The Problem of Susan

As I have stated before, one of my favorite stories is growing up was Harry Potter. However, because I was growing up as the story was being written there were often long gaps of months to years between one book and the next. As a result I found myself journeying into other completed works, one of which being The Chronicles of Narnia.

Unlike many little girls, I identified myself with Susan more than with Lucy and was both disappointed and dissatisfied when she did not join her sister, brothers, cousin, and every other traveler in The Last Battle. While everyone who had ever been to Narnia journeyed “further up and further in” Susan was left behind to deal with broken bodies at a train station, alone.

The Problem of Susan is a topic that has been debated ever since The Last Battle was written in 1956, but it is a debate that has become more popular with the publication of The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman in 2004. I won’t link it as the short story is slightly graphic, look it up if you like.

What must be remembered is that the Chronicles of Narnia is an allegory for Christianity. At the end of voyage of the Dawn treader, Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund that they must find him under a different name in their own world. It is possible that Peter and Susan also were given this message in Prince Caspian, but all the reader is told is that the two eldest Pevensie’s are “to old for Narnia”. To me, Aslan’s message implies that the siblings are supposed to grow up and bring the lessons learned in Narnia to Earth. However, by the end of The Last Battle there is no evidence shown that any of the siblings or any of the other travelers ever found Aslan on earth. Most of he “friends of Narnia” seem so busy talking about Narnia and wanting to go back there, they don’t bother looking here. The only one to follow this and move on is Susan.

Later in life, C.S.Lewis wrote that: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end . . . in her own way.” My question is why should she have to? Why must Susan ask forgiveness for he crime of growing up?

I like to imagine that Susan had a long for filling life. That she helped to rebuild Britain after the second world war, that she took the lessons learned as the queen gentle into her fancy parties with nylons and lipsticks, and that even if she didn’t want to talk every day about what was lost it didn’t mean she forgot it. Only that she kept going forward instead of looking back.

Cross Cultural Confusion: Western Fandom and Girls Love

When I was growing up, anime seemed much more progressive then the television shows that originated in America or Europe. Don't get me wrong, shows like W.I.T.C.H., Gargoyles, Code:Lyoko, TMNT, and Winx Club were fun. However as I got older, all of these shows presented a very familiar format of male/female protagonist goes on adventures and over the course of episodes or seasons, falls in love with female/male characters. Possibly with a love triangle to “make things interesting”. As a result, the seemingly queer relationships among anime characters opened up a new world for me. Relationships between characters of the same gender were well represented, but most importantly to me, among school girls.

However once I got older, and learned more about Japan then just anime, I realized that the relationships that had helped me understand myself were less cultural progress, and more cultural misunderstanding. The animes that I had identified with was a specific subset of the Girls Love gene, or Yuri based on real cultural expectations. In Japan, a "romantic friendship” between school girls is considered a normal part of growing up. This allows Japanese girls to have practice relationships while remaining pure for their eventual husbands, and it is always meant to be temporary.

If these romantic friendships continue past school age, women considered immature. In the western world, this type of relationship is closer to the LGBT terms LUG (Lesbian until graduation) or bi-curious. Even then though, that is still a bit wrong. A “romantic friendship” deals with the emotional connection of a relationship, but not the sexual part.

This specific subset of girls love is called “Seinen Yuri” and in Japan it is actually marketed to men, men watch the friendship and fantasize about the girl(s) deep friendship, them growing up and eventually marrying them. However, cultural differences meant that for me growing up, I loved these animes. I would join other western fans of these shows in forums and blogs and speculate about the relationships, without truly understanding that my perspective wasn't the original intent.

I suppose that the. If question is this: does the fact that the animes I watched growing up which helped me develop who I am and accept that being LGBT+ was okay, are actually not that devalue the lessons I learned? You decide.

A Conspicuous Christmas

It’s not quite thanksgiving yet, but already advertisers are preparing for the holiday season. On every channel , viewers are being told that the key to their collective happiness lies in the very latest clothing, shoes, phones, makeup, jewelry and more in preparation for the December holiday season. Be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or whatever you are celebrating, the stresses of the season can culminate in one simple question. Is my gift for (insert name here) good enough?

