This is the blog for History 175, Claremont McKenna College, fall 2014. It is open only to students enrolled in the course. Please use this blog to post articles and links related to the broad theme of women and politics. You can also post comments or questions on our readings, reflections on outside events that you attend, and notices of upcoming events of interest to the class. To generate discussion, please also read and comment on other postings. Check back regularly for updates!
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Pretty Faces
Not sure if you all have heard anything about it, but there's a new movie in the action sports world that focuses entirely on women in the extreme skiing industry. Being born and raised in Colorado, among very active outdoor communities, movies like this one were a staple of my childhood and adolescence. Except, as I grew older, I started to notice how women were mysteriously absent from so many of them. Regardless of the sport - skiing, kayaking, mountain biking, road biking, climbing, mountaineering, etc - there always seemed to be a single token female or two who totally hung with the guys, yet never had her story told. And then the idea for this movie surfaced, struggled for a while, and finally, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign, became a reality. The women behind the project wanted to give young, aspiring female skiers (but really skiers of any and all ages) something to look up to. The movie's website even includes a nice Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
I have yet to see the movie, but I've heard that every showing yet has been sold out and incredibly well received! Here's the link to the trailer.
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This is awesome! I had a similar experience growing up and suddenly realizing the extreme lack of female athlete representation. For a while when I played soccer, the WUSA (Women's United Soccer Association) was around and my teammates and I would go watch the games, but then the league closed. This was unsettling to me because these female sports stars I had looked up to were suddenly gone from the public eye, and it was strange to me that I continued to play soccer while they did not.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that this movie provides women to look up to in the skiing world.As we've seen with suffragists, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jane Addams, these women all serve as great motivators for others to have someone successful to look up