Baby Bart? On American Idol?

Studies like this - or rather, articles like this - drive me crazy.

'Baby Einstein': a bright idea?

Infants shown such educational series end up with poorer vocabularies, study finds. Researcher says 'American Idol' is better.

By Amber Dance, Times Staff Writer
August 7, 2007

Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today.

(emphasis mine)

Studies never say shit like this, and while I realize that newspapers need to try to sell information/newspapers, they can do so while being scientifically accurate. First of all, the writer should have used "may be" rather than "are." (for reasons I'll go into in a bit) and "according to the results of a" rather than "according to a" because the way it's written now makes it sound like they are paraphrasing rather than interpreting the study. Also, the bit about American Idol needs to be crossed off. It's eye catching to be sure, but since the exact quote (found at the end of the article) is:

"I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them — which does have developmental benefits.

(emphasis mine)

it's misleading in the extreme. Headlines should not act like all the adorable newsboys in Newsies.

So, what does the study say? Well, the article has three whopping paragraphs about the actual study (about a third to a quarter of the total story):

For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.
...

Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies' vocabularies using a set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.

The researchers found that 32% of the babies were shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown them for more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

....

Christakis said children whose parents read to them or told them stories had larger vocabularies.

Two things stand out.

First, that half the parents who showed their kids the videos had their kids watch them for more than an hour a day, which (I believe) goes against the instructions on the videos. It definitely goes against common sense. Considering how much time babies/toddlers spend sleeping and eating and how much time they need to spend talking to people and doing physical activity, doing anything other than these four things for more than an hour a day is generally not a good idea. It's not the positive act of watching the videos that's the problem, it's the negative act of not doing the talking and the moving around. So, as long as you make sure your baby/toddler spends a lot of time doing these things, there's really no reason to think that you are dumbing your baby down by popping in a video every once in while. And since the study didn't divide up kids who watched up to an hour and kids who watched more than an hour, it doesn't really tell us more than were already knew, or could have guessed.

Secondly, the way the last sentence is phrased suggests that there are two groups of parents, the ones who show their kids videos and the ones who talk and read to their kids. In reality, there are three, parents who show their kids videos, parents who talk and read to their kids, and parents who do both. (Well, four, there are also parents who do none of these things, but we don't need a study to tell us that this control group would have a lot of developmentally lagging children.)

This is why the "are" instead of a "may be" annoys the crap out of me. My niece and nephew have had both Baby Einstein videos and a crazy amount of books since day one. They've always been read to a lot and have only watched more than an hour of television a day on very rare occasions. I don't know if the Baby Einstein videos have helped or hurt them or neither, but they are most definitely not Homer Simpsons. And since having to sit with them while they watch videos and cartoons would have taken away one on my sister's breaks and made her more frazzled and worn out during the rest of the day, I very strongly disagree that watching American Idol or anything else with my sister would have been to anyone's benefit.

As I understand it, the Baby Einstein videos were not created to make babies smarter so much as they are meant to be media that is developmentally appropriate for babies and toddlers. In my opinion, the Baby Einstein videos are developmentally appropriate as long as you follow these three conditions:

1) no more than an hour a day (preferably less than an hour and not every day) - except on rare occasions.

2) stick to the ages recommended as much as possible (it's ok to bend the rules if your kid is above or below the curve and if your kid as become obsessed with a particular topic)

3) Repetition. Don't buy a bunch and show a new one each day, start with just one or two and show the same one for an entire week - or even month, if you are only showing them videos a couple times a week.

We've already discussed rule number 1. Rule number 2 is there because the concepts in the videos are broken down into age appropriate concepts and matched with age appropriate pacing and dialogue.

The article describes the videos as

The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.

Which isn't really accurate. They do not "hop from scene to scene" - at least not compared to most TV/movies. They are very slow paced, with much fewer cuts per minute, and tend to include a lot of logical transitions. Seriously, minutes will go by at times without a cut*, which pretty much doesn't happen in regular TV unless you're watching a show by Joss Whedon or the like.

The minimal dialogue is good for the babies, who don't benefit from dialogue on screen the same way they benefit from the conversation around them.** The "dialogue" in the videos for babies is meant to act like a parent consistently pointing to a dog and saying "dog." They pretty much repeat a handful of vocabulary words at appropriate times. Which, no, does not work as well as having the child interact with others, but it is better than lots of dialogue on screen. The videos for older toddlers have more actual dialogue than what babies can follow on screen, and that's part of the reason why it's best to stick to the recommended ages.

Rule 3 is there to remind parents that kids need repetition in order for things to sink in. That's why the videos will repeat the same images and words over and over again. That's also why your kid will ask for the same book over and over again. One of the TV shows that has been proven to increase kid's vocabulary and thinking skills, Blue's Clues, only really does so when the repetition that the creators intended (the same show repeated throughout the week) is followed.

Videos are not a substitute for parent-child interactions or books and stories. But considering how much information adults get from media like TV, it's about time we started thinking critically about how to make our kids media saavy in ways that go beyond "advertising bad" and "TV bad." Part of that includes more nuanced studies than just "reading is better than watching movies!" Well, considering the state of the media, duh. But until we acknowledge that moving pictures can be more than just entertainment, very few of them will be anything other than entertaining.

****

*A noticeable one, anyway. Some of the videos have skits with puppets, and there will be cuts between the skits when the puppets are offstage, but you have to know what you are looking for to see them.

**A caveat: while still not as good as person to person conversation, dialogue that rhymes a lot (songs, nursery rhymes, poetry, Dr. Seuss books on tape) should work as well as the concentration on particular vocabulary words. The idea is that, because babies have a harder time following dialogue on screen, you want to focus on one thing instead of expecting them to pick it all up together. Having mostly words that rhyme allows them to focus on the sound of language, rather than the meaning of words. This is the one area I think the Baby Einstein videos are lacking in, they concentrate too much on vocabulary and not enough on the other parts of language that babies need to learn.

PSA

As usual, I don’t know what the fuck Scott is trying to say here. One would assume that he is either trying to make fun of people who call him names or trying to say that people shouldn’t call hi-….er…other people names, but in a funny way.

But for some reason he’s decided that the insult “misogynistic douche” is, in and of itself, snark worthy. (Which, it kinda is, but not for the reasons he goes into.) So he asks, "What would a misogynistic douche look like?"

A “misogynistic douche” would look like, well, a douche. Seeing as how the premise of the douche is that the most female of female parts is so dirty that one not only needs to clean it out regularly*, but that sometimes it needs to be cleaned out with bleach. (Yes, bleach.)

In case this is news to anyone (other than Scott), here is the PSA: douching is NOT a Good Idea. (Unless your doctor prescribes it.) It tends to cause problems rather than prevent them because it messes up your body's natural defenses. Even when all you use is water. It is even thought that douching may increase the risk of having an ectopic pregnancy and all sorts of other nasty stuff.

The question should not be "what do we need to put in douches to make them misogynistic?" , but rather, "why was using water not misogynistic enough?" and "What in god’s green earth moved Lysol to advertise (once upon a time) as a feminine hygene product?" And "why the fuck would anyone write a post contemplating ways to make douches more misogynistic than they are?"

