The Good Witch and the F-Word

A couple of days ago, I had tea with a number of intelligent and stylish and (happily) progressive women. After the usual civilities ("Where do you live?" "What do you do?") and several cucumber sandwiches, the conversation turned toward the current attack on Planned Parenthood. Several of the group were a decade or so older than I, and had been active in the 1974 fight for the ERA. (I was only 12 at the time, but thanks to my best friend's famous feminist mother, I was acutely aware of the women's rights movement.) As we refreshed our tea and moved on to petits fours and chocolate covered strawberries, we bemoaned the fact that our daughters and granddaughters don't have enough feminist role models.

For many young women, the F-word (no, not that one) isn't cool anymore. It's become synonymous with "man-hater" or "lesbian." When Shailene Woodley, the young star of the Divergent dystopian action series was asked "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" she answered this way:

"No because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. And I think that is important to note. And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance."

I'd argue that she's 50 percent ignorant and 50 percent immature. And 100 percent silly. But, that's just my opinion.

Happily, my daughter and her cohorts do have a marvelous role model — and it's someone they grew up with. Emma Watson, best known as the overachieving little witch from the Harry Potter movies and recent Ivy League graduate, became a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women last year. 


Here is a speech she made in its entirety (if you'd rather watch it, click here):

Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN. We want to try to mobilize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change. And, we don’t just want to talk about it. We want to try and make sure that it’s tangible.
I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I spoke about feminism, the more I realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.

For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was 8, I was confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings.

I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even.

Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men.

But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality. These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.

My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need more of those.

And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact, statistically, very few have.

In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many of the things that she wanted to change are still true today. But what stood out for me the most was that less than thirty percent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?

Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help for fear it would make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.

I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves.

You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she doing speaking at the UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.
All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better. And, having seen what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something.
Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”

In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing, it will take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates, it won't be until 2086 before all rural African girls can have a secondary education.

If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I spoke of earlier, and for this, I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good news is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I invite you to step forward, to be seen and to ask yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Thank you very, very much.

No, Hermione, thank you.

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book  Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.

Pass the Popcorn: Insurgent

My husband has a nickname for me. He has several actually, but the one I'm referring to right now is "Sucker-Mom." It's apt. To use a musical theatre allusion, "I'm just a mom who can't say no."

So when it turned out that Insurgent, the sequel to last year's Divergent, was playing at a small cinema one town over, I didn't just agree to go with my daughter; I suggested it.

At this point (she's seventeen and heading into the home stretch of her junior year of high school), I'll do pretty much anything if it means I get to be in her company. Between the hours she spends at school and the hours she spends at the stable and the hours she spends at concerts and at Bertucci's and Panera with her buds ... well, there ain't too many hours left.

I'm not above bribery either. Shopping sometimes works. (But how many pairs of distressed jeans does she really need? Wait. Don't answer that.)

In this case, I got off pretty easy. Two matinee tickets, two bags of popcorn.

Then again, I had to sit through the movie.

On rottentomatoes.com, which collects movie reviews from all over the country, Insurgent earned a 31%. Out of 148 reviews counted, 102 were ... well ... "rotten."

So, you may ask, what did I think of it? I'm going to tell you. Here are my top ten observations for you.

1. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

2. It moved pretty quickly (which was good, because even though it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be it was still pretty bad).

3. I couldn't figure out who some of the characters were, but since I couldn't figure out what was going on half the time anyway it didn't really matter.

4. Unfortunately, the movie didn't come with a glossary or a cheat sheet, so I was stuck trying to figure out what a "sim" was and which faction was which.

5. Shailene Woodley looks very pretty with short hair. Especially when she's fake crying.

6. Ansel Elgort fake cries better than Shailene Woodley fake cries.

7. It's impossible to watch Four in bed with Tris without thinking of dead Mr. Pamuk in bed with Lady Mary.

8. Despite the general consensus that Divergent and Insurgent were "rotten tomatoes," Sequels Allegiant: Part 1 and Allegiant: Part 2 are already in production.

9. I was often distracted wondering how much they paid Oscar winners and nominees like Kate Winslet, Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts to be in this thing. (My only conclusion? A lot!)

And, finally ...

10. They never told us what the hippies in Amity were smoking (but I could have used some).


If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.  

The F-Word

What do we want for our daughters?

I think most mothers of teens would agree that we want our daughters to be happy and smart and kind and successful. I think, if we're honest, we'd also say that we want them to be beautiful and lucky in love. (Despite our best efforts, that Disney-princess "happy ever after" thing is hard to get away from.)

In my case, I'd also add that I want my daughter to be a feminist. (I recently wrote an essay for Women's Voices for Change on that very subject.) Every time my daughter stands up for herself, notices an inequity or admires another woman for all the right reasons, my pride is palpable.

That's one reason I've been happy with some of the contemporary books she chooses to read. (Would I be happier if she reached for Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë or Louis May Alcott? Well ... um ... YES. I may be a feminist mother but I was also an English major.) Today's popular YA (young adult) dystopian genre includes some fairly kick-ass heroines.

