I ♥ Being a Girl people, Julia

Dear awesome people,

My name is Julia Danyltsova and I am from Ukraine. 

Since March 2015 I have joined I <3 Being a Girl Community and will be happy to inspire and get inspired within the Working Group!

A bit about myself in this article. :-)

Long-long time ago... (September 2012)... I have been doing my internship at Women Health and Family Planning Foundation. This is where I learned what SRHR is, where I have done my first steps in advocacy. I became a volunteer and member of youth group after finishing the internship. This experience totally changes the life. I have started volunteering on international level by joining YSAFE network. Just a year ago I became ASTRA-youth member and I’m constantly developing my skills in advocacy by taking actions on national, regional and international levels. Now I am YSAFE Steering Committee Member and I <3 Being a Girl working group member which are challenges for me.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:

• see: at least 5 countries different to their motherland 
• listen: to their hearts
• read: a love-letter from a person they love
• try: to do things which make them happy and to avoid everything which disappoints them

Before I am 80, I’d like to know that this world is safe and happy place for my children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren.

I enjoy:

• Travelling
• Getting acquainted with new people / countries / cultures
• Spending time with my friends

Let's get acquainted!

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Harold and Maude (1971)

#inspirationalmovies

From the writer and director of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), here you have an even weirder piece on sentimental (and sexual) liberation: Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby), a love story and life lesson neatly packed in total eccentricity! You are welcome!

While Harold's coming of age is the linchpin of the movie, he does that through his experience of meeting and getting to know Maude. Oh, Ruth Gordon, oh! At last, an inversion of the empowerment-through-romance-with-men we have seen so much (as in here, here, or here).

The special pluses:

+ Life is long and people can enjoy it at all ages!

+ And we are sexual, sensual beings at all ages!

+ Intergenerational love exists. And is also sexual.

+ The movie is a cult classic with very peculiar and most awesome esthetics. Rookie even suggests ways how to bring Maude in your warderobe.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Summertime (1955)

#inspirationalmovie 

Just in time for August, another treat with Katharine Hepburn: Summertime (1955, David Lean). And exactly as it happens with many more classic - and contemporary - movies, there are several ways how you can read the plot. Our mission is emancipatory, so on that we shall focus...

1) A woman traveling solo to a country she does not know without speaking a word in its language. Already daring.

2) She is not young. Or breathtakingly beautiful. Or overly confident. But she's very excited to be doing things and going places.

3) She meets a person. And has lots of fun with them. While nobody is promising marriage or happily ever after.

4) After that, she takes a decision to stop a relationship that is not promising anything more than she has already seen. She leaves. To go back to her life. Because she has a life. For real.   

Obviously, all of this happens in a sauce of she wasn't really living until she met the right man, but - as we did with Roman Holiday (1953), which has a very very similar narrative - let's treat the love interest as a driver of empowerment and self-discovery instead of being a prince charming and a savior. Because in both of these movies (both set in Italy, curiously enough, the paragon of loose morals for 1950's Hollywood, apparently), the protagonists have romantic fun and then move on. With a bittersweet break-up, yes, but with little doubts about what they have to do and where are they going.

And before most of the above happens, this quote:

"Renato De Rossi: Listen to me! Stop behaving like a schoolgirl! What my wife does is not your business. What signora Fiorini does is not your business. You come here and what you do? You hide in a gondola and you sigh “Oh, Venice is so beautiful, so romantic! Oh, these Italians, so beautiful, so romantic! Such children!” and you dream of meeting someone you want: young, rich, witty, brilliant, and unmarried, of course! But me, I’m a shopkeeper, not young, not rich, not witty, not brilliant and married, of course. But I am a man, and you are a woman. But you see…it’s “wrong” it’s “wicked” it’s this, it’s that. You’re like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. “No!” you say, “I want beef steak!” My dear girl…you are hungry. Eat the ravioli.
Jane Hudson: I’m not that hungry.
Renato De Rossi: We are all that hungry, Miss Hudson."

Realizing your most authentic needs and fulfilling them is very important. And sometimes other people might help with that.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Tomboy (2011)

#inspirationalmovies

It may be very difficult for older people to admit, but the life of young - and very young - can be extremely complex. Classical literature is full of examples, but today's one is a recent French cinema gem.

Tomboy (2011, Céline Sciamma) offers a moving story about trying to fit in better in your own body while living in an extremely gendered world.

