• • Media Savvy

  Why are there so many Girls on TV this year?

  June 5, 2012 • Guest Blogger

  Women of a certain age (18-30ish) seem to fall into a nebulous category best described by pop sensation Britney Spears – not a girl, not yet a woman. As cheesy as that comparison is, it becomes especially relevant when attempting to classify the young women seen on television. I realized this year that I had watched three different TV shows explicitly about the trials and tribulations of “girls” – New Girl (FOX), 2 Broke Girls (CBS), and Girls (HBO). Following in a long line of similarly-named shows (Gossip Girl, Secret Life of a Call Girl, and my favourite, Gilmore Girls), this year’s crop of girl-themed programs have little in common save for a few key features: the main characters of each show are white, they are all dealing with money problems, and they are all between the ages of 22 and 32 (give or take).

  I started thinking about this trend when I realized that I could not think of a single television show that mentioned “women” in the title. A quick Internet search revealed only a few recent examples: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-1998), Bionic Woman (1976-1978), and TLC’s Police Women reality series (2009-present). In comparison, I thought of a few shows about “men” right off the bat: Mad Men, Two and a Half Men, and the now-cancelled Men of a Certain Age. The only recent shows about “boys” were Boy Meets World and My Boys, both of which are off the air now. Aside from these exceptions, current shows about adult men are explicitly titled as such, while women-centred shows usually involve a woman’s name, profession, or, as we saw this year, the word “bitch” (GCB, “Don’t Trust the B* in Apt. 23”).

  Legally, the characters on New Girl, 2 Broke Girls and Girls are no longer “girls,” but they don’t exemplify many of the stereotypical traits associated with “grown women” – having children, having a spouse, working a stable job or owning a house. In contrast, their girliness makes them entertaining to watch because of the funny and odd situations in which they find themselves. The funny and quirky girls become separated from the invisible spectre of “serious womanhood,” and the former becomes more appealing to viewers.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • Media Savvy
  • Race and Racism

  I can’t get no representation: whitewashing storytelling in popular media

  April 25, 2012 • Raisa Bhuiyan

  Dear Shameless reader,

  I’ve just come home from watching popular film of the week The Hunger Games with a sour taste in my mouth and an angry grumbling motion vibrating through my intestines. It seems as though the white-washing of Hunger Games protagonist Katniss has given me yet another case of racial indigestion. In fact, I’m currently cursing myself for being hopeful in thinking that some satisfaction could be had with regards to how people of colour are represented in our popular media.

  Can you blame me though?

  Every time I hear that a big shot film depicting some form of oppression or discrimination is coming out, I get excited. I get excited because I start hoping that there’s been some equitable representation of people of colour in these movies. I get so excited that I start hoping with all my might that some representational justice will be done to the racialized character(s) and that they won’t be doomed to forever remain as the one-dimensional support system to the main, typically white protagonist. I start hoping that maybe, just maybe the character(s) of colour will finally be presented as full, complex human beings.

  But I was wrong.

  If you already haven’t been blasted with Hunger Games-saturated trailers and interviews as of late, do let me remind you that Katniss is the central character of the story, whose experiences as a contestant of the Hunger Games make up the storyline of the book. In addition to being characterized by author Suzanne Collins as a radical female hero-warrior combating institutionalized oppression in a dystopia in the future, Katniss is also characterized as being olive-skinned. But as Hollywood page-to-screen synergy would have it, the casting call for Katniss indicated that only Caucasian actors apply.

  (more inside…)

• • Film Reel
  • Media Savvy
  • Race and Racism

  Racism and the Hunger Games

  April 4, 2012 • Guest Blogger

  Like almost everyone I know, I saw The Hunger Games on opening weekend. I sat in a packed theatre, sandwiched between my friends and an opinionated preteen girl who read a massive fantasy novel until the lights dimmed. She wasn’t the only one; it was the first time in a while that I saw so many young people avidly reading in a movie theatre, and I’ve been to many midnight showings of Harry Potter. From my limited observations, and from the film’s massive box office sales, it’s clear that the Hunger Games franchise has really resonated with many people, both young and old, who gravitated towards the strong female protagonist, interesting social commentary, and gripping action sequences of the story.

  In the days following the film’s release, I was also one of many who saw the racist tweets compiled on sites like Buzzfeed and Tumblr. (The comments appeared to come mostly from young people, who expressed outrage and confusion over the casting of black actors in the roles of Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). Some of the commenters accused the film’s producers of not “staying true” to the character descriptions in the novels, when in fact, Rue and Thresh are described as having “brown” skin and Cinna’s race is not described in any detail. Others confessed that they did not feel as “sad” about the death of Rue because she was black, with one tweeter adding “#ihatemyself.”

  

  At first, I was shocked and angry to read these hateful and disturbing tweets, especially because I had spent a lot of time sniffling through Rue’s death scene when reading the books and watching the film. I was furious with the commenters for questioning their own feelings of loss and sadness when Rue died, purely based on the fact that they weren’t expecting her to look a certain way. But after reading through the comments a few times, and reading an exchange between the moderator of the Hunger Games Tweets Tumblr and one of the racist tweeters, I started to focus more on the theme of confusion present in many of the tweets in an attempt to make sense of the events.

