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So, the other night, I was unable to sleep, and so I did that which I'd been lamely threatening to do for some time: I sat up and watched Beauty and the Beast on YouTube. Someone has kindly uploaded the film in nine chapters (and chapter nine is just final credits).It was awesome. The only downside was that it was 1am and I felt it would be unneighbourly to my aurally long-suffering housemates to sing along to the Gaston song with all the gusto it assuredly deserves. I just mouthed the words and grinned and slapped my thigh a lot. And I pretended that cartoon Gaston was real life Hugh Jackman. Which is a totally normal thing to do by the way.And, I also cried - not least because I was too stressed out to sleep. But also because of how awesome Belle is, and how her love prevailed against the odds. The odds being the beastliness of her paramour, ostracism from her entire world and some pretty severe past wrongs done to her by Mr Beasty.
Anyhoo, all of this is tangential to what I actually wanted to write about, which is how the Disney Princesses of the 1990s - particularly The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, all offer at least one glimmer of positive role-modelness for little girls. And by little girls, I mean me as a little girl, mostly.
You see, I was never especially girly. I always dirty, shouty, and quick to resist any hint of gender inequality. Anything boys could do I could do better, or at least do without having to wear a ridiculous dress. So it's interesting that I loved these movies so much when they came out.
Admittedly, I am one for a bit of a song and dance. But I would still loathe the dancers if they were in any way weak or pathetic (I give you exhibit A - Sandy from Grease). And admittedly, Disney princesses all end up with their men, who save them dramatically at least once a film. So let's not get carried away with the whole Disney as advocate for women's rights or anything.
But, let's recall that watching these movies I was a young and extremely curious and restless child living in the suburban no-mans-land which is Heathmont. That's the Heathmont that's between Ringwood and Bayswater. Heathmont, where your schoolmates grow to marry your other schoolmates and progenate young because they all belong to the happy-clappy church and they purchase houses a few streets from their parents house and the whole thing goes on again.
The thing that resonated most for me with these doe-eyed protagonists was that each of them wanted to escape! Escape the expectations of their family, or community or peers. And they wanted to escape beyond the horizons of their current world to discover new opportunities for themselves.
The development of this idea throughout the three movies is quite interesting to me as well. Ariel simply wants to be away from what she knows, and is inspired by her love for a handsome man from the world beyond the ocean. She finds her fulfilment by stepping into the shoes of a beautiful princess, and it is very much her beauty that gets her there (given that she essentially woos the Prince without her voice).
Belle more actively rejects the future proffered by life in a provincial town, where she would be expected to abandon her intellectual pursuits in order to find fulfilment as the wife of a brutish oaf, the ridiculously bulbous Gaston. Despite an eccentric father, Belle feels constrained by the world at large, and finds her happiness through a prince, yes, but not a handsome one. Belle is easily my favourite of the three because the catalyst of her adventure and ultimate happiness is not her beauty, but her bravery, kindness and character. It is these traits that pave the way for her to wind up in a fairytale castle with the finally handsome prince.
Princess Jasmine has the slightly different predicament of being trapped inside the palace - and she simply longs to get beyond the palace walls where she perceives a greater freedom (although the price of that freedom is poverty). Rather than leaving her world to run off and become a pauper's wife in order to keep her happiness with her beloved (I would LOVE to see Disney sell that one!) she manages to change her world in order to enable her happiness within it. Good work Jasmine!
So anyhoo, that is a small insight into why I love Disney movies. That and the songs.
Some days dinner is just too hard. These are the beer and chips days. I might round it off with some fried eggs. Don't worry, I'll go for a run in the morning.
I am feeling particularly gratified to be stuffing and crunching away with the delicious salty crumbs scattering down my front, while cravatted men waffle on about the fine knowledge of Italian cuisine and the difference between barley and farrow on Masterchef.
I made these chips by opening the bag! And using the corner of my skirt to twist the top off my delicious beer. Mmmmm.
Gutsy lady hits, to be wailed by me at opportune moments, in a particular order:
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler
Nobody Does it Better - Carly Simon
Heaven is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
Piece of My Heart - Janice Joplin
Today I Sing the Blues - Aretha Franklin
Can't See My Way - Etta James
100 Days, 100 Nights - Sharon Jones
The first three tracks feature heavily in my karaoke selections (along with Alice Cooper's Poison, Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory, Michael Bolton's Love Is A Wonderful Thing and Queen's Don't Stop Me Now), while the list then verges towards the soul end of my musical tastes. If I were to meander further from the dubious 'power ballad' label, there'd be some Porgy and Bess and Sarah Vaughan lord knows what else.