The insult “misogynistic douche” is a bit redundant, and I can see making fun of it for that reason. But otherwise….as usual, Scott rants just make me very, very glad that I never have to deal with him in person.

*Yes, we all bathe regularly. We do not, however, all have enemas regularly. Or, in general, at all - at least not outside of non-mainstream porn or the doctor's office.

Coolness - and Not So Coolness

While going through the latest Jade Reporting post, I learned about an online clan for XBox that consists of kids ages 8 to 16, chaperoned by an adult. The clan, GR8, is all sorts of cool, giving kids reasons to finish their homework and stay away from gangs and the presence of adults helps the kids learn to be good sports and even pick up school related knowledge (like negative numbers) that would likely have taken them much longer to figure out on their own.

Unfortunately, the articles are all about the fact that various groups of assholes will often come and harrass the kids and parents (often - always? - moms) with all kinds of graphic language - and then report the parent as an abuser when they kick the offending parties out of the room.

Moving Picture Books

A co-worker came and told me yesterday - quite excitedly - that they are making movies of Where the Wild Things Are, Horton Hears a Who, The Tale of Despereaux, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. (There were a couple others, but I'd either already heard about them - Spiderwick, The Dark is Rising - or I can't remember them at the moment.)

I don't think she got the reaction she expected.

Now, unlike some librarians and teachers I know, I'm really happy that Hollywood has decided to start making kids books into movies. When they are well done (and despite The Dark is Rising's likely suckitude, most of them have been very well done lately) I think they expose kids to good stories they may not have heard otherwise and it gets them interested in reading books they not have read otherwise. If they are done well, they leave the kids wanting more and are true enough to the spirit of the books that kids aren't annoyed by the books when they get a hold of them or, more rarely, are different enough from the books that each ends up complimenting the other.

The problem is, most of the good adaptations have been done on kid's novels. There is one decent adaptation of a kid's picture book, and that was Zathura, and Zathura, being about an adventure that we are given minimal details about, is uniquely adaptable. (And I suspect that, after the success of Jumanji the book and the awfulness of Jumanji the movie, it was deliberately written to be adaptable.)

So, I was skeptical when I heard the news. It's really hard to take a 32 page book with only several hundred words and adapt it well and come out with a commercially viable movie. How good these movies are will depend a lot on who is doing them and how willing they are to break the mold.

Unfortunately, most of what I want to know is not available. How long is the story? Are they intended to be kid's movies, or family movies? Did the filmmakers consider the developmental age of their target audience? Does the movie have not just the same story and characters, but the same pacing and the same age appropriate metaphor and symbolism?

Because , you see, the problem is that most people have no idea how to make movies for little kids. Hollywood can make Disney style movies that are for families really well. They've got that down pat. But they generally don't have any idea how to make a movie that is meant for kids. They don't seem to understand what it is about these books that is so appealing to young children, so the movie adaptations tend to only be superficially the same as the books. Despite appealing to all ages, Where the Wild Things Are and Horton Hears a Who are very much books for little kids, and I worry that they plan to make family movies out of them.

What's the difference between a kid's movie and a family movie, you ask? The same difference there is between a picture book and a good read aloud novel like Charlotte's Web.

First of all, they are shorter and the basic plot is simpler. Because kids are so entranced by TV/movies, the issue of length isn't one of boredom, it's about how much kids are able to understand the first time around. In order to be understandable by preschoolers, as Where the Wild Things Are is, the basic plot needs to be digestible in one sitting. The meaning of the story and nuances of the plot come with repetition, but if the story is most appropriate for their age/development, their answer to "what happened?" will usually cover the most fundamental plot points. Most kids will answer something about Max going to live with the Wild Things, spending time with the Wild Things, or leaving home and coming back. But if you ask a preschooler who just saw Cinderella for the first time what happened in it, they aren't as likely to give you the basic plot. They are more likely to say something about the mice than they are about the stepsisters. It's much harder for them to make sense of something that long and complicated on first viewing.

This isn't to say that kids shouldn't be exposed to longer stories. They most definitely should. However, they need to practice not only following complicated plots, but also understanding what stories mean. Especially in elementary school, the novels that teachers analyze with kids tend to be just a bit shorter and a bit easier to read than what the average student is capable of finishing. (Which confuses parents - who will sometimes be all "but my kid read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in class in fifth grade - it's fifth grade level reading!." Um, NO. It's third/fourth grade level.) This is because it's much harder to read for meaning when you are spending so much time working on the mechanics of reading. The same is true with movies. If preschoolers are spending a lot of time trying to follow what is happening, they aren't spending as much time absorbing the emotions and meaning involved.

Focus and repetition are also important for the same reasons. The side plots with the Cinderella's mice confuse preschoolers, but the various activities that Max engages in do not, in part because Max activities are repetitious, but the side plots in Cinderella are not. Max's activities with the Wild Things are not only all of the same variety (until he says "Stop!"), they also mimic the one side plot in the story - Max interactions with his mother. The former helps kids group them into a single plot point and the latter helps them not get caught up in trying to keep track of irrelevant information. It also makes it easier for them to recognize the metaphor in the story, because it's a pretty damn obvious one.

Last of all is pacing. The repetition in Where the Wild Things are - not just repetition in the text, but between text and the illustrations - makes for really slow pacing, despite the energetic action involved. Kids are given time to let each phrase or sentence sink in before moving onto the next. Part of why a lot of TV fascinates children is because it does the exact opposite. Frequent cuts, fast pacing, lots of stuff going on. They find it interesting largely because it's a challenge to to catch everything, and there is no failure because you are always going to catch something. Kids live for challenges, especially ones that have a high success rate and therefore don't often get frustrating. However, these aren't the shows that kids love. There is a reason why one of the most beloved children's shows, Mister Roger's Neighborhood, is painstakingly calm. If you watch the shows that are popular among preschoolers, you'll notice that a lot of them move much more slowly than shows that are popular among older kids.

There's a lot of good television for children that follow these basic rules, (plus a lot of other stuff): Charlie and Lola, Blue's Clues, and Mister Rogers, just to name a few. But there aren't as many good movies for kids, especially outside of direct to video. Most of the movies that do follow these rules tend to not fit the mold of what makes a successful commercial movie. Such as The Heffalump Movie, which manages to have more going on than the toddlers it appeals to can understand on first viewing, and yet not so much that toddlers walk away not understanding the basic plot: two animals/kids meeting and becoming friends. My niece may have become obsessed with both Cinderella and Lumpy upon watching their movies, but it was the basic plot of Lumpy's story that she was able to understand and therefore chose to constantly re-enact. I really hope that the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are will be the kind of movie that kids want to re-enact rather than just wanting stuff with Max on it.



FYI

This is what I've found so far: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is so far back in the pre-pre-pre production stage that we've got squat. It's also the one that I'm worried about the least, because I think it's the easiest of the three to adapt.

