Frozen: Two Princesses for the Price of One!

So, I'm a few weeks late on my review of the Disney movie, Frozen, but better late than never, right? I was so apprehensive about taking my daughter to see her first "princess" movie -- and this one had two princesses to deal with! I imagined a talk (or a few) after the movie about how girls don't really need boys to rescue them, or any number of issues I have with the whole princess enterprise. But I didn't need to. This movie is surprisingly good.

Spoiler Alert!

The princesses actually care about either other. They don't fight over a man. When unintentionally hurt by her sister, the only cure being an act of true love, the princess seeks out the person she thinks she loves (a prince, of course). But he's evil and tries to kill her. Damn, that sucks. And he had us trusting him! Though frail, she escapes and with the last ounce of strength she has she sacrifices herself to save the life of her sister from the same evil prince. Guess what? That was the act of true love she needed -- an act she did herself, that was self-sacrificing and for her sister, not for a dude. She saved herself! And she saved her sister! Score!

The size of the girls' waists could have been a little larger, but other than that it was all good. Two strong female characters, ruling over their queendom, no weddings at the end and even a little humour from a snowman. And, of course, the animation was amazing (spectacularly beautiful, actually) and so was the music. We'll be going to see it again. And I'm kinda looking forward to it.

And this little guy is awesome..

Lily Allen Is Back...

...And making us think and dance at the same time.

Lily's new song and video, Hard Out Here, takes aim at the bullshit that women have to go through to be "successful," gender stereotypes, the pop culture use of the word "bitch," slut shaming and insane body expectations. It starts with Lily undergoing liposuction, while her agent and the doctor question, how anybody could look let themselves go like this, with Lily protesting, unheard, that she has had two kids.The video pokes fun at so many videos with scantily clad women simulating not sex but porn, but in particular the video for the rapey Robin Thicke song, Blurred Lines. Spelled out in balloons in the Robin Thicke video: Robin Thicke has a big dick. Spelled out in balloons in the Lily Allen video: Lily Allen has a baggy pussy. Just awesome.

Here are a couple of great lines from the song (apologies if they aren't 100% accurate or that there is so much -- it's just soooo good):

Don't need to shake my ass for you
Cause I've got a brain
If I told you about my sex life, you'd call me a slut
But boys be talking about their bitches, no one's making a fuss
There's a glass ceiling to break, there's money to make
And now it's time to speed it up, 'cause I can't move in this space
...
You're not a size 6, and you're not good lookin'
Well, you'd better be rich, or be real good at cookin'
You should probably lose some weight, cause we can't see your bones
You should probably fix your face, or you'll end up on your own 

Don't you want to have somebody who objectifies you
Have you thought about your butt, who's gonna tear it in two?
We've never had it so good, we're out of the woods
And if you can't detect the sarcasm, you're misunderstood

The song is fun, but it's also true (which is the case with most of Allen's work). I hope that some people who might not normally pay attention to Lily Allen's music, really listen to this one. It deserves it because it's good. And it's got a message more people need to be paying attention to.

PS - I can't wait for the album!

Globe and Mail Concerned That University-Educated Women Will Not Find Husbands

Earlier this week the Globe and Mail ran a serious article titled, "When women outnumber men on campus: What it means for marriage." When I first saw the title of the article, I thought it was a joke piece and it was something from The Onion showing up in my Facebook feed. No, it is indeed a serious article written by a newspaper claiming to be Canada's national newspaper. I had to read it.

The article talks about how more and more women are attending university and that the gender balance is now thrown off. By the time the current freshman graduate the ratio will be 156 females to every 100 males. The rest of the article is about how this will bode for marriages. Not all women will be able to marry a partner with the same education as them; not all women will be able to marry a partner with the same earning potential as them. It discusses the advantages of being a less-educated women on the marriage market. And the willingness of educated women to "marry down." 

Yes, this was indeed a serious article, and yes, it is still 2013. Here's a quick taste: 

There may be a relative abundance of less-educated men, but the increasing willingness of educated women to marry down, and of less-educated men to marry up, in terms of education has created a shortage of men who have the means to support a family.

