Bake Sales

I know the semester is over and all, but I just came across this and thought I'd post it in case anyone is still reading. Besides, I think I may carry on with this anyway. I'm not sure. But I like having a place to post and talk about things other than Facebook.

I dunno if anyone reads jezebel.com I used to read it regularly, but I have a lot of problems with the way they present things and label themselves as feminist when they're really not.

Anyway, there's an article on there about bake sales.

It talks about a NYTimes article wherein a female writer criticizes moms who use store-bought cookies for bake sales.

“I have gotten kind of aggressive about it,” said Abby Arnold, a grant writer in Santa Monica, Calif., who once looked over in horror to see store-bought Easter-themed cookies being sold at a PTA bake sale a week after the holiday. Ms. Arnold said she has taken to calling people out on the practice. Well, actually, she admitted, she mostly just gossips about them with their friends.

Well, isn't that lovely. So women are expected to treat baking like it's a priority, while men are... wait, what are the dads supposed to do? Why aren't they being subjected to sanctimonious stay-at-home moms?

Look, I like baking. I really do. I love to bake and make fancy cakes and whatnot. But if I HAVE to do it, all the fun is gone. I understand why some people would get upset that you're not contributing "real" baked goods to a bake sale.

Some pull out the “lack of time” card when it comes to baking (though in truth, Rice Krispie treats take less time to make than going to Safeway for cookies) and thus we have the tired meme sparked a decade ago by “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” with the moms (yep, always moms) doctoring store-bought goods to look homemade.

Well... I don't know about where this woman lives, but for me, yes, it is more trouble to make rice krispy treats than buy them. Besides, I've never been able to tell the difference between homemade and store-bought rice krispy treats.

My dad was our room mom in school. My mom worked during the day and my dad worked at night, so he was able to come to our class parties. He'd bring store-bought stuff and no one batted an eye. But my mom... oh, my mom was judged for being a working mom, for not having time to come to anything, for not coming to eat lunch with us every single day like the stay at home moms did.

(Personally, while I didn't like how I was given grief for my mom working, I was glad she didn't come. It was so smothering to me. I remember one boy who, as late as fifth grade, was still being spoon-fed by his mother, who spoiled him. I am not lying.)

Why do we still have this divide between stay at home and working moms? Each group thinks they're better than the other. I know I just called stay at home moms sanctimonious, but working moms can be just as bad, judging SAHMs because they choose not to work.

The thing is, feminism is all about a woman's choices. At least, it should be. So if a woman chooses to stay home, or chooses to work, either one is okay. We shouldn't be working against each other in this manner. Bake sales are a very 1950s June Cleaver sort of thing, and there's really no good reason that we should still be subjecting women to that standard.

We don't need to be subjecting each other to cliquish behavior at bake sales. We don't need to be judging each others choices. It's... it's maddening, really, to see things like this continue. Some women just don't want to bake! Some of them really just don't have time! That's my favorite, the "it doesn't take much time!" argument. Sorry, but my time is mine, and if I think that an hour is too long to spend baking, then it's my hour, and I get to say so.

Rape Culture

The University of Vermont has suspended their chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity while campus police investigate a survey that was allegedly passed among fraternity members.

The survey asked, "If you could rape someone, who would it be?"

Well. Isn't that lovely.

The word "rape" is one of those words that has somehow worked its way into normal conversation with little regard to its original meaning. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say the phrase "mind rape", for example, referring to seeing or experiencing something that was offensive to them, and therefore equatable with rape. Or any time some new movie comes out that's an adaptation of a cartoon from the 80s, someone I know inevitably says, "I wish Hollywood would stop raping my childhood".

They seem to think there's nothing wrong with using that word that way. Like it's funny to say your childhood is being raped, or you feel your mind has been raped.

Except that rape is never, ever funny.

And a survey like that, that uses the word "rape" so casually, is only contributing more to rape culture.

So what is rape culture? Good question! I'm glad you asked. I'm going to let Shakesville explain it. Go get a snack or something, it's a long read. But you need to read all of it.

