30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 8

I think I probably watched about the same amount of animated shows and movies as any other kid did -- Bugs Bunny, Smurfs, Care Bears, My Little Pony, The Jetsons, Animaniacs, and on and on. I watched tons of Disney movies, I watched Pixar movies as a teen and and an adult, I still occasionally watch shows like Family Guy and South Park. But what show or movie used my favorite animated character? Unlike my favorite book or my favorite movie, nothing instantly sprang to mind. What cartoon still evoked the same emotional response in me now as it did five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago?

When I look back on all the Disney movies that I watched over and over as a kid -- Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas -- I feel a short burst of nostalgia, and then I feel apathetic. I still know all the words to the soundtrack, but all the heroines feel interchangeable to me. Why?

I think, after awhile, so many of those classics blur together because they're all so heavily focused on the heroine finding love. Don't get me wrong, I'm a total sucker for a sappy love story -- after all, as you recall, my favorite movie is The Princess Bride -- but it's problematic as the primary representation of a woman's life goals (animated or otherwise). Over the years, more movies have come out that are not so singularly focused on the happily ever after, but a lot of them feature male main characters rather than female ones.

I'm not the first to wonder if that Disney-princess influence has done more harm to little girls than good; it seems we should be teaching them that there is more to being a woman -- and a human -- than getting married and popping out babies (and I say this as someone who very much wants both of those things). I won't get into a heavy analysis of all this, as it's well-covered territory, but it's something I've thought more about as I've gotten more comfortable in my own views about gender roles, and closer to possibly having a little girl or boy of my own.

I find it odd that so many women try to distance themselves from the label of "feminist," even though it means something that most people actually want: equal treatment of women and men. (If you think feminism means hating men, you're wrong, plain and simple.) The fact that all these "men's rights" groups are suddenly popping up turns my stomach -- they are completely missing the point! -- and although many of their claims are clearly sexist in nature, I think some of that anger comes from ignorance of what feminism actually is. No one is asking for special treatment, here, y'all.

The fact is, we're not living in a post-sexist society any more than we're living in a post-racial society. If you really need proof, take a look at the case of the eleven-year-old girl who was essentially blamed for her own gang rape because she "dressed older than her age"; sympathy was given to the rapists, of all people, because they would have to "live with this for the rest of their lives." This happens all the time -- women are routinely accused of lying about their own sexual assaults; they are told they "asked for it" by wearing a short skirt or a low-cut shirt, or by daring to go out alone at night; they are told that if they were dumb enough to get too drunk to consent, or if they found themselves alone with a man (even if, again, they did not give consent to sexual activity), they deserved it; they are told that carrying their rapist's baby is the "right" thing to do, despite the many potential emotional, financial, and physical dangers. I hope it's obvious why this is damaging to women, but it's damaging to men, too -- they're often painted as these lust-filled, uncontrollable animals who can't stop themselves from attacking a woman when she's doing all those "wrong" things.

Anyway, I could go on forever about the ways in which we could improve the standing of women (and men!) in American society, but I'll get back to what got me thinking on all this in the first place: a lack of intelligent, forward-thinking, not-love-obsessed female role models in my childhood. Somehow, I had forgotten all about Lisa Simpson.

I watched a lot of The Simpsons growing up, and although I no longer follow it (as I feel the quality has declined over the last decade or so), it holds a special place in my heart. I can't help but have a soft spot for Lisa in particular; despite the merciless mockery and rejection that nearly always ensued when she pursued her progressive interests, she always stood firm in her beliefs and trusted herself completely. I certainly know how it feels to be put down for asserting myself -- especially growing up in the South, where it seems women are punished more severely for speaking up -- and even though she's just a cartoon character, she deserves some respect and props for that.

Go on with your bad self, little Lisa. It gets easier.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 7

"Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father! Prepare to die!"

This may be one of the most instantly-recognizable film quotes in the English-speaking world, and for good reason -- even if, oddly, the movie wasn't a box office success. It really has stood the test of time and reached a broad range of audiences; I've met very few people who haven't seen it, and I've met exactly zero people who didn't love it.

The Princess Bride is only a few years younger than I am, and it was a staple of my childhood -- I went through several phases where I watched it every single day. My dad's favorite greeting for me was, "What's up, Buttercup?" and my mom is, to this day, convinced that I will wear a wedding dress like the one in the movie. (She will have to be disappointed. This is New England, not medieval England...)

As a result, I'm one of those (kind of irritating) people who knows every bit of dialogue and every move of the sword fight choreography by heart. TJ always switches the channel when it comes on TV because I just can't resist quoting along at certain parts, but that's fine with me because I know exactly which parts they've whittled away to make it fit into the time slot (and it irritates me to no end). It's the DVD version or nada, my friends.

This year marks the cult classic's 25th anniversary, and to celebrate, the Brattle Theatre is showing it this weekend. I encourage you all to see it and get yourself a case of the warm fuzzies.