I have so many problems with this short article that I don't even know where to begin and will probably only end up scratching the surface.

1. Women don't go to university to find a husband. 
2. Not all women (or men) are heterosexual. 
3. Not everyone is interested in getting married and having children.
4. Marriage is (or should be) based on love and respect, not how much someone earns. 
5. The term "marriage market" sets feminism back by decades. 
6. The entire basis of this article is insulting to both men and women by essentially saying all we can bring into a relationship is earning potential. 

The author seems to be trying find a reason for lower marriage rates. Okay, here's the deal. I'll spell it out for you. Younger people are indeed putting off getting married and having kids until they are older. But many are choosing to not do either of those things at all. Or just one of them. My generation watched their parents and 50% of their friends' parents divorce. They don't want to go down that road and many are simply choosing to live with a partner rather than sign a piece of paper. And people today also understand that marriage and kids is not the only path available to them. Many men and women in the 60s got married right out of high school because they simply thought, "well, that's what you do." Well, it's not what we do. Families, marriages and partnerships are all changing. And that ain't a bad thing.

We need to be inspiring today's freshman to study hard, enjoy themselves responsibly, and explore and change the world. Not making them wonder whether there will be an engagement ring waiting for them after graduation.

Halifax Mall Gets in on the Sexism Too!

This time it's not a t-shirt -- though I fear there will be yet another terribly demeaning t-shirt slogan before the back-to-school season is over -- now a mall taken up the call where clothing manufacturers failed. A mall in Halifax just pulled ads that they somehow didn't realize would upset people (Are girls people too??! Who knew?). Here are the ads:

WTF?!! Frankly, I'm running out of creative things to say about this shit. I'm just fed up and tired. Advertisers, why are you making me so damn tired? Seriously, what human wouldn't see the problem with these ads? What advertiser worth their salt would come up with a such a tired and sad campaign in 2013? What ad company if presented with such an idea, assuming they were smart enough to not come up with it, would not say to the mall, in the past few years similar campaigns have been called sexist and the ads/clothing has had to be pulled? Who is doing this?

Sigh. Statement from the mall's marketing director, Rebecca Logan:

“We’ve heard what our customers have to say and we understand why you’re angry. It was never intended to be offensive.”

I'm guessing you didn't intend it be offensive, but how could you realistic think otherwise? What did you think the reaction would be? Unless Ms. Logan became a marketing exec by shopping, I'm guessing the statements don't hold true for her. The ads are now down and the only good thing to come out of this is that the mall is donating  $5,000 to a charity for empowering girls. Hopefully all the girls who saw the ads will be attending seminars from the charity.

Disney Princesses Want Equal Pay Too!

How can a princess live happily ever after making $0.77 for every dollar a man earns? She can't. Disney Princesses want equality too!

This song and video, Disney Princesses for Equal Pay, sung by "the Little Mermaid" and featuring some of the other Disney Princesses, is both hilarious and true. A bit of fun for a boring afternoon courtesy of the Tex Pats. Hopefully we'll see more from them soon. Enjoy!

The Thin Pink Line

It has begun. Last weekend after a playdate with a few of my daughter's preschool friends, my daughter cried at me, "You forgot my nail polish!" Several times. Each time with more energy and disappointment in her voice. Her little friend was wearing nail polish. The peer-to-peer girly indoctrination had begun.

As someone with super short I'm-trying-desperately-not-to-bite-them nails, I don't wear nail polish. Or at least so rarely she would have no memory of the last time I wore it. And let me state that I have no problem with nail polish. But my daughter is three. And I think, though clearly some would disagree with me, too young for make up, which nail polish is. I know people who have taken their daughters, younger than mine, for manicures and spa days. For me, this sends the wrong message; for others, it's okay. Clearly her friend's mother had no qualms about painting her daughter's nails. I do.

And I don't.

On the flip side, there is nothing wrong with being girly, whether it's a little or a lot, IF it is tempered with other things -- books, science, math, etc -- basically anything that reminds her that it's what she does with her brain that defines her (though she should defy definition), not how she looks.

