Final Post

"I love walking in London" (3). Lauren thought of her as she walked towards Hyde Park.  The sun was out for five minutes like it always would be, but the clouds were ahead and she could already see the rain by Marble Arch.  A remarkable dream to be living in London.  Something about Hyde Park always struck Lauren as home.  When she was in the center it was as if she left the city; for one moment she remembered home; the green grass that was only damp in the morning and always running into those whom she knew.

A rain drop awoke her from her memories at home.  It seemed as if rain drops were the only ones waking her up from her day dreams lately, for in a big city it is rare to find those who know you well.  She laughed realizing she had been off to another world for some time now.  While her world was turned upside-down, it truly was a dream to be there, in Hyde Park, "anyhow there was no bitterness in her"(68).   She crossed over the bridge with rushing traffic, cars damp with rain as they drove out of the storm.  She thought of how she was walking towards it the rain; she was always walking towards the rain, "bursting into tears this morning, what was all that about?". (70).  

Out of the house is where she longed to be, so there Lauren walked, away from home.  She had never met a June so cold.  She thought of her friends so far away and thought of the strangers she past.  It was a rare day to find a smile on these streets in London; those who sound so friendly are only rushing to be where they need to be.  Lauren thought about those rushing workers: "if they looked good, kind people, just to say to them 'I am unhappy'"; would they care? (73).  

She stops again and stares at Hyde Park.  A smile comes to her face when she thinks of the sun being over the house across the park.  Ironic to have the sun over that house where she feels so trapped, and then here, in the rain she can find her way to where she has been walking all afternoon.  She knew she was short on time and picked up her pace.  It was typical that Lauren missed every light while walking, for even when she was in a rush luck never seemed to be on her side.  Lauren wondered about the barclays bikes and how they are always one second away from being trampled by those big, red busses.  She always believed those people had a death wish getting on those bikes. Even being luckless and stuck in the rain Lauren could never get on one of those bikes.  

"Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeing the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. There was an embrace in death" (163).  Lauren crossed the road cautiously; still new to the rush of city life.  They were always the same, boring, lifeless people that were nothing like those in her home where the sun would shine before and after June.  She walks up knowing that this night will not be different from any others.  She presses the buzzer to get let inside another night of nothingness.  What is a night out without her people? Lauren needed her people, "in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought" (162).  For every party felt like death for Lauren.  

Mrs. Dalloway and Life in London

When I began reading Mrs. Dalloway I finally felt like I knew London as a city.  I can understand what Clarissa hears when she describes "a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes"(2).  I can also relate to Mrs. Dalloway as she says "I love walking in London" (3).  It is one of the first books I have ever read that I truly understood and envisioned the setting on the novel.

While walking around Westminster for our class field trip, I feel that everyone became a little bit closer to the city as a whole.  It was a sad and serious day due to not only the real life tragedy of losing a teacher at our school to suicide, but also losing Septimus in the same way.  How death is described in this story is extremely sad and also very eye-opening about how some people see the world.  It makes it more clear to me why some people feel that death is the only escape, although I will never be able to fully grasp the concept of someone taking their own life. “Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them;” (163).  Clarissa sees Septimus' death as a positive thing and wishes she had the strength to do the same.  It is amazing how through nature and death, Virginia Woolf is able to beautifully portray such a sad and confusing thing.   


Taking Mrs. Dalloway out of London was also created an even more interesting story line.  We were able to see her mentally, physically, and emotionally in the movie Hours.  We were also able to see Virginia Woolf as a writer and realize more about why she wrote this story.  By watching Hours, I felt I was more connected to the characters in the story and more importantly I was more connected to Virginia Woolf.  Several of the books we have read this year have had a lot to do with the authors and by getting to know the authors I have developed a much greater understanding of why these books were written.  

Grandmother Interview

I did not get a chance to talk to any of my Grandparents about women's rights and whether or not they played a role in trying to help women, but I did talk to my mom and my Aunt Lorraine in order  to have some background for an interview.  

Aunt Lorraine is 10 years older than my mom, so she had a much closer look at what women were trying to do in order to have equal rights.  I was shocked about what she told me and was a little disappointed that she was not more involved.  Aunt Lorraine said that she was in college at the time that active protest were going on but she never felt that she was not an equal to men so she never felt the need to get involved.  I still have mixed feeling on this because of what I have learned and what she has told me, but I can completely understand how a college student working to become a special education teacher had better things to do than protest women's rights. I guess I understand that she knew she would be successful in life no matter what and felt that it was most important to look out for herself.  

I asked my mom what she remembered about her family life growing up.  I was interested to find out that she grew up in what would be your typical family of the time.  She said that her house was always spotless and dinner was always being put on the table the second her father got home from work.  Her mother (my grandmother) also worked part time as a secretary but was always home in time to cook dinner and make sure everything in the house was in order.  

I find it interesting that both my aunt and mom both became professional, full-time working women when they were both raised in a typical family with a stay at home mom.  I guess that even if they did not know it at the time, they were helping to change the stereotype of women everywhere.  

Mean Girls

The movie Mean Girls takes everything we have learned this year and adds some laughter to it.  It takes one girl, Cady Heron, out of her media-free life in Africa and enters her into girl world.  Throughout the movie Cady learns what its like to be one of the Plastics.  We also see the dynamic between girls in the movie and how they can relate to literature we have read this year.

