate breakfast. When we got home from New York sightseeing, she wanted Buffy. We skipped many of the violent, scarier episodes (“Hush,” anyone?), but she loved watching Buffy save her friends and fellow high school students by destroying monsters with her bare hands. 
Now Sophia takes Taekwondo. She showed me some of her moves the last time I saw her, and said, “I bet I’ll be able to kick as much butt as Buffy soon, maybe more!” 
I don’t want to get bogged down about how it sucks in a way that Buffy’s ability comes exclusively from superpowers. I get that, and I could write about it endlessly, but in this moment, I don’t care because Sophia doesn’t care. She watches Buffy and sees a woman who kicks ass, and she wants to emulate that. It’s tough to over-analyze and intellectualize a TV show when you’re watching a young girl practice roundhouse kicks because she wants to be a strong badass like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I have to say, it’s much more heartwarming to see her excited about becoming a strong woman with martial arts skills than it was to watch her pretend she couldn’t speak–because she wanted to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid. 

Quote of the Day: Clementine Ford Calls Out Hollywood’s Excusing Of Domestic Abuse

Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse

Chris Brown scowling

We all know what Chris Brown did. His brutal beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna has made a permanent mark on his career. On Twitter, it’s easy to see how divisive the situation has gotten. Most people are disgusted with Brown, and often tweet taunts to him about his violent temper. His devoted fans, known as “Team Breezy,” blame Rihanna for starting the altercation, and even worse, claim that it would be worth enduring physical assault in order to be Brown’s girlfriend. Brown was unrepentant and still has an explosive temper. And yet he won Grammys, and was allowed to perform twice at this year’s ceremony. It’s obvious that, in Hollywood, domestic abuse isn’t that big a deal. Chris Brown’s career continued, and even flourished after the incident. And other domestic abusers continue to get work in Hollywood too. Mel Gibson. Michael Fassbender. Gary Oldman. Tommy Lee. Josh Brolin. I bet you didn’t even know some of these men are abusers, and these are just a few examples.
This leads to my quote of the day, which has been making the rounds on Tumblr this week. This is excerpted from Clementine Ford’s excellent article, Chris Brown isn’t the only one:

And then there’s Charlie Sheen. Sheen’s sordid history includes shooting Kelly Preston with a .22 calibre pistol, throwing chairs at his then wife Denise Richards, being sued by a UCLA student for allegedly hitting her in the head after she refused to have sex with him, allegedly strangling at least two of his former girlfriends and just generally being a god-awful d-ckmonger. Yet none of that mattered to Chuck Lorre and the other people making squillions of dollars from the long running Two and a Half Men, a televisual fart that didn’t just succeed in offending the tastes of thinking people everywhere but also legitimised Sheen as some kind of raffish japester. In the end, Sheen was fired not because he’s a disgusting human being with a gross history of violence against women but because he had a drug problem and was publicly rude to his boss.

Charlie Sheen’s meltdown didn’t ruin his career. It fueled it. “Winning” and “Tiger Blood” became memes, his solo shows sold out, his Twitter feed got millions of followers within days. And now he’ll be getting another sitcom, Anger Management, which is apparently already breaking ratings records. It begs the question – how much worse can a person get before Hollywood finally gives up on them? Why are we predicting the ruin of Kristen Stewart’s career for a cheating scandal, when Charlie Sheen gets new opportunities after repeatedly committing attempted murder?
Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Quote of the Day: Emma Stone Points Out Sexist Double Standards in Media

Emma Stone in Teen Vogue, August 2012; photographed by Josh Olins
It’s no surprise sexism permeates the media. Women are constantly judged and praised for their beauty and appearance. Not their merit, intellect or accomplishments. This incessant importance on women’s appearances over their talent reduces us to objects. 
As I perused my Pinterest feed last week, I came across a picture courtesy of Upworthy of Emma Stone calling out sexism. Could it be? Is Stone a secret feminist?? I had to investigate.  

In its August 2012 issue, Teen Vogue conducted a joint interview with Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield to promote The Amazing Spider-Man (Sidebar, do we really need a Spider-Man reboot?? How about a Wonder Woman or Catwoman film first…ugh). After the interviewer inquired, “Emma, I have to ask about your hair color,” Stone talked about how she preferred being a blonde because it’s the hair color she possessed as a child. But then here’s where things get awesome.

