Almost as well-covered has been the woman’s apology.

I want to take this opportunity to apologise profusely for the upset and distress that my actions have caused.

“I cannot explain why I did this, it is completely out of character and I certainly did not intend to cause any distress to Lola or her owners.

Later, the woman says,

I wish to reiterate that I am profoundly sorry for my actions and wish to resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction as soon as possible

One of these is an apology. One of them is not.

This isn’t uncommon. People generally don’t like admitting wrongdoing–we hate admitting that we’ve done something inappropriate, and so often we simply don’t admit it. It leads us to “apologies” like the first example here. I’m sorry for the upset this has caused, or I’m sorry that you’re upset. In both instances, the emphasis is on the recipient of the apology and largely removes the reason for the apology from the picture.

Saying things like “I’d like to apologize for the upset and distress that my actions have caused” says quite clearly that what this person is sorry for is that people are upset and distressed. It doesn’t in any way imply apologize for the actions that caused the distress. It’s like saying “I’m sorry you thought I did that,” or “I’m sorry you feel like I wasn’t listening to you when I kept interrupting.” This phrasing implies not only that the person apologizing didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re also the bigger person, since they’re being tolerant this other person’s implicit overreaction.

The cat lady, whose name is Mary Bale, actually flat-out stated this.

“I really don’t see what everyone is getting so excited about. It’s just a cat,” Bale said.

[...]

“To think this video is being seen around the world is unbelievable. I’m a very private person and don’t want to upset any members of my family. I don’t know what my relatives will think, but to be honest I think everyone’s overreacting a bit.”

I’m certainly not saying that Bale should be put to death for abusing the cat (though I admit to feeling that maybe she should spend twelve hours or so in a garbage bin,) and obviously this is an extreme example. It’s a good example, though, because she’s articulated precisely what many reluctant apologizers are thinking: This isn’t a big deal. I didn’t really do anything wrong. These people are just crazy and overreacting. This isn’t really my fault.

This sort of apology isn’t about wrongdoing, or even about the person who’s apologizing. It’s a thinly veiled excuse for your actions, and it pushes the blame from you for doing something offensive to the person who’s been offended. After all, if they were looking at things more realistically, or if they weren’t overreacting, or if they weren’t misinterpreting, this wouldn’t be a problem at all.

So here’s how you apologize.

Decide that you want to apologize. You don’t have to. No one’s going to make you. They might think that you’re an asshole, but they’re not going to bully you into apologizing. If you’re not actually sorry for what you did or said, you might as well own it. If you feel like you have to say something, stick with something relatively neutral. Say it wasn’t your intent, maybe, or that you’ll agree to disagree. If you must, say “I’m sorry you feel that way.” (That’s code, by the way, for “I don’t really care.”)

But if you want to apologize, really, here’s what you do. You listen to what the other person is saying, even if you don’t agree with it, even if you think that they’re being unreasonable. You let them finish without interrupting. Then–and this is the tricky part for a lot of people–you say you’re sorry. Just like that: “I’m sorry.” If you’d like to step it up a bit, you can say something like “I’m sorry for running over your bike. It was an accident, and I’m happy to replace the bike. I hope that this doesn’t get in the way of our friendship.”

You don’t have to do all that, though. All you have to do is say you’re sorry.

The unorthodox challenge grant comes from a health-conscious woman in Oregon who wishes to remain anonymous, Ms. Lynch said. Fit and fond of organic food, the wealthy benefactor believes that obesity is a serious problem in America and wants to give overweight people an incentive to lose pounds.

“The donor is an extraordinary example of a woman who’s led a healthy lifestyle,” Ms. Lynch said. “She’s 87 years old and weighs exactly what she did when she married her husband—117 pounds. It’s a point of pride for her that she has maintained her youthful physique.”

This is appalling. Let’s talk about why.

Here’s the thing. This is clearly not a health-related incentive. If it were really health-related and they were dead set on controlling employee behavior, they’d also be requiring that people who smoke quit and that people who drink more than the recommended two units of alcohol per day cut back.

If they wanted to simply make employees healthier, they could’ve gone about this really differently. Maybe suggest that the college provide healthy snacks for employees, or at least fill the vending machines with things that are a healthier than the standard chips and chocolate. Maybe they could pay up on the condition that the cafeteria cuts its use of deep frying, offers healthier drink options, reduces the use of products with high fructose corn syrup, and adds (or cuts the price on) a nice salad bar. Offer a discount at a local gym, yoga studio, or masseuse, or offer reduced prices on smoking cessation assistance, counseling, and visits to a nutritionist. There are a lot of things that could be offered–things that have the potential to improve both employee health and morale–but the benefactor has chosen none of these things.

What she’s chosen instead is fat-shaming. She’s chosen to make it clear that the she–and by their acceptance, the college–is more concerned about how people look than about trying to provide them with a healthy work environment and trying to improve their health.

Stephens College is primarily a women’s college–I believe that they admit male grad students, but not undergrads. According to The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, one in five women struggle with an eating disorder or disordered habits. (This is backed up by the National Institute of Mental Health.) 90% of people with eating disorders are women between 12 and 25. Look at those numbers again and think for a minute about how many people–how many young women, how many girls–that is. The message that the college is sending is the same message that these young women are getting from everywhere else: it’s not how you feel about yourself that matters. It’s not how healthy you are, and it’s certainly not your quality of life.

No. What matters is being thin, because fat is bad and unhealthy. Because fat is scary and visible and easy to demonize, so it’s what matters.

