November | 2011 | The Fear Girls

I am always excited for a new Pixar movie. Their films never fail to move me, usually to tears. The people working at Pixar are clearly dedicated and masterful storytellers who put their all into the stories they want to tell. However, I am a bit uncertain about their newest, Brave. The first non-teaser trailer was just released, and the film looks amazing. The landscapes are beautiful, and I’m incredibly impressed by the fact that they’ve figured out how to animate curly hair. But the bit of story revealed in the trailer is, at best cliché; at worst, utterly uncompelling.

Judging by the trailer, Brave is about a Scottish princess named Merida. Merida wants to go on adventures! Her mother wants her to be more ladylike! Merida runs away to prove she is just as good as a son! I’m assuming that the movie ends with Merida proving herself! And her parents still love her and are proud of her for being a hero and saving the day! Don’t even get me started on how her parents (a heavy-set, goofy man and a petite, strict woman) are straight out of sitcom territory.

One of my favorite things about Pixar is their original storytelling. They give us an exciting look at the secret lives of toys and bugs and rats. They take unremarkable things, like tropical fish and garbage collecting robots, and make them memorable characters. Brave is Pixar’s thirteenth film, and their first with a female lead. Is she something everyday about to be transformed into something special, like a paintbrush, a dog, or a camp counselor?

No. She’s a princess.

We’ve seen movies about princesses. Disney officially has 10 in their princess stables. Some of them, like Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, and Pocahontas, were refusing to be conventional princesses before Merida was a twinkle in creator Brenda Chapman’s eye. Is there anything more typical, anything more safe for a girl to be than a princess?
Another thing I love about Pixar is the little nods they include towards their own films. Their iconic Luxo lamp pops up frequently, as well as Toy Story’s Pizza Planet truck. A boy in Finding Nemo reads a Mr. Incredible comic book. There are even nods in WALL•E to other films. Their movies all exist in the same world, creating a sense of an entire Pixar universe.
Brave takes place in the past, and is the only film to have a fairy tale feeling to it, effectively separating it from the established Pixar world. Why can’t their first female lead exist in the same universe as all of their other characters? While I’m excited to see a period piece of sorts from Pixar, and to see them attempt a darker and moodier story, this segregation bothers me.

And now for the elephant in the room: the firing of Brenda Chapman. Personally, I was so excited when I heard that Pixar’s first female director would be making its first film with a female lead. As a woman just getting started in what was until recently a male dominated field, I love hearing about other women finding success in industries that they had been shut out of before.

Then in October 2010 it was announced that Chapman, who had been working on Brave for six years, was leaving over “creative differences” and would be replaced by Mark Andrews. This was crushing news, and I can’t help but wonder what the “creative differences” were, and why Chapman was forced to leave her project (which she has stated was inspired by her relationship with her daughter) behind. An article in the Los Angeles Times about Chapman being fired raises a good point:

Chapman’s removal came roughly one year after Disney’s 2009 animated feature “The Princess and the Frog” disappointed at the box office and one month before the premiere of the company’s film “Tangled.” That film, which was originally titled “Rapunzel,” underwent a number of revisions to broaden its appeal beyond a core audience of little girls.

And the article’s author, Nicole Sperling, is correct. Tangled’s main male character was added because of the tired “girls will see movies about boys, but boys won’t see movies about girls” dilemma. But who cares? Female-centric films have been doing more than well lately (see The Help, Bridesmaids, and Sex and the City 2), enough for that old adage to be given a break.

Pixar’s uneasiness over making a film with a female lead is a bit depressing. Excluding the Cars films, their movies are universally loved and are critical darlings. All of them (again, excluding Cars and Cars 2) have Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 91% and up. If anyone should be confident about making a wonderful, loved film with a female lead, it’s Pixar. But instead they got nervous. And instead of crafting a story about a character who happens to be female, they came up with a story where being female is part of the character’s struggle. They felt the need to rehash something film goers have seen before in order to make a female lead more palatable instead of believing in their own story telling skills.
Or maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe my prediction for Brave’s plot is overly cynical. Pixar released a more detailed synopsis in August 2011, which states

Merida’s actions inadvertently unleash chaos and fury in the kingdom, and when she turns to an eccentric old Witch for help, she is granted an ill-fated wish. The ensuing peril forces Merida to discover the meaning of true bravery in order to undo a beastly curse before it’s too late.