Okay, you got all that? It's a lot to take in.

Now think about how often you see or hear or read something that is contributing to rape culture. Probably every day, whether you realize it or not. I certainly didn't realize it before I became serious about feminism. I am ashamed to admit that, at one point in my life, I was a victim-blamer. I didn't understand how a woman could be upset that she was raped if she'd worn a short skirt or walked alone in the dark or had too much to drink.

But none of that matters. Because rape is rape, and it doesn't matter that her skirt was short or that she was on her phone while walking to her car, or that she drank too much, or that she changed her mind in the middle of sex.

We teach our daughters, "Don't get raped. Be safe. Be cautious." We teach them to fear men, to fear certain situations, to be wary and fearful.

It's exhausting being a woman. Do men live with the shadow of rape over their heads? We do. We live every day knowing that 1 out of 6 women are raped in their lifetimes. That every one of us is equally likely to be raped, that there's no one thing we can do to prevent it.

We teach our daughters "Don't get raped", but we don't teach our sons "Don't rape".

I don't know who said that originally. But it's true. Women live their lives trying to prevent themselves from becoming victims, but men don't live their lives trying to keep themselves from becoming rapists.

Steals and Deals

I watch the Today show pretty much every morning. I don't know why, because half the time it just makes me irritable.

Anyway, there's this segment they do in the 9am hour, called "Steals and Deals". It's on right now, so it reminded me that I wanted to talk about it.

The premise is, this woman comes on who finds really great deals on products that would normally cost 60-90% more than the price she's offering. Usually it's stuff I would consider junk, things that you don't need. Today there's bracelets, men's briefs, DVDs that claim to teach your toddler speech, and some other things I already forgot.

What gets me is, with nearly every product, she feels the need to name-drop the celebrities who also like that product. The Kardashians get mentioned a lot. Her intention, I'm sure, is to appeal to that part of us that wants to be a celebrity as well. And it's very clear that she's targeting women.

So why does marketing towards women try to make us feel like we need the same things celebrities have? Does marketing towards men do that? I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Even when the woman on Today features men's products, she mentions them as things that women could buy as gifts for men. She doesn't appeal to a male audience at all.

We make women feel like they have to live up to the celebrity standard. We should try to look like them, act like them, emulate them in every way. Celebrities present an ideal that no woman could possibly imitate unless she were also surrounded by stylists and handlers.

Sorry, these thoughts aren't very organized right now. But that's just something for you to think about this morning.

Brides and Extravagant Weddings

I was at a friend's wedding over the weekend, and of course I couldn't help thinking a bit critically about the wedding industry.

I'm not against marriage or anything, but I really dislike how society treats it like it's the Most! Important! Thing! In a woman's life. Remember, girls: If your wedding isn't huge and expensive and completely perfect, then it's wrong.

Celebrity weddings are the worst offenders, spending millions of dollars on weddings that, half the time, don't even last. The Kardashian girl spent how much on hers? I don't know, it was many millions, only for it to last a couple of months. I cannot tell you how many friends of mine watch that show, and seem to admire her, though for what reason, I don't know. To me, she embodies everything that women should be working against.

Anyway, it is endlessly frustrating that the media place such importance on the "fairy tale" of marriage. Of course, this so-called fairy tale usually involves pretty, wealthy white people. It is no secret that TV wedding specials are big draws for female audiences, which is why networks continually try to one-up themselves. The Kardashian wedding special was four hours long, spread over two nights. Ratings were huge.

Why? Why do we think that a wedding is the highlight of a woman's life? That there is no happier day she can or should look forward to?

And even more frustrating is the fact that someone like Kim Kardashian can stage a wedding with the clear intention of making money off of it, but homosexuals are not allowed to marry. Because to let them marry defies the "sanctity" of marriage.

I'm sure I sound pretty angry and/or cynical about all this. Again, I'm not against marriage or anything, I just don't understand why we think it's so important. Why women should hold it up as the best thing they can accomplish with their lives. And clearly many women believe it, or you wouldn't see entire shelves and sections of bookstores dedicated to bridal magazines and books.

