Happy Birthday Geena Davis

I don't know about you, but I love love love Geena Davis. I mean, who couldn't love her for all the great women she's been in her movies and televisions shows?

Dottie Hinson, anyone?

President Mackenzie Allen?

But she's not just an actor. She's a mover and shaker as well. Her organization, The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, is working hard to make sure there are better role models in media for children, including better and more roles for girls and women.

We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.

The institute not only does important research work, but they have excellent resources for parents and educators, including lesson plans and discussion guides.

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films. 

Thank you Geena, for all your hard work!

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SRPS - Blog Around

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." Nora Ephram

I just love that quote. And I love this essay Tom Hanks wrote for Time magazine.

Women 2.0 has a great list of female founders they saw at the Google I/O developers conference that wrapped up last week.

I love this RedBubble t-shirt design!

The Gameologicial Society has a fantastic interview with game writer Rhianna Pratchett.

There isn’t a great deal of understanding about what writers actually do, how they do it, and why. At the moment, we don’t have enough experienced storytellers calling the shots in the industry. Consequently, our narrative literacy is still low. Writers are treated as typists of other people’s ideas, rather than professionals with a specific set of skills, gained over many years of living and breathing stories. In fairness, this is a two-way street, and writers themselves need to be more proactive about the best way to utilize their skills and experience. They need to be prepared to fight for the space and agency they need to do their job.

I think the Emily Windsnap series, written by Liz Kessler and beautifully illustrated by Sarah Gibb, will be my next ink on paper book purchase. It comes highly recommended by a children's librarian friend, so it has to be good!

Marie Brennan has an interesting post up on the SFnovelists.com Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists blog about how just because history may not remember all the exceptional women doesn't mean they didn't exist.

When we talk about people like this — the exceptions to the rule — we aren’t scrounging through the dust-bin, trying desperately to find tokens we can hold up as a sop for women and minorities. We’re taking off the filters that make us dismiss those people as tokens.

I could not help but laugh very much out loud while reading Amanda LaPergola's review of Prometheus and Snow White and the Huntsman. I saw them both on the same night as well, and while I thought about blogging my review, I decided I really didn't want to. Her review pretty much sums up my thoughts on both movies.

While I know I still owe you all a more comprehensive review of Brave, please accept this post about the interactive comic instead.

Speaking of Brave, Ms. Magazine says, "If you like Brave, you'll love Korra." OK, then. I'll have to check it out.

The Frisky quotes Geena Davis on how we're not done creating gender equality:

If we’re not showing boys and girls that they share the sandbox equally when they are young, that girls have the same value as boys, then it’s never going to change.

BetaBeat has super slideshow on the tales of eight young women who learned computer science in high school.

OMG OMG OMG! Her Universe is adding lots and lots of new shirts (Star Trek, Dr. Who, and so much more! to their line up! Including this Uhura tee:

I've been reading a lot of posts over on Women Talk Sports, what with the Olympics coming up and all. This one about Emily Geraghty, an Irish Karate champion, was quite inspirational.

Conversely, this article on BuzzFeed about how Sarah Robles, the likely gold-medal champion and strongest women in America, lives in poverty because she isn't getting the same level of endorsements other more conventionally attractive female athletes receive.

I have been watching lots of TV over the last month or so. And while I may not be writing about it all, I'm certainly doing a lot of critiquing in my head. Which is why this Racialicious post about how criticizing a women-centric show's lack of diversity isn't the same thing as women-hate. Hear hear!


What are you reading/blogging/posting these days?

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Another Double Hitter: SRPS Movie Review and Shout-out.

I just love this movie so much! 20 years later, and it still holds up. I loved baseball when I was growing up in Louisiana and East Texas, and enjoyed spending a rare quite Saturday afternoon with my dad watching the Astros on TV. We even went to a game when we visited Houston. When we moved to Michigan, I changed my allegiance to the Tigers, naturally. In Kansas City, I followed the Royals. And now that I'm in Northern California, I'm a Giants fan.

