The Spinster Book
This was going to be a very light and fluffy post, raising an arched eyebrow at an interesting find, but over the course of writing this article I made some discoveries which made it seem less of a frippery. But more on that later. Let’s start at the beginning: I was browsing in a charity shop when I found a 1901 book (okay, fine, the 1903 reprint) with the incredible name The Spinster Book. Even brushing aside, for a moment, the hilarious and wonderful title – it’s amazing.
Published in New York by the Knickerbocker Press
I mean, just look at it. Look harder! It’s all lavender and embossing and gold leaf and a looking-glass (wonderfully implying ‘it could be YOU’). It’s an absolutely sodding gorgeous book: rough uncut paper edges on two sides, gold leaf on the top, strange red-and-black printing on the pages which reminds me a little of the Kelmscott Press facsimile I own (made by William Morris. The most beautiful books since illuminated manuscripts. OHMIGOD read his Chaucer… *cough* Excuse me, I seem to have bibliophiled all over the place).
On closer inspection, The Spinster Book is basically a dating/courtship guide, which very much assumes that one should never, ever attempt to talk to the opposite gender like a normal human being. Indeed, it even seems to suggest that too many friendships with men put a woman in the ‘friend zone’ forever:
“To one distinct class of women men tell their troubles and the other class sees that they have plenty to tell. It is better to be in the second category than in the first.”
It’s a bit like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, but due to being 111 years out of date it’s even more laughable. (And I absolutely love dated dating advice anyway.)
The chapter titles are a treat in themselves:
- Notes on Men
- Concerning Women
- The Philosophy of Love
- The Lost Art of Courtship
- The Natural History of Proposals
- Love Letters: Old and New
- An Inquiry into Marriage
- The Physiology of Vanity
- Widowers and Widows
- The Consolations of Spinsterhood
(… note that even in 1901 courtship was considered a ‘lost art’. When precisely were the good old days, anyway?)
“There is nothing in the world so harmless and as utterly joyous as man’s conceit. The woman who will not pander to it is ungracious indeed. Man’s interest in himself is purely altruistic and springs from an unselfish desire to please.”
– Chapter 1, Notes on Men
Why I am I still unmarried? Enquiring minds want to know
Buh. Duh…. whu? A man being self-centred is actually selfless, because he’s only doing it to be adorable. So lighten up and adore him some more, regardless of how conceited he is? Can… can I get an irony check on this?
My instinct when dealing with writing from the past (rightly or wrongly) is to assume the chance of satire is reduced the longer ago the text comes from (Jonathan Swift, forgive me). However, for most of The Spinster Book, I’m realising a grain of salt is the way forward. This book does appear, at times, to be Jane Austen-wry, and puts forward some things with a fanciful glibness:
“After the door of a woman’s heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it. A storm is apt to displace the brick, however – and there is a heavy spring in the door. Woe to the masculine finger that is in the way!”
– Chapter 4, The Lost Art of Courtship
But at the same time, it treads the difficult line of mocking some concepts whilst also giving some advice very seriously. I mean, come on, we’re playing for keeps. ‘Do you want to be a spinster? No? Then listen up. No talking at the back. It could be you. It could be YOOOU.’
There’s also a lingering assumption throughout this book that both parties are playing a pretty nasty game of chess:
“He who would win a woman must challenge her admiration, prove himself worthy of her regard, appeal to her sympathy – and then wound her. She is never wholly his until she realises that he has the power to make her miserable as well as to make her happy, and that love is an infinite capacity for suffering.”
– Chapter 4, The Lost Art of Courtship
(Also: lucky girl. Jesus.)
A lot of the book has this kind of masochistic, ‘love is pain’ tone throughout – sometimes in understandable ways and sometimes completely out of the blue. Advice, advice, advice… misery and masochism sneak attack! For example, the final sentence of the ‘love letters’ chapter is “So the old love letters bring happiness after all – like the smile which sometimes rests upon the faces of the dead.”
