Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Girl Superheroines

#inspirationalmovies 

Again and again, a disclaimer first. Yes, superhero movies are mostly already problematic. Lots of violence, lots of sexism. But being part of the popular culture, some inspiration can be drawn from the genre. Assuming you'd be obliged to look for superheroine movies, here is our take on those.

First of all, the stereotypical. Say hello to Kick-Ass (2010) and Kick-Ass 2 (2013). Apart from the extremely tough character of Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl there's not much going on for these movies. Flat, explicitly violent (rated R both of them) and quite boring. Gender-based jokes are less than tasteful and the whole genre could be classified as traditional superheroes meet mean girls.
Anyways, you may want to bear through those just to realize how bad the superhero thing is when it comes to heroines*.

And this is the place where the invitation to go back to our childhood goes. Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005) as a somewhat healthy alternative. In order to convince you, the laborious people of buzzfeed.com have compiled a whole list of the reasons why "The Powerpuff Girls Could Have Replaced Your Gender Studies Class". Some of the reasons include, obviously, the fact they do not fit the "sugar, spice and blah-blah stereotype", had a male primary caregiver, did (together with many other characters) drag and dress-up, etc. And they fought patriarchy -in their cutesy and drawn baby-girl way - as they fought villains.

* Yes, Hunger Games are on and will be featured eventually. No, Catwoman or other female characters from different Batman movies do not count. The saddest of recent takes on women and superpowers ever was probably Watchmen (2009).

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Mean Girls (2004)

#inspirationalmovies

This, as some other of our suggestions - like Dirty Dancing (1987), for example - may seem unlikely to be labelled as feminist inspiration.

But we insist that Mean Girls (2004, Mark Waters), the girl-on-girl hate classics for those who have grown up in the 2000's, does offer at least some empowering life lessons:

a) You do not need men to perpetuate the patriarchy. The whole thing - as heteronormative and fallocentric as it gets - can be going on with the objects of the rat race being completely oblivious to the fact that friendships, sanity and intelligence is sacrificed for entering in a couple.

b) Playing dumb (or different) is a strategy that doesn't work in long term. And it hurts your most authentic self. Not worth it.

c) The urge to be part of a group, to have social capital is a (social) life or death issue among adolescents (it may get better with the age, not always, though). Trying to be cool is hard enough... and bullying exists, especially the body-, gender- and sexual orientation-related one. And it takes a lot to try to get over that and hope on that it gets better.
This is to be taken into account when trying to intervene and change the behaviour. 

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (2007)

#InspirationalMovie

This is one of the harsh transformational movies. One of those that leads you through powerful emotional experiences in order to emerge being a better, more aware person.  
4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (2007, Christian Mungiu) takes you through the drama surrounding illegal and unsafe abortion. The unbelief. The shame. The risks. The silence. The need for a social network to rely upon. And a frequent absence of it.

The movie is a masterpiece. It will make you feel very present and actually live through experiences of Gabita and Otilia. And after having watched it you will have very few questions about abortion (yes, safe and available for everybody who needs it) and several regarding friendship, sacrifice, hypocrisy, patriarchy and the (very fragile) autonomy of a female body. 

Who runs the social media? Girls, really?

Mari-Claire Price, the Executive Coordinator of the European Youth SRHR Network, YouAct, recently has raised a handful of really valid questions at Conversations for a Better World about the presence of girls in social media and the effectiveness of the social media campaigns among girls:

"I recently read an interesting article discussing the demographics of Facebook users across the world. To my surprise (and delight) the article stated that ‘women rule social networks’ with 64% of Twitter users, 58% of facebook users and 57% of Myspace users being female. A women ruled Facebook! DJ please, a request! Beyonce- Girls Run the World!

But looking closer at this study, we can see that the claim that ‘women rule social networks’ is nearly as questionable as the lyrics of that song…. do girls really run the world and do they really run social networks?"

You can read the whole thing here!

Inspirational movies: Towelhead (2007)

Towelhead (2007) is a movie on what happens when you, being 13, are forced to deal with multiple discrimination (gender + age + race/etnicity) and puberty at the same time.

And the fact that, if everybody around you seem to be crazy and somehow wrong... it might actually be so, although it may occur to them to blame you for your body, your desires, for who you are.

When Beyoncé says that girls run the world...

Amber expressing her outrage about Beyoncé's song "Run the World" in her Youtube channel Nineteen Percent, a piece that could be perceived as empowering...

maybe...

...if you manage to ignore all the fair (and well researched) points Amber is making.

If you have no clue what is it all about, here you can see the Beyoncé's video.

Girls & Contraception (Decision by H.E.R.A.)

A short on girls and myths and truth about contraception produced by H.E.R.A.