Category Archives: Arts

50 Shades of Plastics

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

My apologies for not posting yesterday.  Better late than never, right?

For those of you who didn’t quite follow the title of this post, it’s a reference to a line in the movie The Graduate.  In case you haven’t seen it, let me sum up: Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) graduates college.  Having nothing better to do with his time, he has an affair with Mrs. Robinson.  He decides he likes her daughter better and they run off together.  The end.

I first saw this movie with my boyfriend (now husband) and a bunch of our college friends on recommendation of one friend’s mother.  She said it was one of the movies we just had to see.  I have never been able to figure out if this was a generational thing or if we just didn’t happen to like the movie, but the general consensus was that it was about an hour and forty-five minutes of our lives we would never have back.  Just about the only thing I remember (other than the general plot) is the line, “I have one word for you: Plastics.”

Anyway, the whole point of that story is that in Fifty Shades, Ana keeps referring to the woman who initiated Christian into BDSM as “Mrs. Robinson.”  I have concluded that E. L. James has not ever seen that movie, because if she had, she would not be calling the woman Mrs. Robinson.  First of all, the movie Mrs. Robinson is manipulative, but she isn’t a child molester.  Benjamin is an adult, unlike 15-year-old Christian.  Second, in the movie, Benjamin has a very good idea that Mrs. Robinson is horrible, and he eventually gets a clue–again, unlike Christian, who seems to think it’s perfectly fine and dandy to have an ongoing business relationship with his rapist.  Finally, if E. L. James had had her wits about her, she would have realized that no one under the age of 25 has seen the movie at this point, which makes Ana referencing it and making that connection–and Christian getting it–kind of weird.  It’s this vague sense of having heard of the film without having watched it and having the takeaway be, “Oh, yeah, that movie about an older woman seducing a young, impressionable man.”  Which is not precisely what the movie is about.

Ana (remember, we’re still with her on vacation) gets jealous when she finds out Christian is having dinner with an “old friend.”  Naturally, this turns out to be her worst nightmare–Mrs. Robinson.  To Ana’s credit, she understands that an adult preying on a 15-year-old is wrong, and she points out that if it had been a 15-year-old girl and an adult man, no one would be romanticizing it.  Christian is all lost in the fact that he feels his Mrs. Robinson did him a favor.

There is nothing in me that thinks it is okay for an adult to be sleeping with a teenager.  I do not mean two young people, one of whom happens to be 18 and the other of whom is not.  I mean the kind of situation we’re talking about with Christian and his Mrs. Robinson, where an adult over the age of 30 thinks that it’s a good idea to have sex with a 15-year-old.  Before anyone gets all upset that I’m being judgy, I hold no blame for the younger person in that relationship.  Everything is squarely on the adult’s shoulders.  Why an adult would even have a sexual interest in a teenager is beyond me.  Ana rightly pushes Christian on this, telling him she sees Mrs. Robinson as a pedophile (even if she does spell it the UK way).

That brings us to how the heck Ana and Christian end up having another conversation about this.  Guess where he is right now in the story?  If you said, “Seattle,” you’d be wrong.  He follows Ana to Georgia, because he’s a creepy stalker.  While she’s busy emailing him about how mad she is that he is seeing Mrs. Robinson, he’s busy watching her from across the bar, counting how many drinks she’s had.

So, nah, he’s not messed up at all.  Nope.

I don’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed, but we’re nearing the end.  In a few weeks, we’ll bid goodbye to Fifty Shades of Grey.  I suppose I could continue with the next one, but I haven’t decided if I want to.  I may need to pull an Ana and have a cosmopolitan or five.

50 Shades of Vacation

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Happy Monday!  I now have enough caffeine in my system to write about Fifty Shades.  (But not nearly enough alcohol; I have no idea how I’m going to finish this series.  Meh–I’ll manage.)

Ana has arrived in Georgia to visit her mom and husband-I’ve-lost-track-of-what-number.  She thinks,

I like this husband, Mom.  You can keep him.

This is yet another example of Ana telling us how much she likes some person or another, even though we readers have no idea why.  With Kate, Ana is constantly in Jealous Mode, yet she assures us Kate is superawesome.  With Christian, he’s intensely creepy, but Ana reminds us on nearly every page how hot he makes her.  Now we have Bob.  Apparently, the thing Ana likes is that Bob has twinkly blue eyes “that gaze at [her] fondly.”

Ana spends several paragraphs complaining about the heat and her “fog of fatigue.”  So it’s only natural that instead of going to her mother’s house to rest and soak up the AC, she asks to go to the beach.  You know what?  I’ve taken late-night flights before.  It’s not pretty.  The last thing I wanted to do was anything other than shower and take a nap.  But hey, who am I to judge?  At least it’s gotten her mind of Christian, right?

Or not.

Here comes the Big Mother-Daughter Talk.  Ana’s mom opens by asking about the relationship, to which Ana replies that Christian is “complicated and mercurial.”  Her mother wisely chooses to focus on those two things, but then she goes on to lose all the respect I was just beginning to have for her.  Somehow she fails to notice when Ana says,

. . . his mood-swings make me dizzy.  He’s had a grim up-bringing, so he’s very closed, difficult to gauge.

Instead of going with the giant red flag about the mood swings, Ana’s mother asks Ana if she likes him.  Yeah, that would not be my first response to that.  What follows is a really strange bit of dialogue.  Her mother decides to characterize men somewhat oddly, going with tired stereotypes of men as hardly more deep than a kiddie pool:

Men aren’t really complicated . . . They are very simple, literal creatures.  They usually mean what they say.  And we spend hours trying to analyze what they’ve said–when really it’s obvious. . . I’d take him literally.

