How our superheroes lack the "feminine touch"

                Marvel has recently found huge financial success in their most recent film Guardians of the Galaxy, which grossed over $94 million in it's opening weekend making it the largest August opener of all time.  But one of the main reasons the film has hit headlines, is due to the fact that 44% of the audience was female. This is the highest female viewer rating which Marvel has ever encountered and is taken to be a positive sign for future superhero movies.

                Many wondered why Guardians of the Galaxy had collected such a large female audience and many notions were suggested. Miss Representation, who are a campaign working towards ending gender inequality and increasing diversity of women we see in our media, claimed that people were excited and impressed that the film included Marvel's first-ever female screen writer- Nicole Perlman. They also pointed out the fact that the film stars the complex female characters played by Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan and Glenn Close. Many other people however, just pointed at Chris Pratt's abs to justify all the female attention the film was receiving.

                Then again, the Guardian writer Bim Adewunmi came up with another theory when writing an article entitled "Why do women love Guardians of the Galaxy?" that maybe women just like the film because they are human. She states in the article that "women like Guardians of the Galaxy because it is a good movie. It is witty, quirky and fun, and has plenty of charm". I support Adewunmi's opinion and am thrilled to learn that women are enjoying themselves and seeing fantastic films despite those movies being notoriously targeted towards men.

                Which means that us female viewers are looking forward to the next step: a female-led superhero film.  There are a few Marvel ladies including Black Widow from Avengers Assemble, Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Pepper Potts from the Iron Man trilogy who we adore but in recent years, we have failed to see a woman actually star in their own super hero Hollywood Blockbuster. Despite the latest demand for a woman to be seen saving the Earth, we are making rather disappointingly slow progress.

                 Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, recently said that " the studio has no intention of releasing a female-led action film in the foreseeable future" and that sequels to their already established franchises are set to be top priorities through to 2017. It was rumoured that a Black Widow film was on the horizon but Feige's statement has destroyed any hope for that for at least 4 years. DC Comics has made a slightly better advancement however, with Gal Gadot being cast  as Wonder Woman and allegedly thought to appear in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, the future Justice League movie in 2017 and eventually her own Wonder Woman movie in 2018- but these have not been fully confirmed and may have their release dates delayed.

                Actresses are also keen to have their chance at the starring role. Kristen Stewart actually turned down a role in a super hero movie, justifying the decision by saying, "I don't want to be the superhero's girlfriend. I want to be the superhero." Which I think is more than fair enough. Scarlett Johansson also has previously said that she would love to star in a Black Widow origin movie "if the audience wants something like that" as " these spin -offs are really like fan-driven".

                So in order to actually have the female-led superhero movies we need to show, as the viewers and consumers, that we want them. This is the link to tweet Marvel Studios that we want a strong and complex super heroine confirmed before 2017: https://t.e2ma.net/click/62p5d/mjpkjg/qirocb and here is the link to sign a petition for a Black Widow movie: https://www.change.org/p/yo-marvel-whereismyblackwidowmovie . It's about time the women wore the cape for once.

Fractured Fozz

                I had never broken any bone in my body. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never had a fracture or sprained anything properly; I was an X-ray virgin. So when a severe sprain in netball training turned into a painful chip of the bone- a part of me was actually kind of excited. Missing the couple of days off school for hospital appointments seemed pretty appealing, choosing a colour for my cast appeared to be fun and the thought of several weeks lying on the sofa watching netflix was seriously awesome. Then, when I went on to learn that we were going to hire a wheelchair to get me round at a quicker pace, I was so happy thinking about all the fun I would have rolling around everywhere.

                However the novelty wore off pretty soon. It took me approximately 24 hours to completely 180 spin on my opinion and wish I could rip off the plastic prison that my leg was encased in. Firstly, hardly anywhere is wheelchair friendly. Every ramp is too steep and every pavement is too bumpy and numerous times an entire slab has come loose and occasionally even popped out while I was wheeling past which is not only annoying and possibly harmful to me but frustrating for whoever is wheeling me around.

                The other problem with being in a chair in public is other people. I've always made it a point to never stare and possibly offend someone in a wheelchair or crutches as I thought they would not want the unnecessary extra attention, however I found most people seemingly purposely avoid my gaze and look straight ahead which surprisingly made me feel dehumanized as if I was unworthy of having eye contact with everybody else. It wasn't their fault of course, they obviously weren't trying to offend me on purpose, but I had never realised how much effect eye contact had on how included I felt in the space around me.  

                Secondly, I felt ostracised by how I couldn't participate in daily occurrences. I couldn't hang out with my family for our little catch ups in the kitchen before dinner as by the time I had got up from the sofa, put on my crutches and dodged various obstacles in my path during the initial pain of walking, the conversation was over. I couldn't go to meet ups with friends due to the unknown variable of whether there would be stairs or whether anyone would want to go through the infuriating agony of wheeling me anywhere. I couldn't go to a concert as I would have to either "sit in the foyer if I got tired" or exhaustingly "just lean on the wall" which sounded to me like a disappointing night.

