Eat Like a Girl

Dear Readers,

I wanted to bring this to your attention in case you, too, have been upset by seemingly "small" ways that our girls are told that being who they are is a pejorative.   If you see something like I describe in my letter below, please speak up!  And if you feel thus inclined on this issue, please write Cubby's and let them know it bothers you too or blog/tweet/post about it with the hashtag #EatLikeAGirl #LikeAGirl

February 11, 2015

Cubby's Chicago Beef

1258 North State Street

Provo, Utah 84604

Dear Cubby's,

I had the great experience of discovering your restaurant last week in Provo.  The servers were polite and friendly.  The food was wonderful.  The atmosphere was fun.  The menu wall was engaging and infuriating.  I know you’ve heard about this before because when I posted the following picture (see below) on my Facebook page one of my friends said that she complains about it every time she goes to Cubby's.  I’m talking about the designation of the levels of spiciness as “girl, boy and man.”  Yes, I know it is meant to be in keeping with the fun loving atmosphere of the restaurant.  It was a joke.  We should all just laugh it off or, if it really bugs us, go eat somewhere else.  But I really like your food and I’d like to keep eating there.  In order to do that, I can’t just remain silent on this issue.  It bothers me that it is still considered ok to characterize women and girls, across the board, as being less than or weaker than men.  There are a hundred other fun-loving ways to designate the levels of spiciness of the food.  Why was this designation chosen?  What message is it sending?  Yes, this is one tiny little thing.  But our girls are bombarded with tiny little things that define them as less than.  The weight of all of these tiny little things adds up.  As we saw in the excellent Always commercial during the Super Bowl, young girls don’t recognize being a girl is a pejorative until we teach them it’s a pejorative.  Please don’t be one of the voices teaching my daughters that to be who they are is the weakest thing on the menu.

Marianne Hales Harding

Two Minds: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo, A New Musical
BYU
January 22-14; 27-31, 2015
Music by Frank Wildhorn
Book and lyrics by Jack Murphy
Directed by Tim Threlfall
Musical direction by Gayle Lockwood
Choreography by Nathan Balser
Creative producer: Jeffrey Martin

Long before my brief stint as a resident of Las Vegas, I was a fan of big spectacle.  Raised on opera, I learned as a child to put my inner playwright on the back shelf and just enjoy the overblown drama, the unearned emotion, and, most of all, the music.  This is also the reason I love large cast musicals.  No judgment about how they got from Point A to Point B; let's just listen to them sing.  Especially when the heroine's songs all fall within my range!  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you.

It was in that vein that I enjoyed this new musical adaptation of the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo.  Folks, they had a body double for two of the main characters so they could fly them across an ocean themed screen and have the characters actually swim across the stage to the hidden cavern.  This was Spectacle (note the capital S!).  I love stuff like that!  I also loved the graphic design of the opening slides, even though I'm not a huge fan of slides-as-exposition.  The drawings of waves moved like waves.  It was supercool.

It was about a third of the way through that my inner playwright started bugging me.  We had just had a beautiful duet between the True Love in a church praying for Our Hero's safe return and Our Hero in the prison, sustained by the mere thought of his True Love.  Great song.  Then Our Hero leaves and the Weaselly Bad Guy attempts to woo True Love.  In time Our Hero returns to the prison part of the scene, but with substantial beard growth.  True Love and the Weasel continue as before.  So are we to suppose that the Weasel persisted over the course of many years before turning True Love's heart to his?  A major plot point refutes that explanation and I once again must say, "Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!"

When condensing a lengthy novel for the stage, significant emotional journeys are sometimes (ok, often) reduced to the barest brushstrokes so that we can more easily move from one song to the next.  Sometimes I have to tell myself that surely this is more fleshed out in the novel.  I had to do that at several points in the musical and now I can't decide if I want to ever read the novel.  What if it doesn't give us reason not to hate True Love? I'm holding on to that last thread (remember, all of her songs are in my range so I am inclined at the gut level to like her), because based only on what we see in the musical this is a girl I want to smack.  Hard.

