Somewhere Different Now

I was in a coffee shop downtown trying to get some writing done as the vendors started setting up for the big weekly farmers market on the street outside.  In honor of Halloween some downtown businesses, including the coffee shop I was writing in, were giving out candy to trick-or-treating children on farmers market night, so once that started there was a steady stream of small children in costume. After watching for a while I started to get curious about exactly how prevalent princess costumes were among the girls, so I started writing down the costumes for all the girls who came in for maybe an hour and a half.

Obviously these data are not representative of the country or even my little city, just the location I happened to be.  I counted only children, not older teens or adults (those who looked under 13 or so), who were presenting as female (not including children in hoods and masks or other costumes that made gender impossible to guess).  I didn't ask the kids or parents what they were supposed to be, so there was a certain amount of guesswork in figuring out what to call the costumes.  Here are some figures from the results.

Total girls: 92
Princesses (both identifiable Disney princess characters and fancy princess-style dresses): 38 (41.3% of total).
Most popular costume: Elsa from Frozen by a mile, 14 girls (15.2% of all the girls)
Superheroines: 10 (10.8%).  Includes four each of Wonder Woman and Supergirl, one Batgirl, and one Captain America in a tutu.
Animals: 5
Specific characters other than princesses and superheros: 4
Cultural/Historical: 8
Offensive cultural appropriation (a subcategory of cultural/historical): 2 white girls dressed as Native Americans (note that the parents are the ones who should know better here).  The only Day of the Dead facepainting I saw was on people who appeared to be Latina.
Mythical/Supernatural: 12
Occupations: 5  (2 pirates, one each of astronaut, boxer, and police officer)
Objects: 5
Quirky dress/Unidentifiable: 5
My personal favorite costumes: Wednesday Addams (on a wee toddler), an Astronaut, the TARDIS, the aforementioned Captain America in a tutu.

There is nothing wrong with liking princesses.  However, I do think there is a problem in the messages our culture is sending little girls when over 41% of them are being dressed as or choosing to be princesses, far more than any other category of costumes.  There are so many other things to want to be beyond the princess attributes of beautiful and kinda spunky, yet that is overwhelmingly the narrative pushed on little girls.  

I do find it interesting and perhaps encouraging that the overwhelmingly most popular princess right now, Elsa, has no romance plotline.  She may wear beautiful dresses and live in a castle, but it occurs to me that her story is almost more like a superhero story than the stories of many of the other Disney girls.  Elsa's story is about feeling different and isolated, trying to hide a true identity behind a public persona, finding one's power, screwing up monumentally with that power, and finally taking responsibility and finding acceptance as the unique, powerful person she is.  In contrast, her sister Anna, who is made out to be the audience POV character most of the movie and has romantic plotlines in addition to her sisterly love plotline, is much less popular.  I saw four girls as Anna, but they were all in the company of an Elsa.  Either only girls with a sister (or perhaps certain close friends) identify as Anna, or nobody wants to be Anna and they only get persuaded to be her as part of a set after losing the argument about who can be Elsa.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that I hope that in 2018 a massive surge of Captain Marvels makes Princess Sparklefists the princess of choice. Little girls deserve to fly.

I read a fascinating blog post by nightsky (ellipticcurve  on LJ) about the costuming trend for femme!Doctors and what it might mean.  I was a big fan of the femme!Doctor costumes I saw at the last few cons I went to, especially this latest Gallifrey, but couldn't really articulate why I loved them aside from the beauty of many of the costumes, the playfulness, and perhaps the chance for women to play the Doctor without having to disguise themselves as men.  Nightsky explores how the femme costumes play with concepts, looks at some history, and concludes with some great points about how femme costumes can be a way for women to assert our belonging in geekdom without sacrificing femininity to act like one of the boys.  Plus, there are nifty costume pictures!

Prior to me seeing this blog post but strangely related, my father and I got into a discussion of women we think would be good in the role of the Doctor.  After mentioning Emma Thompson, his initial top choice was Holly Hunter (with the point that if the Doctor was switching genders, a Georgia accent was not that big a stretch).  I really haven't seen Hunter in enough stuff to comment on that casting choice.  My list of fantasy casting for a female Doctor, without regard for the likelihood that said actresses would actually be willing to take the role, is as follows:

4. Kate Winslet:  Because she is just generally awesome and should be in everything.  She's got great presence and acting range. I bet she could do a great Oncoming Storm mode.

3.  Sigourney Weaver:  This is a bit off the wall, since she is (a) American, and (b) mostly known for blow-'em-up action movies, but I think it would actually be amazing. She can do the serious acting in addition to the blowing up of aliens.  Galaxy Quest shows that she can also do comedy.  Also, I think it would be great stereotype-busting to have the first female Doctor be tough as nails.  She's older than any of the previous actors were when they took the role (yes, even Hartnell), but she's fit and gorgeous for her age. (Realistically, I'd want a British actress as the Doctor, but I still kinda like this idea.)

2.  Catherine Tate:  This was a rumor prior to the casting of Matt Smith, though probably a rumor based utterly on fannish wishful thinking.  Sure, it would need some crazy sci-fi explanations for why the Doctor regenerated to look like Donna, but it would be brilliant enough to be worth it.   DoctorDonna FTW!   Raise your hand if you can come up with a reason why the Doctor could end up looking like Donna (or Donna could end up AS the Doctor) that makes as much sense as some of the stuff the show gives us.  I bet everyone has her/his hand up now.  Also, ginger!

And my number 1 choice for a woman Doctor is...

Helena Bonham Carter.  She has a wonderful, very Doctor-ish quirky energy.  She's hilarious but also capable of the serious acting when need be.  A little bit of madness is definitely an asset in the role.  She's old enough for gravitas but still gorgeous and charismatic.  Her idiosyncratic goth/bohemian style could translate into a really cool Doctor costume.  After hearing this list, my dad shifted Helena Bonham Carter to the top of his. 

What about you, flist?  What women would you cast as the Doctor? Assume no budget constraints.

Also on the subject of Teh Wimmins, flickr user caseface123 posted a neat photography project where she asked people of various ages and genders to make a sign about what feminism means to them and then shot their photographs with the signs.  Some are positive, some are negative, all are fascinating for what they say about people.  My favorite is below the cut:
( photo under here )

-A federal judge found that a hospital was within its rights to allow a woman to die without her family at her side because the family in question was the woman's female partner and their adopted children.   The surviving woman wasn't even kept properly updated on her partner's condition.  How do people working at a hospital have so little sense of compassion?  This is why marriage equality matters; legal documents like power of attorney lack the simplicity and force of a marriage license. 

-Thirty senators apparently don't give a damn about rape victims.  They voted against a bill to prohibit the Pentagon from doing business with contractors that forbid their employees to sue over cases of rape.  This new law was aimed at Halliburton and its subsidiaries, and it was necessitated by numerous serious complaints.   The bill passed, thank goodness, but it utterly appalls me that nearly a third of the Senate, including John McCain apparently feel that gang rape (and suppression of the evidence thereof) is just a minor problem that can be solved in arbitration without any possible recourse to courts.  In this Guardian article about the bill, it says that reasons from the senators who voted against the bill include "claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers." NO.  These are government contractors; the government has every right to say that they won't do business with these companies if they don't keep to appropriate ethical standards, such as doing everything possible to prevent rape, prosecuting rapists, and not boiling kittens alive.  The government would certainly care if they were doing something like employing undocumented immigrants.

EPIC  FAIL, America.