The catharsis of wailing a power ballad with abandon is matched only by the tolerance of my good housemates and general acquaintance.
On Saturday afternoon I had the added bonus of a grand piano to writhe around on top of, a ridiculous pleasure that everyone should experience at least once in their lives*.
* Wear your good knickers if you plan to kick your legs. And be careful, those things are slippery!
I like to think that I know my own mind. I am certainly prone towards neurotic levels of analysis: of others, of situations, and of myself. And like any somewhat neurotic person, nothing motivates me more in my analysis than a conundrum, some inexplicable feeling or situation. But recently I've hit upon an inherent truth about myself:
I am completely, and frequently, capable of holding two contradictory positions simultaneously.
I've been aware of this in a murky way that I'd never examined too closely until a year or so ago, when I realised that I both loved myself and hated myself to an uncompromising degree. This is something that I think most people, on some level do. We think we're quite special and unique, and when we get a promotion, or a new lover, we feel very gratified that other people are recognising our true worth. And at the same time we can loathe ourselves, and feel deserving when other people reject us or hurt us, and punish ourselves in all kinds of cruel ways. I know I do. I think I'm smarter than most people and can be smugly righteous, and yet in the past I've deliberately physicaly hurt myself (not in a suicidal way!) because I think I'm so shit, and I needed an outlet. Other people have other methods like alcoholism or 'arsehole' syndrome. I feel vainly gratified that my lover would choose to be with me, yet would find it pathetically understandable if he were to abandon me for someone more attractive. I think these things all at once. It's amazingly daft.
I can't remember who said it, but I recall a line being delivered to someone else: "You are both far more important, and far less important, than you think". To me, this is nearly always true, except for those wonderful glimmers of humble perspective which are the exception rather than the rule of my thinking.
But the other day this internal contradictory state crystalised quite profoundly for me. I was looking up porn on the internet. I haven't really done this before, but I was curious, and so I went looking. The footage I discovered was both compelling and also in no way sexy. I had a sort of clinical fascination with it, and moreso with the people who were making it. What were they thinking? Did they find it empowering, sexy, or just a way to pay the bills? Did they have low self-esteem? Do they see their bodies as an instrument that is seperate from some kind of 'self' or are they deliberately undergoing a something more experiential. Do they find it gratifying to imagine all kinds of people getting off on the footage, or did they just want to be famous? Were they exploited? Or were they exploiting? Or could both be true at once? And how was a viewer accessing these images on a laptop in the privacy of her room possibly to know the difference? All these questions and more have been occurring to me since, as have recurring images of some of what I saw (none of which could I relate to what I knew as sex - all those bleached and hairless genitals made it all seem highly removed from my 'real life' experiences).
The only conclusion I have come to is that I like porn, I find it curious and arousing and it makes me question my body and has stimulated some new bizarre fantasies. And at the same time, I find it confronting, it makes me feel a bit upset on behalf of the performers and worried for them when I try to understand their self-image, and troubled that some people see this as the pinnacle of possible sexual activity. And some of it makes me really angry. And some of the stuff that makes me angry also makes me hot. But then a lot of people can find self-destruction appealing, so I guess there's no rocket science going on there.
I can relate to people who defend porn, and who occasionally curl up at home and have a good go at themselves whilst watching it, and I can also read and intellectualise about inherent power dynamics and active vs passive gender roles and find it all a bit off. I've never really been much of a post-feminist after all.
For now, I'm not going to think about it much further. I shall remain a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, couched in a mystery, who is a bit of a hypocrit.
For the longest time, Saturday night has been the night I'm most likely to spend in. It seems counter-intuitive to most people I tell, but seriously, by the time Saturday night rolls around I'm thoroughly knackered.It would be easy but incorrect to blame this on my relatively new grown-up job with regular hours + overtime arrangement. You see, in the height of my partying days, this pattern of Saturdays on the the couch has held fairly steady (except for those weeklong benders that my body is no longer capable of sustaining).
Usually, at the moment, my week shapes up thus:
Monday: I'll be newly reminded of what the week ahead requires of me, and often spend the evening at home and cook a lot of food, stockpiling for the week ahead. There is a high probability of dvds with housemates or the gentleman caller, who may equally be called upon.
Tuesday - Thursday: There'll be busy days at work, often starting quite early. Then racing off to something or other such as a meeting, drinks with friends, dinner engagement, movie, theatre, gig, exhibition opening, festival event, dinner with family member, and the usual combinations of the above. I am rarely home of a weeknight.
Friday: Post work drinks with workmates, then out to somewhere or other. Friday is always accompanied with a big sigh of relief that I get a couple of days to wind down, to which I then apply poor judgement, liberal quantities of booze, and shouty conversations late at night in bars with people I wish I saw more of.
