Well that didn’t take long. What are we- just past 100 days or so and lots of peeps who were all “Obama is the one true shining hope of progress” are now seeing that no, he really isn’t pro-gay rights. And no- he really doesn’t think that women have the right to control what happens to their own bodies. And torture isn’t sooooo bad. And we’re still in Iraq but Obama’s getting more hawkish on Afghanistan.

In the mean time, bankers get a bail out but autoworkers get the shaft. Universal healthcare is a pipedream. Unemployment’s at 10 percent. And we have a majority in both the House and Senate, but aren’t doing any of those things we lefties dreamed about through the Rethuglikan revolution or 8 years of Bushco.

Since straight up logic or ethics aren’t working on the dear leader and the Dem party, I think I shall go back to my high school cheerleader roots with this happy little chant every time another progressive idea is squashed in favor of a centrist (read corporatist) approach.

Be fauxgressive! Be Be fauxgressive!

Anyone wanna join me on the new rah rah squad?

(Not exactly off topic, but I saw Simon Schama on Charlie Rose last night. He said that Obama has “19th century values” and is a “Christian hawk”. I think that explains it perfectly and Schama is totes on my list of Hot Brains I’d Like To……)

I was talking to Ruth and Nard last night about women in movies (we were talking about the Abyss in particular). I think it was Nard who asked why they always make the woman (singular- cause in movie land the world is made up of groups of 4 or more guys with a token chick thrown in) the scientist. She can’t be the action hero, but she has to have some reason to be there (unlike dudes, who can be completely useless tools and yet still get a part).

I think that a lot of entertainment creates female characters that are more like the mix and match book above, but everything below the head is always the same*. Head is scientist, torso of porn star, legs of super model. Head is ball busting bitch (who just needs to get laid), torso of porn star, legs of super model. Head is manic pixie dream girl. Head is mushy romantic singleton. Head is anxious and sexually unfulfilled career woman. Head dead set on bloody revenge of the people that have done her wrong (but the porn star/ super model body combo make the whole thing a joke cause a girl built like that could never take a punch, let alone throw one- I’m looking at you Tarantino and even Joss Whedon).

I watch a lot of movies where I don’t need to find the lead actor attractive to make the movie compelling or interesting. Think of fat Russel Crow in the Insider. Or Matt Damon (who I’ve never found physically attractive) in the Borne series. Actually, I’ve found Damon MORE attractive not because of his looks, but because of his feminist friendly comments over the years. Or any movie with a Tom (Hanks or Cruise) in it (ugh I hate them both). Or Brad Pitt (not my type).

But I am left, more often than not, feeling blah about the way women are written, because they are rarely written as people but as mix and match cutouts. Heaven forbid that the male half of the population should be made to possibly watch someone that they didn’t want to fuck. And I think about the stereotypes in movies and on tv and I don’t know a single woman that falls into them. I know scientists and mathgeeks. They are beautiful but not built like porn stars and they have a lot more going on in their lives than their movie versions do. They are also not unfulfilled because of their quest for knowledge. I know girls who look like they could be a manic pixie girl, but they don’t exist in real life as the humanizer of their boyfriends. I know soldiers and sailors who spend their free time painting their nails and wearing dresses. We are more complicated than cardboard cutouts. And we are more numerous than movies or tv would lead you to think.

I was thinking about this when Oceans 11 or 12 or whatever aired for the 57th time not so long ago. I think it was 12 cause it had Julia Roberts AND Catherine Zeta Jones in it. But they never once say a single word to each other in the whole movie. Oh and Cherry Jones (who I love) shows up at the end. 3 women. 12 + dudes. If the population of the world mirrored the population of movies, the human race would die out. The number of available wombs would simply be too few to repopulate the earth. And if the few women that exist entertainment world don’t talk to each other about anything other than the plethora of men in their lives, how would any of them know how to give birth?

Maybe that is why women get such flat roles to play. No one has any experience writing for them, at least at the same numbers that they write for men. Maybe that is why, even when women are portrayed as something other than a hooker, victim or doormat they still seem fake and uninteresting. Even “good” movies suffer. I watched the Reader last week, and god love Kate Winslet (who can do no wrong IMHO) but that movie blew Ralph Fines colored chunks. Winslet took a very narrowly written role and made something of it. But really her character was given very very little to work with. We know that she is poor. We know that she can’t read, but likes stories. We know that she is hardworking but terrified of being outed as illiterate. And we know that she has sex with a teenage boy (though we never find out why she finds him attractive, he’s kind of a git). That is it. From Winslet’s acting, we see t

(*- unless they are playing the sympathetic fat girl. But then it’s a chick flick and we don’t have to worry that male audiences will find the lead fuckable)

Roommates who refuse to buy toilet paper yet leave passive aggressive notes around the house about EVERYTHING else deserve to be shot.