So, yes, I was unsure what to make of this tone. Then our lovely editor Googled the author, Myrtle Reed, and some more information fell into place. By all accounts, Reed was well-known and admired in her own time. She was the author of some thirty books, which included cookbooks (published under the name Olive Green) and novels under her real name – the best known of which is probably Lavender and Old Lace.
Quick Bio:
1874: Born
1899: First novel published (she continued to publish at least one a year, sometimes more)
1901: The Spinster Book was published when she was 27
1906: Married James Sydney McCullough, a penpal, at the unusually late age of 32
1911: Died of a deliberate overdose of sleeping pills/powders aged 37.
Her suicide note, addressed to her maid, stated “If my husband had been as good and kind to me and as considerate as you, I would not be going where I am”. Horrible and sad, but also increasingly eerie from an author whose most famous epigram is this:
“The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it’s a mushroom. If you die, it’s a toadstool.”
– Threads of Gray and Gold (pub. 1913)
No one on the outside knew of anything bad within their marriage. Indeed, according to Annie, Myrtle Reed’s maid, she “had never heard Mrs McCullough [née Reed] quarrel with her husband during the four years she had been at their home.” It’s useless to guess what lay behind it, or how much was a depressive tendency (which certainly seems to show in The Spinster Book), how much was a bad relationship and how much was a clearly intelligent and ambitious woman feeling desperate and trapped in a society which didn’t have many roles for women.
I don’t really know how to end this post. It started with a brilliant charity shop find which had me so hyped I that was reading passages aloud to my flatmate on the tube until he pretended he didn’t know me… and it’s ended with a bit of a reality-check, I suppose.
Although she never states in as many words that she herself is a spinster, Reed was writing the book at age 27 – five years past a woman’s usual marrying age. By the standards of her time, she was now a spinster, and was presumably preparing herself for the future. The advice I saw as laughable – that being a spinster isn’t so bad as a woman might yet find herself a nice widower – was, perhaps, Myrtle Reed’s actual hope.
The chapter ‘The Consolations of Spinsterhood’ does mention “the dazzling allurements offered by various “careers” which bring fame and perhaps fortune”, but it quickly goes on to show just how little consolation Reed considers these to be:
“The universal testimony of the great, that fame itself is barren … it is love for which she hungers, rather than fame…. If she were not free to continue the work that she loved, she would feel no deprivation.”
Although she was a successful and prolific novelist in her own time, the stigma of spinsterhood would have seemed to erode the achievements she had rightfully earned. Reed implies heavily in The Spinster Book that she would have traded it all in for a husband. Except that when she did eventually marry, that clearly didn’t make her happy either.
As much as I love mocking dating advice (old and new) for any hint of gendered assumptions, Myrtle Reed didn’t ‘opt in’ to play by those rules. In 1901 there wasn’t an ‘opt out’. And shame on me for finding the topic so hilariously trivial in the first place. Check your 21st century privilege, Hannah. If I’d lived in a time and a society where marriage was my home, my job, my finances, my legal rights and my love life all rolled into one – you bet your arse I’d agonise over it. I’d probably buy a few books on the topic too. For every snide, ironic, 21st century reader, there were probably dozens of contemporary readers poring over this book’s advice and worrying about their futures. I, on the other hand, have freedom and choices and don’t have to play nasty games to secure a man to secure my future stability – but you don’t have to go back even half as far as Reed’s time to find women who did have to work within this crapshoot of a system. Whilst artefacts like The Spinster Book make interesting time-pieces, we should never forget that many of us who stumble across it now are the lucky ones – and that our privilege is incredibly rare.
And I guess that’s one of the main reasons why I’m a feminist in the first place.
- The full text of The Spinster Book is available on Project Gutenberg.
Time To Be Brave
So, Brave, then.
Yay!
Pixar’s first full length movie with a female protagonist is less than four months away from release. And, as io9 reported last week, the first scene is now previewable:
I’m really excited. ENGAGE INITIAL BURBLE-O-METER:
HURRAH!
