Thursday, October 25, 2012
bic for her
Finally! What we had been waiting for: a pen just for us girls. Ellen Degeneres makes fun of a new product by Bic: pens for women. Yes, they are especially made to "fit a woman's hand." I think my life is complete now.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
"I promise to be friends, until death do us part"
Nothing compares to the feeling of having a friend with whom you can share your life, your adventures, the most intimate (and often embarrassing)details of your life, someone who is like a sister, who you genuinely love and are not afraid to show it.
In Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's essay "The Female World of Love and Ritual" she discusses precisely this type of relationship between female friends.
In this reading, we visit the lives of various women from the nineteenth century, whose friendships with other females were strong, loving, and expressed openly in their letters to each other and their diary entries about each other. These friendships stood the test of time, and remained strong even after subsequent marriages and geographic separation. We have, for instance, the story of Sarah Butler Wistar and Jeannie Field Musgrove, who met during a vacation trip when they were teenagers. Even when they were separated physically when each of them got married, emotionally they were still very close. According to Smith-Rosenberg, women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century lived in emotional proximity to one another. So much, that they sometimes took a more important and active role in a woman's life than her husband, especially when it involved sickness, childbirth, or death, among other emotional events.
These stories about friends and love, emotional support, distance, and sisterhood, made me think of my own friendships and the important women in my life. It made me think of my sisters, who I adore with my life, even if we fight once in a while. I thought of my mother, who would do anything for me, and who I love with all my heart. Now that I am away from them, I realize more and more every day how much I love and miss them, and how important their presence is for me. The reading also made me think about my friends, that sisterhood we formed during our university years, some of whom I met during my years as a graduate student, but remain in my life as if we had met decades ago. This is especially true of perhaps my closest friend, my dearest friend, who is ironically the one I've known for the shortest time. It was mostly in this sense that I was inspired by this reading and I identified with it.
Following somewhat Smith-Rosenberg's footsteps, I did a little bit of research of my own. Although keeping diaries and sending handwritten letters is not a normal practice in the twenty-first century, there are other convenient and even more accessible ways to look at correspondance between friends. There are e-mails, text messages,and Facebook posts and private messages, among other forms. Last week, I had revisited my Facebook timeline due to a message I saw stating that private messages from 2010 and previous years were now public. It wasn't the case for me, but I know other people who were victims of this. While looking through my wall posts from previous years I started reading things that my dear friend had written, such as "I miss you"; "Let's get together to eat and talk"; "We need a girly date"; or "Thank you for understanding my craziness." After reading Smith-Rosenberg's essay, I decided to look closer into these posts and some of our private messages on Facebook. It is so interesting what you can find out about a friendship or any type of relationship for that matter just by reading a conversation between the people involved. We talk about so many things, but mostly we show each other love and we express it many times.
In a funny way, this reading reminded me of my friendship with my dear friend because to an outsider, it can appear to be more than friendship, more like lovers. Although not the case, we joke about this all the time. Being usually the two single girls in our group of close girl friends, we always said that we were each other's date, that we were together, and joked about being lovers. Even when we had our respective boyfriends, we continued joking about that. So, naturally, for someone who doesn't know us, it may seem like we are indeed a couple, especially because we leave "I love you" and "I miss you" on our walls all the time. At one point, I had a friend who asked me, "Emily, is there anything you'd like to tell me? Who is that girl?," implying that I might be 'in the closet.' Of course, she and I joke about this all the time, so we don't mind it. Yet, it is curious for me to learn about these women in the nineteenth century, who had friendships as strong as ours, which have sometimes been interpreted as homosexual. In a letter written to Jeannie, Sarah tells her, "I shall be entirely alone [for this coming week]. I can give you no idea how desperately I shall want you..." These types of written exchanges between friends were common, but they are open to interpretation from a current point of view, which could view them more on the homosexual end of the spectrum. However, as the author explains, these letters "force us to place such female love in a particular historical context," one in which physical contact and freedom of emotional expression between women was more accepted than with the opposite sex.