Saturday: The thrill of having a whole day to myself is such that I generally get quite carried away with regards to what can actually be achieved in one mere day, and set myself a frantically scheduled to-do list, which I race through with an urgency that belies the notion of a 'day to wind down'. I'll try to get up before 9am to fit in a run, get to the market or at least supermarket to stock up on food, clean things, catch up with people, and think ridiculous thoughts about getting to relax eg "from 3:15 - 3:50 I'll read in front of the heater, oooh, whilst baking a tea cake!, but first I'd better wash all the dishes from yesterday so there's some room in the kitchen." Often, I'm also a bit seedy.
It should be noted that I'm rarely able to keep to my plans. For example today I slept until 10:30am, got up, rode to the supermarket, cooked up a big hot breakfast (which took bleeding ages because our oven is so crappy), and then somehow watched an entire series of Black Books with gentleman caller. Before I knew it, it was time to meet Amanda for cake, and my list was uncommenced (except for the supermarket/hot breakfast part - two things I greatly enjoy ticking off on a weekend). However, between 5pm and 7:30pm I downloaded 6 podcasts and listened to three of them, did all the dishes, a load of washing, tidied, dusted and vacuumed my bedroom (no small task), marinated steaks for dinner, checked emails and played with the dog.
By any given Saturday evening, the prospect of costumes, parties, cold night air, the feigning/mustering of high spirits are often a bit beyond me. Especially when I know in advance that the week ahead offers not a single prospect of an evening at home. I don't even have the energy to tell you about Sunday, but it certainly involves a few hours work.
Also, I would like to pause for a moment to sing the praises of the 'nana-ry': home cooked meals; heaters; comfy couches; ug boots and elastic waist lines; hot cups of tea; wine that has already been paid for; movies; books; bed. Pass my crocheted blanket...
Dear Kayser,
Please stop publishing large glossy images of bean-pole shaped women and labelling them apples and hourglasses.
The picture's a little small, but is still clearly retarded.
Kayser, the women in your ads are bean-poles, plain and simple, and no more or less beautiful than other body shapes for it. But this is not my point.
My point is that terms such as apple, hourglass, and pear have been adopted to encourage recognition in women, particularly the impressionable and the young, that female bodies which are something other bean-poles* are completely normal and should be acknowledged as such. In addition to being normal, bean-poley women are privy to a pervasive and subtle series of advantages that other-shaped women often miss out on. To commandeer these body-shape terms to sell underpants lacks taste, responsibility and also plain logic. I may be rounded but I'm not blind.
Are these ads trying to convince non-bean-pole shaped women that Kayser's skimpy lace concoctions are designed just for them? Because all I'm seeing is standard issue underwear models. Men may like them, but men don't buy that many briefs, so I'm stumped.
HOURGLASS FAIL, people. Honestly, the presence of a-cup breasts does not an hourglass make. A female they make. A diverse gender but generally a breasted one.
Until I see a pear shaped bottom, preferably sporting requisite dimples, snugly wrapped up in your undies, I remain utterly unconvinced that they will be anything other than a literal pain in my arse.
On behalf of the young and impressionable, I would also like to add FUCK YOU KAYSER, YOU ABHORENTLY RECKLESS PIECE OF CRAP COMPANY. GIVE ME BACK MY PEAR.
* I heard these women referered to as zucchinis tonight, and needless to say was filled with mirth.
As Leith and I sat side by side on the QANTAS jet yesterday, which was slowly taxiing down the runway, we observed dark grey clouds sort of frothing quite low in the sky ahead. "Look!" Leith suddently exclaimed. "What?" said I."Lightening".Shortly after this, there was more, very observable lightening, really very nearby. I was sort of thrilled in a scaredy way by this, and wondered aloud whether the lightening could strike the plane as we flew threw the stormy skies."Where have you ever read about lightening striking a plane?" Leith scoffed.I protested in my usual pedantic fashion that I'd never claimed to have read about it, and was simply musing on a hypothetical.As we sat in our room at the the hotel in Perth last night, Leith was on a call to one of his clients, and I had checked my email, and briefly flicked to the Age Online. And there, in bold type in the lead story position at the very top of the page was this headline: Lightening Strikes Plane with further details about several planes that were struck by lightening that very afternoon, one of them on the same route we had flown. I got enormous pleasure by frantically beckoning to Leith as he continued his conversation, and pointing triumphantly at the screen. "I read it there!" I mouthed smugly.He looked suitably annoyed and amused.It is in these tiny serendipitous incidences that some of my greatest, and most petty, joys reside.