First, she spends a high percentage of her stage time half-raised from the floor, in emotional turmoil.  I can forgive that because I love emotional turmoil songs, but the complexity that I am really hoping is in the novel does not come across in this script.  I am hoping that she married the Weasel because she knew that as a woman in this time period her options were limited and she wanted her unborn child to have the advantages of a male protector.  On stage, she is too dumb to see how bald the Weasel's romantic machinations are, takes his lies at face value, and only requires a couple of awkward, forced hugs to break her will.  Looks like the Weasel really did know best when it comes to True Love.

There are two types of women in this play: those who exist within the patriarchy and those who do not.  Both are somewhat off-putting.  There's True Love (whose whole life is controlled by the actions and decisions of men), Apprentice True Love (who is in love with True Love's son), and the Pirate Queens (who keep a surly, all male pirate crew in line with the power of their cleavage and their propensity for random violence).  I know I'm supposed to like the Pirate Queens because they are so sassy but the whole scenario seemed terribly unlikely.  Honestly, when they first came on stage I wondered if I was still watching the same musical I had been watching.  So the only female character who can say things and be heard and make decisions for herself is pretty much a joke.  And she, too, is helpless when it comes to Our Hero.  He runs the place, folks (with the help of his body double).  Within 5 minutes of meeting Our Hero, the Pirate Queen changes her policy on how a fight to the death ends, changes her destination (by hundreds of leagues), and changes her pirate instincts (did she get even one coin of the treasure?  Did she even try?). The worst was when Our Hero and Mini Me sing about those silly women they love (True Love and Apprentice True Love, respectively).  The women end up looking like porcelain dolls instead of living, breathing human beings and their portrayal throughout the show does pretty much the same thing.

The other time my inner playwright wept was when True Love reveals that Mini Me is actually Our Hero's son (gasp!).  I did not believe their joyous reactions.  Ok, I can believe that Our Hero is joyous about having a son despite being in prison during his prime family-making years.  But Mini Me, who not only just lost the only father he has ever known but was the person who did the killing, is surely not going to have a first reaction of unadulterated joy.  "You mean the alcoholic, abusive man I just killed isn't my father?  It's actually the lying, angry man who ruined my family's good name and who, earlier today, I tried to kill?  Sweet!  And my mom had a secret life she never told me about?  Could this day get any better?"  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!

Based on the standing ovation all around me, though, and the raucous cheering of the four busloads of appreciative high schoolers, nobody else had a pesky inner playwright casting a pall on what was, really, a very fun afternoon of Spectacle and Song.

The moon expanded as they sang louder as a graphic representation of all of their dreams coming true.  If you can't have fun with a magical expanding moon then you, my friend, won't ever have fun.

What Movies Do Best: Thoughts on _Selma_

On hot button issues I tend to follow the example of Mary: "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).  It's a matter of self preservation.  In most issues you are damned if you do or damned if you don't.  I used to find a good flame war invigorating, but now I can't stand the taste of bile.  Aware of what I don't know, I hesitate to draw a line in the sand.  It seems, too, that there is a deep chasm between the two sides of any issue.  Knowledge and understanding are not acknowledged as malleable and progressive.  You choose a side and view everything through that lens.  The word "ignorant" is hurled back and forth like it was a cardinal sin rather than a universal fact.  I am ignorant.  Love me anyways (as I love you, in your ignorance).  Educate me without rancor (and I will try to return the favor).

With that preamble, I will uncharacteristically share my thoughts on a one such issue (with fear and trembling for the personal ignorance I am sure to reveal).  I didn't really learn any big new facts from the movie Selma.  I am somewhat educated and know my history.  The power of the movie for me was the power of the medium: perspective, empathy, emotion.  Watching the movie with my father I was struck with the realization that he, too, was in his 30's in the 60's--living in the same world and yet in a very different world.  If this struggle was in my immediate background, as close as the man sitting next to me, how would that affect my initial response to the death of a young black man at the hands of a policeman? 

