This weekend, I made the journey to the Kendall Square Theater to see Persepolis.
Since Kendall is the only theater in Boston showing the movie right now, it was packed, forcing me to the second row, where I slumped as down low in my seat as I could and craned my neck to watch. Luckily, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Persepolis, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, tells the story of Marjane Satrapi, a young Iranian woman. Based on the graphic novel written by Satrapi, the film details Marji’s coming of age as her country dissolves into revolution and war with Iraq. Marji’s story doesn’t need lush color or flashy animation–the film is almost entirely in black and white stark graphics, true to the graphic novel format. Though Marji is forced to wear a veil and cannot be seen consorting with men, drinking alcohol, or listening to music, she somehow manages to remain fiercely independent. The film is charged with humor (watch out for the Marji’s rousing rendition of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”) and grace, even while people are executed and the country is bombed. I don’t know much about Middle Eastern history or culture, and I learned a great deal by just seeing this movie. I highly recommend giving it a watch, even if it means sitting in a crowded theater in a far away neighborhood.

There is a fantastic benefit the dames at LUPEC Boston have created this September: a number of area bars and restaurants are donating the proceeds from a specific woman-themed cocktail to Jane Doe, Inc, the MA Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. So naturally, when Julia, Janell, Joanna and I met up after work last night, we went to participating restaurant No. 9 Park, to splurge on a fancy cocktail and know the proceeds were going to help a great organization.

We had a lovely time. And then at the end of the night, someone from the restaurant approached Julia and me to ask how our drinks were. There was some awkward banter, and then he asked why we were there. Well, we like the idea of cocktails for this cause. Our literary magazine, Julia pointed out, is run by all women.

“Hopefully not battered women!” he quipped.

Ha ha, it’s a safe joke, guys! Because everyone knows battered women don’t drink cocktails at No. 9 Park! It’s not their scene. Battered women don’t go out in public. In fact, I don’t know a single woman who’s been physically or psychologically abused by a partner or parent, or witnessed the abuse of a mother, sister, friend… It’s a them issue, not an us issue. And it certainly doesn’t touch the editorial staff of Fringe.

I think this was an isolated case, as No. 9 Park is woman-owned and operated and known for civic engagement. So chalk it up to awkwardness, insensitivity or ignorance on this one employee’s part. But I left feeling a little angry, and conscious of how much more work we need to do to build awareness of violence against women.

For more information about LUPEC Boston and Jane Doe, Inc, please click
here:http://lupecboston.blogspot.com/
and here:http://janedoe.org/

Follow the LUPEC Boston link to find out which bars are doing the cocktail promo in September. The Jane Doe site has info on how to donate directly.

I didn’t own a pair of jeans until fifth grade. But I had dresses aplenty. Dresses, lacy socks, even dolls with matching outfits. Maybe because when shopping with my Virginia-born grandmother, harsh denim fabric never seemed to catch her stylistic eye. That, and when placed next to my frilly wardrobe, jeans just seemed vulgar.

All of my friends wore jeans all the time. I was the only skirt-clad girl at my fifth birthday party at McDonald’s. As if sliding down the staticky plastic slide into a pile of sun-baked mulch weren’t tragic enough.

I would complain to my mom that I wanted to dress like the other girls—wear t-shirts, jeans, socks without lace, shoes without bows-on-the-toes. I hated being the only girl at a slumber party in a frilly nightgown while everyone else was in t-shirts and boxers.

But when I got my wish in those hellish teenage years, and pulled on the brand-regulated pair of stonewashed jeans, it was like a part of me was hiding. I finally looked like everyone else, but I still felt estranged.

This was the dawning of my love affair with fashion. Instead of copying what my friends wore, I decided to wear what I liked and thought looked nice. I began to see style as a unique language—a way to express my femininity, something my friends didn’t think was cool. I no longer had to hide my feminine taste; I could embrace it. Being a girly-girl was empowering.

I think that one of the many misconceptions of feminism is that appearance is essentially unimportant and that society’s excessive attention to it oppresses women. There certainly is a danger in placing too much importance on physical appearance; it often leaks into your source of self-worth. When the intrinsic value of a woman or a man is based upon appearance, there is the indication of a deeply rooted, unhealthy worldview.