That’s not so bad. I’m still hesitant, but hopeful. While I’m still disappointed that they decided to make a princess movie, I’m still hoping for a Pixar-style, engaging story. Even with my concerns, you can bet that I’ll be at the theater, if not on opening day, within the first week of Brave’s release.
As for Pixar and female directors- Pixar has announced the three films that will follow Brave (a Monster’s Inc. prequel, The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs, and The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind), letting us know what Pixar is up to until summer 2014. And you know what? Not a woman in sight. Sorry, Brenda Chapman and any other women interested in directing (or hell, even writing) a Pixar film; you’ll just have to wait until 2015.

Nicole Sperling’s LA Times article: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/25/entertainment/la-et-women-animation-sidebar-20110525

Brave Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHWDA_6e3M

1 comment

November 9, 2011

The Problem With “Boy” Things and “Girl” Things

By Haley Friedmann

This spawned from a conversation with some friends about a commercial that offended me because I found it sexist in a way that I could not forgive. As my friends and I talked about it, one of my friends expressed concern that I was taking the commercial too seriously and he was worried that seriousness might keep me from enjoying life.

I really appreciate where you’re coming from in trying to help me enjoy life. For the most part I do, and try not to let too many things ruffle my feathers

But the chord this commercial struck with me has been a rather slow ruffling over years of my life. It’s coming from a very personal place and I don’t pretend that it applies to anyone other than myself, which is why I don’t mind if anyone else chooses to keep enjoying that brand. But I want to explain, because maybe that will ease your mind in the fact I actually have a point, and am not getting riled up over nothing.

Most of my tastes fall under what are considered “boys clubs.” Power Rangers is the first clear example I can remember. When I was 5, I had a rough time relating to other girls who wanted to play with Barbies and dress them up, when I wanted to build the Megazord and knock down block cities. It kind of sucked, because although this was still the age when cooties weren’t yet rampant, it was still an age where kids are divided up along the lines of gender, mainly by adults. Remember girl and boy Happy Meals? I always had to ask my mom to get me the boys Happy Meals, because those had the awesome Hot Wheels cars or transformer robots, rather than the lame baby dolls. And back then, it made me wonder what was wrong with me. My interests were so clearly “boy,” so why wasn’t I a boy?

Flash forward a bit to second grade. My favorite stuffed animal I slept with was the dragon from Sleeping Beauty. I named him Scorch, and he was my bedtime guardian and best friend. I couldn’t relate at all to the princess in that movie, but the dragon Maleficent transformed into I always thought was badass. I’m with two of my friends at a sleepover, and as it’s time for bed so we all pull out our sleeping buddies. They both have some cutesy thing or another, I can’t remember, and I pull out Scorch. They actually teased me to tears about it. It was a long time ago and I can’t remember the exact words, but you know how ruthless 8 year olds can be—they haven’t developed empathy yet. All I remember is crying in the closet with Scorch and hating them for being mean and myself for having Scorch. Why couldn’t I just like teddy bears and dolls so I wouldn’t have to go through this?

5th and 6th grade got easier, more unisex fads got introduced like Pokémon, and I fit in with girls by liking Beanie Babies. I still went for yo-yos over gel pens, but whatever, things were pretty cool. Whenever there were the elementary school boys vs girls wars, it took 3 or 4 boys to bring me down. I was proud of this. I also discovered Starcraft in 6th grade.

Come 7th grade, though, I had my first online experience in Starcraft. I wandered on to one of the bnet chats and mentioned I was a girl. The entire chat turned and called me a liar, an idiot, and a fag. There are no girls in Starcraft! Lying dick cheese pretending to be a girl hahahahahahaha—You get the idea. Sure, it was the usual immaturity of the internet, but here I was, a young kid again being turned away from what I loved because of my gender. I was being told I was wrong, a liar, and didn’t exist. Like those 8-year-olds, the chat had no empathy. Empathy was not something promoted in those channels. It was totally cool to promote this stereotype that there were no women who played Starcraft, even though I existed, and played Starcraft. Already at the age of 12, it had become a running theme in my life that people like me don’t exist. I obviously didn’t think I didn’t exist, but the loneliness it stressed was crushing. I had nobody to relate to. My male friends didn’t experience the same exclusion. Sure, they may have felt exclusion in being accused of being weak, but none were excluded to the level that I was, to the level of their physical being. I was being excluded because of something I was born with and could not change, which is therefore a core part of who I am.

As I got older, I had to accept my being female along with my interests, which seemed to be two separate things. I assure you this was something I had to work through during my development as a human being. When I went through puberty, I didn’t relate at all to my boobs and vagina and wondered why I couldn’t just have a penis. This level of disassociation is painful to remember. The genderization in our culture, this division between “boy” things and “girl” things, did affect my psychological development in a very real way.

