Sick rant

I've been sick the past few days, and I'm finally starting to feel better. But, while I was sick I noticed a couple of comments that have always bothered me and finally understood why.

The first is "Well, if you're lucky at least you'll lose a couple of pounds."

Like losing weight will make my body's rejection of food any better. Like it will make me thank my lucky stars for the dizziness and sweat pouring out of my skin.

The second is "Haha, maybe you're pregnant."

I don't think I could spiritually handle carrying the messiah at this point in my life.

I think these comments bother me because of the gender based assumptions that Western society throws down our throats. That all women want to be thinner, and that all women of baby making age are at risk of becoming pregnant. (Like pregnancy is a disease, not a choice.)

The people who say these kinds of things don't understand how inconsiderate it is. What if I like being fat and don't want to lose weight? What if I'm infertile or suffered a miscarriage recently and don't want to be reminded of it? What if I feel so wretchedly sick I don't want to look at a brightside? What if I'm a lesbian or just don't see kids in my future?

I wish people would think before they opened their mouths, not only about what they're saying but why they feel the need to say it.

I also think it's interesting that it's women who say things like this. I'm not sure if it's a way of leveling the playing field or a lame attempt of making me feel better.

The adipositivity project, or fatties are beautiful too

I was going to write a scathing post on the feral children who wander my street at dusk, pushing their three wheelers around in the road with no supervision and their diapers sagging around their knees. But, that post will have to wait, for I am delight.

I just found adipositivity, which is a project to promote fat acceptance by showing the world how sexy us fatties really are. Here are my five favorite pics from the project; since nudity is involved I've just posted the links.

Jammies.

Is it hot in here?

Lingerie.

Little Red.

Calming nude.

I found my reactions to the pictures and which ones I thought to be attractive interesting. I like larger women, but there are some body types I really like, and some not so much.

My Super Sweet 16 grow up in Exiled

I haven't heard good things about Exiled, the show that takes spoiled teenagers from My Super Sweet 16 and pairs them with tribes in remote locations around the world. I stumbled upon it by chance a few minutes ago, and I have to admit, I actually like it.

The arguments I've heard against the series have been valid. It shouldn't be up to other countries to educate spoiled rich kids in what it means to be human. And, spending a few days with a non-Western tribal culture shouldn't be the worst punishment imaginable. Some people pay a good chunk of money to have the same experience these girls have.

The reason I like the show is it gives girls who have spent their entire lives (in most cases) cushioned by the luxury of their parents the chance to expand their worldview. At worst, the girls will go home with a feeling of discomfort they've never felt before, which will make them grow as people. At best, they will find a new strength and determination they never knew they had. And, to top it all off, other Westerners (okay, Americans) will get a glimpse of cultures they didn't know they should care about. One of my biggest beefs about American culture is we're blind to the world outside our own borders, especially if the people in the outside world look and act differently than we do. I think any opportunity to show Americans, especially young Americans, the glorious diversity around the globe is a good thing.

This season's action dramas and feminism

Between Monday and Tuesday, I found myself being drawn into two action dramas, the returning Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the new Sons of Anarchy with one of my favorite actors, Ron Perlman.

I think one aspect that draws me into both shows is the strong female characters. In Terminator, Sarah Connor is like the MacGyver of modern mothers. She's resourceful, fierce, and a strategist who can survive just about everything. The competing Terminators so far this season are also women (if you can call them that) who are all the more intimidating because under the soft skin and big eyes are really killing machines crafted of an intricate network of wires, steel, and living tissue.

In some ways to me, the journey of the main Terminator, played by Summer Glau, is like that of women through history as she tries to prove her humanity in the face of the doubts of those around her. Last season she discovered art in the form of ballet, which gave the biggest hints that she was on the path towards becoming a human machine, and in the first episode of this season she declared her love for John Connor, and more surprising, she meant it. Through the machine's journey of self discovery, she is becoming more than a weapon, more than a tool, more than a machine, and because of her superhuman strength, more than an ordinary woman.

