The Awkward Girl Revolution

Revolutions are controversial topics. Historians have been known to debate them for centuries. They argue over when it started, who is responsible, and when it ended. Unless you are taking a 4th grade history class, there is never a straight answer to any of these questions. Therefore, I know some may not agree with me when I say that the Awkward Girl revolution is upon us, but I believe her time has come. Allow me to make my case.

Let me first clarify the Awkward Girl. She is not just a nerd, although she can have aspects of a nerd. She is not extremely weird, just on the far end of quirky. But the single most defining aspect of the Awkward Girl is that she has flaws. She makes mistakes and is self-conscious of them. Still, her life is a constant cycle of mistakes and attempts at redemption. 

The Awkward Girl has found her way into mainstream culture. With the rise of feminism, movies and television showcased many fine and groundbreaking examples of strong, beautiful, and independent women. These days, a show about a strong and independent woman isn't groundbreaking; it's normal. If there was something to prove about women being capable, they proved it. They proved that women could be just as good if not better than men. That's old news now, and with good reason. We've reached a new era now, an era that let's all the flaws hang out in the open. 

But why now? Some would argue that the revolution already happened. Some would argue it hasn't happened yet. I would like to assert that it is happening now, based on three tv shows; Awkward, New Girl, and Girls. While shows like 30 Rock, The Office, and Parks and Rec feature many awkward or gawky characters, awkwardness is not the star of the show. It's just a faithful sidekick. Awkward, New Girl, and Girls put the Awkward girl in the title role and their plots revolve around the redemption of the Awkward Girl's mistakes. And audiences are eating it up. Awkward is in its third season and going strong, one of the few scripted shows on MTV. New Girl received  multiple Emmy nominations with Awkward Girl poster girl Zooey Deschanel at the helm. Girls proved itself a critical knockout and received many Emmy nominations and one win. 

In some ways it's more liberating than watching shows about strong, independent, super-human women. These women might be inspirational, but at some point it becomes an unattainable goal. The success of shows about the Awkward Girl prove that audiences are beginning to tire of  the Kim Kardashian look-alikes having a great career, always getting the guy, and being secret agent Angelina Jolie spies. They want girls that are real. Painfully and awkwardly real.

Discuss!

Film Review: Romance and Cigarettes

When my professor assigned the movie "Romance and Cigarettes" for a homework assignment, I was excited. Score! Movies for homework! Biology majors, envy me! Then I watched it and realized the cruel joke my professor was playing on us. This movie was not going to be normal and it was not going to be easy to interpret, but it was still better than biology.

"Romance and Cigarettes" tells the story of a working class man, Nick Murder, who has just been caught cheating by his wife. Throughout the film he tries to negotiate his feelings of lust for his mistress with his feelings of resentment but love for his wife and the family they have together. Except there's a twist; it's a musical. It's a twisted, sadistic, terrifying musical. Pregnant prostitutes dance in the street, Christopher Walken murders his lover, James Gandolfini sings tied up in chains, James Gandolfini sings....it's absolutely nuts. Then there's Kate Winslet's character, or at least someone who vaguely resembles Winslet. My jaw dropped with the first scene and I couldn't reattach it to my face until the movie ended. 

The director, John Turturro, didn't just want to make a grey movie about working class America. He also didn't just want to make a flashy musical, so he made both. He combined the spontaneity and showmanship of a 50's musical with the quiet desperation of the American working class. The result is a zany and whimsical yet dark and raunchy romp. I found myself asking how all these "A List" actors could have been roped into playing these parts, but you gotta give them credit. A movie as strange as this one demands complete commitment from its players, and the actors in this film deliver nothing less. They commit whole heatedly to playing out these desperate and sometimes animalistic characters. 

Despite how shocking the film comes off, it has a message that any person can understand; we all need a little romance in our lives. Turturro suggests needing romance may even be a vice, but something we need all the same. The characters fantasized that their lives amount to something more magical than the reality they know is their own. This theme is established early on in the film, when Nick's wife finds a rhyming note written to his mistress. She thinks he is ridiculous, but he exclaims "it's poetry!" The rest of the film focuses on how ordinary people living ordinary lives try to find the "poetry" in their lives. Though the places they find it might be a little wacky (the lingerie store, the diner, a cheap motel room), Turturro sets out to prove that our lives would be empty without romance. 