On a more serious aspect, I identified greatly with this reading because it shows how strong the bonds of friendship can be. These women remained in contact (at a time when there was no internet, no phones, no Skype) after years of being appart from each other. I'm going through that phase with my friend now. During our years in graduate school, we spent a lot of time together, taking classes and working in the same place. Our similar personalities and sense of humor, contributed to our closeness. I could relate to another friendship presented in the essay, where two girls started working together after being friends, "We know we can amuse each other for many idle hours together and now we know that we can also work together. And that means much, don't you think so?" After I graduated, I started working at a school, so we didn't get to see each other as much; then, the following semester, we started working together again, and became even closer to one another. During that semester we also traveled together and realized we make great traveling partners. As we both started to plan our future, we knew that we were going to be away from each other, soon. We took that as an opportunity to spend time together having fun, and that's what we did. During the summer, we traveled together again, worked together, did small field trips around Puerto Rico, had sleepovers, and just spent time together. The first one to leave was me, and it was a sad good-bye, but we knew our friendship wouldn't end there. A month after, she moved to South Korea, where she will live for a year. The beautiful thing about our friendship (and technology) is that no matter how far we are from each other, we keep in touch. We write to each other and we talk over Skype. This way, we were able to see each other's apartments and our surroundings. We keep each other up to date with everything going on in our lives, just like we did when we were in PR, maybe even more now.
My friend wrote this in a picture of us a few weeks before I left: "I promise to be friends, until death do us part." I am happy we have both kept our promise, and that despite the distance, our friendship remains strong.
In Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's essay "The Female World of Love and Ritual" she discusses precisely this type of relationship between female friends.
In this reading, we visit the lives of various women from the nineteenth century, whose friendships with other females were strong, loving, and expressed openly in their letters to each other and their diary entries about each other. These friendships stood the test of time, and remained strong even after subsequent marriages and geographic separation. We have, for instance, the story of Sarah Butler Wistar and Jeannie Field Musgrove, who met during a vacation trip when they were teenagers. Even when they were separated physically when each of them got married, emotionally they were still very close. According to Smith-Rosenberg, women in the eighteenth and nineteenth century lived in emotional proximity to one another. So much, that they sometimes took a more important and active role in a woman's life than her husband, especially when it involved sickness, childbirth, or death, among other emotional events.
These stories about friends and love, emotional support, distance, and sisterhood, made me think of my own friendships and the important women in my life. It made me think of my sisters, who I adore with my life, even if we fight once in a while. I thought of my mother, who would do anything for me, and who I love with all my heart. Now that I am away from them, I realize more and more every day how much I love and miss them, and how important their presence is for me. The reading also made me think about my friends, that sisterhood we formed during our university years, some of whom I met during my years as a graduate student, but remain in my life as if we had met decades ago. This is especially true of perhaps my closest friend, my dearest friend, who is ironically the one I've known for the shortest time. It was mostly in this sense that I was inspired by this reading and I identified with it.
Following somewhat Smith-Rosenberg's footsteps, I did a little bit of research of my own. Although keeping diaries and sending handwritten letters is not a normal practice in the twenty-first century, there are other convenient and even more accessible ways to look at correspondance between friends. There are e-mails, text messages,and Facebook posts and private messages, among other forms. Last week, I had revisited my Facebook timeline due to a message I saw stating that private messages from 2010 and previous years were now public. It wasn't the case for me, but I know other people who were victims of this. While looking through my wall posts from previous years I started reading things that my dear friend had written, such as "I miss you"; "Let's get together to eat and talk"; "We need a girly date"; or "Thank you for understanding my craziness." After reading Smith-Rosenberg's essay, I decided to look closer into these posts and some of our private messages on Facebook. It is so interesting what you can find out about a friendship or any type of relationship for that matter just by reading a conversation between the people involved. We talk about so many things, but mostly we show each other love and we express it many times.