I wouldn’t be so angry about things like this if I didn’t see it affecting other women. Ever since I got the haircut I’ve always wanted, I’ve had so many women come up to me and say they wish they could have the courage to get this haircut, too. “Just go do it!” I tell them, perplexed, “It’s hair, it grows back. Worst case scenario, you wear a hat for a week or two.” “Yeah, maybe…” they almost always reply. Yes, everyone can be timid, but it’s the number of women who want my “boyish” haircut that alarm me, that wish they could have the courage to get it. Women get crazy haircuts all the time, probably a lot more than men do, so why am I so “courageous” for getting this one? It might have something to do with the fact that I’m used to not giving a shit whether something is for boys or for girls, that if I like it then I like it. And it pisses me off that something like that is “courageous.” This improper, traditional genderization of things is making people unhappy, and we don’t have to perpetuate it. Yes, men and women are different. We have different genitals and different strength averages and slightly different brains. That’s where it stops. The rest is culture and I think it’s good to call out the BS from the truth. I wish I didn’t have to go through the pain of growing up thinking that I should have been a boy. I wish that BS had been called out to me that girls can like Godzilla and boys can like baking. I feel it’s a lot better these days, and it seems our culture is constantly improving about unnecessary sexism. But it still exists, and I’m going to call it out when I feel it’s too much. I want things to keep improving. I don’t want any other girl to grow up ashamed of being a girl, or ashamed of growing up to be a woman. I felt that, it was real, and you can’t sit there and tell me it didn’t happen or doesn’t happen.

Haley is a concept artist/illustrator living in the Bay Area. Her dream is to design awesome beasties and bad guys for video games and watch them come to life with their own AI. Originally from LA, she has a healthy appreciation for sun and surf, the rich and the famous, but she’s enjoyed the friendly atmosphere of Norcal and plans to stay there for years to come. When she’s not drawing monsters or playing video games, she’s looking for animal shelters to volunteer at to help out the real life creatures she loves.

Her fear is that for some strange reason everyone she knows would suddenly not like her anymore and abandon her. That’s pretty much the saddest thing she can think of.

1 comment

November 7, 2011

The Problem with Public Transportation

By Caitlin Clarkson

He took the empty seat next to me, trapping me up against the window. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Eleven-twenty.”
“Are you a model?”
“No.”
“Have you ever thought about being photographed, or being in videos or something?”
“I’m not interested.”
“You’re beautiful.”
I snapped, in the most polite way possible. “If you’re going to talk to me like that, then go sit somewhere else.”
I noticed several people around me stir at the sound of my raised voice, but no one intervened. The man didn’t move, but I quickly lost my courage. He was at least twice my size, and I didn’t want to make him mad. He didn’t move for another fifteen minutes, preferring to sulk and glare at me. When I got off the bus, I was relieved to see he didn’t follow me.

I’ve never confronted someone like that before, but I know I’ve been building up to it. I moved from Oakland to Los Angeles three months ago; in these three months, I’ve been harassed more than in all my previous 22 years. Every time I step outside now, I brace myself for the leering, the smirking, the “where you going?”, the “hey girl, nice titties!” At first, I chalked it up to changes I was making. I’m growing my hair out, and I recently warmed to the look of red lipstick. But even with my hair in a bun and no make-up on my face, I was getting it.

Two days ago (again, on the bus) I was witness to another woman getting it. I was already on edge after being stuck between two crazies threatening to pepper spray each other. After moving towards the back of the bus, I ended up standing next to the woman. At first, I thought the man standing behind her was a little close. Then I noticed she was a little uncomfortable. Then I noticed the little tent in the front of his sweatpants. I was horrified; I realized that whether I liked it or not, my proximity made me a participant in this scene.

I stared straight at the man, feebly trying to make him aware that I knew what I he was doing and that I didn’t approve. We made eye-contact, but he didn’t care. I knocked my shoulder into him when I got off the bus, but nothing else. I’m ashamed of myself for not saying anything, for not sticking up for the woman and telling him to back off. I can feel my face flushing, my hands are clamming up just thinking about it.

I always assumed I would stick up for other women, should the time arise. It did, and I didn’t. I would like to think that I won’t stay quiet again; that something like this won’t happen again in front of me unchallenged, not on my watch. But I’m not sure. I just hope in the future that I can be brave, and do the right thing. If not for myself, then for the woman I didn’t stand up for, and all the other women no one ever helps.

