pop culture

Though two new shows in the fall line-up – Once Upon a Time and Grimm – both use fairy tales as the basis for their narratives, blending the ‘real world’ with the ‘fairy tale’ world, the similarities pretty much stop there. The two shows are radically different – and especially so in their representation of gender. Grimm has far less of a female focus and frames women as victims, functioning like CSI: The Fairy Tale Version while Once Upon a Time is centered around strong female characters, functioning as a sort of Snow White: Disney Princess Slayer.

Much like Hoodwinked, Grimm functions as a fairy-tale crime scene retake. However, while Hoodwinked gave us a wise-talking Red and a go-to Granny, Grimm focuses on a male detective and thus far has put females on the sidelines – and, in accordance with rape culture – represents them as potential victims who had better “stay out of the forest” it they want to stay safe.

The season premiere opened with a young woman jogging in a red-sweatshirt listening to the Eurhythmics song Sweet Dreams, a song that will later be hummed by her wolfy attacker as he ominously adds another red sweatshirt to his basement wardrobe collection, indicating he has kidnapped and killed quite a few ‘litte Reds.’ As the use of the Eurhythmics song suggests “some of them want to abuse you.” Never fear though, as the intrepid male detective duo of Nick Burckhardt (David Guintoli) and Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby) are on the wolf’s track, serving as would-be woodsmen to save red damsels in distress.

Earlier, these same two detectives watch women walking down a street. Hank asks David “What you looking at?,” to which David notes that something seems remiss about one of the women, noting her low salary does not match her Armani outfit. Hank scoffs in reply “Why can’t you just watch her ass like the rest of us?” This may be the most obvious moment of a sexualized male gaze in the premiere, but other aspects of the show indicate it will be more akin to Supernatural (where two male leads are the key demon hunters) than to Alias (where a strong woman was front and center).

Granted the premiere introduces us to Mary – Nick’s guardian since he was 12. She is the one strong woman thus far, telling Nick about his true “fairy tale hunter” identity and then battling a monstrous baddie. This fight lands her in hospital (and if male-hero Nick hadn’t shot the monster, would have likely resulted in her death). This, and the fact she earlier told Nick she’s been given only weeks to live, suggests Mary won’t be around for long – too bad, as putting  (good) strong women at the helm of fairy tales is a rare occurrence – there are plenty of evil female villains, but not many heroines, unless you consider talking to animals or finding a prince a particularly heroic trait.

The most intriguing plot point of the premiere comes when Nick targets the wrong creature, a reformed wolf. The wolf/human insists on his innocence, angrily telling Nick “you people started profiling us over 200 years ago.” It will be interesting to see if the show builds on ideas of racial profiling or if (please!) it includes some strong women and non-prince charming detectives, until it does, I will get my strong-women-in-fairy-tales fix watching Once Upon a Time.

Once features not only a re-vamped Snow White, but her kick-butt daughter, Emma Swan.

While in Grimm, the setting is modern-day Oregon, in Once, the characters are trapped between two worlds – the fairy-tale past and the modern world, including the town of Storybrooke, where an evil spell cast by the Queen has frozen all the fairy-tale characters in time and taken away their awareness of who they are. In the modern world, The Queen is Storybrooke’s dictatorial mayor, and her adoptive son Henry is on a quest to save the day. He seeks out Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White, who lives in Boston and works as a bail bondsperson that reveals the “evil” of philandering men. Not knowing her “true identity,” Emma goes with Henry to Storybroooke, staying there when he convinces her only she can undo the curse.

Thus far, it is not clear who knows they are stuck in a fairy tale and who doesn’t, but the lavish costumes, special effects, and attention to fairy-tale detail makes for a show that is far more enchanting than the film Enchantment – Disney’s attempt at a fairy tale redux that, in spite of excellent turns by Amy Adams as princess and Susan Sarandon as Evil Queen, ultimately gave us the same old message – someday your prince will come, he will “save” you, and your “happy ending” equals being  a happy wife/mother.

Where Enchantment failed in a typical Disney way – by trying to “modernize” a sexy message and make it palatable via the inclusion of catchy tunes and cute talking animals, Once succeeds by NOT being cute – instead we have the nasty Rumpelstilskin morphed into the modern evil capitalist Mr. Gold, the newfangled Snow as an excellent, caring elementary school teacher, little Red and the Fairy Godmother as hotel proprietors, and Jiminy Cricket as child therapist. Further, though the show accords with the “evil stepmother” meme of fairy tales – it complicates it as well, suggesting that “evil” women might just  be the result of a society that does not value single mothers and questions powerful women in the workforce.

But, the biggest difference is the fact Emma Swan is framed as the heroine – that her “happy ending” is NOT about finding a man or going to a ball all gussied up, but about detective work, about building a relationship with her son Henry, and about seeking the “truth” as to why time stands still in the corrupt Storybrooke world. For once a female is poised to be the hero – and with no prince charming by her side. Woot!

The themes and content of the show thus far circulate around issues of gender, class, education, mothering/parenting, beauty, aging, and power – yes, these are common fairy tale concerns, but the difference is Once – at least so far – takes fairy tale tropes and give them a feminist/social justice twist.