I realize that we’re talking about a fairly small amount of weight shared over a presumably large pool of people. The weight loss is probably just a few pounds each. But it’s not what they’re losing that we really need to think about here–we should think about what they’re gaining. They’re gaining a culture in which office culture is synonymous with diet culture. They’re gaining an environment that has the potential to really pit people against each other–dieters vs. non-dieters. We’re talking about a lot of money here, and it’s easy to get people worked up over that. They’re gaining the ability to pressure coworkers into dieting, regardless of how that coworker feels about their own weight, lifestyle, and level of health. Sure, people who disagree could refuse to participate, but let’s be realistic: when you’ve got a hundred people on a diet, and they’re all on it together, and they’re charting the group weight loss, you’re going to have to be a damn strong person to not feel bad–guilty, even–about eating your Friday-afternoon brownie.

The worst part of this for me is that the college president has actively created this environment. The initial offer was made just to her, and she went back and said hey, we’ll collectively lose weight if you’ll donate. Her offer of a “bargain” seems to imply that she initially refused–apparently, a donation to the college wasn’t sufficient reason for her to change her lifestyle and habits. It was, however, sufficient reason to convince most of the staff to do so.

If the donor had suggested that underweight people gain weight, there’s no way that it would have been considered. I doubt, too, that anyone would have undertaken a quest to, say, teach everyone how to knit, nor would a donation contingent upon everyone learning Esperanto go over so well. I don’t think that anyone would have seriously considered a suggestion in which grown adults were made to monitor, report, and reduce their alcohol intake. Or since we’re talking about personal lives here, how about someone will make a donation, but only if the president will spend the next year campaigning in support of a political cause, or maybe spend the next four months having a romantic supper one night a week with the donor–clearly inappropriate, right? But because we’re talking about fat, people seem to feel that it’s okay.

It’s not okay. These people are adults and have the right to determine how they live their lives. If they want to eat healthily and take long walks and not care about their weight, they have the right to do that. If they want to count every calorie and exercise for at least an hour a day, they have the right to do that, too. If they want to live off of jelly doughnuts and coffee, they can. They can ride motorcycles without protective gear, they can stay with abusive partners, they can choose to become a hermit, they can drink until they vomit five nights a week. Most of this is not healthy behavior, but it’s still something that they’re entitled to choose, and unless they’re vomiting in your shoes, it’s none of your business what they’re doing.

Neither is it the business of some anonymous donor, regardless of how much money the donor’s willing to pay for that privilege.

This is part two. Eventually, I’ll be posting part three, about misogyny in Disney movies, because it turns out that I have a lot to say about this.

Two quick notes: I hate unnecessary capitalization, but have tried to capitalize princess when it’s specifically referring to the Disney Princess line. When it’s referring to princesses in general, it’s (probably) not capitalized. Hopefully I managed to keep it straight throughout; apologies for any errors.

Also, I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: this is specifically about Disney’s Princess movies. It’s explicitly not about Monsters Inc. or Robin Hood or Mary Poppins or Ponyo, several of which I’ve seen and liked very much. I’m not saying all Disney movies are bad and everyone should hate them forever, I’m just saying that a little bit of critical thinking never hurt anyone.

Unlike the last post, this post starts with a picture. Two of them, in fact. Looking at the picture, what do you notice? Notice the pink, maybe? That’s sort of the obvious–the “girl’s” aisle at Toys R Us is bathed in it. Pink signs, pink signboards, pink packaging, pink dresses. There’s also a lot of yellow, and sometimes blue (mostly, I noticed, on bath toys,) but surprisingly little purple–apparently pink and yellow are the big “girl colors” now.

Those two pictures are (almost) the entirety of the Disney Princess display at my local Toys R Us. Like I was saying the other day, there are nine princesses: Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Mulan, Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Tiana. Maybe, looking at those pictures, you’ve noticed that only the first five princesses on that list are represented.

In fairness to Disney and Toys R Us, I have to admit that there’s a Princess and the Frog display next to the one that I took photos of–it’s about two shelves, roughly the size of the shelves in the pictures. It seems to mostly have a ton of dress-up clothes, plus a few Tiana Barbies. It also has a Polly Pocket set, which costs about $35 and comes with a prince and a horse and a carriage, I believe.

Still, the focus of the Princesses is clear: Princesses, for the purposes of Disney, are white. When you’re looking at the whole Princess line, it’s easy to think that Disney has done a reasonably good job of providing heroines of different nationalities. And, in the films, they mostly have, I suppose. Sure, Tiana spends the vast majority of the movie as a frog, but hey, at least she’s there, right? And okay, Pocahontas exists solely to help the white peoples, but representation, yay!

Unfortunately, the films, at this point, are sort of obsolete. Not because no one has them (though it seems that the actual films have waned somewhat in popularity, replaced by sing-along DVDs and Princess-themed shorts,) but because the real money’s in the merchandise. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying that the films don’t make money. I’m just saying that in terms of yearly revenue, I’d bet that the dolls and dress-up costumes and Princess-themed bookbags bring in more than sales of the DVD backlist.

And, really, Disney’s merchandising is impressive. Princess dolls in every size, if not shape or color; clothes from the movies; clothes allegedly inspired by the movies; clothes with Princesses on them; games ranging from puzzles to complicated games for the Nintendo DS; Princess books–sticker books, coloring books, actual books with words in them; backpacks; ballpits; makeup; cameras; motorized bubble blowers… That’s just from a quick skim of an Amazon search for “Little Mermaid”.

Maura has the Polly Pocket Disney princesses–she has all of them except Mulan and Pocahontas, and (to my distress) they’re her favorite toys. I picked the first five of them up for a few bucks at the drug store or the supermarket. For about five bucks, I could get a doll and two dresses; for about twelve, there’d be six dresses and, usually, some sort of adorable bird or dwarf or whatever it was that featured in that film. Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle were all purchased this way. I caved and ordered Tiana online for, I think, about $25. She’s new and popular, I told myself. There’s a premium on that.