  (more inside…)

• • In My Opinion...
  • Media Savvy

  Writing Outside the Lines

  April 3, 2012 • Guest Blogger

  In June of 2011, the intractable Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul made the claim that women authors are unequal to him. “I read a piece of writing,” he said, “and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.”

  Naipaul is a far from uncontroversial figure, and can hardly be said to represent the generally accepted position on women writers. Nevertheless, his dismissal of writing by and for women - a dismissal predicated largely on its supposed sentimentality - is revealing on a societal level, and brings to mind Virginia Woolf when she wrote in A Room of One’s Own (1929): “women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unresolved problems.”

  For some working in the media, this perception is not restricted to fiction. In an email interview, Anna North, former editor of and writer for the current events and pop culture blog Jezebel, notes that part of this difficulty comes from the fact that “women’s issues,” while a useful general designation, is also vague and just plain misleading. Just as Naipaul’s designation of women’s writing as “sentimental” is a glossing-over of myriad individual voices, grouping the heterogeneity of women’s concerns together ignores the real differences that exist among women along political, social and cultural lines. Not only that, but such a categorization ignores those who fall outside mainstream definitions of “women,” such as trans- and non gender-conforming individuals. What’s more, North notes, with a “site that is explicitly for women, you can try to be as welcoming as possible, but you’re never going to please all women, any more than you can please all people.”

  (more inside…)

• • All About Shameless
  • Arts
  • Media Savvy
  • Playlist

  Putting together an alternative playlist

  December 21, 2011 • Sarah Feldbloom

  Readers! Listeners!

  Shameless wants to put together a podcast of music by women, trans, genderqueer and non-binary folk that comes through non-mainstream channels, from parts of the world that often feel out of reach for those of us in Canada. Can you help us?

  Send songs through sendspace.com or another online file sharing program to sfeldbloom@shamelessmag.com, and email some notes about the artist – where they come from, who they are, and what’s awesome about them and their music. How wonderful will it be to hear this playlist?! We’d love to get some of your title ideas too!

• • Activist Report
  • Arts
  • Media Savvy
  • News Flash
  • On The Job
  • Playlist
  • Politics

  2011: A Shameless Retrospective

  December 20, 2011 • Team Shameless

  What a year! People say that every year as they bid the previous one adieu but 2011 has been full of world events that have shocked and touched us. Worry is one of the words that comes to mind when we think about 2011. From worry over the economy to fretting about our political climate, it’s clear the past year was fraught with events that, despite the fast pace of our lives, has caused us to pause and reflect. However, many events have given us lots of reason to hope and to be proud.

  Here are just a few of the events and items of the past year that have caught the attention of some of your Shameless team members. We throw it to you to leave links, comments and discussion-starters in the comment section.

  In keeping with the themes of the three print issues Shameless released this year, we offer you some jumping-off points:

  –––-

  Music in 2011

  Wild Flag (self-titled album): One of Rolling Stone’s best albums of the year, including former members of Sleater Kinney, Mary Timony (ex-riot grrrl bands). [Co-founder Nicole Cohen says: “I am obsessed with this album; so so so good.”]

  On a Mission, Katy B: A major breakthrough in the dubstep music genre, as it crossed over into pop consciousness. A UK release. [Web director Julia Horel can’t stop listening to it.]

  What music did you love this year?

  –––-

  Politics in 2011:

  The Northern Ontario Indigenous community of Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency in light of a housing and supply crisis … and no one came. Help has since been slow in coming and has been mostly inappropriate and inadequate. This is a humanitarian crisis, but it’s also political because it has occurred due to colonial government policies.

  (more inside…)

• • Anti-violence
  • Media Savvy
  • Recommended Reading

  Recommended Reading: Fist-of-Cuffs: A response to ‘Toronto, City of Sissies’

  December 12, 2011 • Julia Horel

  Jeff Perera is a friend of Shameless, founder of the Ryerson University White Ribbon Campaign chapter, event director of TEDxRyersonUWomen, the only TEDxWomen event in Toronto, and co-director and curator of the annual discussion-focused “What Makes a Man” White Ribbon Conference at Ryerson.

  Along with being an all-around fabulous person, Jeff has written a piece in response to a hateful piece by the National Post’s Christie Blatchford that asserted the Toronto is a city full of “sissies.”

  Every one of us was meant to embrace our whole, full humanity. Yet, enforced ideas of what being a man is leaves every boy and man wrestling to supress themselves. We are raised to value an unattainable standard, and devalue anything ‘less than’, which is any aspect of our humanity labelled ‘feminine’. Men are left feeling they are not given permission (from others or from our own self) to discover our handcuffed array of emotions. Denying or forced to deny sides of our self, we are the walking dead, numb and emotionally illiterate. This leaves us numb to the very fact of the gun pressing on our soul. The sound of the resulting trauma inflected on the world is muted by a silencer, but the impact resonates like an endless echo of gunfire on women and men worldwide.