In a sense, I guess I agree with her advice.  If Ana were to take Christian at his word, she might recognize him for the abusive, creepy person he is.  On the other hand, I don’t think that Ana’s mother is a good source of advice on this.  Besides making it sound like all men are shallow and kind of stupid, she’s also on her fourth (ah, yes, that’s it) husband.  Ana doesn’t seem to realize this, though.

She is on her fourth marriage.  Maybe she does know something about men after all.

Did it occur to you, Ana, that she’s on husband number four precisely because she doesn’t know crap about men at all?  I’m going with “like mother, like daughter” here.

Her mother proceeds to tell her that most men are moody.  Apparently her mother can’t make up her mind.  Are men simple and literal, or are they complicated and moody?  I don’t even know what to do with this one:

I used to think your father was moody.  But now . . . I just think he was too caught up in his job and trying to make a life for us.

Dear Ana’s mother: You would know if you’d ever bothered to, I don’t know, have a real conversation with him about it.  It’s a myth that men don’t like to talk about what’s on their minds.  There isn’t some secret to approaching men about their feelings.  I mean, you can’t just open with, “Hi, honey.  You’ve been super moody lately.  Want to tell me why?”  Women generally do not like that approach either.  Who wants to be grilled like that?  But good, old-fashioned communication works pretty well, I find.

Eventually, the conversation ends somewhat abruptly and Ana’s mom disappears to “mold some candles or whatever she does with them.”  Off-topic, but I seem to recall a YA book where the mom’s best friend is into candle-making.  Anyone remember reading such a book back in the ’80s?  If you remember the title, let me know.  It’s really bothering me now.

Christian has finally replied to Ana’s email.  He’s all mad that she communicates openly when there’s distance between them, but not in person.  Well, yes, because you scare her, you ass.  He threatens to make an appointment for her with his psychiatrist.  Is it wrong of me to think that’s not a bad idea?

He goes on to explain to her that in a D/s relationship, she has all the power as his sub.  Except that is never how he behaves with her.  Not only that, he tells her that if she says no, he can’t touch her and reminds her that she said no in his parents’ boathouse.  He seems to have forgotten that in the boathouse, he didn’t respect her no.  Remember the time when he raped her?  Yeah.

See, if he hadn’t come across as a creepy stalker, a rapist, and an all-around horrible person/boyfriend, this email is actually decent at the start.  It’s just wrong in the context of everything else that’s happened.  His assurance that she has the power here is only true in regard to what they do in the bedroom (or the Red Room of Pain).  The rest of the time, he is the one controlling every last thing between them.

He goes on to tell her that she’s not properly allowing him to have control over her anywhere but the “playroom.”  Wait…didn’t he just say that she is the one really in control?  He ends by saying that he will “try” to do things her way.  It seems to me that there is a huge gap in their understanding of each other, not to mention that he’s still creepy as hell–evidenced by his closing line:

. . . enjoy yourself.  But not too much.

What the actual, Christian.  Not too much?  She is with her mother and stepfather number three.  What constitutes “too much fun”?  Learning how to make candles?  Lying on the beach?  Dinner at the golf club?

Ana’s reaction reminds me so much of a line from the movie Roxanne.  Steve Martin’s character says to Daryl Hannah’s,

A few frilly words and you’re counting ceiling tiles!

That’s a pretty accurate description of Ana here.  Christian sends her an email she describes as being like a high school essay (“and most of it good!”), and all of a sudden she’s giddy with the desire to make things work between them.  This story would be a thousand times more interesting if Christian had had someone else write his emails and if Ana figured out she was really in love with that other person.  Alas, we’re stuck with Ana *hearts* Christian Forever.

I’m going to spare everyone a discussion on the rest of their email exchange, which quickly devolves into something no one wants to read.  If it weren’t for the fact that Ana’s not allowed to touch herself, and the interruption from her mother that it’s time for dinner, I would expect the two of them to start having email sex.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) they don’t.

I will leave it there for now.  Up next week, I ask the question, “How can this possibly get more convoluted while Ana is on vacation?” because somehow, it does.  That shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, though.

Notable News: Week of May 4-10, 2013

Posted by Amy in Books, Cool Stuff, Links, News, Odds 'n' Ends and tagged with , , ,

It’s been quite a week.  Here are some of the highlights of what I’ve been reading.

1. Charles Ramsey is a hero

The interview with Mr. Ramsey after the rescue was compelling.  He comes across as a man of great compassion.  I heard several people saying they thought “hero” was too strong a word, since “all” he did was call 911.  But I like how this article in the New Yorker puts it:

But one phrase in particular, from the interview, is worth dwelling on: “I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute.” In many times and places, a line like that has been offered as an excuse for walking away, not for helping a woman break down your neighbor’s door. How many women have died as a result? They didn’t yesterday.

So, yes, Mr. Ramsey is a hero, and those hostages are free as a result.

2. And speaking of victims

This is a fascinating article on the fixation with crimes against white women and girls.  Many years ago, a local girl was kidnapped and murdered by her neighbor.  When she went missing, it was huge news.  Everyone was in on it, and people were glued to the television.  I remember my mother saying that she felt terrible for the girl and her family, but she was disappointed that yet again, a white girl’s plight was more important than all the missing non-white children.  Things haven’t changed much in the intervening years.

3. Are Christians a persecuted minority?

The short answer is, “NO.”  If you’d like a longer explanation, though, you can read one here by Myisha Cherry.  I’m going to throw my own two cents in on this one.  I don’t appreciate being lumped (by other Christians) into the category of “maligned.”  I do not now, nor have I ever, felt as though I could not express my faith or my views–except as an LGBTQ ally in a conservative church.  Even when I held those conservative views I didn’t feel persecuted.  No one–not even my LGBTQ friends–ever told me to keep my mouth shut (though maybe they should have).  On the other hand, I was asked to silence myself among conservatives.  How much worse is it for those who cannot live authentic lives because of the disapproving words and actions of the church.

