and the bride wore white

Last weekend I was sitting on my couch with my close-circle friend E. and fellow bridesmaid for other close-circle friend M. looking at the cover of the movie Bridesmaids.

Did you see Bridesmaids? It was amazing. It had an all-female leading cast, and what was great about it was that it wasn't a chick-flick, it was just a comedy, like The Hangover or Superbad. But it was all women. But it wasn't about the fact that they were women. Seriously, that blows my mind. And you know what? It was funny. SO funny. I nearly peed my pants during the whole movie, I was laughing so hard I almost forgot to add the vodka to my rootbeer. Almost.

But now that that's out of the way, I have a serious problem with it. The DVD cover (and I guess the promo poster?) is both ridiculously photoshopped and white washed.

What you need to do is to open this image and look very closely.

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/bridesmaids-blu-ray-cover.jpg

I know around the net there has been some complaint about how Melissa McCarthy (left) was covered up while the the other, thinner actresses were more exposed, but in the big picture, I can deal with that. I have two problems with this picture. First of all, look at their feet. Look very close. Look at their toes. Have you ever worn shoes like that? I have. For about 10 seconds in a store. My toes do not look like that. It's just not possible. All those shoes are ridiculously photoshopped to make it look like they are comfortable and all the same size. No. I am not okay with this.

Second of all, look at their skin color. Look at their legs and where their arms are touching. Notice something? Yeah. They're all the same color. They're all the same "very white but not too pale" white. Exactly. Even Maya Rudolph (the one in the bridal gown). You know why I have a problem with this? Maya Rudolph is half black. So why is she the same color as Kristen Wiig? This is what they should look like.

To be fair, I know that everyone's skin color can vary based on many factors such as lighting and age but I tried to choose a photo where Kristen Wiig didn't look "too white" or that Maya Rudolph looked "too black". 

Okay, maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this, but I feel like if I were to go out and find 5 other light skinned women and then we took a picture of all of us you would see a much broader variation in our skin types, not just lighter and darker but skintones that are more pink or more yellow or more olive, and yet, in this image they are somehow all exactly the same.

Leave your comments below. Oh and you should still see Bridesmaids, you'll laugh so hard you might hurt something.

community

Well, last night I had a bit of a breakdown at the Ruby Tuesday. No, it wasn’t over the lack of pasta salad at the salad bar (although that would certainly be a cry-worthy situation) it was over my frustration about my community.

A little backstory: Last night, husband and I attended our local community improvement association meeting. Now, because of a previous life endeavor, I have been to a lot of local community associations. Some are far more productive than others, but they all have one common thread: only old people attend community meetings. Additionally, unless a community is overwhelmingly a majority-minority, only white people attend community meetings. That’s not to say that your community meeting isn’t diverse, or that there aren’t community meetings where lots of young people show up, but after attending literally dozens of these things in a few months time, I can conclude that this is true of more meetings than not. Of course, our community meeting was no different. We were literally the youngest people in the room, and the next youngest were my in-laws. This is no exaggeration. Although my community is easily at least 30% African American and has a very noticeable and young Spanish-speaking population (due to the prevalence of Spanish-speaking church services in the area, or vice versa) every single person at this well-attended community meeting was white.

Without going into too much detail, community members vocalized their opinions on issues of illegal immigration, homelessness and class issues, and the gay community (in reference to the recently failed attempt to pass an equal marriage bill in our state’s legislature.) And then, one of our elected officials told us, with a visible eye-roll, that he was sure the “gay community” would be bringing “it” (the bill) back next year. I’m resisting the urge to say anything negative about this person because while I don’t respect his service to our community, he is a friend and so I’ll leave it at that. But the blatant disregard for who supported this bill was appalling. And don’t you worry, everyone had an opinion, whether it was on their face or on their lips.

All of those opinions were racist, intolerant, hateful, and/or ignorant. None of them were related to actually “improving” the community.

I held back tears looking at the faces of people who are grandmas, grandpas, and respected community elders while realizing that they were completely and unashamedly racist. The place I called home was suddenly completely foreign to me.

It’s at this point that I think most young people interested in change find themselves at a crossroads. You can leave and go somewhere young and vibrant that is accepting and open to their entire community, but only adding to the epidemic that young progressives are moving away, or you can stay and try to change the community around you at the risk of living your whole life in those miserable racist conditions and never seeing any improvement.

And so, I cried.

“All these people are so racist and intolerant. I can’t stand it. It’s offensive to me. I’m not proud to call this place home. I don’t want to live here. We can’t change the community. I’m scared you will turn into one of them. I don’t want to be them. We’re not them. I hate it here.”

Husband generally deals with my sobbing over social issues with a fair amount of tact. He understands why I’m upset, but usually doesn’t quite get why I’d cry over it. But husband has recently been in a pretty good mood, so he tried his best to just humor me and prevent it from turning into a scene the rest of the Ruby Tuesday patrons would tweet about.

Obviously, not everyone in my community is racist or intolerant. And obviously, all communities deal with some element of racism no matter how progressive and accepting they are. And to be fair, old people are generally the ones who show up to these kinds of things because they have the freedom to spend time worrying about their community because they’re not working or taking care of young children. But this larger social issue of communities pushing away young progressives in favor of the status quo is not going to resolve itself if people don’t step up and get involved where they live.

Ultimately, I don’t know what we’ll end up doing, staying to fix it or leaving it behind. Right now, though, we live here, and we do what we can. Last night I didn’t have the courage to speak up, but next time I will. And next time my elected official starts running his mouth about the “gay community”, maybe I will take my husband’s advice and run against him.