Friday 29 November 2013

Focusing Our Firepower


In response to yesterday's blog post, I have been involved in a Facebook conversation with a friend discussing whether it is true that our culture views women as inferior. I wrote in my blog post that "...the church should claim the middle ground, passionately defending the beauty of binary gender as created and called 'good' by God, while at the same time standing firmly against any implied or outright attitudes that mark one gender as superior! ... And in our culture, the gender that tends to be portrayed as inferior is women." This friend argued that our culture has "spent many years trying to present women as equal to or even better than men". My response follows, as I think it merits wider discussion. 

"I agree that our culture would be quite unlikely to say outright that females are inferior. However, much like racism, which presents in subtle ways now that it is no longer socially acceptable to be overt about it, I do think mainstream media and those saturated in its thinking present a degraded, sexualised, and inferior view of women. The graphic I linked yesterday had many examples of this. The vast majority of tales of heroism, friendship, and character growth are fronted by male characters, while females are most often main characters in a romance story intended only for other females. I have explored on my blog dozens of other ways in which females are subtly presented as less valuable."
"Indeed, for the vast majority of history and still in the vast majority of the developing world, women are overtly considered less valuable, intelligent, and capable then men. This is true in the Muslim nations where women are hidden beneath robes as if shameful and have little to no civil rights in comparison to men, this is true in the African nations where females are routinely circumcised so that sexual pleasure becomes strictly male territory, this is true in India where little girls are given away as sexual toys in a parody of marriage to men old enough to be their grandfathers, this is true in China where female infants are aborted or abandoned in favour of males. It is only in the West and in the last fifty or so years that it even became inappropriate (in most contexts, unless it's the internet) to say that women are only good for cooking and looking pretty."
"As I have said repeatedly on my blog, I think the complementarian church is in grave danger of totally undermining its message if it sees feminism as its only enemy, since the enemy of misogyny is far more deeply entrenched over the world and across history. It feels to me a bit like if a movement for more racial equality in the church focused mainly on ways black culture excludes whites and ignored the long and bloody history of the ways whites have mistreated blacks. One is not the answer to the other, absolutely, but we should be very cautious before we decide which side deserves most of our firepower."

As always, deeply interested to hear your thoughts, arguments, and experience, whether here or on Facebook.

Thursday 28 November 2013

Thoughts on the NYFA's Infographic

Since the graphic is so unwieldy, I thought I'd better break this into two posts.

Quick thoughts: what we see revealed by this infographic is an industry that sells a very rigid, narrowly defined ideal of femininity to both women and men. Although half of audiences are female, the industry is dominated both financially and in terms of physical presence by men. This means that what we see on our movie screens-- the sexually postured, youthful, largely silent and subservient female explained in the first section of the infographic-- is a construct designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator being sold by what is largely a group of amoral, godless, and money-hungry males (I'm making assumptions here, but given the material the film industry routinely pumps out, I think they're pretty likely to be true.)

There are two points of consideration I'd like to draw from this. One is how we as Christians evaluate the films we watch-- and the ones we choose not to. It is easy, for example, to decide a movie isn't appropriate because "there's too much nudity" or "the actresses are all dressed immodestly". However, I think it is very important that we move beyond just "that isn't decent/modest" to "that isn't fair or honouring." There is a very real and present pressure on actresses to be sexy and to act sexually and our critique needs to incorporate an understanding of how sexualised female characters in the majority of our narratives contribute to rape, sexual harassment, and the sexual entitlement claimed by so many men of our culture. Are we going into the conversation with our sons beyond just telling them it's not appropriate for them to look at women's bodies in those contexts, to talk about ways in which this harms the actual women in the world around them, such situations as one where a couple of schoolboys can rape a young woman while all their male classmates look on and not one intervenes or goes for the authorities? Simply turning off the film without having these types of conversations effectively condemns the immodestly dressed actress without also explaining that a portion of the blame-- perhaps the lion's share-- lies with those who provide the funding, advertising, and influence to make that a criteria for an actress's success: the largely male portion of the industry.*

The second point I want to think about is something I mentioned in this recent post, about how the bulk of pop culture is radically sidelining, limiting, and tightly defining femininity rather than blurring the lines between the two genders. Pop culture creates a caricature of womanhood in which a beautiful, youthful physical appearance is paramount, the ability to attract a romantic/sexual partner is more important than any true talents, and articulateness, intelligence, and character are of minimal significance. On the other side, a small subsection of our culture pushes against this by arguing all gender differences are social constructs and should be done away with altogether. Surely the church should claim the middle ground, passionately defending the beauty of binary gender as created and called 'good' by God, while at the same time standing firmly against any implied or outright attitudes that mark one gender as superior!**

*Another portion of the blame lies with the men who act upon the ideas about women portrayed in mainstream media, and that's another important conversation to have with our sons, but that's for another blog post, I think.
**And in our culture, the gender that tends to be portrayed as 'inferior' is women, which is why I write the blog posts I write. 

New York Film Acadamy's Infographic on Gender Inequality in the Film Industry

New York Film Academy takes a look at gender inequality in film
Courtesy of: New York Film Academy

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Culture Check: The Top-Selling Girl's Dolls


This image is sourced from Pigtail Pals Ballcap Buddies' blog, where a community member submitted this collage of the top-selling dolls in toy stores right now. Are these "just" dolls, or do they send a loud and clear message to our daughters (and sons!) about the "right" way to be a girl?

One of the reasons I wanted to share this is because there is a certain amount of fear about blurring gender lines in the evangelical, complementarian community. This is certainly a concern; God created two genders and declared two genders very good, and I think it is right to celebrate and defend that. But I think it is equally harmful the way the majority of our culture (as seen in the bulk of mainstream media and merchandise) seems to be pushing the lines further apart in ways that alienate and harm male-female relationships, and limit both men and women, boys and girls. You can bet that the top-selling boys' action figures have nothing in common in terms of interests, physique, or attire with any of these girls' dolls.

Yes, God created us different, but God also created us for fellowship and with many, many similarities. Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus; we are all image-bearers of God, joint heirs of the same salvation, and intended to live together with fellowship and respect, not mutual incomprehension. (And we both have a great deal more variety within our respective genders than these dolls would have us believe!)

Monday 28 October 2013

10 Reasons I Stopped Wearing Make-Up

I want to talk today about make-up. Or rather, the lack thereof. And before I do that, I want to make a quick disclaimer: the purpose of this post is to encourage and provoke, not to judge. I feel myself very blessed to have a God who inspires a deep confidence that isn't rooted in other people's opinions of me, and a husband who affirms and celebrates my natural beauty without any makeup at all, but I know that given the prevailing cultural pressures, every woman will be on a different point in their journey. So I want to start by saying, I'm not judging anyone for wearing make-up. I think life in general is much better without it, and I want to share why, but if your choice is to continue, understand that this is not intended as a criticism of you.

So, that said, the story of how I stopped wearing make-up, and then 10 reasons why I think it's a great idea.

As a teenager, I was deeply insecure, wracked with guilt and condemnation about my sin inside, and convinced that externally I was plain and needed make-up to fix feature flaws-- my too-straight eyebrows, my crooked mouth, my eyes with the funny outside slant, my stubby eyelashes, my high forehead and long face. God was very kind to bring me out of my forest of condemnation and into a joyful freedom in Christ when I was around 18 or 19, but the journey of physical confidence was just starting. 