4. I have rage

In the last few weeks, I’ve had several online and in-person conversations with people about publishing and marketing and the biases there.  Despite all that, apparently some men seem to think there’s nothing “for them” to read.  Because the shelves at Barnes & Noble are not stocked with all kinds of action/adventure/spy novels or memoirs of football players and pro wrestlers, of course.  There is nothing available that men would like, right?  And of course, there are absolutely no men writing fantasy or science fiction, in case one likes those sorts of books.  Most of the classics weren’t written by men with men as the main characters.  But, you know, publishing is alienating half the population.

5. On finding our way again

Kassie Rutherford is a phenomenal writer.  There is something compelling about her words; she has a knack for venturing deep into emotional territory in a safe way.  This incredible post is about how beautiful our stories are, even if we’re the only ones who know them.

6. Sometimes, we’re all just tired

Andi Cumbo sums it up nicely in this post.  Maybe, in the midst of all our weariness, we, too, can find sustenance in the things around us.

7. Guest post

I had the privilege of writing a guest post for Dianna Anderson this week for her series “Account and Countenance.”  You can read it here.

That’s it for this week.  Have a great weekend, and come back Monday.  I will have my usual 50 Shades post plus a big announcement.  See you then!

 

50 Shades of Flight

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with ,

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

I have to backtrack to the previous chapter for a few lines before I start in on Chapter 22.  At the end of Chapter 21, Ana arrives for her flight to Georgia and discovers that Christian has upgraded her to first class.  I will get to how incredibly creepy that is in a moment.  For now, I have some words about this interaction with the man at the ticket counter (which Ana later refers to as making her “look like a klutz”).

Ana describes the young man at the desk as “bored,” until he discovers that she’s been upgraded.  At that point, he starts treating her

. . . like I’m the Christmas Fairy and the Easter Bunny rolled into one.

I think I could count the number of times I’ve flown on one hand, and I’ve never flown first class.  But I have never had anyone at check-in treat me like that.  (And by the way, what the hell is the “Christmas Fairy”?)  This scene at the end of the chapter leads right into the next one, where we get pages and pages of Ana’s flight and her email exchanges with Christian (here we go again).

As I said, I’ve never flown first class, so perhaps someone would care to enlighten me as to whether Ana’s experience of the first class lounge is even true.  She claims to have had a manicure, a massage, and two glasses of champagne (is anyone else worried about her drinking habits?).  And in a completely surprising twist, Ana thinks the man who gave her the massage, Jean-Paul, is gay.  Because so far, that was the only minority stereotype we hadn’t seen in this book.  Why not throw it in for good measure?

. . . honestly, who has a tan in Seattle?  It’s just so wrong.  I think he was gay . . .

I don’t think that having those particular sentences next to each other was necessarily intentional (Ana seems to think a tanned Seattle resident is wrong, and the bit about him being gay is because she’s withholding that information from Christian).  But due to either poor writing or poor editing, it comes across as an indictment of the gay guy.  Of course, given how the author has described every other minority in the book, I’m not sure she wasn’t going for exactly that.

Which brings us to the latest bizarre emails between Ana and Christian.  She emails from the lounge to “thank” him for the upgrade and to “wind him up” over her massage (by not explaining her unconfirmed suspicion that Jean-Paul is gay).  She starts out with,

What really alarms me is how you knew which flight I was on.  Your stalking knows no bounds.

She is apparently “joking,” and yet this is an entirely accurate assessment.  When she gets around to explaining the massage, she decides that Christian somehow deserves to be made jealous.  I cannot figure this out.  When she calls it “payback,” does she mean for the stalking?  Because I’m not really sure that jealousy is the best weapon against stalking.

Meanwhile, Ana’s subconscious has decided to remind her that Christian secretly upgrading her to first class without talking to her is “sweet.”  Perhaps it would be, if he hadn’t spent the rest of the book stalking her in various other ways.  Although she’s trying to appear brave and sort of playful here, her discomfort is evident when she sees that the only empty seat is the one right next to her–and she’s worried that Christian is going to turn up and accompany her.

His email response to her is to threaten to tie her up and put her in the cargo hold.

Ana can’t tell whether or not he’s joking.  When she asks, he never gives her a direct answer.  Instead, he chastises her for emailing during takeoff.  As a result, she sends him a long, rambling email in which she explains that his extravagant gifts make her feel like he’s paying her for sex, she doesn’t really know when he’s joking and when he’s serious, and that he scares her.

Once again, I find myself frustrated with E. L. James here.  Sure, the writing is lousy, but if her purpose were to break open an abusive relationship and explore some of the psychology, it would be brilliant.  The problem is that we’re supposed to see this as romantic.  We’re supposed to want Ana and Christian to work, to fight for each other.  I, on the other hand, want to see her find her way out of this labyrinth of domestic violence.  I want to see her start off believing she can rescue him and end up realizing she can’t, so she leaves–permanently.  I want to see her learn to admit that he terrifies her–and that’s not a good thing.  I want to see her learn that she doesn’t need Christian–or any other man–to be strong and fulfilled.

All we get is Ana opening up about her fears, followed by how hard she’s going to work to be what he wants her to be.  Is it any wonder that Ana’s time at the airport ends with her embracing her mom and crying?

I don’t care how many people find this awful story romantic; it isn’t even close.  I know I keep saying this, but if this is you, if you are like Ana and you’re afraid of your partner, you are not alone.  And that’s not limited to women–we tend to think domestic violence only affects women or that it’s all about “misogyny.”  Guess what?  It’s not, and in the U.S., the statistics for domestic violence against men are not, in fact, much lower than for women (I can almost feel a few people breathing down my neck for that statement).  People who have lived Ana’s experiences in one way or another can tell you that it’s not romantic.  Don’t believe that lie–be a friend and help someone you love who might be in an abusive relationship.

