| June 1st, 2009 |
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1) May be offline for a while. Have to go do something that could take me out of internet reach for an undetermined period of time. Do not worry.
2) George Tiller has been murdered.
I don't have the resources, right now, to really talk about that, so much as about a small side-issue that's making me quite angry.
He was murdered at his church.
People keep talking about this as "irony".
It's not irony. Not even close. It's a hate crime, an act of terrorism against Christians who do not adhere to extremist insanity. Blaming Christianity generically for the murder of a good Christian man who was shot down in deliberate violation of the sanctuary of his faith for doing the right thing, for caring for others in the face of threats and attacks in accordance with Christian principles is disgusting anti-Christian bigotry.
Stop it.
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This evening I rewatched Miss Congeniality with a friend, and noticed something I'd previously not given a second thought:
In the pageant scenes, the black contestants have relatively natural hair.
I say "relatively" because it's still heavily styled. They're playing beauty pageant contestants; every woman has heavily styled hair. But the black women's hair is styled in ways that take advantage of thick curls, of the things their hair can do that the white women's can't, and look like they just require scrunching and gel and hairspray.
I never noticed before, I think, because natural hair on black women isn't something that pings to me as something to take special note of - most of the black women I see in real life have natural hair, and since most of the television I've watched of late has been Japanese (and I hardly ever watch movies), I just don't see enough black women with heavily-processed hair to have overcome my tendency to think of natural as the default for hair on black women. (Japanese TV shows? Not heavily loaded with black characters. Or any characters who aren't Japanese. "Foreign" is "from Osaka".)
Miss Congeniality is a movie whose awesomeness I really kind of want to advocate. In addition to just being genuinely entertaining, it has stuff I just approve of. Like beautiful black women with hair that looks real. Positive representation of non-heterosexuality. A range of characters who aren't stereotypes:
The sweet, naive Miss Rhode Island, who comes off as lovely but sheltered, is the one who's described as majoring in physics and minoring in elementary particles. The non-white characters include the slightly bitchy Miss Hawaii, the worldly but clearly kind-hearted Miss New York who trades barbs with Miss Hawaii in defence of other contestants - but before the movie's out, it becomes clear that there's no real animosity in it after a while, and it's something they're just doing because they can. Miss California, also black, is warm-hearted and friendly - because the bitchy isn't because they're not white, it's because they're them, and the different characters have different personalities.
And when it's important, all of them are good people. A woman can be warm and kind and supportive of other women when it matters, even if she's a bit catty or outright bitchy when it doesn't.
Not really spoilery, because it's not plot, and the movie isn't exactly new anyway: You also get bits like Gracie's conversation with Cheryl, Miss Rhode Island, where Cheryl mentions offhandedly that there was this time when one of her college professors invited her to his office to discuss a paper.
Cheryl, rueful/bitter: He wanted to "discuss a paper", right? [...] Anyway, he attacked me.
Gracie, shocked: Did you report him?
Cheryl: No, I never told anyone before this. I know that happens all the time.
Gracie exclaims that it doesn't, it totally doesn't, and starts talking about teaching Cheryl self-defence. Miss Congeniality 2 also has the "self-defence for women" thing and how important it is - because the message, in Miss Congeniality, is that sexual violence happens, and the woman may well not even report it, because it's just expected... but women can try and establish some agency, take some steps to protect themselves. Which doesn't make it okay.
Also, conforming to the unrealistic beauty ideal requires, at best, an agony of alterations.
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