I started looking for Mulan, Pocahontas, and Jasmine. Jasmine is nearly impossible to find in stores–I finally happened across the doll in a closeout store, just her and a single dress, for seven bucks. I snapped it up, of course. To get the bigger set of her, which has the doll, the tiger, and half a dozen dresses, I was going to have to order it online for something like $30. (Remember, I can buy the other large sets for twelve bucks.) Mulan is just as hard to find–you can buy her, but only online, and only in a $30 set with about six dresses. Pocahontas can’t be had for love or money. She just doesn’t exist.

After the ridiculous success of the Polly Pocket Princesses, Disney apparently figured that hey, one set went well, so two sets would go twice as well! So now there are an additional six “favorite moments sparkle bag” dolls. They’re the exact same thing, only they have painted-on shoes and sparkly clothes. Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine, and Belle got bags. (Jasmine’s bag is only available–you guessed it–online.) Pocahontas, Tiana, and Mulan didn’t get sparkle bags at all.

It’s weird, right, that while I can find the white princesses in every damn store I walk into (and believe me, I can, because Maura has a homing instinct that leads her straight to the Pollys,) but I can’t find any of the non-white dolls? That to buy the non-white dolls, I’ve had to order online and pay twice as much?

The same holds true for other Disney products–the princess tea set has Belle, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. The tiara has Ariel and Belle and Cinderella. Bookbag? Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. Underwear? Mostly Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, though Tiana can be bought on her own (instead of with other princesses) and it’s possible (though difficult) to find a set of Belle, Cinderella, and Jasmine. These aren’t examples I had to hunt down, either, it was just the first few things that I plugged into Amazon. It goes on and on. The only place I’ve ever found Jasmine is on Valentine’s cards, in one of the Princess movies, and as a Barbie. Mulan can be had as a Barbie, as can Tiana, but that’s about it. They’re not in the princess movies, and they’re not part of the merchandising. Pocahontas, so far as I can tell, isn’t on anything at all.

The message that Disney’s sending is clear: real princesses are white. You other people might be allowed to show up in the background, or as guests at a tea party, but let’s face it–you’re just not as pretty or interesting as those other princesses.

The kicker, of course, is that of the Princess line, the only ones who have any sort of personality are the ones who are excluded. We don’t really know a lot about any of the Princesses–Belle likes to read, Ariel likes singing and collecting forks, Sleeping Beauty likes to dance in the forest, Snow White is apparently a great housekeeper, Cinderella isn’t afraid of mice, Jasmine is tired of staying at home and would like to go explore the world, Pocahontas is an environmental activist, Tiana would like to own her own restaurant, and Mulan’s strong enough to head off to war to save her dad’s ass.

So…yeah. Of those characters, which ones should be the interesting ones? The ones who like to play house, obviously! Looking at it laid out like that, though, it’s also striking that any character who’s darker than skim milk isn’t in this for herself, she’s in it for good, noble reasons. Jasmine’s teaching us a very important lesson about arranged marriages, Pocahontas wants to save her land and her people, Mulan wants to save her father, and Tiana’s both fulfilling her father’s dream and working for a living.

It’s interesting to me, too, that while the vast majority of the princesses have endings that are very clearly meant to be read as happy (and then they got married and rode off in a beautiful carriage pulled by white horses, and they lived happily ever after, the end,) the only two who don’t have that ending are Pocahontas–remember, John leaves at the end of the movie and goes back to England, and Pocahontas stays with her people–and Tiana, who ends up married to a guy she loves, but is going to be busting her ass in that restaurant for the rest of her life. Both of these are certainly more realistic endings than Snow White and company, but am I the only one who finds it a little problematic that the one princess who’s going to spend her life working is the black one?

And then we have Mulan and Jasmine. Neither was all that interested in getting married, but by the end of the movies, they’ve gotten any sort of adventurous spirit worked out and they’re ready to settle down and be good wives. Jasmine was so bored, but hey, now that she has a husband, she’ll never be bored again! And Mulan was failing at all the proper girl things that she was supposed to be doing. Then she went off to war and met Shang, who, when he realized she was a woman, was clearly bothered by her lack of womanliness. Eventually, the Emperor’s like, “That Mulan, eh?” Then Shang follows her home, and hey, now she’s apparently ready to settle down and behave correctly.

Disney could very easily make all of the Princesses part of their Princess merchandise, and they’ve chosen not to. The message is clear: real princesses are white and appropriately feminine. The Princesses of color might be more interesting and more realistic, but they don’t fit this ideal, so they’re going to be second-class merchandise forever.

I’ve also visited my in-laws down in Florida, shipped my daughter off for two weeks with my mother, had heat exhaustion, had a mild bout of stomach flu, adopted two dogs, gotten Maura back, and completely and totally failed to pay any attention at all to my garden.

Despite that last bit, my garden is doing surprisingly well. The carrots and fennel are huge and leafy, the tomato plants have little green tomatoes on them, and we’re going to have enough squash to eat all winter, and then probably some left over. I was thinking that maybe I could pay my mortgage in squash for a few months, actually. That seems reasonable, right? Surely Bank of America will jump all over that. Beautiful organic squashes, guys!

In other squash-related news, I’m now the only person I’ve ever met who managed to completely fail at growing zucchini. Zucchini! The vegetable that gets left in baskets for unsuspecting neighbors, that grows to the size of your average toddler in three days, that fells large trees with little more than an angry glance, and I have managed to destroy it. I don’t even know, guys.

Those of you who are reading closely may have noticed that I mentioned some dogs. We have dogs! Multiple dogs. To go, you know, with our multiple cats. We will not be having multiple kids, so this works out pretty well. We’d been looking for a dog friend for Basil, and had emailed a guy on Craigslist about a dog he’d posted. As I was talking to him, Nick sent me another Craigslist post, telling me that if this fell through, we should contact this other guy. Turned out that it was the same guy and he had two dogs, so now we have three. Like you do, right?