Barnes & Noble, Harry Potter, and the Smurfette Principle: Part 3

Posted by Amy in Books, Feminism, Social Justice, Writing and tagged with , , , , , ,

Pretty sure she had something to do with the on-shelf options at B&N.

This is the last part of the series on using men/boys as the default for readership.  Read the first two parts here and here.  Today, I’m offering some solutions.  We can’t solve everything, but this might be a start.

Time for the Big Question: What if Harry Potter had been a girl? (TRUTH)

I don’t just mean would we have read the books or would she have become a cultural icon.  I’m asking what would have changed if the story had been about a girl.

As written, the whole point of the story is The Boy Who Lived.  My guess is that if the protagonist were a girl, even though the story would have remained the same, in our cultural consciousness it would have become about The Girl Who Lived.  That is to say, suddenly it would have been about her femaleness rather than her spirit or her heart or her resolve.  (I like to give J. K. Rowling credit that this would not have been her doing, but that of cultural constructs that dictate male as neutral, objective, and default.)  The books would have been marketed toward girls, with a whole line of pink merchandise.

Because boy wizards are for everyone; girl witches are for girls.

(Interestingly, StoryNory has subverted this quite nicely.  You can listen to the original stories about Katie the Witch here.)

We could actually ask this question in a whole host of different ways, because the problem of the default is not limited to simply being male.  It’s also about being white, straight, neurotypical, able-bodied, and cisgender.  The moment a main character is not all of those things, it becomes all about being whatever else they might be.  (For example, if Harry had fallen in love with Dean or Neville instead of Ginny, it would have become a Coming Out story instead of a Defeating Voldemort story.)

The whole point of speculative fiction (which covers a pretty broad range–fantasy, science fiction, distopian, urban fantasy) is to leave our world and enter another.  Too often, those stories feature either a male main character or a character for whom their not-maleness (or not-straightness or not-whiteness or not-able-bodiedness or not cis-ness or whatever) becomes a key point in the plot.  You could have a story about a kid from the 25th century who travels back in time with a laser sword and a trusty sidekick to battle pirates in the 18th century.  Make the kid a girl and suddenly it’s all about how she has to “prove” herself among men or how she’s “atypical” in her culture for wanting to battle pirates.  You can swap out the girl for pretty much anyone who isn’t a white, straight, cis dude and the same thing happens.

That is not to say that there shouldn’t be anything different between the laser sword-wielding boy and the laser sword-wielding girl.  I’m not advocating for some unknown ideal of gender-neutrality.  I’m just explaining that when it comes to what’s on the book shelves, anyone who isn’t in the Approved Default Category gets a specially roped off section devoted to People Like That–which means that the story is often about dealing with both pirates and being a girl (or whatever) instead of just being about Saving the World From Pirates.

So what the heck do we do with that?  Let me give some completely unsolicited advice.

For writers:

  1. Be conscious of what you’re doing.  If you write a character that is Not You, please don’t make it all about how that person is Not You.  It might help to actually talk to (or better yet be friends with) people who are Not You so that you know what people might appreciate.  For example, I am done with princesses who rebel against expectations in order to go battle dragons.
  2. Discussing cultural norms works fine in historical/realistic fiction (when done well, mind you), but it doesn’t work well in fantasy.  Part of the appeal of speculative fiction is that these issues can be addressed sideways (as in Harry Potter with pureblood supremacy).  A girl dealing with sexism in her school election when she’s supposed to be dealing with sexism is great; a girl dealing with sexism on an alien planet when she’s supposed to be Saving the World is not.
  3. Be mindful of tropes.  Not all of them are bad, but racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, and transphobic tropes are NOT EVER OKAY.
  4. Don’t make assumptions about what people will or won’t read.  Boys do, in fact, want to read about girls.  Not just adventuresome girls, either; boys do not naturally come with a setting that says, “Girls are boring.”  You can have an entire book that has mostly girls in it and guess what?  Boys will still read it!  Amazing, that.
  5. Stop limiting girls in “realistic” fiction to domesticity and relational drama.  Sometimes, girls have to deal with the death of a parent or a move to a new city or nerves about being the trombone soloist in the band concert–oddly, much like boys do.
  6. Same thing goes for any other characters that are not white, straight, cis boys.  It’s true that there are experiences unique to people who haven’t been considered the default, so those issues may come up in realistic fiction as things characters have to deal with.  But this can be done in a way that every kid can understand.  A good example of this is James Howe’s The Misfits and its companion books.  The kids in the books are dealing with things specific to them, but it’s done in the context of bullying–which makes it relatable regardless of the particulars.
  7. Most importantly, tell the story you have to tell.  Don’t stress about making your story an issues story, just make it a good story.

For readers (especially parents giving books to their kids):

  1. Don’t limit yourself.  If you can’t find the book at Barnes & Noble in-store, then look online.  Ask friends to recommend books.  Check with a librarian at your local branch.  There’s more than what’s on those store shelves.
  2. Make sure you give both boys and girls a wide variety from which to choose.  Read the back cover and the first chapter before handing something to your child–don’t just look at the cover and make assumptions.
  3. If you have a boy, don’t pass up books about girls because you think he won’t be interested.  The American Girl stories are really good (stupid, expensive product line aside).  The stories are not about “girlhood”; they are about friendship and family and kids experiencing changes in their lives, all within a historical context.
  4. A great way to find books for your child is to check out lexile.com.  If you know your child’s actual lexile, you can find books based on that.  If not, take a look at the last thing your child read.  Type the title into the search engine and you’ll come up with a lexile number for it.  If your child says that book is what my own son calls a “just right” read, you can enter the lexile number into the search to find similarly leveled books.  You can search by genre as well, including non-fiction.
  5. When you read, set the example by reading a broad range of books.  Interestingly, in the “new fiction” section of B&N, I found a completely different story from the kids’ section.  There were books by and about both men and women in approximately equal numbers.  The stories were varied–memoir, action, drama, romance, horror, mystery.  Take a chance on a new author!