But she going to be bombarded with the opposite message for the rest of her life. I had hoped for more time.

Part of me wishes that I had been raised in a more girly household. Make up, shaving my legs, hair styles, nails, jewelry, foot care, facial hair -- these are all issues that I tackled on my own, because I had no guidance on them. In fact, at times when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I felt like I was teaching my mom about these things (in her defense, she was in a house filled with boys for many years before I came along). I admire the fact that my mom wasn't a slave to the feminine commercial engine and that we didn't have a house filled with fashion magazines. But sometimes I wish she'd taken me for a manicure, to have my "colours done" or just out to dinner to chat about ladies' stuff. But I wished for these things when I was 13, not three.

From my daughter's perspective, all she saw was that her friend had brightly coloured nails and she did not. Those nails must have looked fun, and she would have thought nothing of seeing a boy with same nails (yet), so it can't really be chalked up to her wanting to be girly. And it's okay if she does want to be girly. She already likes dresses and skirts, and play bracelets and rings. Is nail polish so different? She also loves trains, superheroes, books, cars, cooking, learning about animals and the Science Centre. And her favourite colour is green, not pink.

I think I had play nail polish when I was about seven or eight years old (Tinkerbell brand, if I'm not mistaken). I have not bought my daughter any nail polish. I have also not ruled it out completely.

Another clothing season, another t-shirt in poor taste

It seems every time a new season is upon us, another t-shirt is released that demeans girls and their abilities. Are the designers not following the news? Is the same idiot designer jumping from store to store every season in a moronic plot to beat down the self-esteem of girls everywhere? And, what mom or dad do they this is actually going to buy these things?

The latest offender is Children's Place. I wasn't a fan of the store before, but I'm steering clear for sure now (add it to the huge and growing list). The t-shirt says:  "My best subjects" and has a checklist with shopping, music and dancing checked off. Fourth on the list, and not checked, is math, with "Well, nobody's perfect" underneath.

I'm sick of writing about this. We wonder why there is a lack of women in STEM careers. We've been bombarded with this shit our whole lives and we are continuing to do it do our children. Children, not just girls, need to be encouraged to study, to grow and to value themselves and their talent.

And I feel like I need to shout this from the rooftops, NOT ALL WOMEN LIKE TO SHOP. Many women hate it. And many men enjoy it. Argh. Enough with the damn false gender roles, people. We're done now.

(I just read in the Toronto Star that the t-shirt has been pulled. Let's hope none were bought.)

Mom Discrimination in the Workplace

An article, titled "Half the mothers I know have been driven from their jobs," in today's Guardian brought back many painful memories for me. This headline/quote is true for me. Many women that I know/knew had babies around the same time as me. Approximately half of those women lost their jobs. Now that my daughter is three and those women's children are older, many, including myself, are back in full-time employment. But not with the employer that we were with when we got pregnant.

My former employer was very supportive of my pregnancy. When I went on mat leave, I felt there would be no problem with my return -- a great person was hired to take over while I was gone and my job would be waiting for me when I returned. It was. But I learned on my second day back that I had essentially been demoted. The department of one that I had turned around and worked for years to reform and make very profitable had changed. The atmosphere had changed. I was no longer supported in leaving to pick my daughter up at daycare or take her to the doctor (though she was so sick she was hospitalized at one point). My former ability to work from home and work flexible hours was taken away. I complained. A week later I was let go.

A close friend working in a similar position was made redundant from her unionized job (which we all thought was safer) a month before she was due to return to work. The guy who replaced her happened to be bilingual. Though that skill was not needed her position, her job description was changed to include bilingualism as a requirement so that the company could keep her replacement full-time.

Another mom from my neighbourhood found out she was being let go a few weeks before her maternity leave was up. Downsizing. Several other professional women I know were downsized out of their positions while on mat leave. Much easier to downsize someone who isn't there, especially if no one replaced her while she was gone. If two people can do the work of three, why bring back the third?