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Knowing what to buy assorted family and friends is always a bit of a mess. Not only is it necessary to coordinate with other people in the friend circle to ensure no one gets the same thing, gift givers also have to navigate an innumerable amount of advertisements shouting out that THIS product is the seasons perfect gift. My family each have their own stratifies for Christmas, with varying success.

For grandma, her tried and true method is a gift box with a rolled up check inside. The boxes are each labeled with our names and have been reused for at least the past 6 years. Personally I love my grandmas method, it lets the recipient choose their own gift so there is no worrying about if they will like it, or if someone else has steady bought it for them. In my family though? Grandma is the only one who can get away with that. Everyone else has to give an actual gift.

Me and my mom? We ask. I know what I want for Christmas and so does she. Does it take the mystery out of gift giving, or the charm of it? Possibly, but now that I would rather get something that I know I would actually want and will use over something that someone else thinks that I need.

My aunts love to play the guessing game. They want to give a present that they picked out, and while they may ask other relatives for help, me for Mom Dad for my brother and so on, my hey would never ask the recipient what they specifically want. It is a nice idea L, but it can also end up backfiring, like the year I got two full makeup kits that i never used because “that’s what you get a 17 year old girl”. My aunts relied on the advertising around them to say what they should get me. A section of shirts with the tags still on, a carrying case of barely touched makeup, and a box of too big designer purses are the results. I won’t deny that the gifts are nice, but they aren’t me.

As the holidays approach my suggestion is this, no matter how much you love the look of surprise that the perfect gift brings, be mindful that what you think is perfect may not be what they think is the same. When in doubt, it is better to ‘ruin’ the surprise then let your almost thoughtful gift gather dust. If all else fails, listen to grandma, everyone loves cash.

Play like a girl

Growing up, I wasn’t the most active of children. I much preferred reading inside the lunch room to playing kickball on the playground at recess. However, I did have friends who were much more active  on the field than I was and I enjoyed other activities outside of the grounds of my schools athletic arena. I loved things like swimming, kneeboarding, innertubing, skiing on both water and snow, and rock climbing.  Lots of things that I thought were fun, that I could do at my own pace, but weren’t necessarily the best for demonstrating athleticism inside of the boundaries of schools PE class.  I didn’t see the point of running around a quarter-mile track for times just to prove that I could, so whenever we had to do the fitness test, I wasn’t necessarily the best at it. As a result to most of my classmates, and to my PE teacher, everything that I did it in that gymnasium I did ‘like a girl’.

 Like a girl is the phrase that I never really thought about  until I was older. Growing up it just kind of meant that I could do the best I wanted to in sports, but my brother would probably be better at it than me. To me it didn’t seem like something bad. It just meant that I didn’t like team sports, my brother did, and that was OK because I was a girl and it didn’t matter if I was good at sports.  It was only after I got into high school and my brother put together a band, that I realized what those words really meant. I was always more musical, my brother was always more athletic. When he seemed to infringe on to my space, it seems logical that I should try to take  some of his. So I tried out for the basketball team, and failed miserably. 

 It wasn’t my failure that bothered me though, it was the reaction I got from my family. They could’ve said that I could try again next year, or that they would work with me to help me build up the endurance I needed to be on the team. Instead, they told me it was fine That I didn’t make the team and I play like a girl anyway so it didn’t really matter. For the first time that I can remember those words hurt me. Not even because I really wanted to be on the basketball team, but because even the thought that I would want to even try seemed ludicrous to the closest members of my family.

 My tryout for the basketball team was my last attempt to get into team sports, but it affected me more than that. I was already growing out of swimming at our community pool, but I also stopped diving into the lake whenever we wend down to visit my Grandma. I let my membership to the local rock climbing arena expire. The next time summer came round I never once told you the kneeboard out of the shed,  and the winter after that, when my parents asked if I wanted to go skiing I made excuses. For the first time in my life I let those words affect me.

 My parents weren’t being malicious, my brother was never trying to impose his manliness on me by being better at me and sports. Looking back on it now it seems slightly ridiculous that I let four words affect my entire life. However I feel about it now though, then those words were everything. They told me it didn’t matter if I tried because I wouldn’t be good at it, so why try at all? Play like a girl is a phrase that needs to change, and thankfully today it is. People around the world are asking themselves just what message play like a girl gives the next generation. The world is changing, one ball at a time.