The queen/mayor is not just an evil witch of the all powerful women are bad, but a woman stuck within capitalist patriarchy – where Mr. Gold (Rumplestilskin) calls the shots. Even more intriguingly, Maleficent (played by True Blood’s Kristin Bauer van Straten) is portrayed as recognizing the bind inherent in the good/evil binary and the way it too simplistically frames some women as witches, and others as princesses. In one humorous scene, The Queen and Maleficent complain about Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, noting how those prissies ruined their lives. Underneath this banter lies the suggestion that what really turned them evil was neither Snow or Sleeping, but patriarchy and the marriage imperative imposed by fathers.

The show also interestingly puts a new twist on “true love” – the focus of so many fairy tales. When the Queen wants to release her dark curse, Rumplestilskin tells her she must sacrifice “the heart of the thing you love most,” which we soon discover is not some Prince Charming character, but her father.  Just before she kills him, her father tells her “Power is seductive, but so is love, you can have that again…I believe given a chance we can find happiness again, but the choice is yours.”  Alas, she chooses power over love and kills him, using his heart for the curse that transports the fairy tale inhabitants to Storybrooke and freezes them forever in time.

Henry, who bears the namesake of the slain father of the Queen, seeks Emma out to release the curse, telling her she is the only one who has the power to do so. Embedded within this quest is Henry’s own search for true motherly love. However, the show is careful not to suggest that Emma’s love is “better” or “natural” because she is his biological mother – rather, it suggests that, as a good person, she cannot help but help Henry, and in doing so, she disproves her claim that she is “not fit to be a mother.” The show also is careful not to demonize her for putting Henry up for adoption and notes the age/class factors that contributed to her decision. Moreover, it opens out what “mothering” means – it is not about having money and power (like the Queen/Mayor), but about the type of nurturing both Emma and the newfangled Snow White (Henry’s elementary school teacher) offer Henry.

Emma of course doesn’t believe she can save Henry nor Storybrooke, but, as Henry points out,  “the hero never believes at first, if they did, it wouldn’t be a very good story.”

As for me, I believe this is going to be one heck of a good story, and I hope against hope that it will lead to the “happy ending” of finally FINALLY! having a mainstream fairy-tale that doesn’t sideline females or suggest they are only good for cleaning up after dwarves, marrying princes, or beautifully sleeping.  As for me, I am not awaiting “true love’s kiss” – nope, I am counting the days until episode two of Once Upon a Time.

For this month’s column, I spoke with Patricia A. Adler, Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She and her husband Peter Adler, Professor of Sociology at the University of Denver, co-authored a new book that offers an ethnographic perspective on a controversial health topic. The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury (NYU Press) invites readers to go beyond predominant medical and psychological perspectives by offering a nuanced analysis of self-injury as a sociological phenomenon.

Their book is the culmination of 135 in-depth, life-history interviews conducted over ten years with self-injurers from across the world, as well as analysis of tens of thousands of emails and Internet messages. Their participants were engaging in self-injury, the intentional non-suicidal harm of one’s own body, including but not limited to include cutting, branding, burning, branding, and scratching. 

AN: In your book, you describe a broad range of motivations for self-injury. Can you explain the most typical reasons?

PA: Most of the people we interviewed saw it as a way to cope, to function when they were facing tough times. Many started in their teens when they were trying to cope with negative life circumstances.

AN: Did you find that sex and gender made a difference – did the self-injury types or reasons differ between men and women?

PA: Yes, men and women differed in the ways that they self-injured and their motivations. Men were injuring their bodies because of feelings of rage and anger and were more likely to use dull or rusted instruments to make bigger injuries on parts of their body that would be easily visible. If a man did small self-injuries and tried to hide them, then other guys would be likely to ridicule him. Women were more likely to use sharp, small blades on parts of their body that they could easily conceal because society judges women’s bodies, and they wanted to be able to hide it. They tended to self-injure because of negative feelings about themselves.

AN: It’s fascinating that sex and gender factors into others’ reactions to the self-injurers: that those who acted in ways that matched their gender norms – who were seen as being appropriately masculine or feminine – received less ridicule. Do you think mental health and medical practitioners understand self-injury as a gendered phenomenon?

PA: I think that mental health practitioners probably regard self-injury as they do eating disorders, as a generally female behavior. They may see a guy here and there, but I doubt that any practitioner sees enough to recognize this pattern. And some of the books I’ve read from the clinic people who do see larger numbers have presented cases of men who injure in ‘feminine’ ways. So I don’t think they’re attuned to this gendered pattern.

AN: Most media coverage of self-injury approaches it as a psychological problem, often as a physically dangerous type of addiction. Can you explain the sociological perspective you present on self-injury?

PA: It is common for self-injurers to be told that they have a mental disorder and that it is an addictive practice. We looked at a range of people who self-injure and found that their motivations did not necessarily reflect mental illness. A lot of regular teenagers and adults who were structurally disadvantaged were using it to find relief. Then there are those who have severe mental disorders before they start self-injuring. Some of the people we interviewed were mentally ill, but our research suggests that many of them are not. We intentionally chose the word “tender” in the book’s title because cutting may be a coping mechanism that makes some people feel empowered with a sense of control over their pain. The self-injury gave some people relief from emotional pain that they needed to get through challenging times. Our book is nonjudgmental, providing a “voice” for the experiences of a broad population of self-injurers: comprising people who have genuine mental disorders, as well as those who just have temporary situational life troubles, and everything in between.

AN: From the medical and psychological perspectives, a key focus in on how to help self-injurers stop “dangerous” behaviors. So, what did you learn about the ways and reasons why self-injurers stop?

