Desiring Women #8

Sex. Sex. Sex. What is sex? Who should I do it with? How do I do it? These are just some of the thoughts that roam the minds of prepubescent youth trying to navigate the anticipation of losing their virginity. In Chewing Gum, Tracey may be 24, but everything she thinks and feels takes me back to entering the teenage years – a very heightened feeling of “I have never had sex and I want to” that provides a kind of blindness to the actual reality of sex. She is the virgin.

           Tracey is the poster child for never being exposed to any idea of what sex or sexuality is, as she has grown with a Christian lens over every perspective she has come across. She wants more though. When people hide away all discourse around gender, sexuality, and sex – it creates an embodiment of sex not being considered natural. When the free reign chance is given to explore one’s sexuality – this is exactly what Tracey does. She was never properly educated about sex or everything else that comes with this action, so she has a hard time understanding how she should go about it. Sex in Chewing Gum has a taboo around it for Tracey, her family, and people sharing her faith, but she knows it should not be. Never being exposed to it, she has created an idealistic view of it. Sex is the end all be all to Tracey and I can totally understand where she is coming from. I am only 20 years old and sex has become part of popular discourse in the university culture, everyone is always talking about SEX. So, imagine being stereotypically too old to be a virgin, and only ever hearing about sex. ALL. THE. TIME. I can understand how sex has manifested itself inside of Tracey’s head, it seems to have that allure on a lot of people especially those shun away from the assumed deviance of sex. But I think what comes from this upbringing of Tracey’s is what truly makes Chewing Gum so ground-breaking.
           The audience watching Chewing Gum is able to experience this refreshing experience of one approaching their first sexual encounter. Tracey makes this experience all about her, we are able to experience this with her. The producers provide such an honest account of trying to understand one’s own potential and limitations without ever knowing anything to do with sex. Tracey is oblivious to any awkwardness she may project; her ignorance truly is bliss. This is one of the most exciting times in Tracey’s life, but it can also be challenging to jump into a routine foreign to your understanding. The unknown is what makes this such an accelerating experience to come for Tracey.           
By the end of the pilot, I was hooked to Chewing Gum. I was rooting for the Beyoncé praising Tracey to get laid and do anything she has ever wished to. A lovable character about to figure out what she has been wanting for so long. It may not amount to the multiple fantasies of hot sex, but I hope it is everything she ever imagined.

Yesterday's Woman #7

            Glamour. Power. Money. These nostalgic historical fiction shows provide us the American dream without ever working for it. History has a knack for romanticizing any era that has passed no matter what the reality of it was. In American Woman, the life we are told we should want is shown and brings us to a feeling of having everything at the palms of your hands. But it is also at the hand of the man. Bonnie Nolan’s lifestyle has no indication of her, it is from the comfort of her husband. With that being said though, it ends quickly, and she is left to be single mother with her two children.
           So, this is when I start to think, that maybe the appeal is not just the money or glamour but being able to see a woman be put in a situation that we are not used to seeing especially in a male-dominated time period. I am so used to see movies and television about the men of the 1970s with their cigars and big business. Woman usually seem to just be the pawns in the background of these programs as they act as an accessory to the man. Instead in American Woman, we are witnessing a woman thrown out of her regular element and into a world that has put all odds against the woman. It can fill us with a feeling of empowerment to see someone else who has faced the same struggles while navigating being a female in Western society. We can connect with women from all different time periods through shared experiences of finding out our own identity. We are able to see ourselves through these characters, celebrating their triumphs through the duration of the tv show. We relate, we feel – I think this is television doing what it is supposed to – making us feel something for what we are viewing. That feeling is nostalgia, that feeling is empathy, that feeling is power. We want these programs because we want history, but we want to see females in this history.
           I do believe there are good intentions with female led tv series created around the idea of female liberation, but one critique while watching American Woman was that I have seen this story line before. A woman finding her cheating husband and then leaving him to somehow find herself while being a single mother and trying to find a job. Yes, this has been done. I believe it takes on the second-wave feminist perspective continuously giving us this abrupt plot, but I want more. What happens 20 years after this? Where is her life now? These are the stories we want to hear, of the woman who have gone through it all and now have something to show for it. We as a people have been trying to move forward, so why doesn’t our television too? Someone let me know when we have a female lead in the Breaking Bad revival because this is the type of television we need in the future. We have our foot through the door, now lets walk through it.

Heroes and Villains #6

In most stories, the villains’ motive through creating chaos links to the longing for power. And in a lot of these stories they once had this power or gain it throughout the story meeting this goal. That does not mean reign lasts, but the point is they have it at some point. Now as you read those sentences, what visual came to your mind? If you were thinking of a man, well join this unfortunately participated in club. It just so happens to be that most villains in pop culture are men and I believe this has to do with a little thing called power. In society, power seems to be this thing that many people want due to all the responsibility and jurisdiction that comes with it. The people with power make the decisions and there seems to be only one gender capable of doing so: men. With that being said, the reasoning to why there are so little female villains is due to the fact that they are consumed with the want for power and let’s be realistic, the patriarchy has put in great effort to make sure we believe women and power don’t get along.

