Guevara-Flanagan Soars with ‘Wonder Woman’

By Michael Fox

The dearth of female action heroes is a perennial subject of film bloggers (most of whom are male) all over the Web. A number of those fanboy posts read like veiled mash notes to Angelina Jolie, who convincingly flexed her pecs in Tomb Raider and brings the muscle in Salt a few Fridays hence. But, seriously, how essential is it for adolescent girls to have distaff role models that are as tough, independent and freakily costumed as Batman, Spider-Man and Rambo? Especially, I might add, after Hilary Clinton ran for President (and may do so again in six years). East Bay filmmaker Kristy Guevara-Flanagan has been rooting through pop culture and serious commentary alike for the last year and a half, asking the same questions for her forthcoming documentary feature, The History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman.

Read more here ! And thank you Michael Fox for a great piece!

The Seventeen Magazine Project

Adults have long professed that popular media feeds our children, especially young girls, the wrong impressions of what it takes to be considered valuable and normal. As most adults know their opinions are not usually held in the highest esteem by teenagers. The Seventeen Magazine Project by Jamie Keiles is interesting and compelling because it exhibits the interest and desire to address this problem by an actual teenager (not that she is the only one). 18 year old Jamie firmly states one of her goals as, “spreading the word about healthy body image, media bullshit, and why we need a broader definition of beauty.” For one month Jamie focuses her project on following the advice of Seventeen Magazine, whose target audience is teenage girls. She states her exact mission as seeing “what would happen if an actual teenager were to apply these tips and tricks to her life.” Jamie has managed to gather a large following through her campaign to redefine everything that different media aspects have ingrained into our society for generations. Jamie has called on her followers and people that feel alike to send in slogans and phrases aimed at media outlets especially magazines.One of my personal favorites(maybe because I’ll have all three soon) is the phrase that says, “into beards, bellies, and glasses where’s my hot guy poster.”

As a twenty-seven year old man I feel that Jamie’s project is a fundamental breakthrough that will hopefully change the mind set of current adolescents and  lead to a new blueprint for future generations of children(maybe mine).While her project revolves around the teenage girl centered Seventeen Magazine the same issue exist in magazines that  target other age groups and genders. Most adults, to a certain degree  still view beauty as what they see on the cover of a magazine or other media. Just the other day I saw I guy on the cover of a magazine and I thought to myself I wish I still looked like that. Even though I am not particularly overweight or out of shape I definitely don’t have the body I did when I was in the military. So when I see a guy in the media looking like an action figure it makes me want to go the gym, not because I’m unhealthy, but because that’s what society has thought me that being “attractive” is. The media shaped my sense of what being attractive is the same way that it did for Jamie and millions of other children. I hope Jamie’s project can be the beginning of the end for media dominated perceptions of beauty.

Guest Blog Post written by Larry Guster, Vaquera Film intern and film student at the Art Institute of San Francisco at California who hails from Mississippi.

Marvel's female superheroes

The awesome Tricia Creason Valenicia of Flaca Films sent us this great blog link about women in comics over at BlogHer. What is the potential of these heroes and what should be our concern.

If it is irritating raising a girl in a culture obsessed with living blow-up dolls, it is even even more so when my daughter falls in love with intelligent, capable characters like Marvel’s Emma Frost or Misty Knight, then sees those women’s bodies drawn like living blow-up dolls. Though Iz currently seems less concerned with the comic artists’ objectification of women and more perturbed by comic writers’ proofreading errors (“Mommy, Cyclops misspelled ‘anarchist’!”), I worry that those images, those attitudes will warp the way she sees herself and how she judges other women.

She invites a few well-informed female comic geeks to ponder: What draws them to comics, science fiction, and fantasy? Which characters are role-model-worthy for girls? And what should we tell young girls about how they are represented?

Read the article by Shannon Des Roches Rosa, HERE!

Aepoch

Guess what?? THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS TOLD BY WONDER WOMAN received an UNSOLICITED GRANT from the Aepoch Fund! That sure feels nice! And it couldn’t have come at a better time as we launch into a summer of shooting and travel!!!