PA: Many self-injurers stop when they are able to escape from the circumstance that caused them to initially start. So, transitioning from high school to college can be a time when young people stop. For others, it takes getting a good job, finding a partner who will not tolerate it, or becoming a parent and not wanting their children to see them self-injuring.

AN: In other published interviews, you’ve made the somewhat controversial point that not every self-injurer will need to invest in professional medical and mental health treatment in order to quit. What are some of the other ways that those you interviewed found to be helpful when they decided they wanted to stop self-injuring?

PA: Solutions from the medical-psychological community include everything from specialized clinics, which can be very expensive, to outpatient therapy, and drugs. Those who found therapy to be effective were those whose therapists addressed the reasons the person began self-injuring in the first place, rather than those who focused on self-injuring as the problem to be treated. Most of the people who self-injure are not trying to self-destruct; they’re trying to self-soothe. And, we also found many turning to free online support groups to connect with people like themselves who had either stopped self-injuring or could give advice on how to better manage the negative aspects of self-injury. In addition, some people just stopped on their own or with the encouragement and support of friends.

AN: As experts on deviant subcultures, would you say that the Internet has helped to create communities of self-injurers?

PA: Yes, the Internet has helped to build a kind of self-help community for self-injurers. Peer support groups have emerged organically, and people are sharing their experiences with each other in cyber-communities. These online relationships help them manage stress so that they function better in their daily lives.

AN: What role do you think the media played in transforming self-injury into a sociological phenomenon?

PA: It was initially shocking but not necessarily more shocking that the many other ways the people try to relieve their pain. The stories often showed that self-injury was not a suicide attempt and wasn’t necessarily because the person had serious psychological problems. Once the media started to cover self-injury stories of celebrities, then it became more acceptable because young people could relate to these people. Now, it’s so common in high schools that teens are more willing to disclose their self-injuries to their friends, and their friends often see it as “that thing that people do” if they’re unhappy, as a temporary coping mechanism. We see this behavior as highly “socially contagious”—the media, along with word of mouth, has contributed to its spread.

In The Tender Cut, we describe how media coverage of celebrities who self-injured, the accessibility of the Internet, and shifts in cultural norms made it possible for loner deviants to join Internet self-injury subcultures. These subcultures represent a range of levels of acceptance of self-injury and often help people to realize that their behaviors do not necessarily mean that they are mentally ill or bad people. This helps them manage the stigma of society judging people negatively for relieving emotional pain by inflicting physical pain on themselves. Our longitudinal data shows that many who began self-injuring as teenagers eventually outgrow it and lead functional lives.

I loved doing dot-to-dots as a child. There was something grand about linking all the tiny dots together to reveal a bigger picture. As an adult, I still love dot-to-dot, but now I attempt to link various “dots” into larger pictures that reveal cultural trends and ideologies.

This week, a number of “dots” sat scattered across my computer screen, in the form of various posts and podcasts, waiting for me to have time to more thoroughly connect them – the wonderful “Letter to Bella” post from Ms. Blog, Are Boys Natural Born Killers?, a podcast about war and gender, the “Born to Breed” interview with author Vyckie Garrison, news about JC Penney’s t-shirt “Too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me” t-shirt, and, as I am about to head off to Forks, Washington to speak at Stephenie Meyer Day, a number of Twilight related posts.

When the metaphorical dots between all these pieces are connected, the picture I am left with is one of a world that has definitely not gone “beyond pink and blue” (to borrow the title of another Girl with Pen column).

As Melissa Wardy points out in one “dot”, her post to the young Bella, “grown ups try to fit kids into little boxes that are labeled ‘Boy’ or ‘Girl’, and then they only let certain colors or ideas into each box.” As Wardy further points out, four year olds are sadly more likely to “know that girls can like or do anything boys can” than their grown up counterparts.

This claim was confirmed by heated comments in my War Literature class last evening. I had students listen to one of the dots coloring my desktop, the podcast Are Boys Natural Born Killers?, which includes Professor Joshua Goldstein, author of War and Gender, talking about the fact that boys are not “natural warriors” and that the only biological claim that seems to hold up this widely held cultural view is their propensity for more upper body strength. Though the entire podcast emphasized that gender is constructed and downplayed biological essentialism, the one comment made by Goldstein about upper body strength was latched onto. One student, for example, insisted men are built to fight whereas women are not. In this “Me Strong, You Weak” debate, I found myself thinking back to yet another dot, to the “Born to Breed” piece I had read earlier in the week.

In the piece, Vyckie Garrison, a former member of the Quiverfull movement, talks about the growing religious movement and its grounding in the belief that “the husband is the head of the household and the wife is the submissive ‘helpmeet.’” As Garrison documents, “A Quiverfull daughter is taught from a young age that her purpose in life is to serve the man whom God has placed in authority over her,” as well as to have as many children as possible. As such, “Her education is geared toward developing domestic skills–college is generally considered unnecessary and even dangerous for her spiritual well-being.”

And this brings me to Twilight, that oh-so-popular saga that has the heroine Bella (who shares no resemblance to the blue-shoe-wearing four year old feminist Bella above), giving up college to marry Edward and bear his vampire/human baby.