So those were some of the thoughts I had over the weekend while at this wedding. It was a nice event, I guess. I don't really get "into" weddings like some women do. It is what it is. Personally, if I ever get married some day, I will be perfectly happy with just signing a marriage license down at the courthouse. I don't understand the pressure to have a huge, extravagant event. My parents had a very modest, tiny wedding in the town where my mom grew up, and they're still together thirty years later.

Women's and Men's Interests

I apologize for all the text-heavy posts. I do have some images I want to go with this one, but I don't quite know how to get them off my phone. I haven't even had the phone a week yet, so I'm still learning how to work it.

Anyway, I'm currently out of town for a friend's wedding. Yesterday some other friends and I were going around taking care of some things, and we stopped in a Barnes & Noble for a bit. I browsed around, noticing how even something like books are segregated along gender lines. I took photos of the displays, but I'll have to add those in later on.

The magazines were particularly telling. The sign over fashion, bridal, and home decor magazines reads "Women's Interest." Hmm. I looked at the titles and covers. Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Ladies' Home Journal, Country Living, Brides, Weddings, Flowers... the list goes on. Most of the magazines had photos of either celebrity women or women who are so obviously models. Thin, airbrushed to heck and back, and almost inhuman looking.

Oddly, a magazine titled Burlesque Bible was also included in this section.

There were also things like Shop Smart, Perfect Hair, and other hairstyle magazines.

The only title that appeared to address anything besides appearance, celebrity, or domestic work was Bitch magazine.

Meanwhile, the "Men's Interest" section contained titles like Men's Health, GQ, Esquire, Maxim, Men's Journal, and Details. The Men's Interest section was much smaller than Women's Interest, taking up only one top shelf, while the women took up two. Covers of the men's magazines had celebrity men, but unlike the women, the males on these covers are usually shot in a close-up on their faces. Maxim is the most obviously exploitative. This month's issue had a woman in a bikini standing spread-legged in front of some sports car.

So why the categorization? I'm a woman, and I'm not remotely interested in bridal magazines, housekeeping, or hairstyles. I buy magazines like National Geographic and Juxtapose. There must be other women like me.

Likewise, I'm sure there are men who enjoy things typically labeled as "women's interest". My dad, for example, enjoys looking through Country Living or whatever other home decor magazines my mother gets. I've never seen him look through a typically "men's" magazine in my life.

And again, these are images that, whether we realize it or not, we are bombarded with daily. We see these magazines in the checkout at the grocery store, at convenience stores, wal-mart, target, etc. There's a reason they're located by the registers, where you are waiting in line.

Seeing all those "women's" magazines grouped together like that really helps that sink in. Take a look next time you go to a bookstore.

I also noticed some segregation in the children's area, but I'm going to save that for another post. Hopefully by then I'll have figured out how to get these photos off my phone.

Batgirl and Superheroines

Speaking of girls and superheroes, this summer at San Diego Comic-Con, a girl dressed as Batgirl took DC comics head honchos off guard when she asked, during a panel about the Justice League, why there aren't more women helming comics at DC.

From the article:

"When I got up to ask the question, I was feeling almost *bewildered*, which is why it came out as, "Where are the women?" This line got cheered. Johns responded that DC had more iconic female characters than anyone else, and also said that he loved Mera, who was a great character and ‘right there next to Aquaman'. The first woman Johns mentioned in response to my question wasn't Wonder Woman, it was a character defined by her relationship to one of the male superheroes.

I responded to that, thinking out loud and noting that a lot of their female heroes are associated with another hero. For example, BatGIRL/Batman, SuperGIRL/Superman, Wonder GIRL…Wonder WOMAN, who I said was the only REALLY iconic DC female hero I could think of off the top of my head.

The audience didn't like that. They immediately began yelling at me, shouting out their favorite female heroes, Huntress, Starfire, etc. In terms of iconic status, are Huntress and Starfire on the same level as Wonder Woman? I certainly hadn't heard of them before I got into comics.