It will (well, it could, if you'll let it) get you thinking about:
- How little external appearance tells you about people. And how - at the same time - you should respect the signals people are sending. Even if that takes you into an uncharted territory (even beyond gender binary, uh oh).
- How much inner drama and struggle is brought up when you realize that you should make serious adjustments in order to fit in. Especially if you feel that you cannot share that with anybody. Especially if people assume that you are too young to have any coherent idea about what's going on.
- How beyond the "oh, children are so cruel" stands nothing more than the boxed thinking of the adults transmitting certain notions. You cannot expect little children - those people still just ordering basic ideas about human life - to question and bend the old toxic ideas right away. Adults should lead by example.

It's bittersweet, short, and very touching. What else do you need?

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Gone with the Wind (1939)

#inspirationalmovies 

"Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?"

OK, this one is a challenge, because you can interpret it both ways. You could argue that - as in the case of Dirty Dancing, for example - there's not much empowerment or feminism to be found in Gone with the Wind (1939). It's racist. It's androcentric. It's about a privileged girlie facing the world and looking for a man to shelter her from the reality.

But here comes the trick: she ends up having to do stuff for herself. On her own. And that is revolutionary. Well, especially for a Hollywood studio superproduction of 1939 and a novel (written by a woman, take note) describing realities of a Southern-belle suddenly thrown into a turmoil.

Our impulse for including Gone with the Wind among our suggestions come from this article in Spanish critical feminist magazine (google translate should be able to help you!). They ask the following question: how come that even people aware of all those shortcomings (when it comes to aspiring towards empowering feminist fiction) do find it inspirational and somehow - backwardly - groundbreaking?

Their answer goes along the lines of recognizing the qualities of the heroine. Because beyond the superficial persona that Scarlett puts up in order to - very strategically! - try to attract a good match for marriage there is strong person able to grow and overcome the loss of privilege and vanity. An additional credit has to be given for the courage to admit - although through pain and not by choice - that there is life beyond romance and coupledom. And to the conviction that "tomorrow is another day". Resilience, therefore.

By the way, reading the book is always a good idea, too.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Stonewall (1995)

#inspirationalmovies

For a little walk in (again, a dramatized one) history, we offer Stonewall (1995, Nigel Finch). While it has 1990's written all over and sometimes makes you cringe because of awkwardness, it's still worth the while.

Playing with the idea that every LGBTQI activist has their own Stonewall story (yes, yes, go, read the wiki, we'll wait), so here you have one particular story with all the dramatic ingredients and dichotomies you wanted. Being out / being in closet. Trying to fit in / defying. Creating closed ghettos / suffering discrimination. Different ways of doing activism. Love. Friendship. Corrupt policemen. Street riots. Some jail. Lots of the Shangri-Las and lip-sync. Reminder that the most famous LGBTQI riot (and historical milestone) was fought by trans persons of color and not well-groomed rich white men.
Don't expect much from this, and you might be surprised.

 

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: La vie d'Adèle (2013)

#inspirationalmovies

La vie d'Adèle or Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche) is a heavy romantic French drama, a very good example of cinematic depiction of the realities of making and unmaking affective relationships. And being French, it's explicitly sexual (take care of this, think twice before watching this with your grandma...), full of intense emotions, intimate details, ups and downs characteristics of the life in couple.

The twist away from the typical emotionally charged romantic drama is the fact that the central couple is made of two young women. Therefore, the already existing tension of desire, negotiations, jealousy, changing feelings is accompanied with additional pain caused by coming out, stigma, construction of an alternative identity and other little gifts that the heteronormative patriarchy brings.

Go, block 3 hours (!) of your busy schedule to immerse yourself in what is already becoming a classic of LGBTQI movies. And then feel free to read some of the analysis already done on the possible bias introduced by the male gaze and stereotyping, etc. Some people think it's more of the same old eroticizing for hetero audiences, some claim it as a step out of this girls just playing dogma... Go, make up your mind.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Out of Africa (1985)

#inspirationalmovies

The trailer may give an erroneous impression... Karen Blixen's (1885-1962) memoir Out of Africa is not about sitting around waiting and then hugging Robert Redford a lot (although, nothing wrong with it, of course). It's a tale of daring travel, by XIX century standards at least, some convenience driven marriage, some STI, some love and learning how to love-and-let-go of people.