Finally, I want to briefly touch on how this relates in particular to people of faith.  As a Christian, I take it seriously when the Bible says that in Christ there is no male or female.  For me that means that I need to work toward ending the injustice toward women, including the view that men are the default.  It’s important to me that my kids grow up knowing that real freedom, spiritually speaking, means being true to themselves and having the expectation that others will do likewise.  My daughter should not grow up believing the only thing God made special about her is that she’s a girl; my son should not grow up thinking that God put the burden of being the measuring stick upon him because he’s a boy.

Thanks for coming along for the ride this week, everyone.  Happy reading and writing–now go, change the world!

Barnes & Noble, Harry Potter, and the Smurfette Principle: Part 2

Posted by Amy in Books, Feminism and tagged with , , , ,

Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of Hermione that’s not just Emma Watson posing for a shoot? I rather like this one, though.

Today’s post is a continuation of yesterday’s discussion.  If you didn’t read it, you may want to catch up.  I also recommend you read the links so we’re all on the same page.

I promised that I would explain further about the Smurfette Principle/Girls Are Special and how those tropes relate to Harry Potter, so let’s dive right in.  I admit to being reluctant; I loved Harry before the books were cool.  I first spotted Sorcerer’s Stone in Barnes & Noble (yeah, I know) and thought, That looks like an interesting book.  I bought a copy.  By that time, the second one had just come out, so I bought that one, too.  I was hooked.  So keep in mind that this is coming from a place of deep love.

The reason I’m bringing up the books in this conversation is that I think they’re a good way to analyze the problem from both sides.  Many books (as readers pointed out in the comments on yesterday’s post) have lone female characters, and it’s easy to tell that they’re Smurfettes or Special for Being Girls.  When there are no other girls or women (or they’re the Big Bad), the story automatically fails Bechdel.  Princess stories tend to fall into this category, for example.  But in the Harryverse, it’s not quite so obvious.  After all, there are lots of women and girls–but only one girl who is central to the plot.

So let’s talk about Hermione.  Don’t misunderstand–I love her.  I probably love her for the same reasons that she embodies several tropes (and really, who wasn’t cheering for her when she slapped Malfoy?).  But that’s important to acknowledge, because there’s a fine line between wanting all girls/women to fit into those categories and appreciating one who just happens to do so.

On the surface, it appears that Hermione is a pretty good example of a Smurfette.  After all, isn’t she the lone girl having adventures alongside the boys?  The other girls and women seem one-dimensional.  Aren’t Lavender and Parvati just there to be pretty and flirtatious?  And isn’t Ginny’s claim to fame that she’s Harry’s love interest?  And isn’t Molly Weasley a stereotype of a stay-at-home mom (particularly of the religious sort), while Narcissa Malfoy is the picture of a trophy wife?

When one digs deeper, however, it’s obvious that this isn’t strictly true.  In fact, the entire Harryverse is populated with some pretty amazing girls and women.  They’re a diverse crew.  Not all of them are nice, of course (and Bellatrix Lestrange is definitely an evil version of a Smurfette).  Even so, they are there in vibrant colors–girls who are smart, fiesty, brave, caring, and a bit kooky.  Even girls who seem shallow and uninteresting can sometimes turn out to be among the bravest.

The problem isn’t the girls in the Harry Potter books (though we could make a good case for the movies largely erasing most of them; there’s a big surprise).  Where I notice it more is in the books that imitate the style.  When it’s done improperly, all we find are stories driven by the adventures of boys and their one girl companion.

That makes me sad.

I think that a huge part of what leads to the belief that Women Are Special is the very thing that Hermione and Ginny and Luna and, yes, Lavender (and even bitchy Pansy) subvert.  If men are the default, then everything about me–what I do, what I think, what I write–must automatically be in relation to men (or at minimum my identity as “not a man”).  Girls in books exist either as lone beacons or as accessories for boys–even when hunting dragons.  It would never occur to a girl to go on an adventure unless she was being rebellious against her femininity or she was helping a boy to win against the bad guys.  Therefore, we would never see more than one of these mysterious creatures adventuring with her own kind.

But Harry’s friends aren’t like that.

Warning: Spoilers.  Don’t read this if you haven’t read all 7 books but plan to and want to be surprised.

Although in the last book Harry, Ron, and Hermione go off on their own, she is typically not without help from other girls and/or women.  This is particularly evident when Harry’s friends insist on accompanying him to the Department of Mysteries in the fifth book.  His reason for not wanting them there isn’t because he’s afraid the girls are too weak and might get hurt; he wants to go alone so no one else gets into trouble.

When it comes down to the end of the last book, they all show up–every last one of the diverse crew of women and girls, including characters who hadn’t been seen in some time.  No one tells them that they should take care of the wounded while the men-folk do the real fighting.  No one asks them to defend their presence by making them show their Plucky Tomboy Princess credentials or assessing their motivation (is it a rebellion against gender stereotypes? is it to save the boys they love? is it to prove they’re as tough as any man?).  They do what they need to do, and no one asks them why–it’s assumed that everyone is sharing a common why.

Motivation for heroic or selfless acts doesn’t have gender.  A woman can write about these themes, and her characters can embody them, because they are universal–not because they belong to men and women are finally claiming them.

Tomorrow, I’m wrapping up the series with a discussion of how that affects what writers do and how we can avoid boxing girls in with narrow gender stereotypes and sexist tropes–and why it matters (including in regard to faith; you knew I’d get to that, right?).  I hope you’ll stick around.