Basil’s, the white terrier mix, is about two and a half; Cooper, a long-haired dachshund, is two; Seamus, the Yorkie, is six. They sleep on our bed, sometimes with the cats, and I love them.

The first one is from Margaret Atwood’s poem Spelling:
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

The second is on Nick’s calf–it’s Maura’s name (circa 2008) and a cat that she drew around the same time. I love it madly.

I also madly love the remaining 1/3 of this week’s activities–another Maura name and drawing, this one of an ice-fishing penguin, that’s on my foot. Pics of that forthcoming, as it was a bit more swollen and raw looking than the other ones. Give it another day or two.

This weekend is my little sister’s wedding reception. It’s completely bizarre to me that she’s no longer seventeen.

Slight delay on the rest of the Disney posts. I got a concussion (cat, stairway, low crossbeam) on Friday and have been out of commission for a couple of days. The bruise on my head has receded, but the pain has not, nor has the very attractive lump on my forehead. I look like a Neanderthal.

Regular posting to resume shortly.

Obligatory disclaimer before I even start writing this post: it’s about Disney movies, and, more specifically, Disney Princess movies. I realize that Disney has other movies and that Pixar’s owned by Disney, but for most people, when you say Disney, they hear “princesses”. So that’s what we’re talking about.

It comes up, from time to time, that Maura isn’t really allowed to watch Disney movies. This is less stridently enforced than it used to be, partly out of necessity—it was one thing when she was with me all of the time, but it’s another thing entirely to tell her daycare provider that she’s not allowed to watch Disney, especially when every other kid in the group knows and loves all of the movies already. But still, we only own The Little Mermaid and The Princess and the Frog, and those aren’t standard viewing fare.

To most people my age, it seems, this is a completely heretical stance. Everyone pities Maura, whose crazy, crazy mother doesn’t want her to watch Disney movies. I have yet to find anyone who responds with “oh, thank god, my kid isn’t allowed to watch them, either.” (I have hope, though—surely someone else is bothered by this, right?)

Here’s the thing, though: I really, really hate Disney movies. Almost across the board, the Disney movies (at least those with people in them—I admit that I’ve seen very few of their animal-based animated films) hold up marriage, usually to someone completely inappropriate, as the holy grail. I remind you that these are films being marketed to children, and that the overwhelming message in the end is this: Be pretty and kind and good, and maybe someone who is wealthy and powerful will want you for his bride.

Note that I didn’t say his partner, or even his wife. No, he’ll want you for his bride, his beautiful trophy.

Usually when I try to explain this to people, they immediately demand to know if I’ve seen Mulan. Yes, I have. And no, Maura hasn’t.

For those of you who’ve not read the original poem upon which the movie was based, the whole point of the poem is that no one knew if she was a man or a woman, and it didn’t matter because in war we are all affected. Her comrades didn’t know that she was a woman until after the war was won, when she returned home clad as a woman. When this happens, it’s pointed out again that it doesn’t matter that she’s a woman, and that it’s society, not nature, that separates the two sexes.

So Disney’s interpretation of this—one in which she is outed as a woman early on, one in which it’s a plot point that she is a woman, leaves me cold. Mulan starts out promisingly: she’s not great at the feminine arts, and she runs off to join the army in her father’s place. And, okay, she’s made to look a fool in the early military training, but she soon proves herself and is as good and as strong as any of the men. That’s pretty awesome.

And then she falls in love with her commanding officer, Shang. Okay. It happens. Maybe he’ll respect her for her skills and abilities as a warrior! …Or, on the other hand, maybe she’ll single-handedly win a battle for the Imperial Army and save Shang in the same battle, getting badly injured in the process. When it’s revealed that she’s a woman, the Emperor’s advisor orders her killed. Instead of standing up for her, Shang suggests that they just leave her–wounded and alone–at the snowy mountain pass so that she can find her way home. I think that we’re meant to feel that he’s saved her life, but realistically, he’s just condemned her to a slow, painful death. Despite Shang’s betrayal, when Mulan finds out that her comrades are in danger because the Huns weren’t actually dead, she rides back to warn them. She gets there and Shang—oh. Well, that’s embarrassing. He brushes her off. After all, she’s just a silly girl. But then the Huns show up, and Mulan defeats them. Again.

This time, the Emperor commends her, and Shang…does basically nothing. She heads home with military honors, and the Emperor comments to the love interest that hey, she’s pretty special, huh? And then Shang goes after her, and is pleased to find that she’s no longer clad as a man, but now looks appropriately womanly. She is, of course, delighted to see him and, as with all Disney movies, the implication is that they’ll live happily ever after.

So first he leaves her on an isolated, snowy mountain pass that’s recently been overrun with Huns who may or may not be dead. Then when she shows up to warn him that the Huns are coming, he ignores her. After she saves the day yet again, he still has to be told by the Emperor that he might want to consider her as a potential partner. I’m sure that it’s a fantastic match for Shang—after all, she’s already proved that she can pretty much do for herself if need be, plus there has to be some social cachet to marrying the only decorated female war hero in the country, right? It’s less of a fantastic match for Mulan, though, married to someone who doesn’t respect her or trust her judgment.

Mulan is hardly an isolated example, either. A brief rundown:

The very first Disney movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is—like many Disney movies—based on a fairy tale. I’ll recap the fairy tale, for those of you who’ve forgotten. Beautiful child, evil stepmother, hunter unable to kill her, goes to live with the dwarves, poisoned apple, glass coffin. Check, right down the list. Prince shows up and begs to be given the coffin, and the dwaves—somewhat inexplicably—agree. They start to move the coffin, and the movement dislodges the poisoned apple stuck in Snow White’s throat. And yes, she eventually marries the prince.

