Film
Mykala and I have a steadily-growing list of movies we would like to watch, but there are so many other things we’d rather do (usually, rather read) once Ess goes to bed that we watch very few movies. At this rate, I expect to miss most excellent new films and all of the new mediocre ones for years to come, because soon Ess will want to watch with us. We are prepared and excited for that.
Most important, at the point when all the merchandise, freebies, tie-ins, and commercials point us at Disney junction, we expect to take an intentional detour so we can instead watch the entire Miyazaki canon first. This is 90% due to his superb, realistic, empowering depiction of woman protagonists and 10% to the extraordinary artistry of the films. It is so so SO important to Mykala and I that we do everything we can to show Ess (not tell, tell doesn’t work) the deep biases and xenophobia against women and any ethnicity/culture/norm outside mainstream-America. In order to do this, Ess first needs to be instilled with a fiery core of steel, her options limitless, her potential vast, her autonomy paramount. If we help her stoke this fire early on, we hope she can then learn to counter institutional biases against women, thereby pointing the prow of her ship into the waves, tacking rather than capsizing.
There is much much more to say about this in the years to come. If you are interested, start by following Everyday Sexism on Twitter.