Sexism in the Media

Sorry folks, but part 2 of the Crew post will not be taking place right now, as I have other things to write about and crew's not in season.  But you will indeed be privvy to all of our rowing secrets! Just give me until next week.

In the meantime, I would like to discuss something a lot heavier: sexism.  For those of you who've been living under a rock for the past 40 years, but sexism is discrimination against a person based on their sex or gender.  Again, talk to Becca about the subtleties between gender and sex, but as this is really about how the victim is perceived, there's a grey area.

I decided to talk about this after reading this article about the editor-in-chief of the Niagra Falls Reporter who apparently will not allow the newspaper to publish "reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta."  He then tried to defend it, but the original email is appalling.

Let me say one thing first: sexism is so entrenched in human society, entire languages would have to be remodeled to break free from it.  Does this make it ok? No.

Another thing: there are many views on how to solve this issue, and it is not within my power or desire to judge such views.  I am just here to point out blatant sexism in media, Hollywood especially if I can, to prove this misogynistic editor false.

Now, I don't have much time, so I'm going to employ a simplified (and remarkably accurate, for something so simplified) way of measuring female presence in a movie.

There is a test, called the Bechdel Test, to see if movies are sexist or not.  To pass, there has to be a conversation between two named female characters that is not about men.  Simple, right?  Yes.  Easy to pass, right?  Apparently not, for Hollywood.

To sum up the video linked to above, of the nine movies nominated for the 2011 "Best Picture" Academy Award, only two clearly pass.  Two more technically pass, due to one brief interaction per movie with no significance to the plot in either, but still have next to no female presence in them, so I'm not going to count them.  (Of the two grey-area passes, the first movie, Hugo, has a five-second scene that passes; the second, Midnight in Paris, has one that also involves male characters.)

Even Pixar films, by far my favorite group of movies, fail more often than pass.  None of the three Toy Story films passes; neither do Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, or Cars 2.  The only Pixar films that pass are A Bug's Life, The Incredibles and Brave.

I'm going to break a major rule of Tumblr, and mention it outside of Tumblr.  A major section of Tumblr is devoted to "social justice" blogging, determined to fight racism, sexism, cissexism, homophobia, ableism, and related injustices.  I don't consider myself a social justice blogger, but I do reblog occasional commentaries and discussions that I think merit view.

Of eight posts tagged "sexism" on my tumblr blog, I would like to quote six.

"'Women are more likely to be attracted to personality and men are more likely to be attracted to physical appearance'

[W]oah[,] maybe that’s because we teach women to see men as people and we teach men to see women as objects"  I'll come back to this later.

"Being a feminist doesn't mean suddenly no longer liking problematic things.  If you stopped liking everything that was sexist in media and entertainment there would be no media or entertainment left.  Being a feminist, to me, is being aware of what it is you're liking, and of its problematic aspects."

The third is not very good for quoting, but inhabitants of the internet will likely have seen it by now: the two-panel comic where a guy approves of another guy wearing a shirt of a comic book character, but when a girl walks by wearing a similar shirt, he demands to hear her credibility as a comic book geek.  Skepticism based on gender?  I think I call that sexism.

A fourth is a side-by-side of two Angry Birds Halloween costumes: one for men, one for women.  The one for men is a round fabric representation of the ubiquitous red "angry bird."  The one for women is a red cocktail-length dress with the bird face on it, with black tights and, of course, high heels.

Perhaps the scariest - and most credible - is from a book called The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard.  "Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske took brain scans of heterosexual men while they looked at sexualised images of women wearing bikinis. She found that the part of their brains that became activated was pre-motor - areas that usually light up when people anticipate using tools. The men were reacting to the images as if the women were objects they were going to act on. Particularly shocking was the discovery that the participants who scored highest on tests of hostile sexism were those most likely to deactivate the part of the brain that considers other people’s intentions (the medial prefrontal cortex) while looking at the pictures. These men were responding to images of the women as if they were non-human."