A very sexy Halloween

With Halloween just around the corner, it is almost impossible to ignore the advertisements for costumes from Party City, Walmart, and other outlets. Even more high-end stores like Burlington get in on the action. The costume industry big business for children and adults alike but one thing I notice every year is the very big difference between male costumes and women's costumes.

It is practically impossible to go shopping either online or in store and not see some sexy version of a Halloween costume, and it is slightly ridiculous. Even ignoring people who are dressing up as a specific character from the specific television show that they may enjoy, there are also such sexafied costumes as sexy flight attendant, sexy vampire, sexy nurse, sexy schoolgirl, sexy candy bar, and my personal favorite sexy Chinese takeout box.

I guess that my real problem with the sexy Halloween costume is that 99% of the costumes that I see online are geared towards women. Well I may sometimes see a sexy version for a Male costume most of the time they aren't on the website or in stores, and even if they are on the website I very rarely if ever see a man actually dressed ‘Sexy’ on Halloween. Additionally, sexy male costumes can be presented in different ways. Take the below picture. I know what the hose represents and so do you. But compared to sexy female firefighter, it’s barely anything to protest about.

I don't have any problem with the people who want to be sexy on Halloween, you do you. But when my only options are to either bare more than I personally feel comfortable with or piece together my own costume, there is an issue. This year, I’m handing out candy as a poodle girl. The costume is my mom's from when she was my age, and it is the third time I will borrow it. Whatever your plans are, when you're looking for your costume pay attention to the other gender and have a happy Halloween.

Outwit, Outplay, Outed

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When people think about reality television, one of the first shows mentioned is almost always Survivor. Running on CBS since 2000, the show is cure toy airing it's 35th season and shows no sign of slowing down. It should be no surprise that a long running show like survivor would have controversies associated with it, but long standing fans of the show were shocked last season when Jeff Varner outed Zeke Smith as transgender during tribal council.

For anybody who is never seen survivor before, wasn't watching that season, or has since forgotten that infamous tribal Council, let me give a quick recap. Jeff Varner is a man who has played Survivor twice before. He is from North Carolina, in his 50’s, and is openly gay. Zeke Smith on the other hand is 28 years old, is currently playing back-to-back seasons of Survivor, and is not “Out”. Varner, aware that he is on the bottom it the Tribe and will probably be voted out that night declares to the audience that he knows something about Zeke that no one else does. That he (Smith) is not the guy we think he is, and that he (Varner) is not going down without a fight.

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At tribal council, Varner begins to make a speech about deception within the tribe, before turning to Zeke and asking him “Why haven't you told anyone you are transgender?” This is a negative stereotype in the representation of transgendered individuals. It is often associated with a fear  that an individual may pretend to be transgender in order to spy on people of the opposite sex. What is extremely important is that after the outing, there was an immensely positive response for Zeke by his tribe mates, host Jeff Probst, the producers and by news outlets across the country and the world.

 Starting with his tribe mates, the members of Nuku immediately confronted Varner, stating that the outing was unnecessary. Contestant Debbie Wanner proclaimed that Zeke’s gender identity was personal and had nothing to do with the game. Varner tried to backtrack and apologized multiple time over the coursed of the night, but his words could not be unspoken and at the end of tribal council, Nuku unanimously voted out Varner.

In a later interview with Entertainment Weekly, Varner stated that he believed that Zeke was already out. Because filming for survivor game changers took place while Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X aired, he had no idea what Zeke’s narrative for the season had been. Varner states his assumption that Zeke had been “touted” as the first transgendered survivor player and his gender identity was only a secret from his current tribe mate. As millions of people saw this was a very dangerous, and ultimately incorrect, assumption to make.

Following the episode being aired, fans took to social media in storm. Many people were casting the blame on to Varner, but some were also blaming CBS.
They claimed that while Varner was the person who outed Zeke to the tribe, it was the Survivor producers and CBS who outed him to everyone watching at home. Honestly, I am not sure how I feel about that issue. Of course Varner must have responsibility for what he said, but should CBS have removed the incident from their broadcast? For me, it comes down to Zeke. In a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zeke said it had never crossed his mind that it shouldn't air. He also stated that he had been given unprecedented control over how the episode would be handed. Whether or not CBS should have edited out that part of tribal council should be weighed with the fact that Zeke never asked them to.