                I could go on about the bruises on my arms that I obtained from my crutches, how uncomfortable it is sleeping with a bulging calf or even how it seemed like an aching uphill trek just to reach the TV remote on the other side of the room for the first couple of days. However, by the time this is published, I will have hopefully had my cast removed and I'll be back to my fully able bodied self. But I will do my utmost best to remember how exasperating all of this was and use my incredibly brief and insultingly tiny injury to develop sympathy towards those who are sadly in a more permanent state than I am and actively make adjustments  to my behaviour and the environment around us to make it as comfortable  and inclusive to those not as fortunate as myself.
If there's anything that I've learned, it's that the fun wears off quicker than the pain killers.

Fozz.
N.B.- This is present me and I am out of my cast! The rehabilitation is intense though and the pain is still constant. Working on a list of points to take to Student Parliament to improve the school environment to make it easier for those in a similar or worse situation than I am. 

The Hypocrisy of Teenage Girls

                The majority of teenage girls can unfortunately be hypocritical. I hate to say it but a lot of us, myself included, spend our time being infuriated at how teenage boys make comments about our bodies and looks-which is sadly a common occurrence nowadays. Teenagers are constantly being suffocated by what is "hot or not" which can affect us negatively, burdening us with low self esteem or possibly worse. Cruel comments that come out of boys' mouths can be partly to blame for this and a lot of girls openly call them out on their vulgar remarks- and rightly so.

                But us girls sometimes then turn around and insult one another's appearance; the human race is prone to bitching about one another. Most of the time it is just harmless ranting and venting to a close friend but sometimes it's a bit more than that. Sometimes it can turn into a snappy insult about a new look that a fellow female was trying to test out- just a sideways observation that didn't mean anything. But then someone blabs, someone confronts someone else and people end up falling out. We've all been guilty of it and we have all been exhausted by it.

                Then you've got the petty little fights when the context is blown way out of proportion and all because of what? Because someone judged someone else's looks for just a second. But these are the same girls that turn around and tell boys to stop judging girls on their appearance. It's like in Mean Girls, one of the most loved and quotable movies of this century, yet a lot of us tend to miss out when Tina Fey says, "You have all got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores."

                So what can we do? Just be a bit nicer, I suppose. Encourage your friends to try out a new style even if it is wacky and ridiculous, help each other find a new confidence with being secure about ourselves and our bodies. We need to help one another and not belittle anyone for how they look. Us girls need to practice what we preach and try and cut down on this bitchiness that we seem to get carried away with. It's really crazy how better things would be if we were all just a bit more involved in girl power and kinder to each other.

Fozz.

"Connections between people can become stronger as the wifi does."

                Back in late April earlier this year, London based Gary Turk uploaded a video called "Look Up" onto YouTube in which he explains through a poem, how we are all becoming too dependent on technology and how we are not living in the moment and cherishing the time that we have together because we are all too busy looking on our phones. He encourages the viewer to "look up" so that they can go out into the world and have new experiences.

                The video has reached over 45 million views due to how persuasive it is when Gary Turk uses a love story to portray how the fact that being so consumed in the worldwide web can affect meeting your soul mate. When TheFineBros hosted a Youtubers react to the viral hit, many of the guests- who have technology to thank for their careers- understood the message of the video and although they were touched by the storyline, they were frustrated at how hypocritical it was that Gary Turk is relying on technology to spread the message that technology has now become a negative development in our society. Popular YouTube star Tyler Oakley went on to say in the feature that the internet can also connect so many people and has so many advantages.

                Which I personally agree with; the internet can be a positive catalyst for relationships and enables us to interact with each other on a whole new level of communication. They say that 23% of online daters meet their long term spouse but these relationships don't always have to start on OK Cupid or eHarmony. According to statisticbrain.com, 20% of current committed relationships in the US start just online. Romantic, sexual and platonic relationships can all start by a simple comment on a Facebook status, a cheeky retweet on Twitter or a friendly follow on Tumblr. People miles apart now have the capability to Skype to one another; as close to face to face as some people can achieve. Connections between people can become stronger as the wifi does.

                However, Gary Turk obviously has a point. We can sometimes be too easily engulfed by a screen and we need to learn how to use technology to our advantage before it takes advantage of us. We can use social media to spark relationships and to stay in touch but when we are with each other we need to be able to put the phone away and to converse without the assistance of emoticons. We should stop focusing on how many likes our instagram pictures are getting and instead concentrate on who else is tagged in the photo with us.

Fozz.   

Link to the "Look Up" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6CTu_Zmn8E

http://www.statisticbrain.com/online-dating-statistics/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/10/21/online-dating-relationships/