So, really, it’s not all that different from the Disney version. Beautiful child, evil stepmother, hunter unable to kill her, goes to live with the dwarves. In both versions, her time with the dwarves is spent cooking and cleaning and taking after them. The inevitable poisoned apple comes, as does the glass coffin, and then comes the prince. You’ll note that he’s referred to only as the prince; his name, it seems, is less important than making it quite clear that he is someone of power, someone of wealth. And, of course, he saves her: Disney’s version is quite clear that it’s only the kiss of her true love that can wake her from her tragically beautiful, endless sleep.

What, then, does Snow White teach us (or our impressionable five year olds)? To be fair, it’s a bit more nuanced than some of the other films—though Snow White’s beauty is ultimately her savior, it’s also what sets the Evil Stepmother after her in the first place. Still, we come away with the knowledge that she was so beautiful and pure and womanly that the prince (who is, don’t forget, important and wealthy) fell “in love” with her the moment that he saw her. And, in turn, he’s her “true love”—despite the fact that they’ve not spoken a word to each other. After all, what could be a better marriage than childlike, subservient beauty and wealthy, manly power?

Cinderella was made over a decade later, but it falls into many of the same traps that Snow White does. Cinderella herself is good to a fault, friends with all of the animals and creatures of the forest. Every other (human) female character is evil, though, providing us with plenty of reminders of how good Cinderella is compared to all other women. Through the eventual intervention of her fairy godmother, Cinderella is turned “beautiful”—that is, she’s given a fancy dress, a carriage and all of the trappings, and a curfew. She heads to the ball, where the Prince (again nameless) has been rejecting every woman he meets. He sees Cinderella and is immediately in love with her, chasing her as she runs out of the castle, desperate to leave before curfew comes and she reverts to her normal state. Of course, in the end, it’s discovered that she’s the beautiful woman from the night before, nuptials ensue, and the happy couple ride off as the narrator intones “and they lived happily ever after”.

All well and good, though again, I’m forced to wonder what on earth the Prince and Cinderella could have in common. While I’m sure that it’s a step up for Cinderella, the idea that she “lived happily ever after” seems suspect to me—lived happily ever after doing what? With whom? With the prince, who she’s only known for a few hours when they decide to wed? The movie assumes that we won’t care, that we’ll fall for living happily ever after as surely as Cinderella fell for the promise of a life better than the one that she knew.

Sleeping Beauty takes us to 1959. According to Wikipedia—and this lines up with my recollections of the film—the titular character is on stage as an adult for less than eighteen minutes of the seventy-five minute film. Which, I suppose, is appropriate. After all, the title tells us everything we need to know about her: she’s beautiful. Beauty, nee Aurora, is born, and is immediately betrothed to Prince Phillip, which I’m willing to buy as part of the pseudo-Medieval thing that the movie has going on. Her fairy godmothers queue up to bestow their blessings upon the child, and they cover all the important stuff, making sure that she’ll be pretty and able to sing. Then the evil fairy shows up and casts the curse: death by spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday. Good fairy the third isn’t powerful enough to counter that, so she changes it to eternal sleep by spinning wheel. Then the good fairies take Aurora to live in a cottage in the woods, trying to keep her safe. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, she meets a handsome boy in the woods and falls immediately in love with him. She’s called away before she learns his name, though, and goes home only to find out that she’s a princess, and also cursed, and also engaged to some guy called Phillip.

Apparently unable to hold out the single day it would take for the curse to not happen, the fairies take her back to her parents’ castle, where Maleficent lures her to the spinning wheel. She, inevitably enough, pricks her finger. The kingdom falls asleep just as the fairy godmothers realize that the boy Aurora is in love with is, in fact, Prince Phillip, her betrothed. Happy coincidence! He’s been captured by Maleficent, but aided by the fairies—and the “shield of virtue” and “sword of truth”—he defeats Maleficent, makes out with the sleeping Aurora, and gets his happily ever after.

To summarize: Aurora is a good singer. Also, really, really pretty. All of the adults are idiots, since apparently none of thought to keep an eye on her on her potentially tragic sixteenth birthday. Phillip likes to dance in the woods, and is also truthful and virtuous, except for when he sexually assaults cursed princesses. Most importantly, he will someday be king, and he will have a beautiful wife who can sing. Excellent. I know that’s what I was looking for when I sought out a partner.

The next Disney “Princess” movie jumps forward three decades—suddenly, it’s 1989, and The Little Mermaid is heralding the revival of the animated film. You’d think that maybe, after thirty years, there’d be some passing nod to women who do something other than look pretty and cook and clean and sing, but you’d be mostly wrong. I say mostly because Ariel does not, to my recollection, cook or clean—she just looks pretty and sings.

I’ll be honest that I’m none too fond of the original story (which is a Christian allegory in which the mermaid is desperate to become human that she might gain an immortal soul), but Disney took a bad concept and made it worse. In the movie, sixteen-year-old Ariel longs to become human—partly because she thinks that they’re fascinating and probably less restrictive than her father, but (and this is apparently the more pressing concern) also because she’s fallen in love with a boy.

Don’t be silly—she hasn’t spoken to him or anything like that, but she did save his life when he got washed overboard. She swam him to shore, and then she sang to him until he regained consciousness. Predictably, he has fallen in love with her on the power of her voice alone.

Ariel heads over to the Sea Witch and trades her voice for legs, then heads off to win the boy’s heart. She gets three days. Wacky hijinks, mostly on the part of Sebastian the Crab, ensue. There’s a bit where Ariel almost succeeds in kissing Erik–which, in Disney movies, means that they’re in love–but not quite. Her failure gets her turned into a sea vegetable, or would if her father hadn’t shown up and proved himself to be the worst king in all of existence, dooming his kingdom to be ruled by an evil witch by taking his daughter’s place as a sea vegetable. Ultimately, everyone gangs up to kill the Sea Witch. Because it’s clear that Ariel and Eric’s love is so pure and true, everyone supports it, and Ariel’s father turns her into a human so that she can marry the boy she’s known for three days and never actually spoken to.