As I argued in my piece Wed, Bed and Bruised but Certainly Not Equal, the romanticization of sexual violence that texts like Twilight entail is part and parcel of the continuing inequality of our society. But, as lamented in “In Defense of Twilight,” this type of criticism is, like, a major bummer. The author writes: “Have you noticed Twilight gets attacked a lot? It gets attacked by men & feminists all the time & also by other fandoms. The latest thing I’ve heard is how Twilight romanticizes “domestic violence” & supports “inequality.” What a downer!” What a downer indeed. Far better to take the view enthusiastically supported by the author of the post that “It’s a love story and nothing more.”

Supportive of this enthusiastic love of love is the tendency to frame females and males as entirely opposite species, as in the post “Julia Jones Calls ‘Twilight’ Wolf Pack a Boys’ Club.” Author Brooke Tarnoff starts her gender essentialist piece with the following: “You might think you understand the plight of a woman in traditionally male-dominated fields — but none of them have anything on Julia Jones.” Suggesting that being an actress playing the lone female werewolf in an otherwise all male pack is far more heinous, say, than being the only female soldier in your regiment or than a lifetime of butting your head against the glass ceiling, Tarnoff’s piece not only brushes off male domination as something to joke about, but is also grounded in the “opposites attract” type of mentality that keeps heterosexism firmly in place.

The actress Jones, discussing her time working with the “ wolf boys club” notes “I kind of got to a place where I felt like I… know how to think like a guy,” which, Tarnoff suggests, entails learning “how gross they really are.” While admittedly this is a light piece joking about having to deal with “male talk” when one is the only female on the job, it nevertheless reflects a deeper issue – the still widely held belief that men and women naturally think, talk, and act differently – a belief that belies the social construction of gender and acts as if other markers of difference – race, class, sexuality, and so on, don’t matter.

This belief is echoed in the last weekly news story in my dot-to-dot puzzle – the JC Penny t-shirt that reads “Too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.”

Like four-year-old Bella who is told blue shoes are not for her, like the Quiverfull movement that claims men are meant to lead and women to breed, like the male student that suggested women are weak, like the Twilight texts and the surrounding fan culture that tends to frame males as “wolfish boys” and females as selfless romantics, this t-shirt echoes our continuing entrenchment in the gender binary.

Strung together, all these dots show one big, ugly patriarchal picture.

Thankfully, some of the dots – for example, the stories about the feminist actions that resulted in the JC Penney shirt being pulled, muddle this patriarchal image, making it less stable.

Let’s hope we can keep connecting the dots in order to show how everything from the gendering of children to the upswing in religious fundamentalism is colored by the sexism of our culture. Further, let’s not forget how important it is to forge our own dots — our own points of connection — so as to create a new, more inclusive societal picture for the benefit of us all.

I initially gulped down Kathryn’s Stockett’s The Help, the book, applauding its nascent feminist representation of women – both black and white – and their experiences in Jackson, Missippi in the Jim Crow South. Anxious to support female writers in our still male privileged publishing world, I tore through its pages after receiving the book as a Christmas gift.

In hindsight, I now more fully recognize its failings – the nostalgic framing, the failure to really grapple with structural inequalities, the privileging of the white narrator’s voice, and the reliance on stock characters. Nevertheless, it is a good read, and one that at least nods towards the structural inequalities that still shape US culture.

However, I am less torn about the film, which I did not like. I wanted to – especially as it’s an ensemble film with a powerhouse line-up of female actors. As such, it is especially disappointing that the movie falls short and will likely add more grist to the mill that such films are “special interest chick flicks” unable to draw in male viewers or generate huge earnings. It is also unsatisfactory in its Blind-Side-type take on racism, wherein inequality is framed as an individual problem best solved by nice, white ladies (whether played by Sandra Bullock or Emma Stone).

Most pervasively though, as I argue in my Ms. Blog review, the film is unsavory for its attempt to feed the audience the same type of poop-laced- pie Minnie, one of the black female heroines, feeds Hilly, the arch-villainess (who becomes even more of a one-note character in the book). Or, as the friend I saw the film put it, “the whole issue of race, gender and class relations is one big shit joke. Bathrooms and toilets and pie, oh my!”

Not only are we served up this objectionable slice of syrupy-sweet nostalgia, but it comes with extra heapings of whiteness.

As Martha Southgate writes in her review of the book, “Implicit in The Help and a number of other popular works that deal with the civil rights era is the notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even necessary to tell this particular tale of black liberation.”

More often than not, films set in the past are helmed by white male characters and frame them as the heroes (Missippi Burning, as noted here, being one example). At least The Help departs from this trend, placing females front and center. But, problematically, the white females are depicted as the prime movers and shakers, whether for good (Skeeter) or bad (Hilly), or, even just for comic relief (Celia). Such a focus denies, to use Southgate’s words, that “Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help” (emphasis mine). As similarly noted in this Colorlines piece, “precisely at the time that ‘The Help’ transpires, African Americans across Mississippi were registering to vote and agitating for political change. In other words, they were helping themselves.” Alas, in the movie, African Americans are busy sneaking poop into chocolate pie, stealing their employers jewelry, or laughing heartily (whether in church or prison)… Yes, cuz racism is so much fun!

As a feminist film and book junkie who wants to support female authors and actresses, I yearn for these types of books and movies to be better – and, I question why Hollywood keeps shoveling sugar-coated versions of the world down our throats, as if we will swallow any old sh*t.

