Mississippi Sissy- Read It!!

I just finished reading Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums. It's incredible. I've never been more ashamed and, simultaneously, more proud to be a Southerner than I was while reading this memoir. I've never felt particularly connected to Southern culture, or even felt particularly Southern, but in this book I found dozens of little sayings, jingles, behaviors, or references that I recognized from my own Mississippi upbringing (I had completely forgotten about the "lil' shortnin' bread" song!). And his story of loss and grief intermingled with his coming-of-age and attempting to find himself in a culture that is less receptive than most is beautifully told. This is a great, great book and everyone should read it!

Film vs. Novel: Fried Green Tomatoes

I finally finished reading Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I think it took me so long to finish this book (years, in fact) because it's nothing like the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, which I grew up watching. But now that I've finished it I can definitely say: the book is so much better!

First of all, I love the film. Love it. I love Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates, I love Mary-Louise Parker and Mary Stuart Masterson. The film is great. However, the film avoids the core of Idgie and Ruth's relationship: namely, that it is a loving, sexual relationship between women. The film shows two women who have an intense friendship, an indivisible bond, and maybe even some sexual desire (that is not acted on). Ruth comes to live with her friend out of desperation: she is constantly abused by her husband and has to escape before she has a baby in such a horrible environment. There are moments of intimacy, sure, but the relationship is never defined, by Ruth and Idgie or by other members of the community, as anything but platonic.

The film's interpretation of this relationship makes me so sad because it's the reason the book is so interesting. In the book, Idgie and Ruth have an open lesbian relationship. Ruth leaves to get married because she feels Idgie is too young to choose a partner, not because she doesn't love or need her. When Idgie gets lonely, she visits the local prostitute (I couldn't think of a nicer word for her, but prostitute doesn't really fit), Eva. When Ruth is living with Idgie and about to have her baby, Idgie's father gives her what I have to call a 'man-to-man' talk; he talks to her about the responsibilities of caring for and supporting a family. The book is so interesting because it shows an open lesbian relationship in the South in the 1930s (and on) that is never questioned, never scorned and never ridiculed. No one in the book wonders why two women are living together, raising a child. No one questions Idgie's right to discipline Stump, as another parent would. No one questions the love and devotion that exists between Ruth and Idgie. Everyone simply understands that Ruth and Idgie are a loving a couple like any other.

What I think the film really gets right is Kathy Bates's character, Evelyn Couch. She may be one of my favorite literary characters ever. In the beginning of the novel, she is exactly the woman that Betty Friedan was writing about: She's married because she thought she had to be. She never had sex before marriage for fear of the bad girl reputation, but finds as an adult that she has less knowledge of sex than her sixteen-year-old daughter; worse, she discovers that nothing horrible ever happened to the bad girls in high school, they are all unhappy or happy, married or not, just like everyone else. She feels like she missed out on feminism, and doesn't understand it. She lacks control in her life and tries to gain it through hopeless dieting. Through the meetings with Miss Threadgoode and the stories of Idgie and Ruth, Evelyn gains the confidence and understanding she needed to take back control of her life. The film shows this beautifully, with Kathy Bates slowly getting stronger, going through an angry, man-hating phase, and finally settling down in a place where she's happy, employed, and healthier.

The biggest travesty of the film is the ending, when we discover that Miss Threadgoode has been Idgie all along. Never mind that she has explicitly told us that she married into the Threadgoode family by marrying Idgie's brother Cleo (incest anyone?). Never mind that she's discussed having a child of her own. As a professor of mine put it, the filmmakers seemed to have wanted to 'redeem' Idgie, by having her straighten up (literally), marry a man and have a family of her own. Never mind that it doesn't fit the character of Idgie, whom we've watched onscreen for an hour and a half at this point! Never mind that it doesn't make any sense!! I hate to think of this move being remade, because of the beautiful performances by all of the actors involved; but, I would like to see a film that explored the relationship between Ruth and Idgie as it was written to be.

I don't want this to be a rant against the film, because I do love it. I've watched that movie since before I can remember. My grandmother looks and sounds just like Jessica Tandy, and I love all the memories of watching the movie with my sisters and seeing our grandmother so perfectly imitated onscreen. But for those who love the film, or even who have never seen it, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg is a must-read novel.

