PrintDecember 11, 2010
When Beauty and Heroism are Wrong
The other day, I came across a feminist blog about the movie Tangled, a movie I know almost nothing about other than that it's racist, sexist, and evil. Girl With Pen writes: "The bad news is that it re-hashes the same old story -- that as a woman you can either be a princess awaiting her prince or an evil stepmother/witch, that if you are male, you get all the action (in many senses of the word) and that beauty equals white, blonde, thin, and young." Let us all grab our pitchforks.
The first reason we should be at arms is because of the racism. You see, when we apply positive affirmations of beauty to white people, it logically implies that all the other races cannot possess these traits, and are in fact less beautiful than white people. Consider also that the princess, in Tangled's case, is white, blonde, and young. Solely because of movies such as Tangled, it is entirely likely that an entire generation of American boys will find young blondes sexually attractive. I, as one tragic example, have fallen prey to this most odious of ploys.
But -- as some conservo-Nazis will argue -- does not any statement of beauty intrinsically imply that certain other characteristics are less beautiful, if not ugly? Yes, but the statement is offensive only when white people make it...because of diversity. In a fair world, all the other races would equally imply that specific physical characteristics are undesirable, and those characteristics would be diametrically opposed between cultures, so that as many people as possible could feel sexually useless.
The second reason we riot is because of the sexism. It is completely offensive to me, as a progressive man with absolutely no differences from a woman whatsoever, to continue the historical injustice of keeping women from their natural, swashbuckling tendencies. In a world which allowed people to pursue their natural inclinations, perhaps the overwhelming majority of men would scrapbook pictures of their girlfriends for hours, and women would engage in hobbies like weapon-smithing, car-building, arm-wrestling, and -- lest we forget -- rescuing the menfolk from certain peril. But yet we see, because of movies like Tangled, that the overwhelming majority of women tragically still do not envy the lives of UFC champions.
It is also highly offensive, to me, to think that women should be highly discriminatory with their partners, while men have to do all the glory-work. For once, I would like to see a really beautiful man like Kevin Sorbo, combing his hair in a tower, while women struggle to prove their sexual legitimacy to him with something other than old-news, media-brainwashed hips and boobs. And why tell women that men have to be valiant and honorable? Makes romance tougher on men, anyway.
The Republo-fascists usually respond to the concept of a moral male impotency in several ways. First, they do so by suggesting that male sexual and relational legitimacy must be proven to women, as the biological nature of sex requires that one gender be a giver/pursuer and the other a receiver/chooser. They would also claim that as the receiver, the woman is supposedly granted the right to accept or deny the male partner based upon what he brings to the table (genetically, creatively, monetarily, romantically, etc). And supposedly, this benefits the human race, or something equally stupid. But in real life, everybody knows that men have only one thing to prove to women, and it's that men will treat women like one of the boys. Need I elaborate on this most obvious subject?
Fortunately for anyone who is not an imbecilic fundie yokel, there exist a few solutions to these problems of rampant expectation and personal taste. First, we can bombard the conservative media (aka Disney) with letters, demanding that the next female protagonist be a very, very large aborigine peasant witchdoctor with Lady Gaga glasses. Second, the white man-princess, excessively anemic beyond all hope of valiance -- yet a successful gossip columnist -- will be captured by a band of marauding body-building Amazonians who seek his genetic input for the purpose of having more anemic, gossip-loving children (whom he will personally nurse 24/7). Third, the evil character will be President George W. Bush, although at this time we are having an incredibly difficult time fitting him into the script.
And this brings us to our moral conclusion. In a culture plagued by standards of both beauty and heroism, few are willing to break the norms, to offer something not only unattractive, but completely undesirable to the mainstream public. If global audiences will not take the first step toward these goals by watching only movies which shatter every normal appreciation, it is our most supreme duty to angrily encourage movie producers to change audiences' movies for them. And for those who protest? Well, tell them they can have their stupid man heroes and young, curvy blondes -- but not in our theaters!
Jeremy Egerer is a recent convert to Christian conservatism from radical liberalism and is the editor of the Seattle website www.americanclarity.com.