In one of the earliest scenes of the movie, Cady and the Plastics (Regina, Gretchen and Karen) walk into Regina's room.  Regina, Gretchen and  Karen immediately walk to the mirror and begin criticizing themselves saying things such as "I have man shoulders", "my nail beds suck", and "my pores are huge". The three girls stare at Cady and wait for her to criticize herself.  Cady, a very confused girl responds saying, "I have really bad breath in the morning" and then thinks to herself how she didn't think there was anything more than skinny or fat.  This directly relates to The Beauty Myth and shows how women expect other women to think poorly of themselves.  In reality, when girls think negatively of themselves, all it does it point out flaws to everyone else.  If everyone could be confident with themselves, maybe everyone would start being nicer to each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWMtOxlKFRw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUFT35S7Jb4&feature=related

These two scenes in Mean Girls relate to the The Vagina Monologues.  While both these scenes are clearly in this movie for the purpose of humor, it also shows how women may be scared to speak up because of what others will think about them.  I guess women don't talk about certain things for the same reasons they don't like to talk about their vaginas: "I was worried about what we would think about vaginas, and even more worried about that we don't think about them" (3).  Just like the girls in Mean Girls, once the women Eve Ensler began talking, they could not stop, "They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them". (5).  Women can benefit from talking about things that are uncomfortable.  The girls in Mean Girls opened up and found peace after talking about things that were once secrets, just as the women in The Vagina Monologues were empowered by talking about their vaginas.

Dieting Won't Kill You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RLAGxUbp-U

The youtube video above explains not only my relationship with food, but also almost exactly how all my diets end up.  I know that I am not alone in this love-hate relationship with food.  I know Naomi Wolf is not saying that obesity is the best way to get healthy but that "women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier if they weigh... [more] and they refrain from dieting'" (187) seems pretty unrealistic to me.  If a person already had a healthy lifestyle where they eat well and exercise then they could most likely live their whole lives at a healthy weight for their body and be able to maintain it.  If a person eats junk food and does not exercise, there is no way that this could possibly be more healthy than dieting.  I am not a doctor or specialist in any way but I know that when I am eating well and going to the gym (aka dieting) I feel 100 times better then I do when I am living a less healthy lifestyle.  Wolf then goes on to say that dieting "may indeed cause... obesity itself," which seems nearly impossible.  I can only slightly agree with this statement because I know that it is when I lose weight that I can gain it back the quickest.  

Rather than criticizing Naomi Wolf, I am just going to nicely disagree with her on this subject because I  strongly feel that there are right and wrong ways to diet.  It is extreme to think that every diet means starving yourself or excessively going to the gym.  Diets such as weight watchers are safe and personal for every person who joins.  Wolf sees writing down everything you eat as obsessive, but the truth of weight watchers is that when you write down your food you see how much more you could eat without  one, big unhealthy meal.  I don't think Wolf could disagree with having a big, healthy salad over nachos grande! 

The Sad Truth

One day I plan on having a family of my own.  It will be 10+ years from now, but I hope one day it will happen.  If I have a daughter I am going to be TERRIFIED.  One would find that very confusing since I am a daughter and have only a sister.  The truth is, every generation of girls gets more and more promiscuous.  I know I would do the best I could to scare her away from anything completely out of line, but if girls continue on the same path they are on, my poor daughter will end up locked in her room with a chastity belt (half-kidding).  These horrible thoughts about my daughter's future were triggered two summers ago when I was talking to my family friend Nick who was in seventh grade at the time.  He told be how the cool thing for girls and boys to do is to give blow jobs on the busses on the way to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.  I couldn't even believe what I was hearing.  In seventh grade I was hoping to have a boyfriend that I could talk to somewhere else other than AIM over the computer or maybe get a kiss on the cheek.  But these girls were giving blow jobs on the way to their friend's bat mitzvah?! That is NO mitzvah if I ever knew one.

The point I am trying to make is that it is evident that girls are being extremely effected by the beauty myth from an extremely young age.  The behavior of these young girls reflects on what we learned from "Killing Us Softly 4".  Some ads we were shown showed full mature women dressed as children or children piled on with makeup to look like a women.  Clearly when young and impressionable people see these things, it make them believe it is ok to do completely inappropriate things.  It is true what Kilbourne says that "ads create an environment we all swim in... a toxic cultural environment".  Although I don't feel the media has effected me too much as a person, the fact that it is influencing people around me by causing eating disorders and promiscuous behavior has made a huge impact on my life.  While watching TV or reading a magazine everyone should keep in mind that "ads sell more than products... They sell concepts of normalcy...The tell us who we are and who we should want to be".  Hopefully years from now I can rest easy when my children open a magazine or turn on the TV.  I would hate to see more generations sucked into the beauty myth.

Jealousy

My mom is not the hugging, loving, shopping-with-your-mom kind of mom.  She extremely serious, and even when my sister and I are upset she's all business.  Nothing makes her more mad then when my sister and I have those "I'm so fat and ugly days".  She always says the same thing, "Go outside and look around. You girls are prettier than 99% of those people".  Of course she's our mom and she has to say that.  Now thinking about that statement, although totally harmless, I know it is part of the problem.  For years women are constantly comparing themselves to other women.  It is like there is a constant competition for something that is impossible to win.  Is there a prize for being most beautiful? Is even the hottest guy worth constantly trying to look the best? The answer to both of these questions is obviously no. So what is with the constant jealousy ladies?!

In A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft tell on many occasions about this jealousy that girls have for each other.   Wollstonecraft compares men and women and says, "but women are very differently situated with respect to each other-for they are all rivals"(121).  It is amazing to me how even in the 1700s women were competitive and  rivals.  I am confused why this rivalry had been going on for hundreds of years.  Wollstonecraft makes a valid point in bringing up how by paying so much attention to your physical self, one can forget to respect what is on the inside.  She says, "Did women really respect virtue for its own sake, they would not seek for compensation in vanity, for the self-denial which they are obliged to practice to preserve their reputation, nor would they associate with men who set a reputation at defiance" (88).  If women joined together rather then constantly fighting each other, not only would we have more respect for each other, we would have more respect from the men who are apparently so important to impress.