I often said I wore make-up because it was fun: colourful, experimental, interesting. There was a degree to which this was true (I liked cat-eye liner, bright lip colours, and bold eyebrows) but there was a much stronger degree to which I still believed in that list of "feature flaws" above. 

The year I turned 20, Steven and I began our relationship. Steven has been an amazing help to me in overcoming my physical insecurity; from the first he has called me the most beautiful woman in the world, never criticized my appearance, and has complimented the very things I considered flaws. I was so nervous for our honeymoon because he would see me with my hair down for the first time and I didn't like how it looked down, and wondered whether I should wash my make-up off in the evenings!

His acceptance and love of my appearance couldn't help but work it's magic on me, though. I remember vividly one morning midway through our first year of marriage when he was once again complimenting me, first thing in the morning before I'd fixed my hair or put on make-up.
"Do you really think I'm this beautiful with no make-up on?" I asked.
"Your eyes are brighter," he told me.
Well, if that was true, I didn't see the point anymore.

It took me a while to get accustomed to my face without the additions I'd given it, but over time I learned to love my straight eyebrows (I think they make me look intellectual) and care more about my smile and it's one-sided dimple than whether my mouth is perfectly symmetrical. These days, I occasionally wear make-up to formal events like weddings as a way of signalling that they're special, but I barely put any on; I usually feel like it makes my features look dark and unnatural.


I'm now about two years out from wearing make-up on a daily basis, and here are 10 reasons why I think it is a great decision for any woman to make:
  1. You are free to cry, swim, or sweat without warning or consequence. Make-up subtly limits the activities you can participate in. How many times have you felt moved by something in church but been distracted from the deep significance of what you're feeling by the need to hold back the tears so they don't smear your mascara? How many times have you decided not to go swimming or play a sport (things that men participate in without a second thought) because it will ruin your make-up? Heck, you can't even drink normally as a make-up-wearing girl because your lipstick might smear on the cup. Losing the make-up frees you up to be more involved in actually doing things, instead of focusing your energy on just looking right. 
  2. It saves you money. I always had a fairly small make-up kit: mascara, tinted lip balm/blush, an eyeshadow palette or two, brow shader, and eyeliner. At a frugal estimate this was about a $35 kit. (At this point in my life, I'm much more concerned about the quality and ingredients of my toiletries than I was as a teenager, so if I was still wearing make-up today it would probably be more.) Given shelf-life and rate of using up, that $35 kit was probably $100 yearly. If I started wearing make-up at 13 and kept it up until I was 65 (although in all likelihood if I went on that long, I'd probably keep going 'til I died) that would be over five grand spent on hiding my face. And that's a small, frugal kit! Aren't there better, more fulfilling ways to spend $5,000?
  3. It saves you time. I'll soon be a mother of two. I'll be nursing (probably both of them), getting two babies dressed, and making breakfast for us all in time for Steven to come home from work for 9:30 coffee break. I work a part-time job, am redecorating my house, and pre-homeschooling a bright, curious little boy. In short, there are a thousand practical things that I am responsible for. Beyond that, there are many other meaningful things that do more for my soul than putting on make-up: reading my Bible, praying, reading good books, spending time with people, creative pursuits, and building my relationship with my husband and child. I gladly take the extra 20-30 minutes of time that come from not putting on and taking off make-up on either end of my day. And I believe that reading the Word or loving people actually do more for my beauty than mascara and blush. 
  4. It's better for the environment. There are a host of problems with the ingredients used in conventional make-up products, from animal testing to questionable origins, but even if you're using organic, "earth-friendly" make-up products, you're still facing a colossal amount of packaging waste, manufacturing waste (power usage, by-products), and transportation costs (emissions, fuel use). When adding up the cumulative effect of this from the millions and millions of women using make-up worldwide, shouldn't we be asking ourselves if this is really good stewardship of the resources God put on our planet? Especially given that it isn't substantially improving human lives or allowing us to be better in serving the church or sharing the Gospel.
  5. It's better for your health. If you've hung around me for any length of time you've probably heard me rant about the nasty ingredients in beauty products: alcohols, artificial fragrances, chemicals preservatives and dyes, many of which are known or suspected to be involved in causing cancer, reproductive difficulties, and more. Not to mention how a healthier planet (see #4) results in healthier humans. I mentioned this in a previous blog post about how the things that are considered feminine and beautiful are often harmful to our health, which I think is a good indicator of how warped our perception of beauty has become. 
  6. It breaks a vicious circle. This is sort of related to the last point-- those nasty chemical ingredients in the beauty products that are supposed to give you flawless skin, miles-long lashes, a blooming complexion, erase your wrinkles, etc. are self-perpetuating a cycle of oil-overproduction and skin-drying for your skin, degrading and damaging your eyelashes, dulling your skin's natural bloom, and contributing to the aging of your skin. So that you'll need to buy more make-up to cover up the ill effects, so that your skin will be even worse off, so that you'll need to buy even more... Almost like make-up manufacturers don't particularly want you to be naturally beautiful isn't it? Like maybe they care more about profits than about you actually having any of those buzzwords they use in their commercials: "fresh", "natural", "breathing", "real you..." The other side of this is that the more accustomed you become to your face in an augmented/artificial mask-- the arch of your brows carefully achieved by plucking and pencils instead of your natural straight line, your thin upper lip plumped up with a lipstick, your undramatic lashes darkened-- the harder it is for your to enjoy or even recognise your own face without make-up; you start to feel as if the face you were born with isn't really who you are.
  7. It takes a stand against the world's lie that age is to be fought and feared. The world, faced with at best nothing and at worst, judgement, in the afterlife, has a good reason to fear the effects of age, as they bring death ever-closer. But we have something else to look forward to: eternal joy, worship, and peace in a world made perfect by Christ. We have a Scripture that tells us grey hair is a crown of glory. The lie about age is particularly pernicious in it's condemnation of female aging, and I have heard this explained as a simple matter of biology: men like women who look young because men like women who look fertile. Never mind that female fertility is generally decent until around 40; we as Christians need to assess the deeply humanistic assumptions of this idea.