Don’t hate me Potterites, but I would have preferred the Harry Potter series had been instead the Hermione Granger series. Sure, Harry is great and all, but, given that male protagonists still vastly outnumber female ones, I wish J.K. Rowling had chosen to frame her saga around a female character.

Thankfully, many recent popular saga’s do just that. Alas, some of the most popular (ahem, Twilight) have fairly week protagonists a little too focused on romance and not nearly focused enough on charging through complex narratives.

Instead of talking about Edward’s golden eyes a bazillion times, how about some heroines with wit, intelligence, bravery and charisma? For that type of character, my recent favorite is Katniss from The Hunger Games.

This summer, I am on a mission to find another Katniss-fix for my daughter and I (heck, for my mom and son too, who also loved the series). I have thus far turned to Matched, Divergent, and Uglies.

I was disappointed with Cassia’s Matched. The book’s love triangle focus smacked very much of Twilight with similar undertones of pro-abstinence and you-need-a-man-to-be-complete messages.

In contrast, Tris, from Divergent, gave me the Katniss chutzpah and Hermione intellect I yearn for rolled into one. And, so far, Uglies’ Tally and Shay read like feminist rebels in training.

Sadly, films with strong young female protagonists have proven non-existent this summer. While I loved

Alice in Super 8, I was underwhelmed by the typical damsel-in-distress narrative she ultimately inhabited. Though I commend (and appreiceate) J Boursaw’s coverage of five recent strong females in family films, I would argue that strong female leads are much rarer in film than in YA fiction. While the Goodreads list of “Best Feminist Young Adult Books” started by Jessica Stites of Ms. Magazine swells with 512 titles, movies aimed at the YA set predominantly feature male leads. For a visual of these male-helmed films, take a gander at Margot Magowan’s gallery of 2011 kids movie posters here.

Unfortunately, most Harry Potter posters could be included in this gallery as they feature Harry, not Hermione. I will admit that I have already purchased my midnight tickets of the final Potter film for July 14, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on a saga as popular and influential as Rowling’s that features a female at the helm.

Thankfully, The Hunger Games film adaptation is in the works, with the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence (of Winter’s Bone) as the lead. Though I fear Hollywood will up the love triangle quotient of the story and downgrade Katniss’ feminist awesomeness, I am still hoping this saga can finally prove that female-helmed narratives can attract large, diverse audiences and lay that “boys will only read about (or watch films with) male leads” claim to rest.

Ah, if only I had the power to enact an “Imperio” curse and make Hollywood and the book publishing world fill our pages and screens with females of the Hermione/Katniss ilk! Or, maybe a new spell is needed – Arrresto Bella! Hermione Engorgio! – meaning stop with the Bella-esque characters and let narratives swell with Hermione magnificence.

Rather than falling into the typical princess/witch or angel/whore binary most films trade in, Hanna gives us a movie rarity–a female protagonist who is strong, smart, brave and decidedly not in need of male rescue.

The film is overtly framed as a dark fairytale, but rather than taking the characteristic romantic turn fairytale-esque films have taken lately (see: Tangled, Twilight, Red Riding Hood), Hanna doesn’t require a princess waiting for her prince. Instead, Hanna is an expert survivalist, able to evade the government operative pursuing her, Marissa (played by Cate Blanchett with an icy Texan twang).

The title character’s name brings to mind other strong female Hanna’s (such as Kathleen Hanna of the grrrrrrl band Le Tigre, or political theorist Hannah Arendt) and, fitting of these strong female role models, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is quick-thinking and independent. With a storehouse of encyclopedic knowledge handed down from her father (Erik Bana) and more than enough training to evade the many assassins gunning for her, she is a combination of Sydney Bristow without the glitz, Buffy Summers without the vampires, and Jodie Foster with all her icy-blue-eyed strength.

Like other women populating director Joe Wright’s films (such as Cecilia and Briony Tallis from Atonement), Hanna is neither hyper-sexualized, mentally vacant nor a one-note villain/heroine. As Matt Smith notes in his review, Wright has given us “yet another strong female lead in a film culture that is all too often devoid of them.” Contrasting the film to the “brain dead Sucker Punch,” Smith argues that the film offers “a complex portrait of a young woman.”

While I have not seen Sucker Punch, the trailer indicates a movie saturated in hyper-sexualized female bodies. Framed from a voyeuristic, objectifying male gaze that ogles the female body in action as sexual rather than powerful, and as only holding power via sexuality, Sucker Punch appears to fall in line with other female-driven action movies. Thankfully, by Hanna not sexualizing its protagonist, the film shows that power for women need not reside in bountiful breasts nor be clad in skin-tight body suits (as in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Cat Woman, Iron Man 2 and the like). Perhaps Hanna will finally prove that females can successfully helm action films without being booty-bots.

I agree with Smith that Wright has delivered a feminist take on the assassin genre. Even more intriguing, the film avoids romance and passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors. In one evocative scene, Hanna talks with her new friend Sophie (played splendidly by British actress Jessica Barden). Here, the film offers something even rarer than strong female protagonists–an exploration of female friendship and intimacy completely devoid of boy talk or heteronormative romance. The inclusion of a shot of Sophie’s disgruntled and jealous younger brother speaks volumes about why such scenes (and a widespread acknowledgment of female intimacy in general) are so rare: In short, they threaten male defined hetero-patriarchy, revealing that women don’t need nor necessarily desperately desire men in the way so many movies make us believe.

