Fangirls Around the Web: August 9, 2012
On Monday, Lisa Granshaw of The Look for The TODAY Show wrote a great article, Geek girls demand — and receive — recognition in fashion world. She discusses the influence of Her Universe, ThinkGeek, Etsy, and other venues where female fans are asserting their purchasing power.
It also helps that companies like Her Universe are proving the stereotypes wrong. According to Eckstein, a number of companies told her that female fans just aren’t interested in and don’t buy science fiction and similarly themed merchandise. It is the primary claim she’s striving to debunk. “We said we’ll prove you wrong,” asserted the actress, “and we did.”
The lack of faith in the female fans as consumer isn’t unique to the area of clothing, but stretches into books and comics. Hopefully as geek merchandise sales flourish, this will help bolster the publishers’ faith in female readers.
At Blog Full of Words, Megan Crouse raises an interesting point: whether Aaron Allston used some elements of Mercy Kill to make a subtle commentary on sexualization and objectification of characters in genre storytelling. I won’t give it away – you’ll have to go read her post (and Mercy Kill!) for yourself.
Jedi News featured the news that the original director of Brave, Brenda Chapman, has left Disney-Pixar to join Lucasfilm. Could a female-centered animated feature film or more television shows be in the works?
On Tuesday, GeekGirlCon posted a great description of how Geek Girls support one another at the convention, and beyond. I hope all geek girls can take away the beauty of this message, because working together we are stronger.
And as GeekGirlCon ‘12 approaches in just a few days, we want to dissect what it means for geek girls to support one another. We believe there is an important underlying message at the core of this phrase—one that emphasizes support over cattiness, encouragement over judgment, collaboration over competition.
Women and girls today live in a society where they are constantly encouraged to care about how they look rather than what they know or what they do. Much of mainstream television showcases female relationships where women compete with one another, attack or belittle one another, or otherwise get ahead by undercutting other women. Other media and advertising bombard us with messages that our bodies aren’t good enough, that we aren’t whole without larger bra sizes, smaller tummies, or perfect skin.
It is no surprise these constant messages impact our behavior. Women can also be harsh critics of other women.
This week’s Fangirls Around the Web is a bit shorter than usual. I’m off to GeekGirlCon, where I’m sure I’ll spot tons of real life heroines that we can feature next week!
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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