- I remain so, so pleased to see a Pixar movie from the point of view of a girl character. Without exception, the entire Pixar canon – which I’m a huge, boxset-toting, scene-quoting fan of, for the record – features male protagonists, and while Jessie, Dory, and Ellie (who determines much of Up‘s story even though it’s via her absence) are all fun and compelling sidekick or partner characters, I’ve been waiting for Pixar to place a female character centre-stage. And now, after over 20 years, we’ve got one in the shape of Princess Merida, headstrong Scottish medieval archery whizz.
- Placing a female character centre-stage, of course, is not the be-all and end-all. Disney’s been doing it for years with their fairytale movies and resultant “princess” brand. They’ve finally brought the curtain down on their run of “princess” films with 2010’s Tangled, which I thought was charmingly smart, sassy and very happy, to a point, to send up its own canon. But it still operated very much within the constraints of that canon – it was, in places, a bit like Legally Blonde in Fairytale Land – and I’m hoping this will bust the box open juuuust a bit more.
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BROW-FURROW!
- I think it’s interesting that Pixar have chosen, as far as I can tell, to make their first girl-POV movie begin from a starting problem of an arranged marriage tradition, and the synopsis as it stands (it’s on the io9 page) hints that they’re going with Little Mermaid-style tropes of “headstrong young woman consults wise woman for advice to avoid patriarchal problem; things go wrong”, and so on. Being critical for just a moment, I do think it would be good in the end to get to a Disney/Pixar film where female characters are not lone figures in a world of predominantly male characters, or on quests where the aim is to fight the male status quo. Or as one commenter on io9 put it, “I’m still waiting for the movie about the girl who doesn’t have to prove she’s awesome or that she’s as good as boys”. It makes me want to cheer and bounce off my chair when Merida fires that final arrow in front of all those shocked dudes, but I’d also quite like to just see her … go on a quest that isn’t about Defying Sexism. Lone Female Crusaders are all over our screens with relative frequency, from True Grit‘s Mattie Ross – who has a lump-throat-making scene where she packs her bags for adventure and stuffs rolls of newspaper in a man’s cowboy hat to make it fit her head – to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo‘s Lisbeth Salander (arguably the ultimate Lone Woman On A Vengeful Spree for our time), and I’d like to see more scope for women in Hollywood stories to get to interact a bit more with other women – beyond, for example, “but mother, WHY can’t I do X” and “yes, sorceress, I will make this dodgy deal with you!” at the very least.
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BACK TO HURRAH-ING!
- Buuuut the fact remains that this scene still makes me go misty eyed and wibbly at the slightest provocation. I love how it looks and feels, and it’s got Billy Connolly (playing Princess Merida’s warlord dad, with whom she seems to have a pleasingly co-conspirator relationship rather than what I call the King Triton Model, though this does mean relations with mum aren’t looking cosy), Emma Thompson, Julie Walters (the wise woman conflict catalyst!) and more on board. It’s been co-authored by two women (for anyone casually interested in the gender balance of the creative team) and I’m honestly so excited (IT HAS A BEAR IN IT I LOVE BEARS I HOPE SHE DOES NOT SHOOT THE BEAR) that I’m really glad it won’t be long now.
- ENTIRELY SPECULATION, BUT ANYWAY: On the fairy tale riffing front, I’m pleased to see such an obvious Robin Hood folklore moment referenced in the scene above – he, of course, splits an arrow just like this in his own quest to win Maid Marion, and in this version the princess is out to win…her own hand. Neat. Since it was originally titled The Bear and the Bow, so presumably has a bear of some importance in the story, it’s also got me wondering whether it’ll draw on beast stories like East of the Sun, West of the Moon or Brown Bear of Norway. The idea is that the woman goes on a journey and finds a man/foils a curse along the way. That might not happen in Brave at all, but since the opening problem is marriage-related I’d be surprised if no options around the topic came up, and if it doesn’t happen like that, that’ll be an attempt at subversion in itself. Either way, I think with the final title being Brave I’m optimistic about how it’ll turn out for Merida.