The last, and most disappointing to me, is the straightforward statement of the blatant sexism in one of my favorite television shows, Doctor Who.  When the show was restarted in 2005, the writers were pretty good about writing realistic, strong characters of many skin colors, sexes, sexual orientations, and the like.  But when Steven Moffat took over in 2010, that pretty much flew out the window.  The only female characters you could call "strong" are all from the same mold: she can fight, she's sassy and sexy, but she has a soft side that really translates to "Save me, Doctor!"  I enjoy the existences of River Song and Amelia Pond as much as anyone, but I can't ignore the sexism that went into the writing of their characters.  The worst was shortly before the start of season 7, when a controversial promotional picture was released of an unconscious, makeup-wearing Amy Pond, the female lead of the show for seasons 5-7, carried in the arms of the Doctor while explosions and evil Daleks fill the background.  This did not go down well among the fans.  One blogger put it best when analyzing a snippet of dialogue from Amy's debut episode:

"Rory: How can he be real? He was never real! It was just a game. We were- we were kids. You made me dress up as him!

"Right here, with this quote, I knew the characterization of Amy Pond was going to go seriously awry.

"Kids love to play pretend, don’t they?

"Moffat was a Who fan as a kid, right? I bet he played Doctor Who pretend. Yet somehow I don’t think he assigned the role of Doctor to others. I mean, the Doctor is the hero! You don’t assign that role to another kid! You fight for your right to be the Doctor! Maybe you take turns with who gets to be him. Maybe there’s three Doctors running around at the same time and it gets a big squiggly. But whatever you do, you don’t freely abdicate the hero role.

"Unless you’re a girl.

Apparently.

"Steven Moffat could not conceive of a little Amelia Pond who would look at the magical Doctor and his blue box and want to be him. He assumed she would want to be with him instead.

"Actual little girls, however, are well-versed in this problem. I know I had a lot of contradictory feelings about Indiana Jones. (“He’s so dreamy!” “I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up!” “Mom, can I have a whip for my birthday?”) Most of the heroes- the characters it’s most fun to imagine being- are dudes. If you also happen to find some of those dudes attractive, you’re going to develop the “I want to be you/I want to be with you” duality. This is something that straight guys like Moffat have not needed to deal with, as characters for them were nicely divided into a binary of those they want to be (male heroes) and those they want to be with (the hot ladies male heroes get).

"So when Moffat created Amelia he projected this binary on to her, but reversed it. She’s a girl! The Doctor is a dude! Obviously she wants to be with him! I’m not even sure he realizes it’s possible for Amelia to want to be the Doctor. Yes, if someone asked him directly if he thought little girls wanted to grow up to be the Doctor he’d probably agree, but the point is it didn’t occur to him when he was actually writing her character.

"And so she becomes The Girl Who Waited, waited for the hero’s return, and not The Girl Who Dreamed, dreamed of being the hero.

"Amelia Pond, drawing Doctor fanart in crayon- are you our on-screen fangirl cypher? Dreaming of what male creators think we want: romance! With an awkward, unnecessary love triangle! Uh, girls love that, right?

"Enter the series 7 promo still.

"I look at this and think- what fantasy does this appeal to? That’s no hero shot, not of Amy Pond.

"The girl who waited, carried away.

"It’s everything that’s been there from the beginning, that we’ve tried to put aside. The misconception of Amy Pond. As the love interest, the sidekick, and not the hero. In the hero’s arms and not the hero.

"Where is the image of Amy Pond, hero? Why can’t that sell the show? Why a damsel in distress shot?

"Ah, but we don’t want to confuse the little boys, the mini-Moffats, by making them want to be her, instead of just be with her. How weird that would be!

"So Amy will stay as she is, in the Doctor’s arms, safe."

And another blogger replied to that:

"While I love Amy Pond a lot, and while she is more heroic, seeing as she saved Eleven [*] and Rory a BUNCH of times over two seasons, I found myself agreeing with a lot of this. Moffatt’s Who is problematic in all the important (to me) respects, which I could ignore when Eleven, Amy, and Rory first started because I loved them all so much, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that it’s going to get to the point where I can’t ignore it and just enjoy the show anymore. He keeps [expletive] up the amazing women I fell in love with and nothing about the seventh season makes me want to watch it.

"Starting with this graphic, which fundamentally misunderstands Amy’s relationship to the Doctor. She isn’t his damsel in distress, she isn’t his sidekick, she’s his equal, his conscience, and, at times, his savior. She should be walking beside him, not being carried by him. This is why the graphic upset me so much, because that’s not the Amy and Eleven I had fallen in love with."

