Now, before launching into this, let me make one thing clear: I love the TV show Bones and have for a long time. I also kind of like Rizzoli & Isles, but there’s one thing that’s been irking me about these two series, even though they feature women in the leading roles and (especially in the case of Bones) have diverse casts. My problem is the fact that while both Temperance Brennan of Bones and Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles are portrayed as unusually smart and gifted females, they are also portrayed as socially awkward to a point that borders on a psychological disorder.

As anyone who has read The Yellow Wallpaper might know, there’s been a long standing tradition of portraying women as crazy and in need of psychiatric assistance in order to undermine their intelligence (or, as the folks at Jezebel recently pointed out, just to undermine them in general).By portraying both Temperance and Maura as gifted-but-mentally-challenged individuals this old stereotype is reinforced.

But there’s more to it. Think about all the police procedural dramas out there that have especially smart male characters (Gill Grissom of CSI is one example that comes to mind). While these male characters are sometimes portrayed as a bit goofy, there’s never the same social inhibition or hints at disorders as with Temperance and Miranda. In male characters, being smart is astonishing and awe-inspiring, but is rarely seen as being “crazy.” The only reason I can see for this is gender. I mean, wouldn’t Temperance’s social blunders be just as fun if she was a man? Or in the case of Miranda: would it detract from the show if she was socially well-adjusted? I really don’t thinks. After all, is it so much to ask of the writers of these shows to create opportunities for tension and/or humor without making a smart woman look like she should see a shrink?

Of course, there are smart female characters that are able to be smart without being portrayed as “crazy”: Catherine Willows in CSI, Stella Bonasera in CSI:NY or Angela Montenegro in Bones are all good examples. But it’s still revealing to see that women that are not only smart, but specifically exceptionally talented in male-dominated fields (forensic anthropology in Bones and medical examiner in Rizzoli & Isles) are portrayed as slightly crazy. The idea that too much knowledge is just not good for women, and that women can’t actually be as good (let alone better than) men in traditionally male-dominated fields still seems to linger in some people’s minds, which in turn leads to the perpetuation of this harmful stereotype. And here we are, still wondering why there aren’t more women in the so-called hard-sciences. When women who are in those fields on TV are portrayed as “crazy” is it such a stretch to understand why female viewers might shy away from those fields?

why does pink = girly

I volunteer at the children’s service at my synagogue on Shabbat (the Sabbath). Every week, the kids walk around with kid-sized Torahs, some of which are stuffed toys. The Torahs are red, yellow, blue, and purple and were bought in the past few years, so they all look new and are in pretty good condition, but there’s one pink one, that is about twice my age. It’s very faded, a little corroded looking, and has been sewed more times than I can remember to keep the stuffing from falling out. Despite the clear quality disparity, all hell breaks loose every Shabbat when the little girls come running to grab the pink Torah before anyone else can catch up. And yes, innumerable tears have been shed and many fights have ensued over this issue.

The obsession over the pink Torah has been going on for a while now, and it’s really been bothering me. I know it’s not the girls’ fault that they love pink, since they’re being flooded by pink pink pink on a daily basis by the media. For example, a while ago I was at a friend’s house and we were watching the Disney movie Princess Protection Program with her youngest sister. I happen to love the color pink, but the movie’s insistence that princesses have to have lots and lots of pink things was nauseating. I know that I probably love pink because society has conditioned me, a possessor of ovaries, to like the color. It’s nobody’s fault but the media and society for allowing it.

Is it really a big deal, though? If girls love pink, does it matter so much? While it may be just a color — not exactly life or death — I think it does matter, not so much because of the specifics of the matter, but because of the concept. When one gender is conditioned to prefer one thing to another, it becomes the property of that gender, not to be enjoyed by the other. Pink is liked by girls, which makes it girly; if it’s girly, boys who like it are considered effeminate. Boys like cars, which makes it “boyish” and therefore girls who like it are tomboys. Gendering things as basic as colors separates the men from women, forming a dichotomy.

