"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."
So the question is - Why be normal? Enjoy the rest of the week.
Looking for more? Please visit FaMiss - Women's Success History & Literature, including books & movie reviews highlighting historical and modern women experiences.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thelma & Louise: Instead of Freedom, They Chose Prison
"You get what you settle for."
Thelma and Louise 1991 movie
I missed this movie when it first came out. Finally making the time for this "girlfriend" classic, I looked forward to wild adventures and renegade women. Instead I found women who managed to escape from one prison only to securely lock themselves in another.
The movie unfolds into one shackle after another as each woman makes a choice to leave behind a world that either bores or pains them only to plunge into a lawless, lifeless abyss.
I was so disappointed in the courageous attitude of these women who seemed to spend more time reacting to events than to planning and creating them. Still, I do love the quote "You get what you settle for." It helps keep me in check when I am grumbling about my place in life. - I have what I've settled for. So the question each of us should ask is are we happy with what we have?
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Thelma and Louise 1991 movie
I missed this movie when it first came out. Finally making the time for this "girlfriend" classic, I looked forward to wild adventures and renegade women. Instead I found women who managed to escape from one prison only to securely lock themselves in another.
The movie unfolds into one shackle after another as each woman makes a choice to leave behind a world that either bores or pains them only to plunge into a lawless, lifeless abyss.
I was so disappointed in the courageous attitude of these women who seemed to spend more time reacting to events than to planning and creating them. Still, I do love the quote "You get what you settle for." It helps keep me in check when I am grumbling about my place in life. - I have what I've settled for. So the question each of us should ask is are we happy with what we have?
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Girlfriends Hit the Road: a 1920s Road Trip Book Review of Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West (2007)
Book Review of Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West (2007) by Joanne Wilke
Author Joanne Wilke is a wonderful storyteller whose childhood memories waffle into the readers’ nostrils like homemade apple pie. She beautifully captures the story of her grandmother’s trip to California from Iowa in 1924.
Eight young women loaded their belongings into two Model T cars and headed to California. Wilke tries to answer the question why did these girls do this? How did they find the courage and convince their parents to let them go? Even though Wilke worked from living testimonies of some of the women who made the journey, read their journals and letters back home, this adventure had many gaps and conflicting accounts. Wilke supplements the story with her own childhood memories of spending the summers in Iowa with her grandmother. These added stories really make her grandmother come alive to the reader.
This is a fun, relatively short tale of a cross country adventure before there were real roads, reliable maps, or even enclosed cars. This grand scale of this journey makes me wonder if the women were able to return to their lives and be happy for the memories or if it woke a restlessness in them that was difficult to quench.
Looking for more? Please visit FaMiss - Women's Success History & Literature, including books & movie reviews highlighting historical and modern women experiences.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Author Joanne Wilke is a wonderful storyteller whose childhood memories waffle into the readers’ nostrils like homemade apple pie. She beautifully captures the story of her grandmother’s trip to California from Iowa in 1924.
Eight young women loaded their belongings into two Model T cars and headed to California. Wilke tries to answer the question why did these girls do this? How did they find the courage and convince their parents to let them go? Even though Wilke worked from living testimonies of some of the women who made the journey, read their journals and letters back home, this adventure had many gaps and conflicting accounts. Wilke supplements the story with her own childhood memories of spending the summers in Iowa with her grandmother. These added stories really make her grandmother come alive to the reader.
This is a fun, relatively short tale of a cross country adventure before there were real roads, reliable maps, or even enclosed cars. This grand scale of this journey makes me wonder if the women were able to return to their lives and be happy for the memories or if it woke a restlessness in them that was difficult to quench.
Looking for more? Please visit FaMiss - Women's Success History & Literature, including books & movie reviews highlighting historical and modern women experiences.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Volver: Movie Review - A Woman's Interior World
The world revolves around the lives of women in Spanish director Pedro Almodόvar’s latest film, Volver (2006). It is a wonderful depiction of survival, loyalty, and integrity yet the action on the screen bears little resemblance to what is really going on in the lives, hearts, and heads of the women.
Almodόvar demonstrates once again (as he did in the film All About My Mother) that he truly understands the dual nature of women. He understands that women often have their external life, one that is busy and complex, but it is in their interior life (often very different than what is seen by others) where the core of her being dwells. His female characters are smart, fallible, sophisticated, genuine, and complex, perhaps some of the most complex female characters ever represented in film.
Volver is a relational film though perhaps few women can relate to the circumstances Penélope Cruz finds herself in but it isn’t to the situation that we can relate but rather who her character, Raimunda, is.
A beautiful, fun (in a strange way) film, one to share with your girlfriends.
This film reminded me of a quote by Edith Wharton:
"But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing- room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."*
*The Fullness of Life, part II (1893) Early Stories of Edith Wharton, vol. 2.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
Almodόvar demonstrates once again (as he did in the film All About My Mother) that he truly understands the dual nature of women. He understands that women often have their external life, one that is busy and complex, but it is in their interior life (often very different than what is seen by others) where the core of her being dwells. His female characters are smart, fallible, sophisticated, genuine, and complex, perhaps some of the most complex female characters ever represented in film.
Volver is a relational film though perhaps few women can relate to the circumstances Penélope Cruz finds herself in but it isn’t to the situation that we can relate but rather who her character, Raimunda, is.
A beautiful, fun (in a strange way) film, one to share with your girlfriends.
This film reminded me of a quote by Edith Wharton:
"But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing- room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."*
*The Fullness of Life, part II (1893) Early Stories of Edith Wharton, vol. 2.
About the author: Allison Frederick is a writer and online marketing educator for other creative women. www.FaMissWomen.com offers free Web 2.0 resources. She is also the author of an upcoming novel, A Portrait of Josephine, an academic-lite thriller. Find out how to receive a free copy of the novel by visiting www.portraitofjosephine.com
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