And he sees this girl who catches his eye. He walks up to her, flirts and asks if he could buy her a drink. She declines. It seems she wants to hang out with her friends and doesn’t want to be bothered. So the man calmly and with a non sarcastic tone says: “Okay. Well, you have a good evening then”. He walks away and continues to enjoy his evening because life moves on and she didn’t owe him a goddamn thing.
THE END.
What is real? What is normalcy? People don’t normally run around making lighting fixtures out of kale?
WHAT IS LIFE.
Is anyone else experiencing this fear?
The only upside is that I can shave my legs tomorrow. Finally. I’ve been a loyal minion, Misha.
GISHWHES All Night(G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S) Parody by LuvLibertyDisco
No time to sleep in my bed,
There’s cotton candy on my head
Potatoes all over the room
Cheeze Whiz is in the pool
I smell like a coffee bean
6 Chairs stacked out in the yard
Barbie and Ken’s on the barbeque
Is this a burn from hot glue?
If our item pictures end up online,
We’re screwed
Oh well
It’s been a crazy week
But I’m pretty sure my team rules,
MIIISHA!
GISHWHES all night
Yeah, we pole danced in Ukraine
And our friends think we’re insane
Think I drew Tarzan and Jane
GISHWHES all night
Yeah, took 10 trips to the store
And got kicked out of the morgue
Rode a human medieval horse
GISHWHES all night
Found a chair to kill a shark
Making a gummy bear landmark
Built a website in the dark
GISHWHES all night
Had to explain an arcane law
Have to find a hell house prop
Whoa-oh-oah
GISHWHES next year
Do it all again
Need a chicken and a road to cross
Wonder if I can serenade my boss
Need 100,000 pennies in my car
Kale chandelier is on the floor
Made an awesome bacon dress
What is a slap-in-the-face contest?
Think I need more Swedish fish
Taught myself Gottscheerish
If our item pictures end up online,
We’re screwed
Oh well
It’s been a crazy week
But I’m pretty sure my team rules,
asprohedral
GISHWHES all night
Yeah, danced cueca with a llama
Need to use your backyard, please Obama?
5-foot penguins in Lima
GISHWHES all night
Yeah, we sautéed a travel book
and visited the home of Captain Cook
Got a lot of weird looks.
GISHWHES all night
Made Misha tell the story of Snow White
Turned my nightmare into a website
Let’s go to Taiwan to fly a kite
GISHWHES all night
Yeah we helped out the homelessMorse code in 20 seconds or less
Oh whoa oh
GISHWHES next year
Do it all again
G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S
G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S
G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S
GISHWHES all night
Dick Cheney in a monkey hat
Tried to feed some kale to a cat
Built a dollhouse house out of ketupat
GISHWHES all night
Need way more helium
Went to Singapore to chew some gum
My sleep requirement is minimum
GISHWHES all night
Got some actors to wear Bieber
Looking for Pee-Wee’s direct phone number
Think I’m in love with a team member
GISHWHES all night
Ate some meatballs and ice cream
Proud to be part of my team
Oh-whoa-oh
GISHWHES all night
Do it all again
Not a molar in sight.
Femmephobia, for those of you who haven’t heard the term before, is the hatred and/or fear of all things feminine. Make note that femmephobia isn’t misogyny, the hatred and fear of women—no, femmephobia is, as defined in a blog post I once read, “the devaluation… of the feminine: of softness, nurturance, dependence, emotions, passivity, sensitivity, grace, innocence, and the color pink.” It also includes a devout hatred of the “girly” things that most girly-girls do or like—shopping, thinking about romance and boys, reading teen magazines that pollute their sense of self-worth.
Now, where does Disney Channel come into this equation?
Since I have a wifi router from the stone age and the only thing that works now is our ethernet cable, I’ve been curled downstairs in the living room with my laptop on my lap trying not to let my brother and sister on their video games and television set respectively disturb whatever show I’m catching up on at the moment. But this morning while I was working on applications for college I started to slack and watch television with my sister—and she was watching Disney Channel.
There’s this absurd show that she likes called Jessie, which seems to be about a brunette who plays guitar and is capable of being “one of the guys” when she wants to. The episode in question featured her friend, the unbearable blonde girly-girl who wears pinks and yellows and is obsessed with a teen magazine that gives out free holographic posters of Taylor Lautner, which she calls her “road to womanhood.” It’s clear from the very beginning that this character and her habits are intended to be vomit-inducing at the least, and the main character, Jessie, continually jabs at her femininity, ridiculing her with superior wit and sarcasm. And when this little blonde babe of a twelve year old tries to set Jessie up with a guy, Jessie immediately rejects the idea because she doesn’t want things between her and this boy to be “awkward,” so she abolishes any plans the blonde (forgive me, I didn’t bother to learn her name) had to dress her up and instead dresses in a style called “one of the guys.”