I know this all sounds like Empathy 101 or Things You Learn When You Are Twelve but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and having it really land emotionally.  The struggle depicted on the screen was not far away at all.  It was right here, within the scope of my immediate family, nearly within the scope of my lifetime.

And as I think of my family's history unfolding alongside these seminal events and yet not seemingly touched by them, I don't have to wonder what it would have been like to experience that.  I'm currently experiencing that.  How much pain is outside the scope of my daily influence?  How many moments are there where I would stand up and be counted if I had any real awareness of them?  This is not to say that my sphere of influence does not contain pain or moments of truth and courage.  But, oh, how I would like to take a stand for truth in all instances.  How I would like to view life from all perspectives, even if only briefly.  How I hope to keep being emotionally educated.  And how I hope we can always do this for each other with love.

[And, yes, I know I promised some musings on a current hot button issue but that mostly got the ax.  That's not my bag, folks.]

Here is a poem I wrote a week or two ago that seems particularly relevant to my musings tonight:

Maps

I’ve been high on life, drunk on love, and addicted to soap operas, but I couldn’t tell you what alcohol tastes like or how random pills you haven’t been prescribed feel when they slip into your brain.

That’s not my path.

No judgment.

It just isn’t mine.

That’s on Main Street; I’m on Center.

If you want a tour guide, I can’t help you with that street.

It isn’t a personal failing not to have first hand, intimate knowledge of every street in town.

That’s what maps are for.  Guidebooks.  Blogs.

Because I’ve been beaten down but never beaten.

I’ve begged for seconds but never for rent.

But I have listened to enough travelers to know that no roads are without rocks.

We all have bloodied feet, even if it isn’t apparent when observed from a distance.

So instead of throwing stones between the blocks, perhaps we should work together on a more comprehensive and detailed atlas.

Restless and Happy

Paint My Eyes
by Jamie Erekson
directed by George D. Nelson
BYU
November 22, 2014

I count it an excellent day at the theater when I leave feeling restless.  In this case, my brain was so restless that I didn't even mind getting caught in the post-football-game traffic because it gave me time to think rather than drive.  I was excited about the piece but also excited about what I'm currently writing and excited to be even a very small part of the process of developing a new piece.  How I miss giving feedback on plays!  How I have missed the collaborative environment of the theater!

The piece was a new musical by Jamie Erekson called Paint My Eyes.  By the time you read this it will have closed but hopefully you will get to see the next incarnation.  One thing I loved about this piece was that it fit into an aesthetic that I try to cultivate in my own work.  It came from a distinctly faithful viewpoint and could be considered faith promoting but it also comes from a place of complexity and depth.  The feel-good moments are hard won and do not diminish the harsh realities.  The beautiful moments were earned by both the characters and the audience and so they were more dear.  This was brought home forcefully by the highly emotional response of one audience member during the talkback session afterwards.  We had trusted the playwright/composer to take us on a journey and, though the journey was difficult, our trust was not misplaced.

The piece explores the experiences of two missionaries against a backdrop of dreams (especially Lehi's dream) and memories.  As we put together the puzzle pieces of Elder Garn's last few months in the mission field our eyes are opened to his struggles and the struggles of those around him.  The deep wounds of the German people are sympathetically wrought and contrasted to the deep wounds in the central storyline.  A depth of emotion is established so that when the revelation of the central wound is finally realized, our hearts are ready.  We see it in context and it lands. Hard.

The humor in the story also serves to further this goal.  Elder Garn's companion is a comic foil for much of the story, constantly calling himself out for his faults (such as perpetual lying) and spectacularly ruining missionary opportunities with hilarious missteps.  This makes the audience listen all the more when he steps into the role of truth teller and facilitates the feeling of redemption at the end of the piece.

The music, too, brought home the themes of the piece.  Difficult and haunting, the music embodied the emotional undercurrent of the play.  My memory of the music is not of specific tunes but of how it seized my heart.  In fact, the music was so fused to the scene that the two can't be separated in my head, which is where the piece will be for a long while--swirling around my brain, making me smile, because being in a theater and wearing the hat of "collaborator" feeds my start and makes my heart happy.

