Girl Power at its Glammiest

warning: this post is about kicking ass! if you can't handle this colorful language, do not read on.

Saw Sucker Punch in theaters. Pretty girls all dolled up in pin-up style make up and sexy outfits kicking ass against fantastical monsters. Not much in the way of plot, but very artistic in melding of costume, music, and choreography in the fight scenes.

And O the music...

Like any movie, I guess I took away from it what I brought in. A little bit of girl power - but not enough.

I realized it a couple years ago when looking for inspiration for writing. I went to our (extensive) DVD collection looking for femme fatales and bad-ass female role models... only to discover my favorite movies were severely lacking.

On the internet, I found several lists of favorite powerful babes in movies. All these lists were so short, only 10 or 15 girls, most of whom, in my humble opinion, are not worthy of the title.

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out in the 90's, followed by James Cameron's Dark Angel, I thought we were entering a revolution in girl power and strong female role models, but the new millennium has disappointed me by not adding more women to the list.

I'm not really a feminist in the elite sense. The girl power I like to see is a balance. Yes, she may be trained in martial arts, cool and collected under pressure, and kick ass, but that doesn't mean she can't also have a fashion sense, style, beauty, know how to cook, or otherwise fall into her "traditional" gender role. Don't most Moms in real life embody both these sides every day?

It's these women that I miss in the current media. Yes, we have the 'pretty girl who can actually fight' part covered, but even Buffy and Leeloo have their 'damsel in distress' moments when a man must step in and save them. Don't get me wrong; I'd be nothing without my man and I think we save each other all the time. But I do think our girls onscreen could be a little stronger. A little more like the real life women who battle challenges more badass than any vampire or ninja. Because if our ideal female isn't strong, confident, smart, and sexy, how can we ever expect to be?

health:exhausted - mood:impatient - weather:gray

music:pretty girl -sugarcult

"she's beautiful as usual with bruises on her ego"

References/Inspiration

Top 10 badass women in movies

Miss Representation

MFIF

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Nothing is absolute.

It makes me mad when people judge a situation in absolutes


The bullies are picking on her so she must have done something to provoke them.
He doesn't have a job so he must be lazy.
This product is inexpensive so there must be something wrong with it.

We have a serious problem abusing the word and concept of "therefore." Saying it doesn't always make it so. An alleged cause does not always lead to a supposed effect.

I'm a huge believer in possibilities. There is never just one motivation for an action, or only one solution to a problem. That's what makes creativity and flexibility so important. Thinking inside the box is closing your off your mind from the world. A wise person knows that even at her most observant, she is ignorant of many things. Because in our myriad universe, there are tens of thousands of things that are too small to see, too intangible to feel, or too complicated to comprehend.

Todays stats:

health:poor - mood:panicked - weather:stormy

music:in it for life -sick puppies

"some people talk like they can't hear, some people walk but get nowhere"

a little study I may or may not commit to... curious to see how my current situation affects my writing. i miss those cute little livejournal emoticons that correspond to your moods- hehe

Sometimes, I Hope I'm Wrong

Okay, I hope I'm wrong here, because I think I just saw something that made my stomach turn.

Flipping channels, I found out there's a show on the science channel on today called "The Next Wave: Science of Tsunamis" - not so much an educational show as it is one of those scare-you shows about maybe possibly someday hypothetical probably more likely in about 150 million years according to real geophysicists mega-disasters that could happen to you.

I'm sorry, science channel, did you think this was an opportune time after the disaster in Japan to scare people and raise your ratings? Did you think you could benefit when so many people are in misery right now? 'Cause that would be insensitive, disgusting, and just wrong.

But maybe it's just a coincidence?

Anyway, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims who are suffering now in my favorite place in the world, Nippon.

Had Enough

When did "family-oriented" become business speak for "not committed enough?"

Back in the day, you really were what you did: instead of heading off to college, young adults would prepare to join the family business. We have the surnames to prove it - Baker, Cooper, Taylor, Smith. Work and family were one in the same, whether it was the family farm, the family trade, or the royal family. Now, internships have replaced apprenticeships. We work hard to separate our family and social life from our profession, dividing our lives into two worlds. One must have a personal e-mail and work e-mail, home phone and work phone, and be careful whom to friend on facebook. We try to maintain some shred of privacy in a naked culture and find balance between conflicting demands.

If we try to devote any more time to our family world than to the other, then something must be wrong. They call it lazy, apathetic, unmotivated, distracted. Your boss never stops to think that while you're an energetic, self-starting go-getter in the office, your family might describe you as the opposite. Absence and tardiness have the same consequences even when one is off the clock.

Despite our change in attitude, the fact still remains: Family comes first. These are the values that our lives were built on. So why has this become so hard to understand? Why do we have to beg and plead when someone we love is in trouble or seriously ill?

I believe if there is to be an imbalance, the scales should always tip in favor of family. Jobs come and go, but the people you love are to be cherished for as long as they are with you.

- wit - 

Still Waiting

I'm lost and it's a feeling I've had before, when you take a wrong turn and suddenly don't know where you are. But you're driving at night; it's dark, you're emotional and full of angry, so instead of stopping you keep rushing down the highway. You take exits and left turns that look promising, but every move just leads you further away from the route you know. Still, you keep going, because you don't want familiar streets to see this breakdown. A crisis needs an appropriate setting, somewhere strange and forgettable where the road names and landmarks blend together and fade from your memory as soon as they pass. In the back of your head, you know there's a cell phone or GPS that will eventually lead you back home, but for now the car is driving forward as if on its own.

I have this feeling as I stand here sweating under a hot sun in academic robes, shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow 2006 graduates as a seahawk glides over us across a blue sky. My mind is a passenger behind the wheel of a car that is driving aimlessly and getting more lost at every turn.

Now, it's five years later and I'm in the same place. At the same pace, I drive forward full of anxiety towards no destination in particular. I'm waiting for the road sign or town name that I recognize, or for sheer exhaustion to take over until I finally pull off on the side of the road to assess where I've ended up.

My whole generation is waiting. We look to our peers for evidence of our parents' accomplishments: the house, the family, the financially-stable career. But everything is happening out of order, or not at all. We scrape by from job to job like high school drop-outs, struggling every day to make that paycheck meet our bills and avoid the dreaded "boomerang" that defines our failure to live up to society's expectations.

Invisible, we watch as kids four years our junior get hired, promoted, married, and pregnant. We are the forgotten ones, our prospects lost to a recession that hit at the most critical point of our development - like the infant born of a mother who smoked cigarettes and drank hard liquor her whole first trimester. We are unlike the newer and better versions of ourselves, who knew computers when they were in diapers. They have not been through the hardship of the past four years. Fresh off the line, they are energetic and ready to be manipulated to this new world order of smartphones, twelve-hour days, and no privacy. Our little brothers and sisters are moving forward, but we are static. The limitless possibility of their dreams is as airy as the burden of our responsibility is heavy.

Elders will always tell us it's been worse, but history tells me that it's also been better. There have been generations whose formative years have fallen during prosperity, and whose lives have been shaped positively by their time. On the hard days I wonder why that couldn't have been us? Maybe then, we'd all be grown up by now, with mortgages, hybrids, and dinner parties, instead of looking in between the couch cushions for beer money and worrying about that next tank of gas. With all these fears, I forget the dream I was reaching for. What was I hoping for on graduation day? Where did I want to be by now?

Trapped in my car, I'm driving in the dark and full of angry. I keep moving forward, taking exits and left turns that seem promising, but each move only leads me further away from where I want to be. My GPS is out of date, and what I really want to do is just stop and find my way back before I forget where I was going in the first place.

- wit -