emBODYed in twilight

I thought the Twilight article on sexuality was pretty interesting to read, which made some insightful interpretations from the book about the message of the female body and sex. However, I have a hang-ups with one argument:

In the 4^th book, Bella, who has wanted to become a vampire ever since she started dating Edward, finally transforms. 

McGeough explains, “Underneath the theme of romance is the story of a girl who wants to belong, and through bodily transformations, Bella is able to find her place of belonging…. Bella’s easy transition into a new body suggests girls can grow into their bodies and have positive experiences with, through, and because of their bodies.

Is McGeough serious? Are we supposed to believe that in becoming a vampire, which is a violent, painful, near-death procedure reminiscent of all-over plastic surgery gone wrong, Bella finds belonging? I doubt young girls take this as a message of learning to grow into their bodies. Instead, I think this message tells a story of a teen doesn’t ever learn too embrace her body nor see the beautiful in it that others can see. Reversely, she may encourage young teens to buy into plastic surgery, bio-cosmetics, tanning booths, diet pills… in order to “fix” what they think is wrong about their bodies. In fact, Bella’s obsessive desire to become a vampire in order to “belong” with Edward shows that she probably places far too much emphasis on appearance instead of personality. She doesn’t comment much on how she feels about Edward’s own damnation – she simply thinks something that looks that good must be good to be with.

I hated the film’s decision to cast Kristen Stewart as Bella (back when I actually was into the book series…). Mostly I found her far too apathetic and disengaged. I couldn’t place myself in her position – Stephanie Meyer wrote Bella as someone detailed enough to be sensitive, proud, and sad, but also vague enough that most girl readers could become Bella momentarily as they read from her point of view (and thus why so many girls fell in love with the symbol Edward Cullen). But Stewart doesn’t have enough charm.  

Body-wise, she seems to lack one – I don’t mean to say that girls aren’t allowed to have stick-straight legs and pointy faces, but book Bella says, “I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete.” This Bella lacks the softness that could add sensuality, but I especially wonder if the filmmakers played on this generation’s unhealthy obsession with skinny models as examples of beauty, in order to present an appealing Bella to teen girls.

But to end on a positive note: In the film’s make out scene, Bella shows her desire for experiencing sexual pleasure, much like in the books, as McGeough points out. Bella says she’s less “strong” than Edward since he stops first, controlling himself so he doesn’t bite her. But I always took these types of scenes in the books, and more obviously in the movie, as a way of showing Bella’s power, and therefore strength, over Edward, in being able to so easily seduce him, and make him worried about going too far.

Jet Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag

Three hours of sleep since friday

                 too much sun exposure

                                 missing the tamtameroonikins,
not to mention my pads, the beach, warm humid air
I physically can't write anything more than this: moi moi

Roaches, Pedis, and Cults

None of my friends from high school are back on the aina this week for spring break. But here is the reason why it’s worth flying through 6 time zones, on 3 separate planes, with 1 major jet-lag, to get home for spring break: the fam.

You doubt me? Fine, I’ll admit that not everyone has pads* like mine. Did you’re mom come running into the kitchen this morning to kill a three-inch cockroach with a paper towel and her bare palm? Probs not. But here are some ways to make a family-filled weekend an ass-kickin’ fiesta.

My sis and I kicked off our first day back by kicking off our slippas** and getting pedis with the maj. I had no idea pedis involve back messaging chairs. Now I have a jewel on my toe for the first time and I can’t stop staring. (Shout out to Quan my boy, a midkid who’s mom owns the nail salon. Quan, you rock).

Last night we went to a do-it-yourself wine bottling place, Oeno Winemaking, where I learned how to fill, cork, seal, and label pinot noirs. Greg, the owner, let us taste his specialty chocolate-flavored ports before we left for dinner. These would taste great with cheesecake, especially on a 21^st birthday that happens to be coming up…

This morning sis went off gallivanting with her Williams home girls so I had the pads to myself, and we went on a beautiful hike up Olamana ridge. Naturally, none of us brought a camera. But at the top a nice middle-aged guy took a picture of us with his iphone and emailed it to me right there. (Who’s the millennial now, huh? (Why am I so tech-deficient?)). This picture doesn’t capture the amazing 360º view of the jagged Ko’olau range and sparkly blue ocean.

Along the trail I found out that my town has its own cult. Funny, since I just watched the Veronica Mars cult episode. (Don’t you love that feeling, when your reality starts mimicking the surreality??) Ours is a surf cult. (Mmm hmm. Only in Hawaii). All I know is there’s a “queen” who sits out on the red zodiac while her “servants” surf. She wears a long sleeve rashguard, hat and gloves – no one can see her skin. And they all live in a few houses on a compound in Lanikai where all the windows are boarded up.