In Sons of Anarchy, it is clear that Gemma, played by Katey Sagal, pulls some major strings when it comes to her son Jax and Clay, the leaders of the SOA. She's not afraid to kill to get results, and she uses seduction, power, and quick thinking to get what she wants. She is cold and calculating, but you can tell she is tuned in when it comes to her family and will do what she thinks is best, no matter what it takes to see its fruition.

Dr. Tara Knowles has also been introduced as a strong woman. Not only has she had the courage to leave the jurisdiction of the SOA and come back to do good in her hometown, she also was intelligent and hardworking enough to finish medical school. It is clear there will be sparks between her and Jax, but it remains to be seen whether or not Jax will be up to being involved with such a strong, together woman.

Another thing I like about these shows, and it's somewhat controversial, is that the people who make the show are brave enough to put these women in danger. The mothers aren't June Cleaver. They make hard, and sometimes bad, decisions that impact the story lines of the shows. They get hurt, and sometimes women end up with a boot in their face or with an overdose coursing through their veins and making them froth at the mouth. But, instead of being victims who constantly need to be saved by the men around them, at times they save the men. I think this shows a maturity growing in Hollywood, where a gender paradigm is beginning to shift, and people are beginning to rethink the roles of men and women when it comes to power and protection.

If you agree or disagree on any of this, please feel free to leave a comment.

The Terminator series is available on Amazon and pretty much anywhere you can buy DVDs, and individual episodes of Sons of Anarchy are available for download from iTunes.

On Sarah Palin and censorship

I'm hoping this will be my only Palin related post, but I can't make any promises.

Palin is anti-abortion, pro-guns, and is in the pocket of the religious right. But, none of that matters to me as much as what I've read on her stance on books. Here's an excerpt from Time Magazine:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

It was easy for me to decide whether to vote for or against intellectual freedom.

Remember, when you vote for a president, you're also voting for their running mate.

New focus

I'm starting this year with a new focus. I'm going to be trying to focus topics and improve my writing in Artist's Passion and My Musings 2.0. I'm going to try to include more in-depth interviewing, more researching, and more linking.

I've noticed I haven't included very much feminism in this blog lately. It's partially because nothing has infuriated me or made me jump for joy lately. I'll still be including feminist theories and rants, starting with a shout-out to an Utne article I read a few days ago. I'm wondering if I should integrate more powerful women in Friday's Fabulous Fat Chick and open up the topic to all women I look up to.

In the future, I'd like to incorporate more video and audio into my blogs. Today, I learned how to do some basic editing in Media 100. Soon, I'd like all of my interviews to be video recorded.

I'm thinking a computer-upgrade is in my near future. I'm going to go to the campus computer store tomorrow to see about my options. I'm pretty sure I want a MacBook, since I'm going to be using for design and multimedia editing.

That's about it for now.

Writing delayed

I've been working about 40 hours a week at the bookstore, and my writing, on all fronts, has suffered.

When I get home, I'm usually just not in the mood to write. I'd rather knit and watch old episodes of Buffy I have on DVD.

However, I'm seriously thinking about submitting to Yes Means Yes, a feminist response to the rape issue. I still have some time to pull something together.

Tomorrow starts a new semester, the first semester in my graduate career. My graduate level course is a multimedia journalism course; I read over the syllabus, and it scares me. But, I'm going to take the jump anyways and see where it takes me. At the least, I'll be learning flash, video and audio editing and buying my own Web site domain. I have no reason not to face this head on; everyone knows fear is the mind killer, and I must face my fear.

I graduate in May, then I'm joining the working world for a few years to pay off student loans and broaden my horizons. Eventually, I really want to work towards a master's in cultural reporting at NYU. I enjoy dreaming big.

Friday's Fabulous Fat Chick: Ann Wilson

Sultry brown eyes. A powerful voice. And, of course, makeup provided by MAC. (According to her official site.)