Sassy Gay Friend

Like many other people, I love wasting time on youtube. And it was on this fabulous website that I discovered Sassy Gay Friend. I love these videos! If you haven't seen them, Sassy Gay Friend is, you guessed it, a gay man who pops up to provide an alternate ending to famous, but tragic, female characters. The first few videos have SGF saving the lives of Juliet, Ophelia, Desdemona and Lady MacBeth; after that, he branches out from Shakespeare to save the lives (or destinies) of The Giving Tree, Eve, and Miss Havisham. (Recently, he also tackled Nina from Black Swan, but I don't like this one.) In each video, SGF sassily talks the women out of ending (or otherwise destroying) their lives.

First of all, I love these videos because they are hilarious! Especially in the first few, SGF makes very clever jokes based on the text he's making fun of. ("I think you're 14 and you're an idiot. You took a roofie from a priest. Look at your life. Look at your choices." -Juliet video) Also, he often points out the absurdity of the power dynamics between men and women at that time; in Desdemona's video he says, "Some guy ends up with your handkerchief so your husband gets to murder you?" In each of these videos, he takes a female character who is, at least by the end of her literary journey, powerless, and gives her strength to make a change.

But what about the continued stereotype of gay men as simply fun accessories for straight women? In most (commercial) movies I have seen with a gay male character, he is the sidekick to the female heroine (Monster-in-Law, The Devil Wears Prada, Easy A, Bridget Jones's Diary, Clueless, to name a few off the top of my head). The gay friend is usually a good shopping buddy, a good listener, a shoulder to cry on, and, most importantly, single, and therefore available to the female, until the end of the film (if even then). Many of these characters in commercial films have little importance as people; they are sidekicks, crutches and open arms. And aren't the Sassy Gay Friend videos just perpetuating this stereotype?

In some ways, I think they could be. But I think, more than that, these videos are making fun of these stereotypes. His language and mannerisms are completely over the top. And he is always pointing out the obvious that the straight girls are completely unable to see. It's almost as if the creators of SGF are saying, "OK, you want to make the sassy gay friend a necessary accessory to the straight woman? All right then, he'll just be way smarter and more clever than her! And he'll save her life! Take that!" 

At least, that's what I hope they're saying. I'll definitely keep watching these videos as long as they keep making them. 

Feminist TV Character: Daria?

For some reason, probably because of my recent completion of a college degree (bam!) and the large amounts of free time I now have on my hands, I’ve decided to revisit the TV show Daria from the late 90s. I remember watching it occasionally when I was younger. I had to change the channel every time my mom came in the room. The one time I wasn’t fast enough, she came in and talked to me for a minute; when she was silent for a minute, the sound from the TV filled the room and she looked horrified. “Does this cartoon have cuss words in it?” Anyway, I saw that it was on Netflix and I decided that I was interested in revisiting the asocial, sarcastic and monotonous Daria Morgendorffer.

Daria is a great character, but I’m undecided if she counts as feminist. She is not concerned about appearance or popularity in high school. She’s intelligent, witty and, importantly, the lead character on her own show. But, so far at least (which is the third episode), she doesn’t seem to actually be feminist. After all, she’s not really concerned with ‘advancing’ women, or even herself. She’s completely detached from the people around her. She’s uninterested in just about everything.

The ways that Daria and Quinn are treated differently are definitely evidence of an underlying feminist message. Daria, smart and intelligent, is often scolded for being too outspoken. In the first episode, “Esteemers,” she answers a question correctly in her history class. When no one knows the answer to another question, she answers again—only to be told by her teacher to “Stop showing off.” Quinn, vapid, airheaded, self-absorbed Quinn, is often thought by those around her to be the normal sister. This is definitely a critique of what passes for acceptable or unacceptable behavior from females in our society. Daria’s intelligence, outspokenness and her willingness to question authority are clearly not acceptable for teenage girls.

I think I like Daria so much because she’s a lot like I was in high school. I didn’t have the witty remarks or the awesome glasses, but I was completely uninterested in the high school culture. I refused to join clubs, no matter how great they would look on college applications. I also refused to take AP classes if they weren’t in subjects I enjoyed, again, no matter how great it would look. AP History was just not going to be worth the bonus points (plus, if I had taken AP, I wouldn’t have had the most enlightening day in history class ever: getting on the floor with pieces of paper balled up, and throwing them across the room at other students…you know, to simulate trench warfare. I’m not making this up.).

So, maybe if Daria is like me, she’s just a feminist in the making. But I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine sarcastic and slow-talking Daria as much of a political (or social) activist. In the meantime, however, her constant sarcastic commentaries and critiques of high school, femininity, and American upper middle-class culture are hilarious and entertaining. 