And on that note of beachy mysteries, where did that old boat in front of our beach path wash up from? And why did it say “Kapu” on the side above a skull and bones? Dun Dun Dun…

*Short for padres.

**Never say flip-flops in Hawaii if you don’t like beef from a 375 pound moke***

*** A moke is a huge Polynesian guy who talks pigeon (“eh braddah, try move outta da way. Or I go make stinkface atcha auntie”).

**** translates to forbidden/sacred in Hawaiian

Religious enemies... angels and pregnancy

Supernatural and The Secret Life of the American Teenager take two pretty different approaches to using religion as a theme in their millennial representation, but I think they were both fairly effective and intriguing.

First of all, Supernatural is clearly a magical world where the fantastical is accepted on a daily basis, even though it doesn’t stop sneaking up on the characters in new types of creatures. In the article Renegotiating religious imaginations through transformations of "banal religion" in Supernatural, Peterson says that shows like Supernatural take mainstream Western religious myths and reshape them. Building on and distorting institutionalized beliefs appeals to the viewers, keeping them entertained by the new and in the loop.

Here are some of the myths I noticed Supernatural revised: Deans memories of hell involve red and black, colors often associated with the devil in religious iconography since probably even before the Renaissance. It takes an angel to raise Dean out of hell, much like it took an Angel (Beatrice) to get Dante out of hell in the Inferno, written back in the 1400s. The angel still has wings, although now they’re black. The setting feels pretty western for being Illinois, with all the plaid, gruff men, and cowboy-like speaking. This rings true since the rural west has traditionally been a coming together of Christian ideals and the unexpected, unruly wild.

Another interesting twist to religious representation is the intertwining of technology, which we millennials will relate. The tv turns on when demons and angels are nearby. An ipod replays a car stereo. And the angel’s voice sounds like static.

In The Secret Life of the American Teenager, religion does not deal directly with biblical figures – it’s sort of twice-removed because people practice it in their daily lives (prayers, church, chastity pledges) instead of encountering godly manifestations. Yet it does become very confrontational.

Religion’s biggest enemy here is sex. All the kids are obsessed with it, or with not doing it, or by the problems it causes… pregnancy. The show’s protagonist is purposefully a good girl, and not in an overly-showy way like the cheerleader Grace. She’s cute, nice, a hard worker, and doesn’t deserve to have a jerk knock her up. This show’s message right off the bat tells millennials that teens, no matter how Christian, or how innocent, will make mistakes. I’m interested to see where religion goes on this show: it’s unclear to me if religion will become more positive or negative, or continue to have a mixed effect on the characters’ morals.

Meet the Macaron

I keep swearing my next post will not involve food. Even though I’m a college student, I do more than eat, homework, eat, sleep, and eat. Did I mention eating? No really, I have a life. Like last night, I went to the Anaïs Mitchell concert – she’s a doll. And a toga party. And I started synchronized swimming. But it’s hard to act natural with a D40 hanging from your neck in a bathing suit or bedsheet. So alas, here’s another food post…

My study abroad experience could be called: Kaylen in Paris: A 5-month Critical Investigation into Every Single Patisserie Shop in the City. (Forget criminals, Veronica. This is the real stuff). I spent so much time in Pierre Hermé, the god of the macaron, (sorry Ladurée), that I started getting free macarons from the cute assistant. (I thought he had a crush on me, until I brought my whole family in and realized he was just relieved to see I had friends. How embarrassing).

What is a macaron? It’s a French almond-based cookie with a buttercream or jelly filling that comes in every color and flavor imaginable. Chocolate passion fruit. Hazlenut truffle. Chestnut green tea. Figue fois gras (should have steered clear of that one). My tried-and-true favorite rose. (It’s pink!). I can’t even describe the delight of biting into one – so many different textures exist in such a small, delicate beauty.  

This weekend my copaines of La Maison Française and I made Chocolate Salty-Caramel macarons. The recipe wasn’t too hard to follow, but apparently macarons are finicky things – they need to be shiny and ooze the right way as batter, must be whapped and left alone in peace for some precise time before put into the oven, can crack in humidity, become overly hard if they aren’t taken out at the right time, must be turned after precisely 3.5 minutes, and should be firm but sort of jiggly afterward. So it takes a few tries, or a Cordon Bleu student (it pretty much rocks that I have a pastry chef living upstairs) to master them.

All in all, ours came out delicious. What made the event kick ass was the fact that I decided to neglect homework and spent the sunny afternoon in the kitchen, actually speaking French while making French pastry with my French-loving ladies. I’ve promised myself I’m going back to Paris one day. But til then, I’ll be making macarons.