One of these is Tris from Veronica Roth's Divergent series. Even though she's a little too swoony when it comes to her hunky trainer Four, the girl is one tough cookie. Leaping from moving trains, climbing abandoned ferris wheels, hand-to-hand combat (with boys, no less!), this is not a girl who sits at home waiting for the phone to ring while her manicure dries.

When the movie version was released a few months ago, I was happy that Hollywood resisted the urge to take Tris and glam her up for the big screen. Sure, young star Shailene Woodley looks super sultry on the poster, but in the film itself, she is strong and seemingly make-up free. Both Divergent and its precursor The Hunger Games depict future societies in which women live and work (and, apparently, fight to the death) alongside men.

(And the fictional heroines aren't the only inspiration for our teens. Both bestselling novels were written by, you guessed it, women. You go, girls!)

You'd think all this girl power would rub off on the young actress lucky enough to star in Divergent. Earlier this month, TIME magazine asked Woodley if she was a feminist. But, her answer surprised me. Surprised and, frankly, disappointed.

"No because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. And I think that is important to note. And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance.

My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism. I don’t know how we as women expect men to respect us because we don’t even seem to respect each other. There’s so much jealousy, so much comparison and envy. And “This girl did this to me and that girl did that to me.” And it’s just so silly and heartbreaking in a way."

So, according to Woodley, sisterhood and feminism have nothing to do with each other. Oh, and you can't be a feminist and love a man. (This will be unhappy news for my husband.)

Shailene, honey, here's the deal ...

Let's start with the F-word itself. Who better to turn to for an official definition than the movement's mother superior, Gloria Steinem?

"A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men." 

Even without the last two words, Steinem doesn't say anything about taking away anybody's power. You would think the word "equality" would be inarguable.

What have feminists fought for? Freedom. Respect. True citizenship. Women's rights to make choices, to work outside the home, to be represented in government, to have access to healthcare.

Girlfriend, don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Shailene, the next time you vote or earn a half a million dollars for a movie (or speak your mind in a national magazine), thank your real sisters. 

The feminists.

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com. 

Pass The Popcorn: Divergent

I have a lot of close friends who never had a child. I have others whose offspring are already away at college, medical school or out in the real world. Still another (a late bloomer, I guess) has a toddler. Think about that for a moment. Wow, is she brave!

Now, I love these women, I do. But, I also feel sorry for them.

How do my peers, women of a certain age, survive without a teenager on hand to tune them in to what's hot, what's not and what definitely-absolutely-positively cannot be missed?

How, for example, would any of these women know about Divergent? OMG.

Yes, Divergent is the latest pop culture phenom. (And I have my daughter to thank for my intimate knowledge of it.) First was Twilight. Then, The Hunger Games. Now, Divergent.

What happened to teen fiction? Somewhere along the way, the romances of yesteryear (how we all swooned over Healthcliff back in my day!) and the real-life real-girl narratives (Are You There, God? It's Me, Alex) morphed into these dark, dystopian sagas. It's not enough for a heroine to be a typical teenager, riddled with adolescent angst or — worse! — acne. Now, apparently, you have to be in a love triangle with a vampire and a werewolf. Or be in a fight to the death with other teen tributes. Or be a square peg individualist in a round hole faction in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, bombed-out version of Chicago.

That, my friends, is where Divergent comes in.

Last weekend, my daughter and I had second-row, center seats for the new movie based on Veronica Roth's bestseller. After a war which virtually annihilated the human race, the powers that be decided that the survivors' best chance of ... well ... surviving would be to restructure society into "factions," each based on its members' core personality traits, and each playing a prescribed role for the betterment of all.

Sounds orderly if nothing else, right? The problem is that our heroine, one Tris (née Beatrice) is an anomaly. Despite some standardized testing that makes the SATs look like a walk in the park with puppies and kittens and ice cream, her results are "inconclusive." She doesn't fit into one of the factions. She is, in a word, in a bestseller title, divergent.

So, what would you do if you found you didn't really fit in? Well, naturally you would risk your life to join the toughest group, right? Of course right. 

Tris selects "Dauntless," whose brave members serve as society's warriors. But, choosing Dauntless doesn't mean that Dauntless chooses you. So, Tris has to go through all kinds of initiation hell: leaps out of moving elevated trains, scaling an old ferris wheel, hand-to-hand combat with nasty characters who are considerably larger, stronger and just plain meaner. There's blood. There's guts. 

There's a hunky instructor.

Tris and "Four" (as one smart-mouthed initiate asks, "What, were One, Two and Three taken?") fall in love and foil a deadly coup driven by another faction, the "Erudite." But, even as they escape in the final moments of the movie, we know it ain't over. There are two more Divergent books and probably three more Divergent movies (following the examples of Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games, Hollywood will certainly split the last book into two installments).

Here's what I think my daughter and her peers find so appealing about all this. As teenage girls, they feel a lot like Tris. They are asked to conform. They are pigeon-holed as "brains" or "beauties." They may not be forced to fight each other in a ring, but things can get pretty brutal online.

Here's what I like. Tris is a girl. She's brave; she's strong; she holds her own. She even holds her own against boys. Does she ever!