In a funny way, this reading reminded me of my friendship with my dear friend because to an outsider, it can appear to be more than friendship, more like lovers. Although not the case, we joke about this all the time. Being usually the two single girls in our group of close girl friends, we always said that we were each other's date, that we were together, and joked about being lovers. Even when we had our respective boyfriends, we continued joking about that. So, naturally, for someone who doesn't know us, it may seem like we are indeed a couple, especially because we leave "I love you" and "I miss you" on our walls all the time. At one point, I had a friend who asked me, "Emily, is there anything you'd like to tell me? Who is that girl?," implying that I might be 'in the closet.' Of course, she and I joke about this all the time, so we don't mind it. Yet, it is curious for me to learn about these women in the nineteenth century, who had friendships as strong as ours, which have sometimes been interpreted as homosexual. In a letter written to Jeannie, Sarah tells her, "I shall be entirely alone [for this coming week]. I can give you no idea how desperately I shall want you..." These types of written exchanges between friends were common, but they are open to interpretation from a current point of view, which could view them more on the homosexual end of the spectrum. However, as the author explains, these letters "force us to place such female love in a particular historical context," one in which physical contact and freedom of emotional expression between women was more accepted than with the opposite sex.
On a more serious aspect, I identified greatly with this reading because it shows how strong the bonds of friendship can be. These women remained in contact (at a time when there was no internet, no phones, no Skype) after years of being appart from each other. I'm going through that phase with my friend now. During our years in graduate school, we spent a lot of time together, taking classes and working in the same place. Our similar personalities and sense of humor, contributed to our closeness. I could relate to another friendship presented in the essay, where two girls started working together after being friends, "We know we can amuse each other for many idle hours together and now we know that we can also work together. And that means much, don't you think so?" After I graduated, I started working at a school, so we didn't get to see each other as much; then, the following semester, we started working together again, and became even closer to one another. During that semester we also traveled together and realized we make great traveling partners. As we both started to plan our future, we knew that we were going to be away from each other, soon. We took that as an opportunity to spend time together having fun, and that's what we did. During the summer, we traveled together again, worked together, did small field trips around Puerto Rico, had sleepovers, and just spent time together. The first one to leave was me, and it was a sad good-bye, but we knew our friendship wouldn't end there. A month after, she moved to South Korea, where she will live for a year. The beautiful thing about our friendship (and technology) is that no matter how far we are from each other, we keep in touch. We write to each other and we talk over Skype. This way, we were able to see each other's apartments and our surroundings. We keep each other up to date with everything going on in our lives, just like we did when we were in PR, maybe even more now.
My friend wrote this in a picture of us a few weeks before I left: "I promise to be friends, until death do us part." I am happy we have both kept our promise, and that despite the distance, our friendship remains strong.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
girl power!
Whenever I hear the phrase "Girl Power" I am reminded of something that was a big part of who I was as a teen: the Spice Girls. That was their battle cry, their motto, and they wanted to let us girls know that we had power, that we were important. "Girl Power" might have been used as a catchphrase from which then merchandise was created, but it was meaningful for us. At a time when only boy bands were becoming famous, all girls had as role models were cute (okay, hot)guys who were singing about love (and we fantasized about each song being about ourselves). However, the Spice girls provided songs that were about us, girls, about our dilemmas, our strength, about being happy. They sang about friends, mothers, boys,and dancing, among other things. We not only admired them, we wanted to be them because we identified with one (if not all) of them. They were singing for girls.
In Coalescing: The Development of Girls’ Studies, Mary Celeste Kearney discusses that in early feminism,in an attempt to demonstrate that women were equal to men, issues about girls were neglected, making it an adult-centered feminism.Thus, feminism became about women, not all females, but there was a need to study girls; they needed to be included.
The fact that the Spice Girls were grown women but their name included the word "girls" instead of "ladies" perhaps, is a sign that they were including all forms of females, not just adults. Their catchphrase was "girl power" and not "woman power" or "female power". Of course, not surprisingly, their majority of their fanbase was comprised of little girls and teenagers (such as myself).
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| Image taken from: this blog |
In Coalescing: The Development of Girls’ Studies, Mary Celeste Kearney discusses that in early feminism,in an attempt to demonstrate that women were equal to men, issues about girls were neglected, making it an adult-centered feminism.Thus, feminism became about women, not all females, but there was a need to study girls; they needed to be included.
