Now, this is a totally out of the blue post and very belated in terms of the blog its in response to. I was doing a Google image search for a specific Disney princess and happened to come across a blog post from June 1, 2008 on dirtyrottenfeminist‘s blog. You can find the specific entry here.
She had a whole “in depth” post about how sexist Disney Princess movies are. I read it out of pure curiosity and halfway through I had to take a break to clear the growing sarcasm and snark that was just begging to be released in a comment.
She mentions straight away that she doesn’t think any of these movies should be banned, saying, “…the main problem is that plenty of parents do not discuss the issues with their kids, and I think that is important.” Now, I dunno when she started watching Disney movies, but I don’t think I would’ve understood or cared if my mom had sat me down at five years old and said, “Now I know you love Aladdin, but do you see how Jasmin totally comes on to Jafar? She’s using her sexuality to seduce him for her own gain; it’s very sexist.”
She starts out with Snow White, saying, “The biggest issue I have with Snow White is the way her song “Someday My Prince Will Come” today. It’s quite…well…shallow. This is the first instance we have a mother-figure as the villain. And what fuels her hatred? Jealousy over beauty. Blech.” First part; Someday My Prince Will Come is shallow? Isn’t that song supposed to be about getting what you dream and wish for? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought people – including women – were encouraged to dream and hope for things. Doing so doesn’t make someone shallow. I wish I was thinner; does that make me shallow? (Don’t answer that, I’m sure someone will say yes. xD )
Second part; The mother-figure villain. She expresses her dislike of the fact that the wicked mother figure is jealous of Snow White’s beauty. Personally, I don’t even see this as an issue since the movie very clearly depicts this as something bad and undesirable. The jealousy, that is. So who cares if the person is jealous? The movie portrays her as a villian; of course she’s going to be bad! (God forbid.)
Her next princess is Cinderella. She expresses distaste for the “Aryan-ness” of the whole movie… Which originally came out in 1950. Around this time, Disney was geared towards the middle class families which were predominantly white. There’s nothing “Aryan” about it! So Cinderella is blonde with blue eyes — get over it.
Then there’s Sleeping Beauty. This one was a real kicker. “The virginity symbolism is strong in this one: pricking her finger on a spindle (phallus?) and drawing blood (hymen?) is BAD BAD BAD!!!” I can imagine it now, every five to eight year old girl turning to the boy beside her and saying, “That spindle totally symbolizes your penis! Don’t stick it in me or I’ll bleed and fall asleep for hundreds of years!” No child is going to understand this as symbolism. It’s a fairy tale for crying out loud! They’re too busy laughing at the bumbling fairies and gazing wide eyed at the giant dragoness as she spurts a plume of flame at the prince.
On to the Little Mermaid! “So far we have: change yourself for a man, leave your family and friends behind to be with him, less talky–more fucky.” I never once saw any implications of sex in this movie the way she talks about it. From what I remember, and please correct me if I’m wrong, Ariel had already been fascinated by humans; Eric just fueled her curiosity. She goes on to say, “Instead of like the Hans Christensen Anderson version, where she would rather make the choice (look! a choice! how novel) to die instead of killing the man she loves, in this version, Daddy swoops in to save the day. Disgusting.” Now I can understand having little respect for a daddy’s girl as I was raised with a father figure who used to snort in disgust every time he saw someone like that. I don’t like things handed to me, despite what my mom sometimes thinks; I don’t even do well with gifts! But honestly… What’s so bad about a father saving his daughter’s life? Given the chance, wouldn’t any real father save his daughter? I’d be more concerned with the ending where the priest looks like he’s sporting a huge hardon. Someone needs to go back and redraw his pants! (Or keep it, it made me giggle like mad when I noticed.)
Now for some Beast. Beauty and the Beast. She points out how there seems to be some domestic abuse issues between Belle and Beast. I don’t see them. Belle seems overly curious and nosy, very perceptive. Beast strikes me as someone who just doesn’t want to be found out. He doesn’t want to let anyone in. If anything, it’s less abuse and more… “Hoo, he has issues…” Belle doesn’t change him in the way this girl presented it; she simply shows him that someone does care, that he isn’t alone and doesn’t have to be alone. What’s so wrong about that?
For Aladdin, I already touched on her main point at the beginning. That was really the only point she made. She says Jasmine is basically useless in the movie; I would assume so! The movie isn’t even about her. It’s about Aladdin! Hence why it’s called Aladdin. But apparently using your body to get out of a life threatening situation is a no-no. Find another way, girlies! Smite them with your glorious wit! =/
Now she goes into the other female characters. Pocahontas apparently “trades up” for the “white man” (God forbid you fall for someone who isn’t the same race!) And Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is suddenly depicted as a whore. Does she not know history? Esmeralda is a gypsy and back then gypsies were despised! Their trade skills, including the dances the women put on, were usually considered vulgar simply because the women showed so much skin. You see more skin now going to the beach.