Hanna has been derided as unbelievable and thin on plot (as here), but I beg to differ. What is unbelievable is that movies like this are so rare. Yes, it’s not entirely believable–what action movie is? Yes, it sometimes values action over dialogue or character development–but it is an action movie, after all. But, finally, it delivers a punch very palatable to those who refuse to be suckers for misogynistic female action-hero stereotypes.

*cross-posted here at Ms. Blog

Girl w/Pen friends — it’s been too long!  In keeping with today’s theme so wonderfully explored by Debbie Siegel, here’s my review of my shero Peggy Orenstein’s latest.  This review originally appeared on the Ms. Magazine blog and is re-posted with permission.  For more of Orenstein’s thoughts read my interview with her on SheWrites.

If you’ve been within 50 feet of a 4-year-old girl in the past decade, you can’t have escaped the fact that princess is a booming industry. From T-shirts emblazoned with “princess” to the fad for “makeover” parties to “princess potty seats”, there is no shortage of products with a tiara theme offered to girls. In her excellent new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein writes as a journalist, a mother of an elementary school-age girl and a former girl herself to investigate the explosion of pink “girlie-girl culture.”

Common wisdom would have it that the demand for pink is simply hardwired into girls. Orenstein evaluates this by consulting with neuroscientist and Pink Brain, Blue Brain author Lise Eliot, a proponent of neuroplasticity–the idea that “[inborn traits], gender-based or otherwise, are shaped by our experience.” Eliot’s research shows that, in fact, when kids are tiny, “[they] do not know from pink and blue.” She argues that children don’t begin to label behavior or toys as meant for girls or for boys until between ages 2 and 3, as kids come to understand there are gender differences. It’s also the exact time when they’re handed toys that are gender-specific. In other words, Orenstein writes, “nurture becomes nature.” Boys are blued; girls are pinked.

So if not nature, what’s the force behind all the pinking? The easy answer is money. As one example, the ever-more-present Disney Princesses line grossed $4 billion dollars in 2009. The “father” of that line, Andy Mooney, tells Orenstein, “I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy.” A sales rep at the annual Toy Fair has a more direct answer when Orenstein asks if all this pink is necessary: “Only if you want to make money.”

But even if cash-hungry marketers are pushing pink to rake in profits, there’s another piece to the puzzle: parents who buy the toys for their kids. Orenstein has a deep empathy for the competing pressures they face. She herself doesn’t want to restrict her daughter from choosing her own mode of self-expression–even if that’s a poufy princess dress–but worries that all the marketing itself constricts her daughter’s choices. Instead of the entire rainbow, girls only get to see the pink slice.

Orenstein’s sympathy extends to parents participating in the most extreme “girl-ification”–the pageant parents portrayed on the TV show Toddlers and Tiaras. Visiting a pageant held deep in the hill country of Texas, Orenstein leaves the tiara-fest more ambivalent. She’s not ready to dismiss the parents’ oft-repeated credo that pageants boost their girls’ self-esteem and that it’s okay to tell your daughter that she’s special. She also sees how much much participating in pageants can mean to a family. But it’s clear from her observations that Toddlers and Tiaras is doing its share of harm.

Orenstein mentions how exposés of the show have featured “psychologists who (with good reason) link self-objectification and sexualization to [a] host of ills previously mentioned—eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, impaired academic performance,” often rebutted by the pageant moms, who then defend their actions. And within the book’s first pages Orenstein references the well-respected American Psychological Association’s Report of The Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls which offered hard evidence that an overemphasis on beauty and sexiness made girls vulnerable to problematic behaviors linked to self-objectification.

So how can parents balance these pressures in order to stem the tide of pink? Orenstein leaves the question open, which might frustrate some readers. She muses as she researches, reflects as she consults, and ends the book optimistic but uncertain about how root-level change can be achieved. On her website she’s just launched a “resources” section which offers suggestions of books for kids and parents, recommended shows and films, even a clothing line. Lisa Belkin of “Motherlode” in The New York Times has also responded with a solid list of suggested reading in her column “The Princess Wears Plaid.” Additionally, the Ms. blog offers a list of contemporary retellings of fairy tales and myths from a feminist perspective. All ask readers to chime in with further contributions.

Orenstein has a final, crucial piece of advice: Just say NO to the overpinking. That might seem pat to a frustrated parent–saying no reaches beyond appeasing a demanding child to refusing cultural edicts that seem to whisper and shout from every side. Awareness is your best line of defense, Orenstein insisted in dialogue with Lori Gottlieb at a recent L.A. talk, as she repeated, “You just say NO.”

Ask me five years ago and I’d have told you I’d be first in line to challenge gender stereotypes if ever I had kids myself.  I minored in feminist cultural studies!  I believe boys and girls are made, not just born!  But sixteen months into parenting my boy/girl twins, I’m starting to wonder how I’ll ever ensure that my boy grows up sensitive and my girl stays, as one of my favorite organizations has trained me to say, strong, brave, and bold.

It’s an unfortunate moment for complacency.  Children are boxed into hyper-gendered categories at ages younger than ever before.  Just last month, Disney infiltrated the delivery room.  New research shows that girls as young as three are internalizing the thin ideal.  As blogger Pigtail Pals reports, a study by Dr. Jennifer Harriger, published in 2010 finds that preschoolers are attributing stereotypes to others because of their weight.  The news is distressing.  Gender-aware parents can cleanse our daughters’ bedrooms of pale pink and defend a love for Tinkerbelle in our sons, yet the clutch of our pink-vs.-blue culture seems only to tighten its hold.  Why, we’re all asking, is this so?

