suzubara

I bet you guys thought I forgot about this thing/gave up on it! I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Honestly though, I didn’t forget about it - in fact, I think about what I should write here all the time. Usually while I’m commuting. The thing is it’s hard to decide what to write about, because there are so many options and they are all kind of connected, and I’m afraid if I start writing about one thing then it will lead to another and I’ll end up with a really long rambly post. I’m trying very hard to avoid that!

Also I procrastinate a lot.

Anyways, today I am excited because I am going to Disney World for the first time! I’ve been to Disneyland before and I loved it, so I’m pretty sure I’ll have a blast. But to stay relevant, let’s talk a little bit about Disney.

Disney gets a lot of flack for the whole Princess thing. Lately there’s been that whole issue with the Merida redesign, which I have mixed feelings about. But instead of nitpicking the “redesign” (which was not really a redesign, just ONE image depicting Merida in a different artistic style, and I really don’t think it was meant to represent Disney’s intended direction for her character) I want to talk about something that I think people ignore when they are criticizing Disney for making movies about princesses.

I think that one of the biggest problems with women in media (particularly comics & video games), which often gets overlooked in favor of criticizing female characters for being over-sexualized or not being “strong” enough, is the general lack of stories told from a woman’s perspective. When something is told from a female perspective, it’s generally dismissed as being only for women (see: chick flicks, chick lit). I’m not going to deny that there is a lot of crappy media out there targeted towards women, and I think a lot of it is crappy because it is targeted towards women, but that shouldn’t mean that a story told from a female perspective is automatically any less legitimate than one told from a male perspective.

I want to make something clear: I am not talking about a lack of female characters, or the shoehorning of female characters into specific stereotypes/gender roles. These are obviously issues as well, but I don’t think they can really change until there is an increase in the quantity of popular media/stories told by women. Honestly, you can create as many “token female” characters as you want, and you can make them strong and independent and capable, but it’s not going to help much until there is an actual shift in narrative, because until female characters are given as much of a voice as male characters, they are still going to be “the other”, or just a cool prop.

What do I mean when I say female perspective? It might not be obvious. Here’s a fun test: take any IP that you like, whether it’s a movie or a comic book or a tv show or a video game, and ask yourself “who is this story about?” It could easily be an ensemble, but usually there are one or two characters a story is really about. Meaning they are the characters the audience is meant to empathize with, who really grow emotionally throughout the story — the audience sees the story from their perspective. There is an astonishing imbalance towards male characters, to the point where it’s as if the male perspective is the “default”. This imbalance exists EVERYWHERE. Show me a commercial told from a woman’s point of view that isn’t about weight loss or household cleaning products.

What does this have to do with Disney? Well, they have an entire brand that revolves around female characters, and in that way it is pretty unique. Yes, they are princesses, some of them reinforce negative gender roles and are pretty terrible (I’m looking at you, Snow White & Sleeping Beauty) — but the important point is that Disney princess movies are about women. They give young girls stories of their own, stories where they don’t have to look for that token female character and wish that she was given a little more focus. A lot of these stories get criticized because they involve a woman overcoming some odds “in order to be with a man,” as if because she is doing something for love, she is no longer a legitimate role model. They get criticized because there’s no real love story there anyways, the woman and man fall in love at first sight without getting to know each other, or the characters aren’t “deep” enough. (Can we take a moment to remember that these movies are intended for younger audiences, and consider how much character depth they can really process?) I’m going to be bold for a second and suggest that maybe there isn’t a real love story in Disney movies because the princess is not in love with the prince at all — he only represents a more ideal situation that she wants to strive for.

Let’s try another fun test: imagine a story where there is a male character in a not-ideal situation, he meets a woman who represents a better life for him, and he overcomes odds in order to be with her. Does the man get criticized for changing his life for a woman, or does the woman get criticized for being a non-character? (hint: it’s the woman.) Let’s not forget how entirely unimportant the princes are in Disney movies. How many names of Disney princes do you remember? Maybe consider how important it is just for there to be female role models available to young girls, female characters who are actively making their own decisions and moving the story along, no matter whether they are doing it to “be with a man” or not.

So why is content so important? What about all of the problems with how female characters are marketed, or represented in merchandise (or not represented at all)? The thing is that it’s a self-perpetuating problem. Boys watch action movies and read superhero comics, girls watch romantic comedies and read fashion magazines. So by all means, continue making gendered products targeted to specific genders, because that is how money will get made. But marketing is all based on target audiences, which is based on statistics, and that is never going to change. I think real change has to come from what content is being produced, with less thought given to who it is being produced for. The Avengers was one of the highest grossing movies of all time, and it’s great that they have Black Widow in there, but like I mentioned before, she’s little more than a cool prop — until there is a good, solid movie about a female superhero (Carol Danvers, please!), superheros will continue to be marketed for guys. That’s what I’m talking about.

(A little side note here, I’d like to give a shout out to an awesome woman whose blog I’ve been following & who gives a very real perspective to the whole Princess thing and how the Disney Princess brand actually affects young girls versus how adults think it does: http://www.theprincessforhire.com/ Definitely check her out if you are interested in that subect! Also just as a disclaimer, I am not trying to say that Disney is perfect by any means — it has plenty of issues, but I do think their princesses are more important than people like to think)

Before anything else I want to give myself a little background. Because honestly, I don’t claim to be an expert on most of the things that I want to talk about. In fact I can’t say I gave these things much thought before say… three-ish years ago. I went to high school in New York City and then I went to college at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, a school that is known for being very pro-women, where I did not take any women’s studies courses or anything remotely resembling a women’s studies course. What I did was concentrate on two subjects, Film and Japanese, that traditionally in the “real world/industry” are not very kind to women. So I think I started becoming somewhat aware of feminist issues, but only in a distant “this-is-not-applicable-to-me” kind of way.