    Scripture teaches that the point of marriage is a lifelong commitment mirroring that of Christ and his Bride, the Church. Humanistic viewpoints often debate whether men are "meant" to be monogamous, assume the sole point of life is to pass on genes, and address attraction and parenthood from a purely naturalistic perspective. Not so the believer! We know monogamy is God's intention for human relationships and thus the happiest, most fulfilling path for both men and women. We know that healthy biological children are a great blessing from the Lord, but that they are not the be-all-and-end-all of a happy relationship or a happy life. We know that there is more to attraction than genetic influences because we are called to lifelong love and attraction where our mate's character and our own self-sacrifice are as important as genetic factors. Believing this, why do we buy into the idea that the highest compliment we can pay an older woman is that she "looks young"?* 
  8.  It declares the "very-good"ness of God's creation. I want to tread carefully here because I know the effects of sin have brought deformity, illness, and injury into the world so that there are real ways in which one's face might no longer be "very good" as it was created. But at the same time, I don't believe God intend to create a world without genetic variation. I think that if there were no Fall, there would still be women with big noses and small ones, high foreheads and long torsos and cowlicks and widow's peaks, with crazy afros and downy-fine locks, with wide hips, flat chests, sturdy ankles, and narrow shoulders. I certainly don't believe we'd all be slight variations on the modern Western ideal woman: white, long flowing locks, slender figures with curves in the "right" places, doe-eyes, and perfectly regular facial features. My straight eyebrows, my high forehead, my "funny" eyes, are all part of the Avery that God lovingly knit together when I was in my mother's womb. My childbearing hips and my Laura-Ingalls-esque "strong as a little French horse" constitution are part of my heritage, traits I can see in my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. I will never be the "ideal" presented in movies, but I am just as God intended me to be, and I believe that is a far more beautiful thing.
  9. It fights the false image of femininity sold to the men in your life. Sometime after I stopped shaving my legs, I came across an article about how, in a society where hard- and soft-core pornography is more and more readily provided for young boys, many young teenaged girls already feel pressured to get full Brazilian waxes-- boys from a very young age are squeamish about or unattracted by female body hair. Setting aside the numerous other issues we could explore in this story, isn't it scary that from such a young age, boys are indoctrinated to believe that a woman's body should look perpetually prepubescent? Make-up plays the same game, if more subtly; pouty lips and long, fluttering lashes help make a woman look perpetually physically attracted/seductive. Ditto blush. Arched brows suggest mystery. None of these are the things that make a woman a good Christian, a good woman, or a good life partner. Mystery? Honesty and encouragement in the faith are far more important. Seduction? It's all well and good in a one-flesh union, but it's not the part of a godly woman to be seducing the males willy-nilly. But if the media's image is the only one ever presented and it's always presented in a deeply attractive light, it's hard for male brains to ignore. If they should be seeing something different, surely they should be seeing it in the church?
  10. It fights the negative body messages constantly sent to the women in your life. The number of genuinely hideous-looking people in the world is pretty low. But there are women all around you who see themselves as less acceptable because of the messages of media. Women who think they are too stocky, too pale, too curvy, too fat, too skinny to be attractive. Women who think they aren't glamourous enough or charming enough or that they lack the "feminine mystique" to be valued and loved. And every time you criticize yourself they-- your sisters, your friends, your daughters-- face the temptation to compare themselves to you and measure up even shorter. You moan about how you need to lose five extra pounds? The girl beside you carrying twenty-five extra pounds has a new reason for self-loathing. You mention how you hate your hair? The girl beside you who has always wished her hair was as nice as yours now has reason to suspect you think her hair is ugly beyond all belief. You use make-up to "fix" how your eyes look "too close together"? Now your daughter with the exact same eyes has reason to believe her mother thinks her eyes are a feature flaw and she'd better find a way to fix hers as well. The world needs women who will proudly declare that not only are there many things vastly more to be valued than physical beauty-- from kindness to humour to persistence to wisdom-- but that women as God created us are beautiful anyways-- we don't need to fritter away our time and energy and money to "fix" ourselves. 
*I remember one time in a prayer meeting we divided up by age: youths, 20-40 years olds, and over-40s. Our pastor joked that the over-40 women need not declare their age. I don't blame him for this lighthearted and probably realistic jest, but how I wish that women over 40 in the church were cheerfully sharing their age and showing their grey hairs and wrinkles to the younger women as a proud declaration that age is not something to fear but a blessing from God and a status of honour and wisdom as the Bible teaches!

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Film Review: Gravity


Role of Women: Without wishing to give too much away about the film (and it's really hard to talk about it without spoiling it), I want to praise Gravity for giving a female a central, almost exclusive role in a film without resorting to cliches and tropes. In an earlier post I talked about how Hollywood tends to assume men won't watch films with a female central protagonist, but everyone I know who has seen this film has nothing bad to say about it-- certainly they don't mention how boring it was to watch a movie all about a woman! Dr. Ryan Stone is educated (in a STEM field), capable, and courageous, and yet also vulnerable, emotional, and caring-- palpably human with all the diversity that involves. It is rare for films to straddle that line in a female character; most tend to divide women into tough, "manly" types who are capable, independent, and unemotional, and gentle, "womanly" types who need rescuing and are nurturing. Bravo to this film for making their heroine a woman who, like most of humanity, has strengths and weaknesses, areas of capability and vulnerability, something to offer as well as some areas of neediness.

Sexualisation of Women: Clooney's character Matt Kowalski is more stereotyped than Dr. Stone, as a bit of a rogue or charmer, and he is guilty of the small instance of sexualisation in the film. In the throes of a life-threatening situation in space, he teasingly invites Dr. Stone to admit she's attracted to him. It's small and subtle, but it is an implied imposition of sexuality that by no means need be present.

Dr. Stone spends several scenes dressed only in the tank top and fitted shorts she wore under her spacesuit, but it didn't feel at all sexualised to me. The scenes draw heavily on a "rebirth" subtheme and she is never posed sexually while dressed like this; her body is acknowledged without being either vilified or objectified and I appreciated that.


Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Fail. The other female in the film dies without any dialogue. There was a fine opportunity to include a conversation with a women when Dr. Stone makes radio contact with Earth, but the voice on the other end is the Hollywood default: a male. 

Male:Female Ratio: Of the seven characters in the film, two are female. One dies without any dialogue.

Friday 27 September 2013

The "Default Male": What's That?

Scenario: a fly is buzzing through your kitchen, landing on your sandwich whenever you put it down. You and your toddler wave it off in annoyance for a while, but eventually you're sick of it. "Run and get the flyswatter," you tell your child, "and I'll kill him."

Scenario: you are reading Are You My Mother? to your toddler. The baby bird comes upon a dog. You put on a special deep voice for the dog as you drawl, "How can I be your mother? I am a dog."

So what do these scenarios have in common?

They are the illustration of a principle called the 'default male'. This term describes a phenomenon where we automatically assume that any creature not directly identified as female by specific "feminine" markings (long eyelashes, pink bows, long hair) is a male. This means that chances are good that you unconsciously refer to every frog, worm, anthropomorphised vehicle (say, an airplane you're watching fly by, or a toy car), bunny in the yard, stick figure, or unspecified professional (doctor, mechanic) as "he". This is true unless the animal in question has its offspring with it, in which case it is instantly a mummy (although the young are probably still "he".)

Try it out! Grab the nearest children's book with animals in it-- Are You My Mother? will do. In this book there are four gender-specified characters: the mother bird and the baby bird (male), the cow (which is clearly not a bull), and the hen. Do you read the kitten and dog as male or female? Consider the dog's reason for not being the bird's mother: "I am a dog." Chances are that if the dog was male, he'd say "I am a male," wouldn't he? But-- with no eyelashes, no frilly collar, odds are good that you read the dog as male and not female. It holds true in other books. Brown Bear, Brown Bear-- the sheep has no horns and the cat is a "girly" colour so perhaps you read them as female, but do you look at the rest of the animals and think "girl bear", "girl dog", or do you automatically assume they're all male?

Have you ever told your child before killing an earwig that you're going to "squash her?" Have you ever stopped to consider the actual natural functional relationships of creatures such as ants and bees (most worker bees and ants are sterile females) before calling them a him? Alternatively, do you ever call an animal pictured with it's offspring the "daddy"? (I had a funny moment today where my son was doing a puzzle, which featured a green-headed duck with four ducklings. Given it's plumage, it was obviously male, but up until recently I would never have called it the daddy, and I would not be even slightly surprised if the original puzzle-maker intended it to be a mummy.) *

So, like with canting, after having described what the term means, I want to talk about why it's a problem.

I've mentioned in earlier posts the ratio of male leads to female leads in children's media. I've also talked about why it troubles me that toys relating to family life are strongly marketed to girls as if family life is somehow not "manly".