But, really, I'm a baseball fan. I love the sound of a baseball game being broadcast on the radio or TV. I love the sounds of the crowd and the game. I love the suspense. I love the slow, meditative pace of a game, with short bursts of excitement, and lots of strategy. 

Even at a young age, I was pretty aware that things were different for girls and boys. I don't think I ever harbored any unrealistic ambition of being a professional baseball player, like I'm sure many boys my age did. I remember asking my mom why there weren't any baseball players who were women. In fact, in the 1970s, it was pretty rare to find girls playing Little League.  She didn't really have a good answer. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I'm sure it was yet another lesson in gender expectations and inequality.

I never heard anything about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. I don't know if she had ever heard of them either. 

When the movie A League of Their Own came out in 1992, I went to see it and fell in love. It was the first time I had ever heard of women playing professional sports other than the ones we see in the Olympics (tennis, figure skating, etc.). Which is surprising to me now, seeing as how the AAGPBL was active for a decade (1943 to 1954). How could something that was, according to all the stories I read about it now, so popular be completely missing from our collective memory in the 1970s and 80s? Or was it just not known in my little corner of the world?

The movie is a fictionalized account of the first season, and seems to hold true to the general story. Although it's a movie about baseball players, it's not necessarily about baseball so much as about the story of how the league came into being and the experiences of the individual women in the story, especially the sisters Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis, whom I adore) and Kit Keller (played by Lori Petty), who have a strong bond but also a healthy dose of sibling rivalry. Originally placed on the same team, because of an argument that makes Dottie consider leaving the league, Kit is traded to a rival team. Of course, the movie puts both teams in the World Series game, and the last at bat brings Kit to the plate where Dottie is catcher. It's a suspenseful scene.

There are some remarkable performances in this film. Tom Hanks as the coach, screaming, "There's no crying in baseball!" Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell as two feisty friends. John Lovitz as the scout. So many great scenes. So many great lines. It's not a perfect movie, but it's a fun story. And I love these ensemble casts of women. The characters are complex and whole people, not props. 

This is a movie I make it a point to watch at least once a year. Usually when I get Spring Training Fever in early February, when I pull out all my baseball movies, getting excited about the coming season. And I see something new each time I watch it.

So, when I learned that February 2 is Doris Sams' birthday, I had to move up the re-viewing to make it happen for a shout-out for her.

I don't claim to have known anything about her, or her record, before this week when I saw her listed on a Wikipedia page for birthdays.

According to the Baseball Almanac biography, written by Jim Sargent:

Following the circuit's 1947 season, Sammye's second year, she was selected as the AAGPBL's Player of the Year. A pitcher turned outfielder, she was named to the league's all-star team at both positions. No other player in the history of the AAGPBL accomplished that unique feat.

The Society for American Baseball Research biography, also written by Jim Sargent (actually, it looks like a longer version of the article on BaseballAlmanac.com):

When fans, readers, and baseball enthusiasts consider the fine All-Americans who performed in consistently excellent fashion year in and year out, Doris Sams will be remembered among the best in the league's storied history. Considering her all-around athletic skills, including her accomplishments at the plate and on the mound as well as her down-home personality and widespread popularity, the Knoxville great deserved to be selected among Total Baseball's top twenty players. Indeed, Sammye's popularity in her adopted hometowns of Muskegon and Kalamazoo helps illustrate the glory of hundreds of All-American women who played a high level of baseball on their own fields of dreams in the 1940s and early 1950s.

I would have loved to have known about Doris Sams and the other professional womens baseball players when I was a girl! No telling how I would have used that info. I wasn't especially athletically inclined, but it certainly would have been inspirational anyway. I'm sure I would have devoured biographies about women ball players if I had found any, the same way I read through every book I could find on Amelia Earhart.

I just hope there are lots of little girls out there who ARE learning about professional women's baseball, and other professional women's sports, and are inspired to pursue their dreams. Of course, it's up to us adults to make sure they know about them, and to support them in their goals.

Happy Birthday Doris "Sammye" Sams!

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