AUDIOS & VIDEOS
IMPROV COMEDY CONNECTION / PODCAST
Host & fellow improviser Whit Shiller begins with a conversation about improv, of course — including an exploration of character-based improv, ‘growing up’ at the Groundlings Theater & School and continued in Improvolution in New York and Los Angeles. This episode also goes into Holly’s highly-regarded Good Girls Aren’t Funny workshops and presentations, which explores and seeks to understand differences in gender experiences in improv and beyond.
THE NURSERY / LONDON IMPROV SCHOOL / PODCAST
Jules Munns (Artistic Director) talk with Holly about
“WHAT CHARACTER REALLY MEANS,
AND WHY BEING A GOOD GIRL WON’T HELP YOU”
FROM HOLLY: please know that this was originally a filmed interview but the camera stopped working early on…so if at moments it sounds weird, trust it’s because we’re doing something HILARIOUS to the camera which has been lost forever and you only have your imagination to recreate the brilliance.
FEMINIST CRUSH's interview with Holly Mandel
Ep. 13 - Holly Mandel
Released Sep 16, 2016
Through comedy, feminist improviser and creator of goodgirlsarentfunny.com Holly Mandel empowers funny women to say HELL yes, and... "f*ck it!", to bust their inner good girls, and to "build their own sandboxes" in which to play (No boys necessary!).
POETIC JUSTICE: Vanessa Fisher talks with Holly Mandel
Poetic Justice Dialogues Series is a hub for engaging important conversations with artists, activists, authors, and influential thought leaders around the world who bring unique and fresh perspectives to an array of pressing global issues. The conversations in this series range from political, to poetic, to philosophical in exploration, and aim to bring fresh thinking to a diverse array of topics by delving into the deeper layers of culture, art, economics, leadership, politics, activism, social media, gender, religion and spirituality in the 21st century.
TED TALK: Your Brain on Improv by Charles Limb
The part of the brain that is activated during improv and creative functions is not the same part that is worried about right, wrong, good, bad, or playing by the rules.
MAKERS: Terry Crews “Men As Allies”
I love this video and what Terry has to say about TOXIC MASCULINITY. It’s raw and to the point.
TED TALK: Billie Jean King
Tennis legend Billie Jean King isn't just a pioneer of women's tennis -- she's a pioneer for women getting paid. In this freewheeling conversation, she talks about identity, the role of sports in social justice and the famous Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs.
"...So you can have a law, but it's changing the hearts and minds to match up with it. That's when it really rocks, totally. So that was on my mind. I wanted to start that change in the hearts and minds. But two things came out of that match. For women: self-confidence, empowerment. They actually had enough nerve to ask for a raise. Some women have waited 10, 15 years to ask. I said, "More importantly, did you get it?"
TED TALK: President Jimmy Carter - "Why I Believe the Mistreatment of Women is the Number One Human Rights Abuse"
With his signature resolve, former US President Jimmy Carter dives into three unexpected reasons why the mistreatment of women and girls continues in so many manifestations in so many parts of the world, both developed and developing. The final reason he gives? "In general, men don't give a damn."
BOOKS TO CHECK OUT
'Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body' by Sara Pascoe
Not only is it one of the funniest books I've ever read, it might also be one of the most poignant. Or much needed. Or timely. Or relevant. Or thought-provoking.
Take a funny and illuminating tour of the female body with award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe.
Women have so much going on, what with boobs and jealousy and menstruating and broodiness and sex and infidelity and pubes and wombs and jobs and memories and emotions and the past and the future and themselves and each other.
Here's a book that deals with all of it.
‘Good and Mad’ by Rebecca Traister
“She also illustrates the many ways that American society shuns angry women, convincing them that their rage is impolite, unattractive, or even unhealthy. This point is made over and over, but it doesn't get repetitive or tiresome, so much as that it hammers home just how pervasive the phenomenon is.