These are, I think, two of the main problems with the default male phenomenon.** In general, it's fair to say that male-female populations are about 50-50 in the world, human as well as the animal kingdom. So what message do we communicate about one gender if we consistently leave it out? I would argue the message is like, "Males do more, experience more, and take up more space in the world than females," which, essentially, is tantamount to saying "Males matter more than females." I don't think it is a stretch to interpret it as such. If every creature you encounter is assumed to be male, unless there are very specific indications to the contrary (and sometimes even if there are!), you set up a world where male perspective will be more valued than female, because you've been subtly trained to believe that males are just more there. I believe this feeds into the imbalances of gender leads in our culture's storytelling, and probably strongly contributes to the idea that male's stories are universally representative, while female's stories are just for female audiences. I believe this feeds into the ways our language and cultural predilections make things coded "female" shameful for boys to associate themselves with.

Now, I don't think that the complementarian church as a whole actually holds the stated belief that "Males matter more than females." Indeed, thankfully, I don't know anybody who would say that. But here's the thing: there's a degree to which our actions are going to shout down our words. If we are adamantly insisting that complementarianism is about "equal but different" and supporting the idea that God created us for two different roles in churches and marriages, but that both genders are both image-bearers and equals before God and His law, we need to be careful. We need to be careful that we're not knee-jerking against feminism and thus ignoring ways in which we are not treating women as equal. And if we're defaulting to assuming male presence is more prevalent and male perspective more weighty, then I'm afraid we are not living up to our "equal but different" belief, and are thus undermining the credibility of our complementarianism.

The other side of problem with the default male phenomenon is how it limits girls. Consider how it must affect little girls to be taught by implication from the time that they are infants that if they're not either practicing some form of domestic, maternal instinct or displaying a specific set of beauty ideals (long hair and eyelashes, pink accessories, skirts), they're not a proper, recogniseable girl. Is it any wonder that our daughters are growing up beauty-obsessed, wearing make-up younger and younger, buying into a toxic beauty culture of disordered eating, insecurity, and self-alteration? Is it any wonder that there are still areas of interest that are predominantly seen as not really "for" girls (like STEM studies, politics, athletics)? The church ought to be a safe haven from a culture that teaches girls their beauty and marriageability trumps their brains, their hearts, their ministry giftings, and their talents in importance, and I believe we can be that while still holding marriage in esteem for both genders and proudly holding firm to a belief in different roles in the church and in marriages. And maybe it starts with sprinkling in a few 'she's' with all the 'he's' in your daily pronoun use...

*This post gives some examples from media of creatures interpreted by filmmakers as male despite nature pointing to them being female.
**Although, more seriously, in things like crash test dummies (based on average male figures) and heart attack symptoms (which actually present differently in women), the default male can lead to unnecessary female deaths.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Film Review: Man of Steel


Role of Women: To be honest, it's hard to tell where the portrayals of women in Man of Steel were flat or stereotypical because they were women, and when they were just flat and stereotypical because they were characters in Man of Steel, since one of the main criticisms I have of the film as a whole is the one-dimensional, underdeveloped characters. They had the usual suspects of hardboiled/tough girls-- Captain Farris, Faora, Lois Lane (who claims she gets writer's block if she's not wearing a flak jacket)-- and tender, motherly types-- Martha Kent, Lara-- none of whom ever really did anything to catch you off guard. The angst, suspense, and tension mostly lay between male characters. Clark's human father teaches him to believe in but also hide himself, leading to a relationship with currents of respect and resentment mingled; Clark's human mother gardens and has dogs and believes the best of Clark no matter what. Jor-El gets all the action in challenging the Kryptonians' self-destructive genetic selection and pointing out the end of the world, while Lara gets to be indecisive and mostly passive/background; do you really think she went through a natural pregnancy and childbirth because she was sort of thinking maybe Jor-El had a point about the end of Krypton? I have a feeling she would've needed a lot more courage and conviction than portrayed. It would've been pretty awesome if Lara had've been uploaded onto the ship as well as/instead of Jor-El, and really there's no reason why she needn't have been. Just Hollywood defaults.

Sexualization of Women: Why do filmmakers insist on putting women who need to run in ridiculous platform heels? Don't they realise that in real life either the heel would break, or the character's ankle? Other than that, though, they did fine on this front, with one exception-- when they had Captain Farris remark with a girlish smirk to her commanding officer that she thought Superman was "kinda hot". Considering the grit and dedication she would've had to display to get to her current position, is that really the sort of thing she would be likely to say to an authority figure in her job? Even if she did think that, I humbly suggest she would've had the self-control to keep it to herself. It just made her seem like a silly schoolgirl instead of a hardworking woman. 

Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Iffy. Lois and Jenny have an exchange ("Why is the printer out of toner?" "You have got to come see this...") which is not in the strictest terms a conversation; more just two unrelated sentences tossed at each other. Given the relatively higher number of female characters in this film, you'd think they could've managed to give at least two of them meaningful dialogue that didn't directly involve a male. 

Male:Female Ratio: In terms of presence of women, this film did pretty well (especially compared with its counterparts in the same genre which often feature only one or two token females). Pretty well all the male main characters had a female counterpart-- Zod and his second-in-command Faora, Clark and Lois, Jor-El and Lara, Clark's parents,  Perry and Jenny, General Swanwick and Captain Farris. It is telling, however, that every single male main character holds the role of authority or action, while the females really are 'counterparts': second-in-commands, supporters, love interests, and underlings.

So, overall, not awful like some superhero movies can be (don't get me started on Iron Man 3...) but by now means a shining star either.

Monday 5 August 2013

Elementary-School Girls and Math Anxiety

Just read a really interesting article in the Smithsonian on how math-anxious, female, early elementary school teachers pass on their math-anxiety to their female students. It's a really short article, so why don't you click through and read it?

I'm particularly interested in this as I begin researching how to homeschool my children. Up until about a year ago, I would've fit the definition of math anxiety given in the article: "When someone has math anxiety, they can master mathematical concepts but tend to avoid the subject and perform more poorly than their abilities allow." I'm a fairly intelligent human being, passed my SATs no problem, and generally was able to find most subjects interesting and engaging, from different types of genetic mutations to how to write a sestina to basic CSS, and everything in between. Why did math feel like such a brick wall to me?

There were probably a lot of things at play, but two points stand out to me as notable:
1) My own math teacher (my mother) was and is pretty math-anxious, while my dad is pretty good at math. Of my siblings and I, only my brother came out of secondary school feeling mathematically adept. I'm not trying to blame my parents at all, but I do think it likely that some of the subconscious stereotyping as described in the Smithsonian article was playing out in our family. Obviously, as with the teachers in the article, there is no intention of raising girls who performed worse in math than the boys, but I think it's reasonable to suppose some of those preconceptions about girls being worse at math than boys were communicated through my own parents' educations (after all, when they were being educated in the seventies and eighties, it was by teachers who would've been educated even earlier-- at a time when girls and STEM studies were pretty well considered totally incompatible.)
2) The other skill-area in my life where I felt that notion of a brick wall and not being able to improve myself was sports. I always thought I was just bad at sports, but that it didn't matter because I was a girl and didn't need to play sports-- that was for boys. As an adult, I am much more able to see the joy and use of using your body well, and once I'm not pregnant/recovering from a pregnancy anymore, I do hope to engage in sports much more. So I definitely think I was self-stereotyping, discouraged in what could've been of great interest and benefit to me by pre-conceived notions of what I could and should be good at.