The fact that the Spice Girls were grown women but their name included the word "girls" instead of "ladies" perhaps, is a sign that they were including all forms of females, not just adults. Their catchphrase was "girl power" and not "woman power" or "female power". Of course, not surprisingly, their majority of their fanbase was comprised of little girls and teenagers (such as myself).
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
childhood memories
During the summer 2011 institute of the MayaWest Writing Project, we were asked to write different personal pieces, which could talk about our past or our present. They could be painful, happy, funny, serious; in other words, we were free to write about what we wanted given the specifications or writing prompts. Looking back on the overall experience of the MWWP I realized I had indadvertedly accessed memories from my childhood in many of these writing instances. I talked about things I did when I was little, toys I played with, games my siblings and I would create, clothes I wore, and songs I used to sing, among other things. I would usually associate many of the topics discussed in our daily workshops to my childhood. It was then I realized more clearly that what had formed and shaped my current interests was in fact my childhood or perhaps my memories of it.
Mitchell and Reid-Walsh discuss the nostalgia adults feel when talking about their childhood or when presented with something that reminds them of their childhood, which is in part why the Toy Story movie franchise has been and continues to be wildly successful. As they explain, it has been noted that these movies are not necessarily about our childhood toys but rather about the nostalgia that they bring (Flick Filosopher of the Internet; Giroux). The success of these movies relies greatly on the parents who are bringing their children to watch them. Children today will undoubtedly enjoy these movies because they feature toys that are alive, therefore, they are fun. However, the way an adult will enjoy these movies is very different. They will watch them with a nostalgia (I don't think I know a single person who did not cry during Toy Story 3), and the movies will bring up emotions about the past. They will think about those toys -- I remember being very excited about the toy phone because we had one at home -- and they will remember that time in their lives when they were creative, when the biggest problem was perhaps that a toy was broken. They will miss those toys. Adults will be children again, even if it is for just ninety minutes because we want to be kids again. We want to be able to play and not be judged about it. This I believe, is why the Disney parks are so successful; they are places where adults can be children again, at least for a day. It is no surprise then, that there have been three Toy Story movies, and a fourth one is rumored to be in the making.
This feeling is, I think, what overpowered me during that summer. The fact that I could sit down and talk about things that I love and that I remembered, most of them being moments of my childhood, gave me a sense of joy that I wanted to share with everyone else. I wrote about a talent show my siblings and I used to put up at home, about my favorite dress as a child, about my stuffed animals. The poster I created about myself looked like one that could've been made by a little girl:
During an activity in which we were assigned to take a series of pictures of something about ourselves or our surroundings, I chose to take pictures of some of my dolls, stuffed animals, games, and childhood books. Curiously I was asked by someone jokingly (I hope): "How old are you?!" I took it to be a funny commentary on what I chose to photograph, since other people took pictures of their communities or their family. My interpretation to this person's comment was that their concept of childhood follows the idea that age is a (or the) determining factor. I feel like I am a child at heart, which became even more evident to me when I wrote a personal piece about the importance of the Alice stories in my life. But, am I a child at heart? Could I still be considered a girl or do I have to be a women and act accordingly? Driscoll talks about this in her "Introduction: Toward a Genealogy of Girlhood," stating:
In my mid-thirties I am not a girl any longer, in most senses of the word. And yet I might still be called a girl and use the word "girl" about myself, especially among women around my own age. Moreover, I remain socially connected to, interested in, and sometimes still strongly identify with "girl" things and "girl" behaviors, and experience girlhood.(2)
Although she admits to not being a girl anymore (using age as the determining factor), she also provides instances in which she considers herself a girl and is engaged with girlhood and what it may entail. Similarly, I can separate the time and place where I am (or have to be or need to be)and adult, and when I am what I consider a "girl". Usually this occurs when something triggers my emotions and feeling of nostalgia: whenever I am with my siblings, Christmas day, looking at toys I used to play with, watching cartoons that I strictly remember from my childhood, paper dolls, songs, and my one or two favorite dresses, among other things. I think this is why I still get excited and emotional when I see things that remind me of those years. I still search for cartoons and other videos on YouTube and share them with my siblings. We look forward to Christmas because it is the time we get together and are "allowed" to be children again, watch all those videos and cartoons, play with toys, and just reminisce about those moments of joy.