There’s ample proof that since the utopian hope of “Free to Be You and Me” in the 1970s, as a culture we’ve slid backwards. As Peggy Orenstein documents so thoroughly and well in Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie Girl Culture (reviewed here this week by Elline!), things are far worse than they were when we grew up.  The hyper-marketing of gendered purchases target kids at an increasingly vulnerable age, and it’s enough to make any parent tired.

We can blame Disney and we can fight the princesses, but perhaps two additional reasons that a generation of parents raised on feminism feels like we’re losing the war is that 1) we’re confused and 2) we’re alone.

We’re confused by “science.” Fighting gender-based discrimination has morphed into dealing with science, which carries boldfaced authority—and many feminist scientists themselves are now fighting this fight too.  Sometimes I wonder about the effects.  Have Gen X parents grown convinced of children’s innate gender sensibilities?  Decades of media stories hawking the latest in neuroscience have emphasized the nature side of the nurture debate that second-wave feminism famously upstaged.  Have the things we’ve heard about gender affected a new generation’s parenting behavior?  “The more we parents hear about hard-wiring and biological programming, the less we bother tempering our pink or blue fantasies, and start attributing every skill or deficit to innate sex differences,” suggests neuroscientist Lise Eliot in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, (which argues, by the way, that social expectations—not biological differences—have the upper hand in shaping who our children become.)  Sensational, whiplash-inducing headlines tell us gender is inborn—no, wait, made—no, born.  Unless you’re steeped in this research, it’s often hard to know what’s what anymore.

But our biggest problem, I fear, is that when it comes to resisting the hyper-genderfication of childhood, we’re largely fighting it alone.

Over the past sixteen months, as my babies have progressed from a crawl to a walk and now to words, it’s slowly dawned on me how much the premise of my previous book, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, applies to my new situation: As parents, and especially as new parents, we don’t always feel plugged into a movement to change the larger culture in which we raise our kids.  Instead, we’re left to focus on ourselves—in this case, our familial microcosms—on our own.

To be sure, there’s a burgeoning movement out there. I’m a huge fan of initiatives like SPARK and the Geena Davis Institute and efforts to redefine girly like Pigtail Pals and of course the longstanding work of Girls Inc.  I voraciously consume every new book by educators like Lyn Mikel Brown to learn what we can do to resist (See Packaging Girlhood, Packaging Boyhood, and also the resource page at the wonderful Peggy Orenstein’s site.) But these initiatives aren’t as mainstreamed as they might be.  I can control my growing babies’ media consumption and control what comes in the house, but control only goes so far.  I fear that as a new mother, I’m long on feminist parenting ideals, short on ways to make them stick in the world outside my home.

I hear that change feels more possible once your kids hit kindergarten.  My friends there tell me that they feel successful in their attempts to provide a larger context in which it’s natural for their girl to love Star Wars and their boy to take ballet.  They feel effective.  They feel their actions span far.

In the meantime, we mothers of babes continue our preparations for the good fight by lining our children’s bookshelves with The Sissy Duckling and No I Will NOT Wear a Dress and painting our nurseries sage.  But short of a massive and visible movement—you know, like the political ones we see right now on tv—sometimes I worry.  Are we all just focusing on the equivalent of wardrobes and walls?

What do YOU think?  Do you see a new generation of parents taking on the battle against the hyper-genderfication of childhood in spades?  Is there a movement?  Or are we all basically out here on our own?  If you have strong thoughts on this either way, for a writing/blogging/thinking project I’m working on (The Pink and Blue Diaries), I’d love to hear from you.  Please email me at deborah@shewrites.com

This interview originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog and is re-posted with permission.

Move over dot-com, dot-org, and dot-gov. There’s a new domain on the block: dot-xxx. With 370 million sites and $3,000 spent for online porn every second, the industry’s revenues surpass earnings by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined.

This is author Gail Dines’s point: Porn is about profit, not pleasure. Some people make a buck; many more are harmed, argues Dines in her new book PORNLAND: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press).

Gail Dines calls herself an anti-porn feminist, but she is quick to clarify that she’s not anti-sex. Unlike Dines—and in the interest of full disclosure—I am not anti-porn. I oppose censorship and unproductive arguments pitting sex-positive feminists against anti-porn activists. This keeps rival groups in far corners of the Sex Wars boxing ring. We need more conversation—not less—which means asking tough questions across ideological divides. To that end, I interviewed Gail Dines, curious about our agreements and differences on The Porn Question.

Ms./Shira Tarrant: You wrote Pornland for a mainstream audience. What is your primary hope for this book?

Gail Dines: I wrote Pornland to raise consciousness about the effects of the contemporary porn industry. Many people have outdated ideas that porn is pictures of naked women wearing coy smiles and not much else, or of people having hot sex. Today’s mainstream Internet porn is brutal and cruel, with body-punishing sex acts that debase and dehumanize women.

Pornland looks at how porn messages, ideologies, and images seep into our everyday life. Whether it be Miley Cyrus in Elle spread-eagle on a table dressed in S&M gear, or Cosmopolitan telling readers to spice up their sex lives with porn, we are overwhelmed by a porn culture that shapes our sexual identities and ideas about gender and sexuality. Pornland explores how porn limits our capacity for connection, intimacy and relationships.