Barnes & Noble, Harry Potter, and the Smurfette Principle: Part 1

Posted by Amy in Books, Feminism and tagged with , , , ,

Note: I’m going to ask that before you leave a comment, please read all the links in this post.  Otherwise, I will have to spend my time explaining things to you that you could easily read for yourself.  Thanks!

On Sunday, I was out with my family enjoying some much-needed time together after a very busy weekend.  We took the kids to Barnes & Noble, followed by dinner out.  A good time was had by all, and I was reminded again just why I adore my husband so much.  How many women can say to their husbands, “My inner Feminist Meter was pinging” and have their husbands nod in agreement?  While we enjoyed our ice cream, I told him I would explain after the kids were in bed what disturbed me while browsing the kids’ section with my daughter.  The good news is that later that night, I got about six words in when my husband’s eyes widened and he was shaking his head–he knew exactly what I meant.

Before I begin, I should define a term for those who may not be familiar.  A trope is a device or convention commonly used or expected in media (particularly storytelling).  You can read more about them here.  Fair warning, though: That web site is highly addictive and you will likely find yourself falling quickly down the rabbit hole.

Back to my story.  While at Barnes & Noble, I decided to have a look around for books that might be interesting to my kids.  I am aware of lots of wonderful books for their ages, many of which we own.  But we’re in a unique situation where we have two children who can read above grade level; that means that books for their ages are often uninteresting because they’re too easy.  So I’m always on the lookout for good stuff.  I figured this would be as good a time as any to see what was on the shelves.

That was a mistake.

I should learn to just walk away.  But since I am slightly obsessive about these things, I just haven’t been able to do it yet.  Once I started, I couldn’t stop.  By the time we left the store, I had moved past Mildly Annoyed and into I Need to Blog This territory.

Last week, several of my favorite bloggers posted about how most men tend to read books by men, while women often read a more equal mix of books by men and by women.  I wasn’t sure what to write; it seemed like it had already been said.  That is, until I browsed the shelves and realized that it’s actually part of a larger problem.  I don’t think that the author’s gender is the only important factor–it’s also the characters in the books.

What I discovered was that the vast majority of books available in-store feature boys as main characters.  This is true regardless of the author or the content.  Books aimed at boys feature boys; books aimed at girls feature girls.  That’s to be expected, and not all of that is bad.  I mean, not that I wouldn’t let my son read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but he won’t ever be able to relate to menstruation.  What I didn’t appreciate was that most books aimed at a “universal” audience also feature boys.

This is a particular trope known as Men Are Generic, Women Are Special.  In other words, something everyone can/should enjoy must feature boys/men as the main characters.  Girls end up as sidekicks, girlfriends, casualties, or all three.  There are a host of other tropes that usually accompany this theme–for example, there is often only one girl among the group, and she is seen as “not particularly girly.”  She might be unattractive in some way, or she might be intelligent but weak, or she might be a tomboy stereotype.  Sometimes, the girl of the group has very little personality–her uniqueness is related to being a girl (the Smurfette Principle).

Quite a lot of popular films and books fall into this unfortunate trap.  And really, it wouldn’t be a big deal if only some of what we read have these tropes.  When I browsed the shelves, though, I saw a disproportionate number of books with the same theme–boys are the “leaders” who drive the story, even when the audience is supposed to be universal.  Books featuring girls were nearly all (with a few notable exceptions) about girls doing domestic tasks and/or grappling with “relationship” issues.  An uncomfortable number of “girl” books don’t pass the Bechdel Test, despite having multiple girl characters (i. e. the plot is driven by a fight over a boy).

When I mentioned this on Twitter, I was accused of creating a “conspiracy theory” and informed that this is a problem with “marketing” not availability.  I agree that the problem is with the marketing; I never said it wasn’t.  I was expressly condemning Barnes & Noble for its poor choice in what to stock.  At no point did I say there aren’t enough women writing books or there aren’t enough books featuring girls.  There are!  There are lots and lots of wonderful books by women and men alike that feature girls.  Our public library contains many of them, and friends have recommended others.  If I want to buy the books, I can find them in all sorts of places.  That’s not my complaint!

My complaint is specifically about what’s marketed, what’s available on-shelf when one browses the book store.  Because the message being sent by this–or at least, what marketing believes to be true–is that girls don’t have universal appeal, but boys do.  The perception is that Harry Potter is the pinnacle of storytelling for youth because of the appeal of Harry, not the broad themes of the story.  (There were at least half a dozen Potter knock-off series on the shelves.)  Sadly, the Harryverse fits neatly into that belief system.  I want to unpack that a bit more, but I’ll save it for tomorrow.

The problem I have with the book store is the same one I have with toy stores and visual media: It’s split into boy things and girl things, with boy things the acceptable default.  The sexism is evident in what and how things are advertised, not necessarily what’s being created (though there are exceptions).  This is the thing that needs to change.  And if stores like Barnes & Noble won’t change what they put on their shelves, then we need to stop looking there for new material.

Tomorrow, I will expand on how Harry fits into this and why that series is potentially not a problem while the imitations potentially are.  Stick around this week to find out more (including what we can do about it).

50 Shades of Interviewing

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

Every Monday, when I sit down to write about Fifty Shades, I think, There can’t possibly be anything else for me to say about this horrible book.  And then I reread the section I’m going to post about and realize that there is, indeed, plenty more to say.

In today’s episode, The One Where Ana Goes on an Interview, we get a fantastic combination of boring and silly.  This is followed up by a conversation that makes me like Kate less and another series of bizarre email exchanges.  Is anyone else sick of reading Ana and Christian’s online correspondence?