- THERE IS A HORSE IN IT AND HIS NAME IS ANGUS. I love Disney’s horses. They’ve carved out a noble niche as providers of bathos and irony over the years from Samson through to Maximus. ANGUS, I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR YOU. (Although I kind of wish you were an Elspeth, maybe? I mean, Maximus would’ve been fine as… Agrippina, you know?) Oh God, now everyone’s going to think I’m really weird. Uh. Moving on.
- Conclusion: Any road, I think my DVD shelf can take one more Lone Female Crusader in this instance. See you in the cinema.
Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) has long been a battlefield of the sexes, with countless essays, blogposts and events on topics such as ‘Mary Sues’, ‘the state of women in SFF’ and ‘why are cosplayers at conventions naked if female and storm troopers if male?’1
Last week, Paul Cornell (comics, TV and novel writer) stated that, in a bid to get more equal gender representation on Science Fiction and Fantasy convention panels, he was going to stand down from any panel that wasn’t 50/50 or near as and invite a woman to take his place.
Cue an awesome shitstorm of vitriol and support. The main thrust of some feminists’ arguments I’ve heard against this, and in some cases against Paul personally, is that this was ego boosting, man-on-a-white-horse, mansplaining wank and we don’t need it.
Sorry, sisters, but we do. Let’s take a look at the arguments.
1. ‘This looks like it’s a man to the rescue of women, showing us in a submissive and passive light, needing us to be thrust into the spotlight by a man with agency.’
Um, yes. You know why? Because sexism has been so ingrained in SFF over the years, back when it was a male-dominated genre, this is actually our starting point. Editors get fewer submissions from women regarding horror, fantasy and hard SF, the subgenres that are often most applauded by critics (also mostly male). Publishers put fewer women forward for convention guest spots, and female authors themselves look at the gender make-up of panels and step back. I think women haven’t stood up en masse to rectify this because it became the norm. We told ourselves ‘SFF is sexist, so they don’t notice women’ and forgot that arguably – especially when you take account of urban fantasy and paranormal romance – there are more of us in the genre, and hey, we sell more copies. We have as much right to be at those cons, doing those signings, making our voices heard, as the feted men do. SFF convention organisers have shoved women on all-women panels, told us to talk about ‘women in SFF’ and then told us that’s the debate and equality will shake out of that. It won’t. I think, somewhere along the way, we forgot to band together and tell SFF and con organisers to go shove their sexism. Maybe this will help.
2. ‘We don’t need no man sorting this out for us.’
See above. We do. It sucks. That’s the frikkin’ point. SFF wasn’t listening when we were raising our voices. I wish, I fervently wish, that when a woman makes a point about gender inequality, it wasn’t explained away as being a ‘women’s issue’ and therefore marginal and easy to ignore. It shouldn’t be. This is about equality – which affects you, regardless of gender. Yes, it sucks that the world takes notice when a man does something. No, it shouldn’t be this way. But it is. And maybe, just maybe, if we join hands and do this thing together without drawing gender lines ourselves, in a few years, it won’t be this way anymore.
3. ‘This casts the woman who is invited to speak as an also-ran, putting her immediately as a runner-up to the man stepping down for her.’
Yes, it does. And I think this does mean that Paul may have to change his approach, perhaps so that he and other people (male or female, it’s 50/50 for all) ask the con organisers to disclose the gender balance of the panels they are being invited on, and then, if it’s out of whack, suggest another male (or female) author to readdress the balance. This way, your fans still get to see you on a balanced panel elsewhere at the convention, and there doesn’t have to be any theatre or drawing of attention to an act of substitution.
But, and I want to be really clear about this, just because Paul suggested something that isn’t 100% ideal for women, doesn’t mean we have to throw out the entire idea. The theory is good; we just have to look at the best way of putting it into practice. We don’t need to get into an uproar because the first suggestion wasn’t the best approach – it’s not carved in stone.