Where the Wild Things Are is being done by Spike Jonze. There is one picture available on the web, and I must admit, I saw it and went oooohhhh. Max in his Max suit looks freakin' adorable and you look at (what you can see of) the Wild Things and you think "I can see someone looking at those and coming up with Sendak's illustrations." Which is the right way to go, rather than trying to bring something that looks like Sendak's Wild Things to life. Unfortunately, they've also introduced a character named Alexander to the movie. Which I can only hope is the same idea as the astronaut in Zathura and works better than I fear it will.



Horton Hears a Who is being done by the "creators of Ice Age via Fox. They are far enough along that they have a trailer up. (The IMDB link will take you to it.) The character design looks very well done. The backgrounds....ok. (There is a reason why Seuss' backgrounds are often so minimal, and I'm not sure this movie translates that well.) The personalities are engaging but a bit off. The jokes for adults: "Boooo!!!"

PS - If Spike Jonze does pull Where the Wild Things Off and doesn't get at least nominated for best adapted screenplay, I'm going to be almost as pissed as I will be if he ruins it.

Tick Tock

It occurred to me today (while reading something only somewhat related ) that the Pie Fights happened over two years ago.

My, how time does fly.

It makes me wonder about how much things have changed and how much they've stayed the same.

It also makes me wonder if the MJ Kerfluffle (because, you can't give them serious names) will be the same sort of benchmark event for the comics/scifi blogosphere as the Pie Fights are.

Newflash: Women Not Adults

In the tradition of legislating on abortion, a certain distinction was made out of prudence: On the one hand there may a young, unmarried woman, who finds herself pregnant, with the father of the child not standing with her. Abandoned by the man, and detached from her family, she may feel the burden of the crisis bearing on her alone, with the prospect of life-altering changes. On the other hand, there is the man trained in surgery, the professional who knows exactly what he is doing — he knows that he is destroying a human life, either by poisoning a child or dismembering it.

NRO "pro-life expert" Hadley Arkes, responding to Anna Quindlen's question (via Shakesville)

(emphasis mine - but I'm enough of an idiot that someone else had to point this out the gender division to me)

Women are not moral agents. (Also, apparently, not doctors).

The people that should be punished are those evil men who take away what rightfully belongs to other men.

Of course, I also love the fact that she is unmarried and childless. Which, while statistically likely, isn't always the case. She isn't always young, either. Or, at least, she's usually old enough to die for her country. Although, a lot of women getting abortions are at an age where people tend to not have health insurance, and thus many affordable options for birth control. Hmmmmmm.....

The A Word

Not that anyone who would disagree with me is likely to read this, but having waded through quite a few looooooong threads on the recent Ohio bill (ok I skimmed some) and the inevitable questions of rights, child support payments, etc. I just needed to say a few things just for the hell of it. But I don't really think they'd add much the the several hundred long comment threads...so, well, this is why I have my own blog.

1) When it comes to abortion, having equal reproductive rights does not mean that men have "veto power," "a say" (legally), or even the right to be notified regarding pregnancy. Why? because it's not your effing body.

"But, but, but, I have a right to have a say it what happens to my child!"

2) If the state does not have enough of an interest in the fetus' welfare to override my bodily autonomy and privacy, neither do you. Why? Because you only have rights as a parent because you are the custodian of your child's rights. If the fetus' rights don't supersede mine, neither do your rights as a potential parent.

"But, but, but, then I should get to opt out of child support payments!"

3) Child support payments are not a contract with the mother, they are a contract with the child. Not being legally able to override a woman's autonomy does not change your responsibilities as custodian of your child's welfare and rights.

Or, as EG states over at feministing, Your complaint is really that biology is unequal. "[W]omen take on by far a greater burden when it comes to reproduction, and thus the stage of pregnancy falls into the purview of women's bodily integrity rather than men's." In other words, the fact that you are not the one pregnant means that you don't get to make legal decisions about pregnancy, but that has no bearing on the rights your child has. Biology is something that laws can work around (ie, does equal number of bathroom stalls mean equivalent number, or proportional to the number needed?), but it's not something that laws can change.

Cool Stuff!

I love it when we get neat stuff into the store. (My wallet, however, doesn't fare too well.)

We just got in a pop-up version of We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. I love, love, love this book, but can never tell it well. The kids always love it anyway.

I wouldn't recommend getting the pop-up instead of the original (in any format) because they had to cut stuff to make it fit. Plus, pop-ups and toddlers don't mix well, no matter how much they love them. But it's absolutely adorable and the pop-ups are well done. So it's a nice treat for older kids (preschool-age, at least) or adults who love the book.

(btw, someone gave the board book a one star review on Amazon. I think the review itself is hilarious. And sad.)

We got in book 2 of Judson Robert's Strongbow Saga: Dragons From the Sea a few weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to read the second book yet, but I liked the first, Viking Warrior. More importantly, it was an engaging and well written non-magical adventure story that should appeal to teen boys - and is marketed to them, and not to adults. A rare occurrence indeed.

But of course, what I'm really waiting for is Eclipse, which is due out next week, and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?, which is due out a few weeks after that.

And this has nothing to do with cool new stuff, but having stumbled across the one star review of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, I was curious about whether or not other classics had gotten one star reviews on amazon as well. And sure enough, there are one star reviews for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are. Of course, the best ones are for kid's novels.

I don't expect everyone to love every classic, but some of these reviews just crack me up.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

"I hate this book SOOOO much. I was seven when I read it for the first time. It scarred me to irrevocable fear and forced its malicious, acrid depiction of the murder of four innocent children down my vulnerable throat. Many have argued with me and have said that the children didn't die. However, I argue intensely. First of all, Willy Wonka is a liar and anything that expels from his horrid monstrous mouth can be regarded only for the sake of malevolence and remain at that..."

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing:

"Subversive. I swear kids like this book because it is their first introduction to sexuality. The persistent thread of "oh no, this forbidden thing can't be happening" makes for a sort of naughty thrill ride, a sort of prepubescent fantasy about acts of social misbehavior. Covertly sensual acts (like the eating of the turtle, the ultimate "oh no!") and bathroom allusions help charge kids up in ways they can't even grasp themselves."

A Wrinkle in Time:

"...is an extremely terrible book. Its attempt at science fiction is out of place and corny to the extreme. I read this book expecting it to be a decent novel, but instead I encountered garbage. Oh, and don't pay attention to the Newbery Medal Award that they awarded. They probably awarded it to A Wrinkle in Time because there were no other books published that year, so it won by default. Even then, it was more than likely that the people who gave the award were reluctant to do so. It only says that I gave it one star because there was no choice for 0 stars or lower. This book would be much more entertaining...if it were burnt. "

Bridge to Terabithia:

"My daughter was assigned Bridge to Terabithia as summer reading for 5th grade. Whenever I suggested she read it, she would groan and reply, 'Mom, its SOOOO boring.' Thinking she was stalling and complaining about nothing, I picked it up one night after she had gone to bed. She was right - it was boring. Really boring. The characters are not developed, the plot is superficial, and, in the end, none of the questions that are raised are really answered. I realize that it was an 'award winning book', but the competition must have been truly awful for this book to have been the best. If I may, I would recommend 'A Wrinkle in Time' instead (also on my daughter's reading list and a story we both have found much more enjoyable.)"

