Viva la Feminista

He left evidence along the way like pieces of bread crumbs. Angel's curse, that Wonder Woman script, and Black Widow as a Hulk pacifier. I saw it. I acknowledged it, but I still saw Joss Whedon as a feminist. "My feminism is not perfect. No one's is!" I would cry. But over the weekend I cried for yet another loss in the battle for men to be included in feminism . Buffy arrived in my life at the tail end of my college years. She took the baton from Xena to fulfill my need for feminist television. As a pop culture junkie I was desperate to watch something that not just validated my world view but also most importantly did not make me feel bad for being overweight, for liking to hang out in a library, and yes even just wanting to have fun despite the weight of the world on my shoulders. The series finale will always be the best finale ever. It depicted what I feel is the true spirit of feminism - that we are in this together. That together we kick the patriarchy...

In the fifth grade a few of my friends & I wanted to feel connected. We decided to always were jean jackets and call ourselves a gang. Of course our teacher stepped in and said it was ok to want to band together, but not call ourselves a gang. She never fully explained it, or I have forgotten, but it was clear that as working class kids, most of us Latin@, that calling ourselves a gang was not cool.at.all. But while we couldn't call ourselves a gang, we still stuck together until we grew apart. Nevertheless I would continue to want to organize my groups of friends into tight circles. That is why when I watched Ovarian Psycos I was emotional. While my working class upbringing is far from the life we see in this new documentary, that sense of wanting to create your own family struck me to my core. What we get in this documentary are tales of young women seeking to strengthen their community by banding together, riding their bikes around LA, and being bad ass. Ovarian Psycos ...

Credit: Ron Groeper The first feature documentary about Maya Angelou, American Masters – Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, premieres nationwide Tuesday, February 21 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) during Black History Month as part of the 31st season of THIRTEEN’s American Masters series. PBS Distribution will release the film on DVD the same day, with additional bonus features, and on Digital HD February 22. Most people know Angelou as a writer, but this documentary showcases all of her geniuses in literature, speaking, acting, signing, and dancing. The best part of a full-length documentary on Maya Angelou are the moments when she is reciting a poem while footage of the world runs. This documentary is touching, but most importantly it is funny. Angelou's laughter rings throughout the film. It wraps around your heart like a warm hug...just the type of hug we need during these dark times. Seriously though, for progressives and feminists, these are dark days. Days w...

  Issa Rae gained wide recognition through an honest look at life in her YouTube series, “The Misadventures of AWKWARD Black Girl.” This weekend Rae’s HBO series Insecure debuts and you really shouldn't miss it. Insecure introduces us to Issa Dee as a late-20s single woman in a dead-end relationship and possibly dead-end job. But it is the awkwardness of Issa’s human interactions that are the star of the show. From her half-assed way of breaking up with her utterly unromantic boyfriend to her spectacular fail at a new guy, Issa is living up to the show’s name. Issa's bestie, Molly, who appears to have it all together, doesn't. It's their friendship that will carry this show through the exploration of being modern-day Black women. The scene that best exhibits the brilliance of Insecure 's writing team and the promise of the show is when Issa and her coworkers are brainstorming at the nonprofit. Despite being a nonprofit that works with youth of color Issa ...

Kerry Washington (Credit: Frank Masi/courtesy of HBO) Twenty-five years ago the country, if not the world, were flung into a crash course on sexual harassment. A staffer’s call to a legal professor in Oklahoma ignited a fire that has yet to be extinguished. That professor was of course Anita F. Hill and that call asked her if she knew anything about her former boss Clarence Thomas that should be known before his confirmation hearing to join the U.S. Supreme Court. What came next is still hotly debated and is now a dramatized movie on HBO starring Kerry Washington as Hill, Wendell Pierce as Thomas and Greg Kinnear as then-Senator Joe Biden sporting an excellent accent. Confirmation dives right into the intrigue and suspense of how does the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee handle the discovery that a number of young women claim to have been harassed by Thomas. Considering that we know the outcome of the hearings as Justice Thomas just asked his first question in a decade from ...

