I don't know what to say anymore...
(For what is livejournal if not a place to theorize ramblingly when you really should be asleep?)
Following are two (paraphrased) conversations that I have had with my mom recently.
Me: You know, with this show going on, I've been thinking that a gender-reversal version of Beauty and the Beast would be really fun to do.
Mom: Yeah, but you'd have to change a lot. You couldn't have a beast anymore...you'd have to think up something different for the princess to change into.
Me: What? Why?
Mom: Well, the point is that the beast is the undercurrent of a man, right? So, what's the undercurrent of a woman? Nobody wants to see a beastly woman.
Me: *blinks* Ha buh duh WUH?
~
[While watching an episode of Wife Swap]
Mom: She can't tell a man to change his career. His job is who he is.
Me: Um...*gives slightly weirded-out glance*
I'm starting to think that I'm way less like my mother than I ever realized before.
Doesn't all of that just sound kind of sexist? I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about my mom, but her views strike me more and more often as really conservative and remarkably old-fashioned. She's not at all sexist in some ways, because she does believe that everybody has an equal chance to do whatever they want to do, and all that. But she seems to have some very deep-set notions about How A Man/Woman Should Act, and anything outside of that strikes her as awkward and unpleasant. It's not even that she'll really discriminate against broken gender roles, she just seems uncomfortable with it.
Every obsession in my life right now can be connected to destroying gender roles. Of course slash is a huge part of that, but even the things I like that don't have squee-able pairings have characters who don't conform. It's how my brain operates. I want to see wimpy guys and beastly women. I want to see characters who are who they are, not who they should be. But I don't feel like I can explain any of that to my mom.
It's sort of weird, because for the longest time I thought that my mom was the parent who would understand the ramblings of my brain once in a while. But I've gone through what looks like a huge shift in personality and interests over the last few years, and I'm starting to realize that maybe we don't connect as well as I thought. I don't know.
So, what do you guys think? Is she just the product of her generation? Am I just the product of mine? Do you guys see anything similar in your parents? Wouldn't a gender-reversal BATB be TOTALLY AWESOME?
Following are two (paraphrased) conversations that I have had with my mom recently.
Me: You know, with this show going on, I've been thinking that a gender-reversal version of Beauty and the Beast would be really fun to do.
Mom: Yeah, but you'd have to change a lot. You couldn't have a beast anymore...you'd have to think up something different for the princess to change into.
Me: What? Why?
Mom: Well, the point is that the beast is the undercurrent of a man, right? So, what's the undercurrent of a woman? Nobody wants to see a beastly woman.
Me: *blinks* Ha buh duh WUH?
~
[While watching an episode of Wife Swap]
Mom: She can't tell a man to change his career. His job is who he is.
Me: Um...*gives slightly weirded-out glance*
I'm starting to think that I'm way less like my mother than I ever realized before.
Doesn't all of that just sound kind of sexist? I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about my mom, but her views strike me more and more often as really conservative and remarkably old-fashioned. She's not at all sexist in some ways, because she does believe that everybody has an equal chance to do whatever they want to do, and all that. But she seems to have some very deep-set notions about How A Man/Woman Should Act, and anything outside of that strikes her as awkward and unpleasant. It's not even that she'll really discriminate against broken gender roles, she just seems uncomfortable with it.
Every obsession in my life right now can be connected to destroying gender roles. Of course slash is a huge part of that, but even the things I like that don't have squee-able pairings have characters who don't conform. It's how my brain operates. I want to see wimpy guys and beastly women. I want to see characters who are who they are, not who they should be. But I don't feel like I can explain any of that to my mom.
It's sort of weird, because for the longest time I thought that my mom was the parent who would understand the ramblings of my brain once in a while. But I've gone through what looks like a huge shift in personality and interests over the last few years, and I'm starting to realize that maybe we don't connect as well as I thought. I don't know.
So, what do you guys think? Is she just the product of her generation? Am I just the product of mine? Do you guys see anything similar in your parents? Wouldn't a gender-reversal BATB be TOTALLY AWESOME?