I’d also like to point out that “girly” doesn’t have any real male equivalent. I used “boyish” in the above paragraph for lack of a better word, but it doesn’t have the right connotation — probably because while “girly” is a condition, “boyish” is the cultural standard. So when the girls at my synagogue fight over the pink Torah, they’re reinforcing the idea that they’re the “other” group. This isn’t just bad for girls — if a boy naturally likes pink, they’re looked down upon because it’s seen as “girly”.

One Shabbat quite a while ago, a boy actually asked for the pink Torah. It had already been snapped up by one of the girls, but it made me really happy that neither his parents nor society at large had (yet) conditioned him not to like pink. He hasn’t asked for the pink Torah again, but I really hope he still wants it.

I was also a tomboy

I never thought much of gender construction as a child. I just knew what I wanted to wear, how my hair should be cut, and what interested me. Did I want to proudly wear my new matching dragon shirt and short set? Yes. Did I want to play the more physical and male dominated games? Yes. Breaking through the conventions of the female stereotype was never problematic for me until I was around eight years old and moved to a new town.

It was nerve racking. I was suddenly over-aware of my “boyish” appearance, worried about how and if my peers would accept me. My mother accompanied my sister and me to our new classrooms, mine being the first. The teacher met us outside of the classroom, hugged my sister, who had more of a feminine appearance than myself, and enthusiastically said, “Welcome Aimee!” This assumption was just the beginning of the long lasting confusion regarding my gender from those around me. I can’t say for certain what my peers thought of me, but I managed to attend school free from being bullied, and I am grateful to this day that my classmates did not outwardly ridicule me for who I was.

That isn’t to say I wasn’t internally tormented about my identity. I’d hover between the male and female bathrooms, trying to decide in which bathroom I would receive fewer stares from. The situation became so detrimental that at times I would hold my bladder until I went home in pain, or, on occasion, urinating myself.

When puberty hit, my life changed. I began to succumb to the expectations that society had for me as a woman. I began to stray away from my masculine traits and started to dress more feminine and began to grow my hair out in attempts to be seen as “normal.” Regardless of whether or not that was what I desired, I grew into this new appropriate gender role I had created for myself. No longer was I mistaken for a boy and I felt comfortable around new people that weren’t trying to decipher my gender.

Yet as I became more educated on the issue, I started to ask myself if this was how I wanted to identify myself. I’ve lived on both ends of the spectrum and it seems I am now left attempting to determine who I truly am. My childhood has resulted in a deeply rooted self-consciousness that I can’t seem to shake. What I really desire is to just be free from the pressures that have forced me to confine myself to these simplified versions of the female gender.

When I first saw Miss Representation it stunned me—in the best of ways. I didn’t immediately take the time to reflect on it, but then a few nights ago I was unlucky enough to witness the newest Carl’s Jr. commercial, where a very hungry Kate Upton seductively devours a burger while wearing basically, well, nothing. And after 23 years of demeaning media onslaught, I’m thinking I’ve had enough.

Before watching Miss Representation, I indulged in the occasional “guilty pleasure”—reality TV being my wind-down-at-the-end-of-the-day treat. I saw no harm in it. It’s just mindless entertainment, right? Shows like Jersey Shore and Keeping Up With The Kardashians were among my favorites. But that was before the film, before my eyes were opened to the very (real) poison of this seemingly harmless reality TV.

For those who haven’t seen the film, Miss Representation is a documentary produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, focusing on the unvirtuous cycle of over-sexualized and debased images of women in the media and the parallel (and not coincidental) absence of women in positions of power. Newsom, as an actress, was asked to lie about her age and strike her MBA, among other academic achievements, from her resume—demonstrating that a woman’s value lies in her youth and looks rather than her academic achievements and intelligence. A 2011 research study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that women are 400% more likely than men to be represented in “sexy” attire on television. And this is no coincidence—a 2005 study published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs found ads targeted at young adults and teenagers to be 65% more likely to contain a provocatively dressed model, and 128% more likely to contain sexual innuendo or behavior than ads geared towards mature adults.

The first few minutes of the documentary paint a disheartening picture of reality very different from my own perception—after all, this was 2011. Don’t we have equality? Think about this: women have been able to vote and hold public office for nearly 100 years, yet women occupy only a third of the seats in Congress they should. At this rate, it will take 500 years to reach parity. 500 years—we’ll probably be teleporting and time traveling before women are equally represented in Congress? Something is really wrong here.