Mitchell and Reid-Walsh discuss the nostalgia adults feel when talking about their childhood or when presented with something that reminds them of their childhood, which is in part why the Toy Story movie franchise has been and continues to be wildly successful. As they explain, it has been noted that these movies are not necessarily about our childhood toys but rather about the nostalgia that they bring (Flick Filosopher of the Internet; Giroux). The success of these movies relies greatly on the parents who are bringing their children to watch them. Children today will undoubtedly enjoy these movies because they feature toys that are alive, therefore, they are fun. However, the way an adult will enjoy these movies is very different. They will watch them with a nostalgia (I don't think I know a single person who did not cry during Toy Story 3), and the movies will bring up emotions about the past. They will think about those toys -- I remember being very excited about the toy phone because we had one at home -- and they will remember that time in their lives when they were creative, when the biggest problem was perhaps that a toy was broken. They will miss those toys. Adults will be children again, even if it is for just ninety minutes because we want to be kids again. We want to be able to play and not be judged about it. This I believe, is why the Disney parks are so successful; they are places where adults can be children again, at least for a day. It is no surprise then, that there have been three Toy Story movies, and a fourth one is rumored to be in the making.
This feeling is, I think, what overpowered me during that summer. The fact that I could sit down and talk about things that I love and that I remembered, most of them being moments of my childhood, gave me a sense of joy that I wanted to share with everyone else. I wrote about a talent show my siblings and I used to put up at home, about my favorite dress as a child, about my stuffed animals. The poster I created about myself looked like one that could've been made by a little girl:
During an activity in which we were assigned to take a series of pictures of something about ourselves or our surroundings, I chose to take pictures of some of my dolls, stuffed animals, games, and childhood books. Curiously I was asked by someone jokingly (I hope): "How old are you?!" I took it to be a funny commentary on what I chose to photograph, since other people took pictures of their communities or their family. My interpretation to this person's comment was that their concept of childhood follows the idea that age is a (or the) determining factor. I feel like I am a child at heart, which became even more evident to me when I wrote a personal piece about the importance of the Alice stories in my life. But, am I a child at heart? Could I still be considered a girl or do I have to be a women and act accordingly? Driscoll talks about this in her "Introduction: Toward a Genealogy of Girlhood," stating:
In my mid-thirties I am not a girl any longer, in most senses of the word. And yet I might still be called a girl and use the word "girl" about myself, especially among women around my own age. Moreover, I remain socially connected to, interested in, and sometimes still strongly identify with "girl" things and "girl" behaviors, and experience girlhood.(2)
Although she admits to not being a girl anymore (using age as the determining factor), she also provides instances in which she considers herself a girl and is engaged with girlhood and what it may entail. Similarly, I can separate the time and place where I am (or have to be or need to be)and adult, and when I am what I consider a "girl". Usually this occurs when something triggers my emotions and feeling of nostalgia: whenever I am with my siblings, Christmas day, looking at toys I used to play with, watching cartoons that I strictly remember from my childhood, paper dolls, songs, and my one or two favorite dresses, among other things. I think this is why I still get excited and emotional when I see things that remind me of those years. I still search for cartoons and other videos on YouTube and share them with my siblings. We look forward to Christmas because it is the time we get together and are "allowed" to be children again, watch all those videos and cartoons, play with toys, and just reminisce about those moments of joy.
Readings Referenced:
C.
Driscoll, Girls, Intro. Towards a Genealogy of Girlhood in Girls: Feminine adolescence
in popular culture and cultural theory (2002)
Mitchell
and J. Reid-Walsh “Memory Spaces: Exploring the afterlife of children’s popular
culture” Ch. 2 in Mitchell and Reid-Walsh Researching Children’s Popular Culture (2002).
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
welcome!
This is a blog I created for "Girls’ Cultures and Popular Cultures created for and by
Girls," a doctoral course I am taking this semester at Penn State. This will serve as a sort of scrapbook where I will share critical thoughts on the readings we are assigned, but also on anything that calls my attention related to girls' culture. Enjoy!
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