Wonder Woman takes on evil and corruption...and bakes pies!

Women, ugh. Amiright?

That's what beginning iterations of Wonder Woman comics teach us. However, I wonder how effectively the message was absorbed because if you ask someone today they are all: Wonder Woman kicks butt!

They don't say: Wonder Woman did it all for love and her main fighting tactic isn't the truth lasso, it is her ability to act like a weak woman!

My hero!

Oh, and racism. Can't forget the racism.

General thought seems to say WW left her Amazonian utopia to help save people.

She actually does it to follow the man she loves (the only man she has ever seen, which seems like moving to Oregon to live with granola bars and then coming across chocolate...awkward).

Onto the action plot: operation save the world.

Now, I understand the yay USA, boo Nazis slant the first year of WW. It was during World War II. I get it. However, the propaganda is painted with such a wide brush that when the villains lose, they are always like: those pesky Americans are so courageous and loyal and determined, we can't defeat them!

That's like at a job interview, listing your main downfall as working too hard...

At least you get to see WW punch a lot of people. That is nice. But before the punching you have to make it through WW playing the role of weak woman AKA normal woman:



Also, just in case any one gets a big head with truth lasso's and bullet dodging cuffs and saving the day, let's all remember that - as women - our main concern is catching a man!


Looking back over the first year of Wonder Woman, I'm struck by the stereotypes, the racist portrayal of anyone who isn't a white American, and story lines the reinforce the fortitude of Americans - but also - Wonder Woman is NOT American. We all know that, right?

Wonder Woman is a patriotic immigrant, just trying to make her way in a new country.

She's just an amazingly strong girl standing in front of a boy with a weird angel complex, telling him she loves him.

Get in the wallpaper and fix me a sandwich

Dear Hark, a vagrant:

You've made my Friday.

xoxo

"It dwells in my mind so!"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

No make-up week (day) experiment

Rachel, my editor over at The Chi Guide and authoress of the inspiring blog Rabbit Write is ensconced in an experiment.

A no-make-up experiment.

Back Story
All week I've been wondering what kind of contribution I wanted to make to the no-make-up experiment cause. Then Rachel's post got put up on Jezebel and I was shocked at the negative feedback I was reading. Aren't my fellow feminists the main readers of Jezebel? So why, when it came to make-up were they all you-can-take-my-freedom-but-you-can't-take-my-MAC-lip-gloss?

Make-up and Dating
What about make-up and dating? You can argue who the audience of your make-up is, but if you are a single woman who might want to get married sometime in her lifetime I think we have to admit that our make-up is partly intended for possibly paramours or at the very least making ourselves feel great which in turn makes possible paramours notice us.

These days I almost never go out at night without make-up, but I also almost never put make-up on for weekend errand running.

Some might think you can't get dates if you aren't depicting your most fabulous (made up) self, but that's just not true. It might even be true that my future significant other will be interested in me regardless of if I applied a facade or not (shown by the fact that in college I mainly got numbers while in sweatpants, and make-up doesn't go with sweatpants).

Although, that could be inconclusive data as I was in sweatpants for 90% of college. Regardless, I find that if you truly connect with a person, whether or not you wore designer favorite eye liner is superfluous (regardless of what Cosmo tells us).

Case Studies
One weekend, I was going to visit a new boyfriend and I forgot all of my makeup. At first I was petrified. I started asking insecure questions as I was without my security make-up blanket.

And then I told myself to get-it-together. Why would I date someone who only likes the me in make-up? I wouldn't. And even if I did, would I date them forever with a mask of powders, blushes and liner on? No (and the weekend was fine).

The opposite is also true, however.

I recently dated someone who thought I should never wear make-up. That wearing make-up marred my beauty.

At first, you might say awww, he liked you and thought you were beautiful without make-up. But what does that insinuate? That I should feel lucky I found someone who can stand to look at me when my adornments are gone (hold on to him, you don't have to wear your make-up to bed!).

At the end of the day, what I do with my face/body/hair/nails is my business. My relationship with make-up is mine and isn't to be dictated by someone I like to kiss (unless my lip gloss is too sticky...such a deal breaker).

Make-up probably hasn't gotten me any dates, but it has kicked some unworthy prospects to the curb. So here's to you make-up, it might be just me and you at the end of the night.

Documentation
Today for Rachel I went sans make-up to work which naturally occurs about once a week. I like to play with make-up, but I like sleep more.

The photography requirement of the experiment isn't a call for compliments.

Instead, I ask: why does a make-up free face seem to beg for validation that it is still pretty?

"I don't make an effort to be sloppy. I just don't consider a perfect hairdo and a perfect face to be beautiful."
Juliette Lewis

You win Kerourac

I made it to page 139 of On the Road - which I think is a success as I only found 2 people who have actually read the book. If I had to describe On the Road in one word it would be: INDULGENT.

I'm not arguing that this style of "novel" didn't disrupt the literary status quo at the time and that was a positive thing. However, that does not make it quality literature and it does not make it something I need to read.

I prefer to leave On the Road where it should be: the book on everyone's to-read list because it makes them seem less yuppy-ish and yet never gets read.