Traister also writes that she's trying to provide women with validation for whatever rage they are currently feeling. Her book's final line: "Don't ever let them talk you out of being mad again."
In covering all that ground, she has done her research — the book is thick with citations of other books, as well as interviews with candidates, activists, and longtime politicians. That said, her book is not a detached chronicling of women's anger in American history. She, at times, injects her own opinions and experiences into some of the stories, as well as her own politics — Traister is a liberal, and the book is unmistakably so…” (NPR review)
‘The Second Sex’ by Simone de Beauvoir
Her introduction alone is a revolution, if that’s all you end up reading…
“The Second Sex, she says, is a description of an oppressive set of relations that “currently neither men nor women can just transform... with a magic wand.” …Beauvoir’s work to begin forcing changes in the material conditions she identified as creating gender-based forms of social oppression…”
“In The Second Sex, she produced an articulate attack on the fact that throughout history women have been relegated to a sphere of “immanence,” and the passive acceptance of roles assigned to them by society.”
'All the Single Ladies': Book Review & Book
“…The fact, then, that the median age for a woman’s first marriage has risen to 27 is a momentous turn of events. American women who eventually marry are now left with nearly a decade of single adulthood to forge their own paths professionally, romantically and socially. And this current period feels markedly different from prior moments when decisions to abstain from or delay marriage were intentional actions of feminist protest. Singlehood is no longer as restrictive for women as it once was. Women can work, they can borrow money, they can vote, buy houses, start businesses, travel the world and have children without ever formally attaching themselves to a man.”
“Marriage Shock” by Dalma Heyn
This is the book where it all began...lightbulb moment & dot connector. Despite the rather intense book cover, it's NOT anti-marriage. Heyn asks what the relevance of marriage is for first-world women in the 21st Century and her findings are nothing less than fascinating.
BOOK: “When Everything Changed” by Gail Collins
In When Everything Changed, Gail Collins, the former editorial page director of the New York Times and author of the best-selling America’s Women, picks up her history of women left off in the 1960s. Collins uses her great sense of revealing anecdotes, engaging personalities, representative case histories, resonant stories, and startling details to defamiliarize a decade we thought we remembered, and to show how truly far American women have come in every aspect of their lives. Whether being forbidden to wear pants in a courtroom, growing up without seeing “a woman doctor, lawyer, police officer, or bus driver,” or hearing that “for a woman to make decisions... would be unpleasant, dominant, masculine,” Sixties women took for granted a second-class status that would be unthinkable now. The median age of marriage was twenty, and girls might otherwise aspire to brief mini-careers as airline stewardesses or schoolteachers. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963 (just a few months before Betty has her baby on Mad Men) put a label to the malaise of unhappy, bored, rebellious, and intellectually frustrated housewives, and the second wave of American feminism, the women’s liberation movement, began.
BOOK: "The Confidence Code" by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman
"In The Confidence Code, Katy Kay and Claire Shipman shine a perceptive light on the crucial role that confidence plays in the ability of women to succeed. By cracking the code – explaining where confidence comes from and how to bolster it – they offer women practical advice and the vision of a more hopeful future for us." - Sheryl Sandberg
"Playing Big" by Tara Mohr
"Five years ago, I began to see a pattern in my work: women with tremendous talent, ideas and aspiration often didn’t see their own brilliance. Too often, they were sitting on their big ideas rather than sharing them, holding back their most provocative questions rather than asking them. I recognized the same thing in myself. I started on a journey to understand why women were playing small and what helps us play big, from the inside out. In this book, I share with you the tools I’ve used with thousands of women to help them take big steps forward in their lives and careers."
ARTICLES
ARTICLE: ‘Why Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute To Be Scared?’
“…When a girl learns that the chance of skinning her knee is an acceptable reason not to attempt the fire pole, she learns to avoid activities outside her comfort zone. Soon many situations are considered too scary, when in fact they are simply exhilarating and unknown. Fear becomes a go-to feminine trait, something girls are expected to feel and express at will. By the time a girl reaches her tweens no one bats an eye when she screams at the sight of an insect.”
