beauty

Day 11: Turning Point in Your Life.
The Power of Beauty, Nancy Friday.

Enter my first* accidental foray into feminism. In my then-boyfriend's bedroom, I had inadvertently picked up a book I once saw the cool girl in my homeroom reading. But turns out in my naiveté I had misread the titles and the homeroom-cool-girl had actually been reading The Beauty Myth. That fact alone validates my homeroom girl crush, I mean, what kind of a tenth grader reads Naomi Wolf? It took me four years to finish it, embarrassingly enough. Eventually, both books would go on to have a huge impact on me, Friday's simply because it was anecdotal enough to draw me in and simple enough for a budding feminists to understand.

*No wait, or was this my first foray into feminism?

poet.

We forgot about connectivity.

MISSrepresentation

I love seeing positive representation of women in the media.
Feminism doesn't seem to be doing so well here in Hong Kong; I've been hanging out with a new friend, the other day she complimented me, telling me that I was really funny, adding 'and I thought humour was only a male gene'.
A red light went off in my head, there's something up if there is a lesbian walking around your city thinking women can't be funny. Something terrible is obviously up.
How can little girls aspire to become their funniest selves when they don't know women can be funny?
We need more positive female role models on our screens, so girls know they can grow up to be cool, funny, powerful, strong, smart, opinionated, creative, or just generally awesome.
Via Jezebel.

choice

The Girl's Guide To Having An Abortion.
Did you know one in three American women have had or will have an abortion in their lifetime? For such a common and important medical procedure it is awfully hard to find comprehensive and straightforward information. Jezebel is here to help! I think it's really important to see more articles like this normalizing the still hush-hush topic.

The comments are really awesome too, you should read them. Here's a good one:

'If any woman in this nation doesn't have easy access to this spectrum of options, we cannot call ourselves civilized.'

GOD IS GAY

Kathleen Hanna is my hero.
'Rebel Girl' is my favourite song to sing on Guitar Hero, I constantly insist on singing screaming it, so much so that none of my friends will play Guitar Hero with me anymore.

Shirin

Women Without Men has been on my Mubi watch list since forever ago and I still haven't gotten around to seeing it yet. But, today I googled some stills from the film and aren't they breathtaking?
Women Without Men follows the lives of four women in Iran is directed by acclaimed visual artist Shirin Neshat.

TIFF

There are two films I really want to see for TIFF this year, the first one is All About Love by the acclaimed Hong Kong New Wave director Ann Hui, she is well known for her directorial work in Night and Fog, Boat People and The Way We Are. Hui's new film is about two queer women in Hong Kong, how could I not support that? It's pretty groundbreaking and gutsy considering how conservative Hong Kong culture is and the fact that the film won't be able to be distributed in China as they have a ban on films dealing with gay subject matter.
The second film is !Women Art Revolution - A Secret History, it's "filmed over four decades, this inspiring cultural history tracks the struggles and breakthroughs of women artists from Judy Chicago to Guerilla Girls to Miranda July and more".

Wolf

"We can dress up for our own pleasure, but we must speak up for our rights." - Naomi Wolf.

myth

Angelica Saved by Ruggiero from the cover of The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

I've literally been reading this book for four years, my roommate from 1st year can testify, but it's just cause I've been reading it like this, but I'm finally on the last few pages. The book is endlessly fascinating, enlightening and at times disturbing, you should most definitely read it.

"The Beauty Myth examines beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women. Wolf examines how modern conceptions of women's beauty impact the spheres of employment, culture, religion, sexuality, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgery.

Wolf argues that women in Western culture are damaged by the pressure to conform to an idealized concept of female beauty—the Iron Maiden throughout modern society, from Victorian Times to today. She argues that the beauty myth is political, a way of maintaining the patriarchal system. It allows women to enter the labour force, but under controlled conditions. She also claims that this system keeps women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. The beauty myth is sometimes viewed as succeeding The Feminine Mystique, which relegated women to the position of housewife, as the social guard over women. In this sense, Wolf claims that public interest in a woman's virginity has been replaced by public interest in the shape of her body."

From Wikipedia.

Breillat!

Catherine Breillat is a brilliant director, I haven't seen that many of her films but the works I have seen has struck me as incredibly brave and masterful. On top of that, Breillat is always pissing people off with her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. This month Cinematheque Ontario is doing a retrospective on Breillat's works titled Anatomies of Desire. I'm most likely going to watch Bluebeard and The Last Mistress, which is playing this Thursday and August 9th respectively.

Bluebeard

Barbe bleue is a “brilliantly written, exquisitely realized feminist reworking of the cautionary mixed message in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale” (Amy Taubin, Artforum). Narrated by two young sisters huddled away in their attic to read the titular tale, the film unfolds from their imaginations like a stylized seventeenth-century pageant play reminiscent of Demy’s Peau d’âne and Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois. Naïve and courageous Marie-Christine (Lola Créton and her dancing big brown eyes) is the young, impoverished girl willing to wed the big, bearded brute (Dominique Thomas) in order to save her family from starvation and ruin. Breillat’s touch is in every detail, and her characteristic insights into the psychology of female desire, curiosity, fantasy and sibling rivalry—a curious parallel universe is created between the sisters reading the book and the fairytale sisters separated by marriage—are at the core of the film, yet Barbe Bleue is noticeably devoid of the explicit sex and sex talk that have come to define the director’s reputation. “I can't think of a better image to represent Breillat's cinema en toto than a shot of the massive, shirtless Bluebeard being watched unnoticed by his waif, virgin wife. Brilliant film” (Darren Hughes, Long Pauses).

Top three photos: The Last Mistress, last photo: Bluebeard.

Thelma & Louise

Thelma & Louise is a totally kick ass film in which two heroines lead us through danger, adventure and crime through the desert in their '66 Thunderbird. This film definitely passes The Bechdel Test, meaning: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.
At first, Thelma drove me nuts but she does eventually redeem her self through some hilarious badassery. So, if you haven't seen this movie yet, get on it! It's an essential feminist film. Also check out Essential Films by Women, people on Mubi.com make such great lists.

"sweet and satisfying"

Caramel is one of the best films I've seen in a while. Beauty salons are a special place, true they do their part in holding up the Beauty Myth and drain woman's wallets but it is an intimate environment for women to bond and I love the chatter and the massages.
The first part of the film couldn't be embedded, but just go on youtube to watch the whole thing.

"On one hand, women are trained to be competitors against all others for "beauty"; on the other, when one woman - a bride, a shopper in a boutique - needs to be adorned for a big occasion, other women swoop and bustle around her in generous concentration in a team formation as effortlessly choreographed as a football play. These sweet and satisfying rituals of being all on the same team, these all-too-infrequent celebrations of shared femaleness, are some of the few shared female rituals left; hence their loveliness and power. But sadly, these delightful bonds too often dissolve when the women reenter public space and resume their isolated, unequal, mutually threatening, jealously guarded "beauty" status."
- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.