Here's what I don't like. The way the studio felt the need to glam her up for the movie poster. Shailene Woodley was nowhere near as curvy or "come hither" in the actual film. Her hair was pulled back. And her stretch pants weren't quite that stretched.

Still, if Tinsel-town's executives are willing to produce bazillion dollar projects about a girl ... well ... stretch pants or not, things are looking up.

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.   

Mother-Daughter Book Club: Divergent

A few months ago, my teenage daughter and I saw a "coming attraction" trailer for a new movie called Divergent. In it, a young girl comes of age in a future society in which people are assessed and put into one of five factions based on their personality traits. As with most of these set-ups (Hunger Games, anyone?), the system is corrupt, the people (especially those who still need acne medicine) are exploited, heroes arise, authority is challenged, much mayhem ensues. The whole things ends on one mother of a cliffhanger and we all wait breathlessly for part two.

"We're totally gonna see that!" my daughter proclaimed, as I knew she would. But she then added "I have to read the book first."

Sniff, sniff. As you can imagine, I was proud. Very proud.

For Christmas, my daughter had asked for (and received) a new dressage saddle. Ka-ching! It was understood there would be no other presents. (Of course, it was also understood that I would break my own rule and get her at least a handful of other lesser gifts so we could still have our joyful, cluttered Christmas morning.) I looked for Divergent and found that in the not-always-logical world of shopping online, I could buy the 3-volume hardcover set (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiance) with free shipping for less than the softcover versions à la carte. Well, I thought, I hope she likes it.

Major understatement.

My daughter devoured Divergent. The novel, an ambitious first by a fairly young author Veronica Roth, weighs in at 496 pages, although the type is fairly generous in size. Still, I was impressed by how quickly it was completed. Even with my daughter's attention necessarily distracted by William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for Honors English and post-revolutionary France's Louis XVIII for AP World History.

"You have to read this, Mom!"

Under her supervision, I had already read all three Hunger Games books (not to mention all four Twilight — now, there's a week I'll never get back). Meanwhile, I'm two thirds through my own Dickens curriculum (self-inflicted — don't ask), so I welcomed the diversion of Divergent. Aside from the actual writing (which is engaging and fast-paced though hardly a work of literary fine art), here are some pros and cons:

The hero is a girl. A petite (as we are told ... um ... like a thousand times), but an enormously brave and determined one.

This girl (Tris), along with the other girls in the faction she chooses (Dauntless), doesn't seem to mind getting the sh*t kicked out of her on a regular basis. I was reminded of Katniss Eberdeen, but at least in The Hunger Games, Katniss had a bow and arrow between her and her opponents. In Divergent, it's all about the cracked ribs, the broken nose, the sliced ear, the gunshot wounds. Lots of blood, lots and lots of blood.

And, the girls get beat up just as much as the boys. There is no special treatment, no dispensation for the weaker sex. Pummel or be pummeled.

Equality at last? (Um, no thanks.)

There is a convoluted logic to the whole thing. This is really the key to dystopian fiction. With its roots firmly planted in 1984 (which, happily, my daughter will read later this year for school), Brave New World, and the later Handmaid's Tale, the genre takes societal attitudes and laws to the extreme, but in a way that feels somehow plausible. In this way, it's like really good science fiction but without the aliens and genetically engineered creatures from the black lagoon.

And, as I mentioned earlier, Divergent moves; it moves fast. You do care about Tris. She may not be Elizabeth Bennet, but she's a voice of immature reason in a grownup world that's deeply out of whack.

So far, so good, right? Onward to my objection then (there's really just the one).

All in all, Divergent sounds like a fairly feminist book whether you want to drink the dystopian Kool-Aid or not. Unfortunately though, my single biggest issue with it (aside from the unapologetically mercenary use of formula) is that Roth falls back into swooning heroine territory every time Tris notices or is (gasp!) noticed by her hunky trainer Four. We've just read (suffered through) several pages of brutal hand-to-hand combat in which tiny Tris gets her head served back on a juicy platter. Then (gasp!), Four looks her way. She turns to mush. Then (gasp!), Four touches her shoulder. She melts completely. Truly, this resilient little fighter goes gaga at the mere idea of the much older (she's sixteen; he's eighteen — gasp! gasp!) boy's attention to the tune of:

"As he reached for the target, his hand brushed the inside of my wrist. A tremor of electricity ran up my arm. I didn't know what was happening. I was terrified, but I liked it."

All right, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. One sideways glance from the hero and our heroine's bosom is heaving pretty quickly. I'm not sure whether to be happy that some semblance of romance still exists in Tris's kick ass or get your ass kicked world — or to roll my eyes. Sheesh.

Divergent and all the other YA titles like it lend themselves beautifully to the movies. The phenomenon of The Hunger Games franchise is no accident, and I have confidence that Tris and Four will share similar success on the big screen. I admit, the genre will never be my favorite (give me some Jane Austen and a lovely "cuppa" anytime), but I'm not the target audience. Nevertheless, my daughter is reading when she could be texting. She's talking to me about a novel when she could be sulking in her room. 

So, thank you, Veronica Roth. "May the odds be ever in your favor."

Oops, wrong book.

"The future belongs to those who know where they belong."

Peace, out.

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.