           There are some female villains though that are quite favourable with the audiences. This is where the likeable trait comes in no matter how much tragedy they may bring. In Queen of the South, Teresa is your typical Latino cartel archetype who has many redeeming qualities when understanding how they were socialized as they grew up through their hardships that give them a reason to go around causing havoc. We see it all the time from El Chapo to Pablo Escobar. We like the outlaw, we root for them in the end to have the better life they always wanted. And we seem to forget about all the tragedy they have also caused. Teresa is a little different though. In the pilot, the show explains how Teresa came to gain all her power and what motivated her into this direction. Well again the  is a man. The female in television really cannot escape the man which ironically creates a greater divide between the two. And this is where I am stuck. Inevitably this showcases how women can never reach the same standards of men through villainous power demonstrating social inequality of class hierarchy in the drug cartel world. But I do enjoy that my female villains have a little more to them. Men are can just be angry and ready to start a war, where I have found women have been given more complex storylines when addressing their rise to crime. Women have not been the oppressors in history, and I am okay with that. Maybe men have just colonized their minds to be susceptible to wanting villainous power. Teresa is another person with a past that has led her to where she is now. We are able to sympathize with her as a villain because we have witnessed what led her to this point in her life. We get to understand the character and I believe once you have an understanding of a villain, the empathy starts to come out and then they become the soft spot in our heart. So maybe our villains are not exactly like some of the evil men of television, but I think that is what makes them so much better. We want those complex characters and we want them more if they are women.

Comedy #5

With the Halloween season just coming around the corner, the topic of woman being funny comes up a lot especially when addressing what costume, one will be wearing. I have always loved Halloween and this is the one time of the year I am able to be ANYTHING I want no matter how silly, goofy, or plain wack I will look. It has always been so easy to decide what I wanted to wear. But that has changed as I surpassed puberty entering a realm of differing ideologies and prejudice over everything. Picking out my Halloween costume just got much more difficult. This is where the real pretty vs. funny debate comes in and the many factors that help in deciding what Halloween costume one will be sporting this festive season. As we go through multiple feminine costumes in the store, less revealing than the last – I think to myself: Do woman need to be funny? Just as Christopher Hitchens has once said, I could not grasp the idea that humour wasn’t a natural trait to myself as it was like many other men I know.
            Growing up in class, I loved to make people laugh. I was loud and rambunctious – I think I may have started a mud war and hey, one time I even locked my grade 7 teacher, Mr.Wilson out of the classroom. I look back at this now and believe I was trying to compensate for the feeling of always being incompetent through my humour because there was always a funnier guy. It was as if humour was my one way into being similar to the guys. They would exclude us girls during sports games and we would never be able to play with toys that weren’t exploding with pink and purple. This is the one thing that I was able to fit in with them through because I could make others laugh. And even in elementary school, it was quite taboo for a girl to be so outwardly goofy. So, this furthered as I got older. And Halloween was the prime example where I would get much praise from my male counterparts about how chill, cool, and funny I am for dressing up in a funny costume over dressing sexy.
            This year I was fed up though. Sure, high school, we’re told we want to have boy’s attention, but university comes, and I realized that this is something. I wasn’t going to let Hitchens win thinking women are only rewarded for what they look like and not anything that comes out of their mouth. Even though I wasn’t getting comments about how scandalous my costume was, but it always felt like I needed some approval from my guy friends.
            So I stopped this year, I did exactly what I wanted. I dressed as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, then brought out my inner most self as a rock groupie, and as actual Halloween came – I decided to wear whatever the fuck I wanted. I wore a small red cocktail dress and I do not think I have ever felt as empowered as I did that moment. In Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette she mentions how the straight, white male thinks he is the king of the world. I do not think that feeling ever came to me until I could look at myself wearing something I was usually uncomfortable in and enjoying what I was seeing. I even had one of my male friends make a comment asking why I was dressed so girly, and you know what, being filled with this self-empowerment gave me the power to put him in his place.
            I had been watching a Netflix documentary about the history of feminism and something stuck with me. Women believed they didn’t have any power because men believed they didn’t and that they would not need it anyways. This thought left when I wore what I wanted to. I did not have to be funny or pretty or anything for anyone. I got to be myself for me and it was probably the best thing ever.

PS. This costume I was wearing feeling all sexy in..... Well, my whole body was green because I was The Grinch! (A Sexy Grinch?? Maybe)