Ana is meeting with the good folks at Seattle Independent Publishing.  She describes the people who work there as “bohemian.”  Naturally, the people at the big, mean corporate publishing house are all dull people in suits; the independent publishers are artsy and casual-cool.  Is this supposed to make us root for them to hire Ana?  I also find it strange that she seems to think she will fit in there.  I need someone to explain this to me, because I see no evidence that Ana is the “bohemian” sort.  Nothing we’ve seen of her personality thus far would suggest that she’s the “artsy” type.  Or any other type, actually–she has virtually no personality apart from her interactions with Christian.

I don’t know which Twilight characters are supposed to be represented by the interviewers, if any.  Honestly, though, my first thought on reading Ana’s description of the editor, Jack Hyde, is that she’s being interviewed by Bill Weasley.  Long red hair in a ponytail? Check.  Earrings? Check (though hoops, not a fang).  Blue eyes? Check.  Attractive? Check.  Gah.  Dammit, E. L. James, you have now ruined a second book for me.  It doesn’t help that Ana feels sort of uncomfortable with him.  I think we’re supposed to assume he finds her attractive.  Naturally, since all men are obviously going to fall head-over-heels for Ana within 30 seconds of meeting her.  She’s just that hot.  It makes me feel super-duper icky thinking about anyone shipping Bill Weasley and Bella Swan Ana Steele (you know someone has done this).

When Ana meets the head of human resources, she can’t tell how old the woman is.  Do you know why?  Because the woman

. . . could be in her late thirties, maybe in her forties.  It’s so difficult to tell with older women.

Ana, screw you.  You seem to be calling me an “older woman” here.  I get it that you’re all young and hip and stuff, but please do not refer to women my age as “older women.”  I was actually looking forward to turning 40 in a couple more years, but now that I’m apparently already “older,” I guess I can just give up.  My life is clearly nearing its end.

Ana’s big criticism of Bill Weasley Jack Hyde is that he doesn’t seem interested in classic literature.  Well, who wouldn’t criticize that?  I mean, nothing of value has been written after 1950!  And it’s so shocking that a publisher would want new material.  I guess this is supposed to heighten our distrust of Ana’s future employer.  He finds her hot, he hates the classics.  Ooh…creepy.

Anyway, I guess we’re supposed to think this interview went well.  Ana returns to her apartment to have another “interview”–with Kate.  Ana remembers that she needs to have a serious talk with Kate about not winding Christian up because he’s the jealous type.  The conversation makes me want to punch Kate.  First she tells Ana that she was trying to “help”:

. . . He’s a real control freak.  I don’t know how you stand it.  I was trying to make him jealous–give him a little help with his commitment issues.

Um, what?  So, the best way to help someone who is a control freak is to make him jealous so that he becomes more controlling?  So, Kate wasn’t trying to get Ana to see what an abusive jerk Christian is–she was trying to make him “commit” to Ana.  As expected, Ana doesn’t tell Kate all about the Red Room of Pain.  Instead, she confesses that she’s fallen for Christian.  Kate, in a strange moment of not seeing Christian for the ass he is, tells Ana that she’s sure he’s fallen for her, too.  She says that if they haven’t professed their undying love told each other how they feel, they’d better get to it.

. . . Someone has to make the first move, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.

Kate, you have lost all my respect.

After the job interview and Kate the Great’s grilling session, we have to suffer through another round of “Ana and Christian exchange emails no one wants to read.”  These are always awful.  I guess the only positive is that we don’t have to read about Christian wearing his pants “in that way” or Ana’s Inner Fucking Goddess.  Instead, we get to read Ana referring to their morning desk sex as “impeccable.”

Now, I recognize the fact that I’m particular about word choice.  When I proofread, I’m not shy about saying that despite its dictionary definition, some words just should not be used the way the writer has used it.  E. L. James’ use of “impeccable” here is one of those times.  Didn’t her beta readers or her editor catch this one?  Yes, the word can mean “flawless” or “above reproach.”  In the sense of how it’s defined, no problem.  But I just don’t think it fits here.  Ana sounds like she’s trying to use big, impressive words.  If that had been the goal, I could be cool with that.  The problem is that it’s not–we’re supposed to see this as evidence of Ana’s skill with words.  Oh, look!  The college English major can use 4-syllable words!

Then we get this impossible to decipher response from Christian:

I shall take impeccable as a compliment–though I’m never sure if that’s what you mean, or if your sense of irony is getting the better of you–as usual.

I have no clue what he’s talking about.  Irony–you keep using that word; I don’t think it means what you think it means.  There is nothing in the emails that even remotely hints at irony.  Is he saying he can’t tell if she’s being sincere?  Or that saying they had perfect sex isn’t a compliment because she would rather have had lousy sex?  I’m not sure.  Either way, this exchange, which I suppose is meant to be witty banter, just comes across as nonsense.

Finally, we finish with Ana discovering that Christian has upgraded her to first class.  You know, I understand he’s a control freak, but I’m kind of thinking Ana should be a lot more upset about the incident in the boat house than about the fact that he bumped her to have a more pleasant flight.  If it weren’t for the fact that we’re going to have to read about Ana’s trip to Georgia (after all, it’s her point of view), I would celebrate this chapter ending with her getting on a plane.  I’m tempted to hope the plane crashes on a remote island populated by polar bears, button-pushing Scotsmen, and Michael Emerson.  Betcha that would cure some of Ana’s problems.

On second thought, even I’m not heartless enough to wish Ana on anyone.

50 Shades of Weirder than Usual

Posted by Amy in Books and tagged with , ,

Warnings: The Fifty Shades series is extremely sexually explicit and involves BDSM. Because of that, and because they are not exactly well-researched or high-quality literature, I will mention things such as abuse, rape, rape culture, male dominance, sexism, relationship violence, and consensual BDSM. Also, the books began as Twilight fanfic, so I will be mentioning Twilight (which is a major squick for a lot of people just by itself).