The saying, “you can’t be what you can’t see,” rings true here. There is massive gender inequality in leadership positions, partially because young girls are not seeing images of strong, intelligent women in positions of power each day. In fact, women hold only 3% of media power positions, which means 97% of what we hear, read and watch is coming from the male perspective. And the cycle of disparity continues.

The problem has a lot to do with media, and the message projected to children. Kids today consume an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes of media per day. So, to think that what we see on TV, read in a magazine or listen to on our iPods has no effect on our perceptions is ludicrous. Media instills the idea that the value of a woman lies in her appearance, simply because it gets good ratings. You can’t turn the TV on anymore without a heavy dose of ultra-sexualized, suggestive images, and shows that celebrate women who lack substance (cue GoDaddy commercials and the Jersey Shore opening sequence).

What I used to think were harmless, albeit ridiculous shows or commercials, I now understand to be much more. These are not benign. How are we supposed to raise intellectual, confident young women when they are assailed each day by media messages telling them they aren’t pretty enough, skinny or curvy enough and that the quickest way to stardom and fame is to make a sex tape and party like a rock star? Likewise, how can young men grow up with respect for their female counterparts and a healthy amount of emotion and empathy while absorbing drastically conflicting messages from the media? It’s a toxic situation, and one that cries out for a remedy and collective action.

So what can we do? It may seem overwhelming, but small changes can lead to revolution. Let’s start by becoming more aware and conscious. If you see an offensive commercial or TV show, call it out on Twitter or Facebook. After watching the film, I now pick up on things I never found important before. Do they really need that bikinied woman there to sell that cheeseburger? Why were only male innovators represented here? The men/women in this show are all heavily stereotyped. I scrutinize everything I watch and encourage my loved ones to do the same. While watching the Oscars a few weeks back, I listened hard for the kinds of questions female attendees were asked as opposed to their male counterparts. Wait, she was asked about her dress first, and artistic endeavors second. This kind of stuff matters.

Post-Miss Representation, the shows I watch and brands I buy have shifted. Gone are the days when I sit back and watch an episode of Jersey Shore without thinking about the bigger picture and subsequently turning it off. The media can be used for good, for uplifting and inspiring young men and women. If the day ever comes that I’m raising a daughter, the last thing I would ever want her to feel is insignificant, or that her aesthetics trump her substance.

This is why, among other things, the Jersey Shore has been deleted from my DVR list. And to all of it I say: good riddance.

I’m currently a senior at my high school here in the Dominican Republic. I was born in the States and have lived overseas almost my entire life. I’m also Hispanic– both my parents and the rest of my family are Cuban. I think this is a great thing, a blessing even. We’re all pretty close, we’re bilingual, our food is delicious, we have friends all around the world, and now we have many opportunities that we wouldn’t have been granted if we hadn’t moved around. I’m extremely grateful.

Nevertheless (did you feel there was an impending catch?), if you’re also Hispanic or if you have had any exposure to Latino culture, you’ve probably witnessed the drawbacks of the close-mindedness and conventionalism that are evident in my culture, and maybe you’ve even dealt with the ever-present ‘Big P’, or need for propriety.

My family could easily be considered open-minded for a Latino family. There are some ideas and decisions that are debatable, but mostly they’re very modern. But when I told my family that I was applying to women’s colleges, their reaction wasn’t so progressive. “Why?” They asked. “Are you feeling a bit confused Amanda? Because you know…” they trailed off. I didn’t understand why they automatically associated women’s colleges with lesbians before associating them with powerful, innovative women or extremely rigorous schools. I even thought it was quite entertaining to have my father, who is probably one of the most conservative men his age and the opposite of up-front when it comes to discussing sexuality and relationships with his daughters, look at me wide-eyed, scrutinizing my every move, so as to notice any sign of hesitation or confusion. I answered: “No, I’m pretty confident that I’m straight, not that my sexuality impacts my decision to apply to these colleges in any way.”