Emma Stone: But people do always ask that. They ask who is my style icon, what’s the one thing that I can’t leave my house without. I’m always like, “My clothes!” I can pretty much leave without anything.It’s fine as long as I’m not naked. 
Andrew Garfield: I don’t get asked that— 
Emma Stone:You get asked interesting, poignant questions because you are a boy.
Teen Vogue: It’s sexism. 
Emma Stone: It is sexism. 
Women and men getting asked different questions strictly based on their gender? Yep, it sure is sexism.

I already knew Stone was pretty fab. In addition to her hilarious public appearances at the Emmys and the Oscars, she’s a funny and talented actor. The same woman who convinced her parents to let her move to Hollywood with a power point presentation seizes the moment to point out sexist gender disparities in the media. What makes her astute comment even better? She calls out sexism in a fashion magazine…for young women. 

At first glance, it seems to make sense fashion and beauty magazines would ask celebs questions belonging to the realm of fashion, hair, cosmetics, diet and exercise. I mean that’s their job, right? So why do I care that Stone — or any celeb — is constantly asked about her hair color or her style icon? What’s the big deal? 
The media constantly dissects, critiques and polices women’s bodies. Men don’t face the same bombardment of scrutiny. This sexist double standard perpetuates the notion that men lead while women serve as objects of beauty. 
As much as I love clothes, fashion and beauty magazines can wreak havoc on women’s and girls’ self-esteem and body image. According to Miss Representation, “3 out of 4 teen girls feel depressed, guilty and shameful after spending 3 minutes leafing through a fashion magazine.” But beauty and diet questions aren’t merely relegated to fashion and fitness magazines. Mainstream media outlets obsessively ask women these questions too. 
At a press conference for The Avengers a few months ago, Scarlett Johansson exhibited her exasperation at the way the media treats women differently than men. Johansson’s co-star Robert Downey Jr. received a lengthy, “interesting and existential question” about Iron Man’s growth and maturity, which would have allowed him to talk about his inspiration, motivation and talent. What question did this same reporter ask Johansson? She was asked about what food she ate…another sexist diet question. 
A reporter for Extra also interrogated Johansson about the underwear she wore under her svelte Black Widow suit and Anne Hathaway about her diet and exercise regimen to fit into the slinky Catwoman costume — while he asked their male co-stars about the films and their characters. 
The media treats men as complex, introspective artists while simultaneously reducing women to objects, only interrogating them about their hair color, clothing, diet, and fitness regimens. The message is clear: women’s talent and intellect don’t really matter. Only their outer beauty and thinness matters. 
Thankfully, we’ve also witnessed Ashley Judd, Meryl Streep, Zoe Saldana, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway (in an albeit subtle way), Sarah Polley, Rashida Jones and now Emma Stone calling out sexism — objectification, body policing and double standards — in the media and Hollywood. Teens have also started speaking out with petitions against Seventeen and Teen Vogue to cease photoshopping and increase images of diversity. We need more people — women and men — denouncing misogyny and sexism. Only then can we hope to attain equality.

Hollywood, like the rest of society, is far from gender equitable. Female actors earn far less than their male colleagues. Only 33% of speaking roles belong to women. Women write only 10% and direct a mere 7% of the 250 top grossing domestic films. We don’t see nearly enough complex women on-screen as too many films revolve around white dudes. All of these abysmal stats coinciding with the media’s rampant objectification, misogyny and sexism strip women and girls of their power.

With Teen Vogue’s huge readership, who knows…maybe young women will read Stone’s interview, see the discussion of sexism and start questioning the gender disparities in the media’s depiction of women. Maybe Stone’s comment will help catalyze change. Hey, a woman can dream.

