Promise of A "Fairy-tale Life"

Lately I have been noticing the implications of the “fairy-tale life” that is spoon fed to young girls, well all women if I am being honest.

As soon as it is announced, “It’s a girl”, there is assumption that this little person is in need of rescuing. While this is not always conscious I would argue that to some extent it is always there. If you look at the ways in which people interact with babies this is clearly demonstrated. How do you act with a little boy? You through him in the air or bounce him around on your knee. If it was a baby girl, you are more likely to play peek-a-boo or tickle her to make her smile. These different styles of interaction clearly show a gender distinction. Why not through the baby girl in the air or tickle the baby boy? Because you are both consciously and unconsciously making a distinction between the two children, based on the fact that one was born with a penis and one with a vagina.

As the child grows older, we transfer our expectations into actions. As I have said before, I am presently working in a children’s store. When I am at work it absolutely drives me crazy but the first two questions I am supposed to ask someone when they are looking for a present for a child is: what is the child’s age and what is the child’s gender. Once I know those two things I point them in gender stereotyped directions. Little girls go to the dolls and crafts, little boys to the cars and dinosaurs. I try and sneak other options in there, but it is only like 1 in 30 times am I successful. The most successful I tend to get is when you get to the animal figurine section, which are apparently ‘gender neutral’. These children, are partitioned into boy and girl and TRAINED how to act their sex. In fact, from my interactions with children, they are bigger gender police than a lot of adults.

But what really gets me is the notion that is presented to little girls of the princess culture. (For the purposes of this article, when I refer to princess culture I am referring primarily to Disney Princesses, as they are the most stereotypical of my argument.) Truthfully I have mixed emotions about the princess culture. One the one hand, they tell young girls you can achieve the world. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, Belle does not want to settle for a life with the stuck-up, self-centered, arrogant, asshole that is Gaston. Instead she wants to find something more with her life. If you cannot see me right now I am applauding you Disney, good job! Pat yourself on the back! But at the same time, each of these young princesses is so defined by their prince, their knight in shining armour, their “savour”. If you think of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, both women needed to be awakened from their spell by their ‘true love’. Aurora and Snow White are not the only princesses that needed to be rescued: Belle was saved by the Beast from marrying Gaston and Cinderella was saved from her ‘miserable’ life by her prince. All these women were rescued or saved by the man of their dreams.

Not too long ago I was babysitting for a young girl who is in love with the princess culture. As I was tucking her into bed, it was her decision as to what book we read. She chose a book of princess weddings. The book consisted of two pages of each princess as they got prepared for their wedding and got married to their prince. Some princesses had to pick out their dress, while others just admired their decorations or how lucky they were to marry their prince. It really makes me wonder what we are telling young girls today. Princesses can be strong role models, however when you are defining them in terms of their prince, I do not at all think that the princess culture is teaching young girls any positive messages. We are telling young girls that your prince will save you, you will ride off into the sunset and live “Happily Ever After”. That may be the case for some women but it is anything but the norm.

To me it is like looking at the depictions of women in the media, they are all skinny, pretty and preppy and then looking at women in real life. Women in real life come with curves and personalities. It is unrealistic to tell young girls that they are guaranteed to happily ever after, in particular to define their happiness by the man in their life. Why can’t we teach young girls to stand up for themselves, to in a way be their own prince, to be their own “savour”?

The “Fairy-tale Life” that we are telling young girls exists is unreasonable and irresponsible. These princesses are smart, intelligent and capable women, that much does come off viewing their stories, however I would really love to see a princess who finds her own happy ending. She can have a prince (or even another princess – why not have a queer princess, but that is a whole other can of worms), by her side but why can’t we see a princess kick ass! Prince’s fight dragons and save the day. Where is our Joan of Arc in children’s form? Please Disney if you are reading this, people would love to see a princess that saves her own day. Without it we are telling young girls their life is in another’s hands. Women are the subject of their own lives not the object, so let her kick some ass please! (and thank-you!)

