Fangirls Around the Web: May 30, 2013
It’s been a busy month with Star Wars Weekends at Disney, but we don’t want to forget to shine the spotlight on heroines and their fangirls spotted around the web!
Ashley Eckstein ended up with a few Rebellious fangirls in her signing booth at Disney’s Hollywood Studios last weekend when the Lady Rogues debuted their Endor costumes. It really is the Year of the Fangirl! Ask Ellen’s latest post at Her Universe talks about why The Clone Wars isn’t just for kids. The Lady Rogues have been to almost all of the Behind the Force shows, featuring voice actors from The Clone Wars at Star Wars Weekends, and they can attest to plenty of adults in the audience.
Year of the Fangirl contributor Amy Ratcliffe wrote a heartwarming blog post for Mother’s Day at the Star Wars Blog. And for other ways fangirls share their fandom excitement, check out the latest Fangirls of the Day: Shea, Shelby, Shelby, Stacy and Lilly, Kristen, Becky, Venezia, Nicole, Jen, Vanessa, Megan, Lexi, Juliet, Mackenzie, Melody, Marie, Teresa, Autumn, Cookie, Onezumi, Delaney, Pam, Faith, and Leia.
Rebecca Pahle at TheMarySue links to an outstanding TED Talk by Jackson Katz, Ph.D, discussing gender violence and the problems created when men fail to speak out against it. Along similar lines, kudos to U.S. Representative Jackie Speier from California for forcing the Department of the Defense and Facebook to finally take action, after allowing it to stand for three years, against a Facebook page operated by members of the Marines with content denigrating and offensive to women.
While some believe women as warriors as a relatively new concept, our Jedi Historian Priya passed along the link to a fascinating article by Kameron Hurley challenging the conventional narrative that women haven’t always played a role in fighting wars. From a more humorous and fictional angle, the title of Emily Asher-Perrin’s blog post at Tor.com speaks for itself: It’s Time to Retire “Boob Plate” Armor. Because It Would Kill You.
While fictional ladies who pack a wallop are being featured more on the big and little screens, the picture on the other side of the camera doesn’t seem to be catching up. Pahle also shares comments from Sony Pictures boss Amy Pascal about obstacles for female directors in Hollywood.
The most important thing in the job that we do here is to make movies about women where they are characters that have consequences in the story. They can be villains, they can be protagonists, I don’t care. But their movements, their actions, what they do in the plot has to actually matter. And that’s the most important thing, because young girls coming up are going to see that they matter that your not an appendage to someone else—that you’re not married to the person, not their sister or friend or girlfriend, you actually are the plot.
So how about some women who do matter to the plot? Bill Silvia blogs about why Pepper Potts is the heroine of Iron Man 3. The New York Daily News featured Alice Eve and Zoe Saldana in Star Trek Into Darkness. In television, the L.A. Times Hero Complex reports that The CW is further redeveloping their Wonder Woman television show. And thanks to Mary for pointing out a great feature on The Big Bang Theory actress and real-life scientist Miyam Bialik encouraging girls to pursue STEM careers.
Slashfilm reports on Merida from Brave‘s officially crowning as the eleventh Disney Princess. Kay shared a link to Noah Berlatsky’s excellent article in The Atlantic calling for a more expansive definition of princess in storytelling.
The point isn’t to create a single perfect role model, be it Merida or Wonder Woman or Cimorene or Cinderella. The point is to give girls, and for that matter boys, the chance to see femininity not solely as a prison to inhabit or escape, but as a story that can be told in lots of ways.
Author Maureen Johnson wrote a great blog post at Huffington Post about the continuing problem of derogatory perceptions of and commentary about books written by and for women. Be sure not to miss the “coverflip” slideshow included with the post, reimagining the cover art to well-known books if the author had been the other gender. And author John Scalzi writes about his recent experience of feeling welcomed and included as man and honoree at the RT Booklovers’ Convention, dominated by romance novels and women attendees, and wonders why the experience of so many women at male-dominated comics and genre conventions is too often the opposite.
Tricia Barr took her understanding of brand management and marketing, mixed it with a love of genre storytelling, and added a dash of social media flare to create FANgirl Blog, where she discusses Star Wars, fandom, and strong female characters. She also writes about Star Wars for Random House’s science fiction and fantasy blog Suvudu.com and Star Wars Insider magazine and is a contributor for Her Universe’s Year of the Fangirl.
In her spare time, Tricia puts the finishing touches on her first novel, Wynde. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
For updates on all things FANgirl follow @FANgirlcantina on Twitter or like FANgirl Zone on Facebook.
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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