Away for vacation...

My parents are coming to visit us in Australia tomorrow, so I won't be posting for the next two weeks while we explore Melbourne, Uluru, and the Great Barrier Reef.

For fun, http://dna.imagini.net/friends. Click on one picture for each question and the site will tell you all about yourself.

No more periods?

According to an AP report, the FDA has just approved a new form of the birth control pill called Lybrel that is meant to end menstruating altogether. My first reaction: "Really? Can that be healthy?" I agree with the concern raised by sociologist Jean Elson, who is quoted in the AP article ,that approval of this drug makes menstruation seem more like "a medical condition" than a normal life event. While Lybrel may be a welcome relief to women who suffer through really painful menstruation, I am concerned about the message this sends to young women, who already get the message that menstruation is gross, dirty, etc.

When I did a retreat with seventh and eighth grade girls about a year ago, I was surprised at how little they knew about menstruation. Some of the questions they asked me anonymously through our question box were, "How long does an average cycle last?" "Is it true that you can't get pregnant while you have your period?" and "Will it hurt a lot when I finally get my period?" On msn.com's coverage of the Lybrel story, there is a link to an interactive depiction of the menstrual cycle. I wish I had had something like it when I ran the retreat.

Cracks of Resistance

My doctoral research focuses on how young women in the United States construct their gendered and religious identities and how (religious) educators can best support their identity work. Thus, I am always on the look-out for resources that can better help me understand the lives and struggles and joys and stories of young women and support for my claim that one of the best things we can do for young women is to create safe spaces where they can tell their identities stories and be heard into being.

One such resource is Alive Magazine. It started in 2004 as the senior thesis project of Heather Scheiwe, one of the contributors to My Red Couch. Now it is just one component of Alive Arts Media, a non-profit organization based in Minneapolis dedicated to creating media by and for young women. All of the staff people and contributors to their website and e-zine (which you can sign up to receive via e-mail) are between the ages of 13-25.

Judith Okely, an anthropologist, coins the wonderful term "cracks of resistance" to describe where she looks to find examples of agency in conditions of subordination.* Alive Magazine is an example of a flower growing from a crack of resistance, as this grassroots group has worked together to create more fulsome alternatives to mass media products that all too often portray young women without agency.

*Judith Okely, "Defiant Moments: Gender, Resistance and Individuals," Man 26: 3-22.

Campaign for Real Beauty

My friend Jael told me about a short film called "Evolution" on the Dove website that shows how a normal looking woman can go from looking simply average to having her face on a billboard through the magic of hair and make-up artists and computer brushing up. The short clip is worth sharing with the young women--actually, with any man or woman--in your life. Even once we know about the way images are manipulated before we see them in post-production, with the ever-present stream of unattainable figures presented to us, it can be easy to forget that our standards of beauty have become seriously skewed.

For fun...

For fun, take the Grey's Anatomy character quiz. I turned out to be Meredith, which makes sense given how dark and twisty I am.

Or if you are more daring, check the InterPlay website to see if there are any InterPlay groups operating near you (there are regular groups in St. Paul/Minneapolis and also in Port Melbourne, which is the next suburb over from where I live in Australia). InterPlay is all about fun and embodiment, as participants move through incremental "forms" that allow them to move, think, and be in new ways. InterPlay proudly proclaims it is for those who want to become "recovering serious people." I have learned about InterPlay from my colleague Courtney Goto at Emory University, who is studying InterPlay as part of her dissertation. Regardless of whether I ever become a regular InterPlayer or not, their work does remind me of the importance of considering the role of the body in education and the fact that there are multiple ways of knowing--and embodied knowing often gets short shrift in the world of academics.

The OT

I must be on a theater kick because last night I went to see The OT: Chronicles of the Old Testament. (No, I did not go to see it just because The OT sounds like The O.C., although that is why it attracted my attention in the first place.) According to its promotional materials, "The Old Testament has been the guiding light for many into the fundamental values of our world. Love it or revile it, the Old Testament is embedded in our thoughts, our language and how we see ourselves. But how many of us have looked more deeply into the old book to see the things your Sunday School teacher didn’t tell you? What kind of universe ultimately emerges?"

Admittedly, the universe that emerges in this imaginative (picture stuffed animals acting out the story of Lot and his daughters or the actors dressed as telle-tubbies to proclaim the psalms) production is a largely dark and violent world. I appreciated the play's reminder about the overwhelming number of difficult stories in the Bible, stories with which we must contend, like Jacob wrestling the angel, if we are to continue to make Christianity relevant in the twenty-first century. I also appreciated the way the play itself rendered the Old Testament not only entertaining but also relevant. I left wanting to read the stories more for myself and to think deeply about how religious educators can make biblical education more relevant to the concerns of today.

Interestingly, (and also theologically appropriately) the character of God did not speak throughout most of the play, although he (played by a man) was present and involved to a greater or lesser extent throughout. Most of the time, the human characters spoke for him ("Thus says the Lord...") and God only spoke in the final scene to affect creation.

Operation

This past week I went to see an amazing "play" entitled "Operation" at the Black Box Theatre in Melbourne. I put play in quotation marks because puppetry arts more accurately describes the show. According to a flier for the show, "This searing performance gives a rare insight into a very secret and personal war. Using the techniques of autopsy and crime scene investigation, you will bear witness to the hidden truth of a soldier's existence and an interrogator's determination to extract meaning in a silent battle for information." Read more about it here.

For the full hour of the show, no words were spoken. A human man operated on a human-looking doll, extracting a smaller puppet who became the main character in the drama. This smaller puppet grew up in the Middle East, moved to Australia, apparently was recruited for terroristic activities, and left behind a wife and child in Australia when we went on his mission. The whole thing was surprisingly moving, given that the only live human character served in the role of the interrogator/surgeon.

I appreciated two things most about the production. First, it invited the audience into the story of the main puppet in a way that did not shy away from the horror of terrorism/war but that also helped us to realize that even those on the other side of a conflict have a family and life story and to understand the lure of extreme organizations (be they political, religious, or otherwise).

Second, the play was staged in a way that I have never seen before. At any one time, the audience could take at least two views on the action. We could watch the play as it unfolded before us on the stage, or we could watch a screen behind the stage that broadcasted the play from the point of view of one of the characters. For instance, at the beginning when the puppet was being operated upon, you could see the puppet's view of the doctor doing the operation on the screen behind the stage. One of my favorite educators, Maxine Greene, frequently writes about the importance of multiple perspective taking, and here is a play that invites the audience to take multiple perspectives through its unique staging.