Compelled to Marry

Whether it is the holidays or just the right time, for some reason, I have a handful of friends and family that have gotten engaged. While I am excited for all of them and wish them all nothing but the best, I am starting to question the obligatory feelings we have to rush into marriage and a family. Most of the individuals I know that have just announced this grand new (4 out of 5 individuals) are under the age of 23, one just turned 20 before Christmas. I myself am a couple weeks away from being 21 and could not imagine having a ring on my left ring finger let alone preparing to manage a household and potentially a family. It may also partially be because I am single that I cannot image such things for myself, but being so young I feel I have to world and my fingertips and cannot wait to explore it.

            Some of the couples that have recently announced their engagement have not been together that long, the longest relationship out of the all of them is 6 years however a very rocky six years. The next longest is a year and a half. At our age how can we really know that it is someone that we want to spend our life with if we have only known them for such a short period of time. Let alone how can we truly understand what it is to be married. Marriage is a life commitment. Not a week, or a year but a lifetime! Don’t get me wrong I am pro-marriage however I do not think it is something that ANYONE no matter your age should rush into or take lightly.

            These people do love each other, I cannot deny that (or even speak of their love because I am not a part of their relationship, just an external viewer) but why do these couples feel so obliged to proclaim their love. What is wrong with waiting a little while longer. Why not continue dating or even live together. Why do these couples feel the need to legally bind their love and commitment to one another. What is our social fancination with legally binding love. Why can’t love be freeform, go with the flow. Why after such as short courtship are these individuals feeling compelled to legally bind themselves to their partners.

            I cannot speak of what it is like to be married, but it does not make sense to me. Does someone else have insight that I don’t have?

Right to Life

I found this story and my stomach began to churn. In Texas a 14-year-old girl has placed a Temporary Restraining Order against any member of her family, after they attempted to force her to get an abortion. From what I have read into the situation, it came to the point of physical violence against the pregnant teen in attempt to persuade her to terminating her pregnancy. At present she is under the protection of the Texas Center for Defense of Life, where no member of her family is able to contact her in any form. According to what I read, the unborn baby’s father and his mother are both in support of seeing the pregnancy to term. I am definitely glad to hear she isn’t completely alone in this matter. (article)

            What really gets me about this case is not the legal stance of it all, but the young girls rights over her body and her pregnancy. Yes, her having a baby at a young age will affect her entire family to some degree; however they are not the one that is carrying this child. It is not directly their future child or their body!

I am proudly pro-choice. However, in my opinion, pro-choice to me means that you have complete freedom over your options. That could mean you have the right terminate the pregnancy, keeping your child or even adoption. I truly believe that the final decision is your own and no one else’s. It makes me really sad that this decision was removed from the pregnant teen. I understand she is underage, however she is still old enough to know what she wants and does not want to happen with her body. If this young woman was raped you would completely consider this her body.  however because she engaged (in what I am assuming is) consensual sex and consequently ended up pregnant, it is no longer her body or her decision. That doesn’t seem right to me. Under all circumstances it is and should be her body. Whether it was forced or consensual that doesn’t change that is her body and thereby her decision. 

Women are Women, Girls are Girls

Sorry for the large gap in time where I haven’t blogged. As everyone can contest, life gets crazy. I know that isn’t an excuse but that is mine. I will do my best to continue blogging as the new semester begins however school is a priority so I am sorry if I am absent for a while.

Anyway, I have something that I have really really really wanting to blog about for awhile now. Over the Winter Break I watched the movie “50 First Dates”. Such a good movie, or at least I think so. However in one of the very last scenes (*spoiler alert* sorry overt eyes if you haven’t watched the movie and do not want it ruined for you) Adam Sandler, aka Henry, goes to the memory hospital (unsure of its actual names so I will refer to it as the memory hospital) and reunites with Drew Barrymore, aka Lucy. Lucy suffers from a short term memory, so basically she has difficulty forming new memories and relives the same day over and over again. When Henry and Lucy reunite at the hospital Lucy shows Henry her art studio which contains a collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures of Henry. At this point Henry reveals that they had a past… blah blah blah… insert typical romantic comedy jargon here. At the end of this scene Henry says (I am saying quote from memory so please do not directly quote me, however I know the just, but not the exact wording) “It appears I am the man of your dreams, and you are the girl of mine.”

            Umm… excuse me?! “Girl of my dreams”. Why not woman, lady or person. But girl?!?! Why is he infantizing this woman who he loves. In a way it sounds very perverted that a woman falls in love with a man but a man falls in love with a girl.

