The Insanity of a Vegas Fangirl

I’m in a tight financial situation to where I have to rely on a crappy phone in order to make important calls. My decent phone got water damaged by me placing it on a wet counter like an idiot (although it didn’t get damaged the last times I’ve done so). 

I’m willing to do commissions to the best of my ability as I am mentally disabled (donations are accepted too). 

I feel terrible for even asking for such a thing but I cannot make important calls if my phone refuses to charge when it is overheating (was only on the phone for a few minutes).

I am hoping to earn at least $100 if not a little more so I have insurance on the phone. 

Again I am terrible sorry if it sounds like I am begging. IM me for my paypal address.

It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!

First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.

Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…

…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!

*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*

Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.

Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”

And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)

he’s non threatening

let’s take a look at his rival - Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.

But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe - which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.

Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time - you were just so terrified you don’t remember.”  Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!

Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):

Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:

He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.

When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation - George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula - he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!

AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing - Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice - he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…

Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.

Like

So ive hit some troubles with work, heres the situation

I deal with PTSD (and bipolar disorder but this comes in later) from sexual/physical/emotional abuse, and very recently i went through another very traumatic experience (im not going to go into explicit detail, but we will just say it is categorized under sexual abuse) which has left me terrified of doing half of my work. That half of my work supports the other half of my work, aka allows me to buy materials.

I live with my mother, and she would have enough money in her bank account to last us the year if I didn’t have to go to a psychiatrist for my mental illnesses (Thanks, genetics/assholes in my past!) 

Because the only psychiatrist I can see is out of network, we are paying around $200 per session, out of pocket. We are trying to spend as little as we can so we can make it as long as we can, but that means a. we have enough to support the two of us for half that time (This isn’t counting supporting our step dad, two sisters, and biological father,) and b. our physical health is suffering. My medication has a possibly deadly side effect (I could break out into a full body horrifying rash that if not dealt with in the matter of a few hours could kill me), and we are just praying we never have to deal with it. Not because of how it would effect me (I mean, that is obviously a concern,) but because that could possibly set us back to around 2 months.

My mother is getting older (Shes turning 63 next year), and she’s working as much as she can, but I know her physical/mental health is suffering because of it, and she is going to need to into retirement eventually.

I feel HORRIBLE for asking this (Literally nearly in tears, i feel guilty as hell asking for this because not even a week ago i was going to be helping support another person, and we aren’t nearly in as desperate of a situation as others), but if you have ANY money you could spare, I have a donation button at the bottom of my blog. Otherwise, I’d be willing to do a commission. We just need the money. 

If you can’t donate, please, if you could boost this post, it would help immensely.

You know, it’s funny - I used to just support Hillary by merit of “Not Donald Trump” (or, honestly, “Not a Republican”). I was feeling the Bern pretty hard during the primary elections, and I just was really concerned that she wasn’t liberal enough, wasn’t honest enough, was offput by the Debbie Wasserman Schultz stuff, etc., etc.

And then I… actually started reading things? And realized that she had the exact same PoliticFacts honesty rating as Bernie Sanders? That I was falling for a narrative of repeated indictment constructed by Republicans seeking to delegitimize her way back when?

So then I started rethinking things. And around this time, I got a call, actually, from my local Democratic party organizing group - not strictly “for Hillary” so much as generally trying to organize the disparate Democratic groups in the area, which is something I’d wanted for a while. So obviously, I went in, and at first we met once alongside some others from my family, but it became quickly apparent that he was really, really interested in meeting later to discuss social media strategies. Like, that was clearly the biggest thing he was interested in. Simultaneously, it became apparent that he’d organized for Hillary in the primaries. I agreed to meet for a coffee later to discuss strategies, but at the meeting, I went ahead and made it pretty clear up front that I’d been a Bernie supporter but I thought unity was important, etc., etc. And he was just…

I guess I’d sort of expected to have to fight for things a little bit? That I’d have to be holding my ground, that he’d be sort of smug or whatever, but it wasn’t like that at all. He was just immediately welcoming, talking about how glad he was to have me aboard, how important he thought it was to address Bernie supporter’s concerns, how much great work Bernie had done and how eager they were to integrate it into the campaign. But the moment that really stuck with me was when he made a casual reference to abortion rights as “women’s rights” and I stopped him and went “That’s trans exclusionary, I don’t like to call them that.” (Grade A Tumblr discourse, right?) And he didn’t get defensive or anything, just immediately went “Oh, I’m sorry, what should I be calling them?” I was a little taken aback and immediately checked back into the conversation, explaining that “reproductive rights” was more inclusive, etc.

He immediately thanked me and explained that this was why he was so excited to have me and people like me in the campaign, to make sure everyone was included.

I left the conversation feeling a lot more optimistic about this whole thing, feeling like maybe I wasn’t just chipping in to stave off a worst case scenario and was actually fighting fo a cause that was actively including me.