So coming back to the research I'm doing for homeschooling my own children: even before reading the Smithsonian article, I had come to the conclusion that believing your brain isn't capable of doing a certain skill is a fabulous way to cripple your brain in doing it, so I knew I wanted to pass on to my children the joy of math, logic, and analytical thinking as surely as my own mother did such a wonderful job passing on the love of reading, poetry, and music. I am more sure than ever now that I want to be careful not to let my (potential future) daughters think that math is for boys, and that one way I need to do that is by entering joyfully into math myself.

What about you? How do you think your math teachers affected your ability to learn math? Have you thought about how you will teach math to your kids (real or potential future)?

Friday 2 August 2013

"Ladies' Man..."

This is another exhortation to think about how the language we use reinforces worldly views of gender versus Scriptural views; a bit of a companion post to my earlier post, "Ladies..."

Ok, well, let's start with some frank, if perhaps somewhat biased, opinions: I think my son is an absolute looker. I mean, he looks like his Daddy, and his Daddy is a babe, so how could he not be, but something about his fluffy blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and miles-long dark eyelashes seem to move other people to agree with me. People are always stopping us in the grocery store and such to tell him what lovely eyes he has. And hey, my mama-heart likes seeing my son praised, although I know his outward appearance is superficial and will in no way determine whether he is a man after God's heart-- which is what really matters. But it's nice to see my son making a favourable impression.

However.

There's something a lot of people (unfortunately, some of them believers) tend to say to him that really troubles me; something along the lines of, "You're going to be quite the ladies' man, aren't you?" or "The girls will just love you." Lest you think I've just misplaced my sense of humour over what people obviously intend as a lighthearted remark, let me unpack why this troubles me.

If this was an isolated cultural incident, maybe it could be shrugged off as 'no big deal' or 'just a joke'. But it's not; far from it. One of the most common ways our culture warps God's ideal of masculinity is by promoting the ladies' man as a paragon of manliness. If you need convincing that this is a culturally-prevalent attitude, check out two places where cultural norms are not usually challenged: superhero movies and TV commercials. Watch an Axe commercial*. Or a beer commercial, or a shaving commercial, or pretty well any commercial that airs during a sporting event. Picture Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark's glamorous millionaire lifestyle, traveling everywhere with a girl on either arm. Alternately, think of Steve Rogers (Captain America) prior to his enhancement: as a runty, unhealthy (i.e. not very masculine) guy, he can't get one girl interested in him, while his handsome, broad-shouldered friend can easily pick up two. The message is clear, and it is everywhere: if you're really manly, you can get lots of girls to sleep with you-- and you'll want to.

Is this what people are thinking when they compliment my son by predicting he'll be sexually appealing lots of women? I hope not-- I hope they're just not thinking at all, not realising that they're predicting my one-year-old will be sexually appealing to lots of women (because if they are thinking in that language, that's thoroughly creepy). But the fact that it's unthinking doesn't change the fact that they're planting those seeds in his mind, adding their weight to a cultural barrage that would push my son into thinking uncommitted, unchecked sleeping around is glamourous and desirable.

Now think of Christ. Think of his singleminded, self-sacrificing pursuit of his one Bride. Think of the sober, committed man of God called to lead the churches and how his faithfulness to his wife is among the first qualifications given in 1 Timothy 3. Think of Proverbs 5, pleadingly praising the blessedness of enjoying one committed relationship and using words like "scattered" "folly" and "led astray" in relation to this "ladies' man" ideal our culture promotes. Do we really believe that following God's statutes is a delight and "riches", as Psalm 119 puts it? Then let us not use the language of rebellious ignorance to God's way in our praise of little children!

What I would love is if people instead said, "You're going to make one woman very happy."** That's a goal I would like him to have. Here's the thing: there is absolutely nothing wrong-- indeed, there's plenty right-- with a godly man who chooses not to pursue any romantic relationship at all until he finds a woman who not only attracts him with her beauty, but also impresses him with her character, nothing wrong with waiting for God's timing, and most of all, nothing wrong with being a guy who just never really interests most girls he meets, until he meets the one woman whom God intended for him, who can see parts of him that others couldn't, and who will appreciate him as a whole man, body, mind, and spirit-- not just a hottie good for a one-night stand.***

I would like to talk at a later point about another harmful cultural warping of masculinity/femininity, in which purity is seen as a more feminine virtue, but for now I think I'll leave you with this plea: next time you bend down to a little boy's level and let him know you think he's great, can you take a second and check that that encouragement will help him think of Christlikeness as more desirable than being liked by lots of women?


*I was going to link an Axe commercial but they are just too offensive, especially coming from the same company who owns Dove and purports to be promoting respect for women and their natural beauty. Basically, picture dozens of stick-thin but busty girls in the tiniest bikinis possible, fighting and racing each other to get to one man. Tagline, "Spray more, get more." Phallic symbol duly included.)
** Or, even better, left his future sex appeal off the table entirely?
***This works the same way for girls, by the way. I wish there was a way to reassure all the single girls I know that it doesn't matter two straws if there's no one interested in them right now. I was never the object of much male attention before I caught Steven's eye, and darned if I can think of one way that has made our love the less sweet or our marriage the less wonderfully fulfilling.

Friday 12 July 2013

Femininity and Artifice

Have you seen any of the coverage of the debacle surrounding comments by BBC's John Inverdale about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli's appearance? He basically said she was too ugly to be anything but a scrappy fighter, actually suggested that her father probably told her she was ugly. This was immediately following Bartoli's celebratory hug with her father and former coach, and was a shameful, demeaning way to approach both her victory and her relationship with her father. 

Sadly, Inverdale was not alone in thinking that Bartoli's physical appearance was somehow a relevant factor in her being an athletic champion. Public Shaming (warning: link contains plenty of strong language) condemned a whole string of tweeters who used a far more offensive tone than Inverdale to do the same thing he did: sexualise her. Remember the first condition of sexualisation from Wednesday's blog post? Sexualising is happening when "a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics."

I read a thought-provoking quote from Rebecca Hain's blog post called "When Women Look Strong: The Sexism At Wimbledon" (emphasis mine):