            When I thought about it this is not exclusive to “50 First Dates”, has anyone ever watched “Toddlers and Tiaras”. A lot can be said about that show, that I won’t even be able to touch the surface but it helps to demonstrate my point. You look at those little girls, who are genuinely little girls of 4 or 5 years, or even younger (and older as well). These girls are put into Spanx and fake eyelashes and then pranced in front of 100’s to 1000’s of people. They are transformed into little women. May I add slutty little women, but little women none-the-less. They are girls, yet when we look at actual women they are now held against the standard established by these prostitotes. To be an actual woman you have to evolve from the image of these pagent princesses and evolve into a woman. However there is not much room to evolve if we are making these actual little girls into women while they are girls.

            How can actual women be women, if little girls are told to be women. Why can’t girls be girls and women be women. Why do we not distinctly differentiate between the two. Instead we have come to think of women and girls as the same entity. Women are girls and girls are women. To society they have become the same thing. This is wrong on so many levels. Girls should be girls. They should be allowed to be kids, not aged 20 years before they are out of diapers. At the same time women should be women. Allowed to dress and act as an adult and not treated the subconscious mindset that they are children.

            So to the writers and producers of "50 First Dates", good movie however Henry found the "WOMAN of his dreams"! NOT the "GIRL of his dreams".

Even 4-year-olds Know it is Wrong

This little girl has made my day! If you have not yet seen this video take a minute and watch it! Maybe some ignorant adults will then start to realize that gendered toys ultimately isolate children into gendered life patterns and can therefore be oblivious to other life opportunities. So what if a little girl wants a superhero and a boy wants a princess. Take a lesson from Riley, the little girl in the video. Even she knows it's wrong.

Accepting Imperfection

Finals are finally finished and I can resume blogging! YEAHS!!! There have been so many things that I have wanted to talk about but couldn’t slip away to write.

One of the most predominate one being H&M’s models. If you have not already, it was discovered that all the models appearing in H&M’s advertisements (of any sort) are actually computer generated. The heads of the models are those of actual people, however everything below the neck is a computer creation. When asked about this, Mr. Andersson a H&M spokesperson’s response was: “This is not about ideals or to show off a perfect body, we do this to demonstrate an item of clothing.”

Excuse me?!?! If the entire purpose of this is to demonstrate an article of clothing then why not use real life models?! Why are fashion companies so afraid of the “imperfections” of the human body? It has long been standing that advertising uses altering techniques such as airbrushing and Photoshopping, to “perfect” the images before they are presented to the public. However, H&M has reached an all-time low. These are not just altered women they are electronically generated images. If you ever thought that images presented before were unrealistic, this is a whole new level of low in my opinion. Women do not all have the same dimensions of arms, chest, bust size, butt size, anything. Each woman is unique, and I really don’t understand why advertising cannot use the uniqueness of each woman to their advantage.

My favourite quote in response to this is from Seth Matlins (told to the Huffington Post): “To all involved, we say, keep doing what you are doing what you’re doing if you must – just tell us you’ve done it. Maybe then we will realize that the women in those ads and spreads are about as real as Avatar, and thus, we’ll see it as escapism and not as realism to which we don’t measure up.” Maybe asking these companies to stop altering these images is “unrealistic” and if it is why cannot we make it even more evident that these images are not real. Make it so that we openly know that these images are false, and maybe from there we can deconstruct them as not relevant to our ideas of beauty. Distinctly distancing real women from advertising women as two distinctly separate things. 

And You Thought You've Had a Bad Date

I am a regular reader of Jezebel. I have to say I rather enjoy their satirical views and coverage of everyday events and issues. Today when skimming the headlines, I found this article, "Investment banker proves daing is getting even more crappy". If you have any time it definitly worth the read!
If you only have time for the letter, here is what you should know before reading. A couple "Lauren" and "Mike" went on date at the NY Philharmonic. While Mike felt the date went extremely well, Lauren did not feel the same way. Okay you should be good to read the letter now.
Reading this letter, I could not believe it. Man, Mike has some guts. I know that I have had all the thoughts that he is thinking in my head after the being in his shoes, but I would NEVER write this kind of letter. And if this kind of letter was ever written to me, I would consider filing for a restraining order. There is a serious difference between thinking these things and acting on these thoughts.