"They were filming that show ‘Gossip Girl’ across from my apartment. I marched right up to the crew and said: ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing to the youth of America?’"
"Is the show really bad?"
"Oh, I’ve never seen it. But gossip is horrible. It ruins lives."
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARLY. not quite sure if its late or early anymore, I HAD A BIG DAY OKAY. The gingers weren’t super co-operative. Harley refused to even sit up and Tobi walked away in disgust after four shots but. I tried! I wanted to do hats but. Look at their faces. That would not have gone down.
I hope you have the most wonderful day Marly, and everyone around you lets you know how awesome you are. Your present will be in the mail on monday! SO YOU KNOW, KEEP A LOOK OUT FOR THAT.
This is absolutely perfect. Look at Tobi’s face! “What is the meaning of this?" And Harley’s “Nope." I love them so much. And you! Thank you, Jade!!!!!
That cat is so against your birthday, but I’m not! Happy birthday, Maaaaaaaaaarly. ILU!!!
This is astounding. Trigger warning for rape, obviously, but read it if you can stomach it. Just wow.
"It was his sister’s turn to use the hose."
Submitted Anonymously
that one’s getting shown at prom.
For the first time ever, this year’s Women Who Kick Ass panel at ComicCon was held in the convention’s largest venue, Hall H. Entertainment Weekly covers the panel here and it sounds incredible. A full transcript of the panel is here.
Unfortunately, the audience’s response to this panel was sexist and predictable.
A panel called “Women Who Kick Ass” follows Hunger Games. It’s in its fourth iteration, and the fact that it’s in Hall H on Saturday is a surprise. On the surface, it makes sense for this to follow Hunger Games, and it’s also likely the Con intended it to be something that would allow for the room to clear out a bit while shuffling in more people from the line that still snakes off across the street outside. But, all the same, there’s something gutsy about placing a frank discussion of Hollywood sexism, feminism, and the limited opportunities for women in the entertainment industry right before 20th Century Fox and Marvel come out to present superhero-heavy slates.
And “Women Who Kick Ass" is the most fascinating and enriching panel I attend at Comic-Con. In particular, its discussion of how sexism still rules far too often in Hollywood is terrific, with panelist Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame) discussing a time an unnamed male actor pulled her arms out of their sockets while filming a fight sequence, in what she believes was recourse for her questioning him earlier in the shoot; and fellow panelist Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black discussing how a male crew member inappropriately hit on her when she was just 18 and bound to a bed for a shot. The moderator is good, in that she knows to get out of the way when the women on the panel — particularly Michelle Rodriguez — cut loose, and the content is engaging throughout.
For the most part, the dudes I’m sitting near either pay respectful attention or check Twitter, though there are some jokes from an older guy in front of me about how stupid he finds all of this. Then Rodriguez uses the phrase “destructive male culture” — as part of a larger answer about how women need to take more agency in telling their own stories — and something in the crowd flips. A certain subset of the audience begins to get more and more vocal, and when the panel runs slightly over, as all panels have done during the day, the vocalizations begin to get easier to hear, even to someone sitting clear across a giant room in a place that tends to eat sound from specific individuals in the audience; one really has to make a ruckus to be heard.
The final question — from a young woman about what aspects the perfect kick-ass woman would have — turns into a digression about the many roles that women play in real life and the few that they are asked to play onscreen. It’s all fascinating stuff, with Sackhoff talking about wanting to see someone as kind and strong as her mother onscreen, and Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira talking about the effectiveness of female political protestors in her native Zimbabwe, the sort of story that would almost never appear in a Hollywood film — but the longer it goes on, the more restless the crowd gets. When Rodriguez grabs the microphone again to follow up on a point made by another panelist, for the first time, the audience ripples with something close to jeering anger. When the panel finally ends and the five women on it proceed off to the side for photographs, something done at the end of most Hall H panels, someone shouts something from the audience, to a mixture of supportive laughs and horrified gasps, and the women quickly leave the stage. (I was not sitting close enough to hear what was said, but I confirmed with several people sitting in the immediate vicinity that it was a young man shouting “Women who talk too much!” after the loudspeaker asked attendees to voice their appreciation for the participants in the “Women Who Kick Ass” panel.)