(snort)

So, dear readers, which classic book(s) that everyone loves, did you hate with every fiber of your being?

I have to admit that I can't think of any myself at the moment. Once upon a time I might have said Goodnight Moon (not that I hated it, just that I didn't get The Big Deal), but having studied it in kid lit classes, I know understand why babies and toddlers love it.

Part 2: The Power of Myth

A review/analysis of Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

(Go here for the Intro and links to Part I and beyond.)

As the back of the books says: "Beware the Wild - it bites..."

So, you know how I said in the last post that it would contain spoilers? That goes double for these next two. Seriously. I'm going to give away the two big twists, so DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU'VE READ THE BOOK!

"You can't resist it," the fairy godmother said. "If you find a bear's house, you must eat their porridge. If you go to a ball, you must lose a slipper...."

The Wild that lives under Julie's bed is not just a fairy tale monster, it is the fairy tales - or rather the force that keeps them going. When a wish allows the Wild to escape and grow once more, the people that wander into it - or are swallowed up by it - act out the plots of various tales - over and over again. As Julie travels deeper into the Wild, various helpers explain to her that her mother managed to defeat the Wild before by somehow stopping this unending cycle. That is Julie's task - to follow in her mother's footsteps.

As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the main themes of Into the Wild is free will. The scariest thing that the Wild does is manipulate everyone's memory and personality, bit by bit, until they no longer know who they once were or even that they are repeating the same story over and over again.

"This is crazy," [Julie] said. "You're destroying people."

"On the contrary," it said. "I am giving them meaning."

One goes through most of the story not needing an answer as to why the Wild is doing this. It would be like asking why Julie's bicycle came alive; that's just the sort of thing that happens in fairy tales. Except, not. Because fairy tales and their cousins are full of symbolic meaning, so there must be some reason why the Wild is doing this particular thing.

The Wild acts the way it does because it's not only a metaphor for the stories themselves, it's also an allegory for how stories affect can us.

"Stay clear of stories. Especially Endings," Grandma hugged her quickly, and Julie tried to cling to her.

In the Wild, fairy tales are traps that Julie must avoid, for if she does she will forget herself and her mission. It took hundreds of cycles for the fairy tale characters to break free of the Wild the last time, and they did so at great cost. In order to do this they left clues for themselves so that when the next cycle started, they would remember what had happened before. As a general rule, the Wild does take away people's memories of the previous cycles. But it's not all-powerful, and Zel found a way to break free and encourage others to do the same. It was a chaotic and dangerous time.

Cindy gave [Julie] a sad smile. "Not many people know this, but my stepsisters didn't need the Wild to force them to be cruel. Every time they regained their memories, they hated me anew for their blinding. And I took it, all the work and all the hatred, because how could I blame them? After hundreds and thousands of cycles, there's no way to know what came first: how they treated me or how my birds pecked out their eyes."

In explaining itself to Julie, the Wild argues that "I give rewards to the good and punishment to the bad. I give order and sense to an otherwise arbitrary existence."

But Cinderella's confession, which comes only a handful of pages after the Wild's attempt to persuade Julie, reminds us that there is a dark side to all this order. Stories do give us meaning and order and sense, but they can also trap us into roles we'd be better off not fulfilling. Sisters pushed to violent jealousy. Brides married to men who only care that they are beautiful and silent. Wives desperate to give their husbands heirs. Stepmothers forced to compete with their own children for power and affection. Grandmothers left bitter by a world that does not value their power and wisdom.

In the chapters leading up to the Wild's escape, a large number of former fairy tale characters are presented. The personalities of each have some correlation to the tales they come from, but in many ways they no longer fit the role they once played. In taking parts of their memory and personality, the newly returned Wild transforms them into, at best, caricatures of themselves. The least lucky, such as Julie's grandmother, are consumed by their worst traits and doomed to constantly hurt the ones they love.

The why of the Wild is not the only important part of the metaphor, the how is vital as well. Not just the loss of free will, but the repetition of the stories - each time exactly like the last. For it is the lack of variation that turns real stories into traps, makes archetypes become stereotypes, and messes with our ability to make choices with our eyes wide open.

"Mom's not a hero," Julie said automatically. "She's Rapunzel."

Thankfully, there is another type of story being re-enacted in the Wild, and that is the story of how Julie's mother trapped it under her bed.

Before she ventures into the Wild, Julie not only arms herself with magical talismans from the linen closet, she also heads to the folklore section of the local library. Knowing that fairy tales are real, and knowing that her mother defeated the Wild once before, but having no idea how, Julie logically assumes the tale must be written down somewhere. But alas, having only happened once before, it is a rare tale - the librarian informs Julie that the tome she needs is out on interlibrary loan. So, in the end, Julie's quest is not just to defeat the Wild, but to uncover the other story about her mother.

Julie realized her mouth was hanging open. She shut it. Her mother was in a battle? She pictured Mom with scissors in one hand and a curl brush in the other riding a griffin. "You're joking."

At first glance, Into the Wild appears to be another fractured fairy tale. But not long into the story, one realizes that is is also a story about fractured fairy tales.

Stories do not just give us order and meaning, they also give us hope. Julie willingly braves the danger of the Wild for the sake of the people she loves, but like any new hero, she's often reluctant and uncertain. But unlike Luke or Frodo, Julie has no Obi Wan or Gandalf urging her on and giving her advice. Instead, she has stories of her mother. Throughout her journey in the Wild, Julie slowly learns more and more about her mother's bravery, determination, and cleverness. Whenever she despairs of defeating the Wild, the knowledge that it must be possible gives Julie the strength she needs to carry on.

It's no coincidence that the wide old man archetype most often becomes the narrator in theatrical versions of stories. In many ways that is their true role in myths, to make sure that the new heroes know the tales of the previous heroes. This is the positive power of stories, to give us hope and show us possibilities.

Her eyes flew open, wide awake, as the idea came to her. Instead of trying to escape the stories, she should be trying to live them.

Yes, that was the way to win: follow the tales to the happily ever after of her mother's rescue tale - and avoid the role of evil step-sister who spits toads and has her eyelids pecked out by talking birds. She may not be able to avoid being in the tales altogether, but she could try to be in the right one.

At one point, after seeing her nemesis from school acting out a role in the tale of the Swan Princes, she comes to the realization that she is in a unique position to avoid being captured. Unlike her classmate, she knows the stories and is able to recognize them before they can capture her. And while her mother, grandmother, and their friends are quickly trapped into the same roles they had before, Julie does not belong to a particular story yet.

Julie, in fact, gets to write her own story, just as her mother learned to do.

"Oh, I don't blame them.,"The first dwarf said. "In fact, I envy them. To have always known who you are, to be able to change who you are, to shape your fate, to make your own story...." He nodded at Julie in reference.

The stories themselves become Julie's guide. Rather than becoming trapped by them, she is able to choose among them. But in order to do this she needs to realize that she has the ability to do so and she needs to have a variety of stories to choose from.

