The advancement of feminism, as measured by merchandising

My sister and I have decidedly different taste in decorating. While my room is as basic and frill-less as I can get it, hers is covered in ruffles and as many romantic pre-victorian paintings as she can possibly fit (punctuated by the odd anime print up). I can't stand it, venturing into her space will at times make me nearly nauseous. I used to think it was simply because her things were to 'girly', but lately I've begun to think that isn't the reason.

I remember hating all things girly when I was little. It was all so pink, ruffly, romantic, and more than enough to push me into tomboyism. Most people who know me now have a hard time seeing me in that role as I've come to truly embrace my own femininity in the past several years. What changed? While I've evolved to some degree I think that what really happened was the world has evolved to fit me.

The subtle messages contained in female merchandising has come a long way since I was five and six years old. Barbie had safe jobs like nurse, teacher and stewardess. Today my baby sister has the Powerpuff girls who live to kick evil hinny without the help of any stupid Ken. The ruffles and romantics have gone the way of the hills and instead of being subtly told that our entire life's emphasis is to be attractive to men we are allowed to choose what we want to be. We are no longer one dimensional creatures to the world, but have taken for ourselves a dictionary full of adjectives. Princess, tiger, angel, slut, bitch, Queen, geek. We define ourselves, and tomorrow we can change the t-shirt if we want to because now we have control. Today's girls have what I wanted: the ability to say "I can be what I want, do what I want, imagine what I want because I am a girl and my life revolves around no man." The only girls boxed in by the old doctrines are those like my sister who choose to be. (which is fine so long as they're not choosing for me.)

Is it any wonder I'm excited about the future? If we can have come this far in a mere fifteen years imagine what the rest of it will bring.

*whimpers*

I hate fandom. I hate fandom. I HATE fandom.

Why is it that online people feel free to say the most cruel awful spiteful things, things that no one should be allowed to say?

Yet again my some of my favorite fandom people are yelling at each other (I'm sure neither of them read my live journal, so most of you can stop worrying) and I just don't like it. They're both lovely talented people, who happen to rub each other the wrong way entirely. I couldn't bring myself to take sides, but I'd love to hug the one and clam down the other as it just hurts to see it.

At times I soooo want to ask "why can't we all just get along?" to the fandom at large.

Especially the talented people. In my (admittedly humble) observation the people with talent, true visible talent have a tendency to be a bit... prima dona-y. I'm not judging them for it, but I do know when and how to work around it, and if they've done a great job on something and want an ego stroke who am I to deny them? Like most people, if you're sweet to them they're sweet to you, which is probably why the people that do know me don't usually have a problem with me. But the true talents seem to feel they've got something to loose if they back down in a debate, so both go head to head and at the end develop bitter enmity, when they would have been fine had they both just agreed to disagree.

In other words, behaved like adults.

Despite, and occasionally because of these childish tendencies I still like and respect them, so it bothers me to see the absolute hatred that often ensues. I just don't like to see people be that mean.

I don't suppose it'd be possible to institute the policy angeleledhwen and I came up with? If you must write something that expresses your dislike of someone/thing, write it as if you were sending it through their mother. Keep it nice enough that she wouldn't feel the need to set up a meeting with your mother to have it worked out. In other words, could we act as if the people we know are real people rather than this faceless embodiment of everything you dislike?

Please, be nice? Or just don't yell so much in public? Fitting as it is for this particular fandom, I'd rather not feel like hiding in a cupboard when I see your posts.