Miss Representation - Documentary on women in media

Speed past the self-congrats ads for O Network and the back-patting of the director, once you get into the meat of the interviews with women in positions of power, it's interesting, and the stats certainly make you stand up and pay attention, it's not just about how images of women in media make us unhappy with our physicality (after all that's how you sell product) but it's about how this hinders our advance into the political arena and how as soon as women make any headway at all, the pushback is so strong.

Women create most of the blogging content online (about 80%) at least, so let's start harnessing this energy.

As a woman who writes fiction, how do I treat my female characters?

I don't make them an obstacle to my male/male OTP getting together

I make them fully realized, even if they are on the 'side of wrong' they have motivations that are reasonable.

I give them personalities, backstory, hopes, dreams

My women can be firefighters, policewomen, detectives, scientists, soldiers, but this does not negate their nurturing qualities, and I invest my male characters with nuturing qualities.

I try to populate my stories with women as coworkers, as friends, as lovers, mothers, sisters. even if this means creating OCs.

To my lasting regret, now that I have a daughter, I have yet to write a story with a female protagonist who carries the narrative.

Did you know about Marissa Alexander?

Marissa Alexander is the Florida mother and abused wife that fired a warning shot in her home to keep her husband, Rico Gray, from killing her –as he promised– and was sentenced to a mandatory 20 years in prison. The Stand Your Ground law that she thought would protect her did not…and she didn’t kill anyone. Her children were present and she was trying to protect herself.

She didn’t pursue her husband. She did not kill him. She had no prior record.

A jury convicted Marissa of aggravated assault after 12 minutes of deliberation. On May 11, 2012, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown stated the charges were overboard and labeled the case “institutional racism.”

Oh I was gonna read up on cults

Yay.

the things I do for fanfiction.