I realize that the economy hasn't been at the top of the cycle for the past few years, but this problem seems to be systemic and international (judging by the Guardian article). Workplaces are run on men's timing, men who either don't have children or aren't involved with their children; that needs to change. We have the technology and the capability to offer all employees, including fathers, work/life balance with shared hours, flex time, telecommuting and good old empathy. But so many employers aren't doing it. We have to stop assuming that mothers are going to be less focused on their work or that moms will be happy to be out of a job they love. Mothers can bring fresh perspective to a position and a workplace. Yes, we want to be with our kids, but we also want meaningful work. And a little understanding.

Rape Joke: A Poem

This poem was written by Patricia Lockwood. It is beautiful and devastating. It needs to be read.

Rape Joke

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.

The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.

The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.

Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”

No offense.

The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.

Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.

The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.

The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.

Not you!

The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.

He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.

The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.

How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.

The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.

The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.

OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.

Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.

The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.

The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.

It gets funnier.

The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.

The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!

The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.

The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.

The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.

The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.

The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.

Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.

You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.

The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.

The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.

The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.

The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.

The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.

The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.

The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.

The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

Admit it.

-Patricia Lockwood

A Breastfeeding Curtain Call

A friend's post about breastfeeding reminded me that I hadn't written about the end of my breastfeeding days. My daughter turned three in March and as we hit her birthday I realized that it was time to end breastfeeding. She no longer needed the milk and I would still provide the same comfort to her and cuddles with her without breastfeeding. Some nights, if she was very tired, she fell asleep without milk, so I knew it was only about comfort and routine now. I worried for a week about how I would stop: should I put vinegar or lemon juice on my nipples and tell her the milk was sick, or say no and endure many nights of crying. In the end I didn't have to do anything. One night, I told her that the milk was going away soon and that she could still cuddle with the milk (she calls my breasts "milk" in addition to calling milk "milk") but soon she wouldn't be able to drink it. She cried for a minute and I held her, and then she was back to her old self. It was not my intent to stop breastfeeding that night, but that's how it worked out. She didn't ask for milk and she fell asleep. And with that we were done. I think I was disappointed that it wasn't a more monumental thing. There was no great sadness, and that's a good thing. We still cuddle the same way we always did. And it's important for me to keep doing with her, even when she thinking she's too old for it. I never did with my parents and it took me a long time to feel comfortable even giving my parents a hug as an adult.

I thought I would quit breastfeeding when I returned to work when she was one, but instead we both adapted to just morning and night feedings. I'm so glad that I didn't listen to others and stop earlier because it's what you're supposed to do (and the Time magazine cover about attachment parent is not how anyone breastfeeds a three year old or any age child -- it's pretty detached, and the mom involved was pretty pissed; see her second cover photo below). This was right was us. Three months or 18 months might be right for others. But we're all different and we have to do what works for us, our children and our families. Everyone needs to just chill out about breastfeeding, bottle feeding and how long you're "supposed" to do it for. Relax, people. It might make me a hippie granola mom, but my favourite saying is true, "It's all good."

Not so much this:

More like this:

When Your Mother Says She's Fat

This letter written by Kasey Edwards to her mother is beautiful and absolutely heart-breaking. It's all about that self-defeating language women use and how it has to stop. We are all beautiful, we are all important, we are all special. We need to KNOW it. Our daughters need to KNOW it. The letter comes from the book Dear Mum, which is collection of letters from Australian celebrities to their mothers.

I'm posting the entire letter below, or you can read it here.

Dear Mum,
I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful - in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I'd pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I'd be big enough to wear it; when I'd be like you.

But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ''Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.''

At first I didn't understand what you meant.
''You're not fat,'' I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ''Yes I am, darling. I've always been fat; even as a child.''
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don't lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I'll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.

Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.

With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ''Oh-I-really-shouldn't'', I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.
Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.

But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.
Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at 79 years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.

I remember her ''compassionate'' response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ''I don't understand why he'd leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You're overweight - but not that much.''

Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
''Jesus, Jan,'' I overheard him say to you. ''It's not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.''

That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad's ''Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less'' weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else's food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.

As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth - as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own - paled into insignificance when compared with the centimetres you couldn't lose from your waist.