On Friday American Masters premieres Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl . In Chicago it will air at 9:30 PM. Everyone else, check your local listings. I haven't had time to preview this documentary for a review, but I am excited for this! When I was growing up, much of the music in our house was country and western music. My first concert was seeing Kenny Rogers. We watched Hee Haw and Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters. Loretta Lynn was everything back then. I did not realize how revolutionary she was until I was older. I do remember not quite understanding how popular culture reduced women in country music to "Stand By Your Man," when I knew them by Loretta, Dolly and Barbara. If you need evidence of Loretta's feminist ways, take a peek at the clip below. Then check out the full documentary Friday night. EDITED TO ADD: It has come to my attention that Loretta is a Trump supporter . My heart is crushed. More evidence that even bad ass women are not pe...

No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice, when a small group of Mexican immigrant women sued county doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This moving (seriously, have tissues at hand!) documentary about the human rights abuses inflicted on Latinas in the 1960s and 1970s will have you up in arms. My friend and colleague, Elena R. Gutiérrez did a lot of the research work to help put together this puzzle. In a blog post about the film she says: “No Más Bebés” also shows that socially grounded attitudes relating to ethnicity and gender can play a role in the provision of reproductive health care services; a message that is important for us to hear today. In my own research I show that the abusive practices that occurred at LACMC were not only shaped by debates on population control, but also by co...

B................. I................. G................. .................. S................. P................. O................. I................. L................. E................. R................. S................. .................. B................. E................. W................. A................. R................. E................. .................. One of the biggest take home messages from my meeting at Mattel was that according to their research, girls want their superheroes to also save the villain. Jessica Jones blows that out of the water. Ok, sure, few of us are going to have our kids watch "Jessica Jones" as it is quite violent, deals with rape and PTSD and has some hot and heavy sex scenes. But I know that many of us comic book geeks allow our kids to idolize superheroes that they don't really know the whole story for. Take for example Xena. My daughter loved Xena well before she ever watched an episode. Di...

Dear Jane, I know life doesn't seem to be going your way all the time, but I want you to know you are the best. While most viewers may be fixated on your agonizing decision between Michael and Rafael, I am all in for your story. I envy your relationship with your mom and grandma. My mom has been gone for 12 years, her mom 19 years. I miss them. I don't kid myself to think we had that type of relationship you have with yours. But I love how it seems like it not you against the world, but the Villanueva mujeres against the world! But I am really loving how you are dealing with the push and pull of being a mom and grad student so well. Your breaking down at the baby play group as you were deciding on going back to school was so real. Then tonight's talk with Rafael about it being selfish to stop pumping even after Mateo has weened from breast feeding. Then your WOOHOO about ending pumping. I was truly teary-eyed. THEN when you were totally honest with Petra about th...

SPOILERS AHEAD! . . . . . . Super spoilers! . . . . .  . After three episodes of "Supergirl" I am still waiting for Kara to reach her full potential. As I mentioned in my review after the first episode I would hope that the writers would get past the fact she is a woman by now. But no. Three full episodes full of Kara complaining that villains snark about her being a "girl," the endless comparisons to Superman (ok, kinda expected) and almost everyone waiting for her to call Superman for help. And of course he does swoop in to save her. Why? Because James freakin' Olsen thinks that she can't handle a villain that once kicked Clark's butt. All this to set up Kara kicking said villain's butt herself and giving Superman a chance to chat, "I guess this was a job for Supergirl!" I see what you did there, Clark! While I totally get that Supergirl is going to be compared to Superman, I think three episodes of her blunting figh...

If you don't know who Tig Notaro is, you may recall hearing about a stand-up comic who opened up a show with, " Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. " That was Tig Notaro. I haven't kept up with her career and appearances on "Inside Amy Schumer" or "Transparent," so getting a chance to preview her new HBO special, "Tig Notaro: Boyish Girl Interrupted," was exciting. Notaro's style of comedy is slyly smart. Sometimes her jokes take a moment longer to get to the kick than you expect. But for the most part, they stick their landing. She laughs about her inability to hang in Vegas, which all the introverts will LOVE, not to mention how she utterly bombed in Vegas all the while inadvertently wearing a mustache. Notaro also reminds us that sometimes the funniest moments are those that we make as we seek out the perfect man or planning for our burials. Her comedy is personal and considering that this includes laughing at her history o...