My feminist bias also got in the way of reading this book for similar reasons as to why I boycott reading I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Regardless of the drugged out writing and the ignoring of grammar and the pointless blah-tangent-blahing and the hypocritical forging out into the country (but always with the option to mooch off the aunt for money)...I have extreme issues with Kerouac's treatment and description of women.

Examples? No problem.

Banging Chicks Schedule:
"There was always a schedule in Dean's life. 'The schedule is this: I came off work a half-hour ago. In that time Dean is balling Marylou at the hotel and gives me time to change and dress. At one sharp he rushes from Marylou to Camille - of course neither one of them knows what's going on - and bangs her once, giving me time to arrive at one-thirty. Then he comes out with me...Then at six he goes back to Marylou - and he's going to spend all day tomorrow running around to get the necessary papers for their divorce. Marylou's all for it, but she insists on banging in the interim. She says she loves him - so does Camille.'"

Disappointing virgins:
"She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. She sighed into the dark."

The ruining of the word 'in':
Lee Ann took all her clothes off and lay down to sun herself...I watched her...I wanted to jump down from a mast and land right in her..."

Summation of the novel:
"It was a complete meaningless set of circumstances that made Dean come, and similarly I went off with him for no reason."

Change of sentiment...
"The truth of the matter is we don't understand our women; we blame on them and it's all our fault."

...but not change of deeds:
"We played catch with Marylou over the couch; she was no small doll either."

...really not changing any deeds, and the ruining of the word 'work':
"We're buddies aren't we...Finally he came out with it: he wanted me to work Marylou...I knew he wanted to see what Marylou was like with another man."

...but don't worry it's because of issues - I leave you to discern the metaphor:
"Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came."

If I want to read meandering psychobabble filled texts, I'll stick with Anais Nin. Because at least she actually has meaning to her writing and calls the work what it is: A DIARY.

"I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
Kerourac

Us excellent women

Last night in class we discussed whether men actually want their women strong and independent or if they just say they do...and whether or not women also want to conform to the gender roles in place (wife, mother, housekeeper, slave, etc)...

How fortuitous as I just read a hilarious novel, which swirls around these topics, by the delightfully funny British author Barbara Pym. Now, the outside of her book, Excellent Women, portrays her as a 'modern' day Jane Austen. Opening the book I was all pshh, she is nothing like Jane Austen and I DON'T find this funny.



But her author picture is her with her cat, which is awesome. So I kept reading.

And then I started chuckling.

Because as with black and white stereotypes, black and white satire of these same stereotypes is incredibly entertaining. I think we can all agree that if we were to have a serious discussion on the topic of gender roles, the majority of the discussion (if it was rationally based) would take place in the tricky gray area of life.

However, the gray area is almost never funny.

And sometimes a girl needs a little funny. Especially when she is currently realizing that quirky funny might be her thing because when she is serious her mother calls her writing 'clinical'. Ouch.

And so I give you Barbara Pym's musing on marriage, men, and society:

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't feel this every time I go on Facebook...
"They all sounded so married and splendid, their lives so full and yet so well organised, that I felt more than usually spinsterish and useless."

Oh yeah, I have my college five year reunion coming up...
"We had neither of us married. That was really it. It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were."

Only if you are planning on manipulating him...
"I think it's much better to keep men in the dark about one's plans, don't you?"

To be fair, I know at least one women who also does this (Felicity from TV, I'm looking at you)...
"Men do seem to like the women they know to become friends,' I remarked, but then it occurred to me that of course it is usually their old and new loves whome they wish to force into friendship."

Honestly, who can remember to shower every morning much less put on an unwrinkled outfit...
"One should always start the day suitably dressed for anything, she had often told me. Any emergency might arise. Somebody - by which she meant a man - might suddenly ring up and ask you out to lunch. Although I agreed with her in theory I found it difficult to remember this every morning I dressed."

Typical...
"It was not the excellent women who got married but people like Allegra Gray, who was no good at sewing, and Helena Napier, who left all the washing up."

And, saving my favorite for last:
"'And perhaps you could help me with the index too? Reading proofs for a long stretch gets a little boring. The index would make a nice change for you'...I agreed. And before long I should be certain to find myself at his sink peeling potatoes and washing up; that would be a nice change when both proofreading and indexing began to pall. Was any man worth this burden?"

Oh, snap. After those last biting observations I'm so very tempted to answer NO. I'll hold off though and simply say thank you for the much needed chuckle Barbara Pym.

Now, do we think she writes a book on how to get the dim ring and the boring husband and the piles of work? No? I have to go to the self help aisle for that? Oh, okay. No thanks then, I think I'll just go make some delicious spinster tea instead.

"Perhaps I need some shattering experience to awaken and inspire me, or at least to give me some emotion to recollect in tranquility. But how to get it? Sit here and wait for it or go out and seek it?...I expect it will be sit and wait."
Barbara Pym

Ironically, if we never read the classics, we couldn't play these games

I was reading a book this morning. Shocker. The book in question concerns literacy.