But I like to go shopping. I enjoy wearing ‘outfits.’ I’m one who feels naked without earrings (and let’s face it, a necklace and bracelet also). So for me, being a girly-girl is part of who I am as a feminist: it’s simply an expression of myself, of what I like. It can even be my way of showing my friend that I’m thrilled to be meeting her for lunch—by putting some effort into my appearance, I’m showing her I respect her and the time we spend together.

And being a girly-girl doesn’t mean you have to sell out to materialism and support slave labor. But that’s another blog…

In this Advice Goddess blog, Amy Alkon discusses a piece by Christina Hoff Sommers from the Weekly Standard. The Sommers piece beats the old horse, stating that American feminists have blinders on when it comes to helping out women in foreign countries. As the article points out and Alkon foregrounds, it is tempting for American feminists to draw sweeping and inaccurate parallels between the oppression of women in America and the oppression of women in other countries. For example, Eve Ensler compares optional vaginoplasties to female genital mutilation.

My take on this is that yes, American feminists often do have blinders on when it comes to international feminism, but also that engaging in international feminism is more ideologically complicated than it seems for two reasons:

1. Many non-American cultures feel (justly) threatened by globalization. Feminism is often equated with western/white culture. Therefore, adopting feminism can be perceived as abandoning one’s own culture. Many women chose to cling to the old (and often misogynist) ways because it is more important to them to preserve their culture than to gain freedom.

2. Given the above situation, what is a western feminist to do? Let’s say I want to free a community of women from the burka. Let’s say that they do not want to be freed from the burka. I can either a) insult their intelligence (certainly not the goal of feminism) by telling them that they don’t know what they’re doing, or b) accept and validate their choice, which then doesn’t effect any change.

I think there are ways around this seeming impasse:

- One way is to include men in the feminist movement. Check out Women for Women’s awesome report on how they are involving men in feminist struggles. Including men in the discussion helps move along a feminist agenda the same way we did it in the west — by explaining to men why it is to their advantage to educate and allow their women more freedom.

-Another way to get around this impasse is to try to separate misogyny from other aspects of a culture so that cultural concerns do not seem to be competing with feminist ones. In the Weekly Standard article, Sommers quotes Katha Politt:

“The word “terrorism” invokes images of furtive organizations. . . . But there is a different kind of terrorism, one that so pervades our culture that we have learned to live with it as though it were the natural order of things. Its target is females–of all ages, races, and classes. It is the common characteristic of rape, wife battery, incest, pornography, harassment. . . . I call it “sexual terrorism.”

While this parallel is taken too far, I think Politt is attempting to get around the cultural-trumps-feminist dilemma by endeavoring to build up the sisterhood of women. Are there better ways to do this? Oh yes. But that’s another blog

-Finally, we do have the option of calling it like we see it — a culture that oppresses women is no kind of culture. But this seems to be a good way to alienate the folks we are hoping to convince. On the other hand, it may be that multi-perspective feminism has become too inclusive and in doing so has lost the will to aggressively act for change.

I’m not sure when it first hit me: the moment my professor announced that she agreed that Muslim women in the UK should have to remove their veils, or later, when she looked directly at me and told me that postmodernism doesn’t exist—that my American education had essentially mislead me down a path of ignorance. Wait, no—maybe it was Tony Blair’s speech on the need to assimilate if you want to live in Britain. Ah, who can keep count… Regardless, it’s been hard to ignore the fact that perceptions on race and nationalism here in the UK are not nearly as advanced as many would like to believe.

As an American living abroad, I expect to become the effigy at times of all things evil. Bush has managed in the last six years to not only reduce the value of our dollar, but to create a stereotype of Americans that is deeply disturbing. And, to be honest, the anti-Americanism I’ve experienced thus far living in Scotland has not been too bad. They’re subtle things, like the gentleman that heard me speaking to a friend the other day and pointed, courteously enough, saying: “You—back home.” What I don’t expect is to see it in academia. Academia is supposed to be advanced. We’re supposed to be more aware, more socially conscious than the layman; more respectful of other cultures, especially if we are working in the humanities. (The very root of the word suggests cultural openness.) But what I’ve discovered here is the exact opposite. Race is suppressed, pushed to the margins and ignored.

