These two things appear seem at odds with each other but hear me out.
Today is my father's birthday and for the first time in five years, it does not make me sad. Do I miss him? Like hell. But I knew my father well enough to know what he would think of things.
He would have loved Bridesmaids. He was quite the movie buff and he loved to laugh. If I have a sense of humor, it's because of him. Only a true comedian could have kept coming up with fresh jokes in every hospital he stayed at ("These hospital johnnies make me look fat! It's this horrible hospital food that's killing me, Simone, not the cancer! Simone! Stop riding around on that wheel chair - it'll piss off the nurses!") He also would have liked that Bridesmaids is a feminist watershed moment - Hollywood has finally realized that women can be funny - that women buy movie tickets - and that women deserve entertainment that is actually FOR and ABOUT THEM. For too long we have relied on horrible chick flicks and Twilight - it's time to acknowledge that we have entertainment capital too.
I will go even further to say that Bridesmaids had real hutzfah to go after the wedding machine. I don't understand for the life of me why a wedding, which used to be (and still is in many ways an inherently sexist) ritual, has just become another capitalist venture. I would rather slit my wrists than plan a wedding. It's city hall for me, baby. I'm gonna be a cheap wife.
It's a good time to be a feminist in Hollywood, Daddy.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
On the Beauty Machine
I would give anything to be a man. I can only imagine waking up without doing my hair or slathering my face with makeup every morning only to take it off every evening. Not only is makeup not good for your skin, but it's also extremely expensive.
I spend an hour or more every day getting ready just so I can leave my apartment. On the rare occasions that I decide not to wear makeup or do my hair, I can tell that people want to say to me, "Jesus, make some sort of effort!" But on the days I do make an effort, no one probably even notices, because that is just how a woman is supposed to look.
I am surrounded by blonde, perfect women out here, and for the most part, I am proud that I am neither a stick nor blonde. In the production and management offices in which I have worked thus far in Hollywood, there weren't even enough women with which to compete. The boys club pissed me off but I now have to admit that being a woman in these offices dominated by men was kind of special (of course there were many ways in which it was NOT special - the incessant dick measuring, the assumption that I was stupid because I happened to have a vagina, and of course, the sexual harassment that is still very much ingrained in Hollywood, most especially in these smaller, private companies).
Now that I am on the other side of that equation, I am extremely aware of the amount of women with which I am competing. It's terrifying. And I desperately want to hate them. But I cannot hate them, and instead I hastily transfer that hate into self-hatred, which is both narcissistic and unproductive.
LA can drive you insane if you let it. But my Yankee upbringing shall not be erased. Boo fucking who.
I spend an hour or more every day getting ready just so I can leave my apartment. On the rare occasions that I decide not to wear makeup or do my hair, I can tell that people want to say to me, "Jesus, make some sort of effort!" But on the days I do make an effort, no one probably even notices, because that is just how a woman is supposed to look.
I am surrounded by blonde, perfect women out here, and for the most part, I am proud that I am neither a stick nor blonde. In the production and management offices in which I have worked thus far in Hollywood, there weren't even enough women with which to compete. The boys club pissed me off but I now have to admit that being a woman in these offices dominated by men was kind of special (of course there were many ways in which it was NOT special - the incessant dick measuring, the assumption that I was stupid because I happened to have a vagina, and of course, the sexual harassment that is still very much ingrained in Hollywood, most especially in these smaller, private companies).
Now that I am on the other side of that equation, I am extremely aware of the amount of women with which I am competing. It's terrifying. And I desperately want to hate them. But I cannot hate them, and instead I hastily transfer that hate into self-hatred, which is both narcissistic and unproductive.
LA can drive you insane if you let it. But my Yankee upbringing shall not be erased. Boo fucking who.
Monday, May 2, 2011
How does one become a mass murdering fuck head?
I am probably a little obsessive about all this Osama Bin Laden coverage, but if you watched the crowds at Ground Zero and The White House - most of the revelers were rather young. They compromised of the generation who came out in droves to vote for Obama, a generation more progressive than any generation that preceded it.
Imagine if Hitler had somehow lived in hiding ten years after the end of WWII (near military barracks? in broad daylight?)? The idea seems completely ridiculous. At least Hitler knew the jig was up and did himself and his cross-dressing-black-face-wearing wife in accordingly. How Bin Laden evaded the US for ten long years can probably be best explained by Pakistan. (Is that crickets I hear? ).
The towers went down when I was 15 sitting in Geometry class. Another math teacher walked into the classroom and said a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. Immediately my teacher and my peers thought this teacher was full of shit (this teacher had a reputation for being quite the prankster). But this was no prank. I saw on TV in real time the second plane crash into the second tower, and I think it's safe to say that I have tried and failed to erase that image from my mind for the last ten years.
For anyone 25 or younger, 9/11 has informed most of our adult lives. Our war was (still is?) with terrorism. Our Hitler was Bin Laden. I have never rejoiced over a death like this before and I refuse to be ashamed of it. I imagine on the day the world found out Hitler was dead nobody said "YOU SHOULD NOT CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF THAT MASS MURDERING FUCK HEAD!". I think the reaction was more along the lines of "I OUTLIVED THAT BASTARD!" followed by copious amounts of sex (sounds pretty good to me).
I wish my father were still alive to see this.
And continuing with my WWII comparisons, I leave you with one of Casablanca's best quotes:
"There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
Amen.
Imagine if Hitler had somehow lived in hiding ten years after the end of WWII (near military barracks? in broad daylight?)? The idea seems completely ridiculous. At least Hitler knew the jig was up and did himself and his cross-dressing-black-face-wearing wife in accordingly. How Bin Laden evaded the US for ten long years can probably be best explained by Pakistan. (Is that crickets I hear? ).
The towers went down when I was 15 sitting in Geometry class. Another math teacher walked into the classroom and said a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. Immediately my teacher and my peers thought this teacher was full of shit (this teacher had a reputation for being quite the prankster). But this was no prank. I saw on TV in real time the second plane crash into the second tower, and I think it's safe to say that I have tried and failed to erase that image from my mind for the last ten years.
For anyone 25 or younger, 9/11 has informed most of our adult lives. Our war was (still is?) with terrorism. Our Hitler was Bin Laden. I have never rejoiced over a death like this before and I refuse to be ashamed of it. I imagine on the day the world found out Hitler was dead nobody said "YOU SHOULD NOT CELEBRATE THE DEATH OF THAT MASS MURDERING FUCK HEAD!". I think the reaction was more along the lines of "I OUTLIVED THAT BASTARD!" followed by copious amounts of sex (sounds pretty good to me).
I wish my father were still alive to see this.
And continuing with my WWII comparisons, I leave you with one of Casablanca's best quotes:
"There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
Amen.
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