The librarian knows this, and this is why she made the wish that set the Wild free. When we first meet Linda she comes across as opinionated and narrow-minded. She lectures Zel on the importance of stories and Zel ignores her because she knows how harmful stories can be. The identity of the wish-maker is kept a secret until the epilogue (although clever readers will guess the answer earlier) and it is assumed that whoever did so was foolish and reckless. But Linda is neither, and though outspoken, she is most definitely not narrow-minded. It's important to remember that when she extols the virtues of the fairy tales, she concludes with "I tell, you, a fresh influx of stories could solve most of the world's problems."

Linda the librarian at first comes across as a traditional gatekeeper, a defender of the status quo - or worse, someone who yearns to turn back the clock. But again she is neither. Linda does not accidentally set the Wild free, nor does she wish to return to the Dark Ages. Instead she wishes for, and gets, an influx of new stories to guide her young charges. Linda knows exactly what she is doing, she trusts Julie to find her way out of the Wild and back into the outside world. Yet another story metaphor, this time about trusting children to both understand the difference between fact and fiction and to be clever enough to take meaning and hope from stories, while avoiding the pitfalls of harmful stereotypes.

In the end, Julie accomplishes what she sets out to do, and, in doing so, she gives the librarian - and her other charges - the inspiration they so desperately need.

Part I: Mothers and Daughters

A review/analysis of Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

(Go here for the Intro and links to Part II and beyond.)

One of the things I've noticed lately is that when movies and TV shows want to depict a meaningful but complex relationship between a parent and an adult/older child, the parent is almost always a father. At least outside of "chick flicks," anyway. (In fact, that rather seems to be the definition of a "chick flick" - a movie that is about the relationships between women, rather than the relationships that men have.)

I think that part of the reason that a lot of girls and women are drawn to fairy tales is because the opposite is true. While the characters in traditional fairy tales are often one dimensional and not always the best representations of women, the relationships in fairy tales tend to include a lot of mothers. Cinderella, Hansel and Gretal, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty...while the mother figure is often an evil one, at least she is there, making the stories usually about girls with mommy issues, not boys with daddy issues.

Sometimes there are even other adult women - good and bad - who figure prominently in the story. And they aren't all bad; in Little Red Riding Hood, it is Red's positive relationships with the adult women in her life that provides the catalyst needed for the story to start. (Despite the paternalistic tone of the version most of us grew up with.)

WARNING - massive spoilers below the cut!

Her mom smiled, and Julie grinned back. And for an instant, everything was ok.

The same is true of Into the Wild. Julie's story begins with Julie having to deal with being her mother's daughter and how that isn't always easy. Julie also accepts the call to adventure solely because of her emotional ties to her mother, Rapunzel, and her grandmother. And as we all know, it was Rapunzel's mother who provided the conflict needed for her story to begin as well . While not important to the plot of the story, this tidbit makes it clear that Julie's relationship with Zel, although special, is not unique. Julie's story is part of a larger pattern, and this connection to the cycle of mothers and daughters makes her journey more meaningful, not less so.

So it's no surprise that Sarah Beth Durst dedicated the story to her mother and her daughter. In interviews, Durst has talked about free will being one of the main themes of the book, and it is. The relationships between women is another one. Throughout the story, female friends of Julie and Zel act as helpers and guides, and the relationship between Julie and her mother is central to the action that takes place.

Zel sighed. Sometimes she understood why her own adoptive mother had locked her in a tower. It was hard to watch the person she loved more than her own life grow distant. Each time her daughter rolled her eyes at her, Zel felt her heart twist. She didn't want to wait nine or ten years for Julie to like her again.

Durst does a very good job of not only showing the conflict between Julie, who just wants to fit in, and Rapunzel, who is afraid of losing her daughter to the abyss of teenager's inner turnoil, but also of depicting it in such a way as to make both characters sympathetic to readers of all ages. While most of the story is shown from Julie's point of view, the entire second chapter is spent shadowing Rapunzel instead as she goes about her daily routine at the Salon. This not only provides some necessary world building, as Julie's understanding of the Wild and the past is patchy at best, it also allows kids to step into Rapunzel's shoes and see her as a person and not just a mother archetype.

When Zel and Julie fight, we feel for both. When Julie wonders if she is the cause of her mother's capture by The Wild, we can all empathize with having wished our parents gone at some point, despite the fact that such a wish would mean our deepest fears as well. And even if we haven't been a mother ourselves, we can see that Zel's situation is no easier than Julie's. The stories she refuses to share are do not belong to just her, and intention is obviously to protect Julie, not dismiss her.

Mom went in? In the Wild? In that Thing that ate a police helicopter? Her mom was in that?

When Julie sets off to defeat the Wild, she does so for the sake of her mother and grandmother. Throughout the story she also learns that, in doing so, she is following in her mother's footsteps. Julie learns a lot about her mother during her journey, and she consequently learns a lot about herself, as well. Many fairy and folk tales - and myths and the like - are about the younger generation replacing the older. In very old versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the grandmother stays dead, symbolizing that Red's entry into adulthood is part of a cycle of life and death, of new life replacing old. While neither the grandmother nor the mother die in Durst's book, the story is still very much about Rapunzel having taken on the role of protective mother that her own mother once held - and about Julie beginning her own path towards adulthood.

She looked up at her mother with a fierce expression on her face, an expression that Zel had never seen her wear. For an instant, Julie reminded her of herself. Was that how she'd looked when she'd fought against the Wild?

Into the Wild is an incredibly feminist fairy tale not only because it features a brave and likable female protagonist, but because it recaptures the original spirit of many old fairy tales: the wisdom of old wives and the importance of mothers passing on such wisdom to their daughters.

Blog News

I'm going to be fiddling around with the hide/show feature today, so ignore any repetitive posts, and ignore any new posts for today unless you want Into the Wild spoiled.

update hide/show now working. You may now read without any fear of spoilers.

Wherein I Get Sucked Into the LOLCATS Phenom

Kitteh has broken an axle.

(no, none of these are mine, they just cracked me up.)



going to chambr of sekrets brb





pow pow power wheels





poysin mouses





align right

(sigh)

"Think! Think Think!"

says Pooh Bear

The nice and thought-provoking folks over at The Hathor Legacy awarded me with a Thinking Blogger Award a while ago. Which completely surprised me and made my week.

But now I have to pick five blogs that make me think. Which would be easy as pie, if the obvious hadn't already been tagged. I could just tag Pandagon and the like for probably the ten billionth time, but I'd rather not.

So here are five not-quite-on-the-beaten-path blogs that make me think:

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:

Aside from having a wicked sense of humor the very smart bitches at SB, TB are a great source for thought-provoking commentary on romance novels and the romance novel industry. Romance novels get a lot of flack, and while some of it is deserved, they don't deserve to be treated as the pissing hole of fiction that most people treat them as. Candy and Sarah manage to balance the mockery that romance so often richly deserves with a great amount of respect and admiration for readers and writers of romance. All of which is injected with a large amount of fan enthusiasm.

Nothing New Under the Sun:

For reminding me that just because romance novels and their readers are treated like pathetic freaks by the industry and the media and beyond, that doesn't mean they can't benefit from some good constructive criticism. Bellatrys also writes lots of good stuff about SciFi/Fantasy, literature, sexism, racism, and more.