“Is there really such a thing as a month for black people?” one Scottish lad asked me. He thought Philip Roth was taking creative liberties in The Human Stain. “Why are American’s always whining about race?” another one complained, as if all American’s were constantly lying on the couch moaning over their childhood. “Surely, colour is not the first thing someone uses to assess a person,” a nice girl from Essex commented. I have to admit, the knuckles were white and the face red when I listened to these people, whom to this point I had considered friends, rant about the inferiority of Americans. Though I had my say, including pointing out the fact that the only “people of colour” in Glasgow are either Indians or highlanders and so race is simply not an issue that anyone has to address, it was a sad reality that diversity is rather poor here. And as a consequence, any discussions on race are easily pushed to the side and trivialized as belly-aching. In the wake of the Don Imus comments, I have to give the US some props. Though it is a tension, though it is still atrociously an issue in our culture, at least, once in a while, we let it sneak out of the closet and address it. The fact that people reacted to Imus’ idiotic remarks is a positive sign in the wake of immigration changes and Big Brother’s constant hovering.

Click on the image to play:

Once you stop laughing, consider this for a moment. Has it become the definition of “cool” to do something different, to refuse to conform to a certain genre? On Fringe, we have a genre called (de)Classified that was created to be a space for experimental work with no set genre. Most often, this is poetry mixed with prose or art, but what else could make something (de)Classified? This is a call to arms. Write something that pushes the boundaries out to the stratosphere, and submit it.

We’re listening.

I’m a Geek. Now, don’t go judging me. I remember feeling like a Geek in high school, and loving it. And I love it still. I have spent years perfecting my definitions of those judgey words the popular kids always threw around. Warning: If you’re not a self-proclaimed Geek, stop reading now. You might not like how I’ve described you:

Dweeb: This is the kid who thinks he’s in with the popular crowd, but little does he know, no one likes him, and when he’s gone, they make fun of him. They invite him to their parties, and he always goes, but no one really wants him there.

Likely professions: Assistant high school football coach, middle manager, shoe salesperson, PTA chairperson

Nerd: This kid is really smart. She is so smart that she locks herself in her room on a Saturday night to read ancient Greek philosophy. In Greek. She cares not a tick about how she looks, and strives for perfection in her studies. She can be socially awkward at times, but spends little time with other people that would point it out.

Likely professions: Computer programmer, mathematician, engineer

Dork: This is the socially awkward kid. He makes people feel uncomfortable because he never talks about anything anyone can relate to (unless they’re a fellow Dork, of course), but he doesn’t realize his own social awkwardness.

Likely professions: Data analyst, Tech support, video game developer

Geek: The geek is always true to herself and her interests, which are usually intellectual. She hangs out with other geeks, just like her, who enjoy what they are doing and truly think they rock. She is cool. Not in the stereotypical popular kid way (in fact, she doesn’t want to be popular), but in her own way. She’s passionate and committed to her art, whatever it might be.

Likely professions: Professor, journalist, editor, professional musician, theater director, doctor, architect, and any other profession you think is supafly.

Can you tell that I am biased? Of course I am. Geek is the new Popular. I knew I’d made it when I got orgasmically excited about the new external hard drive that just arrived at my house. I spend my days writing about computer security, and spend my nights designing poetry books, picking art for Fringe, and putting the magazine online. I may have a little of each of these admittedly pejorative personality traits. I know I’ll be on the PTA when I have kids someday, I’ve tried my hand at computer tech, and I could talk about playing Tiger Woods Golf on my PS2 until you’re bored half to death. But that just makes me a better Geek, right?

Think you’re a geek, too? Check out these geeky sites:

InnerGeek (Are you a Geek? Take a test to see)

She’s Such a Geek (a blog by and for geeky girls)

ThinkGeek.com (stuff for smart masses)

X-TremeGeek.com (get Geeky gear)

geek! (a clique for proud geeks)