While my dad is a bit “old-school” and conservative about some issues, he is (relatively) open-minded about most others, and so is my mom. Both are completely devoted to and supportive of my every endeavor. Again, most families here do not possess this ‘modern’ thinking. I was, thankfully, brought up to have a mind of my own, to venture outside of my bubble of society here in the D.R. and find this appealing, not scary or “disagreeable” (I’m boldly quoting Jane Austen’s Emma directly, which was, mind you, published in 1815 … uber-conventional thinking? Yes.)

Needless to say, it does get difficult sometimes when dealing with students who are completely unaware of how ignorant they sound when making archaic comments and the effect these comments have on their own society and country. The men inhabiting this island are generally sexist- machistas for you Spanish speakers- and that’s caused by this traditional-conventional-conservative attitude that seizes most minds here. The country still hasn’t progressed past this self-destructive thinking: it’s stayed behind with the Highbury mentality of the 19th century (again, thank you Ms. Austen).

I’ve experienced numerous situations where women face the most regressive expectations here on this island. If we don’t wear makeup to school, we’ve obviously missed out on scoring our future potential husband, who will study business or finance and then come back to start his own company, or work in a bank, or open his own bank, and maintain us for the rest of our lives while we breed and nurse our young. I’ve been in classrooms with male peers, many of whom I adore and am very close with outside of the classroom, but who undeniably project innumerous stereotypes in their (repugnant) attempts to trigger a laugh or two. Guys will make comments like the classic: “I can’t wait to work on Wall Street and bring home the bacon.” I always dismiss comments like this with a, “Who says you will?” which naturally provokes the comeback “the man is supposed to make the money so that the mom can stay home with the kids,Amanda. Duh!”

Wrong.

The extent to which men look down on women here is unthinkable and it’s disturbing how they have these roles for women already planned out in their minds. Naturally I’m really looking forward to moving back to the US so that I can experience newer, more modern, more apt treatments and perspectives of women. I find out where I’ll be attending college this month- wish me luck!

I won't let numbers define me

I’ve always hated numbers.
Ok, maybe not “hate” since they do impact my daily life in positive ways.
But overall I really dislike numbers.
Not for what they inherently are or what good they’ve done for me. I’m thankful for all that they’ve helped us accomplish and I realize that they are irreplaceable.
But I’ve often focused on them too much and have let them play a role in defining who I am, my self-worth.

My height-
I’ve always been taller than most. Sometimes it made me want to go crawl in a hole somewhere. I didn’t want to stand out. I wanted to be that cute little girl that everyone coddled and gushed over. I wasn’t “cute.”
Now I know I’m beautiful, with maybe a bit more to love than others. I’m not at your eye-level. I’m at your heart-level.

My weight-
A number I feared. A number that controlled my life for too long. A number that was my existence.
I first noticed it when I was 10-years-old and it continued to haunt me nearly a decade later, a specter to remind me of why I wasn’t “good enough.”
Now it is what it is: a number. I know when I feel good, the difference between healthy and unhealthy. A number can’t translate how strong I feel after my renovation.

What I eat-
For the longest time food was equal to calories. What I ate was not food, but numbers. My meals were addition problems for me to add up in my head, > or < signs ahead of or behind a prized number in my mind that helped make or break my day.
Now, it’s not that I’m blind to the math behind what I ingest.
It’s that I see an apple as an apple, instead of 100 calories.

My feet-
I’ve never liked my feet. Why? They’re “too big,” obviously. The time I could have fit them into a women’s size 6 shoe was probably a few months at the most, and it most definitely passed me by.
Besides that, both of my second toes are crooked. My pinkie toes look like triangles. I try desperately to cover my toenails up with some pink nail polish, but it runs down into all of the uneven crevices and I have to start all over again, wasting precious minutes of my time. If only they were perfectly proportionate!
My feet owe me nothing. They have taken me through Central Park, let me kick a soccer ball and feel the warm sand and the cool water. I am blessed to have them.