Looking For 'Me': a White girl's take on Black Hermione

I’ll be honest with you. I have never seen or read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and despite my love for the series I have no interest in going to see it. I live in neither London nor New York and seeing a show on Broadway for me is expensive enough when going to a one part show. A two part show seem excessive, but there is one thing that I want to talk about with the show and that is Black Hermione.

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I was 6 years old when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came out in the United States, and I was immediately in love with the series. My mom took me into my younger brothers room and the plan was to read about half a chapter each night before going to bed. The problem was that I loved to read so that by the time mom and my brother were on chapter 3, I had finished the book and was waiting with bated breath for the next one. To be honest, most parents wouldn’t consider that a problem. For my parents? They were dealing with two extremes. A daughter who would much rather climb to the top of the jungle gym and sit there for all of recess in order to read without being bothered, and a son who would have happily paid me to summarize his book report books for him if mom didn’t have eyes in the back of her head.

Before the movies came out, my idea of Hermione was a girl like me. A young girl who is a bit awkward around people, a few reading levels above her peers, learns more by looking ahead in the text book for interesting things, and looks for supplementary materials to learn more outside of class. She was a kid like me, so like any child I pictured her as me. When the movies started came out three years later I still had that image of Hermione being like me, only now I had an face to put to my ideas. Emma Watson looked well enough like me. Brown hair unkempt from too little time brushing it, brown eyes with a thirst for knowledge, and pale skin from sitting in the library a bit to long. I was happy and didn’t really think much more about it. I had an ‘official’ version of Hermione and even as Emma Watson grew up and stopped looking like me as much, I didn’t worry about it.

I grew up, but never grew out of Harry Potter. Technology grew, I got a computer and eventually I joined social media. I made online friends, read fanfiction, and followed some blogs. By the time Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was announced, I had seen some fanart of poc Harry Potter characters. I even saw a few fanmade recasts for the actors. However, I never saw any large scale backlash to the idea until the announcement came out that Hermione would be Black in the stage play. Suddenly, now that a Black Hermione had the potential to be “canon” so many people were coming out of the woodwork to reprimand the idea.

One of the biggest criticisms for a black Hermione was that Emma Watson is white, so Hermione has to be, but the movies didn’t come first. The books did. Nowhere in the books does it say what race Hermione is. I saw Hermione as white before the movies came out growing up because I saw her as like me. There is nothing wrong with that. If some other little girl who started to read those books with her mom and little brother and saw herself in Hermione like I did, but wasn’t white? That is also okay, and nothing changes that. Not the movies, the fanfiction, the promos, fanart, recastings, or the play. I saw me as Hermione. If you see your ‘me’ then that is what matters and never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Gender Roles in Advertising

Imagine that you are 12 years old. You’ve just run home from the bus stop, dashed past your parents waiting for a hello, and leapt into the couch while making a grab for the remote. You tune out the scolding from your parents about politeness and jumping on the furniture and punch in the numbers for Nickelodeon and are just in time for your favorite afternoon special.

Ignoring the fact that kids today have the ability to record their favorite programs, this is an image probably familiar to many of you from your own childhoods. Maybe you preferred Cartoon Network over Nick, or you were an avid devotee of Saturday morning cartoons but the image is none the less familiar. Another familiar image probably is the advertisements that came along with your favorite shows. Ads for the latest toys, books, clothes and other television shows penetrate the breaks in whatever you are watching to sell you, or rather convince you to make your parents buy you the next great thing.

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Gendered advertising has been around for awhile now. Companies use gender in order to sell the same product twice, once to men and then again to women. Multiplying sales mean that they get more money, but what does this mean for children’s advertising? Kids are often smarter than we realize, but are they able to recognize that they are being manipulated into gender roles that may leave a lasting impression on their psyche by advertisers for the sole purpose of companies selling more toys? Or if they are able to recognize it, can those same children resist the boundaries put up by advertisers for their entire childhood into adolescence and adult life?

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The answer to that is complicated. Every child is different, they are raised by different parents, and are given differing values by relatives, teachers, and members of their communities. While some children have been raised to recognize and actively resist gender stereotypes in advertising, others my ave parents who either don’t recognize this as an issue, don’t care, or may recognize the problem, but lack the time to talk about it.