It broke my heart to witness your despair and I'm sorry that I didn't rush to your defence. I'd already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I'd even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ''simple'' process - yet one that you still couldn't come to grips with. The lesson: you didn't deserve any food and you certainly didn't deserve any sympathy.

But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it's like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueller to us than we are to ourselves.

But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better - better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.

And it's not just about you and me any more. It's also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only 3 and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don't want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.

The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends - and the people who love them - wouldn't give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body's thighs or the lines on its face wouldn't matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.

Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ''flaws'' is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.

Let us honour and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.

Love, Kasey xx

Female Superheroes Revisited

Well, it seems to the desire to see more any female superheroes out there is growing and spreading. Joss Whedon has now weighed in (with the Daily Beast) on the topic of Hollywood's lack of super ladies:

Toymakers will tell you they won't sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, 'You see? It can’t be done.' It's stupid, and I'm hoping 'The Hunger Games' will lead to a paradigm shift. It's frustrating to me that I don't see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched 'The Avengers' and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, 'Yeah, of course they were.' I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: 'If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.'

Yes! Yes! Yes! I have yet to watch Buffy (I know, I know) but this is pushing me just a little bit more to make the Whedon plunge.

Also, in separate but related female superhero news, I bought the first season of the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series for my daughter, who now fully understands that girls can be superheroes and loves to say (especially while wearing her Wonder Woman cape), "Wonder Woman. Superhero. To the rescue." My review of the show so far: a tad lot sexist and shows from our youth are not as good as we remember them. Still my daughter likes it. That's all that matters for now.

Self-Defeating Language

I'm pretty good about not putting myself down in front of my daughter. It happens occasionally and I've been quick to recognize it and correct it.

But that doesn't mean I don't hear it internally.

The main source, like so many people who put themselves down, is appearance. Mostly my weight.

I'm not skinny. I never have been and I never will be. I'm also not morbidly obese. I'm somewhere in the middle. And stuck. I so often feel lost, helpless, uncomfortable, ugly, unworthy, unattractive, unsexy. It's these "uns" that I'm most sick of. But when I'm trying to be healthy that helpless feeling kicks in, the struggle to lose weight seems so difficult, that I turn to my usual comfort -- food. But food doesn't make me feel comfortable any more. Chocolate no longer makes me  feel better, nor does it even really taste good. It's a crutch. It's a habit. It's an addiction. I want and need that habit gone. But I really am not sure how to do it -- forever.

One day at a time. One minute at a time. One pound at a time. But one minute can ruin an entire week. One shitty thought can easily turn into a shitty day. I'm sick of thinking about food every minute. I need a new routine. A new habit. But more importantly, I need a new focus for my brain. And I need to stop beating myself up inside.

It all comes back (as everything does) to my daughter. I need to be healthy for her. I need to model healthy behaviour for her, internally and externally. She needs a fun, happy mom who runs and plays with her everyday. I need to be that person. And I just need to do it. Just do it until. Until it's natural. Until it's habit. Until I don't know another way. Until.

Reversing Media Gender Roles

Some wonderfully bright sparks in a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of Saskatchewan decided to show us what it would look like if men were portrayed the same as women in the media. It's a bit cheeky, but some of the statistics and original advertisements that glamorize rape are shocking.

But I'll let this great video speak for itself. Well done!

http://www.good.is/posts/intermission-what-if-gender-roles-in-advertising-were-reversed

Merida: The new princess and her new royal image

Merida, the latest Disney princess from the movie Brave, had everything that mother's like me were looking for. Well, most of what we were looking for. She was strong, didn't need a man or to be married, she was wild, looked after herself and, of course, she was brave. (And it's a great movie -- makes me cry every time.) Merida was the answer to the please-save-me-and-live-happily-ever-after-with-my-prince princess. And last week, Disney was officially inducting her into the Disney princess canon, something I guess they do about a year after each movie comes out, and the 2-D "princess" version of Merida was revealed. Merida went from this:

To this:

No more bow and arrow. No more wild, untamed hair. No spirit. Less waist. More breasts. More sparkle. More sexy. Just what a three year old needs to look up to. No thanks. A petition on Change.org quickly went up, which is how I heard about the change, and it wasn't long before the petition had 120,000 signatures. Merida's creator, Brenda Chapman, even spoke out about Merida's change:

They have been handed an opportunity on a silver platter to give their consumers something of more substance and quality — THAT WILL STILL SELL — and they have a total disregard for it in the name of their narrow minded view of what will make money. I forget that Disney’s goal is to make money without concern for integrity. Silly me.