How many “friends” I have-
584. I know off the top of my head how many Facebook “friends” I have. As much as I try to fight it, I worry when this number fluctuates.
Has someone deleted me because I am no longer important to them? What did I do wrong? Why haven’t I reached 1000 yet?
Delete buttons are in a fantasy world and so is the notion that I have a defined number of friends.
The people who have helped me along the way-family, friends, coaches, teachers and strangers-certainly outnumber 584. There are countless people who can help you too.
You just have to let them in.

How smart I am-
My GPA has always been a source of great personal effort and pride. Overall, this doesn’t seem like a bad thing, until you consider how utterly ridiculous it is. At the end of my first fall semester in college I came to the realization that I had spent the better part of four months working for a number: 4.0.
When I earned that number, did I feel accomplished? Sort of.
After waiting anxiously for weeks, there it was.
Right there in black and white was the evidence that I was smart.
Right?
I have learned more from my eating disorder than I have in any class. “Life intelligence” can’t be measured in numbers. I can’t count the tears shed or measure the frustration I felt during my struggle. Even now I can’t graph the love I’ve experienced or give an equation to solve the problem of self-hate.
All I know is that the greatest struggle of my life has proven to be my greatest learning experience.

How long I’ve been alive-
Until now, I’ve equated age with living. I know I have “lived” beyond these few years. Living is an experience, not a number. That experience is tied down with a number as we try to define it so it makes sense to us.
I need to live for today.
And so do you, any of you who are recovering.
It is impossible for us to turn our heads 180º for a reason: you can’t be stuck looking behind you when moving forward.
We don’t measure visibility in “years” for a reason: a long, immeasurable future lies ahead.
I promise it’s exciting, though. I promise that if you set your sights on today, tomorrow will be within your reach.
And so will recovery.

How many seconds, minutes, days, months or years I have left until I’ve reached “the next phase” of my life-
5 minutes until class is over.
1 week until vacation starts.
2 years until I’m done with college…
But then I have at least a few more years until I’m done with grad school.
Oh my god-in a decade, I’ll be 30.
“Today” is the phase I’ll be living in.
Another day of life after recovery.
Another “first day” of my new, beautiful life.

I’ve never expressed myself in numbers-why let them define who I am?

language matters

Recently, I was taking a course on linguistics, and we were discussing syntax. My professor asked the class– a room of roughly a hundred English students, mostly female– what pronoun to use when replacing the noun ‘boss’. It wasn’t a very serious question, but the response made him stop in his tracks. Over half the class had casually, but eagerly, called out ‘he’. It wasn’t until my astonished professor eyed us that everyone realised what they had said: that they had confirmed something we all thought to have been a thing of the past. There were nervous giggles and some shocked faces, including my own, because what’s so horrific is that I hadn’t realized it either.

The incident reminded me of this riddle I encountered about a year ago. It went like this: ‘A father and a son get into a car crash. The father dies, but the son is rushed to hospital. On the operating table the doctor suddenly cries out “I can’t operate on this boy. He is my son”.’ Possible or not? Well, yes of course it is, but I didn’t think properly then, and apparently I still don’t. My culture is one in which, traditionally, doctors are male, nurses are not. Pilots are men, kindergarten teachers are women, etc.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that language, because it is so intuitive, is a great mirror of society. However, if we don’t like the image that it reflects back at us, then it is our responsibility to try and change that. Also, since language is predominant in almost every aspect of our life, I think it will pay off to try and consciously manipulate it. Some people may give you the stink-eye if you correct their statements into more gender-neutral equivalents, but if you don’t then this passive aggression will surely come back and bite you in the ass.

A friend of mine recently created a zine about the slut/stud double standard for a electives course called Feminisms that she’s taking. She included various fairy-tale-esque ads she found in magazines depicting women as love-obsessed. Watching her make her zine got me thinking about the image we always see of women as relationship-focused and emotional. Specifically, it got me thinking about the way we’re generally told girls and boys view random hook-ups, and I began to question whether those views are as widespread as we’ve been led to believe.

Remember the movie He’s Just Not That Into You? For those of you who missed it, the basic premise of this highbrow film (read: crappy rom-com) is that women and girls make up all kinds of excuses to rationalize men’s jerky behavior. According to He’s Just Not That Into You, we come up with justifications when a guy doesn’t call us, ignores us, or just treats us generally badly.