Westerblog:

Scott Westerfeld's blog has a lot of the usual writer's "covers of my new book!" and "here's some picture of where I am right now!". All very good and worth checking out, but not a reason for a Thinking Blogger Award. However, it also has more than a few posts that demonstrate just why his YA books are so good - he's just that damn smart. Which is why he gets the award.

Digital Femme:

Do I really need to explain this one? Sometimes my lilly white ass needs some kicking, and while it's not Cheryl Lynn's job to do it, she does a fine job of it nevertheless.

And now I'm going to cheat and go all Times Person of the Year Award and give my last Thinking Blogger Award to the linkblogs Jade Reporting and When Fangirls Attack.

Being linkblogs, I'm excusing them from passing this award along (although the people who work so hard putting them together are more than welcome to do so on their own blogs).

Why am I giving an award to linkblogs? Because the theme of the Thinking Blogger Award is "Too many blogs, not enough thoughts!" While there are plenty of links I'd sometimes rather not have read, both of these linkblogs do us all a great service by compiling all these links, just so that we can access a variety of opinions more easily. Because of the topics they focus on (women in what are considered to be traditionally male fandoms) they also provide much needed and appreciated way for non-mainstream voices to connect instead of getting drowned out in a sea of marginalization. All in all, even the links that make you want to gouge out your eyes tend to result in more interesting posts from everyone else.

(yes, I picked 6 blogs, not 5. That's because I had written this up, let it sit for a while to review, and then someone else had tagged digital femme in the meantime, but I didn't want to take Cheryl off.)

Yes, You Know Your School Had One Too

Me should be in bed.

But I want to steal a quote from a commenter over at Shakesville/Shakespeare's Sister because it pins down exactly why all the hand wringing over the poor boys in this case is getting on my nerves.

....Kids in school are forced to put up with all kinds of abuse, even when teachers SEE it, and hitting back can get you expelled. If the boys had touched female teachers on the bottom and breast, they would have been immediately punished for the unthinkably inappropriate behavior. "Lots of kids at school do that," is being used as an excuse because middle school girls are so powerless. People question out loud whether the boys really did anything wrong are really wondering how middle school girls got the balls to inconvenience parents, teachers, law enforcement, the courts, and boys with promising futures, by complaining when they were molested.

- greenmorgaine

(emphasis mine)

If we can expect kids to respect their teachers, we can expect kids to respect each other.

We let kids get away with a lot of shit in the under the guise of expecting them to work it out themselves. But when the larger culture excuses or condones bad behavior it is our responsibility to step in - no matter their age - and tell them it's not ok after all.

Sexual harassment is a serious issue in schools and needs to be dealt with appropriately and definitively.

If for no other reason (as if kids harassing kids wasn't reason enough) than because places where crap like this goes on - which is pretty much everywhere - are also places where the people in charge turn a blind eye to adult behavior as well. We may wring our hands over child rapists and the like constantly, that doesn't stop us from ignoring the very real harassment that adults often put children through.

I do not want to have the same commiserating talk with my niece that I had with my younger cousin - the one about the middle school teacher who puts all the pretty/big breasted girls near the front.

And until kids feel safe speaking out when they've been wronged by their peers, we won't have much success in dealing with harassment from people in positions of power.

edited to add:

Why did I make the jump from kids to adult offenders so quickly, despite my last two lines below? Because both my cousin and I were pulled out of particular subjects because of such teachers. Kathy's point about the lawyers "boys with bright futures" sound bite reminded me of that, and of how sexist that line is. No talk of how the girls lives are affected by such behavior. No talk about the jr. high school science geek who couldn't take science her ninth grade year because the teacher was a sexist pervert who was later convicted of molestation. No talk about girls that have had to make similar choices to avoid peers that the people in charge refused to deal with - and I know of quite of few such girls.

(I really, really need to smash something right now.)

end edit

PS, re the whole sex offender registry, greenmorgaine also has this to say:

I also want to point out how screwed up it is that a law supposedly intended to protect people from sex offenders is causing people to propose letting sex offenders walk away without even misdemeanor charges.

The sex offender registry needs to be fixed or scrapped. We need to stop giving kids adult punishments.

And I really think that's all that needs to be said on that subject.

Carnival!

Hear ye, Hear ye,

Queen Augusta of Westmark proclaims that on the Sixteenth of August, 2007, The Kingdom of Westmark will host the Carnival for Feminist Fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy. All citizens of Westmark and her allies are hereby invited to participate in this Fantastical Pangynaskeia. In honor of her majesty's bravery, and in response to recent controversies, this month's Carnival will focus on "chicks with swords" - or any other type of heroine and her favored weaponry.

In order to further the education of the general populace and promote democratic debate, scholars of all backgrounds and education levels are welcome to participate. Please send any papers you would like to present in advance to Queen Augusta at QMickle at gmail dot com, by sundown on the Thirteenth of August, so that the royal aides may coordinate the day's festivities for the maximum enjoyment of all. Papers of all lengths are welcome, as long as they are written between the Thirtieth of June and the Thirteenth of August, and need not be on any topic more specific than the general theme of Feminism and Science Fiction and Fantasy.

PS - Queen Mickle would like to apologize for the late announcement. The arrival of one Harry Potter caused no little amount of disarray within the court. We are much recovered now, however, so the Carnival should proceed as currently scheduled without any further delays.

Me, Quit Working at the Bookstore? Never!

I have in my hands ARCs for Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade and Lord John and the Hand of the Devils.

Mwahahahahah!!!!!

Wednesday Words of Wisdom: The Extra Late Edition

Things you learn watching Angel, answers to silly questions like:

"I don't know why all you silly women get attached to characters based on their physical characteristics. Shouldn't you identify with characters based on other things?"

Random Detective: "Everybody knows you've gone all Scully. Anytime any of these weird cases crosses anyone's desk, you're always there. What's going on with you?"

Kate: "Scully's the skeptic."

RD: "huh?"

K: "Mulder's the believer, Scully's the skeptic."

RD: (scratches his head) "Scully's the chick, right?"

K: (obviously exasperated) "Yes...."

I Can't Hear You

The smart thing to do would be to take my own advice and simply go "hmmm..." and nod and keep my mouth shut.

But this (via written world) made me think of my aborted letter to Newsweek. The one where I wrote asking why, when TPTB decided to ask some actual black folk who worked at Newsweek what they thought of Imus's remarks, they didn't also ask women what they thought of Imus's remarks. Or, better yet, make a point of asking black women what they thought of Imus's insults. (Although the answer to that last may sadly be "there was no one to ask.")

Cheryl is right, as usual, and I'm not writing this to say that she's not. I'm writing this to make it clearer to non-colored feministsn why they may feel she's not, so they - we - will stop turning a blind eye to racism.

I suspect that people often feel more compelled to put on a veneer of pretending not to be racist than they feel compelled to not voice their sexism - in public. It appears easier to get away with saying that women are genetically not capable of....whatever...than it is to say the same about race. (Unless you modify the "race" to mean "culture" - then anyone is fair game.)

People, of course, still say both. People get away with saying both. But mainstream university presidents seem more likely to feel safe saying sexist things in public (couched in evo-psych). Fortunately, they don't always get away with that either.

