Cheat To Win

Interviewer: Okay. Which designers do you prefer? 
Hillary Clinton: What designers of clothes? 
Interviewer: Yes. 
Hillary Clinton: Would you ever ask a man that question?
Interviewer: Probably not. Probably not.

Girls takes a similar tack. Its characters are distinctly feminine, longing to have voices in a male-dominated society and not taking for granted that they’ll have to squeeze those voices around the edges of the discourse, but they go about it in ways that are often antiheroic. One of the earliest debates about the series was whether viewers were meant to “root” for Hannah when she so often did bad things, like stealing a tip her parents left for a hotel maid or not seeming to care about anybody but herself. Part of this is just a general lack of comfort with comedic antiheroes, who are usually presented with a level of detachment that allows us to realize they’re not meant to be characters we emulate, but rather characters we recognize the darkest parts of ourselves in. (See also: David Brent, Larry David, Kenny Powers, etc.) Dunham presents Hannah without these filters. The show isn’t doing any judging for its viewers, instead asking them to judge the characters’ behavior for themselves. Girls’ world is essentially realistic, which makes it tempting to assume we’re supposed to root for the characters to tumble even further into self-absorption—particularly in the early going, before the series’ central figures got called on a lot of their bullshit. Hannah’s an unreliable narrator, and we’re constantly forced to re-evaluate the way we see things through her point of view. But this also means we’re sometimes wrong about our conclusions, and that’s never fun to realize.

Believe me, there are so many great points that Todd VanDerWerff makes in this post; the excerpt above is really just the tip of the iceberg. In short, this post from The AV Club blows most of the critical pieces I’ve seen on this show out of the water.

Why are people harassing Jones, an incredible Olympic athlete, about her sex life to begin with? This old school mentality that a woman’s sexuality is inherently intertwined with all of her accomplishments is tired and, quite frankly, bullshit. Worst still, it’s a lose-lose. Had Jones had several sexual partners, GMA and the Today Show would still be drooling and gnashing their teeth over her, ignoring the main point: She, a woman who can run the 100m in less than 12 seconds, is headed to the Olympics in London where she is projected to win.

In the end, a person not having sex is a boring news item. A person having sex is a boring news item. Practically any human on Earth can do either of those things. You know what any human can’t do? Be an Olympic athlete.

Amen.

savvycaptain:

Reporter: I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?

And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?

Scarlett: How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?

The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.

No wonder Joss cast her - she’s fucking amazing.

(via teaviant)

Caption: “What if the superheroes in Avengers had to pose like the lone heroine?” 

Look - in the sky!  Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  

NO!  It’s feminism and comic books!

Our political revolutions will not succeed unless they are accompanied by revolutions of thought — social, sexual, and cultural revolutions that topple the Mubaraks in our minds as well as our bedrooms.

“Do you know why they subjected us to virginity tests?” Ibrahim asked me soon after we’d spent hours marching together to mark International Women’s Day in Cairo on March 8. “They want to silence us; they want to chase women back home. But we’re not going anywhere.”

We are more than our headscarves and our hymens. Listen to those of us fighting. Amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye. There was a time when being an Islamist was the most vulnerable political position in Egypt and Tunisia. Understand that now it very well might be Woman. As it always has been. 

Source: Foreign Policy

Look at her. Gaze upon the one person who is even more aware of the irony and hypocrisy of the world than Daria Morgendorffer. This is the one person who has even more right and insight to call everyone out on their sh-t. Meet Jodie Landon–popular girl, homecoming queen, model student, and young woman of color.

I love this article post but I can’t help but think it should have been three times the length and considerably deeper.  What about Jodie’s decision to attend Turner over Crestmore - to the chagrin of her father?  How come we didn’t delve into Jodie’s behavior during the small business project at Lawndale?  Let’s not be anti-feminist, but her relationship with Mack is incredibly important, as well.  He regularly plays off of her token status as a man in similar circumstances, freely commenting on his disdain for the Lawndale community.

I read this piece and I love what’s been put out there, but I feel like it’s less of a definitive reading of Jodie Landon and more like a start to a conversation about the intersectionality of identity and privilege within the realm of Daria at large.

Source: Racialicious