I’m not going to waste any more time on Chapter 20, even though there was another looooong sequence after the one I recapped last week.  Mostly it was just poorly-written smut and a bit of BDSM-lite, followed by a not-very-subtle attempt to drag out the details of Christian’s past.  We’re clearly going to get this in Twitter-friendly installments, so we might as well read all three books:

@AnaSteele The woman who brought me into this world was a crack-whore, Anastasia. Go to sleep. #SexyAngst

Anyway, moving on to Chapter 21.  At this point, it just has a lather-rinse-repeat feel to it.  The smut isn’t that great, the relationship sucks, and none of these people are anyone I want to know in real life.  I have to admit, though, that the first part of the chapter isn’t too bad.  There are–gasp!–a few things I almost liked.

First, although it wasn’t stellar writing, the sex scene in Christian’s study wasn’t awful.  If the rest of the book were a better story, it would have been kind of fun.  It’s a little like something out of a movie–he sweeps everything off his desk in order to have each other right then and there.  I do feel like these people are written like a stereotype of horny teenagers–they’re rarin’ to go at the mere mention of kinky office sex (which is why I said it wasn’t the best writing).  With a little more lead-up, that could have been both very hot and very romantic (that is, if it weren’t Christian and Ana).  My love for the fluffernutter variety of romance enjoyed it on some level.

It makes an odd juxtaposition, but I like the next part, too.  After they’re done, Christian reverts to Sullen Mode, and Ana has trouble figuring him out.  She says he’s acting “weirder than usual.”  What I liked about this is that if the author had been intentional about writing an abusive relationship, it would have been psychologically excellent.  So much of this book would be fantastic (if potentially triggering) if it had been intentional.  The problem for me is that I know where it’s going: Christian waxes angsty, Ana believes she can fix him with her love, he “matures,” and they live happily ever after.

Yeah, that’s pretty much crap and most people know that.

I have the same feelings about these stories where people “save” their partners with love that I do about failure to acknowledge sexual safety.  That is to say, I hate them both.  I recognize books as escapism and fantasy as much as the next person.  I love to lose myself in the characters and settings of a great book.  The book doesn’t need to be ocean-deep with life lessons, although I enjoy that too.  It just needs to be a good story.  There are so many wonderful ways to accomplish this–why do we need savior complexes in romance and sex without safety?  The argument that the story doesn’t reflect reality is complete and utter bullshit.

Stories reflect reality.  All of them.  It might be reality on the level of “these events could actually happen,” or it might be on an emotional, social, spiritual, or philosophical level.  The truth is, people enter into relationships like Ana and Christian’s all the time.  (I don’t mean the BDSM–I mean the domestic violence.)  The way she feels?  That’s real life for many people.  Selling it as potentially–or actually–romantic does a great disservice to the people who are living this hell.  “It’s just a fantasy” doesn’t cut it with me at all.

Even if Ms James didn’t have in mind to create a romance in which a woman saves her man from himself, that is, in fact, what she created.  She may not believe that domestic violence can be resolved by the victim giving more love, but she’s reflecting something that many other people do believe.  Intentionally or not, she’s written reality–and then twisted it to give readers the fantasy that it can have a happy ending.  That’s just plain irresponsible.

Over and over again, my feminist friends and I keep saying, “Words mean things.”  This doesn’t just apply to single words; it applies to whole stories.  The words in Fifty Shades mean something.  Bad writing or not, Ms James had the chance to say something profound with this story, and she chose not to do so.  She could have drawn the line between romance and abuse.  She could have turned this into a kind of psychological thriller.  She could easily have given everyone the happy ending they–and we–deserve by letting Ana break free from the abuse.  Heck, she could even have enjoyed something much more romantic.  But we’re all stuck with Christian Grey.  Talk about Fifty Shades of Wow, This Sucks.

Notable News: Week of April 13-19, 2013

Posted by Amy in Cool Stuff, Links, Writing and tagged with , , , , ,

It’s been quite a week–so much tragedy.  There is really nothing I can say here that hasn’t been said already; I echo all of it.

When the world is this bleak, I find that I need something to lift me out of that.  All I want is a good, fluffy book to read and something that makes me smile.  So today’s Friday links are all about the lighter side of things.

1. Friday Freebie

A bunch of fellow writers and I contributed to this e-book of poetry: Love Poems Deconstructed.  It’s free, and who doesn’t like free stuff?  I am definitely not a poet, but it was a fun experiment.

2. Friday F***

Well, technically not.  But it’s related!  After my post about condoms on Wednesday, both of the lovely women I mentioned in my post weighed in on the topic.  (They ‘fessed up their literary identities, so I feel comfortable linking to them now even though I didn’t previously name them.)  Many thanks to Adrian for reminding me that consent is sexy for men, too.  And Sirena, you are most definitely not a bad feminist!  I’ve read your story, remember?  You write women who are a) fantastic and b) pass the Bechdel test.  Kudos!

Also, on a side note, I found this while searching for condoms in romantic fiction.  I’m one of those awful people who actively looks for something that’s going to indicate these people are being safe and healthy.  There are exceptions, but I even expect it in some types of fantasy or science fiction.  And the woman who said in the comments that she never uses them because she’s sure she’s low risk?  Yeah, I have a degree in health science, lady.  You’re not getting one past me.  Go buy some condoms, for Pete’s sake.

3. Friday Funny

Another good one from Naked Pastor.  Insert sarcastic comment about how I don’t have any experience with this at all.  Nope.

4. Friday Fiction

Here’s the latest installment in the ongoing saga of the Royal Family of Hell.  If you haven’t read them, check out Part 1 and Part 2 first (or today’s won’t make much sense).

Have a great weekend, all.  Play safe (in more ways than one)!