Uganda Anti-gay bill

Sign this petition!!

I just signed an urgent petition to stop the Uganda Anti-gay bill. Join me now!

In 24 hours, the Ugandan Parliament could pass abrutal hate law that would impose the death penalty on citizens who repeatedly “practice homosexuality.” If we can keep this law from reaching a vote this week, it will die when Parliament closes on May 12th. Click to sign the petition, then repost this campaign!

Passive Consumers vs. Insidious Messages

This post has to be quick because I need to keep working on my paper, but I was reading one of my sources and found something that made me kind of angry. I'm reading a book on women's magazines by Amy Beth Aronson (and I'm only in the introduction so it's possible that I'm jumping the gun here). In the intro, she writes, "Most scholarship has seen the women's magazine as capable of perfect domination, and its popular women readers as phantasmagorically 'feminine': passive, dependent, and witless in the extreme" (Taking Liberties, p. 3).

I don't think this is true. Now, I can't speak for "most scholarship," but I've spent the semester in two sociology courses (one on gender and one on popular culture) and in one English class (on feminism and literature). In none of these classes did we discuss the female readers of women's magazines as passively dominated by the magazines and their messages. That's far too easy (and lazy); the relationship between reader and writer, between the consumer and producer, is much more complicated than that.

The problem with women's magazines, as I see it, is not that women feel the need to blindly take in and emulate the images they find within the pages. The problem is that the images are consistently narrow; the women presented are all the same. Yes, many magazines today present the single, working woman as legitimate (maybe even ideal, at least for a significant time of her life); however, the single working woman is also white, upper middle-class, and thin. The ideal image that women are presented with excludes most of the American population. And even though women tend to look at these magazines knowing that they do not represent reality, we are still left feeling inadequate. If we told, over and over again, that we are not good enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not in shape enough, not working enough, not motherly enough, not anything else that these images present enough, we start to believe it, even as we fight not to. How many women have you met who feel guilty for having career ambition? How many women have you met who are against rape, but feel they personally can't say no to unwanted advances? How many women are struggling with body-image issues even when they know that their bodies are healthy, average and sexy?

I haven't finished Aronson's book, so this post may end up being unfair to her writing. Even so, I think this more complicated view of women's magazines (and our culture) is necessary; we have to look at the overwhelming amount of images presenting American women with an impossible ideal (as well as look at the millions of other ways in which women are discriminated against and told they are not enough) in order to effectively understand the effects these magazines may (or may not) have.

Trashy

Today being Mother's Day, I went to lunch with one of my sisters, my mother and my 95-year-old grandmother (I feel the need to announce her age, to prepare for when she starts getting on the news as the oldest person living; I'm convinced she's going to be that person one day). Anyway, the conversation ranged all over the place, but at one point, my sister reminded us of a girl we went to high school with, a girl whom she and my mother referred to as "trashy."

This got me thinking about how the term 'trashy' is gendered. The term can have several meanings. When paired with race and used as 'white trash,' people are usually referring to poor and uneducated white people (a problem in itself, since the implication is that white people who haven't reached a certain education level or income level are inferior to other white people, who are clearly 'not trash'; however, the racist/classist implications of this term will have to wait for another day). When referring to people in general, trashy can mean anything from poor and uneducated to simply uncouth, crude, tactless or tasteless.

But what about when applied specifically to females? When a woman is called trashy, the implication is clear: slutty. The particular girl my mother and sister were referring to is one who started having sex fairly early (early high school, I think) and who dated mostly black guys (she is white). I know that my sister and mother have the feeling that she has somehow 'lost her way' and not 'fulfilled her potential.' But my question is this: If she hasn't been as successful as she could have, or if she hasn't fulfilled all the things her parents expected of her, why do we automatically assume that this is because of her sexual behavior? Sure, it's possible that her sexual history is something she regrets, but it's just as possible that it's not. It's possible that she is very happy with her place in life.

It makes me sad to hear two women, one who identifies as feminist and one who says she wants to be a feminist, still stuck in thinking of women in the virgin/whore dichotomy. The "danger" of women's sexuality has been so brainwashed into us that even forward thinking, progressive women (and men) still get caught thinking of sexually confident and active women as deviant, inferior and trashy. In the same way that anti-feminists love to point out that feminism makes women unhappy, many people love to point out that free sexual behavior makes sexually active women unhappy. It doesn't matter if it's true, as long as it makes us feel better to point fingers at someone else.