I’ve heard The Little Mermaid billed as a trans fairy tale before, and while I certainly see that interpretation, I think that the ultimate message of the movie remains the same: in order to win the person of your dreams and fit in society, in order to be what you want to be, you need to silence yourself. It’s not just her singing voice that she loses, it’s her ability to hold a conversation, or to stand up for herself, or to ask for a glass of water if she’s thirsty. None of those things matter, because the important part is that she be beautiful and willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of her fairytale love story.

Next up is Beauty and the Beast, which several people have pointed out to me as a Disney movie that’s not horrible. I can’t do much other than look at these people in bewilderment, though. Sure, we have Belle, who’s smart, bookish, and—by princess standards—fairly normal-looking. She’s brave, too: when her father is captured by the Beast, she goes to find him and tries to break him out. Then she offers herself to the Beast in her father’s place. So far, so good, right?

From here on out, it’s all downhill. First the Beast goes into a rage because she—understandably—doesn’t want to dine with her captor. After his temper tantrum, he declares that if she won’t eat with him, she won’t eat at all. Then he storms off to sulk. She sneaks into the West Wing, which is strictly verboten, and he catches her and has a tantrum so ferocious that she flees the castle, running into the woods. She is, of course, promptly chased by wolves. The Beast comes and fights them off, then they head back to the castle, where Belle tends his wounds and thanks him for saving her life. Eventually, Belle’s kind and gentle nature tames the emotionally abusive, violent monster who’s imprisoned her, and he allows her to go to visit her father. When the townspeople find out that there’s really a beast, they set up a raid, but once he knows that Belle came back to him, the Beast manages to fight his way out. Until he gets stabbed in the back and collapses, that is. No worries, though, because Belle whispers that she loves him, and he’s restored to the beautiful prince that he used to be, and the castle is restored to its former splendor, and there’s a meaningful waltz. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Beauty and the Beast is, I think, a fantastic movie about Stockholm Syndrome. It’s basically telling people that if you’re just nice enough to someone who’s abusing you, eventually they’ll turn into the princes that they really are. Which would be great, if it were true. The National Domestic Violence Hotline receives over 600 phone calls per day, and a quarter of women in the United States will experience some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. We need a movie that tells people that it’s okay to leave if he’s treating you badly, and that there are places to go for help, not that you should just stay and be really nice and hope that he stops.

We’ve just covered the whole Princess franchise. I know, I know–technically, there’s also Aladdin and The Princess and the Frog, and, really, Pocahontas ought to be considered, too. We’re going to cover that in the second part of this post, so please just bear with me. The primary princesses are Aurora, Snow White, Belle, Ariel, and Cinderella, and princess-branded merchandise is always available branded with those five characters. The remaining three are rotated in, but don’t have nearly the popularity that the big five do.

So we’ve talked about why I find the movies, in and of themselves, problematic. But hey, there are a lot of problematic movies out there, and I’m sure that Maura’s seen her fair share of those. What is is about Disney movies, specifically, that I find so offensive?

When I was little, it was made clear to me–as I’m sure it was made clear to many others–that my primary job in life was to grow up and go to college so that I could get a nice, smart boy to marry me. No one ever said that, of course, but it was clear that that’s what people, girls, did, and once they did that, their lives would be good and middle class and easy. I know that it sounds stupid, but part of me is still trying to get over the fact that this is just inherently not true, that even if you win the lottery and marry someone totally awesome, life will still be hard. That you have to work at relationships, and even when you have a great relationship it’s still hard. That even if you’re rich, life is still hard, because life’s not fair, and bad things will happen and you’ll have to deal with it, and sometimes all the money in the world can’t make that better.

I mean, I’m a reasonably intelligent woman. I’m reasonably self confident, capable, and independent. I own my own power tools and I don’t back down from fights; I can grow and can my own food; I’m not afraid of the dark. But I still struggle with the fact that my life, as much as I love it, isn’t easy and probably never will be. That no one’s going to stride out of the metaphorical forest brandishing their sword and somehow make everything awesome and sparkly. It’s not ever advertised that adulthood isn’t really all that, that you might be single for a long time, that you might be married and still be desperately lonely, that you might divorce, that you might be in a non-hetero relationship that the government and your employer won’t recognize, that you’ll base where you live on where you can have health care for your family and where the schools are good, that your job might suck, that even when you try your hardest there are sometimes bills that you just can’t pay, that life isn’t easy.

It’s never mentioned that life doesn’t have to be easy to be good.

The other reason that I’m not comfortable with a lot of these movies is because they’re aimed at kids. And I mean kids, children–not even middle-schoolers, but three, five, eight year olds. Kids who aren’t anywhere near pubescent, kids who, frankly, don’t need to be thinking about finding a partner (or, in Disney parlance, their prince) and living happily ever after. am desperately, desperately uncomfortable with the way that we market romance to small children. When you’re six, you shouldn’t be worried about being pretty so the boy who sits next to you in kindergarten will want to be your boyfriend.

Happily ever after has always suck in my craw, too. Let’s face it–fewer and fewer people get married with each passing year, and the divorce rate is something like fifty percent. The odds that anyone’s going to get married and live happily ever after are incredibly slim, but it’s still held up as the holy grail of life; the one true path to absolute happiness. I don’t think that it’s healthy to be telling small children that what they should be aiming for in life is to get some rich, attractive boy to like them.

Films aimed at kids should be about finding your place with your family, with your friends. I’ve heard people argue that this, somehow, isn’t interesting, but I think that those people are maybe not watching the right movies. The Incredibles was awesome. Spy Kids. Quest for Camelot. Sure, they’re less common than the yay-a-prince films, but they’re better. They’re more interesting, and there’s more to them–they require stronger characters and more of a plot than “we saw each other and fell in true love and lived happily ever after”.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: I don’t want my child watching Disney movies, because I want her to have strong female role models. I don’t want her watching Disney movies, because I want her to see people with full and interesting lives, regardless of if those people are married or not. And, more than anything, I don’t want her watching Disney movies because I want her aspire to be something more than being a beautiful bride; to want more out of her life than just a wedding.