During a case study discussion, a class reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" is presented. For people who haven't read the story, the book provides a one sentence synopsis: "The short story tells of a woman in the late 1800s who has a mental illness and becomes more obsessed each day with her bedroom yellow wallpaper."

I don't even know what the rest of the case study said because I was blinded with rage.

Going on a diatribe right now isn't healthy for the Zen state I am trying to embody, so I will just say: starting out crazy and dissenting into madness because your husband locks you in a room for months while reinforcing your instability every chance he gets are COMPLETELY separate issues.

Although, perhaps the authors are ON to something. What if we boiled other classic works down to single sentences that are inaccurate and missing the whole point? What would that look like? And once I start, will I be able to stop?

Thanks to E, P and M for playing the game with me...

The Scarlet Letter is about a single woman who had a baby.
Lord of the Flies concerns kids discovering an island.
Native Son is about a black youth who finds employment in a wealthy household.
Oliver Twist...homeless kids.
Pygmalion - an extreme makeover.
Wuthering Heights, a book about neighbors.
The Great Gatsby, new money.
Beloved - a woman, her daughter, and a young girl who comes to live with them.
Of Mice and Men - a big man with a 'little' name learns not to squeeze the things he loves.
The Odyssey, a journey of infidelity.

Why don't you give it a try? It really is so helpful. I'm really glad none of us have to bother reading any of the classics now.

"Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?"
DON'T TRUST HIM husband in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Men and women via Nin and Morton

The last two books I finished, I read in tandem. I read Anais Nin's Ladders to Fire on the bus because her writing demands upright, alert attention. Nin is not a bedtime read. Brian Morton's Starting Out in the Evening is, however. I would snuggle up in bed ready to savor every word, making sure not to read too fast lest the experience be finished prematurely.

I've folded down the pages I want to keep with me. I have returned to my favorite passages, and I find that the two works aren't dealing with such different issues. How does one go about this thing called being a woman or a man? What is love like? Morton and Nin also delve into being a writer and psychological aspects of life, respectively.

I feel the works are in dialogue with each other. One calls out and the other answers. I won't tell you which author wrote which quote, so just take in the following debate...


Point:
"When man imposes his will on woman, she knows how to give him the pleasure of assuming his power is greater and his will becomes her pleasure; but when the woman accomplishes this, the man never gives her a feeling of pleasure, only of guilt for having spoken first and reversed the roles."

Counter-point:
"A man can't understand how a woman feels - how she can offer up her entire life to him. The man thinks she's bringing him a burden. He doesn't understand that she's trying to give him a gift."

Rebuttal:
"For a man it is natural to be the aggressor and he takes defeat well. For a woman it is a transgression, and she assumes the defeat is caused by the aggression. How long will woman be ashamed of her strength?"

ROUND TWO

Point
"...there is a human being...spreading not his charms but his defenses, plotting to disrobe, somewhere along the night - his body without the aperture of the heart or his heart with a door closed to his body."

Counter-point:
"...to go to bed with someone - to carry your conversation into the realm of the body, a realm of insecurity and fear as well as pleasure - was always fraught with the sad evidence of how difficult it is to understand another person and make yourself understood."

Rebuttal:
"...flirting was a pleasure, and flirting with intelligent people - male or female - was one of the supreme pleasures of life."

Reading these books was a pleasure, an honor and perhaps even a flirtation.

"If reading a book is a naked encounter between two people, I have known you nakedly for years."
Brian Morton

Booky booky book book(s)

Lately my book reading has consisted of two categories: books I read for me, and books I read to prepare for teaching. This week it was The Group and Brave New World, respectively.

Mary McCarthy's The Group
A novel about a group of Vassar women? Sign me up. After reading The Group, I am officially a Mary McCarthy fan. This novel reads like an instruction manual for being a woman. It discusses everything from contraception, breastfeeding and family relations to marriage, abuse, lesbianism and the paradox of being highly educated and at the same time expected to fit a subservient role. Whew! And yet, it is also a well arcing story of a group of women who meander back and forth to each other while trying to forge their own way in the world. Not to mention the ending, oh the ending! Bittersweet indeed.

And now, for my favorite quote:

"She had discovered a sad little law: a man never called when you needed him but only when you didn't. If you really got absorbed in your ironing or in doing your bureau drawers, to the point where you did not want to be interrupted, that was the moment the phone decided to ring. You had to mean it: you had to forget about him honestly and enjoy your own society before it worked. You got what you wanted, in other words, as soon as you saw you could do without it, which meant, if Polly reasoned right, that you never got what you wanted."

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Well well well. In all my English class time I somehow have missed reading Brave New World. Last year I read 1984 for the first time. Apparently I put off reading dystopian literature. I decided to finally undergo Brave New World because at some point I will teach it and OMG there is s-e-x in it. The uncomfortableness created at the extensive talk of the genetic and chemical conditioning and accepted social strata thoroughly pleased me. It made me think, about how we are conditioned now...dun dun dunnn. Huxley surprised me in going the whole savage in a civilized world route with heavy religious overtones. And I must say, this week's reading is 2 for 2 on legit endings.

"The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich."
Carlos Ruiz Zafon