But what people say is not always the same as what people do.

Women still only make $.75 for every dollar a man makes. Except, that's not right. The correct stat is that white women make $.77 for every dollar a white man makes. Black men make only $.74 for every dollar a white man makes. Black women make $.68 for every dollar a white man makes. And all four of these groups have Latinos beat by more than a dime.

If economic power really is tied to political and social power, then I think it's clear that Cheryl is quite right. And that's even before we start discussing the messy business of how much power the women who marry the white men have. Or how the recent Supreme Court decision will impact such stats in the future.

Because of our past - recent and distant - we can, as a nation, be very hyper-sensitive when it comes race relations between blacks and whites. But that doesn't mean we actually bother to do a whole lot about racism. In fact, the bulk of what we do is blame the victim.

Just as importantly, there's a lot going on that we (white feminists) don't hear - or don't bother to listen to.

It's not as if universities across the nation are overflowing with black people. In fact, it's very possible that we actually hear more about the sexist remarks made by the Larry Summers of the world not because they are considered to be ok, but because they aren't. Sexist remarks tend to piss off a huge section of the student body and a significant number of the faculty. They same cannot be as confidently said about casual racist remarks. There is strength in numbers, and I suspect women feel more comfortable calling out sexism in college than people of color feel comfortable calling out racism. And that the same is true in a lot of other places as well.

We have to remember that our perception of what people feel is ok to say in public is colored by the fact that we (white feminists) hear the the sexist things people say in private, but we don't necessarily hear the racist things people say in private - or even in public places that we don't happen to be in at the time. My suspicion could very easily be wrong; it's hardly a foolproof enough theory to go around making stupid remarks about black women having advantages over white women.

"Feel it, Hear it..."

I'm watching the movie version of Phantom of the Opera for the first time - I saw the musical three times in LA as teenager and loved it - and I can't help wondering if Schumacher bothered listening to any of the lyrics at all.

Right now, the Phantom and Christine are singing "Music of the Night" in his caves underneath the opera house, and the whole thing is brightly lit. Not harshly, it's all nice and warm and gold with soft shadows that give it texture without making it dark or hard to see. But that means that when the Phantom is singing about darkness stirring the imagination - he's standing in this gold glow, with everything behind him perfectly visible. And instead of the light being cold and white and "unfeeling" when he sings about her turning her face away from the "garish light of day" the light around them is all warm and welcoming. The only thing that's "garish" in the scene is the way his caves are decorated.

To which I can only say wha?

Ah, well. I'm also less enchanted by the story than I used to be. I think it's because rather than seeing the Phantom as merely a tragic villain, I can't help seeing him as a proxy for Weber himself. Not that I know much about him, but based on things like what happened with Evita, I can't help but picture how Weber must view all the women who have played his Christine's and Evita's when I hear the lines "I am the mask you wear/It's me they hear" and the like. (Yes, I know he didn't write the lyrics, but my mind keeps making the association anyway.) Granted, Christine ends up with the only person who argues that her talent is her own, but since the the story starts with him alone, the ending isn't a completely happy one either.

Besides, I love Minnie Driver's acting and I get annoyed with the way Hollywood always manages to write so many parts for new undiscovered ingenues but rarely has anything worthy of it's most talented, established actresses. This time around, I'm finding myself rooting for Carlotta.

Harry Potter Update (Store Stuff, Not Spoilers)

Just a few notes in case anyone is interested.

The store's capacity is 1,000. The fire dept. totally should have shut us down Friday night. And that is with a lot of people outside around the radio station's booth.

We sold 1,300 copies the first night. It took us until 2 am (pretty much on the dot) to ring them all up.

As of sometime yesterday afternoon, we had almost doubled that.

Since we got around 5,500 copies in, though, were still doing fine.

(except for audio :( )

People keep coming in, looking around at our tables filled the the brim with DH, and making stupid comments to the effect of "It must not being doing as well as they thought." Please.

With regard to the "their slashing the price so much they aren't making any money!" meme:

Yes, we are killing small bookstores. But we, ourselves, are doing fine.

We made $65,000 Friday night. A normal summer Friday is around $30,000. 1,300*$20 = $26,000. That leaves $10,000 extra. So we increased our sales by about 25 -30% even if we only broke even on DH.

Saturday was pretty similar.

Now, must go to work!

Harry Potter is Here!

Not that it's doing anybody any good at the moment.

The mountains of boxes arrived a couple days ago at the store. (Last night was my first night since they came in). No simple "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - SALE DATE: 7/21/2007" in black letters on the sides of these boxes. They are specially made white boxes with red lightening bolts and dire warnings in red Harry Potter font all over them.

Ours are also shrink-wrapped. Sort of. Once they arrived, they wrapped them in that plastic they use to keep pallets together. The mountains, not the individual boxes. To make it extra hard to break in.

Wizards and Dragons and Quills of every size and shape have taken over the children's section. There have been several owl and unicorn sightings as well.

Along with the regular festivities for customers, we employees are having a Harry Potter themed potluck contest tomorrow night. Largely owing to that fact that most of our lunch breaks will be between 10 and midnight.

So, I need to think of something good to bring!

Any suggestions?

My First Idol

When I was in preschool, and my brown hair hung all the way to my waist, I used to beg my mother to make my hair like Princess Leia's.

If I was lucky, she would agree and braid my two pigtails and loop them up in an approximation of Leia's Cinnabraids.



If I was very, very, lucky, she would braid my hair and pile it on top of my head.





Long before I met Gertrude.....



...or Oracle....



.....or Kitty Pride.



Long before I met Buffy....



.....or River......



......or Alice.



Long before Kaylee....



.....or Ellie.....



.....or even Penny......



.....and Gadget.



Long before Alanna or Val or Gemma.

Even long before The Beggar Queen, Charlotte Doyle, or Meg.

Even before Anne....



.....and Princess Sara.



There was Leia.



I get nostalgic for VHS ghosts of Luke on Tatooine the way some people talk about the crackling on old records. I can remember the smell and texture and weight and look of all my Leia action figures better than I remember most of the things I've done in the last decade. My earliest memory of going to the movie theatre is not of a Disney movie, but of going to see Return of the Jedi. I was six and we had Burger King afterwards because they were the ones selling the movie cups.

When I applied to work in my college's computer lab, I wrote about stealing Star Wars files off the internet and setting my "alert" sound to Chewbacca's growl. When I decorated the bulletin board on my dorm door, Han and Leia took their place beside Emma and Mr. Knightly.



When I ditched my friends during senior week to go see Episode 1 on opening night in NYC, I brought with me a flashlight, empty Sprite bottles, and packing tape. Because real Jedi make their own.

So it bothers me when people say that Leia's slave girl outfit is her most iconic, because despite having wanted to be her for as long as I can remember, I rarely ever think of that outfit. And when I do, it's usually because That '70's Show is making a joke about dressing up for sex play, Wizard is turning Leia into a Sexy! Zombie!, or Comicon is trying to sell itself - to people who apparently aren't me.



