In Conclusion...

I signed up for Women's Studies for two reasons. 

1. I wanted to piss off my dad

2. I needed more credits to fill out my schedule

I definitely got way more out of it than I thought I would. I'm not usually one to completely invest myself into every class I take, but I know I looked forward to coming to class every week to discuss, debate and break down social constructions, internalized sexism and all that jazz. The fact that the class was discussion based was definitely the reason why I feel I got so much out of it, compared to classes where we just talk about readings and everything we need to learn is found in text books. 

I was nervous about starting a blog because I always thought I had nothing much to say. But forcing myself (in the beginning) to have an opinion made me realize that I do in fact have something to say. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at my social life, my interests and life in general through the lens of feminism. (side note- I had no idea what feminism was before taking this class. thanks dad). Since as a class we were allowed to blog based on our own interests, it made me do a lot of research on what I plan on doing with my life: movies, showbiz and comedy. That being said, in a way I learned about more than just feminism because of this course. 

Lastly, I'm so glad to have taken this course because I realized how hard I am going to have to work to get to where I want to be in the film/comedy world as a woman. Oh and also, it's given me some great topics to debate with my father, since we were definitely running out of things to fight about.

On Facial Hair and Other Hairy Situations

During the presentations in class a few weeks ago, one group spoke about hair removal. Hair removal has become a part of people's daily repertoire whether it's shaving or plucking or waxing. I'm not sure when hair removal started, probably when people started seeing it as "un-hygenic" I guess, but I don't think that then they knew how it would affect our daily lives now or that it would be such a moneymaker.

Today, women have to go through so much to keep every hair in place. We get trims, we shave, wax, pluck, laser it off, spread smelly substances to melt it off and more. (Has anyone heard of threading?) I don't understand why it's acceptable for some parts of women's bodies (yes I'm talking about the part between the legs) to look like they did when we were in kindergarten. 

I'm not saying it's just women that have to go through this. Men have the option of waxing their chest and back, men who aren't lazy take a razor to their face and shave every other day, I'm sure men pluck their eyebrows too. I'm not saying it's unfair that women have to go through more hair removal, but it does kind of suck that dark hair that grows on a woman's inner thigh is seen as unattractive when men who wear flipflops are allowed to sport hairy cave man toes and no one says anything. 

In class we also discussed why women and men go through hair removal and who they're really doing it for. Personally, I have been waxing since I had noticeable body hair at age 12. My mother tells me that the hair wont grow back by the time I'm 35 so I still have 16 more years to go. But I'm not always walking around with completely hairless legs, the hair does grow back and there is an inbetween period before its long enough for some asian lady to rip it out of my skin again. Who do I do it for? Well if I seriously think about it, I don't want (noticeable) hair on my legs because I somehow think it is seen as unfeminine. There goes that internalized sexism. I mean, if I saw a guy walking down the street and I noticed that he had no hair on his legs, I would probably question his masculinity. But he could be a swimmer, or maybe he just isnt a hairy guy or maybe he just doesn't like hair on his legs either. 

Speaking of masculinity, facial hair to me is just gross. I have an issue with facial hair on men. I think that men under the age of 25 should NOT let their facial hair run wild in whimpy little patches on their faces. To me it just looks like face pubes. I also think that men who let their face pubes run awry are just lazy. I mean COME ON. Women go through so much to have smooth skin, hairless armpits and legs and a neat bikini line, but young men can't keep their scraggly beards in order?? 

When I express my views on facial hair to men my age, they just shrug in agreement. They are lazy. But you know what, fuck it, maybe this summer I'll be lazy. I mean, I'm going to work at a summer camp that is miles away from a nail salon that offers hair removal services, and no way am I going to waste 6 years of waxing by shaving my legs. Besides, I don't think my cute hairless eight year old campers will care if my legs are hairy or not. So there.

Pixar's Issue with Sex/Gender

During our class discussion on tuesday about men and feminism, Pixar's gender/sex issue came up. I am a huuuuuuge Pixar nerd, but I never really thought about how unbalanced their films were in terms of the male to female character ratio.

This article I found really breaks it down into detail, but I'll give you the basics here.

Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc, Ratatouille (kind of) and Up are all "buddies" movies that focus on two male characters that are friends that have to go on some kind of quest or mission or something. Yes, they do include female characters, but only Toy Story 2 and 3 include a more important female role (Jessie) who has personality and stuff. Ratatouille has Linguini's love interest (blah, boring) and thats about it for female roles in that group.