Things are getting better. Recently in the UK, regulatory acts were passed that banned the use of gendered stereotypes in advertising due to fears that it could influence children negatively as they grow up. While these regulations only apply to the United Kingdom, in an increasingly global society it is easy, if perhaps a bit optimistic, to imaging these regulations causing a a domino affect within the advertising industry.

The One to Wear: Why do we keep coming back to Say Yes to the Dress?

The One to Wear: An Analysis of “Say Yes to the Dress”

It is the day that every woman dreams about for their entire life. A bouquet of flowers in her hands, walking down the aisle to an eternal bliss. Everything has to be right. An amazing venue with good food, your family and friends and to top it all off, that perfect once in a lifetime dress. Or so television would like us to believe.

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Say Yes to the Dress is a reality show that appeared in October of 2007 on TLC that revolves around finding the perfect dress for your perfect day. Future brides deal with budget concerns, personal struggles and overwhelming guests, in their search for their ‘ the one’. Fifteen seasons on with multiple spinoffs and international versions, it is clear that audiences love watching women get ready for their wedding day, but why?

Part of the reason is that there is always someone on the show who is ‘real’. With a rotating cast of future brides and their entourages backed by the steadfast presence of consultants there is always someone that we are sympathetic towards. Some nights it is the consultants as bridezillas make the appointment impossible before leaving in a huff. In other cases we feel for the bride whose family and friends just don’t seem to grasp that this is her day and not theirs.

Additionally the show presents the idea of conspicuous consumerism. Many of the brides featured on the show either want more then one dress, normally one traditional for the ceremony and another that is shorter and “more fun” for the reception, or they try on dresses that go above their stated price points and then they just can’t go back to the lesser dress. Whether with one budget breaking dress, or with more than one, Say Yes to the Dress presents the idea your perfect day can only be made better if you spend enough money.

From ballgowns to minidresses, Say Yes to the Dress has every kind of dress for every type of bride. Some we love, some we hate and some we just want to say Why. Between beautiful dresses, emotional conflicts and promise of a happy ending for the future bride, it is no wonder that audiences are always drawn back into the Salon to watch another dream come true.

The People's Princess (and the changes she brought)

It has been a few weeks since the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana and as the world remembers the legacy of her life in numerous documentaries, I feel it is also important to acknowledge the changes that came to British media following her death.

In the years preceding her fatal car crash, Diana had been called “the most hunted person of the modern age”. Everyone loved her and it is easy to see why. Diana was not only a beautiful woman, but she was well known for her charity work around the globe. She was also easy for the people of the United Kingdom and around the world to relate to, especially when compared to her late husband. Diana’s Panorama interview in 1995 gained her tremendous sympathy from the press and the public, but also meant that any news stories about her were a great commodity.

Paparazzi photographers Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey recalled a chase from 1994 in their book Dicing With Di: The Amazing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers where Harvey dove across the front of Diana's Audi for the perfect shot just before their prey reached the safety of Kensington Palace. For the photographers it was business as usual while chasing the Princess. For Diana it was a living nightmare.

Following her death in Paris, the Paparazzi who chased her through that dark tunnel and the media outlets who bought their photos were vilified by the public at large. Among those who blamed the media for her death were Diana’s brother and her sons. At the time Earl Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother was quoted as to saying "I always believed that the press would kill her in the end". Additionally, Prince Harry recalls in a recent documentary titled Diana, 7 days that one of the hardest things for him to deal with was that the paparazzi who had chased her down in those final moments were to busy taking pictures of her dying in the back of the car to actually help her.

In an effort to prevent an extremely restrictive privacy law being put into place by the British Government, Newspaper editors on Fleet Street took a voluntary step back and declared that they would no longer purchase photographs from the types of photographers who had pursued Diana that night, would extend the rights of privacy to public spaces where a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and gave a much larger protections to young people. The last point was especially important in consideration for the young princes who were 15 and 12 at the time.

Twenty years on and those protections still remain largely in place within Britain. Prince William and his family can become annoyed at the press, but they do not live in fear of it as William’s mother sometimes did. So while undoubtedly as this anniversary passes on, people will remember Diana for her charitable work and for the children that she raised, it is important to recognize that even in the tragedy of her death, the People’s Princess still invoked change with the way the press would act around those she loved most.