"The tamest of the twitter comments said that she “didn’t deserve to win because she is ugly,” that she is a “pig,” and that she “looks like she’s a cross between a man and an ape.” Why did so many comments fixate on suggesting Bartoli was an animal and/or a man? Well, as Judith Butler argues, femininity is not naturally occurring; it is a performance. It requires artifice and careful planning: pretty makeup, coiffed hair, stylish clothing, and a body that is controlled–slim and slight but curvy. In today’s world, people expect that any self-respecting woman will make being feminine a priority at all times. (Think about how many women won’t leave the house without makeup on, lest people judge them negatively.)
Bartoli, on the tennis court without makeup, was not performing femininity. She was being athletic: running, sweating, driving her body to function at its peak. She looked strong because she is strong–and because our culture associates strength with masculinity, it’s really hard to appear strong and feminine at the same time. Hence, the ape/pig/man comments."
The part I found particularly interesting to think about is why our culture's trappings of female attractiveness (stylish haircuts, hair dye, mascara, foundation, shapewear, plastic surgery, laser hair removal) are artificial when the cultural trappings of male attractiveness are fairly natural (a man with tousled hair and 5 o'clock shadow in jeans and a tee, for example, is perfectly acceptable and attractive). It harks back, for me, to one of my first blog posts, You Don't Have To Be Pretty. In it I quoted a man (a pastor, sadly), who said parents should tell their athletic daughters, "Sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.
So, just some food for thought here: does God intend that part of being womanly is being committed to covering up or changing our bodies and faces-- the natural beauty of a his good creation? If not, what can we in the church do to encourage women not to buy into a commercially and sexually driven stereotype of femininity? On the other hand, why do we associate a human being using their body-- their muscles, their endurance, their endless hours of training to get their body to respond intuitively-- to the fullest with maleness? Does God intend that part of being womanly is not pursuing physical excellence-- the enjoyment of the natural performance of his good creation? If not, what can we in the church do to encourage women to use and enjoy their God-given physical strength and abilities without worrying about whether it jives with society's ideas of walking and talking and smelling "like a girl"? 
(One final note-- it's interesting that "feminine beauty" as suggested above often involves putting weird chemicals onto or into your body, eating in an unsustainable way (i.e. not enough), or subjecting oneself to physical pain, whereas "masculine ability" as suggested above involves eating good fuel and exercising, things that contribute to long-term health. If that's our definition of feminine versus masculine, can I humbly suggest we're doing it wrong?)

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Define: Sexualisation

In preparation for an upcoming blog post discussing issues surrounding how modesty is taught to girls, I wanted to give a quick definition for "sexualisation," so there's no confusion as to what I'm talking about. 

Sexualisation is not a synonym for sexuality. Sexuality is a good gift from God, natural and normal. Sexualisation it is an external imposition of sexual characteristics in places where they don't naturally exist. 

The American Psychological Association defines it as follows: "Here are several components to sexualization, and these set it apart from healthy sexuality. Sexualization occurs when
  • -a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
    -a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
    -a person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
    -sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
All four conditions need not be present; any one is an indication of sexualization."

So, for example, on the movie poster for Now You See Me that I reviewed in a previous post, Henley is sexualised by the first condition because she is not shown as a person with purpose and drive as the other characters, but simply as a sexy person. Bikinis and heels for toddlers, or baby onesies with slogans like "Hung like a 5-year-old" (They exist. Much worse slogans exist.) sexualise children by the fourth condition. A lot of advertising in fashion magazines (cologne seems to be a particularly bad offender) sexualise women according to the third condition by displaying women as sexual accessories (often in vulnerable positions). And the effects of the second condition are all around us.

These are just a few examples of a widespread problem, and I could easily give dozens more, but the definition is the important part, the part that I would like my readers to be carrying with them whenever I do get around to finishing the mega-post on modesty that I've got brewing...

Sunday 30 June 2013

True Courage

I've been very busy (a new house, stomach flu, pregnancy, you know-- just life) and so haven't had much time to post, but I was very moved by a specific part of the sermon on Matthew 27:32-44 at our church this morning: 

"Here we see Jesus refusing to stop the pain and suffering that he is offering to God on our behalf. It is this strand in particular that should move our hearts to trust in Christ with our entire lives. In verse 34, he is offered wine mixed with gall. The practice of offering a pain suppressor to dying people is founded in the pages of the OT: "Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress." (Proverbs 31:6) So this was probably a narcotic to dull pain. But based on the verse that it fulfills from Psalm 69, it may have even been a poison to stop the pain permanently: "They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink." (Psalm 69:21) Regardless whether it was a narcotic or poison, Jesus refuses to take it. He will not give himself relief until the full price for our sins in paid-He has determined to pay the full price of every ransomed sinner."

I can't even begin to imagine the kind of courage and conviction Christ displayed. My pastor, Tim, went on to talk about how those mocking Christ also suggested he come down from the cross to prove he was the Son of God. Jesus could've easily come down, but he chose not to; he chose to hang there, shamed and discredited in the eyes of the watching world, because he had his eyes on a greater prize than vindication in the eyes of the world, and he had in his heart a greater love than the love of his own reputation. Christ endured his excruciating pain and the mocking barbs of his killers to save his people. To save a wretch like me!

What a different picture Christ presents of godly manhood than the media of the world-- where advertising and film present a version of "courage" that is full of aggression, swagger, self-aggrandisement, physical strength, and earthly rewards, Christ's courage was in just the opposite: meekness, silence, shame, physical torture, and eternal rewards. In light of the love and sacrifice of my Saviour, I pray that I can display this kind of humble courage myself, and teach my son that this is true manliness, not the picture the world presents.

Friday 21 June 2013

Dr. Amy Cuddy on "Power Posing"



Last night Steven and I watched this TEDTalk on "power posing" and how it reconfigures the hormones in your brain to be more powerful-- in the sense of authentic, engaging, confident, and passionate (not in the sense of lording it over others or being the alpha dog).

I thought it was fascinating as it relates to my recent post on canting. Dr. Cuddy describes how a person who is insecure or feeling weak "collaspes into themselves" with head down, arms down and towards the torso, and feet and knees together. It's certainly not identical to canting, but it bears some striking similarities: the tendency of the head to be angled downwards, of the arms not to lift above the shoulders, of the feet or arms to be crossed. As well, both feature an off-balanced positioning. Both serve the same purpose, though for different reasons: to persuade onlookers that the poser is not a threat.

Now, the low-power postures Dr. Cuddy describes are an instinctual, emotionally-hardwired way of reacting to feeling weak, while canting is a culturally-learned way of responding to peer pressure (i.e. canting is seen as how feminine and desirable women pose in our culture, and most women would like to be seen as feminine and desirable.) But I wonder if the reaction of women's bodies to canting is the same as the reaction of our bodies to low-power posing; I wonder if canting actually causes us to be more easily stressed, more likely to hide our true passions and personalities, and less confident. I can only speculate, since that wasn't within the scope of Dr. Cuddy's study, but certainly it's a point worth considering. It makes me want to stand a little straighter and square my shoulders when I face the world-- what about you?

Saturday 15 June 2013

Film Review: Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story

Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story is a Canadian film about a Canadian hero: 16-year-old Marilyn Bell, who in 1954 attempted the longest swim on record, a grueling 52-kilometer swim across Lake Ontario. It's a simple story-- told far more simply than if it had been made in Hollywood-- but I really liked it. It was well-acted, and the swim and the odds against Bell completing it drew me in.



Role of Women: What I loved about the way women were treated (with one exception) in this film is that they all but ignored a world where women are viewed as less. Marilyn faces opposition to her swimming dreams from many people at different points in the film: her mother doesn't think she can succeed, her coach initially refuses to train her because she's such a novice, her competitor, professional American swimmer Florence Chadwick, refuses to even acknowledge her as competition, and the CNE attempts to cut her out of the Lake Ontario swim altogether. But no one ever mentions that she can't do it because she's a girl. They say she's young, slight, an untested novice attempting a record-breaking swim-- but nobody ever says she shouldn't be pursuing her dream because of her gender. So many films of this sort make the heroine a scrappy, won't-be-put-in-a-box, chafes-against-the-social-conventions-of-the-day type of girl. There is a place for that, but it was very refreshing that they never had anyone criticize Marilyn because she was athletic, or have her coach, male fellow swim club members, or men in the press treat her as a sex object or as less valuable, and she in turn never needs to be resentful of her femaleness.