*"Eleven" refers to the eleventh regeneration of the Doctor; if you like, the eleventh actor to play the Doctor.

In conclusion, sexism is an integral part of our daily lives.  It is especially prevalent in the media, where we're still trying to get the biggest blockbusters to have women as protagonists, where there has always been a male hero/female romantic interest dynamic, where "Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls."  (Source: NPR)  Well, boys don't have to watch shows about girls, because every genre will have shows starring boys, and they can always find something about a character of their own gender.  Girls can't be so picky.

Well, what do I recommend?  Some high-quality movies/television that is centered around girls.

Movies:

Brave.  It centers around a Scottish princess who just wants to "stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen firing arrows into the sunset," as her father puts it.  It also focuses on the relationship she has with her mother.  A heartwarming, funny, intelligent, action-packed, beautifully-animated film.  

Tangled.  A refreshing take on the classic story of Rapunzel: this time, she takes her fate into her own hands.  When a handsome rogue climbs into her tower to hide on her 18th birthday, Rapunzel seizes her chance. She knocks him out with her signature frying pan, tricks her "mother" into going on a three-day trip, then persuades the Aladdin-esque thief to be her guide to fulfill her lifetime dream.  They have crazy shenanigans, a couple of music numbers, and a pet chameleon.  What's not to love?

Television:

The Legend of Korra.  I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again: Korra is awesome.  The story is a spin-off of the wildly popular Avatar: the Last Airbender (Avatar: the Legend of Aang in some countries), which takes place in a world where some people are born with the ability to "bend" one of the four classical elements: water, earth, fire, or air.  Korra is the Avatar, the only one who can master all four elements and bring balance to the world.  She's headstrong and fearless, and can't wait to take on her duty as the Avatar - she just has to learn Airbending first.  Add a steampunk-1920s-Shanghai-meets-Manhattan metropolis, a popular sport utilizing the already martial-arts-centered bending and a devious scheme that threatens all benders, and you've got yourself a compelling action series.

Kim Possible.  "Dad, I'm off to save the world!" "On a school night?" "I'll be back by midnight!" Kim Possible may be marketed towards young children but it is probably the best example of a lack of sexism in any mainstream media.  In this show, the lead is the girl - a good student, excellent athlete, and all-around good person - and the sidekick is her dorky guy friend.  Kim Possible saves the world on a regular basis, and the only competent villain she faces is her shadow archetype, Shego.  Kim uses her cheerleading skills, high-tech gear, and sheer awesomeness to keep the bad guys on the run, but she still has to deal with normal high school problems, like dating and homework.

Rizzoli & Isles.  This is for those too dignified to watch animated shows.  A crime drama focusing on a detective (Jane Rizzoli) and a medical examiner (Dr. Maura Isles), who investigate crimes in Boston.  I enjoy the dynamic between savvy, tomboyish Rizzoli and reserved, bookish Isles - they always make me laugh.

I realize that media is getting better about sexism.  But we still have a long way to go.  Suggestions?  Critiques?  Favorite female-centered movies and TV shows?  I'd be happy to put them in - right now I probably don't have many of the best examples, just my favorites.

Yellow Leaves, Grey Water, Blue Jackets

This is my "Capture the Fall" independent film project, titled Yellow Leaves, Grey Water, Blue Jackets.  I really like the way it turned out.

I filmed this all on my dad's iPhone, and edited it in iMovie.  The music is from freemusicarchive.org.

Filming was so much fun.  I stopped by Heyser Farms and the local park on the way home from a birthday party.  Dad just pulled over, handed me his phone, and I filmed a few seconds of fall scenery.  

The really fun part started at home, when I got my sisters to help.  They were all too eager to be filmed raking leaves, though Suzanne originally wanted to go in bare feet and no jacket.  Not only did I get a few nice shots of raking leaves, but they kept suggesting new ideas that eventually became the backbone of my project.  Katie wanted to be filmed climbing a tree, Suzanne wanted to be filmed jumping into a pile of leaves, and I suggested the shot where Katie runs down the hill onto the swingset.  When Suzanne jumped into the pile of leaves, I stopped recording - only to have Katie jump in after her!  Then Suzanne started throwing leaves, and I just had to film it.  The original clip is 40 seconds long, but I only kept a few seconds in the video.