Quote of the Day: Actor/Director Sarah Polley on Women’s Bodies in Film

In an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered, director and actor Sarah Polley spoke about her new film Take This Waltz. She also discussed how we need more female directors and the unique perspective they can bestow on female characters. One of our awesome readers, Her Film’s Kyna Morgan, alerted us to the interview. What struck Kyna was Polley’s fantastic quote on the sexist portrayal of women’s bodies on-screen: 
“I feel like with young women, their bodies are constantly objectified and used in a sexual context. With older women, [their bodies are] constantly the butt of a joke. For me, the seminal scene that illustrates that is, in About Schmidt, when Kathy Bates gets into the hot tub and Jack Nicholson is horrified and the audience is supposed to scream. 
 “I remember being so deeply offended by that scene. One of the first times you’re dealing with an older woman being naked in a movie — it doesn’t happen very often — and it’s the butt of a joke, or it’s supposed to horrifying. [In a shower-room scene in Take This Waltz] I wanted to show women’s bodies of all ages, kind of without comment, and the only conversation around it is about time passing and what it means, and about sexuality and relationships. That it not be something contrived to produce an effect, necessarily.” 
Yes, yes, YES!! I’m delighted to see an actor and director speak openly about ageism and the objectification of women’s bodies.

Hollywood often portrays only thin, young, white women’s bodies. Women of color, older women and large women — if portrayed at all — are often depicted as hypersexual or asexual, often for humor or derision. Besides Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and re-runs of The Golden Girls (which I cannot get enough of!), we rarely see female actors over the age of 50 portraying characters embracing their sexuality.

In film and TV, we often see schlubby, overweight, or older men with beautiful, young (or younger), thin women. Couples Retreat, Hitch, King of Queens (pretty much anything with Kevin James), Still Standing, As Good as It Gets, Manhattan, The Wackness, The Honeymooners…I could go on and on. The message is that it doesn’t matter if men age. Ultimately, their looks don’t matter. But as beauty is deemed our only commodity, women must perpetually look young and sexy. Our physiques are only important in enticing and captivating the male gaze.

Reduced to our appearances, women are told time and again that beauty, youth and thinness determine our worth.

We’ve seen toxic bodysnarking recently with Ashley Judd speaking out against the media and the patriarchal policing of women’s bodies, Jennifer Lawrence’s body deemed too fat to play Hunger Games‘ Katniss Everdeen, Lena Dunham’s weight ridiculed and criticized (and lauded!), and Scarlett Johansson annoyed by sexist diet questions. The media polices women’s behavior and scrutinizes their appearance.
Photoshopped faces and bodies saturate the media, bombarding us with unattainable beauty standards. We rarely see imperfections on-screen. No wrinkles, spots, saggy breasts, plump bellies or cellulite in sight. No flaws. Only perfection. It’s no wonder so many girls and women struggle with eating disorders and negative body image issues. The media constantly tells us we’re not good enough. We must be slimmer, curvier, smoother, younger — always different than what we are.
Bodies come in all shapes, races, ethnicities, ages and sizes. And that’s okay. No, it’s better than okay. It’s great. It’s time Hollywood stopped purporting conformity and started embracing diversity.

Quote of the Day: Viola Davis on Women of Color, Dreams & Her Life’s Mission

Viola Davis at the 81st Academy Awards
Viola Davis at the 81st Academy Awards (Photo credit: Wikipedia; Image by: Chrisa Hickey )

The internet has been abuzz over Meryl Streep’s badass statement at Women in Film (WIF)’s Crystal + Lucy Awards condemning the “underrepresentation of women” in film and Hollywood’s preoccupation with “big tent-pole failures.” She went on to question, “Don’t they want the money?” since women’s films like The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia have been box-office blockbusters. And the divine Streep couldn’t be more right. We desperately need more women on-screen (and behind the camera), especially considering women comprise only 33% of speaking roles in film.