It’s an ugly moment, an unfortunate capper to a great session, to be followed by many of the guys sitting around me offering up tired lines like “I hope they feel empowered now!” and several recitations of the Twilight mantra about ruining the Con. To be sure, most people in the room were respectful. But at a certain point, there needs to be an accounting for the fact that there is an ugliness that burbles beneath the surface of too many Comic-Con events, sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional. That’s not a task for the Con itself. It’s a task for nerd culture, and one that will require an earnest attempt to understand why this sort of ugliness rises up so often around women, lest all the nerd culture stereotypes prove unfortunately true.
Just going to leave this here for a while
Amy was livetweeting about this as it was happening and I can’t say I was even the teeniest bit surprised.
True story: while we were on line to ask a question at the Marvel panel, Sheila’s husband texted her that it was good we weren’t there because the guys in front of us said the women who kick ass panel was boring, and I leaned over and yelled (…at the text, shut up, I was drunk) “STAB HIM IN THE FACE."
And a few other people were like “Um, you know someone was actually stabbed in the face in Hall H a year or two ago, right? Maybe you shouldn’t say that?" and I was like THEY SAID THE AWESOME PANEL WHERE MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ WANTED TO OVERTHROW THE SYSTEM WAS BORING, THEY NEED SOME FACE-STABBING RIGHT NOW.
lolol :(
For the first time ever, this year’s Women Who Kick Ass panel at ComicCon was held in the convention’s largest venue, Hall H. Entertainment Weekly covers the panel here and it sounds incredible. A full transcript of the panel is here.
Unfortunately, the audience’s response to this panel was sexist and predictable.
A panel called “Women Who Kick Ass” follows Hunger Games. It’s in its fourth iteration, and the fact that it’s in Hall H on Saturday is a surprise. On the surface, it makes sense for this to follow Hunger Games, and it’s also likely the Con intended it to be something that would allow for the room to clear out a bit while shuffling in more people from the line that still snakes off across the street outside. But, all the same, there’s something gutsy about placing a frank discussion of Hollywood sexism, feminism, and the limited opportunities for women in the entertainment industry right before 20th Century Fox and Marvel come out to present superhero-heavy slates.
And “Women Who Kick Ass" is the most fascinating and enriching panel I attend at Comic-Con. In particular, its discussion of how sexism still rules far too often in Hollywood is terrific, with panelist Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame) discussing a time an unnamed male actor pulled her arms out of their sockets while filming a fight sequence, in what she believes was recourse for her questioning him earlier in the shoot; and fellow panelist Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black discussing how a male crew member inappropriately hit on her when she was just 18 and bound to a bed for a shot. The moderator is good, in that she knows to get out of the way when the women on the panel — particularly Michelle Rodriguez — cut loose, and the content is engaging throughout.
For the most part, the dudes I’m sitting near either pay respectful attention or check Twitter, though there are some jokes from an older guy in front of me about how stupid he finds all of this. Then Rodriguez uses the phrase “destructive male culture” — as part of a larger answer about how women need to take more agency in telling their own stories — and something in the crowd flips. A certain subset of the audience begins to get more and more vocal, and when the panel runs slightly over, as all panels have done during the day, the vocalizations begin to get easier to hear, even to someone sitting clear across a giant room in a place that tends to eat sound from specific individuals in the audience; one really has to make a ruckus to be heard.
The final question — from a young woman about what aspects the perfect kick-ass woman would have — turns into a digression about the many roles that women play in real life and the few that they are asked to play onscreen. It’s all fascinating stuff, with Sackhoff talking about wanting to see someone as kind and strong as her mother onscreen, and Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira talking about the effectiveness of female political protestors in her native Zimbabwe, the sort of story that would almost never appear in a Hollywood film — but the longer it goes on, the more restless the crowd gets. When Rodriguez grabs the microphone again to follow up on a point made by another panelist, for the first time, the audience ripples with something close to jeering anger. When the panel finally ends and the five women on it proceed off to the side for photographs, something done at the end of most Hall H panels, someone shouts something from the audience, to a mixture of supportive laughs and horrified gasps, and the women quickly leave the stage. (I was not sitting close enough to hear what was said, but I confirmed with several people sitting in the immediate vicinity that it was a young man shouting “Women who talk too much!” after the loudspeaker asked attendees to voice their appreciation for the participants in the “Women Who Kick Ass” panel.)