Brave women who made the news for standing up to their harassers:
http://gawker.com/5855987/new-subway-hero-the-groper-slapper
http://jezebel.com/5696376/subway-flasher-picks-the-wrong-woman-to-mess-with

Patricia

First off I’m sorry to hear that this kind of stuff has been happening more often to you too hun <3

It’s really hard to say what we all COULD do to help ourselves and other women in situations like this. The fact of the matter is that our society is one where victim blaming is used to lay down responsibility on not the person doing the harassment, but the innocent person that is being harassed. Like you said Caitlin it is so hard to muster courage for ourselves or other women when we are being harassed. Over the years of dealing with harassment on public transportation as well as on the sidewalk I’ve noticed my feelings of shame and self loathing at myself when men would say things or make motions at me. I’d be convinced that it was somehow MY fault that these men were doing things to make me feel uncomfortable when really I had nothing to do with it. One of the biggest things that has helped me in dealing with being harassed has been the realization that I wasn’t doing anything to egg these men on, not the way I dress, the way I walk, or whether I decided to wear make up that day. After dealing with the shame it’s become easier for me to get angry and defend myself more, to make it clear to men that it isn’t ok to treat women like objects. As for helping women when they are being harassed the safest and easiest thing for me to do has been to let the other woman know that she isn’t alone, that someone else is aware about what’s going on by either talking to her or helping her move away from
a guy that is giving her trouble. One of my biggest fears is that someone would get violent with me through harassment so I try to keep as non-confrontational as I can while getting the message across that I won’t let some man make me a victim.

19 comments

November 5, 2011

How We Are Pretty, Pt. 1

By Angela Lashbrook

I don’t remember, exactly, when my self-loathing began. I’m guessing it was fifth grade, maybe sixth, although I think I had an awareness of being “chubby” as early as second or third grade. The specifics don’t matter, though; what matters is that my anxiety over my appearance (in particular my weight) seems to have had no beginning and, conceivably, no end.

Why? I don’t have a definitive answer to this, of course, because it’s a problem that is incredibly complex and extends beyond my own experience. I have a few theories, though. Of things that may have contributed to this relentless issue. And I bring them up, not to assign blame, but to figure out how I—and, by extension, we (since I am not a special case)—battle these negative influences and kick out the self-hate.
For one thing, I started reading Seventeen in third grade. It was a gift from a family member. I loved it, and I brought it to school where, on rainy days, a few girls and I would huddle inside over its glossy pages. Seventeen was overflowing with images of skinny (and apparently sexy) girls. It had entire sections devoted to weight loss, particularly around prom and bathing-suit time. And even though it also had sections about how to “love your body!” and “be confident! Guys love a confident girl” (that statement is problematic on its own), these messages became very confusing when paired with such a conflicting ideal of beauty in its fashion editorials and advertisements. Seventeen, of course, isn’t the only magazine out there with this problem. Pretty much every magazine intended for women sent (and still sends) these incompatible messages.
So, there’s one springboard.

Another is that I was surrounded by strong, successful women who nevertheless worried about their weight to an excessive degree. When women I looked up to asked me whether or not they looked fat in this or that, the message was sent that it doesn’t matter how successful you are if you’re not thin—or even if you are thin, you’re never thin enough. Although these questions weren’t directed at me, I internalized them.
Thirdly, as a great lover of movies and books from an early age, the heroines of these stories—no matter how incredibly inspiring they were in other ways—were almost always thin. Of course it’s more difficult to tell with books, but with movies—definitely. Take any Disney movie, for example. In fact, I think the only “non-skinny” girl I idolized as a kid was Lizzie McGuire. And even her avatar was not very representative.

In any case, I’m not trying to assign blame. Writer and theorist Slavoj Žižek put it very eloquently when he wrote “The problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt.” While he was writing about capitalism and Occupy Wall Street, I think it applies to the issue I’m discussing here. The people making the advertisements, the people selling us diet pills, the magazines telling how to lose ten pounds in two weeks—they’re not evil. They’re not evil, and I am not a victim of their evil. They’re doing what they feel they have to do to make money—which they’re told to do by society in general. We are both participants in a culture with certain imprinted values, and these values are coupled with capitalism, and capitalism is paired with the insatiable appetite for media—and so on.

This is why the problem is so complex. The magazines tell you how to lose weight because their customer base wants to know how they can lose weight. Advertisements feature thin women because that is the beauty standard, and if they want to sell things, they have to commit to the beauty standard. However, when we’re represented with these messages in media, the message is reinforced. We’re told that thin is the beauty standard, so we try to be thin, et cetera. Which is then reinforced by family members, friends, i.e. members of my inner circle who, knowingly or not, fall into this trap and teach me that it is okay. Because they underwent, and still undergo, the same process.

