Most of you didn't know that I have OnDemand service at my house, or that episodes of this high school sitcom called 10 Things I Hate About You are back on there.
To fill you in, the series is a loose adaptation of a movie by the same name and both are loosely based on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.
The main characters, Kat and Bianca Stratford, are fifteen and sixteen year old sisters who recently moved to California with their widowed father, an obstetrician named Walter who apparently thinks that abstinence-only sex education is a good idea.
Kat is the older sister, an opinionated feminist (because, you know, women who stand up for themselves = shrewish, angry, unlikeable, undateable, and irrational) who I thought would be my favorite character. That assumption ended when I discovered that Kat is racist, selfish, transphobic, kind of pretentious, rude to people for no reason, emotionally neglectful to her best friend, and assumes that all Muslim women who wear burka are meek and helpless and need her little white girl ass to save them from themselves. And she slut shames other girls, her own sister included. She has all the emotional and moral maturity of a 13-year-old...wait, no, worse actually because I've met some awesome 13-year-olds. She was obviously created to be a Straw Feminist trope and it's so bad.
So I hate her. Even though she does look so hot that I got weak in the knees in episode 18 when she's getting ready for her date with Patrick (and you'd think he'd have better taste, because he's actually a really cool guy and I feel like we'd be friends if he were real).
Meanwhile, younger sister Bianca is one of my favorite characters. She can be incredibly sweet and caring, is probably the most non-judgmental character on the show, is ambitious without being manipulative or deceitful, wears her heart on her sleeve, and will fight you if you're rude to her or her loved ones. She has a boyfriend, Joey, who I don't like for some reason, and she worked her ass off to become a cheerleader.
Bianca Stratford is a fucking cinnamon roll who is entirely too good for this world and reminds me of this girl I had a crush on for over a year when I was in high school and might still have feelings for (it's complicated). So that, you know, might have something to do with why I like her. *cough*
The reason I'm talking about this is that it made me think of the way women and girls are depicted in children's media and how those depictions condition girls to see themselves and other women. Like how "evil" versions of female characters are usually more scantily clad than "good" versions, how they're flirtatious toward women even though the "good" version is straight.
How teen movies with female leads pit female characters against each other, usually for the sake of some boring guy's attention. How the protagonist in these movies is almost always tomboyish without actually being GNC (because god forbid) and has one close female friend at the most, while the antagonist almost always wears makeup, has multiple female friends, is a cheerleader, and is hinted - if not explicitly shown - to be sexually active. How they immediately see each other as competition, as if that's just how teenage girls automatically are - needlessly mean and spiteful. How any show of solidarity, friendship, or affection between two girls is either to help one of them get a boyfriend or to hurt another girl. How all of this conditions trans girls to deny their gender and hate themselves, GNC and nonbinary girls to distance themselves from other girls under the assumption that other girls are inherently evil and hate them (the fact that I, a nonbinary butch girl, am bringing this up is not an excuse for cis and/or feminine girls to pull a "#NotAllCisPeople, "#NotAllFeminineGirls), and sapphic girls to distance themselves from other women and mistake their love of girls for envy and hatred.
That's starting to change. The T*witches movies were always pretty great, for example - two WoC leads with magical fucking powers joining together to save their home and family. But this does nothing for wlw, as the only major relationships between women in the movies are familial and the only romances the female characters have are with men. And how many movies are there that aren't like these? How much damage have they done to the self-esteem of impressionable young girls who viewed them?
And it's not just movies either. TV shows do this too, and they're often racist in their execution of it.
Like how in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, there are only three WoC characters who are featured in more than one episode: London, an Asian girl who is coded as neurodivergent and is vapid, spoiled, selfish, and shallow, Nia, a Sapphire trope, and Barbara, a stereotypical Asian nerd who exists solely to be the girlfriend of the white male lead - yet the female character we're most encouraged to like, emulate, and find relatable is Maddie, a white Christian whose Irish Catholic heritage is demonstrated in multiple episodes. But it's only acknowledged in one episode that Barbara is Japanese, and even then the episode isn't about her - it's about Cody trying to impress her grandmother. The first time London is shown having anything to do with her Thai background in the Suite Life universe, it's well into the spinoff series and a big part of the episode is about how London's white best friend Bailey, who is portrayed in much the same way Maddie had been, feels more at home in Thailand than she does. I'm not even sure if Nia or her uncle Mr. Moseby are ever actually called black or African-American, by themselves or any other character. Nia, the only black character with a stereotypically black hairstyle and the only one who ever uses AAVE, takes over a white character's job soon after her first appearance. And we're supposed to sympathize with said white character when she immediately wants it back after having been gone for months.
Or how the two female protagonists of Hannah Montana were white girls who were shown as funny, likeable (apparently? I watched an old episode of this show last year and Miley came across as kind of a brat honestly), intelligent, and hardworking. Meanwhile, Amber and Ashley are girls of color who are constantly shown as mean, spiteful, shallow, insipid bullies. Only Amber is ever given any emotional depth, and only in one episode, and only to make Miley look good because she deigned to not humiliate her in front of millions of people. The only other female character of color on the show is Roxy, who is only a recurring character and who embodies the Mammy trope.