My point is: this is a starting point. We’re gonna have to be big girls and suck up some of the stuff we don’t like to help make a change that we desperately want. We have to be pragmatic and proactive, because the status quo wasn’t changing with us doing nothing or shouting about it in forums and on blogs. We shouldn’t be jumping on this suggestion and saying it’s all tosh because it can be seen as patronising – can we please get past that and look at how the entire situation that this is trying to fight against is worse?
Paul’s proposal may not be perfect. But out of it is growing a 50/50 movement that a lot of women and men are getting behind. We’re asking people to talk to cons to check out their gender balance before they say yes. We’re asking women to promote themselves more. We’re asking readers to look at their shelves and see if they read mostly female or male authors, and to try adding a different gender to the shopping cart next time they buy books. I’m hoping that feminists can look at the big picture here and see that we are struggling to bring visible equality to SFF – and that along the way, we’re going to need equal input from all genders to do it.
- Lizzie is the publicity officer for the British Fantasy Society but considers herself ‘rogue’ when it comes to the 50/50 campaign, so content is her own and not the BFS’s. She prefers fantasy books and science fiction TV, and believes that books are a viable form of currency.
- I made that one up, but it’s a valid question. Why? [↩]
[Gamer Diary] Isaac’s Lament: Treacherous Women
Isaac doesn't like Spoilers either
Before you go any further, I’m going to issue you all with a SPOILER WARNING for both Dead Space and Dead Space 2. Although neither of these are new releases, we all know that not everyone plays a game as soon as it hits the market. If you have intentions of playing either game and don’t want to know what happens… quickly click this link to escape to the relative safety of some pictures of baby rabbits. Go now, and never look back!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Dead Space franchise, it’s a horror/sci-fi universe that spans more than just games – there are also animated films that tell us parts of the story. I’m just going to look at the games, though, which focus on our protagonist Isaac Clarke in our two space vessel settings: the USG Ishimura vessel and the Sprawl. In the first game, the Ishimura drops out of contact with, well, everyone – and nobody knows why. Isaac and his shipmates are sent on a rescue mission as it is believed the Ishimura crew have just had a bit of damage to their communications array or somesuch.
Not so. Long story cut very over-simplistically short, all the crew have either a) gone loopy, b) been killed, or c) turned into necromorphs. These are horrible scary alien things that loosely resemble what might once have been human. Isaac gets separated from his crew, who promptly start dying off while he tries to find out what’s going on and how to escape. Moving towards the end, there’s three of Isaac’s team left (himself included)… then there are two. Isaac and his female crewmate Kendra Daniels.
She’s been helping to guide him on all his trekking about the Ishimura as they try to deal with the shitstorm of scary things. They discover this thing called the Marker has been causing all the bad stuff and have to transport it back to the planet below for any hope of survival. BUT THEN.
Kendra betrays you. She’s actually intending to take the Marker back to civilisation for the government and the Church of Unitology (who seem to think the Marker will raise them up… or something). Don’t worry though; she dies. It’s OK, the nasty traitorous lady gets splattered by a giant alien. So, you know, she deserved it.
Fast forward to Dead Space 2 and now we’re in the Sprawl. Isaac is being held in some description of government institution for the psychologically unstable. After a traumatic session, in your little cell, in your straight jacket: something is wrong! Someone bursts in and tries to free you, but his head gets skewered from behind – NECROMORPHS EVERYWHERE. You run around in your straight jacket for a while until you are sliced free.
Over the comms comes a woman’s voice, saying she’ll help you escape the necromorph threat if you follow her instructions. Super, right? A nice kindly person wants to help you not get dead. Realistically, Isaac should’ve gotten suspicious as soon as she led him through an infested Unitologist Church… you’ve guessed it! She too is a treacherous baddie!
Now, I hope you can forgive me for not really explaining the story properly, but what I wanted you to know was that Isaac really seems to have terrible luck when it comes to trusting people. Or, more importantly: trusting women. I find it a bit more serious than an unfortunate coincidence that the two people who most obviously betray him are women. Surely this concept is a bit tired by now?