  The result is fathers who have been home everyday of their children’s lives yet could not be more distant. The result is men who would rather die than go see the doctor, and so they die. The result is boys being called ‘faggots’ or Christie Blatchford’s preferred term: ‘Sissies’.The result is heterosexual boys face homophobic bullying because they don’t fit the narrow mold. The result is men and young men trapped in endless cycles of substance addition to suppress what they aren’t emotionally able to deal with. The result is young men who won’t back down, no matter what. The result is men who are ready to die over a pair of shoes which they value more than their very own lives. The result is men with disabilities made to feel a heightened level of inadequacy. The result is guys who rather approach women with aggression and violent bravado because they cannot compute vulnerability. The result is severe impacts and financial costs to our Healthcare systems. The result is LBGT communities facing a denial of their right to existence, nevermind equity. The result is women in Canada and across the world subject to devaluation, discrimination and subsequently all forms of violence.

  Read Jeff’s amazing piece in its entirety here.

• • Event Listings
  • Media Savvy

  Toronto event: Screening of Miss Representation

  November 22, 2011 • Julia Horel

  What: Screening of documentary Miss Representation
  Who: Ryerson Students’ Union Equity Committee, Women’s Centre, Nursing Course Union, Students Against Racism, and Social Work Anti-Oppression Coalition
  Date: Friday, November 25th
  Time: 6 PM until 8 PM
  Place: Thomas Lounge, Student Campus Centre, 55 Gould Street, Toronto, Ontario

  Plus, your friends from Shameless will be on-site with a table of magazines, merch and smiles!

  From the film’s website:

  About The Film
  Like drawing back a curtain to let bright light stream in, Miss Representation (90 min; TV-14 DL) uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

  In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman’s value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.

  Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics, like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective.

  Check out missrepresentation.org for more information on the film.

• • Media Savvy
  • Trans-

  If you’ve got “boy parts,” you can’t join…

  November 9, 2011 • Naz Afsahi

  As a kid, I always dreamt about becoming a Girl Guide like my friends. But, unfortunately, it was something that never happened for a variety of monetary and time-related issues. As an adult, I was finally able to realize that dream by becoming a Brownie Unit Guider. My unit, which I helped to facilitate with two other leaders (including Shameless Reviews Editor, Jessica Balmer!), was home to 14 girls aged 7-8. For one year, we came together to encourage our fellow leaders and our Brownies to develop confidence, to develop positive relationships with others and to engage with the community. Overall, my Girl Guide experience was everything I had hoped it would be, and I would hope that anyone else interested in joining the Guides might have a similar experience. However, that has not been the case for Bobby Montoya, a seven-year-old from Denver, Colorado who wished to join a local troop of Girl Scouts.

  (more inside…)

• • Arts
  • Event Listings
  • Film Reel
  • Gender
  • Media Savvy
  • Race and Racism

  Free film festival screenings: Spotlight on Muslim and Arab Women’s Stories

  November 2, 2011 • Ronak Ghorbani

  In April I made a short film for a class project exploring my love for moustaches and the pressure I feel to remove my natural facial hair. It was quite possibly one of the most empowering things I have ever done: to pick up a camera, create a narrative, edit film and have my own self-told-story shown on a TV screen.

  When a professor at Ryerson (where I go to school) got wind of the film she asked to see it. As the coordinator of the Spotlight on Muslim and Arab Women’s Stories, which is part of the International Diaspora Film Festival, the professor, Dr. Nima Naghibi, encouraged me to submit my film.

  My film Sibil (the Farsi word for moustache) is now part of the Spotlight on Muslim and Arab Women’s Stories.

  The Spotlight on Muslim and Arab Women’s Stories features free screenings of six feature-length films and is co-sponsored by various Ryerson University departments and faculties.

  Some of the other screenings include:

  • Unveiled Views – Muslim Women Artists Speak Out (2009, Director: Alba Sotorra), a documentary that follows five Muslim women artists from Turkey, Bosnia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran as they discuss their aspirations and the rights and status of women in their countries.
  • Round Trip (2010, Director: Golkou Parhizgar), a documentary inspired by director’s experience of returning to Iran after 11 years of living in the UK and rediscovering relationships of those left behind. All of the films are being screened at Toronto’s Carlton Cinemas (20 Carlton St.).

  One of the best things about the Spotlight on Muslim and Arab Women’s Stories is that all of the film screenings are free. All you have to do is e-mail info@diasporafilmfest.com to reserve a seat. Click here for a complete schedule.

  To kick-start the festivities, there’s a free film event at Carleton Cinemas on Thursday starting at 5 p.m., featuring a screening of the film Forget Baghdad, a documentary following four Iraqi Jews living in exile in Israel who negotiate between their Arab and Jewish cultures. The screening is followed by a talk by academic Dr. Ella Shohat, from New York University.

  To say I’m excited to be a part of this roster of amazing films and women directors is an understatement. My short film is being screened twice, once on Friday at 9 p.m. before the documentary Les Secrets and on Sunday at 6 p.m. before the documentary Round Trip .

  Check out this preview of Unveiled Views – Muslim Women Artists Speak Out:

Contents copyright © 2004-2013 Shameless Magazine.
Questions? Comments? Contact us.