Apparently, we all need to realize that, upsetting as it is, he’s just not that into us. I agree. If someone is treating you badly, chances are they aren’t worth your time. But I have one issue.Movies like He’s Just Not That Into You and nearly every other rom-com in existence (save, maybe 500 Days of Summer) tell us that men often act like jerks and sometimes act nice. They usually tell us to find the nice guys, but they never address the fact that women also act like jerks, and sometimes she’s just not that into you.

It’s time to realize that girls and boys can be found on all points of the spectrum. Yes, for many girls a random hook-up is a hopeful entrée into a relationship, however for other girls it is just a random hook-up. Similarly, there exist boys who view random hook-ups as more than a successful attempt to get some. The stereotyping we see in popular culture showing women as desperate for relationships and emotional connections, and men as taking advantage of any chance to get physical isn’t entirely accurate, doesn’t allow for outliers to the formula, and creates misunderstandings.

It’s nearly impossible to escape high school (and from what I hear, college) these days without hearing about, seeing, or participating in immense saliva-sharing (hello, rising herpes rates!). I have to say, as a senior in high school, what I’ve seen does not follow the rom-com pattern. I have one very close friend who seems to think every random hook up is a possibility for a fully-developed relationship, and finds herself disappointed every time things don’t work out that way.

On the other side of the spectrum, a friend recently hooked up with a guy at a party, not expecting anything, and was approached by him the next day. Apparently the guy wanted to address what he expected to be her dismay that the hook-up didn’t mean anything. He was surprised when she wholeheartedly agreed and was surprised he would have thought anything else. I guess the moral of that story is that boys watch just as many rom-coms as we do.

The fact is, random hook-ups are probably a little confusing for all parties involved, since they don’t generally involve much talking about what it all means before it all happens. As with nearly everything in high school, if people said what they really felt, many more feelings would probably be preserved, but I don’t think anyone sees that changing in the near future. In the meantime, maybe we can just make a couple of movies about her not being into him, and cast Ryan Gosling as the weepy, confused reject instead of Jennifer Connolly.

Originally posted on Rachel Simmon’s blog. Fiona also writes for Barbara’s Angels. 

Many people don’t know what being transgender means. I, not being transgendered, don’t fully understand every aspect of it either but my fiancée is in the middle of transitioning so I want to express what I do know. Here is some information I’ve gathered about people transitioning from one gender to another.

Being transgender means feeling that you are a different gender than your physical biology. It means that a person does not see themselves as the biological gender they were born into. In other words they do not feel that their gender matches their sex (their body parts). Some people (like my sociology professor) refer to a person transitioning as “man to woman” or “woman to man” because (as he describes it) people transitioning are only transitioning their gender, not their sex, and that even if they change their actual sex organs their DNA is still the same. I asked my fiancée and he disagreed with my professor. Genetics are very complex and a lot still remains unknown about them. Scientists are not sure about all the genes that work in brain function — it is unintelligent to state that someone’s physical and mental biology is solely determined by an X or Y chromosome. New ideas are surfacing that a person’s biological sex may not be the sole factor of things like one’s physical strength, emotions and intelligence level.

We as a society have trouble differentiating between sex and gender, and I think that is where a lot of the confusion surrounding being transgendered comes from. A person’s sex is their biological organs but gender is affected by society in many ways. Society can have great influence on what a person’s gender is and is not supposed to be. People’s gender can be influenced without them even knowing it. Take for example masculinity. Men are pressured to be masculine through society and media. Masculinity suggests that boys must be strong, tough, powerful, and not weak, wimpy, emotional, and especially ‘girly’. These ideas do not derive from the XY chromosomes in a male’s body. Without masculinity, society and the media would be very different and that would lead to different views of gender and what it means to be a man.

Present day media rarely represents people who transition from one gender to another. Most people hear about children transitioning from male to female or female to male and do not consider adults who recently feel they have the ability and social support to transition and pass. We especially don’t hear about individuals who are FTM (female transitioning to male) as often as we hear about MTF individuals. The media puts the spotlight on little boys that want to wear dresses and love pink. Why? Once again I bring up masculinity. These children are questioning masculinity and that is seen as a threat to the patriarchy. Threatening patriarchy means a possible loss of control of the sexist status quo. Once control is lost, those in power feel that they will lose control of everything. So how do they keep control?

