Saturday, May 30, 2009

Notes for a Feminist Comic

Image ideas:
• Simone de Beauvoir sitting in an armchair with a long cigarette holder saying, "Women are oppressed by their biology";
• Sari, 19,1980s, putting on jacket w/shoulder pads and going off to summer job as a clerk in a law firm...;
• me, bags under eyes, saying to my homemaker mother (mother of 4 kids) "you didn't tell me how HARD it was"

Possible title: Snapshots from a New Mother's Life in Which Age-Old Feminist Conflicts are Acted Out

Overview: A patchwork quilt of the last year of my life in which I have had to confront some basic issues of feminism in a more bread-and-butter way than ever before (such as economic self-sufficiency, gender roles, and childbearing).

Script ideas:
Have baby.
Lose job.
Discover that baby needs lots of care.
Lose health insurance.
Start blog!
Baby wakes in middle of the night.
Journalism collapses!
Join coop. Shop for food.
Freelance for less than you were getting in-house. Can afford some daycare!
Publishing collapses!
Baby wakes in the middle of the night.
Shop for food.
Widespread layoffs!
Baby wakes in middle of night.
Baby wakes in middle of night.
Too tired to blog.
Against all reason, wish to have another baby.


Point is not to ridicule feminist thinkers but juxtapose theoretical pronouncements and mass messages women receive with the hard-knock realities of women's lives through the centuries.

Shine some (hopefully humorous) light on the gulf between theory and inevitable realities of life.