ARTICLE: ‘Plight of the Funny Female’
“…For decades, this response stumped psychologists. When they would ask men and women what they looked for in their long-term partners, both genders would say they wanted someone “with a good sense of humor.” It was only when researchers pressed their subjects on what they meant, specifically, by “sense of humor,” that the sex difference became clear. Women want men who will tell jokes; men want women who will laugh at theirs.”
Q&A WITH FILMMAKER JOEY ALLYON "JOY JOY NAILS", INTERSECTIONAL FILMMAKING, AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Sundance Alumna and Director/Writer, Joey Ally’s newest short film Joy Joy Nails was an official selection of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. The film highlights the untold truth of abysmal pay, racism, and sometimes violence that women endure in the roughly 2,000 nail salons across New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.
Bitch Media had a few questions of this rising film director whose most recent work dives deep into the dark places of race, intimacy, bullying, workplace violence, and human rights.
WHITE HOUSE WOMEN WANT TO BE IN THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS & HOW A WHITE HOUSE WOMEN'S OFFICE STRATEGY WENT VIRAL
A few months ago, my colleagues and I sat around discussing how we could write about the White House for our “Women in Power” series in a less conventional way. Karen Tumulty had heard from a former Obama administration official that things were so tough for women to exert influence during the president’s first term that they devised a strategy called “amplification” to hammer across one another’s points during meetings. After one woman offered an idea, if it wasn’t acknowledged, another woman would repeat it and give her colleague credit for suggesting it.
“Since the dawn of time, we’ve been taught that it is men who lead and women who nurture — and so our workplace structures, our belief systems, even our expectations are still very much rooted in that belief,” Bennett said. “No matter how progressive we may think of ourselves in 2016, I think most of us still define leadership in male terms.”
WHY IS THE SILICON VALLEY SO AWFUL TO WOMEN?
"...All Blount could do was laugh—even now, as she looks back on the incident. In the hierarchy of sexist encounters, it didn’t rank very high. Still, it was a reminder that as a woman in tech, she should be prepared to have her authority questioned at any moment, even by some guy trying to get a job at her company.
One reason her career had gone so well, she thinks, is that she’d made a point of ignoring slights and oafish comments. Awkward silences, too. Over the years, she’s experienced—many times—the sensation of walking up to a group of male colleagues and noticing that they fell quiet, as though they’d been talking about something they didn’t want her to hear. She’s been asked to take notes in meetings. She’s found herself standing in elevators at tech conferences late at night when a guy would decide to get, as she puts it, handsy. When she and a male partner started a company, potential investors almost always directed their questions to him—even when the subject clearly fell in Blount’s area of expertise. It drove him crazy, and Blount had to urge him to curb his irritation. “I didn’t have time to be pissed,” she says..."
THE REAL-WORLD CONSEQUENCES OF THE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL CLICHE
"...Rabin claimed that the MPDG "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries." In a recent exploration of the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" phenomenon, though, the New Statesman's Laurie Penny argued that the ubiquity of this stock character in mainstream movies has real-world implications. "Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story," Penny writes. "Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's..."
THE COOL GIRL IS NOT FICTION, BUT A PHASE
"...Recently a friend ran into a woman we all knew in our twenties as a so-called "Cool Girl." She braced herself for the typical performance-art femininity—"dude in a hot girl's body" ready to party with suspicious, irritating gusto—and was startled to find herself speaking to a grownup who seemed pretty together. Down to earth, even.
I realized then what I had always suspected: The Cool Girl has an expiration date, and it is round about your thirties, when you either simply grow up by virtue of existing a few years more on earth, or realize it is hella tiresome to keep pretending you don't have any feelings or long-term goals to be desirable to a certain breed of dude..."