Her words and the signatures may have worked. The new image of Merida has been removed from the Disney website and we may be spared the sexy Merida merchandise machine. Or maybe Disney is simply waiting for all this to blow over. Only time will tell. But only one of these Meridas is welcome in my home, and she's already there.

Book Review-ish: Cinderella Ate My Daughter

I've not done any book reviews on this blog before and since I just finished one, I thought I'd give it a shot. But I don't have lot to say about it, really. The book isn't new; and since I might go back and review books I've already read and as my pile of books grows faster than I can read, up coming reviews, should there be any, probably won't be of new books either. I didn't really read the book with a critical eye or with the intent of doing a book review. So, rather than a proper review, I'm just going to chat a bit about it.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein has been sitting on my pile of books for a while -- it got pushed back a bit more than expected even, because I really wanted to reread the Hobbit for the fifth time before the movie came out. I bought the book with the expectation that I would generally agree with everything Orenstein wrote about. After all, the reason she researched and wrote the book are pretty much the same reason I started this blog. And really, for the most part, I did. There is very little that's mind blowing in the book. It makes sense. Marketing to girls starts at a younger and younger age, the sexualization of girls starts at a younger and younger age, parents embrace the pink toys and princesses because they believe it will stave off the sexualization of their daughters. But instead in makes them prime marketing material for that very thing. Girls are looking and acting older at a younger age, but their minds and emotions are not, and cannot, make that same leap. There is a disconnect and it is troubling. The book is honest in how Orenstein struggled with the issues with her own daughter (not buying a Barbie, feeling guilty and buying the Barbie, feeling confused about buying the damn Barbie) and the role her friends played in teaching her the very things that Orenstein was trying to avoid (in one sequence her daughter's friend tells her daughter that her bike helmet isn't a girl's helmet because it isn't pink). Navigating through the marketing machine isn't easy and Orenstein shows that being an expert on women's issues doesn't necessarily make it any easier.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with a young daughter, and by young I mean tween or younger, as this book also looks at the what's influencing our daughters when they move on from the princess phase. This book just reiterates that we have to involved in our daughters' lives, look at what they are into and just discuss things with them. You can't control what they will like, nor should you be able to, but you can help them think about things critically. That critical thinking is something that they can carry with them when you're not there. They may not always use the tools we give them, but sometimes, when it's most crucial, they might.  The book helped me put on my own critical thinking cap and distilled the issues for me. Definitely worth a read (for both moms and dads, by the way).

I'd love feedback from anyone else who has read the book.

Here is the copy from the back of the jacket, for those who would like to know more about it:

Sweet and sassy or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?

In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.

Superheroes

A few nights ago, my daughter came home and said she wanted to play superheroes, but she couldn't be a superhero because she was a girl. My heart sank. Not yet three years old and she already thinks there is something she can't do or be because of her gender. I stopped what I was doing, knelt on the floor and asked her, "Who said you can't be a superhero?" It turns out one of the boys in her preschool had said it. I looked her in the eyes, made sure she was listening to me, and told her that girls can be anything they want to be. I must have said it five times in a row, at least. Then I told her that there were lots of girl superheroes, and we could play superheroes any time she wanted to.

We ate our dinner and talked a bit more about what superheroes did and how they were strong and had special powers or skills like flying. Halfway through dinner, my husband came home and I told him to tell her about how there were lots of girl superheroes, quickly explaining what happened. He said all the same things I did and when to grab our tablet, so he could look up female superheroes on YouTube for her to see. But they all had enormous breasts, tiny waists, and were sexed up to look like porn stars in a Superman rip off.

