Lillian Rich
Magical Girl stories are stories about growing up and becoming a woman, and protecting other women, saving other women, following desires and dreams and wishes and then kicking the bad guys in the face with your high heeled boots. The weapon is womanhood and girlhood and your sexuality because that’s the weapon society gave you and told you you were going to hurt yourself with it. Except the thing is, you don’t have to hurt yourself. You can protect yourself, and your friends, and your ideas, and feelings, and some days, yes, you fall down on your knees and sob messily because you can’t defeat every bad guy on your own, or ever, or alone - but goddamnit you have the ability to take power in your agency and who you are. Society doesn’t OFTEN tell girls that. We don’t often get the message that who we are is okay, acceptable, powerful, or amazing, much less that it’s also okay if we don’t succeed every single time. We know the fight is a part of our lives, but survival is the minimum. Getting stories about winning beyond that is amazing.
This is the kind of world we live in today
If your suggestion as an administrator is to tell a teenage girl to go under the knife instead of telling a teenage boy to respect women, you are in the wrong damn line of work.
In the areas of both food and sex, boys/men are encouraged to have ‘healthy’ appetites, but girls/women mustn’t be ‘greedy.’
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| — | Annie Fursland, ‘Eve was framed: Food and Sex and Women’s Shame’, from ‘Fed up and hungry - women, oppression and food’ by Marilyn Lawrence |
I remember when I was doing Rent and I was too thin, and I was doing that on purpose because I’m dying, I’m a HIV+ drug addict. I remember having to eat raw food and doing all this work to make sure I could stay thin… And I remember everyone asking me when I was doing press for the movie, “what did you do to get so thin? You looked great!” and I’m like, “I looked emaciated.”
It’s a form of violence in the way that we look at women and how we expect them to look and be, for… what’s sake? Not health, not survival, not enjoyment of life, but just so that you can look ‘pretty’.
I’m constantly telling girls all the time, “everything’s airbrushed, everything’s retouched, to the point of just that it’s never even asked, and none of us look like that.”
- Rosario Dawson
Guerrilla Girls
This work shows the boundaries women had to face before they had more rights. It was rare for art work by women or non-white artists to be shown and the Guerrilla Girls posters brought to light the issues that these artists faced. The posters were a quick and easy way to spread their message while the statistics were created by the Guerilla Girls themselves or reinterpreted from art magazines or other sources. Again their art represents social boundaries.
[F]or young women, the culture of slut shaming that the Kristen Stewart scandal represents won’t go away. I might not be concerned for K-Stew, but I am concerned for all the young women today who are tuned into this scandal, ones who are learning that it’s not okay to screw up, ever. Chris Brown can publicly beat the hell out of his girlfriend but still be played on the radio and win Grammys. However, if you ever cheat on your boyfriend, your life is over and no one will ever want to be associated with you. Almost no one will blame the much-older guy you cheated with, and it might actually make him more famous and help his career. Few will care that he was your boss and in a position of authority or that he may have taken advantage of your youth and relative inexperience. Everything is your fault, and your life will be threatened over it.
Okay, so Kristen Stewart cheats on her boyfriend, who she is not married to, not engaged to, has no real legal bond to, and her career suffers. This is not the first movie she has been rumored to be dropped from. (I think it might be the third) People have talked about how this might hurt Breaking Dawn. How people will harass her at premieres or public appearances. Pretty much, the cheating scandal has made her such a liability that it might be a really long time before producers are willing to cast her in anything.
Meanwhile, Chris Brown physically assaults his girlfriend. There are pictures of what he did to Rihanna. There is a detailed police report saying exactly what he did. And has his career suffered at all? His most recent albums have only gotten more and more popular, he won a Grammy, he was invited to perform at the Grammys, and he still has a huge fan base, mostly female, disturbingly enough.
Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen physically assaults his wife, again, with detailed police reports. He makes anti-Semetic remarks about his boss. He goes on a bender that is captured by every major news outlet. And it’s all a joke. He trademarks all the crazy shit he says and makes money off the merchandise. He not only gets a new TV show, but it is the highest rated show on FX.
A+ sexism there, Hollywood.
