Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didnt’ care if the whole world looked.
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked.
Bea Arthur was an amazing actress, comedienne, and feminist. Growing up in the 1970s, Maude was one of my favorite sitcoms. Of course, I couldn’t have understood at the time exactly how groundbreaking it was.
The Feministing blog has collected several favorite Bea Arthur moments, including a scene from the groundbreaking and tear-jerking two-part episode where Maude discovers she is pregnant at 47, and faces a difficult decision.
The decision, officially agreed to in March prior to the layoffs, has been made to cut the Cast Member position working in the shop outside Splash Mountain that screens every picture taken of riders going over the big drop in their logs. The photos are sold at a little stand near the exit with the longest store title in Disneyland, “Professor Barnaby Owl’s Photographic Art Studio.” The Cast Members just call the place “Owl Photo,” and for the sake of brevity we will too.
Effective May 3rd at Owl Photo, there will no longer be anyone editing the obscene photos as “washed away” before they appear on both the screen next to the animatronic owl as your log approaches the end of the ride, as well as the exit viewing room with the half dozen large screens displaying the photos for sale at the nearby Owl Photo shop.
The Cast Members staffing the screening equipment for more than a decade, in a separate little room just past the exit, see some rather graphic scenes on the average summer day. Admittedly the numbers of young ladies (term used loosely in this case) who lift their tops for the cameras for their shot at Flash Mountain infamy has lessened over the years now that the word is out that editing of the photos is very strict at Disneyland. Not only are the CM’s looking for bared breasts, but they also catch people engaged in unsafe behavior and displaying lewd gestures.
After a user expressed concern that Bioware had “disallowed” the use of the terms “gay” and “lesbian” on the boards in a thread titled “GLBT discrimination in forums?” a Bioware forum moderator dropped in and posted this:
As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.
There are so many reasons for me to smile at Walt Disney World! But in the last couple years, there’s been one in particular that chokes me up every time I take the monorail past the Grand Floridian, as chronicled in this week’s Jentasmic! column at StudiosCentral:
… in years past, I’d feel bittersweet when we’d glide past the wedding chapel at the Grand Floridian, knowing that it was reserved only for opposite-sex couples. Same-sex couples could purchase some types of Fairy Tale Wedding plans, but not those most exposed to the public eye, such as the glass carriage ride through Disney property. These highly-prized opportunities were only available to those with valid wedding licenses, which the state of Florida reserves only for opposite-sex couples.
But for the last couple years now, when the announcer reminds me that “Couples may exchange vows in a fairy tale setting complete with a picturesque backdrop of Cinderella Castle,” I can smile wholeheartedly, knowing that Disney opened up all Fairy Tale Wedding packages to all couples in April of 2007, shortly after the gay news and commentary site AfterElton.com published an article critical of their previous policies. Does this change affect the experience that most Guests have when they visit Walt Disney World? I think not. I’d wager that the average Guest knows nothing of the controversy, much less its resolution. I suspect that very few same-sex marriages have been performed at the Grand Floridian wedding chapel, if the ratio of same-sex/opposite-sex weddings is anything like that of Massachusetts. (Bottom line is, after working through the initial backlog of same-sex couples who’d waited years or decades for marriage rights, there hasn’t been the flood of same-sex marriages that some had expected.) But it makes a big difference to this Guest, and I’m sure it matters to other queer people too, as well as our allies.
We still have a long way to go….same-sex marriage is legal in only 8% of US states. But that’s 8% more than just a few years ago, and sometimes when I see how far we’ve come I can’t help but well up.
I watched the movie Milk recently, and it really took me back to my childhood growing up outside San Francisco, and to my late teens coming out as queer in a fabulous group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered youth. I always find myself going back to Harvey Milk’s (perhaps apocryphal) kid from Altoona, Pennsylvania.
When I watched Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black accept their Academy Awards for their work on Milk, I thought of that kid in Altoona, and hoped she or he was watching, and heard that there are lots of Us’s, that there’s hope. Those acceptance speeches reached into far more living rooms than most newspapers do, nowadays.
And if it can give a kid hope to know that someone like her can be elected to public office, just think of how it feels to some isolated kid, or even a scared and closeted grownup, to know that someday they too could waltz their prince or princess through the Grand Floridian, and marry in the shadow of Cinderella’s Castle.
No, I didn’t ever think I’d type those words: Zac Efron Round-up. But it has become necessary.
First, I learn that the New York Times warns parents to be cautious of bringing girls to see 17 Again (scroll down to the bottom of the review). In response, the Feministing blog is spot on (spoiler alert):
After a quick plot synopsis (a dude’s life was ruined because he turned down a basketball scholarship after his girlfriend got pregnant), reviewer Manohla Dargis notes “the story’s obnoxious implications” are that “sex, meaning girls, can ruin your life.” She makes clear that the movie’s female characters are (surprise!) little more than simple stereotypes. So presumably this is what the “special girl warning” is referring to.
But if that is the case, doesn’t sexist content merit a warning for boys AND girls? The assumption that a negative portrayal of women will only affect girls is simply crazy. Young people of both genders are deeply affected by repeated sexist portrayals of women in movies, music, and culture more generally. Yes, it can have very different effects on boys and girls. But how is it worse for a girl to think of herself as having to choose between harpy or sex object than it is for a boy to view all women as harpies or sex objects?
Then, I see that apparently Efron’s got a bit of a bobblehead disorder, from Photoshop Disasters:
And finally, I stumble upon a thought-provoking video, “Who is Zac Efron and Why Isn’t He Black?” But unfortunately, I’m distracted by the fact that the Google ad in the crawl skips quickly from “Black Women White Men” to “Fly Hawaiian Airlines”, looking like a complete sentence informing me of the demographics of this airline’s customers, and then as much as I agree with many of Zennie Abraham’s comments, I’m lost to all critical discourse.
Officials in New Jersey are asking for the public’s help in recovering a stolen vehicle.
But as CBS station WCBS-TV found out, this is one cold case the likes of which you’ve probably never seen before.
“Uh, I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Belleville Police Capt. Mark Minichini said.
It seems a 7-foot tall and 8-foot long, 1,000-pound gold Cinderella carriage, a feature in the town’s annual Columbus Day Parade, has vanished into thin air. Stolen.
If you enjoy that trip around the Seven Seas Lagoon, or between Tomorrowland and Downtown Disney via Disney’s California Adventure, check out the excellent collection of photos and information about early monorails at Dark Roasted Blend.
Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.”
Children can already see the results of Ms. Peña’s scrutiny on Disney XD, a new cable channel and Web site (disney.go.com/disneyxd). It’s no accident, for instance, that the central character on “Aaron Stone” is a mediocre basketball player. Ms. Peña, 45, told producers that boys identify with protagonists who try hard to grow. “Winning isn’t nearly as important to boys as Hollywood thinks,” she said.
Actors have been instructed to tote their skateboards around with the bottoms facing outward. (Boys in real life carry them that way to display the personalization, Ms. Peña found.) The games portion of the Disney XD Web site now features prominent trophy cases. (It’s less about the level reached in the game and more about sharing small achievements, research showed.)
Creating a punch line about the need to extract information from “incommunicative boys” is left as an exercise for the reader.
None of this would likely have much affect on my family, given that we don’t happen to fall into traditional gender roles much (witness Princess Stitch). But if this “headquarters for boys” succeeds, it could mean some welcome trends for parents who complain that Disney Parks don’t have much to offer boys. I hope the researchers will also do some data-mining on Disney fan message boards, where the Disney Digerati have often clamored for boy-centric character meals, all-Villains meet-and-greets, and other events they feel would appeal to their sons.
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