Mirror Mirror

When I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I was already in love with Sirius Black, the moody, brooding young man (Harry’s parents were only 20 when they had Harry, so by book number 5 Sirius would have only been 35. That’s not too old!), who had a bad reputation and a heart. So I was basically devastated when his cousin Bellatrix kills him. So much could have prevented his death – I think Harry and I both kept thinking, “If only…”

If only Harry had learned how to keep Voldemort out of his thoughts, he wouldn’t have thought Sirius was in trouble. If only Sirius hadn’t disobeyed his order to stay hidden, he wouldn’t have gone to the ministry to save his godson. If only Kreacher hadn’t been racist and spiteful, he would have told Harry that Sirius was safe. If only Harry remembered that he had the two-way mirror, he could have spoken to Sirius and known he was safe….

I think the two-way mirror frustrated me the most. Why did J. K. Rowling give Harry this awesome magical tool, a “tech magic” as Sheltown would call it, if Harry was just going to forget about it? All the other tools that are given tend to imply something important, like the sneak-o-scope warning the boys that Scabbers was actually Peter Pettigrew, an intruder. Even non-magical tools come in handy, like the flute that Hagrid gives Harry in book one, which lulls three-headed fluffy to sleep. Why couldn’t the mirrors save Sirius’ life?!

Reading Shelton’s article actually helped me come to terms with this (not that I’m still in mourning, I swear!) She argues that Rowling seems more gung-ho on technology than fantastical author-predecessors like Lewis and Tolkien. Why shouldn’t she be? She uses technology in a way that really connects to the millennial generation, because she keeps it current, relevant, and fun. The wizards are much like us, in the way that gadgets. Instead of using sparks notes to finish homework faster, Harry and Ron use magic quills…

However, Rowling makes a big point that technology is an artificial, weird concept in general. It may make life fun and easier in day-to-day business, but it ultimately doesn’t have the power to shape who someone is, how they morally live, and how they are going to die. Harry’s world like our own is pretty complicated. It’s not good vs. bad all the time; it’s not dualistic in the technological sense either that the more apt one becomes at magic the better the person they are, or the more they deserve to live. A silly mirror, much like a walkie-talkie in our own world, isn’t enough of a force to save Sirius’ life.

And death, ultimately, “is the next great adventure,” as Dumbledore puts it. Sirius lived his life the way he wanted to, risking his own many times, at first to feel what life really feels like, and then more so in order to save the ones he loved. He took death into consideration like Ciaccio says Rowling wants her characters to, and didn’t hide when it came time to die.

*This sounds awkwardly emotional. I promise I'm over it!

**also, I’d like to note that there’s a big distinction between the handsome Sirius of my imagination, and the not-so-much Sirius of the movies. The illustration is some fan’s version of Sirius back in his own Hogwarts days.

A Chilly Day for Chili

Today Was Middlebury’s 3^rd annual Chili Festival. For those of you number loving folks:

10^th:  top winter activity in Vermont

50: vendors from here to Montpelier selling chili

80: different types of Chili

Obviously and luckily I didn’t get to try everything, even on an empty stomach, or I’d be writing this from a hospital bed with an IV stuck up one arm. But boy I tried a lot.

Some of my favorites were: the Swift House Inn’s venison chili – great meat. Inception Studios vegetarian saffron chili – subtle and satisfying. Middlebury Bagel’s “kitchen sink” chili – best chili flavor but so hard to describe, with a soft piece of cornbread plopped on top. But what was probably my most favorite was Costello’s Market’s red wine and chocolate Chili. Delightful, surprising harmony, with a smooth aftertaste.

I made the executive decision that chili by itself is a no-no. Please be creative, have a bowl of sour cream to dollop, a sprinkling of queso fresco or parmesan, and hand me one of those warm corn-bread cupcakes, please.  (And thank you Woodchuck cider, for the free chapstick).

But I promise this wasn’t all about the food. The Middlebury Mamajamas were singing on the bridge around 2pm when I got there, sounding pretty snazzy. Props to the one kid on the side eating chili while singing.

With

Main Street

so lively, I suddenly understood what it feels like to be Rory Gilmore at a Star’s Hollow festival, with Taylor Doose directing traffic and Kirk selling pumpkin popsicles to kids in a pilgrim costume...

Some pretty interesting townsies turned up. One girl in a chili costume. A group of punks, including, I’m pretty sure, Bucky, the kid who kept stealing laptops from campus last year. Fire-twirlers. Lots of folks in Mardi Gras beads, which turned into a flash mob, breaking out some dance moves to Billie Jean. And two guys near the Two Brother’s Tavern tent with pigs on leashes. Which only begs the question: were they sampling the pork chili?