The room became extraordinarily hostile to me very, very quickly. People started booing and yelling at me to sit down. I shrugged and said, "Well, now I'm going to get yelled at." I wasn't upset so much as I was *confused*. Didn't these people want to see more kick-ass women?"

The thing is, as the article points out, this isn't a controversial position at all. Why would people respond so hostilely to this?

Women who enjoy comics often remark on how they feel uncomfortable around other comics fans, i.e. men. We are objectified, looked down upon by "real" fans, and generally made to feel uncomfortable. Images of women in mainstream comics are not friendly. Covers feature women in impossibly contorted positions meant to showcase their breasts and rears. Superheroine outfits are skimpy and revealing. Women are treated as second-class citizens in the comics world. So why on earth would DC, or any other publisher, expect women to buy their comics?

And the thing is, DC expects us to be okay with that. When Batgirl asked her question at Comic-Con, the response was more or less, "Why can't you be happy with what you have?" Why aren't we happy with the status quo? There's one woman creator out of 100 creators working on DC's new "52" line. Isn't that enough? Geez, women, what more do you want?

From this article, also regarding this year's Comic-Con:

"At one panel, a female questioner was demanded to answer who the women writers and artists were that DC wasn't hiring. It was said, to applause, that DC hire the best writers and artists they can, no doubt referencing the popular belief that female fans wish to see less talented women writers hired at the cost of more talented men. In actual fact, we want the same thing: for DC to truly hire the best writers and artists they can, to fully open their doors to pitches and submissions. It's no secret that DC are very narrow with their creator choices; the entirety of the new 52 was done without pitches.

With the new line, DC have dropped from having 12.5% of their creators being women, to only 1.9%. This isn't about artificial quotas or petulant foot stomping, this is about a drastic cut in the number of women behind DC characters and a worry of what this might mean for the future of DC comics."

When approached with the question of the percentage of women writers, this is how the exchange went:

“Why did you go from 12% in women [creators] to 1% on your creative teams?”

To which DiDio replied in a startlingly aggressive tone, “What do those numbers mean to you? What do they mean to you? Who should we be hiring? Tell me right now. Who should we be hiring right now? Tell me.”

It's startling that DC would outright dismiss half its customer base just like that. DiDio asked Batgirl to name women who should be hired by DC, but what he doesn't understand is that DC is not a female-friendly place right now. It's cyclical. Women like comics, but feel uncomfortable in their enjoyment because of how women are sexualized and objectified, and how we're left out of the creation of the stories we love.

So why is this important? Think about how many superhero movies have come out in the last several years. Women go to see these movies. Remember, women are half the movie-going audience, and that includes superhero movies. But women aren't represented well in these films. I enjoy them a lot, but I'm not going to pretend that they're perfect. Try these films against the Bechdel test and see how many pass.

Women should feel free to enjoy what they enjoy. I shouldn't feel uncomfortable going into a comic store because it is full of men who either leer at me or treat me like I don't know what I'm there for. And both of those things have happened to me. It is rare that I encounter a male who is willing to engage me in my love of comics and have a real discussion about them, talking to me like a person, instead of talking down to me because I'm female.

Female Students, Rapunzel, and "Girl" Toys

So, I was thinking about all of this and how it applies to my students, or children I interact with regularly. I don’t always have the same students come back each month. That means that I have to completely re-evaluate my students every time.

I do a monthly art class on the third Saturday of the month where I show the kids a kind of art that I think they probably don’t get to do in school. I spent spring and summer doing printmaking, and late summer and fall showing them things like metal embossing, paper marbling and bookmaking, and working with polymer clay. It’s a lot of fun, and the kids like the fact that I’m not grading them and they’re free to experiment. There is no assignment, no rubric. They just come, learn a new kind of art, and create.

The split of boys and girls is usually pretty even. I have a core group of about four students who come back every time, two boys and two girls. The rest rotate in and out. Sometimes kids only come once, sometimes they come every other month, or just a few times. The classes are free, so they’re not losing anything by not coming.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how I teach and how I interact with students. There’s a really great article here about how to talk to little girls, and how emphasizing their appearance can lead to insecurities, eating disorders, and a life focused on appearances.

