You'd better work it*

Project: UF!2Girls 3.0 (Still no viable title yet)

Wordcount: 27,797

Goal: 100,000 (approx.)

Deadline: July 31st

Reason For Stopping: Just reporting in. I'll get back to work right after I post this.

Exercise: None today.

Stimulants/Chemicals: None so far.

Musical Inspiration: Apply Some Pressure - Maximo Park; Killing for Love - Jose Gonzalez; Monster - The Automatic Automatic; The Way You Are - 46Bliss; The Round Dance of the Princesses - Stravinsky/Orchestra of the Kirov Opera; Dying Californian - Moira Smiley & Voco

Other Creative Activities: Nothing much

Reading Materials: Walls of the Universe - Paul Melko.

Darling du Jour: "The future is only for Heaven and the dead to know. I can tell you that you are important, and you must do well. Know that your enemies will wear many masks. Some will look like your friends. And some friends will look like enemies. I have learned this, above all else. You must always be in command. Even if it is only of yourself."

Mean Things: Trauma, vague unhelpful prophecies, attempted infanticide, attempted murder of a pregnant woman, being deprived of the ability to see or speak, rat-napping, impersonating the police, giving fake statements to fake police, being taunted about physical disfigurement, near-death experiences, being bitten by a rat

Things Learned/Discovered: Shifting POV is okay as long as you properly signal. Much like changing lanes or turning while driving. Put the blinker on, check your mirrors, and you're good to go.


*I promise I'm not turning into one of those people who post pretentiously obscure lyrics as inexplicable entry titles. It just seemed appropriate.

Meme!

I got this from fashionista_35.

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

These are the ones that she selected for me talk about:

( icons and explanations beneath the cut )

Something to discuss another day

Doing the meme from the previous entry brought up something that I'll one day get around to doing a full blown post on, which is why I have a love/hate with so called "chick flicks" and "chick lit". I want to make it clear that I separate this from the romance genre as a whole, because I do not consider "The Devil Wears Prada" to be equivalent to, say, Harlequin Romances or classics of the genre.

Chick lit and chick flicks are their own category, though they borrow heavily from some bits of the romance genre.

I think some films and books that fit this genre are very smart. Some are surprising. But my problem with the genre, especially as it's portrayed on covers is the attachment to upper class and upper middle class materialism. Often, expensive brand names (for instance, Prada) are part of the selling point, and there is an attachment, superficially or thematically, to commercialization.

The obsession with connecting women's issues and women's lives with shopping and designer names, with this, "oh, it's so hard trying to be a fabulous appletini-drinking, Gucci-wearing single girl in the big city" attitude makes the blue-collar, coupon-clipping, penny-pinching Southerner in me cringe.

I have that same issue with many of paranormal romance and urban fantasy heroines I read about. I find the thought that somehow possessing a vagina makes me more interested in clothes and makeup and shopping and designer duds offensive and maddening. Especially when I'm not there for the high heels, I'm there for the vampires and, essentially, it's either Fangs or GTFO for me when I'm reading.

Yes, some women like shoes, shopping, fashion. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the best women I know are total clothes horses. And I won't deny there's something nice about occasionally getting prettied up for a special event.

But shopping? Clothes? Fashion? Leather pants? They do not factor into my life in the stereotypical fashion. I own exactly three pairs of shoes. One pair of sandals. One pair of tennis shoes. And one pair of oversized shiny black flats that I stuff tissue into the ends of because they're wide enough but too long. The newest pair of these were my tennis shoes and I bought those in July of last year. I probably purchase one new pair of shoes a year, and I have a hard time doing this. New shoes do not delight me. They scare me. I fear change.

I own exactly one dress. I do not wear high heels. The subject of shopping and clothing causes panic attacks in me. If you're a woman of size who was large as a child, especially in places where there were not a lot of clothes for overweight/obese children, you'll understand this.

I'm not trying to brag or somehow say that I am better because I don't tend to make much of my clothing and accessories other than to look clean, presentable, and at least reasonably clothed. It's not a virtue, it's just a choice.

Being interested in clothes, and having lots of shoes and dresses isn't somehow a sign of being a horrible, shallow person. So long as you're not spending beyond your means or putting your family into debt to buy a Kate Spade bag, your disposable cash is your business. No judgments from me.

But the women who are like me exist. And that is why I resent the term "chick lit", because it implies that such literature is the literature representative of all chicks, of all women. And it is not. More than that, I think it enforces this idea that women must be tied to material and socio-economic ideals that are inherently harmful to them.

I think women are not just a marketing group, but sometimes outright targets of advertisers who prey on the societal pressures and stereotypes women labor under to bilk dollars out of them, and I see that same predatory tendency in these books.

I feel utterly excluded from chick lit at moments. I imagine many women who are lower class, of color, queer, fat or otherwise different may feel the same.

And I think there are a lot of chicks who's stories and struggles aren't being talked about because they don't fit into the urban, wealthy, upwardly striving, college educated, white traditional chick-lit model. They don't wear Prada or Gucci. Hell, they don't even wear high heels.

For some "chicks", yeah, this literature is spot on. But for a lot of us? It isn't our literature. These aren't our stories. This isn't us.

Which, coincidentally, is another reason I separate it from romance. Romance, quite smartly, can divide off and tell the stories of many different types of women. There are lines of books specifically for women of color, and many romance novels I've read do center on women who are not fabulously rich, who are the kind of common-sense, thrifty, trying-to-get-by women with two kids, two jobs, and need for love that I actually know about. Of course, romance has it's problems, as all genres do. For instance: nobody in romance novels is ever fat", and that's a problem, but every genre has it's foibles. Ask me about SF/F and racism sometime.

There's an academic paper in here somewhere about the function of materialism in chick lit relative to the romance genre, but like I said. That's for another time.

I have very unchick-like writing to go do.