Because I launched the #365FeministSelfie project, I have been asked a few times what I thought of "Selfie," the new TV show on ABC . And I finally had a chance to watch it tonight, after a fairly boring episode of "Once Upon A Time," we'll discuss that show's fall from awesomeness another time. Back to "Selfie." As most of the comments at "The Mary Sue" said, the first half of the show was sooooo hard to get through. It was seriously painful to watch as I could not feel anything for any of the characters. But the last half...now this is where we were able to see some real action. There were a few "really?" moments such as a certain character living in a glass house. Come on! What struck me is that the premise of the show is completely the opposite of #365FeministSelfie . Almost two weeks ago we rolled past the 265 mark meaning that we're into the last 100 days of this project. The premise of "Selfie" i...

This week's installment of espnW's Nine for IX documentary series is, "Let Them Wear Towels," the story of a small group of pioneering women sports reporters who dared to enter the locker room. How bad was it when women decided they too wanted to report on the goings on in sports? My childhood hero, Dave Kingman once threw buckets of water on Jane Gross and cussed her out. Hey, I wasn't even four when he came to Chicago to play for my Cubbies, so I forgive myself. Then there was a time when a hockey player lifted & escorted out another woman reporter. The old boys club was still located in the locker room, so most men in sports did what they could to maintain that power differential. Consider what a sports reporter has to accomplish in their daily reports and you can see where the power struggle fits in. If a player blows a save in the ninth inning (something us Cubs fans are far too familiar with), you have to ask what happened. And that asking usu...

Venus Vs. Premiere Date | July 2nd at 8:00PM ET on ESPN People, pop the popcorn, grab your sodas and get comfy because "Venus Vs." is a must watch film. And no, you don't have to be a sports fan. Let me tell you why. I love tennis, but I don't follow it very closely. When the Williams sisters arrived on the tennis scene, I fell in love. They were brassy and definitely not "country club" players. In Serena William's memoir , she discussed some of the racism that the sisters have experienced at the professional level. In "Venus Vs." this racism is addressed via the infamous "hair bead" situation and other incidents. But most of this film focuses on Venus' decision to take on the decades long battle to obtain equal prize money for women players at Wimbledon. When Billie Jean King won Wimboldon in 1968, her prize money was equal to 37% of the men's pay package. In 2005, Venus joins the off-and-on fight for equal money. And ...

Loreta Velazquez was no normal little girl. Even as the young daughter of Cuban aristocrats, she railed against the injustice of being a girl in a world that privileged boys. Her story is told in " Rebel," a new episode of "Voces" on PBS , premiering Friday, May 24th. Velazquez was sent to New Orleans as a child to live with an aunt, who was supposed to "finish" turning Velazquez into a proper young lady. Alas, love had a different plan. How this headstrong Cuban woman went from eloping with a Texan Army officer to becoming a Confederate soldier, then a spy for the Union is filled with tragedy and yearning. Velazquez fulfills her dream of following in the steps of her idol, Joan of Arc, but quickly realizes how unglamorous war actually is. What is known of Velazquez we know from her 1876 memoir A Woman in Battle . She published it a few years after the Civil War ends and it is scandalous! So scandalous that the book is quickly labeled a hoax. Som...

Perhaps you might remember a Kickstarter from last year that was about Wonder Woman ? Well, the final product is finally here! And it kicks ass. "Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines" by Vaquera Productions premieres on Independent Lens on PBS April 15th (check your local listings) and it is a much watch. Ella, my 9-year-old daughter, and I watched the preview DVD together on a Saturday afternoon during a study break. Bottomline? We loved it. I grew up on the Linda Carter "Wonder Women," so I enjoyed learning about Wonder Woman's history. I knew she was created to fight the Nazis - that you could get from the show, but I also picked up that elsewhere. But I did not know, or forgot, that Wonder Woman was stripped of her powers at one point! And other lady comic book heroes turned away from saving the day to pining over men. Talk about feminist backlash! Along the way, we not only learn more about our favorite Amazon princess (Sorry,...