So, taking notes from that article, when I talk to female students, I try to get them to talk about less superficial things. This isn’t usually a problem with art students, because they enjoy talking about art and the creative process. So I try to engage them in that, what they think about art, how they like to work, what they do and don’t like about art at their school. Junior high is my favorite age group to teach, because they’re more articulate than elementary school kids, but they haven’t become jaded and bored like many high school kids I have encountered.

And junior high kids are very smart and perceptive. The girls I teach often find much more clever ways of doing their projects than the way I showed them. I love that. I love that they’re fearless. I wish there were some way I could reach out to other girls, girls who think art is dumb or boring, and show them that it’s amazing, and that they can have freedom to express themselves with it. That there’s more to life than the superficial.

I’ve noticed that with older girls, junior high and up, it isn’t too difficult to get them to open up and think about things other than appearances. But with the little ones, the five year olds, it’s much more difficult to steer the conversation in other directions.

A friend of mine’s daughter, for example, is five. She just loves Disney princesses, and right now her favorite is Rapunzel. Hey, cool, I love Rapunzel too. She’s smart, quirky, and loves to paint. What’s not to love about her?

Well… my friend’s daughter compares herself to Rapunzel a lot. She wishes that she had long gold hair like Rapunzel, instead of her short, mousy brown hair.

I tried getting her to talk about this one day. “But Rapunzel cuts her hair at the end,” I told her. “It looks a lot like yours at the end of the movie."

“Rapunzel doesn’t cut it!” She corrected me. “Eugene does.”

Well, this is true. The hero of the story cuts Rapunzel’s hair off in order to save her from the witch who has been masquerading as her mother for her whole life.

“Okay, but still, she has short brown hair at the end, ‘cause her hair changes color. It looks like her mom’s. Your hair looks like your mom’s too.”

She didn’t look very satisfied with my answer. “I guess,” she muttered.

This was distressing to me, because I love the Disney girls, and I feel that they’re much stronger heroines than most people give them credit for. The problem with the girls lies not in their original stories, but in the way they are marketed.

For example, Rapunzel. Really, she should have her short brown pixie cut hair in all the marketing, because that’s how she looks at the end of the movie. But all the dolls and toys and pictures still show her with long blonde hair. How confusing for little girls. And how disappointing, because Disney could have really changed the way people see princesses with Rapunzel.

It frustrates my friend, because her daughter, at the tender age of five, laments her lack of golden hair and already worries about being fat, much to her dismay. She home schools the kids, so her daughter is picking this up from being at friend’s houses. It’s very distressing, because her daughter is focusing on the superficial aspects of Rapunzel, and ignoring what an amazing girl she really is. She’s very smart—she knows how to chart stars, she knits, plays guitar, bakes, plays chess, dances, pretty much everything under the sun, because she lives alone in her tower and has lots of time. She paints murals on every bare inch of wall that depict herself smiling and free, looking like a firework streaking across her walls. She longs to leave her tower not because she meets the hero, Flynn/Eugene, but for herself. Flynn is merely the catalyst who finally gets her out. Rapunzel has longed to leave for nearly her entire life. The first time we see Rapunzel, she’s singing a song titled “When Will My Life Begin?”, lamenting the fact that while she has time to cultivate her talents, it’s not enough. She longs to leave and find out what the “floating lights” she sees every year are on her birthday are.

And all of those amazing characteristics are ignored because of her golden hair, which she loses in the end anyway. It’s very distressing, trying to get a five year old to understand that, because to the five year old, all she sees is her Rapunzel doll with long gold hair, the other toys and story books and pictures of Rapunzel with that hair.

Little girls, like around the ages of 5-6, grow up learning about how much we emphasize appearances. Toys for girls that age are all pink and sparkly, because heaven forbid little girls want to play with “boy” toys. Look at any toy ad, like say the ones from Toys R Us that are probably in your newspaper almost daily this time of year. The “girl” toys are printed on pages with pink borders, and all of the toys are “traditionally” girly. Whereas the boy toys are on blue pages. Why do we separate children at such an early age?