Katie helped me film a few staged shots, and then it was time to get editing.

iMovie was really weird, and it seemed to be made for a less advanced editor than a high school film student - which was annoying - but eventually I got it to work.  The simplicity of the project kept the dumbing down of the program from being a problem.

I ended up having to cut out a few clips that I was going to have, just to fit into the time limit and because they didn't fit the overall theme of the video.

Music was annoying at first, as ccmixter was ridiculously unhelpful, but freemusicarchive was much nicer for finding wordless classical music.  I like the bittersweet tone to this song, and the piano is lovely.

I also made a short blooper reel for this video, mostly involving their leaf fight, but also a couple of mishaps from filming.  Included is a guitar song under the "comedy" tag of freemusicarchive.

Enjoy both videos!

Rowing Crew: Part 1

"Oh yeah, I'm on crew."
"Oh, like stage crew?  What play is it?"
"No, not stage crew.  Rowing crew.  The crew team.  As in, boats and oars and such."
"Oooh.  I didn't know we had a rowing team."
This is another conversation I've had many times.

It's an Olympic sport, one that this year's American team won.  It was featured in "The Social Network," when the main character was a coxswain.  It has its own movie, "Backwards."  But no one seems to know what crew is unless they have a friend on a rowing team.

Three days a week, I hop on a bus after school, filled with my teammates of all skill levels and both sexes.  (I do say sexes and not genders here, Becca, but in this particular case they are synonymous.)  We head down to a local river, take out our 64-foot-long, 2-foot-wide boats, and row.  Well, it's not quite that simple - and I'm going to give you all the inside details of a day of rowing, and a regatta.

First, I will need to explain the mechanics of a boat, also called a Shell.  It's called this for its hollow, thin, hard qualities that are necessary for rowers to be safe and to still be able to carry the boat between the water and the boathouse.

We'll go from bow to stern  in the average boat: a port-rigged Eight.  As you can see from the diagram, there are eight rowers and the sternmost rower (aka Eight seat or Stroke seat)'s oar is to port.  Hence, port-rigged Eight.  With me so far? No? Yes? Good.

Just in case you didn't know, this is important for the rest of this post: bow = front, stern = back, port = left, starboard = right.  We say port, starboard, bow, and stern because rowers sit backwards and what is left to coxswains is right to rowers, etc.  So when I say "We'll go from bow to stern," it means "we'll go from front to back."  Got it?  Yes?  Good.

The first seat from bow to stern is called Bow seat.  This is to avoid confusion that may arise from saying "have One seat take a stroke":  

Ok, one seat, but that could mean any seat.  Which one?  OHH that one seat.  Right. 

"Bow seat" is much clearer.  Bow seat is a starboard rower, meaning his/her oar is out to the starboard side of the boat.  He/she will require a starboard oar.  Bow seat follows Two seat.  When I say "follow," I mean Bow seat watches Two seat's rhythm and matches it as closely as possible, going to each position of the stroke at the same time.  The key to rowing is keeping together, "in sync," if you will.

The next seat is Two seat.  Two is a port, meaning his/her oar goes to the - you guessed it! - port side of the boat.  He/she will require a - altogether now - port oar.  Two seat follows Three seat.  

Detecting a pattern?  Good, because that's exactly how it goes all the way down the boat.  Odd numbers (including Bow) are starboard, even numbers are ports.  You would think it would make the boat hard to steer, with all of the starboard oars behind the port ones, and indeed it does look off-balance at first glance.  But the placement of all the starboard oars behind each one's port partner does absolutely nothing to the steering.  This is because the extra power to port in the stern is counterbalanced by the extra power to starboard in the bow.  It all works out nicely.

That reminds me, rowers/oars/seats are organized by pair: Bow/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/Stroke.  Bow/2 is also called "bow pair," and 7/Stroke is also called "stern pair."  If you have Bow-4 rowing, that's "bow four"; 5-Stroke, "stern four."  Bow-6 is "bow six," 3-Stroke is "stern six."  To have people in the middle rest, the coxswain would call combinations of these: "stern four and bow pair, row" or "bow four and stern pair, row" or simply "five and six, sit out."

Likewise, the other rower in a pair is the first rower's "pair partner."  For example, I am five seat, so six is my pair partner.  I am six's pair partner.  