I can’t say too much about Meg from Hercules, but the girl says she’s a whore. And again, I’ve never seen any indication of this in the movie.
Last but not least, Mulan. She’s almost all praise for this movie, except for oooone little thing… Mulan again gets the guy in the end. Apparently she didn’t want Mulan to have a full happy ending; no, she wants the male depicted as a heartless fumbling asshole so that Mulan can end on a single note, “OMG I SAVED CHINA!” I’m starting to think this chick is one of those lesbians that absolutely hates men.
I’m all for feminism. Women being treated equally in the workplace, etc. But only to a certain extent. This girl takes it to a racist/sexist extent. Her feminist views strike me more as sexist and apparently the “white man” running this country isn’t doing a good job. Does race really have anything to do with how the country is run? More and more “whites” are becoming a minority anyway. Ever been in a classroom filled with hispanics and been the only white person there? I have. Trust me, it’s not fun when you can’t understand a word they’re saying and they’re all looking at you and smirking. It’s humiliating and degrading. But we can’t say anything because they’re the “minority”. =/
My main issue with all this is that she’s taken movies and read all these terrible things into them and then expresses her concerns for children watching them. No child is going to watch one of these movies and become disgusted by the supposedly sexist representations of the princesses! Like my mom says, “Why take the fun out of being a child?” Who cares if Cinderella is waaay to white for your liking? Let the kids marvel at the pumpkin coach. Childhood isn’t about being politically correct; it’s about the magic of things. The kids are gonna grow up and have to live in reality for most of their lives anyway, let them bask in the make believe while they can.
Weeeeeeell, I’ve been itching to get my hands on a tablet for months now and I finally got one! I love the thing, seriously. I want to make sweet love to it all night long, but I’m afraid it might get damaged in the process. Which would be bad, ’cause these fuckers are expensive. Strangely enough, a lot of people told me that my art would probably look like crap for at least a good month or so as they can be difficult to get used to. I did not have this issue. Three days after I got my tablet, I’ve churned out more artwork than I did in all July combined and with much better quality. For example, a sketch of my original character Madani came out like this:
Not too shabby for day two of working with a tablet. I tried some color with decent results, but I wanted to try more. Sooooo instead of leaving the line art so rough, I painstakingly went over it to clean it up and darken it. The piece was based off my Gaiaonline avatar, which in turn was based off DOS (green and black) ’cause I’m awesome like that. (Actually, it was my friend Tim’s idea.) That came out even better and is so far my best piece to date.
She’s a total hottie, yes? I’m absolutely in love with this piece. I’ve done another CG piece as a commission for someone on Gaia, but it didn’t come even close to the awesometasticness that is DOS Girl 2.0 and her jugtastic pose.
I’m basically just showing off my newfound skillz. I’ve got more sketches and full colored pieces at my deviant art account, which you can find here. I’m bugging my mom about this daily, so hopefully eventually I’ll be getting a paypal account and people can actually buy these damn things. For the time being, they’re simple practice/pretty to look at.
S’all I got for ya folks. c:
So… I broke up with Tyler… My boyfriend of like, nearly three years. And I’m so… lost. I barely even know why I did it anymore; all I can think about is how much I want to be with him. Hell, I would marry him.Even with the distance and the barely talking and the never seeing each other… I knew I had him and I knew he was there for me if I needed him… And now it’s like I don’t even have that…
And I probably shouldn’t be listening to Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” and “Angel” over and over again in this situation, but I am.
My mom says we’re each other’s first real loves and we’ll probably still be friends for a long while because that’s just how we are. That and it wasn’t a bad ending, just an incredibly sad one. I haven’t talked to him since we broke up, but he’s more on my mind than ever before now. If things had been different… If we could see each other more often… We would’ve been fine. We both know it; he said it himself. I can’t help but wish there was a way to fix this because God knows I don’t want it to end. I just can’t think of a way.
And now I feel like I’m losing my mind. Does anyone know if tylenol works for heartaches?
Yeah, I’ve been taking a hiatus from writing for a bit, hence why there’s no new Sparkly Vampire Nonsense chapters posted. I’ve been focusing on art a bit more lately, ’cause I’ve been needing the practice and such. I’ve been thinking of going to an art school, maybe taking illustration classes and such. Make this into some kind of career. Or something.