I feel so frustrated when I want to go get things for Toys For Tots, and all the “girl” toys look the same. What if a girl likes cars? Or superheroes? Based on the way these toys are packaged and separated within toy stores, she’s not allowed to. How awful that must be for girls who don’t fit into the mold that society has made for them.

Women in Film and the Bechdel Test

The title of this blog, “Cycle of Omission”, comes from a quote by Judy Chicago regarding her famous work “The Dinner Party”. Chicago said that the work’s purpose was to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record." Now, I am not going to discuss history so much here, but I am going to address how women are left out of various types of media. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Originally I intended to talk only about women in films and television, but I think that may be biting off more than I can chew (though I am still going to discuss it). I’m going to use this space to reflect on my own teaching methods, discuss artists who have inspired me, and maybe reflect further on some of the class readings.

I thought I was being very clever by trying to write all of my posts ahead of time and then just posting them during the last few weeks of class, but of course that didn’t work out quite the way I thought it would. So I’m just going to go for it, starting with my original idea of discussing film and television.

So, I'm a pretty big junkie of movies, TV shows, etc. I don't spend every day watching this stuff, but over the years, I've amassed quite a knowledge base of pop culture. I like it. I like movies, I like TV, I like animated movies, comic books, and novels. Now, please don't mistake this for me being interested in celebrity gossip or "reality" TV or anything like that. My love is purely for the art forms and the stories they tell.

Anyway, you may be wondering why any of this is important, or why it matters.

Good question! I thought for quite some time about how to articulate what I want to say. The way I look at it is, these films are everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. As are TV shows. They're in our faces all the time, and it's difficult not to be affected by them. We grow up in a world that bombards us with advertising, bombards us with imagery, and tells us what to think. These movies do the same thing. And even animated films are guilty. I'm not going to try and pretend that they're perfect, though I will defend them to death. So, think about it: As children we see Disney movies, or Pixar, or whatever, and those images are burned into our psyches. Then we grow up to be adults who still believe in some of that nonsense, and allow ourselves to believe in dumb romantic comedies, believe in negative stereotypes of women and minorities, and especially minority women.

Filmmakers have a wonderful opportunity to do something positive with their art. Many of them do, or at least try. However, many, many more are only in it to make money, which results in terrible movies that are aggressively marketed towards women, as though that's what we want. I don't know about you all, but I never asked for anything like, say, "27 Dresses" or, goodness, any of those "romantic" comedies Katherine Heigl has been in.

There is something out there called the Bechdel test, named for Allison Bechdel, a comic artist who coined the term in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For, written in 1985.

The rules for the test are simple. In order to pass, a movie must include:

1.) Two women

2.)Who talk to each other

3.) About something other than a man.

It is astonishing how many movies don't pass this test.

Of course, this is not necessarily a measure of the movie’s quality. Many movies I enjoy greatly fail this test (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars, pretty much any sci-fi/fantasy movie). That doesn’t mean that they’re bad movies, just as all movies that pass the Bechdel test are not inherently good movies because of it. A work can pass and still be misogynistic, and a work can fail that is feminist. The conversations can be shallow and discussing “typically” female things like shopping or domestic work, etc. The point of the test is to point out the pattern in movie-making of relegating women to the sidelines and is an example of how little mainstream culture values women. Their stories do not need to be told. They do not need to share equal screen time with males.

For example, consider this quote from a recent Huffington Post article:

“A study released by USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism took a survey of the 4,342 speaking characters in the top 100 grossing films of 2009 and compared it to results from the top 100 films of 2007 and 2008. For women, nothing much has changed -- in these top films, 32.8 percent of actors are female and 67.2 are male -- 2.05 males to every one female. This means that less than 17 percent of films are gender balanced, even though females make up half of the ticket-buying population.”

Women are half of the ticket-buying population! How can their stories continue to be so blatantly omitted from films? Studios want our money, but don’t see us as worth depicting or giving a voice to.