After I graduated, I started to realize that these issues actually were applicable to me, very much so, and in a variety of ways. There’s the way to which I’m sure any other woman who has ever walked down a street in NYC can relate, which is receiving unsolicited remarks about your appearance. There’s the way that comes from working as a professional in male-dominated fields, which I did first at a Japanese film/TV production company and again as a web developer (which I still do and love, but rarely get to work with other female developers). Then there’s the unfortunate stigma that comes from being a girl who does nerdy things, such as read comic books and play video games. I think there’s a lot to be said about all of these situations, none of which I am going to address right this second (because seriously, this is still day 1 of my blog and I am going to need content for more than two posts), but at least now I hope I’ve provided you with some idea of what to expect from this!

I’ll end this post with an attempt to somewhat gracefully reiterate my goal. In my many varied and interesting encounters with women’s issues (read: mostly just reading things on the internet), I’ve realized that there are many different kinds of feminists, and I don’t know if I could say which one I am (yet?). I don’t want to define anything here — I don’t want to claim to speak for all of womankind, or all girl-nerds, even — I don’t want to make any brash statements without acknowledging the possibility that I might change my mind later. What I want to do is add my voice to the mix and provide some perspective, because I’ve read so many things about women in programming, women in film, women in comics, women in video games, and hey look, I am all of those! If by providing perspective in any or all of those areas, I can help someone better understand something, or change someone’s mind (if they were previously a biased/sexist asshole or maybe just naive or ignorant), that would be pretty cool I think.

We’ll see how this goes. I’m not making any promises so don’t get too excited - I’ve “started blogs” before and with the exception of my passive-aggressive drama laden livejournal from high school, none of them have really kept my interest beyond making the first and sometimes second posts.

But lately I’ve been feeling particularly opinionated, especially regarding the recent influx of articles and things relating to girls doing nerdy things, and I’ve finally decided to try adding my voice to the bunch. First I want to get a few things straight, though. One is that I don’t want this blog to be too serious — I like being snarky and sarcastic, especially on the internet, and I think that will motivate me to write more. Second is that this is not going to be all-feminist all-the-time. In fact I don’t really think of it as being feminist at all — let’s just call it something like: being equally decent people to both girls and guys, and leave it at that. I will also probably make the occasional post about my life that I don’t expect anyone to really care about, just to make it look like I update this more often, so there’s that.

More than anything I want to engage with people. I wouldn’t be starting this if I didn’t think I had anything to say, and I like talking about my opinions with people. I know how people can be on the internet, so if you are an asshole then I will call you out about it and we can argue or I can just ignore you, depending on what kind of asshole you are being. I am not going to be using this tumblr to repost half a million articles reiterating things I like or agree with, and I especially won’t be using it to repost GIFs because even though there are a lot of funny GIFs out there, whenever I see a tumblr that is all just reposted stuff my eyes just glaze over and I refuse to acknowledge it as an actually valuable source of content.

Ok… here goes.

The other day I received my first package from stitchfix.com! It’s kind of a personal styling/shopping service that is really easy and fun to use. You sign up, answer a bunch of questions about what styles you like, what clothes you need, and your size, and then they send you 5 pieces in the mail (whenever you want them to!). You pay $20 when they ship something to you, and if you like any of the things they send then you get $20 of credit to use on any of them. Whatever you don’t like you can send back to them in a very conveniently included USPS postal bag affixed with a prepaid shipping label! And as a bonus, if you want to keep all five items, you get a 25% discount!

This sweater is the only thing from this shipment I’m keeping. They definitely sent me some fun and interesting clothes, things I wouldn’t normally pick out otherwise. Some of them weren’t my style and others were too expensive and I didn’t like them enough to justify the cost. But it’s a lot of fun to have someone else send you interesting things to try out!

They also include a tag with some information about the product as well as some styling suggestions. I really enjoyed getting my Stitchfix box and I have to make myself wait a little while before ordering another one (they won’t send any to you automatically unless you ask them to, so you don’t have to worry about them charging you when you don’t expect it). They’re in beta now so you have to request an invite, but feel free to use my referral link OR if you don’t want to that’s cool too and you can just sign up at stitchfix.com :)

Everything has been insane lately! Starting the apartment hunt, launching Bosskey in less than a month, planning our panel for AB. It’s all very stressful.

We went to Sleep No More on Friday. It feels a little bit like a dream, like I keep remembering little parts of it and finding it hard to believe that all of that actually happened in a warehouse in Chelsea that I walk by daily. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it right afterwards, but I think I’d like to go again if it sticks around for awhile. If you’re in the NYC area I definitely recommend it just for the experience, it’s unlike anything else. Wandering through a smoky forest and a graveyard with surround sound music felt like walking through a movie. Being envious of the few audience members who got taken into a secret room (if I go again I’d make sure to be one of them!). The rave scene was surreal, if you go be sure not to miss that.