Only 3 more weeks of school. Well, 2.6 if we're being picky (and believe me, at this point, my teenager is being picky). As per usual, the summer looms ahead with too many plans. It will be here — and gone — before we know it.
Recently, I thought about all the movies that I loved when I was a teen (and in years since) and how few of them I've been able to share with my daughter. 'Wouldn't it be fun to have a family film festival?' I thought. We could take turns choosing the movies. (Or, I'd be perfectly happy to curate the entire thing. Control freak, much? Much!)
Of course, I haven't quite gotten up the courage to suggest this fabulous idea to my fabulous offspring.
"Why?" you may ask. Hmmmmm, let's see. Sarcasm. Eye-rolling. Audible groans. Interminable excuses.
Still, I can't help but think about all the wonderful movies I could share. Two of them (not in the top five, maybe, but definitely on the list) would be Shakespeare in Love and Emma. William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Elizabethan and Georgian. Gwyneth Paltrow and ... Gwyneth Paltrow.
Uh-oh. Academy Award aside, is it really responsible of me to expose my daughter to a certifiable loon? Sure, she's pretty. Sure, she's talented. But, has she gone off the deep end?
Sure.
Here are some examples of what I like to think of as The World According to Gwyneth:
On working mothers:
"It’s much harder for me. I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult."
On divorce:
"We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner."
On her net worth:
“I am who I am. I can’t pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year.”
On the voices in her head:
“I’ll never forget it. I was starting to hike up the red rocks, and honestly, it was as if I heard the rock say: ‘You have the answers. You are your teacher.’"
On nutrition:
“I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup.”
and
“I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin.”
And, this week's contribution, on the emotional life of water:
"I am fascinated by the growing science behind the energy of consciousness and its effects on matter. I have long had Dr. Emoto's coffee table book on how negativity changes the structure of water, how the molecules behave differently depending on the words or music being expressed around it."
For more of Gwyneth's wit and wisdom (and weird), you can subscribe to her newsletter GOOP. It's good for a laugh — just park your brain outside for a little while.
I hate to suggest silencing any woman, but Ms. Paltrow isn't doing anybody any favors. Most of her opinions are harmless. Despite her utterly out-of-touch judgmentalism (“Every woman can make time [to work out] — every woman”) or her antiquated notions about skin cancer (“We’re human beings and the sun is the sun—how can it be bad for you?”), underneath it all, Gwyneth is just like you and me.
“I’m just like any other regular mum; cooking, cleaning, wiping butts, picking up after kids, being a wife and helping the kids with their homework. Mind you, I’m terrible at maths. I can’t even do my six-year-old’s maths homework with her.”
So I will try not to hold Gwyneth up as a role model for my daughter. But, will I boycott her movies going forward? Depends on the projects she chooses.
Shakespeare and Austen trump a very silly actress any day.
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As the mother of a teenager, I am intimately acquainted with an oh-so-common adolescent physical manifestation, known as ... the eye roll. Make a suggestion? Eye roll. Make an observation? Eye roll. Make (heaven forbid) a point of constructive criticism?
EYE ROLL!
Often these — most unwelcome — filial reactions come when I least expect them. And, as you can imagine, I avoid them when I can. My dearest daughter, meanwhile, probably wants to spare me her disdain. She probably has my best interests at heart. Right? Of course, right.
That must be why she insisted that I sign the packet her 10th grade Honors English teacher sent home before I actually read it.
You see, my daughter knows me well enough to know that the contents of said package would put me back on my feminist soapbox once again and my subsequent rant would trigger the dreaded eye roll.
The packet explained her new teacher's expectations. It walked through requirements and supplies, tests and quizzes, types of papers. And, it included the year's reading list.
Aye, there's the rub.
Dracula, A Tale of Two Cities, The Catcher in the Rye, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Maus, 1984, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
A quick quiz: What do these titles have in common? Classics, yes. Long and boring, arguably. Outdated, mainly. But, no. Sorry. The answer I'm looking for is this ...
They were all written by men. White men, as a matter of fact.
Surprise, surprise.
Not.
I'm so tired of this. It's 2013, people. I'm not criticizing any specific title on this list (although I could, happily, believe me). My point is that out of ten months and eight titles, they can't devote a single selection to a woman? Or a person of color?
When I work with advertising clients (in my day job, running a direct marketing agency), I always stress "Sell what they want, not what you have." It seems to me that the school system in my comfortable little suburb should apply this precept to its English curriculum.
Who takes Honors English? Mostly girls. 65% at last count (and not just in my town, pretty much everywhere).
Where are the admirable women characters? (Lady Macbeth, really?) Where are the women coming of age? (Holden Caulfield's hooker, maybe?) Where are the themes and topics and settings that matter to a class of fifteen- and sixteen-year old girls? (Vampires, war, assassinations, totalitarian regimes, an albatross?)
Where, oh where, are the women authors?
According to the handout that I dutifully signed, the theme of Honors 10 English is "Defining the Classic." I'm down with that. I really am. Here, then, is a list of indisputable classics by women. In no particular order as each title is as wondrous and wonderful as the next:
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Beloved by Toni Morrison
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Play It as it Lays by Joan Didion
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Karen von Blixen-Finecke)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Take your pick.
Or, better yet, add your suggestions to the comments below.