Anyway, here’s some of my recent work. c:
Still No Bikini
Because I had absolutely nothing better to do, I sat around and listened for Alice to arrive with my truck. I never heard her arrive, but when I went to go look out the window, there it was! Sitting in the driveway!! Like magic!! Stupid magic fairy girl.
This isn’t actually something you need to know and is merely thrown in to make the book lengthier. Did it work?
I totally expected Friday to suck. And it did suck. Like a sucky sucking thing that sucked. Like a cheap whore in a back alley. Inconsequential Girl #1 cackled gleefully because everyone thought I had fainted. I shoved a cracker in her mouth and told her to go suck Mike. She looked kind of pleased at the idea.
Whore.
She was really curious as to what Edward had wanted during lunch. I told her to bug off and finish my math homework. She grumbled and obeyed. I’d have to keep a tighter rein on her now. She was all huffy and stuff because I didn’t give her a good story to gossip about. Whore.
Friday really really sucked most because my beloved Edward wasn’t there!! SOBSOBSOB. He had even told me he wasn’t going to be there because he was going on a camping trip, but I stilled hoped against hope that he’d be there. But he wasn’t.
And gasp!! Someone didn’t like me!! It was Inconsequential Girl #3, actually. I never even talked to her!! I was going to have to beat her beatingly with something. But Mike told her to shut it and she did. Maybe I’d get him an even better collar for Christmas…
Charlie knew all the kids that were going to the beach and all their parents and all their grandparents and all their pets and all their history and stuff like that. He liked that I was going to the beach with them, God knows why. “Sure Bella, go out in the freezing cold to the beach where wind chill will push the temperature down farther.”
I woke up the next day to bright brightness shining brightly through my window. Brighteningly. The sun was out! Yay! And there was a patch of blue sky!! Yay!! Ohmigawd it was so awesome!!! It was the first time I’d seen sun in over a month!!! It was cold though, so still no bikini.
So I left the window and went out to the appointed spot to meet everyone. Inconsequential Girl #3 gave me a dirty look so I shoved a cracker in her mouth and told her to bow down to me. Bitch. Mike was happy to see me though!
The beach was very grey. The trees looked kind of grey, the sand was grey, the rocks were grey, the sky was kind of greyish blue, the water was grey. It was greyingly grey and kind of depressing. Mike made a fire from the driftwood that came in off the ocean and it was blue. Fucking blue fire!! Apparently Mike was magical too. I’d have to keep my eye on him.
Then we went on a hike to the tidal pools. We had to hike through the woods to get to them, even though that makes no sense at all because tidal pools are generally found ON the beach, therefor not requiring us to walk through woods to get there. Except in this book because the author is an idiot.
When we got back, Indians from the nearby reservation had come to join us. I didn’t get any of their names because they’re Indians; who cares? We have their land now, what do they matter? I only got that one of their names was Jacob.
I sat with Inconsequential Girl #2. She was quiet so she never bugged me. Yay! She was my new best friend. After we ate lunch people started to scatter and do their own thing. Fuckers! They’re supposed to stay and watch me because I’m their ruling overlord! UGH! Obviously my hold on them was slipping… Probably due to Inconsequential Girl #1 and #3. They were bitch whores. I’d have to kill them later.
Jacob came over and told me my name. What the hell? Again? Was this a time skip and I was back at the first day of school? Why couldn’t anyone just realize that yes, I was the prettiest person there therefor I had to be Bella. Duh. But apparently I knew his family! So, since he was cute and all that, I spent the next bit of time stroking his ego and talking about cars, a subject I had already admitted to knowing nothing about!
Then Inconsequential Girl #3 decided to butt in and pretend to be better than me. Jacob shut her up though. I think I found my new lost puppy! It was so cute, watching him brush her off inconsequentialness. I batted my lashes at him and cooed.
“Come walk with me,” I said, still cooing cooingly. He had won my adoration because he shut up a bitch. Yay! So even though I was seventeen and he was fifteen, I flirted shamelessly. “So, what was that big tall man who’s name I think is Mondo Pain say about the Cullens?” I asked alluringly.
“Oh, they’re not supposed to come on the reservation at all, but I can’t tell you why,” he replied, looking allured.
“Ooo, tell me why?”
“Okay, but only in a weird cryptic story.”
And so he proceeded to tell me a weird story involving werewolves and vampires. And then he said that the Cullens [i]were[/i] vampires. Haha, as if.
Then Mike and Jessica approached and Mike stared daggers at Jacob who taunted him and stuff and I just secretly flirted with Jacob ’cause I’d totally used him in order to hear about him talk about the Cullens. That wasn’t stalkerlike at all.
And we left ’cause it was gonna rain soon. Ugh.