Finding Nemo is a father/son movie and yes, they've got Dory who is pretty much there for comic relief but thats it.

What's interesting about Bugs Life is that they completely flipped gender roles in the ant world for the sake of the film. All male ants really do is eat and fertilize eggs, while female ants do all the work. What's up with that Pixar? It's similar in Wall-E. Wall-E and EVE are both robots, but why do they even have sex/gender? Why couldn't Wall-E be a feminine character? Why did he have to have a gender at all?

Cars was the worst. The only female characters in cars were the love interest of the main character and the car groupies. I wonder if in Cars 2 it will be different.

The Incredibles did have a few good female characters like Helen (Mr. Incredibles wife) and his daughter too. We also had the quirky E who made costumes and Syndrome's minion girl. But still, the movie focused on Mr. Incredible.


I've read in a few places that Pixar may have made these choices in character because males are seen as the neutral role, while females are "particular". I've also read that Pixar mostly have male writers and that it would be difficult for them to write a compelling female role. Oh please. If you're a good writer, you could write any kind of character no matter what sex/gender they are.

Now, we all know Pixar is coming out with Brave in 2012. We're all thinking, finally a Pixar film with a female lead! Don't get excited too soon. Keep in mind that Brave is also Pixar's first fairy tale which also takes place in mythical Scotland. Gee thanks Pixar. So not only is Pixar being completely unoriginal by making their first female lead in a film be a princess, they are making it take place in a mythical setting. Because having a female lead is so outrageous, people wouldn't see it if it took place in reality. It makes me mad because even though not all Pixar films take place in the "real" world, they still go above and beyond with creativity in terms of filling out their fictional settings to model them like the real world. (see Nemo, Monsters Inc, Cars, Bugs Life). Hopefully they will at least do the same for Brave in "mythical Scotland".

It could be that Pixar is totally aware of their gender/sex issue, but in the end it's about money and maybe the films with male roles just sell better. Which also sucks. When I think about it that way, not only is there negative connotations that go with the word "feminism" but there could be some kind of negative connotations that go with lead female roles in movies as well. Maybe negative is the wrong word, but as I've learned in film studies, people go to the movies and know what to expect depending on the genre of the movie. I mean what would have happened if Finding Nemo was about a mother looking for her daughter? What if Up was about an old woman who's husband died? Would they have been as successful?

And the mother of the year award goes to...

So I read here that there is this mother in San Fransisco who is trying to prepare her daughter for a life of stardom, fame and success. No, she's not sending her to performance schools or letting her taking voice lessons. Instead she chose the fast and surefire way of getting your kid to be famous, yeah you guessed it, botox injections and virgin waxes. (which kind of worked, since now she's in the papers, theres a start!)

excuse me? She's eight years old. She should still be playing with dolls, not worry about when she's going to get her nose done! What has this world come to?

What baffles me most is that this mother isn't even giving her daughter a chance to reach for goals of her own. And that issue doesnt just apply to girls, it applies to boys as well. It's (almost) the same as a father forcing his son to play football so he can become a football star... minus the extremely unhealthy beauty treatments. It makes me sick.

Sexism in the Classroom

I am taking intro to cinema production this semester with a male teacher. Three months into the course, I am starting to see how he truly favors the work of my male classmates over my female classmates. It could be true that the productions from the males are possibly better, however each project varies in content and style so no one can really say which is "better" or "worse". The boys also create more somber, edgy films about death with shots of roadkill in comparison to the girls who create films with a different kind of mood and subject matter. It angers me though, that when giving feedback to the boy's projects, he goes more in depth, gives more compliments and just seems to care more. I have talked to some other girls in my class and they agree. 

This is not the first time I've noticed sexism in the classroom. I remember in eigth grade, my male science teacher gave straight A's to the pretty blonde girls who were no better at creating static with balloons in an experiment than the rest of the class was. I hope I'm not the only one who finds that creepy, I mean we were 13.

However, it's not just the male teachers that can be sexist. In my high school spanish class, my teacher totally favored girls. She is the sweetest, most caring teacher I've ever had. She always gave the girls good grades, including me, and I did NOTHING in that class. However, the boys in the class always walked all over her and she got no respect. We probably had Spanish class three times a month because we could complain about our lives and how much homework we had and she would let us go. That would never happen with a male teacher, I believe. 

