“I think a lot about what makes a strong female character. You know, movies and TV shows, these things have influence, my own website. So I think the question of “What makes a strong female character?”, often goes misinterpreted. And instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen, who maybe have one quality that’s played up a lot. Like, you know, a Catwoman type, or she plays her sexuality up a lot and it’s seen as power. But they’re not strong characters who happen to be female, they’re completely flat and they’re basically cardboard characters.
The problem with this is that then people expect women to be that easy to understand, and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple. When in actuality, women are complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy. And women happen to be people!”-Tavi Gevinson for TEDTalks [x]
![yamino:
wrestleforgold:
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descroissants:
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston marathon. After realizing that a woman was running, race organizer Jock Semple went after Switzer shouting, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.” However, Switzer’s boyfriend and other male runners provided a protective shield during the entire marathon.The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines, and Kathrine later won the NYC marathon with a time of 3:07:29. [Wiki]
Awesome women in history.
ALWAYS REBLOG
I can’t explain how much I love rulebreaking, society changing, progressive women.
Wow, this was as recently as the 70’s. Seeing this posts makes me have a whole new perspective on knowing my parents ran many marathons together in the 70’s-80’s. I wonder if my mother ever experienced something like this. If she did, she never told me.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0zd9hIlaP1qzr6ooo1_500.jpg)
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston marathon. After realizing that a woman was running, race organizer Jock Semple went after Switzer shouting, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.” However, Switzer’s boyfriend and other male runners provided a protective shield during the entire marathon.The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines, and Kathrine later won the NYC marathon with a time of 3:07:29. [Wiki]
Awesome women in history.
ALWAYS REBLOG
I can’t explain how much I love rulebreaking, society changing, progressive women.
Wow, this was as recently as the 70’s. Seeing this posts makes me have a whole new perspective on knowing my parents ran many marathons together in the 70’s-80’s. I wonder if my mother ever experienced something like this. If she did, she never told me.
A gang rape happened in Ohio and no one heard about it. A gang rape happened in India and everyone heard about it (as we should). The American media has represented India as a misogynistic country where women need to be constantly wary of the men that surround them. And after that gang rape, large-scale protests blocked the streets and clogged the media. Now, I am in no way saying that rape and domestic violence are not problems in India. As an Indian-American woman who has been to India many times and is incredibly familiar with the culture, I am in no way denying that. Rape, in India, is a serious problem. Rape, especially in lower class areas in India, is an extremely prevalent problem that needs to stop being ignored and taken seriously. Violence against women in India is a serious issue.
But violence against women in America is also a serious problem. Violence against women in South Africa, and Sweden, and Chile, and Thailand, is a serious problem. Violence against women is a serious problem. Period. Full stop. While our media went out representing India as a typical place for these deplorable events to happen, another woman’s similar story went ignored and without subsequent societal action. This country outright refuses to admit that it is a rape culture.
Our media and our country are so obsessed with presenting foreign countries as worse than us or uncivilized or, most importantly, undemocratic, they will blast our radios and timelines and homepages with news of rapes in India, but refuse to acknowledge that the same thing happens here and is happening here.
| — |
Anisha Ahuja, Why Does America Pretend it Doesn’t Hate Women? (Feminspire.com) EXACTLY! I spoke about the very same thing when I wrote The “Othering” Of Evil. The desperation involved in maintaining the myth of superiority and safety here, a part of the delusion that is American exceptionalism, is why these lies continue to be proliferated. Misogyny is a global problem. (via gradientlair) |
“women are weaklings!”
i’m strong enough to carry
your corpse to the woods
this haiku is my favorite haiku
- be thin
- have a vagina
- give birth
- cook for you
- have long hair
- wear makeup
- have sex with you
- be feminine
- be graceful
- shave
- diet
- be fashionable
- wear pink
- love men
- be the media’s idea of perfection
- listen to your bullshit
“Woman?” She chuckled. “Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took you for a man.” Dany met his stare. “I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, khaleesi to Drogo’s riders, and queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.”
Happy International Women’s Day!
Download These Slides and Take Your Picture with Them To Help Raise Awareness
Wow, that’s just great (considering I’m mostly Cherokee).
| — | Eleanor Roosevelt (via leslieseuffert) |
Would you be surprised if I told you that, according to the Bechdel Test website, only 5 of IMDB’s Top 250 passed all three Bechdel criteria in 2010? Are we really asking too much of the film industry to include two women, who talk to eachother, about something besides a man? Surely this is the bare minimum of female representation we should expect from films. Women populate more than half of the world and yet we are still so often consigned to being the ‘love interest’ whose lives centre wholly around the male protagonist even to the point where the majority of mainstream films in our cinemas seem to find it impossible, in their entire run-time, to imagine a world in which a woman conducts a conversation that is not about a man.