** I found this blog post today on SlutWalks and the word 'slut;' I thought it was an appropriate addition to this post.

Sharing Some Links

OK So I hope to do a new post in a couple of days, but until then, here are some links to articles and/or videos that I've found interesting in the past couple of days. Some of them are more recent than others, but they're all new to me, so they may be new to you too! Enjoy!

I just recently discovered the blog Sociological Images and I really enjoyed this blog post on excusing violence in TV and film.

The Daily Show never disappoints (at least in the episodes and/or video clips that I've seen) to humorously explain all the horrible problems in our society. Here's a satirical video on the No Taxpayer Fund for Abortion Bill.

I really enjoyed this blog post on the Ms. website about the cultural assumptions surrounding women and cooking.

I found an appalling story, also featured on Ms.'s blog, about a news reporter who was raped. The writer believes that she should have never been out covering a story in a dangerous area to begin with, because she's a woman and a mother. The post covers the cultural assumptions about women and motherhood.


I just found this post on feminism and motherhood that's really interesting. Can one be a feminist and a mother? Read it to find out...but yes, of course you can.

I may add more links to this as I continue to surf the net instead of working on either one of my final papers.

It's All About the Dress... Sadly

I was driving in my car today and someone on the radio mentioned a Best Dressed List (with Harry Potter’s Emma Watson on it) and a Worst Dressed List (with Lady GaGa on it). I was suddenly so insulted. Why are we putting women on lists like these? These women are professional, working women. They are trying to have careers doing what they enjoy, and part of that career involves being front and center in public all the time. But just because they are constantly photographed does not give anyone the right to consider them dehumanized bodies that can be constantly criticized and insulted.

Think of a night like the Oscars. This is a huge night for the movie industry. Whatever else you might think of the Oscars, it is supposed to be a night of celebration and honor. This is a night for the work of filmmakers to be appreciated, praised and honored. Filmmakers put a lot of work into their films; many films occupy the entire lives of filmmakers for months or years. The Oscars is a night about work and art.

But what is it really about? According to the media, when it comes to the women of the industry, it’s about the dress. It’s about looking glamorous. It’s about which woman is playing up the Cinderella story the best. It’s about a critique of bodies. I looked up the Best Dressed List for this year's Oscars. The four best-dressed women were written to be “the real winners” of this year. According to this website, a real winner is a well-dressed woman. The winners of awards for their work, for their art, are somehow less important than the women who managed to show up on the red carpet looking wonderfully feminine and beautiful. Could this be any more demeaning and insulting to these women?

I was even more insulted by the write-up given to Jennifer Lawrence, the actress who has received much praise for her performance in Winter’s Bone. “Not a lot of people were familiar with blonde bombshell Jennifer Lawrence before she showed up to the red carpet at the Oscars wearing a sexy red Calvin Klein gown. It’s safe to say Oscar nominee got the attention of a lot of men and is now a household name. Congrats Jennifer, all it took was a sexy red gown!” This site makes it sound like the only reason people know that Jennifer exists is because she looked great at the ceremony. Nothing about the performance that landed her that Oscar nomination. Nothing about the film in which she performed.

It’s time for people in our society to stop accepting this kind of treatment of women. As long as we don’t say anything, as long as we don’t complain, as long as we just take it for granted as the way things are, we are complicit. We are a part of this culture unless we speak out against it.

At the top of this best-dressed page is the statement, “Award shows may come and go, but the fashion is forever!” First of all, I just have to laugh at the stupidity of this sentence. Fashion is just as, if not more, fleeting as award shows. At least the night’s winners will see their awards from time to time; the dresses will disappear and never be worn again. But underneath this statement, again, is the message that the way these woman look is more important, and more lasting, than the work they do.

Misogynist Messages in Disney Films

“The pleasure of consuming pop culture makes critiquing it one of the more challenging projects for feminists.” Andi Zeisler, Feminism and Pop Culture

As the quote above points out, one thing that sucks about analyzing pop culture from a feminist perspective is that you have to call into question cultural objects that you love. I grew up with Disney films and loved all the Disney princesses; however, it's hard to avoid that the messages in these films are hardly progressive when it comes to women. But, instead of analytically tearing these films apart, I discovered a few Youtube videos that did the analyzing for me, with a sense of humor. If you want to see an absolutely hilarious representation of Disney's anti-feminist messages, watch the "Advice From a Cartoon Princess" video series. They have advice from Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and Belle. If you grew up watching the Disney princesses and you appreciate a good dose of sarcasm, you should definitely watch these videos!