Streep presented Viola Davis with the 2012 Crystal Award for Excellence in Film. Journalists and bloggers have also been busy reporting on the sisterly camaraderie and “love fest” between the two friends at the awards ceremony.
But what the media seems to have overlooked is the ever poised and articulate Viola Davis’ moving acceptance speech. Davis spoke about her mom, acting as a vehicle for expressing the pain and joy in her life, women of color’s dreams, and the legacy she hopes to leave:
“I realized I spent my entire life trying to be better than my mom. That I am the daughter and the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter and the great-great-great-granddaughter of so many women whose dreams are in the graveyard. They’re women of color who worked in the tobacco fields and the cotton fields and had children by the time they were 15, left school in the 8th grade and a dream was just ambiguous to them. 
“And I realized that I wanted to have a dream. And I think that I chose acting because all my life has been filled with stories of people of color that have been filled with so much complexity and duality. And so much of my life has been filled with so much pain and humor and joyous moments that I felt the need to express that. And I couldn’t do it in a 9 to 5 [job]. 
“I believe unlike my mom and my grandmother and my great-grandmother that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, truly being who you are. 
“And I’ve spent far too long apologizing for that — my age, my color, my lack of classical beauty — that now at the age of…well at the age of 46 I’m very proud to be Viola Davis, for whatever it’s worth. 
“And I never want to look in the face of a young actress of color and think to myself, “What’s out there for her?” The only thing worse than a graveyard, artistic graveyard, filled with women…[Davis undoubtedly said something awesome here but the video cut out]
“The higher purpose of my life is not the song and dance or the acclaim, but to rise up, to pull up others and leave the world and industry a better place.” 
Words cannot capture just how much I adore this woman. She is truly a role model and inspiration to us all.
 

Quote of the Day: Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions

Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson at The Avengers press conference in London

Cross-posted at Women and Hollywood.

Wow, who knew I could love Scarlett Johansson so much?? I posted this on Bitch Flicks‘ Facebook page but thought it was too great not to post here too.
At The Avengers press conference in London, a reporter proceeded to ask Robert Downey Jr. an in-depth, thought-provoking question about his character (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and then asked Johansson about her diet. I shit you not.
Reporter: “I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?
“And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?”
Scarlett: “How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?“
Amen, sister! If you watch the video, you’ll see just how perturbed Johansson is to be asked. As she should be. Why the hell did the reporter save the diet question for one of the two women on the panel??

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.

The reporter’s question particularly rubs me the wrong way because lots of women have such a contentious relationship with food. Eating should be a fun, sensual, pleasurable experience. But too many women fear food, afraid of what it will do to their bodies. The media monitors and polices women’s consumption. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women.

In response to the asinine question, Sarah at Pop Cultured astutely asserts:

“The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.”
It’s ridiculous — not to mention offensive and sexist — Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and the media lavish praise on men for their minds and their talents while objectifying women and reducing female actors to their appearances. As we recently witnessed with Ashley Judd fighting back against toxic bodysnarking and the heinous criticism of Jennifer Lawrence’s body, the media constantly scrutinizes, visually dismembers, critiques and polices women’s bodies. The media wreaks havoc on women’s body images, telling us we’re too fat or too skinny. Never just right.

This constant bombardment of objectification of women leads to normalizing sexism and violence against women. It reinforces the notion that women are nothing more than sex objects for the male gaze.

So reporters, think twice before you ask a woman yet another stupid diet question. Ugh.

Quote of the Day: Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards

Manifesta by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards

I’ve been reading the 10th anniversary edition of Jennifer Baumgardner’s and Amy Richards’ Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, which was first published in 2000 and revised in 2010. One chapter in particular struck me, and in honor of Mother’s Day this past Sunday–and our upcoming theme on Motherhood, starting Monday (yay!)–I’d like to excerpt from the chapter, “Thou Shalt Not Become Thy Mother.”
The authors discuss the generational divide between mothers and daughters and the tension that often exists because mothers (within the past generation) raised children “with some hint of feminism in the air.” Their young daughters today, though, struggle to avoid becoming like their mothers. Here are two excerpts from the chapter that delve into that theme in greater detail:
Many daughters are scared of falling prey to the indignities we witnessed our mothers suffer. This fear is a challenge to younger feminists. Young women should understand where that fear comes from, rather than simply avoiding it. Unwrapping motherhood from the swaddles of patriarchy means that we will no longer have to work so hard to be different from our mothers.