This ridiculous notion that ‘we must not trust the womens or they will betray us and bad things will happen’ has been around for thousands of years and yet here we are in the 21st century still being subjected to it. Why is that?
Let’s look into the past. If we consider the medium of ‘a game’ to be a new way of storytelling, perhaps we’re experiencing old tropes that are merely being reimagined into this burgeoning format. If we look back, a long way into history, at Clytemnestra and Helen (of Troy fame), these two women were, in certain versions of their tales, manipulative, deceitful and traitorous. What happened as a result of their treachery? Bad things, that’s what.
Through the centuries storytelling has evolved but often still has its roots in these ancient tales – in more ways than just this example – so why should games be different?
Another way to view these female characters and their actions plays out in a more positive light: they are ‘strong women’ with important roles, independently-minded enough to choose their own paths, which also involves being smarter than all the men around them in order to remain trusted or to be able to give the orders.
So how should we see it? Archaic retelling of worn-out old storylines, casting women as dubious, underhanded Judases or powerful, intelligent and self-assured women who just happen to be baddies?
Or does it even matter, seeing as they both end up dead anyway?
In the second of my guest series on the trials of being a feminist while getting married, I’m going to take a look at dealing with people’s expectations when you’re not going along with even the most mainstream of wedding traditions. For example, not taking his name (or hers).
Photo by flickr user ninasaurusrex
Oh, it’s a little thing, I grant you. One word. And it’s so innocuous that most people don’t even think it’s an issue. When we got engaged, we got cards addressed to ‘The Future Mr & Mrs HisLastName’. One friend remarked she couldn’t wait to address her first Christmas card to ‘the HisLastNames’. Another asked if we were looking forward to be announced at our reception as ‘Mr and Mrs HisLastName’. Each time, I’m afraid I’ve shot them down brusquely – even though I’m still deciding what to do.
Why? Well, for starters, I’ve had 30 years of being Lizzie MyLastName, not Lizzie His. It sounds weird to me, like I’m playacting someone else. I’d have to change my passport, my bills, my driver’s licence, my personal emails, my work email, my Facebook – it’s too much damn work. And the biggest reason for my uncertainty: why should I have to literally rename myself to my husband’s last name when I get married? What’s so special about him? (Note: Obviously he’s very special or I wouldn’t be marrying him, yadda yadda don’t take the ring back).
The looks and comments I get when I say these things are rooted in blustering British patriarchal tradition. I’ve had ‘But that’s just what you do’, ‘Just change it in your personal life, you don’t have to change your professional name’ and ‘But don’t you want the same name as your husband and children?’.
Um, maybe, if I planned on having any children. But he could change his name. My name is perfectly lovely. And quite frankly, if we did have kids, plenty of people would call me Mrs HisLastName without me ever having to change it. And for the person who said ‘But that’s just what you do’ (hi, mum! I forgive you because you gave birth to me), we used to put lead in cans, but hey, we changed our way of doing things! As Lucy Mangan said, “I’ve only known him six years. How come he gets to obliterate my history?”
So, what to do? If I don’t want to change my name to his, equally he doesn’t want to change it to mine. People have suggested hyphenating, which is what we would usually do – but alas, our name is a spoonerism that equates to ‘a bird’s balls’, so that’s not the ideal option after all. I quite like the idea of portmanteau-ing our name because it sounds like ‘Baroque’; clearly the most awesome outcome. But he thinks that sounds a bit fake. So, future husband and I are on a quest to find a new name that we can both change to. And in an example of patriarchy working for women instead of against them, this is easier and cheaper for me to do. He has to change it by deed poll – I just have to sign my new name on the marriage licence.
I’m secretly convinced that this will not happen. Family pressure will mean he keeps his name – plus, his profession of author spills into his personal life, so changing his surname is not the most sensible thing to do. And my name actually sounds great with his last name. But while it doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense to insist on keeping one man’s name (my father’s) instead of taking another’s, equally I don’t want to have a visible sign that I am subsuming my identity into his and becoming ‘the wife’. I’m sure we will make a decision – but more late night discussions and trying out new signatures may be required.
- Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.
Found Feminism: HSBC Lemonade Stand Advert
Now, as the opening music rose I’m sure you cringed as much as I did. But when our enterprising lemonade maker launched into a different language, did you smile instead? There’s a tendency to ignore or overlook the marketing campaigns of big business and to assume that nothing they ever do can possibly be for the good. After all, they’re trying to sell us products and services, right? But marketing tries to make us empathise, and to capture our hopes, dreams and ideas for the future. It also guns for mass market appeal.
So here’s the idea: a clever little girl can grow up to be a multinational business leader.
The lemonade stand metaphor is an interesting one, and certainly well used in the fields of business and commerce. It’s used as the basis of training games for pricing models, economics theory (there’s a nice Calvin and Hobbes one here), maths tutorials and host of other skills needed to run your own business. It’s not just a cute thing that kids do; it’s also about how we introduce children, boys and girls, to the world of work.
The models we use for “work” within childhood play set the tone for how we expect children to behave and the roles they might grow into. I remember books on work with pictures of male pilots and female air hostesses. Mothers cleaning the house whilst fathers returned from work. Some of these have since been pleasingly updated, including the Richard Scarry books.
I was told by a friend of mine (who was a boy) that he couldn’t play with pots and pans because they were “for girls”. We must have been about six. Even though we were actually a rock band. With wooden spoons instead of drumsticks. Maybe we were a girl band.
Anyway.
I like the fact that this campaign could have just as easily been done with a young boy and his mother, but instead we have a girl and her dad. A decisive, smart and multi-lingual little girl. Her loving and supportive father, blown away by his daughter’s abilities.
Future businesswoman of the year, perhaps?
Awesomewatch 4: “I know a thing or two about killing reapers.”
Apocalypse Girls
The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse is a blogging collective filled with good advice on how to survive the coming apocalypse. Zombies, plague, robot takeover, these girls have got you covered! Mostly tongue in cheek and always great fun to read, there are articles on everything from weapons advice to dating, to what music to listen to when the end of the world comes along. We especially like their Know Your Idols series, with survival tips picked up from brilliant women such as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and Tank Girl.
You know us. We’re the ones who’ll appear out of nowhere in the middle of the apocalypse and shout “Come with us if you want to live,” while looking fabulous.
– Lou Morgan
THAT New Trailer
Mass Effect 3 is coming out in March. My love of the series is no secret, and this new trailer increased my fannish glee to dangerous levels. *glances nervously at the calandar to see how many more days there are until March 6th*
One of the best things about Mass Effect is how much flexibility there is to create the main character, Commander Shepard, any way you want, from her appearence to her choices and actions in the game. Until now Bioware had only used a male version of Shepard in their marketing (affectionately termed ‘BroShep’ by the fans) but in what’s been called the first official story trailer for the new game, Bioware have released their first trailer to ever show Commander Shepard as a woman (now often termed ‘FemShep’).
It’s The New Planking/Owling…
Last month, author and now official BadRep-designated ‘all-round-good-sport’ Jim C Hines attempted, with the help of his wife, to recreate some of the poses of the women on the covers of books written by him and other SFF authors. He was the one striking the poses, and his wife took the pictures.The results were hilarious.
This reminded me of this Spiderman cover showing Mary Jane, um, ‘relaxing’ and drinking coffee, and the ways fans on 4chan and tumblr decided to mock the pose by recreating it themselves.
The Hines post was itself a response to a post by professional martial artist ‘Ils’, who experimented to see whether she could recreate a very common pose which superheroines are drawn in. She couldn’t, and posted the photographic evidence.
Just seriously. People. I understand artist license. I understand exaggeration. I understand suspending disbelief. But if a martial artist who is also a contortionist can’t mimic a pose you use constantly for female fighters, there might be a problem in, you know, your choices on basic anatomy.
