Irritable

First, before anything else, Happy Birthday to the fabulous kernezelda. She's the Queen of Evil, and we love her for it.

I'm cranky and irritable, which generally signals the soon to be working of my ovaries, but I still can identify outside sources of this.

I'm so very pleased to have a job, and I like my co-workers, I like the stability of employment and the day to day of being useful and mostly productive. That being said, there's an underlying sadness at knowing that I'm probably functioning at 25% of my capacity because this job doesn't require much more than that. It's a good job, a nice job, and I'm so pleased to have it, but it isn't a challenge, it isn't anything more than a job. And I want something that absorbs my focus, my attention. Sigh. I feel guilty at the amount of time I can spend not working and still accomplish the bulk of what I need to get done. Not guilty enough to not go online, or write, or waste a little time but guilty nonetheless.

And I'm still very much thinking about feminism and role models and the necessity of still maintaining a feminist presence and movement. I look at a study released today that said that only 25% of animated features that grossed a certain amount featured female leads. And while that doesn't sound like a big deal, it means that younger children are still seeing boys as the leaders, as the ones things happen to, as the ones who go out and do things. And no, I don't think this statistic stands in isolation, but I think it's relevant. I look at the movies on everyone's mind right now, and they're movies about men. Women are secondary in the bulk of them, and even Walk the Line which I loved, and which features a stellar performance by Reese Whitherspoon and also shows how very strong and together June Carter was, is still a movie about a man and the woman who helped him through.

This... it's troublesome to me. I realize that many of the shows I watch feature strong female leads, and that says something, says a lot in fact, but well... it still feels like women are secondary in the consciousness. And yeah, I can say that knowing how much buzz still follows Desperate Housewives, and that Grey's Anatomy cleaned up post-Superbowl.

And I'm sorry, saying stories are about character and that gender shouldn't matter just doesn't cut it for me, not when 90% of action movies feature a male lead and if women are involved they;re wife or villain or helpmeet, not equal partner. And if women are the stars, they're alone, they're damaged in some way. It goes along way towards identifying some of my issues with Starbuck and the representation of her as a blend of male characteristics with female angst, it helps me to identify why I'm irked that her reason to live/to angst was Anders and not the rest of people left on Caprica. Why it bothers me that she can't just be a hot shot with a hot shot's libido.

I know this sounds vague, and disjointed, but I'm really trying to suss some of this out.