Girls, let's get inspired!

Weekend comes to the end, we need to get inspired for the next week!

















Share these quotes with your friends because we deserve nothing less but the BEST!

More quotes here.

Sunday is for Horizons: The Guardian's Top 100 Women

#top100women

 For the afternoons that you would like to spend in the internets, wikipedia and youtube but don't know where to start from... and in case you already did you googling around the things mentioned in Makers: Women Who Make America (2013), here comes a considerable material to carry on investigating.

So the story is that in 2011 The Guardian made a list of 100 world's most inspirational women. The list is not an actual 1-to-100 list but a gathering of women according to the categories below: 

• Activists and campaigners
• Art, film, music and fashion
• Business and trade unions
• Law
• Politics
• Science and medicine
• Sport and adventure
• Technology
• Television
• Writing and academia

While you probably won't agree to all of them and won't even know many of them, this is a nice place to start to have a grasp on living, inspirational women. Learning and lots of clicking guaranteed.
This being pretty much - with formidable exceptions, thank you - an English-speaking/general culture exercise and the categories might seem somehow wacky (television? really?), feel free to make your own, more local (or more global) list, be it on a sheet of paper, on Pinterest, while having summery something with your friends or on your own.

All of this, of course, can serve also as a major downer when you realize that a 100 women exercise is still a marginal one due to the scarcity of non-males at the top of every wiki-worth field. The only consolation being the fact that this kind of project would be much harder (and whiter) as some 50 years ago...

+ Another cool list (very US-centered, yes) is this one by Hadley Freeman.

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Stories about Anne Boleyn

#inspirationalmovies

Continuing with the princess theme, we are here just to remind you that the much romanticized age of princesses was a very dangerous place to be a woman. And that there is no reason to dream to become a princess/queen. As an example we bring you the life story of Anne Boleyn (c. 1501 – 19 May 1536).

There are many interpretation of her life as the mistress and the 2nd wife of King Henry VIII of England, we shall name just few. In all of them you can see reflected the nauseating relationship between power and lust, manipulation and defeat. It would be too easy to say that this is just about the point when a political need for a male heir and the wish to be the queen (have power!) meets. It is him tearing both England and Europe apart because of the feeling of entitlement. It is her being decapitated (this is not a spoiler, it's general knowledge) for not being able to produce on.
Also, you get to see how religions are made.

Anne of Thousand Days (1969, Charles Jarrot) if you are into movies with patina, and as one from the time when everybody seem to have been comfortable with a tyrannic Richard Burton as the King.

Moving almost 40 years on here comes The Tudors (2007-2010, Michael Hirst) that will bring you lots of hours to watch and lots of characters and relationship dynamics to swallow. Nevertheless, it is quite brilliant and does an excellent job showing the complexity of motivations. With the King in the center and not his wives though... 

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008, Justin Chadwick) is exactly about rivalry inspired in the fact that there is somebody with almost unlimited power to do harm or do good, and conquering their benevolence and trying to maintain it is all you can do. Hard line patriarchy, you know.

I ♥ Being a Girl: Make your day brighter while feministing around

...and an 8 year old wills how you how!

Via A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World and Guerrilla Feminism comes the inspirational moment of the day:

 "This is how Stella Ehrhart, age 8, decides what to wear for school.

She opens her closet. She opens her book, “100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century.” And she opens her mind.

The Dundee Elementary School third-grader comes to school dressed as a different historical figure or character — Every. Single. Day. And she's done that since the second day of second grade, when this all started.

The budding actress with a social conscience came to school on the first day last year dressed like any other 7-year-old girl, in the outfit her grandpa had bought her: a Love T-shirt and leggings. The following day she was dressed as author Laura Ingalls Wilder.

From that point on, Stella decided that what she would wear to school would represent who she was trying to be. With no repeats, at least through second grade." (More here!)

So, while the geopolitical or whatever else importance of some of these women might be disputable, they are still powerful symbols, it's still so awesome + thrilling is the fact that she does that in a very DIY way, no posh pre-made costumes. And the fact that the school and her classmates are completely OK with it. You go, Stella!

That's her as:

 Grace Kelly

 Billie Holiday

 Elvis Costello (well, she does an "Old Turtle from a children's book by the same name" and her school principal, too)

 Helen Keller

 Joan Baez

 Aung Sang Suu Kyi