Back to the tour of the boat!  Eight seat is also known as Stroke seat.  Rowers sit backwards in the boat, so to the rowers, Stroke is in the front.  Stroke seat sets the pace or rhythm - the stroke - for everyone in the boat.

Another useful diagram!  These are the stages of the stroke. The catch and the finish, aka the release,  are points, while the drive and recovery, aka the slide, are processes.  The entire time going from the catch to the finish is the drive, and the entire time going from the finish to the catch is the recovery/slide.

But wait, why and how are that diagram's stick figure's legs extending?  Rowing is with your arms, right?  Wrong.  Rowers' feet are strapped into a shoe stretcher low in the boat.  Our seats slide on tracks on a platform a little higher up.

The only things that are relevant here are the seat and the shoes/stretcher.  Come back to this later, though, if you need to for other parts of the boat.

In this picture, you can see how the shoes are set low, under the platform where the seat is.  Going back to the stroke diagram, you can see how the feet stay still while the seat slides.  This allows rowers to take advantage of humans' strongest muscles for the drive - our leg muscles, which work constantly against the force of gravity and are biologically the strongest voluntary muscles in the human body.  The main force comes from the legs, then a little bit from the back as we swing into the release, and just less than that from the arms.  People seem to think that rowing is all upper body strength - "Oh, you row?  You must have really strong arms!" - but really, it's all in the legs.  Arms are just there to hold the oar and to feather.

Feathering is the rotation of the oar to minimize wind resistance.  At the catch, the oars drop into the water, squared against the surface of the water to get maximum force.  They stay that way through the drive, while the oars are in the water.  At the release, when the oars come out of the water, rowers rotate the oars to parallel the water as we come up the recovery, or "slide."  Going up the slide, rowers gradually square up the blades of the oars, finding the right balance between minimum wind resistance and minimum delay at the catch.  Finally, at the catch, the blade is completely square again to restart the cycle.  That entire process is called feathering.  There's also rowing on the square, which is for warming up and brand-new novices only, because it causes a lot of splashing, wind resistance, and makes it harder to row in general.

One more note: feathering is with the inside hand only.  The outside hand lets the oar rotate inside its grip.  If the outside hand rotates as much as the inside hand, the outside wrist will get too tired too quickly.  It's hard at first to feather with one hand, but it's much easier in the long run.

At last, we've reached the stern!  The coxswain sits in the stern, and does not row.  Instead, he/she steers the boat and gives directions to the rowers via the coxswain's microphone.

This is what a coxswain looks like.  See her microphone?  It stays on her head using a sort of elastic headband.  The wire connects the microphone to a Cox Box, which you can sort of see near her feet.  The Cox Box gives lots of useful information, like the number of strokes per minute (called a stroke rating) and often will have a stopwatch built in.  It also sends the coxswain's words from the microphone to speakers all down the boat so that the rowers in the bow can hear him/her without any screaming required.  In this picture you can also see the ropes that control the steering.  These, like all nautical ropes, are called "sheets."  They control the skeg, a little fin under the boat in the stern that steers the entire boat.

In some Fours (four-rower boats, lighter, slower, and more maneuverable, generally reserved for slightly more experienced rowers), especially more modern ones, the coxswain sits in the bow, in a cavity that allows him/her more leg room.  These boats, with the coxswain seat in the bow, are called bow-loaded fours, and are only for boats where the coxswain can trust his/her rowers completely.  Coxswains in bow-loaders can't see the rowers to critique them, so such boats are generally reserved for rowers who don't need much critique, i.e. varsity rowers.  Different coxswains prefer bow- or stern-loaded boats depending on preference, though bow-loaded boats are always less cramped for the coxswain.  Eights are always stern-loaded.

There you have it! A tour of a crew boat, the stroke, and some other useful basic knowledge.

Next week, I'll give a run-down of a typical practice, then the following week, I'll do a piece on regattas.  This three-part series is in honor of the end of fall season, marked for our team by today's Head of the Occoquan Regatta.  The boat I was in came in 9th out of 19.  First half is pretty good, considering that most of the teams are clubs that get more funding, more practice, and better equipment than our school club team gets.

To finish off, I'm going to embed a link to a video from this season's first regatta, and I'll tell you that I'm in the boat that passes by at 5:40.  I already told you I'm 5 seat; use your new knowledge from this post to see if you can find me.