– Ils
Are we seeing the start of a new trend? I kind of hope so… personally I think the works of a certain Mr Rob Liefield are past due for some real world parody. Don’t, er, break your back though.
If you decide to try any of this at home, don’t forget to a) send @BadRepUK the photographic evidence and b) make sure you’ve got a good friend nearby who can stop laughing long enough to help you limp to your local physiotherapist.
Put Your Red Shoes On
I just discovered this.
The “Rock the Red Pump” campaign is our annual initiative to commemorate National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. It has become our biggest initiative, and is what started The Red Pump Project. Since 2009, when we had over 100 bloggers “Rock the Red Pump,” we have started the “Rock the Red Pump – 500 in 50” to get 500 blogs to participate in the 50 days leading up to NWGHAAD.
The blog network we have is unique in that they are women who acknowledge the severity of the issue and understand the importance of conversation. The power and influence of these bloggers has driven The Red Pump Project to where it is today.
Hey now, I thought. Why isn’t this more well-known? Why didn’t I know about this day? I only know about World AIDS Day. Maybe it is more widely known, but only in the US? I hear about lots of other US-y things with a tedious regularity from Black Friday1 to the Superb Owl2. Either way, even though the Red Pump Project isn’t UK-based, I thought it was way cool.
If you’re US-based (and maybe even if you’re not; does it matter?) you can sign your blog up and download a Red Pump badge. There are excellent reasons to get involved here. One reason I would add: I believe, with a strength that leads me to shout unbecomingly in pubs, that HIV awareness campaigns should always be designed and conducted in a way that is inclusive and above all non-stigmatising of people living with HIV. The Hitler campaign? The Scorpion campaign? Ugh. It doesn’t help if you raise awareness of HIV transmission risks by presenting HIV positive people as dangerous monsters. It leads to more concealment, less disclosure, less openness generally about HIV, and people being actively ostracised and in many cases places in actual physical danger. It’s disgusting. I could rant a while about stigma and the vicious circle of ignorance and erasure it feeds. Or, y’know, go read The Body. Actually, that’s a better idea. Do that instead. Preferable campaigns in my book: examples such as Act Aware, which actually engages with the concept of stigma, or THT’s Stand Up, Stand Out.
So, yeah: I get very excited when I see a well-designed awareness project. On a broader political level I think there are limits to the efficacy of consumerism-inspired charity initiatives in the West – (RED), for example, relies not solely on donations but on people shopping for expensive products and in some cases wearing their awareness as a fashion item, which only goes so far. (RED)’s ‘use global capitalism for good’ approach was groundbreaking to a point, but the level to which large sections of its site will simply redirect you to the Converse store can be quite grating. Its campaigning focus is primarily on funding initiatives in subsaharan Africa, which is great – but not the whole story.
However, the Red Pump Project, unlike (RED), is a grassroots initiative that has taken off in the US, with an emphasis on women and women of colour which I can only applaud. I like that the project takes elements of the (RED) approach and focuses less on the idea that “luxury goods over here will generate aid over there” and more on, say, testing a thousand people in an inner city community. I like that the graphic – which has trainers on it too! – places non-white wearers of the pumps front and centre and in the majority. It makes a nice change. Rae Lewis-Thornton, who speaks eloquently about stigma here, has also endorsed it. While fighting stigma is an implicit rather than explicit aim in the approach the project has taken, they are talking about the issues, and via their blog badge campaign, helping make sure anyone can get involved, rather than those who shop for luxury goods. Most of all, they’re effectively marketing a breakout in HIV activism from simply focussing on World AIDS Day in December, instead broadening the approach to include dedicated action throughout the year on behalf of women and girls (March 10), Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (February 7) and so on.
Good stuff.
- @RockTheRedPump
- @RedPumpProj
- The Red Pump Project site
- Our World AIDS Day Mythbusting rampage last December – featuring Markgraf in the reddest boots he could find
- More on HIV and feminism from us