various rants and a little bit of funtime

Feb 24, 2010 22:11

You know, I get a bit growly whenever people complain about the librarian stereotype and go, ”We're not all frumpy bespectacled women in comfortable shoes, honestly!” But I remind myself, hey, they're not frumpy bespectacled women in comfortable shoes, they want people to know that, fair enough.

Rant number 1. )

rl, doctor who, buffy the vampire slayer, angel, humor, work, tv talk

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Comments 37

kita0610 February 24 2010, 21:33:41 UTC
I think people use Buffy as the marker not just for the violent ass kicking she is capable of delivering but because she was the FIRST one to break stereotype and be tiny, blonde, and capable of said ass kicking.

She was a watershed character for tv, and a lot of other shows/characters wouldn't exist without her.

That said, hell yes there are other strong female characters who don't kill demons.

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kattahj February 24 2010, 21:42:40 UTC
I think, though, that a main reason she broke stereotype was because tiny blondes aren't generally very good ass-kickers. Joss has a thing for very small women kicking massive ass, and,y'know, everyone deserves their kinks, but it's not like Buffy was the first ass-kicking woman on television. I'm sure it's empowering for little blonde cheerleaders, but I'm not a little blonde cheerleader, I don't particularly like little blonde cheerleaders, and it irks me that tough-ass ladies who actually looked like they'd been working out get brushed aside.

I'm giving her points for being a main character, though - most amazons tend to be part of an ensemble.

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kita0610 February 24 2010, 21:47:23 UTC
Yeah, she was the stereotype of the kind of girl usually killed first in horror movies. Joss played with that again in the first ep, when Darla was supposed to be the high school girl, and she turned around and killed the boy.

But Joss' kinks kind of never stopped- see: River, Dru, etc etc etc, so I can see where folks would get tired of it.

As for amazons, I think Aeryn Sun is a good example of someone not Hollywood standard of beauty kicking ass, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a ton of those.

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kattahj February 24 2010, 22:00:27 UTC
Yeah, she was the stereotype of the kind of girl usually killed first in horror movies.

Yeah, and for me... I mean, check rant #1, I'm not Sarah Michelle Gellar, I'm Jamie Lee Curtis. The popular girls are already popular. I don't resent them getting a bit of ass-kicking, I resent being expected to laud it as groundbreaking.

As for amazons, I think Aeryn Sun is a good example of someone not Hollywood standard of beauty kicking ass, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a ton of those.Aeryn Sun is beautiful - but then, I never said they weren't allowed to be pretty. Taller and more muscular, maybe ( ... )

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love2loveher February 24 2010, 22:07:48 UTC
If you aren't going to adhere to the womanly stereotype that involves mascara and uncomfortable shoes, then you are supposed to be in a manly career, such as engineering. Then, should you show up to a meeting in uncomfortable shoes, you will almost certainly be expected to walk a mile to observe a job site. That jacket you are wearing better be waterproof!

/rant on why I can't, occasionally, wear uncomfortable shoes.

I've been watching a lot of Vampire Diaries, and I've really been impressed wtih how the female characters there are given strengths. The mane female had such potential to be Bella Swan, except when the vampire told her he was leaving for her own good, she replied with something to the effect of "You keep telling yourself that, buddy. Meanwhile, I know the risks, I know what I want, and if you leave, you are completely doing it for YOU."
Even the token ditsy blonde, who was a total tool for the men in early episodes, is growing and gaining strength on a personal level.

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kattahj February 25 2010, 05:29:50 UTC
If you aren't going to adhere to the womanly stereotype that involves mascara and uncomfortable shoes, then you are supposed to be in a manly career, such as engineering.

But I like my female environment. *pouts*

That's cool about the Vampire Diaries; I've never seen them.

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love2loveher February 25 2010, 10:23:55 UTC
I feel like I've kind of had to preach Vampire Diaries to my friends because most people assumed it is just an imitation Twilight...
Which it is close to being, except the women in this series are AWESOME and the Vampires are awesome, and there is a fuzzy line between food and bad that you can't distinguish with red contacts.

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go_back_chief February 24 2010, 23:47:26 UTC
Oh god, what an annoying entry, but unfortunately far from the first one of it's kind I see. More than the targetting librarians for living up/down to its stereotype, I'm annoyed by the assumption (one that I've also seen in other contexts, always by writers who seem thouroughly banal and unoriginal in the rest of their writing, as well) that "fun clothing" (whatever that means, but from this entry and the others like it I've seen, it seems to mean "more glamorous") equals a fun personality and that boring clothes equals a boring personality. I can excuse teenagers for making that assumption, but have no idea why anyone over the age of twenty would.

It is a duty for women to be fresh and sexy and well-dressed, because that's having a personality! Dustbunnies have no personality. Duh.

In a nutshell.

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kattahj February 25 2010, 05:36:28 UTC
I'll admit to being cheered up when A. walks into work with multicoloured striped stockings, but I like clothes that are easy to wash, because I hate household duties and want to do as little as possible of them. Plus, for myself, for the most part, I prefer my clothes no be non-distracting to the stuff that's going on in my mind.