The Graduate Student

I am a college student. I wear athletic clothes to class. Sometimes I forget to wear makeup. I stay up late. I procrastinate. I make poor decisions. I wear a backpack that could get me through a trek in the Himalayas. I don't always read for class. But I go to class. I go to class and I face my arch nemesis; the Graduate Student.

The Graduate Student is always on time. They are always dressed well, usually in Toms or a cardigan they grew in their garden. Their hair is done, their makeup is touched up. They don't wear backpacks; they're too good for backpacks. They ALWAYS read for class, and they never miss a day to come to class and prove that they've read and that they are the intellectual superior of any undergrad around.

The Graduate Student does not aim to blend in. Whether it is through attire, long winded answers, or their location at the front of the classroom right under the Professor's nose, they seek always to stick out. If one was to wear a blindfold, one could still pick out the Graduate Student from the class by identifying the one who goes on for the longest about nothing. If they cite any book by a Russian author, they are a PH.D. Student.

The Graduate Student always has a paper and a pen, usually a fountain pen. They always bring their books to class and display them on their desk for everyone to see how prepared they are. Next to their book will be a cup of organic, fair trade coffee. The coffee is key- you cannot be a good graduate student without coffee.

The Graduate Student might even be your teacher, God help you. Since they have no other way of making money, they must sell their souls to the university and teacher the classes no self respecting professor will touch. Ironically, they relish this position of pseudo-authority. They teach using only abstract concepts and words they learned in their GRE prep course. They only call on you on Monday and Friday mornings. Their reading assignments are the longest and the most dense. They grade your papers harder than any professor at Yale ever will. They look forward to every day they can punish the undergrads.

The Undergrad must work hard to not be influenced by the Graduate Student. They must hold on to their carefree, youthful attitude that the Graduate Student envies. But most of all, we must always care less than they Graduate Student. Undergrads must not start wearing messenger book bags. Undergrads must never wear ties to class. Most importantly, Undergrads must never acknowledge any classroom contribution from the undergrad that does not pertain directly to the current discussion topic. We will not tolerate War and Peace references in an economics class. Apathy is the only peaceful way to fight them, because it is what the Graduate Student envies most. They try to outshine us because they desperately want to be us. They want to be back in college, making poor decisions and drinking soda for breakfast.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a paper due tomorrow that I can't finish until I've watched an entire season of Glee.

My not so insightful post about my summer

This past summer, I felt an unusual feeling; boredom. I had just returned from Europe, only had 4 weeks until I returned to school, and had no job or tasks to accomplish. My mother suggested that I organize our armoire downstairs, a piece that had been a catch-all for family photos since I can remember. Stupendous, I thought to myself, I have a purpose! This project will maybe take three, maybe five days tops. How wrong I was. The remains of the project that I started in June are still scattered across our dinning room table as of yesterday, September 5. My mother has not asked me to help out around the house since.

What I thought would take days turned out to be a massive project, one that involved cataloging not just my life but the lives of all my immediate family members. My mother, like all young mothers, had taken countless pictures of my brother and I. We seem to age by the day as we are young, then much quicker as the years progress. We might have had a hope of finishing the project had my dad's cousin not decided to pile on another set of photos. When he returned from Louisiana, he had an entire box filled to the brim with much older pictures. It seemed my Aunt Renee was cleaning out her photos too, and giving the excess to us. We put the box aside and tried not to think about it. This past labor day, I finally retrieved the box and decided to tackle these pictures once and for all.

Turns out my great-grandparents had a photo collection that rivals the Smithsonian. This one box had everything from candid pictures to newspaper clippings, with a few elementary school diplomas in between. They had photo after photo of snow days, vacations, parties, graduations, the list was endless. We even found my Dad's birth announcement, expressed in oil rigging terms, i.e. "Well sprung Sept 9th" etc. Though I had never met Agnes and Willie, it was clear through these pictures that my great-grand parents had lived a full and happy life. Parties, Christmas gatherings, kids, relatives, trips to Europe, they truly lived. With every photo I felt as if I had gotten to know another piece of them. They took such care in archiving every aspect of their lives, in a time when it wasn't as easy to do so. I never found any scandalous pictures, someone having an affair, past loves, confidential area 54 documents. Not finding these didn't take away from the pictures. My tale of archiving didn't have to read like a Nicholas Sparks novel for it to mean something to me. It was enough just to get to see the past through the eyes of a camera.

And that was the second half of my summer. Not as cool as Europe, but close.