First consider who controls the media and keep in mind our patriarchal culture. White, heterosexual, affluent men largely control our capitalistic society. They generally want to obtain as much money and power as possible and eliminate all threats to that goal. They do this by creating unrealistic ideals, like for men to be incredibly strong and women to be extremely skinny (sounds like a bad combination); they also enforce the idea that for people of color light skin equals privilege (which in our society it does) which creates a hierarchy. They do this to turn us against each other so they can continue to make money off of people trying to reach that unreachable ideal. Getting back on topic, trans people blur the lines of gender. They threaten patriarchy just like any person of color or any non-heterosexual person does. What is most important in all of this is that everyone deserves equality and the majority of people do not receive it.

It’s important for us, as feminists and as people in general, to understand what being transgender means. We need to support the transgender individuals in our lives, because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s been shown that having peer support and counseling groups among LGBTQ people leads to less bullying and lower suicide rates. It’s vital that we all become educated, visible and reliable allies.

Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher

Being the avid history nerd that I am, I was basically counting down the minutes until the opening of Iron Lady, the new film chronicling Margaret Thatcher’s life, starring Meryl Streep. I mean, what could be better than Meryl Streep (who is awesomeness in human form) taking on a complex, fascinating character like Prime Minister Thatcher, right? Regardless of your politics, Margaret Thatcher’s story is an exciting one.

I was expecting a few things from the film. First, I was expecting a kick-butt performance from Ms. Streep. Second, I was expecting to learn more about Margaret Thatcher’s political and personal story, since I don’t know that much about her. Third, I was expecting to be thoroughly entertained.

Unfortunately, only one of my three expectations was really fulfilled. Meryl Streep’s performance was above and beyond what I had hoped for. She did an incredible job conveying subtle aspects of Margaret Thatcher’s character, and portraying her throughout at different ages. I also just have to give props to Meryl Streep for taking on this role and helping to bring to light the story of a political trailblazer.

Sadly, I feel the film didn’t give Meryl Streep much of a chance to delve into certain aspects of Thatcher’s character. The film touched on events that occurred during Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister, but glossed over many.

I wanted to see more explanation of how Thatcher came to believe in her conservative politics, whether she ever questioned them, and how she became interested in politics in the first place.The film alludes to Thatcher’s early ambitions with a scene where she dreamily watches her politically active father deliver a speech, but skips over Thatcher’s time at Oxford, showing us her run for Parliament before we know why or when she became interested in politics.

Instead the film focuses mainly on Thatcher’s life as an old woman, after her husband has died, as she is beginning to lose her mind. In most of the movie, Thatcher is coping with the loss of her husband. She hallucinates that he is with her when he is, in fact, dead, and for most of the film refuses to throw out his belongings.

At the end of the film, she finally lets her hallucinations go, as she imagines her husband walking out the door. However, this is done with much crying and saying that she is scared to be alone. I thought the film’s choice to include these hallucinations was especially interesting, as it highlighted Thatcher’s dependency on her male counterpart, rather than focusing on her independent strength.

One positive aspect of this portrayal is that it debunks the idea that Margaret Thatcher was, well, an Iron Lady. Showing Thatcher as vulnerable and reliant on her husband humanizes her to some extent. However, it frustrates me that it is necessary to portray a female leader as dependent on her husband to humanize her or make her seem likeable.

I found myself wishing that the film had focused on a stronger, more independent Thatcher, rather than trying to make her hard exterior soft on the edges.

Maybe it’s because I can be a bit of an iron lady myself sometimes, but I think Thatcher would have been even more likeable and relatable, had more of her firmness and independence been portrayed. I was expecting a lot from this film, and frankly, I left somewhat disappointed. While I commend Streep and the others who worked on this film for highlighting the life of such an interesting woman, I hope that someday filmmakers will not feel the need to soften such a powerful character simply because of her gender.