It’s an ugly moment, an unfortunate capper to a great session, to be followed by many of the guys sitting around me offering up tired lines like “I hope they feel empowered now!” and several recitations of the Twilight mantra about ruining the Con. To be sure, most people in the room were respectful. But at a certain point, there needs to be an accounting for the fact that there is an ugliness that burbles beneath the surface of too many Comic-Con events, sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional. That’s not a task for the Con itself. It’s a task for nerd culture, and one that will require an earnest attempt to understand why this sort of ugliness rises up so often around women, lest all the nerd culture stereotypes prove unfortunately true.
Just going to leave this here for a while
Amy was livetweeting about this as it was happening and I can’t say I was even the teeniest bit surprised.
1. I can borrow all your clothes.
Anything in your closet, no matter how fancy is co-owned by me, your best friend. I can borrow it for as long as I want. One stipulation to my borrowing your clothes is that you have to have worn the item at least once before I borrow it. I’m not a monster.
2. We sleep in the same bed.
If we’re on a trip or if our boyfriends are away, and there’s a bed bigger than a twin, we’re partnering up. It is super weird for us not to share a bed. How else will we talk until we fall asleep?
3. I must be 100 percent honest about how you look, but gentle.
Your boyfriend is never going to tell you that your skirt is too tight and riding up too high on you. In fact, you shouldn’t even have asked him, poor guy. I am the only person besides your mom who has the right (and responsibility) to tell you that. I will employ the gentle, vague expression “I’m not crazy about that on you," which should mean to you, “Holy shit, take that off, that looks terrible!" I owe it to you to give feedback like a cattle prod: painful but quick.
4. I can ditch you, within reason
I can ditch you to hang out with a guy but only if that possibility has been discussed and getting-a-ride-home practicalities have been worked out, prior to the event.
5. I will take care of your kid if you die.
I can’t even write about this, it’s too sad. But yes, I will do that.
6. I will nurse you back to health.
If you are crippled with pain because of a UTI, I need to haul ass to CVS to get you some medicine, fast. I should also try to pick up a fashion magazine and the candy you like, because distracting you from your pain is part of nursing you back to health.
7. We will trade off being social activities chair for our outings.
On trips together, I promise to man up and be the person who drives the rental car sometimes, or uses my credit card and has people pay me back later. Someone needs to check on Yelp to see what the good brunch place is. Neither of us gets to be the princess all the time. I get that.
8. I will keep your favorite feminine hygiene product at my house.
Even though no one uses maxipads anymore, like you do, weirdo, I will keep a box at my house for when you come over.
9. I will try to like your boyfriend five times.
This is a fair number of times to hang out with your boyfriend and withhold judgement.
10. If you’re depressed, I will be there for you.
As everyone knows, depressed people are some of the most boring people in the world. I know this because when I was depressed, people fled. Except my best friends. I will be there for you during your horrible break-up, or getting fired from your job, or if you’re just having a bad couple of months or year. I will hate it and find you really tedious, but I promise I won’t abandon you.
11. I will hate and re-like people for you.
But you can’t get mad if I can’t keep track. Robby? Don’t we hate him? No, we love him. Okay, okay. Sorry.
12. It is okay to take me for granted.
I know when you fall in love with someone that you will completely forget about me. That hurts my feelings, but is okay. Please try to remember to text me, if you can.
13. No two (or three or four) people are better than us.
We fucking rock. No one can beat us.
14. (Added by Kate) When I’m sad or upset and I ask to see your butt, you have to show me.
No matter what.
When I read this book, I remember thinking “This must be what living with Lea (racketstory) is like.”
newtypeblues