I shamefully admit that I thought, "Oh yeah? Well, I'm twenty years younger than you and not yet desperate enough to rely on clothes to make me interesting."

I did enjoy other posts by that blogger, though.

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go_back_chief February 25 2010, 09:00:03 UTC
I haven't looked at her other entries, I was thinking about other writers I've seen saying similar things in the past.

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wee_warrior February 25 2010, 00:01:34 UTC
Especially since she uses buzzwords like ”unsexy” and indeed ”robust shoes”, and complains that and complains that the librarians in question have no personality and look like ”old dustbunnies”.

Because high heels make so much sense when you're working a job where you're standing a lot, walking a lot, and have to be able to reach the highest and lowest shelves, often by using one of these little plastic footstool thingies. And of course, every work performance of any woman is defined by her level of sexiness. After all, the first requirement I have of a librarian is being able to stare at her. Not knowledge about books or the library, or anything pointless like that.

(Also, why the hostility against dustbunnies? Cats love them! Geez.)

He goes beyond what anyone else ever has in so many ways (for one thing, he has a lesbian couple without it being a gay show)Wow, ER will be astonished to hear that. Or NYPD Blue. Or The Wire. Or Babylon 5. Or even bloody Northern Exposure.(She does nowhere say that it is about doing it the earliest, ( ... )

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kattahj February 25 2010, 05:43:00 UTC
Because high heels make so much sense when you're working a job where you're standing a lot, walking a lot, and have to be able to reach the highest and lowest shelves, often by using one of these little plastic footstool thingies.

At one of my jobs, I have to wear indoor shoes, which happens to be wooden slippers because that's what I had at hand. They're good for reaching shelves but SCARY when I have to walk down the cellar stairs. I can't imagine having high heels.

Of course, I'm one of the people who thinks that Joss is good, but also seriously overrated, so I guess I'm just not seeing how his lesbian couple(s) is/are just specialer?

Everything Joss does is specialer always. That's #1 on the list.

Rose: did you by any chance have any exposure to rabid Rose/Doctor shippers during Season 2?Yeah, he was called Russell T. Davies. *g* Mainly, it was just the way Rose became more and more this Special Person to the Doctor (which was carried on in season 3). In season 1, I had the feeling that as much as he liked her, she could have ( ... )

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wee_warrior February 25 2010, 09:11:20 UTC
They're good for reaching shelves but SCARY when I have to walk down the cellar stairs.

O.O Being a legendary klutz - and not in the adorable Mary Sue sense, more in the Whoops, was that a Ming vase? sense - I feel and fear for you.

Everything Joss does is specialer always. That's #1 on the list.

Speaking of #1, one part that made me raise my eyebrows in somewhat amused resignation - when he writes about rabid Whedonites, there is that passage about crazy shippers, who are described as "shawl-wearing, cat-owning knitting enthusiasts." Of course, I don't wear shawls, but should I ever meet the man, I have to enlighten him on my thoughts on shipping. Preferably with the help of a cat and/or knitting needle.

Yeah, he was called Russell T. Davies. *g*You know, I so managed to ignore that. My default thinking was simply: Oh, well, she's a companion, she'll leave at some point like all the others. It seems I even managed to overhear text passages? In Season 3, I was annoyed that Martha was hung up on Ten, mostly because I felt that such ( ... )

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kattahj February 25 2010, 10:20:14 UTC
Speaking of #1, one part that made me raise my eyebrows in somewhat amused resignation - when he writes about rabid Whedonites, there is that passage about crazy shippers, who are described as "shawl-wearing, cat-owning knitting enthusiasts."

Yeah, that bit did have me rolling my eyes.

But I never clued in that the text was trying to tell me Ten didn't notice her because he was hung up on dear Rosita.

Wow, really? I felt there was a "Rose!" every other episode... or maybe I was just put off by "The Shakespeare Code" with its Rose-would-have and Rose-as-the-magic-word.

And I agree, Nine needed Rose and possibly Jack, and Ten needed Martha, but most of all he needed Donna.

Ten needed Donna like whoah.

It's kind of interesting, that, which companions work well in a transfer to the next Doctors and which don't.

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lilacsigil February 25 2010, 00:21:50 UTC
Don't challenge the feminine beauty standard, just rail against the women who reject it! Yeah, the feminist battle is totally won. WTF is wrong with robust shoes? I like to, you know, walk. Someone needs a robust kick up the bum, or at least to have a few copies of "The Beauty Myth" dropped on her by pissy librarians.

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kattahj February 25 2010, 05:46:29 UTC
I honestly can't fathom why shoes in particular are used to diss women who don't live up to the beauty standard. Okay, colour of clothes, hemlines (but it's COLD here!) whatever, but comfortable shoes on a daily basis seems like sanity.

I remember being at a ball once and getting blisters all over, to which the guy I was currently dancing with said, "That's silly. You knew you were going to dance, you should have worn comfortable shoes!" To which I laughed and explained that ball shoes for women are NEVER comfortable. Which is why I don't tend to wear them to work.

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