I also loved the vulnerability of Marilyn's character. Remember in my post One-Sided? I talked about realistic, interesting women? That's what Marilyn is. She's shy, but willing to advocate for herself despite feeling awkward. She's afraid of creatures in the water and swimming in the dark (and the poor girl gets attacked by lamprey eels in the water at night when she starts her epic swim) and needs the help of her coach's hardheartedness to push through her fears and carry on. She laughs, she cries, she has a good friendship with another girl in her swim club, they don't toss in a quick romance for the sake of the modern audience. In short, she's exactly the kind of character Hollywood could use a lot more of. Overall, I think the treatment of women in this film was very positive.

Sexualization of Women: Here's the one niggle I had with the film. Marilyn's opponent, the older, proven swimmer Florence Chadwick, in what I suppose to be an effort to make her seem more "villainous" and so up the tension of the film, is portrayed as a vain, selfish, glamour queen. From what I can find out on the Internet, she wasn't all that glamourous, but in the film they had her unabashedly using her sex appeal to manipulate the men around her, hanging out in her hotel room painting her toenails when everybody was waiting for her to start the swim, generally seeming to care more about her physical appearance than her sport or the world around her. Now, I can't say for sure, but this doesn't seem to me to be the kind of attitude that an extremely talented, successful long-distance swimmer like Chadwick would take towards her sport. Basically, the film implied that she used her glamorous looks and some suggestive behaviour to get the CNE executive to offer her the $10,000 prize for swimming Lake Ontario. I think the film could have created a sense of competition and shown Chadwick as an older, more worldly and experienced opponent without cheapening her like that. Still, this was one or two brief scenes in a movie that falls overwhelmingly on the positive side.

Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Pass. Marilyn and her mother, Marilyn and her sister, and Marilyn and her good friend Joan all have plenty of conversations about things other than men (mostly about swimming).

Male:Female Ratio: 50:50! Nice-- just like the real world. Out of ten main(ish) characters, five were women.

Thursday 13 June 2013

Canting-- What's That?

So I went pretty full-on theological last night so I thought I'd switch things up a little bit tonight and talk more pop-culture. I don't know if people caught my mention of "canting" in my review of Now You See Me. It's not a very common word, and to be honest, even the Internet doesn't have much to say about it, but it's an extremely, scarily common happenstance.

So what is canting? Well, the dictionary tells us, "1. Angular deviation from a vertical or horizontal plane or surface; an inclination or slope." In terms of female body language, The Achilles Effect describes it as one of "the many ways that female bodies, when displayed in popular culture, are sexualized and positioned to communicate submissiveness and powerlessness. Showing females in a recumbent position is one way of communicating this message and canting is another... the crossed leg position, standing on one leg, the torso twisted away from the vertical, and the head cant. All of these positions serve to place the female character off balance and give her an air of vulnerability."

So that's the wordy definition, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few:






Getting the idea? In children's media-- and comic books for adults*-- the canting is very obvious, to an almost grotesque degree, and it is quite common for it to be dismissed on the grounds of them being cartoons, exaggerating the characteristics of the characters because that's what cartoons do. In the adult movie posters it can be more subtle, as in the Italian Job, just a little bit of chest-thrust, with head down and a leg stuck off to one side, or it can be quite obvious, as in the Pirates poster, with Kiera Knightly's tilted head and seductive glance and her hand pointing right at her chest.** These postures are in stark contrast to the sort of poses men hold; consider the Gatsby poster where all the male characters have their shoulders squared directly to the camera (as do the male leads Jack, Will, and Charlie in the other two posters). 

 It becomes a bit of a chicken-or-egg debate, whether the movies are just reflecting that women do subtly stand this way because of their generally-larger hips and different center of balance and what have you, or whether women learn to stand like this because it's presented in media. If you think it's the former, do a little experiment (if you're a lady). Check out that Disney poster up at the top, and try on all those poses. Then ask yourself-- is it really natural for me to stand like this? Ask yourself a few more questions-- if I were standing like this in a public place, would I feel awkward because of what my body language was communicating to the men around me? Try this one: if I had a 15-16 year old daughter (the average age of Disney princesses), how would I feel if she was standing like this in a public place? 

I'm just going to go ahead and take my stance on the chicken-or-egg debate-- women stand like this as a learned behaviour, not as a reflection of some kind of innate knowledge that this is the most feminine way to stand. Since I've agreed pictures are worth a thousand words, here's another in favour of that argument:



When did we go from this kind of thing to what we see in the movie posters above? Someone else can trace that lineage. What I'm concerned about is why this ubiquitous canting pose matters. I propose a couple of reasons:

1) Posture! When we stand with our feet totally together, or toes turned inward, or when we always rest our weight on one hip, or have one shoulder off-balance, or our head tilted, or our torso curved or twisted (all fairly common for women; try comparing male and female postures the next time you're in a crowd), we're trading off future, and even current, comfort and health in order to fit into a media-driven, sexually-charged standard of beauty (sort of like what we do with high-heeled shoes, or chemical-heavy make-up). This happens pretty subconsciouly, because much like figures of speech, we pick up "appropriate" body language and position from our culture without too much conscious decision-making going on. Which is kind of unfair to us in this instance, but that's why there needs to be people pointing it out.

Also, and more importantly...

2) Value. When we fall into line with a canting posture, we are nonverablly communicating a false idea about men and women-- taking the Biblical warrant to submit to our husbands far beyond the realm of marriage and adopting a submissive posture before all men. This is not Scripturally-mandated, and it is not Scripturally-lauded. When I think of the daughters of Zelophehad fighting for their right to keep the family inheritance in Joshua, Ruth proposing to Boaz so she could fulfill the Scripture mandate to maintain a family name, Tamar risking her life and reputation to do the same, Esther steeling herself to face the king and die for her people if need be, Deborah stepping up where the male leadership of Israel was doubtful and did not trust the Lord, Rahab hiding spies because she could see where the Lord's favour lay, the Proverbs 31 woman making investments and working with strength and diligence, Anna with her decades of unwavering faith, Mary standing up straight before the prospect of ridicule, shame, divorce-- everything in her life crashing down around her-- and saying "I am the Lord's handmaiden"... when I think of these women that the Scriptures honour and commemorate, I don't think about their soft, yielding dispositions to the world around them. They are women of courage, of rock-solid faith in the promise of God, bold to risk ridicule or death for the sake of that promise, even if the leadership-- the government of Jericho, Barak the judge, the partriarch Judah-- did not believe or value that promise. I don't doubt that women like Mary, Anna, and Ruth were submissive to their husbands as the Scripture requires. But without being aggressive or unwomanly in the least, the woman I listed above do display what John Piper calls "massive steel in their backs and theology in their brains".

Of course, it's as plain as the nose on your face that God did provide two different (general) body shapes to men and women (with lots of variations within that general theme for both genders). It is not plain to me at all the He wants women to damage their bodies and accentuate their sexuality for the sake of seeming submissive or nonconfrontational towards a wider mankind to whom they owe no such allegiance.

So, in closing, one more image, a turnaround by Kevin Bolk of a poster for The Avengers that puts the one female character in a front-facing, nonsexual pose instead of vice-versa. It's actually incredibly awkward and embarrassing to look at-- which is exactly how the original poster would look if we weren't so desensitized to the sexualisation of women by the sheer magnitude of the imagery that does it. Think about that.

And, hey, I warned you when I started out that these were going to be incredibly verbose blog posts. At least there's lots of pictures here.