ST: What is it about Miley Cyrus in S&M gear that bothers you? Is it her age? Or simply that she’s wearing pseudo-bondage gear?

GD: The problem is that women in our culture have to conform to very narrow definitions of femininity and it’s defined by porn. Miley Cyrus’s performance is not about creativity but dictated by capitalism. She aged out of Disney and this is the carefully planned-out launch of the new Miley Cyrus.

My issue is about the market and about how pornography frames femininity. Women are either fuckable or invisible. Miley Cyrus wouldn’t make any money [with an unfuckable image].

ST: Are you opposed to consensual BDSM sex in real life? Or do you see this as a harmful and exploitative relationship?

GD: What people do outside corporate forces, or outside capitalism, is none of my business.

I’m critiquing the commodification of sex. That gets confused with the idea that I’m telling people what to do in the bedroom. It’s a much easier argument to make [but] it’s a refusal to take seriously a radical feminist critique of the culture.

ST: Some people working in the business argue that porn is a legitimate way to earn a living. I know you disagree, but that keeps us stuck in an us-versus-them sex war. Do you see a way to move past that stalemate?

GD: The industry frames the work as a choice, because otherwise that would ruin porn. Choice is built into the way men enjoy porn. Men I interviewed are convinced the women in porn really choose this and enjoy their job.

Increasingly, women are drawn to porn by the glamorization of the industry. Some women have made porn work for them—Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson. Jenna Jameson was on Oprah, who was gushing about her. Oprah went to her house and showed the audience Jameson’s expensive cars and private art collection. This looks attractive to women with limited resources. Capitalism can only succeed if there are people around who will do the shit work. Women with law degrees are not lining up to do porn. The vast majority of women doing porn don’t make it and don’t get famous. They end up in low paid work as well as the brothels of Nevada.

We need a world where women have real options to make a living. This is a class issue and a race issue. To talk about choice is to ignore how people are constrained by their social and economic situations.

To be continued in Part II …

Above: pornographic film set, 2007. Photo by Larry Knowles for The Naughty American website licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

“For decades, Barbie has remained torpedo-titted, open-mouthed, tippy-toed and vagina-less in her cellophane coffin—and, ever since I was little, she threatened me,” writes Susan Jane Gilman in her article “Klaus Barbie.”

This sentiment towards Barbie, one Gilman describes as “heady, full-blown hatred,” is familiar to many females (myself included) – but, so too, is a love of Barbie and a nostalgia for Barbie-filled memories.

Feelings towards Barbie often lie along a continuum that shifts with life’s passages –as children, many love her, then as tween and teendom sets in, she is tossed aside, forgotten about for many years, and then later, when children come into one’s life – through mothering or aunty-ing, Barbie once again enters the picture. For feminist women, the question of whether or not Barbie is a “suitable” plaything for the children in their lives often looms large as they navigate the toy-fueled world of early childhood.

Daena Title’s “Drown the Dolls,” an art exhibit premiering this weekend at the Koplin Del Reio art gallery in Culver City, California, continues the feminist tradition of analyzing Barbie, this time with an eye towards “drowning” (or at least submerging) the ideals of femininity Barbie embodies. In the video below, the artist explains her fascination with Barbie as “grotesque” and how her distorted reflections under water mirror the distorted messages culture sends to girls and women about feminine bodily perfection.

Title’s project and the surrounding media campaign (which asks people to share their Barbie Stories in 2 to 3 minute clips at You Tube), has garnered a lot of commentary. Much of the surrounding commentary and many of the threads have focused on the issue of drowning as perpetuating or normalizing violence against women. For example, this blogger at The Feminist Agenda writes,

“When I look at the images… I don’t so much get the message that the beauty standard is being drowned as that images of violence against women – especially attractive women – are both acceptable and visually appealing in our culture.”

Threads at the Ms. blog as well as on Facebook include many similar sentiments. While I have not seen the exhibit yet, the paintings featured in the above clip are decidedly non-violent – they do not actively “drown” Barbie so much as showcase her underwater with her distorted image reflected on the water’s surface – as well as often surrounded by smiling young girls. As Title indicates in her discussion of her work, it is the DISTORTED REFLECTIONS of Barbie that captivate her – as well as the way she is linked to girl’s happiness and playfulness – a happiness that will be “drown” as girls grow into the adult bodies Barbie’s plastic body is meant to represent.

The reactions thus far of “drowning” as violent focus on the project’s title alone, failing to take the content (and context) of the paintings into account – they are not a glorification of violence but a critique of the violence done to girls and women (and their bodies and self esteem) by what Barbie represents.

To me, Title’s work is in keeping with the earlier aims of the Barbie Liberation Organization who infamously toyed with Barbie’s voicebox to have her say GI Joe’s line “vengeance is mine” rather than her original “math is hard!” Her work adds to the tradition of feminist work on toys, gendering, and girls studies – a tradition that is thriving and continues to examine new and old toys alike (as here and here).

The negative commentary regarding Title’s work as perpetuating violence seems to me a knee-jerk reaction – one not based in critical reading of her work. While maybe Barbie (and the bodily perfection her grotesquely ABNORMAL body represents) SHOULD sink, Title’s work – and the critiques of Barbie it is fostering, deserves to swim…