Beautiful and married- that’s what I’ll be

You know, it’s no wonder girls grow up to feel depression when they look in the mirror, depression when broken up with, presssure to have the big white wedding and pressure to stay under a certain weight and have a certain look we define as ‘beautiful’.Even a seemingly innocent film like Kangaroo Jack isn’t free from the inference of such pressures.

Recently while babysitting two angelic little kids, I happened to catch the last twenty minutes of Kangaroo Jack, as they watched it attentively before bed. In the time I watched it, a white attractive american man kissed a white blonde haired, blue eyed girl. Of course at the end of the film they were married and the man described his happiness at having a “beautiful” wife. The woman’s value lay in the fact that she was beautiful, not anything else.

TGN Friday

Triona’s Good News Friday…. Well my good news is that I made the right decision.

I am one of the lucky few who actually knew what direction they wanted their life to take career wise at the age of 18, when the day came to fill out the form so many dread- The CAO (that’s Central Applications Office to any who may not be familiar with it- where you fill out your top ten post-leaving cert course choices). A story I delight in telling is the fact that the day my boyfriend and I met (we have now been together for two and a half years) he asked me what I wanted to do when I finished my leaving cert:

Him: What do you want to do when you finish your leaving cert?

Me: Communications in DCU

Him: Ah you’ll have changed your mind by then

Me: No I won’t…….

And the rest is history.

I don’t just do my course, I revel in it. I am probably the only person to have borrowed a very retro film camera over the Christmas holidays- all of us having experienced the highs and lows that come with a photography method in which the main method you usually use to know what you’re doing is unavailable (you cannot see a the image you are taking straight away, on a screen), you may not even be achieving anything by pressing the shutter if you haven’t loaded the film correctly; and if you open to check you either see your mistake or make a different one by ruin by exposing the film to light and losing your images anyway. Did I mention that after all this you could also lose the images you spent so long taking if you make any mistakes in the development process? Ya….. What can I say, despite having one day spending an hour and a half developing what turned out to be a blank film there’s just a certain excitement and magic in taking such care in crafting the image, waiting so long to see it, that magical moment when it appears beneath the surface of the chemicals and the feeling of pride that comes with altering your process bit by bit until it looks just perfect.

Another gem I took home with me this Christmas was the ideas and thoughts my favourite module, Social History and TV Drama, stirred in me. I relished the class so much that I didn’t want it to end. I decided the closest I could get to that would be to do a thesis on its subject matter. And so I began to think. The first idea came to me upon my disgust at the character of Bella in the Twilight saga; more specifically how she goes against everything the feminist movement fought for. I began to think of female role models in general, and considering my interest in the feminist movement was already awakened having done an essay on Desperate Housewives this year I decided maybe the issue of female role models in movies could be interesting. The next idea came to me upon watching an absolutely ridiculous man movie consisting of Steven Segal versus zombies. I noticed the evil characters in the film all had eastern accents and remembered that the case is the same in most Disney movies. I decided implicit racism in films could be another interesting area to explore. But finally I came upon the idea I think suits me best. Sex and the City: Third wave feminism or Sex and the City: We’ve fought for our rights, what now? Or something along those lines. The two books i ordered Reading Sex and the City and Sex and the City: Kiss and tell (a behind the scenes book) have provided me with much entertainment and food for thought already and I just can’t wait to meet up with the lecturer I am hoping with supervise it.

Yes, the future looks bright.