I quickly thought of the Power Puff Girls (which are not without their problems, message-wise) and put on an  episode for her to watch. I know comic books are mostly drawn by men for men, and frankly she is too young for comics anyway, but something needs to change in the superhero comic book and video game world and it needs to change fast.

Some people are taking it upon themselves to start that change. Two dads in the past year have been in the news for changing the coding in video games for daughters, one with Donkey Kong and one with Zelda. DC, Marvel, Nintendo, Sony -- are you listening? People are going to the trouble to create non-damsels in distress characters themselves. People are creating female characters to get the job done. The public are requesting this. Make it so.

FYI -- If anyone knows of some good female superheroes, let me know. I need all the resources I can find.

The Diet of a 7 Year Old

This makes me sad and angry. It's the reason I write this blog. It's reason I've been more dedicated to this since my daughter was born. It's why, among other reasons, we have to keep fighting society and the media, and keep in touch with our children.

An Australian mommy blogger, who sounds like she is doing all the right things, found this note on her 7-year-old daughter's bedroom floor:

How terrible. How sad. A seven-year-old girl should not know the word diet. Apparently she learned about it from another 7 year old  is on a diet. This is what we are up against. We can model the right behaviour. We can talk about how beautiful every woman, every shape, every size is. But 7 year olds may still be told they are fat, that they need to diet, that they aren't the incredible human beings we know they are.

See this mom's post here.
http://www.mamamia.com.au/parenting/i-found-this-today-on-my-daughters-floor-my-daughter-is-seven/

One Billion Rising

Happy Valentine's Day. And of course today was also One Billion Rising. I hope it was at least. Hard to tell by the small crowd in Toronto at Nathan Phillips Square today. The vibe was very positive and it was a great crowd, but it was hardly the crowd I had envisioned when I first heard about the project. I think the problem is that in Canada at least there was no real mainstream media coverage of the upcoming day. Why not? Bad PR? Media just not interested? A lack of sponsors for buying media time/space? My hope is that year after year more people will hear about the movement and join in. And we need a corporate sponsor or ten, but I think more people, schools and businesses would be happy to get involved and spread this message of non-violence. If only they knew the movement was out there. It has to become more mainstream. In the months and days leading up to V-Day, I watched and listened but only heard about events through feminist channels. It's not enough.

But I don't want to be a downer. The event was great. The vibe was positive and inclusive. I just wish there were more people there. Perhaps the media will do a good job showcasing the events in the news and that will translate into more involvement next year. But we were there, and we'll be there next year.

 

What Can Good Men Do?

What can men do to stop the harassment of women and girls? To stop the victim blaming? To ensure a safe future for our daughters?

Most men we know are not abusers. They are not rapists. They are not threatening feminists online or harassing women on the street. But maybe they crack a joke every now and then. Maybe they listen while their friends or those in close proximity harass women and girls without saying anything. Maybe they don't see it as harassment. Maybe they don't understand how hurtful these things are and the effect it has on grown women, let alone the developing minds of our daughters.

What can the good men do? Speak up. Speak up to other men. Tell everyone who will listen, and those that won't, that this has to end. That this must stop now. Advocate for feminism, understanding that doing so doesn't make your weak, but that it makes you strong. Strong for speaking up for what's right, and standing against the crowd. Understanding that not letting this crap slide will help young girls believe they can do and be anything they want. Without fear.

Reading the following Ms. blog post by Ben Atherton-Zeman is a good start. Maybe this should be required reading for all men...
How Some Men Harass Women Online and What Other Men Can Do to Stop It

Skirting the Issue

"Judgment" by Rosea Lake


The above photograph is by student artist Rosea Lake and is entitled "Judgment." This image, clearly a response to the rape culture and victim-blaming culture we are living in now, is beautiful in it's simplicity. It's message is clear. In case the image is difficult to see, the different skirt heights are labelled from "matronly," to "proper" to "asking for it" to "whore" and everything in between. The photo has gone viral and at the very least will get people thinking, asking questions and sharing. We need dialogue. We need people thinking. We need to start changing the world. Art is good start.