Assigned Seating: A Free Verse Prose-y Poem

Assigned Seating

“Every year they ask for suggestions and every year I make the same one: assigned seating.”

This was the topic of conversation among the survivors of the war-torn auditorium for Time Out for Women.

Bonded by shared suffering, those who had escaped trampling, hand-to-hand combat, and general cattiness settled in for a full day of uplifting religious speakers and performance artists with their nearest and dearest female friends and family.

What a way to set the tone for the day!

Maybe the organizers hadn’t noticed that the seats are numbered and people tend to buy tickets in a block anyhow?

Maybe they don’t realize how bad it is in the trenches?

Where good, Christian women rip reserved signs off chairs without remorse or make their own look-alike signs to sneak in the night before?

Where the mad dash from the long wait on the cold hallway floor makes Black Friday look like a church picnic?

It’s every woman for herself out there and so no hard won ground will be yielded.

But assigned seating would fix all of that.

Yes, assigned seating is the answer.

I wonder how many of these same women attended the first-come-first-served seating event the very next day?

Where all baptized members of the church in the entire state of Utah were invited to gather with their nearest and dearest friends and family for spiritual uplift in the temple and packed meetinghouses across the state, preceded by orderly and loving assembly?

No assigned seating required.

Is it writing or is it just writing related?

My mentor in grad school used to say all the time that "only writing is writing."  It's very easy to throw yourself into writing-related activities and feel like you are writing because you're feeding part of your creative side.  Writing-related activities are necessary and valuable but they should never crowd out real writing.  The hard part is finding the balance between activities that stimulate your writing and activities that are a well-intentioned time suck.  (I tell myself that this is why I am an irregular blogger--avoiding the time suck).

Coming from a culture of "if you see a job it's yours," I'm constantly fighting this battle.  I take on more projects than I could possibly complete and feel the need to make everyone around me happy.  It's Relief Society Sister Syndrome :)  Dallin H. Oaks' "Good, Better, Best" talk helped a lot, but it's still a daily battle.  I honestly want to do it all and periodically realize how ridiculous that sentiment is.  Some people (myself included) say they wish they were more naturally "selfish" so this would come easier but I think the adjective we're looking for is "realistic."  I wish I was more naturally realistic about my own capacities.  I wish my actions were more consistently in line with my priorities. 

Another time suck of mine is reading self-help books and when my latest book started quoting other books I've read I realized that there is no time management magic bullet.  The basic idea in all of them is to figure out what's important to you and then do it.  So....writing is important to me.  I'm doing that.  Other creative non-writing things will happen as they happen.  I've made some big changes in the time I have allotted to the creative non-writing things in my life and if you're wondering why, this is why.  Maybe I cut some things that I shouldn't have, but it feels good to at least start doing this.  I'm sure I'll get better as time goes on!

Still Percolating

Because this blog is about maintaining the creative spark that makes writing possible, it seems like I really ought to write about the first of hopefully many, many open mics in Provo.  This won't be a long post, though, because it's all still percolating in my brain.  It takes a certain distance to be able to make all the connections in a way that is totally satisfying.  But, for the sake of my 3 faithful readers, I'll try.

Performance Poetry in Provo is meant to be.  That's the only thing that can explain how easily everything fell together, just at the point where I was thinking, "This is insane.  I don't have the time or energy to do all of this!"  But the perfect venue fell into place and everywhere I turned there were people who were excited and supportive.  There seems to be a widespread desire for this sort of avenue for creative expression.  All that was necessary was to draw those threads together (or, as I told a friend of mine, they just needed a mom to step in and get things done).  Admittedly, my desire for an open mic night was about my own need for a community and an outlet (see previous blog post  "Why Does Utah County Need a Creative Writing Open Mic Night?").  Running an open mic, though, is more about the community than personal needs/desires.  This is why anyone who wants to be part of helping this community grow is more than welcome to join us.  This can be as simple as showing up regularly or as complex as volunteering to help with administrative duties.  I have found performance poets to be generous, giving people and that's what I envision this community being.  I'm excited to get to know you and to grow with you.