No, I'm not talking about another drag queen, even though I love them so. I'm talking about Ann Wilson, the voluptuous half of the sister-act faces of Heart.


With a career spanning over 20 years, Wilson lent her voice to classics like Barracuda and Magic Man.


Unfortunately, I can't give you all of the sordid details of her life. I'm not a music person, but I can say I grew up listening to her music; her last CD was released in 2004. She's been a star longer than I've been alive, which must count for something.

I do have a complaint for her promotions team, though.

Stop hiding her voluptuousness behind her sister! Stop cutting off pictures of her to pretend she's not fat. She is. She's also one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

Have some respect.

Dangerous Books: The Girl Next Door

It's easy to feel outraged over things that make us uncomfortable. That's why people ban books. Why they protest movies.

With my super-psychic powers, I can see a storm brewing. See, Jack Ketchum wrote a novel a few years back. The Girl Next Door. It's a hard read. The book describes the torture of a teenage girl; I had to put the book down multiple times before I got to the end. And, now it's a movie. It premiered on Oct. 3.

Even the horror reviewers, hard and calloused souls used to reading about all sorts of depravity, are getting the queasy "I can't believe this is happening" feeling I struggled with while reading the novel.

JACK KETCHUM’S THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is the best film I’ve seen that you couldn’t pay me to see again. Well made, flawlessly acted, clearly written. But these are just technicalities critics hide behind because, well, how often does a movie really DEAL with what it’s about? ~Dr. Royce Clemens~

I agree with Clemens when it comes to the book. It was well-written and hit all the nerves it set out to hit. It was also like reading de Sade. Something not to be taken lightly or on an empty stomach.

I can see the feminist groups now, carrying torches and pitchforks on the way to theaters playing the film.

Even the trailer makes me a little twitchy.



Poor Meg, the girl who's tortured, doesn't have a chance. The villain of the story is a housewife who sees in Meg all of her failures. She sets out to "educate" the girl on how to be a woman, which includes having the neighborhood kids tie her up, strip her, cut her with knives, burn her, and mutilate her genitals so she will never know sexual pleasure. Meg never had a chance.

The hero is a 12-year-old boy, the only neighborhood kid who sees how monstrous his buddies and the mother next door have become. Except, in the beginning, he gets caught up in it all, too. He figures out his own moral compass a little too late, and a little late to keep these events from changing him forever.

The thing is, I don't think feminists should protest. They should watch the movie and see what they're up against. Things like this really happen. Ketchum based the novel on a woman who scared him, a woman who really got the kids in her neighborhood to help her torture a young girl living with her.

Think this kind of thing wouldn't happen today? You're wrong. A woman in Naples, Fla. went on trial for piercing her daughter's genitals. Her story: her daughter is rebellious and she wanted to teach the girl a lesson by making sex painful. And, guess who is accused of having sex with the daughter? The woman's boyfriend.

Think the government really cares about us poor little women out there, getting hurt and mutilated? That it will protect us? According to Tracy Clark-Flory (wait for the site pass to process, then click on the Enter Salon link at the top right), the U.S. government doesn't give asylum to women who have suffered genital mutilation, even if they don't want their children to experience the same practice. They will, however, give asylum to women who face forced sterilization, because the loss of the ability to have children is deemed more reprehensible than the loss of a mere limb.

In some ways, it reminds me of the trial of the mother above. See, the jury deliberating over the trial had a hard time punishing the mother. In some ways, they can see where she's coming from, having to deal with a bad, rebellious daughter. And, what harm is it to forcibly pierce your daughter's genitals? It doesn't harm the ability to have kids.

Here's something else that makes me a little queasy: the power of fate. I received my copy of The Girl Next Door on Saturday. I read about the case of the mother while I was reading the book. And, I just found out about the movie coming out yesterday. Unfortunately, the timing was right.