Buy some fucking toilet paper you cheap ass bastard. It’s been 6 months already!

It’s beginning to become the standard refrain of the haves when they are about to be “punished” for their misdeeds. If we take away corporate bonuses, then no one with the kind of talent that led to the financial collapse will want to work in banking and finance anymore. If we make the rich pay taxes, then they will leave for their own private islands.

Now Rethuglikan “thinkers” (I use that term very very generously) say that if we prosecute civil servants for their role in torture, then we will have no civil servants left.

Please, please take your torture ball and go home. Theses are not the best and brightest that we need, now or ever.

I have a long and tedious history of educating the boys around me about feminism and the ways women are kept down. I can always see the conversations coming from a thousand miles away, saying the same things over and over and over again about how “women can’t stop rape, only rapists can” or having the same argument with same boy that I’ve had a million times. This is why feminism 101 exists. This is why we get tired. Why the fuckity fuck do we, the oppressed, have to educate the privileged over and over and over.

When I was pregnant with the Kid, I wanted a boy. Not because of family names or because boys are inherently better than girls. I was a bit terrified of what kind of mother I’d be to a girl. In my family, boys are so coddled and loved that we might as well be Chinese or Indian, and girls suffer. That’s how it is. And at 19 years old, I didn’t know if I had the skills to break that family tradition. I didn’t want to do to my daughter what had been done to me, or to my mother and aunts. Having a boy meant that I could skip all the reprogramming my brain would need. A boy I could just love, a girl would require much more serious therapy.

I’ve always been a feminist, from the time I was a little girl. It was always glaringly obvious to me how unfair it was that I was the one who got blamed for a messy house or who had to put their needs aside in favor of my brother. My mom showed up to every one of my brother’s baseball games (which he hated playing) but never went to single one of my volleyball or softball games, never came to watch me cheer a football or basketball game, and only showed up to state cheering competition when I begged. By the time I was the Kid’s age, my mom was doing everything she could to push me out of the house including moving into homes where everyone had a bedroom but me(and my anger at the whole situation made me happy to leave). Girls in my family are supposed to work their asses off, all the time. Boys get pats on the head just for trying.

It wasn’t until I cut off contact with my mother that I started examining the minutia of feminism, the things beyond access to work and reproductive rights. By that time, the Kid was 8. If he had been a girl, that poor child would have had 8 years of a life with a horrible parent. I’ve made some mistakes with the kid, but overall I’ve been a good mom to him. If he had been a girl, I don’t know that would have been true until a few years ago.

Please understand, this isn’t because girls are more difficult children. They aren’t. I cringe whenever someone says things like ” be thankful he’s a teenage boy and not a girl, then you’d be in real trouble”. The only thing that makes girl babies harder to raise is that society hates them so fiercely, and that parents are part of society. If the kid was a girl, right now I would be dealing with creepy middle aged men (and teenage ones too) who think growing boobs means a girl is asking to be sexually harassed. I would be walking a fine line between trying to keep her safe from rape without making her feel that not being raped is her responsibility. I would be trying to teach her that she is beautiful but that is not all she is when every message she gets from the world says that she must fix her physical flaws or no one will love her. The Kid is chubby, but if he was a chubby girl (highly likely given our genes) I’d be struggling with keeping him healthy and keeping him from an eating disorder (or an exercise disorder with a mild case of orthorexia- which is what I had). The biggest struggle I have with a chubby boy is finding pants that fit, and now that he wears grown up clothes it’s much easier.

Everytime I make the kid do the dishes is an act of feminist rebellion. The rule of the house is either you do the cooking or you do the clean up. But if he was a girl, I would just be reinforcing the idea that the house is the responsibility of the woman. My brother, at 32 years old, hasn’t washed a dish in forever. And I know cause he used to pay me to wash his dishes and do his laundry and clean his bathroom. The Kid knows how to scrub a toilet and used to help me with paid cleaning gigs.

Until a few years ago, I wouldn’t have even recognized most of these things as issues. I might have blindly gone into things in the exact same way my mother did. And at 19, I knew that there were all these tiny issues that needed to be dealt with, but I didn’t know what they were. So when the ultra-sound revealed that he was a boy, I felt relieved. This I could do. I could be a good mom to him.

Now 15 years later, I could be a good mom to a girl. Now there wouldn’t be an 8 year lag between me figuring my shit out and becoming a better parent. Now, most of the baggage from my horrid childhood wouldn’t be passed on to a girl child.

So when I read this, I took a deep breath and made a wish for this woman’s daughter.