Today, however, I’m going to post the Great Guide to Cleveland that I end up sending out a couple times a year. Cleveland’s one of those places that can be sort of hard to get, especially if you’re not there all the time. But the thing is that for all the burning river jokes and cracks about flyover states, Cleveland’s pretty awesome.

So here goes: the great rundown of a bunch of cool stuff to do in the Cleveland area. Heavy focus on food, since that gets asked a lot.

Cleveland has a surprisingly great food scene. Michael Symon has three restaurants that are either in Cleveland or right near there: B-Spot (casual place, does burgers, awesome milkshakes, bratwurst, that kind of thing), Lola and Lolita (Lola is pretty formal, Lolita is a little more midrange). All three of them are meant to be fantastic, though I’ve not visited them all. If you decide to hit the B-Spot, I’d suggest getting there earlyish–consider having a very late lunch, maybe. Lolita has great happy hour specials (I think that happy hour if 4-6–double check if you’re interested.)

If you’re into breweries, the Great Lakes Brewing Company is good times–they’ve got fantastic beer (I like the Dortmunder and Eliot Ness, and, if it’s in season, the Christmas Ale) and good food. If you’re into wine, Ohio has quite a few wineries of varying quality. More importantly, we have Vintage Ohio, which is a giant, awesome winefest.

Tommy’s of Cleveland is something of a hipster landmark. Unlike a lot of hipster landmarks, though, the food’s actually good, and Cleveland hipsters are less annoying than the hipsters of other cities, in my experience. Tommy’s is also in a neat little area called Coventry–lots of little independent shops and the like down there. It’s a nice place to walk around. Don’t miss Big Fun for a giant dose of 70s and 80s childhood.

The Flying Fig is a midrange eatery–I’ve only been there once, but really enjoyed the food. Vine and Bean Cafe is more casual and focuses on food that’s produced within a hundred miles of the restaurant. Their menu changes regularly, so I can’t say much about the current menu, but I’ve been there several times and it’s always been good.

If you’re looking for something more casual, go check out Johnny Mango (incredibly cheap, super delicious, very vegetarian friendly,) The Stone Oven, or the West Side Market Cafe. The latter is located inside the West Side Market, which is a historic market in Cleveland–they’ve got basically everything from organic veggies to handmade pastas to whole pigs and goats. Some of the stalls are owned by larger companies, but there are some that’ve been owned by the same family for the last hundred years. It’s a neat place to walk around, and there are actually quite a few eateries in there. All very casual (the Market Cafe is the most “upscale”, and by that I mean that there are tables to sit at), but there’s good brats, any kind of baked good you want, Middle Eastern food, Mexican and Cambodian, plus stuff like gyros, Mediterranean… If you go, climb upstairs to eat on the balcony that overlooks the market–it’s fantastic. The market and everything in it shuts down around three, just so you know.

If you want a crazy-awesome bar, go check out the Velvet Tango Room. Dress up. It’s basically a modern speakeasy, and–as you might expect–is pretty awesome.

If you’re okay walking around looking for somewhere, Little Italy has some fantastic shops and restaurants. Many of them keep weird hours/days of operation, though.

There’s also L’Albatros Brasserie– I’ve heard it’s amazing, though it’s a bit steep for my pocketbook. Blue Point Grille is meant to do fantastic seafood, but as I’m allergic, we’ve never gone.

This is by no means a comprehensive listing, it’s just a bunch of places I’ve been and found memorable for one reason or another.

Moving on to things to do…

If you’re into music, there’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though I haven’t seen it, they currently have a Springsteen exhibit that’s supposed to be great, and Motown exhibit that runs through the end of the summer.

The Cleveland Museum of Art has just opened their newly renovated east wing, and the collection is amazing. Admission, pleasingly enough, is free. There’s also the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is small but neat.

If you’re in a more playing-with-things mood, the Great Lakes Science Center can be pretty fun–they have a lot of hands-on exhibits. (It’s also literally right next to the Rock Hall, so if you wanted, you could do a doubleheader without paying twice for parking.)

This one’s a bit odd, but there’s the William Mather museum, where you’re going through an old steamboat. It’s incredible and I love it, but if you’re claustrophobic, I would recommend against it.

Cleveland has a surprisingly wonderful zoo. Part of it is an indoor rainforest, and they’ve done pretty amazing things with it. It’s also enormous–you can easily spend a whole day there and still not see everything.

Depending on what time of year you’re going to be there, the Cleveland Botanical Garden or the Cleveland Cultural Gardens can be neat. That said, if you’re going to be here before, say, June, it’s probably not worth it, since everything outside will just be mud. Along similar lines is the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse.

Maybe this is weird, but I love taking people to the Lake View Cemetery. It’s absolutely stunning–full of amazing old graves, gorgeous monuments, and there’s a chapel designed by Louis Tiffany (of stained glass fame), which is just as beautiful as you’d expect.

If you want music, check what’s playing at the Grog Shop, the Beachland Ballroom, or the House of Blues. Bonus: Grog Shop and the Ballroom tend to be really cheap, too, with some shows as low as a couple of bucks.

If you want a different kind of music, go check out the world-class Cleveland Orchestra–they’re considered among the top ten orchestras in the world, better than anyone else in America save for Chicago’s Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Theater, go look at Playhouse Square. It’s a fairly impressive theater complex–it’s a group theaters from the twenties that all closed in the sixties. There was discussion about knocking them all down back in the 70s, but a group of people formed a preservation group and between, I think, 1980 and 1999, they’ve totally restored all five of the theaters–it’s gorgeous inside. They do a pretty wide variety of stuff now, ranging from, like, fashion shows to Broadway, and tickets can often be had for as little as $10. (And, okay, they’re a little nosebleedy, but I’ve paid way more than ten bucks for worse.)