As it is, we are more likely to notice what our mothers are doing wrong than what they are doing right. We notice if Dad treats Mom like shit, if homemaking appears to be a fake job, or if Mom worked outside the home and was never there to ask us about our day. We may think that when Dad does “Mom’s chores”–picking us up or doing the dishes or cooking–he’s a hero. We notice if we look to Dad for decision making, and to Mom for love and comfort and mending. If the marriage falls apart, we notice if Mom doesn’t know how to write checks, or dates jerks, or if her lifestyle becomes markedly poorer. We notice the passive-aggressive ways that she may work around powerlessness: the boyfriends she takes on to escape her unhappy marriage, the guilt trips, or the migraine headaches that befall her just before the guests arrived every holiday. Throughout or lives, we make mental notes, and swear on our mothers’ lives not to let that happen to us or do what they did. This includes the most trivial sins: we’ll never embarrass our kids, we’ll never have our hair done every Friday at the same time, we’ll never have a comfy-but-ugly outfit that we change into every day after work.

Our expectations of our dads are so much lower than our expectations of moms that dads don’t get such a bad rap from their daughters. We also let them off the hook because their lives appear more liberated–more like how daughters are told their lives should be. (pages 208-209)

 ———-

One True Thing, a Hollywood tearjerker based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Anna Quindlen, successfully analyzed this generational repulsion. In this 1998 film, Renee Zellweger portrayed an ambitious New York City journalist, Ellen Gulden, who returns to her suburban home to care for her terminally ill mother. “The one thing I never wanted to do was live my mother’s life,” Ellen says. “And there I was doing it.” Meryl Streep, as Kate, zaftig and radiant in the housewife role, throws elaborate theme parties and makes a tabletop mosaic from her broken dishes. Creative and delightful as she is, Kate’s domestic achievements are nada compared to the father’s life as a sought-after English professor and would-be novelist (portrayed by William Hurt). After walking many miles (and scrubbing many toilets) in her mother’s shoes, Ellen learns that her mother’s accomplishments–her ability to bring the community together and make her family comfortable–far surpass her father’s inflated dreams of his own literary importance.

“You spend all of your life thinking about what you don’t have, and you have so much,” Kate warns her puffy-eyed ungrateful daughter just before she dies. In that moment, any daughter might be shocked (as we were) into recognizing that we view our mothers in light of what we think they lack–youthful looks, brilliant careers, respectful husbands–not what they have. Finally, Ellen learns that her mother has actually chosen and fulfilled with joy the very life that Ellen had learned to disdain. The film isn’t a call to join a kaffeeklatsch community group or bake up a storm as a one-way ticket to feminine authenticity. It’s a warning to mothers and daughters to take a clear-eyed look at each other, rather than stealing glances and making notes about what not to do. One True Thing teases out a feminist challenge: to understand the choices our mothers made, knowing they were made in a context we will never experience. For mothers, the challenge is to realize that their daughters came of age in an entirely different era, one that makes their lives fundamentally different. (pages 213-214)

The book is fabulous. Buy it.

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

ashley-judd

Written by Megan Kearns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

TEDx Women: Rachel Simmons

We know that one of the causes of the lack of diverse representation of women in media and film is that there are not enough women behind the camera, not enough women telling their stories, and not enough of these stories being produced. 
We also know that media both reflects and shapes the culture. The (excellent) tagline of the documentary film Miss Representation comes to mind here: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” From childhood, girls see representations that reinforce the idea that girls are secondary to boys. As they grow up, the disparity continues. Geena Davis’ Institute on Gender & Media has reported that in family films males outnumber females 3 to 1 and females are almost four times as likely as males to be shown in sexy attire. We know that these statistics don’t improve in media for young or adult women.
Rachel Simmons’ talk at TEDx Women suggests that as young women grow up, the media barrage telling them that they can be powerful, as long as they don’t offend anyone, sends mixed messages that, along with institutional sexism, prevents women from achieving leadership positions:

I’m convinced a psychological glass ceiling exists as well. And it begins as a product of a culture that is telling girls “Yes, but.” Yes, you can be powerful, but you still be nice while you do it. Yes, you be smart, but make sure you don’t make anyone uncomfortable with your intelligence. Yes, you can be active, but you be sexy and skinny while you do it.

In other words, Simmons argues that enlightened sexism is holding women back, even at a time when women in the United States outpace men in education (women have higher rates of high school graduation, college attendance, and college graduation), women remain a significant minority in positions of leadership.
In Hollywood? We know how women currently fare there.
Watch the Rachel Simmons video, with an introduction and personal story about female friendship from Claire Saninni:
Also check out TEDx talks from the founder of Girls Club Entertainment, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, two women who have taken the reigns to make media of their own.