In Danny Phantom, every female protagonist is white. Maddie. Sam. Jazz. Danielle. And Sam has no female friends besides Jazz (who she mostly hangs out with because of her friendship with/crush on Jazz's brother). Meanwhile, Paulina and Valerie are the only women of color. They're both far more sexualized than Sam is and their main roles in the show are to serve as villains and antagonists when they're not being love interests to a white boy. And Valerie's anger at Phantom is demonized. Think about that. The token black girl is rightfully angry because a white person, who already had a bad reputation and was understandably believed to be a threat by most of the populace of their hometown, caused her family to lose their money and home. And we're not supposed to sympathize with her when she fights back and seeks vengeance. Then the next girl her ex-boyfriend dates is rich and white.
I'm not saying any of this, any of these shows, were intentionally racist or sexist, but we all have internalized biases and the connotations are there.
So after all I realized all of this, lines of poetry started flitting through my mind. And the reason I broke my hiatus again is that I felt like sharing them.
Unapologetically Art
I want girls in screens to be unapologetically art
Beautiful -
Simply because they say they are
Protectors -
Of their sisters
Comrades -
In solidarity
Warriors -
Against injustice
Lovers -
Kissing to the whisper of Sappho's words
Diverse -
With bodies of all colors,
All sizes,
Missing pieces,
Riding as queens on wheeled thrones
Laughing -
Because women can create joy
Flawed -
Because they are human
I want an army of girls in screens
To be as much unapologetically art
As the girls who watch them
And it's not just movies either. TV shows do this too, and they're often racist in their execution of it.
Like how in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, there are only three WoC characters who are featured in more than one episode: London, an Asian girl who is coded as neurodivergent and is vapid, spoiled, selfish, and shallow, Nia, a Sapphire trope, and Barbara, a stereotypical Asian nerd who exists solely to be the girlfriend of the white male lead - yet the female character we're most encouraged to like, emulate, and find relatable is Maddie, a white Christian whose Irish Catholic heritage is demonstrated in multiple episodes. But it's only acknowledged in one episode that Barbara is Japanese, and even then the episode isn't about her - it's about Cody trying to impress her grandmother. The first time London is shown having anything to do with her Thai background in the Suite Life universe, it's well into the spinoff series and a big part of the episode is about how London's white best friend Bailey, who is portrayed in much the same way Maddie had been, feels more at home in Thailand than she does. I'm not even sure if Nia or her uncle Mr. Moseby are ever actually called black or African-American, by themselves or any other character. Nia, the only black character with a stereotypically black hairstyle and the only one who ever uses AAVE, takes over a white character's job soon after her first appearance. And we're supposed to sympathize with said white character when she immediately wants it back after having been gone for months.
Or how the two female protagonists of Hannah Montana were white girls who were shown as funny, likeable (apparently? I watched an old episode of this show last year and Miley came across as kind of a brat honestly), intelligent, and hardworking. Meanwhile, Amber and Ashley are girls of color who are constantly shown as mean, spiteful, shallow, insipid bullies. Only Amber is ever given any emotional depth, and only in one episode, and only to make Miley look good because she deigned to not humiliate her in front of millions of people. The only other female character of color on the show is Roxy, who is only a recurring character and who embodies the Mammy trope.
In Danny Phantom, every female protagonist is white. Maddie. Sam. Jazz. Danielle. And Sam has no female friends besides Jazz (who she mostly hangs out with because of her friendship with/crush on Jazz's brother). Meanwhile, Paulina and Valerie are the only women of color. They're both far more sexualized than Sam is and their main roles in the show are to serve as villains and antagonists when they're not being love interests to a white boy. And Valerie's anger at Phantom is demonized. Think about that. The token black girl is rightfully angry because a white person, who already had a bad reputation and was understandably believed to be a threat by most of the populace of their hometown, caused her family to lose their money and home. And we're not supposed to sympathize with her when she fights back and seeks vengeance. Then the next girl her ex-boyfriend dates is rich and white.
I'm not saying any of this, any of these shows, were intentionally racist or sexist, but we all have internalized biases and the connotations are there.
So after all I realized all of this, lines of poetry started flitting through my mind. And the reason I broke my hiatus again is that I felt like sharing them.
Unapologetically Art
I want girls in screens to be unapologetically art
Beautiful -
Simply because they say they are
Protectors -
Of their sisters
Comrades -
In solidarity
Warriors -
Against injustice
Lovers -
Kissing to the whisper of Sappho's words
Diverse -
With bodies of all colors,
All sizes,
Missing pieces,
Riding as queens on wheeled thrones
Laughing -
Because women can create joy
Flawed -
Because they are human
I want an army of girls in screens
To be as much unapologetically art
As the girls who watch them
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