This is why my self-loathing has no beginning and seemingly no end. It’s like asking what came first, the chicken or the egg. I say “seemingly no end” because although I don’t believe it is impossible to end these unrealistic and harmful beauty standards, I don’t know how to get there. I participate in this culture. I buy Vogue because I love fashion. And even though I have the ability to stand back and critique, it hasn’t gotten rid of the anxiety I feel, every day, when I look in the mirror and see that my shoulders have a bit of pudge that makes me feel fat and unfeminine.

Not to mention, even when I was at my thinnest, this anxiety still did not go away. I still felt fat, even though I was underweight. There is no winning this game. Which is why it makes a very, very good marketing tool.
How do we fight this? We live in a country where women have more rights than ever before, yet this problem—the problem of looking good, of looking young, and especially of being thin—gets more and more reinforced. I don’t know how to fight it. I know it isn’t as simple as “turning off my t.v.” as people have told me (I think this is a very common and very misinformed perspective). It isn’t as simple as not buying magazines. Even if I don’t come in contact with these images all the time—which, by the way, is pretty much impossible if you live in an urban environment—I am still a participant of a society that places value on women’s appearance.

Angela is currently a senior at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her occupations have up to this point been poet, barista and coffee snob, expensive chocolate hawker, and iTunes organizer. She hopes someday to be an editor and writer at Esquire. She loves food, urban landscapes, and a clean apartment.

Her fear is that she will end up in a career not dedicated in some way to the written word.

4 comments

November 3, 2011

Men and Feminism

By Sophia Rowland

I hope you guys know about the documentary that just came out called ‘Miss Representation.’ It’s not easy to see unless you have the Oprah network, which I found out recently my house does! I taped it to avoid commercials and sat down to watch it with my dad, who is a documentary producer. Strangely, he kept me waiting for him for two hours till finally I gave up and watched it solo. I don’t think my father has ever kept me waiting more than 60 seconds to watch a documentary, even one he’s seen before, so I was a little surprised by his resistance to this film. But, maybe I shouldn’t have been. After all, when it’s time to talk about this kind of stuff, few men want to participate.

I was at lunch with three friends, one of whom will (hopefully) be a writer for TheFearGirls come December when she’s out of school. The other two were my past writing and literature classmates. When my female friend and I casually brought up feminist-related topics (how women are depicted in the media mostly), my two very intelligent, thoughtful male friends could not have been quicker to get the hell away from us. Had the topic been race, money, or even homophobia, I am 100% sure they would have participated, because we’ve had those conversations before. Yet in the case of feminism…they didn’t.

I know my father and my two male friends are not chauvinist pigs. But the one thing (the only thing, actually) my friend did say during our lunch struck me in particular when discussing women’s depiction in the media. He said: “Well you can’t change the media. So there’s nothing you can do about it.” I disagree, obviously. But I wonder if he feels that way about Occupy Wall Street? Should they just pack up and go home? I don’t think so…

That response is not an uncommon one. I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard it from women, too, but I hear it a lot more from men, even men that I respect and care about. I think that women being portrayed the way we have been, has become a habit. A habit that is not easy to break, and that may be threatening to even the most confident of men. Clearly, it’s threatening to some women, too – will breaking out of female stereotypes (image and beyond) require us to second guess choices we’ve made? I think it will, and I think that’s important.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred to a girl as “fat”, “ugly”, “bitch”, and “slut” in the course of my life. I’ve been just as bad as the Kardashians in that respect. But in this new period of my life, I’m really trying to change the way I talk about women (and men). It’s my own way to help the environment and to elevate myself to a level I could respect. Because self-respect and self worth are the key essentials in becoming a stronger person and a stronger feminist.

P.S. And it’s working! Dad sent me a feminist article over email the other day. (That means he’s listening!)

Angela

I totally agree about men seeming to be afraid to talk about feminism or anything, really, that has to do with what could be considered “women’s issues.” I think the issue must seem emasculating, and they probably don’t want that. It might not be that these guys actually are disinterested in the issues, but since the issues are commonly thought of as “girly” and “women’s terrain” it makes sense that men wouldn’t want to discuss them. It’s for GIRLS! But there are guys out there interested and active in the arena of feminism. Here are a few examples:
Yashar Ali: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat
Michael Kimmel: http://creativepromotionsagency.com/mk/
ad the White Ribbon Campaign: http://www.whiteribbon.ca/
There ARE men out there, interested in feminism, culture, and masculinity studies (because I for one am very interested in the impact of society on men and senses of masculinity). But nevertheless, many men we come into contact with on a daily basis don’t seem interested. I’m not sure how to bring the issue around to them without scaring them off.

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The Fear Girls

Month: November, 2011

November 22, 2011

Pixar: Not Brave Enough