 *If you have any doubts about that, check out the Hawkeye Initiative, which sheds stark light on just how far comic book creators will go in twisting the female body to make it "sexy".
 **It actually comes a lot more obvious, particularly in low-brow comedies or romance movies, but I'm sparing you that.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Some Heavy Reading For Your Wednesday Night

This article by Irvin A. Busenitz was just brought to my attention in the comments on my post Thoughts On "A (Somewhat) Scholarly Analysis Of Genesis 3:16"*. It features some rather dense, scholarly reading exploring the Hebrew words and use of context at play in Genesis 3:16.

If you're still in doubt about how to correctly interpret this passage, I would encourage you to read the whole article. I feel very confident after reading it that the new interpretation that developed during second-wave feminism-- that women desire to dominate men because of the curse-- is not the correct one.

If you're not up for reading all eleven pages, here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

"The central consideration in the interpretation of Gen 3:16b is context; the meaning of "desire" is best determined in the light of its immediate contextual setting. The context bespeaks procreation and the continuation of life, not the desire to dominate. Furthermore, to appeal to Gen 4:7 with its manifold obscurities to unlock the interpretive door of Gen 3:16 is to throw exegetical caution to the wind. It is much safer to apply the meaning of [Hebrew word] in Cont 7:10** to Gen 3:16, for while it does not enjoy the near proximity of Gen 4:7, its meaning is plain and its interpretation is vitually unquestioned. Consequently, it should be granted preeminence over Gen 4:7 and become the primary cross-reference in ascertaining the meaning of "desire.""
"The text does not sustain the interpretation that one aspect of the woman's judgment is that she will desire to dominate and control the man. The last phrase of Gen 3:16 is not a part of the judgment; it is an explanatino and description of conditions which will exist after the fall. Thus, the last phrase could be translated: "you you will still desire [as you did before the Fall, though now tainted by sin] your husband, and he will still rule [as he did before the Fall, though now tainted by sin] over you."


*I think Busenitz's article is more cautious with the text than article by Alsup which I originally posted. Both posit an alternative meaning for "her desire shall be for her husband" but I think Busenitz's requires less stretching of the text. At any rate, neither support the idea of female domination as part of the curse.
**That's Song of Solomon. Took me forever to figure that out so I'm letting you know now. Or maybe I'm the only one who might've been confused.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

One-Sided?

Someone remarked about the movie review I just did, "Role of women? What about the role of men? Isn't that a little one-sided?" I would like to address that here.

See, yes, it is one-sided. Just like the problem.

Because while there are certainly ways in which Hollywood stereotypes men and makes them one-dimensional and even sexualises them, there is nothing like the same kind of systemic, far-reaching problem as there is with the way women are portrayed in film.

Consider the following:
-According to a recent study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, male characters have nearly three-quarters of the speaking parts in children's entertainment, and in family films, male characters outnumber females 3:1.
-The majority of movies do not pass the Bechdel Test, either featuring only one token female character, or by never having two females cross paths, or by putting two females together and having them only advance the plot on behalf of the male characters. Even more movies only pass the Bechdel Test by one conversation. Try to imagine a world where the reverse was true-- most movies only had one man and if there were two, they wouldn't ever speak unless to talk about the female main character.
-Except for in films made specifically for a female audience, the vast majority of leads are male.

I have to agree with Geena Davis' assessment. Have you noticed recently that the women in your life are hard to come by (drastically outnumbered by the males?) No? What about how they interact? Have you noticed that women tend to avoid each other like the plague unless they are getting together to talk about a man? No? Hmmm... Well, have you noticed that whenever you talk to a female you're bored to tears? Still no?

Okay, so now that we've established that that's not how the world works, I can establish why I want to approach film reviews from a perspective of the role of women. It's not because I think women are more important than men-- it's that I think they're just as important, and Hollywood is doing a terrible job of communicating that. If we aren't aware of just how one-dimensional and marginalized Hollywood makes their female characters, we will unwittingly absorb the message that women are more one-dimensional and less important than men. Like any of the subtle underlying biases in film, being aware of the problem is our best protection against assimilating the message. So I point out the maginalization of women in movies not because I enjoy complaining-- it's because I want change. I want people just starting out in film to think about why a man shouldn't enjoy a story about a woman, to think about what they're saying if they never make two female characters interact. I want movie-goers to come away from the theatre and to say, "The way they had that female character act was unrealistic because x," and then think about what real women are like and go out into the world with realistic, interesting women in their heads instead of a stereotype.

I've heard it said regarding this issue, "Once you see it, you can't unsee it." Thankfully, it's true. And once you're seeing it everywhere, you can become one more voice asking for something different-- something better.

Sunday 9 June 2013

Film Review: Now You See Me

So, I thought I'd add a little intermittent feature to the blog where I review movies for their treatment of women, sexuality, relationships and roles. This week Steven and I went to see Now You See Me at an ill-advised 10:30 showing, so I'll start there.


Role of Women: It's nice to see that they had two female characters who were fleshed out beyond just "women who fall in love with men in the film" (although both of them did) I especially appreciated the character Alma Dray, the female Interpol detective whose intuitive, observational-- more feminine-- style of investigating is portrayed in a positive light against Rhodes' (supposedly) more aggressive, logical, "masculine" style. Often when films cast a woman in a military, police, or other more "combative" role, they work hard to make her seem tough, hardboiled, and no-nonsense. Dray uses co-operation, careful research, and intuition to make strides in the case that Rhodes would not have been able to make on his own, and I appreciated that portrayal.

Henley fared a little worse, especially at the hands of Merrit, who blatantly considers her merely as a sex object. Which would be okay, because there are men like that, except that she doesn't seem to mind at all when, for example, the first thing he does on meeting her is look her over and assess her value solely based on her appearance. Like, sure, that's not creepy at all.

Still, overall I think it did a lot better than many similar films. I could've done without Henley falling in love with J. Daniel Atlas despite him doing nothing to reform the arrogance and self-absorption that she dislikes in him at the beginning of the movie, and it's a bit funny that an Interpol detective would casually overlook her love interest's massive bank robbery but overall, I think the treatment of women in this film was fair-to-middling. (If only the character development of the film matched that, but that's a subject for someone else's film review...)

Sexualization of Women: Considering the strong precedent the filmmakers had to dress Henley in the traditionally skimpy costumes of women in magic, I was pretty impressed that they only had her in one such costume, when she's doing her solo work. And arguably that is realistic both because she was working in entertainment, and because of the trick she was doing (long heavy clothes would probably interfere with her lockpicking and escape from the water tank). Once she was with the Four Horsemen, she was generally not dressed in a revealing matter.

However-- whatever art team was in charge of the poster above totally missed the memo and thought cleavage, legs, and canting were the best way to portray her character. Where all the male characters communicate a sense of purpose, with straight-on glances and squared shoulders (except Freeman who is posed more to communicate his observational role in the movie), Henley has a sidelong, come-hither sort of glance/head pose and is dressed to display her sexuality instead of the drive and purpose she shares with the other three Horsemen.

Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Fail. Features two (and only two) named female characters, but they never speak.

Male:Female Ratio: Out of eight main characters, two were female. That said, in modern day magic, rough estimates suggest that women make up only 3-8% of the professional magical workforce, so actually, I think, kudos to the filmmakers for casting a female magician and portraying her as a solid and talented solo act (instead of the sexy assistant role The Prestige filmmakers, for example, gave their magic lady.)