Aside from the fact that her “one of the guys” outfit is actually what I, a self-declared feminine girl, wear every other day (a sweater with skinny jeans and Ugg boots? since when was that the epitome of guy?), this whole episode reeks of femmephobia. Firstly that the supremely feminine girl of the show is decried as ridiculous, stupid, ditzy, and overall undesirable despite her attempts to be attractive (her attempts, if I may remind you, that are largely fueled by a magazine—the same way many girls in real life are taught by magazines how to look and then are laughed at for being “too girly” when they imitate it). Secondly, the only difference between the blonde and the sassy brunette is that the sassy brunette does not make it obvious that she cares about her appearance yet always looks flawless and wears typically feminine clothing (apart, you know, from that one time she HAD to dress manly (?) so a guy wouldn’t like her).
Point being, it teaches girls that they have to be feminine to be attractive and successful, but if they express the need or want to be feminine in public, they are ridiculed. Which is why Jessie waited until after everyone had left the room to pick up that magazine and indulge herself in a little shirtless holographic Taylor Lautner. Understandably. I wouldn’t want to be found oogling at Lautner either, holographic or not. Why? Because I’d be laughed at, that’s why! Liking boys is gross and waaaaaay too girly.
If this was the only show that was femmephobic and hypocritical on Disney channel, I could excuse it, because then the femmephobia would be a function of the characters, not of the show. Which I get. I mean, I’ve written racist characters before, but I am in no way racist. But the unfortunate truth is that the femmephibia is a much bigger problem than being a function of the show—it’s a function of the channel.
I think we all remember Hannah Montana, right? She looked flawless, blonde or brunette, she was always sassy, and she didn’t try too hard. And when she was too feminine or too obsessed with shopping, she had her dutiful skater friend Lily to kick her into shape and make sure she didn’t act like all the other girls at the high school she was attending when she wasn’t being famous. Because Lily and Miley couldn’t be too girly. But Lulu and Hannah, their famous alter egos, could indulge in the pop-sensation fashion-culture life that they were denied by society.
In addition, it seems to be a popular trend in Disney shows to have the main females, usually conventionally attractive, one blonde, one brunette, and have their nemesis be also conventionally attractive but blisteringly aware of her conventional attractiveness blonde and her cronies. This can vary in some degrees—in the Suite Life of Zach and Cody, the blonde was the pretty, but nerdy, candy counter girl and the shopping-obsessed dim-wit was the still-stunning actress Brenda Song. But shows like Hannah Montana fall under this trap really easily. Even back in the good ol’ days of Lizzie McGuire, Lizzie and Miranda were both pretty girls, but their arch rival, Kate, was shopping obsessed and got all the boys and had boobs before they did. How positively disgusting.
So, there it is—everything Disney is and has been projecting on girls. That the girliest of the girls are repulsive because of their femininity, but the ideal woman must not be too manly because it’s improper if girls aren’t at the very least pretty. It forces girls to walk a fine line between society hating everything she is and society making things easy and accommodating for her because she looks juuuuust right. And, in addition to being pretty but not looks-obsessed, a girl must be sassy, but not so sassy she overpowers the men to whom she belongs—her father, her boyfriend, the one obligatory male in her small group of friends, with whom she is usually in love with.
This is femmephobia at work.
I see it everywhere. I especially see it in this weird new breed of makeup-haters that have arisen—for some reason girls who wear makeup are treated as less “real” than girls who don’t, as if what they put on their face had any bearing on their actual character. I was literally sitting with one of my friends the other day when he told me how funny it was that I, the devout feminist in our group of friends, wore makeup and dresses and was sensitive, emotional, and physically weak (my arms are noodles—literally). Let’s get one thing straight: wearing makeup, being sensitive, emotional, or weak, liking to shop, and, yes, adoring the color pink does not somehow make you bad at being a feminist. That’s ludicrous. Just as liking to shop does not somehow make you a ditz. Making the choice to shop is making a choice to embrace that individual want and embracing that individual want—especially in something as harmless as shopping, seriously—isn’t bad at all.
What we should be teaching girls isn’t that shopping, makeup, and pink things are bad; what we should be teaching girls is to be individual and brave with that individuality. And if shopping is their individual passion, that’s fine. But if shopping is their passion because someone tells them it should be—or, equally, if shopping isn’t their passion because someone tells them it shouldn’t be—that is poisonous.
Femmephobia is poisonous, and Disney is breeding this. Rapidly. The next time your wifi is down and you’re forced to watch a show with your little sister, I implore you: watch. Once you start noticing it, it never seems to go away.
This is very interesting. I like the colour pink, I think shopping is fun, I wear dresses and skirts literally every day, and at the same time I do consider myself a feminist. For some reason people tend to take me less seriously because of this.
My dentist sounded a bit perplexed when I asked him if he had some molars lying around and if I could have them.
Especially when suddenly bees.
If you are on my team, send me an ask (I don’t bite, unless you’re into that).
#white girl problems
I am going crazy.
This is me right now:
No more coffee for me.