And when you have Meryl Streep reminding you that you cannot tame and cage people you love, what else can you ask from a nice, memoir based drama?

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

#InspirationalMovies #WesAnderson

Finally, a Wes Anderson movie where girls - OK, a girl - take active (and not sobbing and passive aggressive) decisions. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is a cute story about love and emancipation. Also about the fact that you don't have to wait until certain (legal?) moment of becoming person or adult in order to do things that resonate with your most authentic being. And a great amount of relationship dos and do-nots you'll see are the same at every age...

Most of all keeping in mind that both Suzy and Sam were persons with their interests, conflicts and preferences before escaping (this is not Romeo and Juliet stuff on sudden transformation and emancipation by love) just that they chose to be together, too.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

#InspirationalMovie

This week's offer is a growing-up feel-good. What you have in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008, Peter Sollett) is two rather marginalized young people melomaniacs stuck in toxic relationships (not with each other). And what it does is to follow them through a one night road trip around New York City in a capricious Yugo dealing with exes, friends, and strangers, and looking for a mysterious indie band.

Sweet? Yes. Cute? Yes. Believable? Well... Relatable? Defintely.

Empowerment lesson? It is completely OK much better being single than being stuck with people who hurt you. And while it doesn't mean waiting for the right one and such, it means that spending time with people that treat you well and appreciate you for who you are is the path to happiness.

A little + : Kat Dennings is not as skinny as most of the young actresses around, so, yay for at least some body diversity! 

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Como agua para chocolate (1992)

#InspirationalMovie

While Como agua para chocolate (1992, Alfonso Arau) might seem just another period piece about love and customs, it is not so. Based on a  novel of Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate: A novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies (1992), it mixes the traditional Western love story with a healthy dose of magical realism.

It analyzes - as good period pieces should - the pressures that social customs place(d) on people. And seeing in detail how women were coping with the fact that submission and passivity were expected from them and the very reality of being a person. With feelings, emotions, desires, and dreams.

As legions of women have done throughout the history, the heroine here finds solace in cooking and breaking free time-by-time (baby steps, you know). Her cooking, though, goes beyond that of your and our grandmothers... because Tita's cooking is magic: the food she prepares transmits her feelings, therefore she can make the whole wedding-crowd cry and people twirl of pleasure at the dinner table.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Babies (2010)

#inspirationalmovie 

Oh, yes, we so are doing the cheesiest, the sweetest New Year's feature. And it's better than Disney. No, seriously... we suggest you watch Babies (2010, Thomas Balmès).

It is a feature documentary showing the first year of life for four little people in four places in the world: Japan, Mongolia, Namibia and USA.
Not to suggest that you should or should not have babies in 2013 or in any other year, but to pay attention to how socially constructed our ideas of upbringing, of care, of socialization, security, hygiene and so on are. How at the same time different and very alike we are.

And to send some unconditional love! 

And don't be afraid of watching in original version with no subtitles as they just speak baby.

IPPF ♥ - YSAFE SC - Thomas

Name: Thomas Goyvaerts, member of the YSAFE Steering Committee.

I enjoy taking challenges, traveling and going out with friends.

I became aware by being active in the social circuit since I was 15. Every opportunity or challenge I faced helped me grow and helped me get more aware about all kinds of social topics that were now to me. For example, right now I'm doing an internship with male sex workers, something I recently learned about and immediately wanted to know some more.

I joined my IPPF Member Association, Sensoa, because to me it was one step up in the whole social staircase; I tend to travel a lot between organizations so to learn and grow even more.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:
   - See a starry midnight sky in the mountains to make you feel small, the view from a high mountaintop to make you feel big and the look of love in that one special person's eyes just so you really know how special you are. If you can do this and be happy with yourself, you can face any storm.
  - Listen Everybody's free to wear sunscreen by Baz Luhrman.
  - Read the stuff you wrote when you were young; love letters, diaries, school reports, cards, letters... So you can see how you've grown, see what possibilities you had but didn't know about and realize that you still have so many possibilities right now that you don't know about.
  - Try many new directions, and if they don't turn out to be like you wanted then at least you made one step in the right direction.

Before I'm 80 I want to have traveled a lot, I want to be able to say that I found true love (even if I lost it by then) & I want to be proud of who I am and stick by it for the rest of my life.