Quote of the Day: Julie Dash

Julie Dash speaking at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival
In 1991, Julie Dash won the Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award for Daughters of the Dust. Set in 1902, the film examines the lives of a family’s Gullah (also sometimes called Geechee) culture, which still thrives on the Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina and in coastal Georgia. 
Recently restored, Daughters of the Dust screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and Dash was interviewed by Nelson George.
George: You grew up in a household with this [Gullah] culture around you even though you grew up in New York City. What’s the journey from there as a child to you deciding to make the film? 
Dash: Once I decided I was going to tell stories through film, and once I decided that I was not going to be a documentary filmmaker, but I was going to tell narrative stories (because I was excited about the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and all the poets of the time), I decided that I wanted to tell a story that was authentic to African American culture – authentic to the point where it was not like something you could turn on the television and see. I wanted it to be more like a foreign film and so deeply into the culture that it appeared to be foreign.
I’m fascinated by her statement about wanting Daughters to be “more like a foreign film.” While it’s safe to say that Gullah culture might be “foreign” to some people in the U.S., I think she’s saying something more. It’s not simply a lack of familiarity, a different language, or a setting outside one’s home country that makes a “foreign film.” It’s a certain quality, a certain uniqueness. When Dash speaks of authenticity, what remains unspoken is reference to depiction of African American experience in other films–she speaks of novelists and poets–and, perhaps, that is what she’s talking about when she talks about the desire for Daughters to appear foreign.

More than 20 years after Julie Dash made Daughters of the Dust, how many “authentic” films do we see?

Quote of the Day: Catherine Bray

In The British film industry’s hopes for 2012, various filmmakers and critics talk about what they hope the new year brings. We have a few favorites, but perhaps the best comes from Catherine Bray, Editor of Film4.com:

Equality now! Over the last few years, we’ve seen Kevin James paired with Rosario Dawson, Seth Rogen paired with Anna Faris, Jack Black paired with Amanda Peet, Vince Vaughn paired with Malin Akerman… and so the list goes on. In the interests of balance, I’d like to see a lithe, stunningly attractive man paired with an averagely schlubby, heavy-set funny woman in a mainstream comedy. I think what I’m saying is that my wish for 2012 is to see Melissa McCarthy from “Bridesmaids” get it on with Ryan Gosling in a knockabout romcom.

Back in 2010, guest writer Molly McCaffrey wrote about this double standard in her piece Holy Hypocrisy: Couples Retreat, but it’s a phenomenon that started a long time ago and that shows no sign of letting up. We, too, would love to see McCarthy paired with Gosling–or any reversal of the knockout-with-the-schlub trope. 
However, would it be a neat reversal, or would the pairing itself be played for laughs? One could argue that the film couples Bray and McCaffrey mention are already being played for laughs, but this is never a central joke in the movie/TV show. And, when a joke is so familiar it certainly loses its punch…so that argument isn’t very convincing.
What two actors would you like to see paired in a comedy this year?
P.S. Thanks to reader Em for pointing this out to us! Be sure to read the whole article…

Top 10 in 2011: Why Should Men Care? An Interview with Matt Damon

Readers, you really really love Matt Damon. That’s the only reason we can figure for this little post, featuring a video of Damon explaining his involvement in the PBS Women, War and Peace series, being #2 in 2011. Perhaps, though, it’s not just Damon’s presence, but how succinctly he explains the importance of men’s involvement in so-called women’s issues. (But we really really like him, too.)
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Matt Damon narrating Women, War, and Peace

At Bitch Flicks, we’re featuring reviews of the five-part PBS documentary Women, War & Peace—all by the fabulous Megan Kearns—the first of which we published on October 19th. (Megan’s review of Part Two will appear later today.) Matt Damon narrates the series, and he was interviewed about his participation, explaining why he wanted to be a part of the event and why men should care about how war impacts women, especially when rape is used as a weapon of war. I’m posting the video of the 4-minute interview, but it’s also linked to above (just in case).