But the real tipping point was… embarrassingly recent, if I’m honest, and came about through a Spotify ad of all things. You may have heard it a zillion times - “millions of jobs”, yada yada yada, but with the stinger at the end that you should go onto her site and read The Plan. “You know, maybe I should actually read that whole ‘Plan’ thing,” I said, and did.

And uh, guys. Do you… has anyone else actually read this? I won’t say I agree on every single point, but there is so much that I’m actually really excited about??

I knew that Hillary was opposed to voter ID laws and probably vaguely supported early voting, but did you also know that she plans to do automatic voter registration at the age of 18 like we’ve wanted to happen for ages? I knew that Hillary had talked about “mending trust between the police and Black communities”, but did you know that her platform explicitly includes body cameras? Did you know that it specifically calls out the school to prison pipeline and her plan to end it? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending private prisons? Did you know that it specifically calls out ending violence against trans women of color with a crosslink to her LGBT rights platform? Did you know that it talks about defending Puerto Rican rights, something even a lot of the mainstream Tumblr SJ discourse tends to overlook?

And that’s just two of the pages on this thing! Look at this stuff! She has the only autism platform that has the ASAN stamp of approval and explicitly includes autistic adults! She has explicit plans to fight anti-LGBT “conversion therapy” and to upgrade the service records of everyone discharged for being queer! Increased HIV/AIDs combating funding including increasing the usage of post-exposure prophylaxis (something not too surprising in retrospect, I suppose, given the Clinton Foundation’s long history of combating HIV/AIDs).She not only supports debt-free college education at all state colleges (something I knew), but she has plans for investing in historically Black colleges and debt relief plans for people already dealing with student loans! She has a substance abuse platform focused on improving treatment options and eliminating jail time for possession! Mental health infrastructure reform!

And I’m still barely touching on all of this, Jesus Christ - we could be here all day discussing all the policies I looked at and went “Oh, wow, that’s actually pretty in line with why I liked Bernie.”

So yeah, okay. You win this round, Hillary. I wanted Bernie to be our candidate, but you know what? Maybe sometimes, primaries are just choosing between two candidates who are actually both pretty great. And maybe you’ve proved that you’re actually willing to listen. And all it took to win me over was, uh, me actually reading your campaign page.

I NEVER KNEW THE REASON THE NEPHEWS WERE LEFT WITH SCROOGE WAS BECAUSE DONALD HAD TO LITERALLY GO OFF WITH THE NAVY LIKE

I’m tired

I’m gay. I’m tired.

I texted one of my best friends this morning and asked, “Did you hear about Orlando?” because the first time I ever went to a gay club and pretended like I was “out” was with him when we were fresh out of high school. Out of all my friends, he’s probably spent the most time in gay clubs. Which means I’m more worried about him than about my other friends. So I texted him.

I’m tired.

They want people to give blood, but it’s gay people who need the blood and it’s gay people who can’t donate. But we’re in crisis mode! We’ll take your tainted gay blood for today only!

I’m tired.

I held hands with a man last week and thought, “Oh no, we’re in a small town in Utah and this is dangerous because we’re both gay,” before I remembered that he’s a guy and I’m a girl so no, it’s not dangerous. But the next time I hold hands with a girl, will someone see us and get mad enough to shoot 50 gay people? Will I feel responsible when I read the news? Will I feel like a danger to society for being gay?

I’m tired.

I went to Pride in Salt Lake City last weekend and I complained as I stood in line in the hot sun and I complained about the ticket prices and I complained about the festival being smaller than it was last year and I complained. When it was over, I was still alive. I’m still alive. I can’t believe I complained.

I’m tired.

Bury your gays. Currently on television, 4 percent of characters identify as LGBT. In 2016, about 40 percent of that 4 percent have already died. Yesterday, that might’ve been the issue I wanted to discuss. Yesterday, I might’ve been angry about fictional gays dying. Yesterday. Art imitates life, life imitates art, and I am tired.

I’m tired.

A year ago I put a rainbow flag around my shoulders and celebrated the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. A year ago there was no law banning transgender people from using the bathroom of their choosing. A year ago a man hadn’t shot 50 gay people dead because he saw two men kissing and got angry. “Now that gay marriage is legal, what more do you people want?” Well, I want to stay alive, for one thing.

I’m tired.

There aren’t gay coffee shops or gay restaurants – there are gay nightclubs. Gay nightclubs where LGBT people can meet other LGBT people and feel safe. I want to meet other LGBT people and make friends with LGBT people, but I also don’t want to die.

I’m tired.

My existence is controversial. Even though I’m out, I have to be careful about how “gay” I “act.” What happens if I’m at work and offend a customer? What happens if someone I know reads these words and decides to punish me for them? What happens if someone gets so angry about my sexuality that they shoot 50 people?

Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.

If you want to learn more about him, there’s a great documentary on him called Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin