{"id":67826,"date":"2013-05-27T08:57:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T12:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67826"},"modified":"2013-06-07T14:24:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T18:24:38","slug":"as-elvis-said-girls-girls-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67826","title":{"rendered":"As Elvis Said: <i>&#8220;Girls! Girls! Girls!&#8221;<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/psZodDfJWg4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Last week came the results of a <a href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2013\/film\/news\/female-movie-critics-influence-shrinking-1200487324\/\">disheartening new study about the lack of female film critics<\/a>.  Look at those numbers.  It&#8217;s an interesting problem, and not news to anyone who is paying attention to what is going on. It&#8217;s no secret that the Boys Club is a real thing.  On some level, it may be maintained deliberately (that Variety article mentions that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/far-flung-correspondents\/reactionary-men-who-fear-and-hate-strong-women\" target=\"_blank\">horrible email sent by an editor forbidding a film critic to review any of those stupid &#8220;women&#8217;s movies&#8221;<\/a>), on other levels (far more insidious) it is unconscious.  But it exists.  It exists in the literary world as well, and that has also gotten a lot of attention recently.  Those who pooh-pooh that this is even a problem &#8230; well, let&#8217;s say I find their motives suspicious.  <\/p>\n<p>Two film sites just came out with lists of female film critics people should be reading, a gesture I very much appreciate, and not just because I&#8217;m on one of the lists. I have mixed feelings about being honored for my writing <i>and<\/i> my vagina.  Like, can&#8217;t we leave my vagina out of it?  But I&#8217;m not that much of an idealist.  I understand how privilege works, and I understand that the situation as it stands is unfair.  So to be included on such a list is flattering, and I am glad that this conversation is occurring.  It needs to occur.<\/p>\n<p>A great example of how the invisible privilege that makes people blind to diversity operates  is in the recent AV Club list of the best films of the &#8217;00s, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.indiewire.com\/womenandhollywood\/as-if-the-a-v-clubs-top-50-films-of-the-90s-has-no-women-directors#\">there wasn&#8217;t one female director represented<\/a>.  50 films, not one female director.  Shameful.  Especially for that particular decade, when so many female directors kicked some serious ass.  I don&#8217;t think they set out to exclude women, but it just happened that way, and not one person along the way thought to themselves, &#8220;Huh &#8230; what is wrong with this picture &#8230;&#8221;  Hopefully, the AV Club (a great site) did some serious soul-searching in the wake of that list. <\/p>\n<p>I do my thing, I have people who have been reading me for years, and I am grateful to the opportunities I have been given (or, to put it in a better way, opportunities I have <em>earned<\/em>).  Having a diversity of voices is an important part of cultural conversation.  Especially now, when misogyny and dismissive attitudes towards women&#8217;s points of view is almost endemic (and reflected in the last presidential campaign season.  Sheesh, what a mess.)  <\/p>\n<p>A related thought: There have been studies done about reading habits of men and women.  Women have no issue reading books by men.  But men reading books by women is a much rarer phenomenon.  There have been huge arguments that have reached the public eye occasionally over things like book design.  Books designed solely for a female audience &#8211; with the typical chick-lit cover &#8211; are clearly good business if you look at it in a certain light but there have been authors who have balked at that ghettoization. And rightly so.  I never would have read the amazing book <i>Inglorious<\/i>, by Joanna Kavenna, with the cover chosen for its American hardback edition, a typical chick-lit cover.  It would have been a turnoff.  I&#8217;m a woman, but I am not drawn to the &#8220;chick-lit genre&#8221;, as it is marketed to me.  Not my thing.  I like more serious weighty books.  <i>Inglorious<\/i> isn&#8217;t &#8220;chick-lit&#8221; at all.  It&#8217;s a harrowing description of a nervous breakdown, told over the course of 5 or 6 days in this one woman&#8217;s life, and it&#8217;s an incredible debut novel.  It has nothing to do with adorable clumsy female heroines, and their romantic shenanigans, talking with friends at happy hour over Cosmopolitans.  It is a brutal book about a woman <i>losing it<\/i>.  It was completely mis-marketed to US audiences.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2008\/jun\/06\/fiction.orangeprizeforfiction2008\">brou-haha Kavenna made about that cover was so intense<\/a> that they actually changed it for the paperback edition, and good for her for making a stink. Here&#8217;s Kavenna:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I begged them not to use that cover but they did, and the reviews in the US were slightly different because of it. One said, &#8216;This is the most boring chick-lit novel I&#8217;ve ever read.&#8217; They may have felt it backfired, because they did a much more sober cover for the paperback.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a conversation about perception.  It&#8217;s an important conversation.  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always had male readers.  I think I have more male readers than female, although I&#8217;ve never tallied it up.  I am thankful to everyone who shows up here and joins in the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>I am grateful to both of the <em>male<\/em> writers at Film.com and Flavorwire who saw the results of that study and didn&#8217;t get defensive, didn&#8217;t just ignore it, didn&#8217;t dismiss it as a problem in the first place.  They set out to highlight some women doing some good work out there, and that&#8217;s a good thing.  I&#8217;m pleased to be included.  It&#8217;s nice to see a couple of my friends on that list as well.  I mean, I&#8217;ll keep writing regardless.  I&#8217;ve been writing a long long time.  But it is nice to be there, I won&#8217;t lie.  <\/p>\n<p>Here are the lists:<\/p>\n<p>Film.com: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.film.com\/movies\/great-female-film-critics\">7 Female Film Critics You Should Be Reading.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Flavorwire.com: <a href=\"http:\/\/flavorwire.com\/393701\/15-great-female-film-critics-you-ought-to-be-reading\/\">15 Great Female Film Critics You Should Be Reading.<\/a>  (I am described as &#8220;scholarly (yet lively)&#8221;.  Thank goodness for that &#8220;yet&#8221;.  My dad would be proud.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week came the results of a disheartening new study about the lack of female film critics. Look at those numbers. It&#8217;s an interesting problem, and not news to anyone who is paying attention to what is going on. It&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=67826\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67826"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68187,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67826\/revisions\/68187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}