I'm sure that teachers don't realize what they're doing if they happen to favor boys over girls or vice versa in the classroom. I've read that boys get more air time then girls, and girls can charm male teachers into giving them good grades blah blah. But going back to my cinema production class with my chin up gets harder and harder each time. While I appreciate constructive criticism and getting praised on my work only when I've really earned it, I know I'm not the only girl in that class who feels like she can't make good films because she's female and isn't interested in shooting dark, creepy, sad movies about death and stuff. 

In class I know we've talked about what women had to go through to even be allowed to go to school and get educated for more than home ec stuff. However I'd be interested to hear what the rest of the class has to say about this aspect of sexism in the classroom. 

Barbie Saves the (Cinematic) Day?

Ever since the first few weeks of Women's Studies class, I have been thinking about female heroes in movies. It's kinda confusing to me.

I know that the mainstream movie business is an industry that caters primarily to its audience. The audience expects and wants to see certain things in movies. The women may want to see strong female characters and stuff and the men wanna see some "jiggle" right? I mean, I don't necessarily think that, but I know that's pretty much what Hollywood thinks (basically). 

What confuses me is how we have heros like the Charlie's Angels (I have only seen the remake with Cameron Diaz etc) who kick ass AND look hot at the same time. What is that saying to the audience exactly? I mean I know that the girls wanna see girls kick butt and the guys just want to see butt.. but that pretty much says that girls can run shit, but they should look good while doing it. 

It's not fair. It's actually impossible. And we've discussed this in class; the images of women portrayed in the media aren't real, but some women still strive to look like Angelina and Cameron (or we're told to.. by the media or whatever). 

My question is, is a movie like Charlie's Angels good for the image of women or bad? Maybe Charlie's Angels isn't the perfect example. I read an article online that describes it perfectly.

Something very interesting that the author says is: 

"Even as a character within a so-called chick flick, whose audience was primarily female, she still manages to reinforce the images of the ideal women that we are meant to picture. Perky, vacuous, tan and well-endowed, and above all else Blonde, she overcomes all obstacles in her path with seemingly no more weapons than a blindingly bright smile, all while maintaining her inner equilibrium and stunning fashion sense. Any girl watching from the audience is presumably meant to come away from the film inspired by the thought that maybe, perhaps, one day, she will be able to marry the twin virtues of style and perseverance the way that Woods does. And perhaps these goals are to be appreciated."

I just wonder where the real women who can also be heroes are in film. And I wonder if a movie that is about a real looking woman who saves the world from exploding would actually be successful or not. 

Women in Comedy (part 2)

Here at Ithaca, I am a member of various clubs, two of which have to do with comedy. One is comedy club, we meet once a week, and we do stand up and improv. Another is Comedy Sauce where we write and shoot sketches and put them online. 

Let me start with Comedy Club. I remember the first meeting, and the first thing I realized was how male dominated the whole club is! Its gotten better throughout the year, more girls show up eventually, but none of them are really brave enough to do stand up, and if we do choose to sack up and do stand up, the guys tease us for not being funny. I even tried to stand up a few times and I found it so difficult to write stuff that would be funny to males AND females. So I took the easy way out and wrote a bit about breasts. 

In Comedy Sauce, the female to male ratio is much more balanced, but the skits we shoot and record mostly have male characters! That makes me so upset. I try my best to write sketches with female characters, but they have to be absolutely off-the-wall hilarious to be chosen to record (no luck yet, still trying). 

My dream is to work for (write for) Saturday Night Live one day. 

I was doing some research about various casts, and I mainly looked at the casts from 2000-2010, but I also skimmed through from 1975-1995. SNL started with 3 women in the cast, it went down to 2 women some years in the 80's and early 90's. In the 00's, there have been 4-5 women in the cast. 

And you have to realize, the total of cast members varies from 10-17 people. 

Seriously?? When I think about it, it makes me livid. 

I was watching the episode that Dana Carvey hosted a few weeks ago, it was pretty funny, I loved seeing the return of Wayne's World, but I noticed what a lack of female-driven sketches there were!! Many times men played women too, which is hilarious... But still! What the fuck SNL? 

I mean, at least we have Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig and among other hilarious females in the world of comedy but we need MORE WOMEN. And enough of this men playing women thing, it's gonna get old soon.