For more outdoorsy stuff, there’s the Headlands Beach State Park–a mile of sandy beach, hiking trails, all sort of nice stuff. Also, Cleveland’s Metroparks system is second to none–miles upon miles of trails, wildlife reserves, all sorts of stuff. There’s even a haunted castle!

If you’re interested in kayaking, I hear that 41 North is well worth the price. Rock climbing? Try Kendall Cliffs if you want indoor, or Whipps Ledges if you want to be outside.

Cleveland also has a couple of great independently owned bookshops. Mac’s Backs Paperbacks and Visible Voice Books both come to mind.

If you’re willing to drive a bit further, Kelleys Island (those are two different links) can be a nice visit–bird watching, swimming, kayaking, sailing, swimming, scuba diving (with shipwrecks!), lighthouse tours, and the largest easily accessible glacial grooves in the world, which are pretty incredible.

About the same distance from Cleveland as Kelleys Island is Cedar Point, which has more rides than any other amusement park and ties for the world record of most roller coasters in an amusement park. There’s also a beach, an indoor waterpark, an outdoor waterpark, a marina, a bunch of restaurants, and go-karts. It’s been voted the best amusement park in the world for something like ten years running. I’m basically counting down until Maura’s tall enough to go on the fun stuff.

Somewhat less impressive than Cedar Point (but also more day-trippish) is Kings Island. It’s worth mentioning that Kings Island tickets are discounted by $15 if you purchase them online, which makes it markedly cheaper than Cedar Point tickets are.

If you’re willing to drive the 45 minutes down to Akron, you can also visit Blossom Music Center, which has a wide variety of concerts, including concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, who are apparently performing with Yo-Yo Ma this summer.

Okay. That’s my incomplete listing of stuff to do in Cleveland. Locals, have anything to add?

Last week, two things happened. First, I ran out of deodorant (the mineral-salt spray-on kind), and second, my cousin mentioned on Facebook that his wife was making deodorant that evening. I was inspired–obviously, I should be making my own deodorant.

The internet offered up a multitude of recipes, almost all of which were some combination of coconut oil, baking soda, and either cornstarch or arrowroot powder. Which sounds mostly good, except that I am a delicate flower, and my poor, sensitive skin hates…well, pretty much everything. Sun burns me alarmingly quickly, scented products give me hives, soap leaves me feeling like I’ve been sandpapered, deodorant often leaves me feeling dried out and itchy. Sexy, right?

So I based my deodorant on the many available recipes, but tailored it for those of us with picky skin.

Ingredients. We’ve got coconut oil, grapefruit essential oil, baking soda, cornstarch, apricot kernel oil, and vitamin E. This is sort of a flexible recipe. You can use whatever essential oil you’ve got around or, really, you could leave it out. It’s such a light scent that I don’t think it’d be terribly noticeable if it were gone. If you have yeast issues, you should use arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch. Thankfully, that’s not an issue for me, so I went with the cheapo cornstarch. For the vitamin E, you can either puncture a few gelcaps and squirt out their insides, or you can buy a little bottle of vitamin E at some pharmacies.

Put 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1/4 cup baking soda, 1 Tbsp apricot kernel oil, 1 tsp vitamin E, and 6 Tbsp coconut oil into a bowl. I cheated and microwaved my coconut oil for about thirty seconds, and I’d suggest that you do, too–sure, you can mush it around in the bowl and it’ll eventually warm up and melt, but why bother? It’s also a lot easier to measure it when it’s at least semi-liquid.

If you happen to have it, I’d add some tea tree oil (maybe 1/4 tsp), as well, since it’s an antifungal, but I didn’t have any and it was too late to go to the store, so whatever.

Anyhow, all that stuff in a bowl, and start mixing. If you haven’t melted (or fully melted) your coconut oil, it’ll take a minute or two before things start to get mixy, but it’ll happen.

And, tada, you’ve made the most delicious cream cheese icing you’ll ever taste!

Okay, no, but it looks like that, doesn’t it? I love cream cheese icing.

Now would be a good time to add your essential oil. Like I said, I used grapefruit, and a fairly substantial amount of it. I keep seeing recipes calling for ten drops, and I can’t imagine that ten drops would do anything to a batch of this side. I ended up using probably between 1/3 and 1/2 of a teaspoon, and the deodorant has a very light scent–it’s noticeable if I stick my nose into the tin, or get right up in my armpit and sniff, but other than that, I don’t notice it at all.

Once you’re all mixed in, let it sit for a few minutes–the coconut oil will be really soft right now, which (sort of unexpectedly) makes it rather difficult to effectively package this stuff. Five minutes or so in a coolish room ought to be sufficient. Scrape the deodorant into a container, and you’re good to go. This made about 3/4 of a cup and filled four 3-Tbsp tins that I had. (Three are in use, and one’s in the freezer to see how it holds up in storage–I’ll report back in a few months.)

This makes a really nice and surprisingly effective deodorant. It’s a little easier on your skin than a lot of recipes out there, since it has more oil and less destinking-and-dessicant stuff in it. It also has the skin-soothing and rejuvinating properties of vitamin E and apricot kernel oil, as well as the moisturizing coconut oil. We’ve been using it for about a week now and have no complaints. It’s even stood up to the sweaty man test–Nick, who’s pretty stinky, has been wearing it, and it’s held up over long walks, gardening, and yard work…all with less smell than our previous deodorant choices have left us with.

I don’t know that you’ll save a ton of money doing this (my coconut oil was pretty expensive, though if you buy it in quantity or online the price drops dramatically), but it’s effective and doesn’t make my armpits hurt, which makes it worth it in my book.