Ewan McGregor once said that girls didn't like Star Wars.* When I first read that quote it sounded so ridiculous to me that I thought it was a joke at first. I bought the damn magazine for no other reason than because it had Star Wars on the cover, didn't I? I kept having to re-read the lines that followed because they didn't make sense - until I realized that he was being deadly serious.

This is the fandom in which Leia as Jabba's fucktoy is the representative image of her: the fandom in which real women are invisible.

"But, but but!" you say. "That's not fair! It's not just iconic because it shows the most skin, it's also iconic because she kills Jabba in that outfit!"

Bullshit, I say.

Princess Leia Organa Solo was a diplomat and high ranking leader in a military rebellion.

She didn't just wait around and pray to be rescued. She had the foresight to not only send word for help, but to make sure that vital information was passed onto the rest of the Alliance - despite her capture.

She told the scary bad guy that had us all quaking in our boots to fuck off. She told the creepy general to fuck off too.

She withstood torture.

She found a way out of the mess Luke and Han made of her rescue (with R2D2's help) and did her fair share of shooting at Stormtroopers. She did not stay inside the Millennium Falcon while Han when out to investigate. Neither did she stay on the sidelines during the Battle of Endor.

She faced down Jabba the Hut with a bomb in her hand and completed the most important part of her mission: unfreezing Han.

And she did none of this while wearing a metal bikini.



"But, but but!" you say. "It's women who dress up as slave-girl Leia at comic conventions. You don't speak for all women! You obviously don't even speak for most women!"

Most women wear make-up. Why don't you go ask a few of them if they always do it because they really enjoy putting gunk on their face every day or if sometimes they do it just because they are afraid of how they will be treated if they don't. Now, I'm sure plenty of them will simply liken it to bathing regularly and there are more than a few that do so because it can be fun. The point is though, that while Kirsten Bell is fully capable of making her own choices and speaking for herself, her decision to wear a metal bikini and not a long white, baggy dress is not uninfluenced by how she will be treated in each outfit.



In fact, Kirsten Bell happens to be wearing that outfit for a new movie called Fanboys. Which brings me to the point that while many women are dressing up as slave-girl Leia for their own amusement, they generally aren't the ones making and buying all the drawings, statues, etc. of Leia as Jabba's slave. I'll bet they're not even the ones uploading and downloading most of the pictures of women dressed as slave-girl Leia.

Pictures of Leia in her metal bikini makes up the vast majority of the first page of links that come up in a google image search of her name.** But to say that makes the bikini outfit the more iconic is just as ridiculous as saying that this (note: probably NSFW) is what comes to most people's minds when you say "american girl."

Let's not ignore that this (note: definitely NSFW!) in fact comes first before this in the above search. Let's also not pretend that anything other than rampant, malicious sexism (dare I say misogyny?) is the reason why a naked Leia being shown her home planet blown to bits beats a flirty but fully clothed Leia holding a gun. At least not when a google image search for Han Solo gives us no naked or nearly naked images of Harrison Ford. (It does eventually give us several more of Leia, however.)

Leia's slave-girl outfit is cool and I completely understand seeing as it as a symbol of women rescuing themselves from their aggressors. (plus, it's literally cool, which I can see being A Very Good thing in San Diego in July.) But, unfortunately, that isn't the only reason why Leia in her metal bikini is such a popular image. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not even the biggest reason.

Remember too, that we're not just talking about women.



The kind of widespread and hardcore fandom that Star Wars enjoys usually only happens when most of the fans are introduced to the story and it's characters as children or teenagers. Most die-hard Star Wars fans are children of the '70's and '80's. So we aren't just talking about women, we are mostly talking about now grown up girls and their childhood idols. To say that Leia will always be remembered most as a scantily clad sex slave turned killer is to say that Ewan McGregor was right, girls don't like Star Wars.

Women may want to look like Sexy Leia. They may even admire her strength. But little girls don't want to be slave girl Leia - Jabba killer or not. Little girls generally don't choose to picture themselves as chained to creepy monsters and they only choose to picture themselves in bikinis if that actually is the character's most iconic image.



You'll note that while Leia in her metal bikini is featured on the posters for Return of the Jedi, Mattel didn't make an action figure of her in that outfit.

I like the Comicon cover (mostly). (It's Star Wars! duh, of course I like it.)



I think having the characters pose for pictures as if they were just people dressed up as Luke and Han and Leia was a cute idea and was mostly well-done. I think that it was smart to try to reference the movie posters as well by having the appropriate background behind them.

I think the not as well done mix of the two ideas is the weakest part of the cover. Such as Han just looking like Han, while the other two are posed like fans in costume. I think that, whatever the artist's feelings and attitudes on the matter, the sexism that is still quite present in sci-fi fandom contributed to the bad mix of the two; the homage to the actual movies is thwarted by the desire to realisticly portray Star Wars fandom - without daring to question the sexism within it. Having all three movies represented by outfts from all three movies was cute; the fact that this gives justification for Leia not wearing her iconic white is not. And as far as the silly argument about color contrast goes, Leia in white and Luke in his black outfit would have solved the problem just as well (better, even) - and kept the three movies/three outfits bit going.

It hardly reaches the "yes, why don't you go and piss off your fans so much that they no longer want to give you money" moment that the Ewan McGregor quote achieved. In large part because Adam Hughes made sure to have Leia hold the chain in a (semi) aggressive way. But it is another little reminder that I'm often invisible. And the defensive reactions to my pointing this out are an even stronger reminder.

And yeah, I'm not looking forward to going to Comicon as much as I was before I heard the stupid argument that this is not Leia's most iconic outift.



However, I'll probably now be wearing Cinnabraids if I do still go.

*Sorry, I don't have the exact quote, it was from a British magazine article the year before Phantom Menace came out. I can't find it with google, and I obviously didn't drag the article back with me from Bristol.

**I started writing this weeks ago. Needless to say, several of the searches have shifted since then (not necessarily for the better) and one link isn't working. The now not working "american girl" link was something along the lines of this (note: very NSFW), but with enough skin covered up for it to not be porn.

Me, I Was 12. And You?

Over at Dr. Petra Boynton's blog, an interesting discussion of "The sex Education Issues Parents Worry About" (via the 27th Carnival to End Sexual Violence)

One of them is:

Teaching them about sex will encourage kids to experiment

I. Do. Not. Get. That.

Especially since it's generally girls that are more worried about having sex than boys.

Comprehensive sex ed teaches kids that sex can be dangerous. It gives kids facts that they can then spit out at their ignorant peers. Not a fool-proof method of deterring peer pressure, to be sure, but a decent tool to have, nonetheless.

Even something as riske as being exposed to positive images of sex (by virtue of the fact that they tend to not ignore female pleasure quite as much as as the negative ones kids see all the time do) makes it less likely that teen girls will fall victim to the modern day version of "How little that which thou deniest me is." They are much less likely to see it as "no big deal" and more likely to experiment in ways that minimize risk and maximize the possibility of pleasure.

Oh.

I take it back.

That's why sex ed scares parents so. They can handle the idea of little Johnny masturbating - they make jokes about it all the time in movies - but they can't handle the idea that little Janey might want to as well.