I'll always be delighted by the fact that the man who plays Inigo shares my first name... and by that amazing moustache and crazy pirate hair.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 6

According to family legend, I taught myself how to read at age three. I don't specifically remember how old I was, but I do remember sitting in the living room of a house I barely lived in with a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit, something clicking -- some conscious understanding that all those little letters meant something, and I could decode their message.

I have a late-August birthday, which meant that, when it came time for kindergarten, my parents could choose whether to send me on or wait another year. They opted for the latter. Although I think ultimately this was the right choice -- after all, even at nearly-nineteen, I didn't feel ready for college, either -- it also led to a lot of boredom in school. I was automatically placed in the Academically Gifted program, but it was rare that the "special" assignments interested me; instead, I turned to books.

I always read books that were several grade levels ahead of me, often going to my older brother's reading lists for suggestions. I truly loved to read. You could stand a foot away from me and loudly say my name, but if I was absorbed in a book, I didn't hear you. I read constantly, often camping out in the living room even on beautiful summer days so I could finish le livre du jour.

When I hit high school, something changed. I think part of it was the much more pronounced pressure to earn good grades, but a lot of it was logistical: I participated in multiple weekly dance classes, I worked fifteen to twenty-five hours a week at a retail job, I was in honors and AP classes, and I had to be at school at 7:15 am. I don't know if the root cause was anxiety or undiagnosed A.D.D. or exhaustion or some combination of the above, but after awhile, I sort of gave up; I didn't finish half my reading assignments for school, so where the hell would I find time to read for pleasure?

It only got worse in college. By the time I graduated, I had nearly forgotten how to get lost in a story the way I once did. I still read occasionally, of course -- Kurt Vonnegut while working the ticket booth at Bill's Bar; D.H. Lawrence and Gabriel Garcia Marquez on the T; Aldous Huxley on the beaches of Thailand -- but I always got distracted or fell asleep before the chapter ended. I started many books that I never finished.

Koh Ang Thong, Thailand; June, 2008.

There is one book, however, that I did manage to finish for school, one that I have read innumerable times and that never fails to remind me of why I love to read: Le Petit Prince. I had never heard of it until I read it in my senior French class in high school, but it completely captivated my heart from the first page.

So once I'd crossed over into the world of tattoos with my best friend just before entering college, it didn't take me long to come up with my next piece of body art.

As I get older -- and thus relate more to the narrator than the hero -- I only love the book more. I'm so completely obsessed with it, in fact, that I decided to be the little prince for Halloween. Admittedly, not everyone got the reference, but those who did were delighted, which kept a perpetual grin on my face both nights I wore the costume. I don't know how I'll top this next Halloween -- or how I'll find a way to express my infinite love for this book any more than I already have.

Top: me on Halloween (with TJ's/my dog, Memphis, as the tamed fox); 2011. Bottom: the illustration on which the costume was based.

For now, I plan to expose everyone, adult and kid alike, who has never read this absolutely marvelous book to its timeless charm. I mean, seriously y'all, it's kind of perfect. If you're reading this and you have no idea what I'm talking about... I beg you, read it!

For now, here's a preview (part of which is a translation of one of the quotations in my tattoo)...

"Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 5

Alana and I became attached at the hip in early high school. We developed the rare kind of friendship where we could spend day after day together and still find things to talk about, we laughed constantly, and we never fought. (She's also a total snuggle monster like I am, so I could always count on her for some comfort-cuddles when I was upset. Bonus!) She was my partner in crime and the one person I could tell anything to without fear of judgment. When it turned out we'd be going to college very far away from each other -- me to Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and her to Northeastern here in Boston -- it instilled far more panic in me than the thought of being separated from my parents.

We committed to making the most of our last summer together. We kicked it off with a seven-day Caribbean cruise -- along with, and thanks to, my grandparents. The old folks' only rule was that we show up for dinner -- which we did, save the day we got so drunk on the beach that we were puking by mid-afternoon. (I desperately wish I could post some of those photos, but sadly, I don't have a scanner.) We took full advantage of the international waters, stayed up late hanging with a family from California, and generally acted like the hyperactive, flirtatious, over-intoxicated 18-year-olds we were. On our way home, when our flight was overbooked, we traded our seats for a later flight and vouchers from the airline. We used the vouchers at the end of the summer for our final pre-college adventure: a trip to L.A. to visit the family from the cruise, at the end of which we went to Venice Beach and got matching tattoos near our right hipbones.

Christmas of our freshman year of college (2003), at the annual "girls' night."

We both struggled a lot, for very different reasons, our freshman year of college. I had made a stunningly bad choice with school -- though the academics were fantastic, it fell very short of my expectations socially, and I hated Memphis. I was depressed, rapidly gaining weight, and drinking heavily, but when I visited Alana in late winter of 2004, I fell in love with Boston and saw a glimmer of hope for my remaining academic years. I transferred to Northeastern the following fall.

We had one school year together before she decided to transfer to UNC Chapel Hill. I tried to understand her reasons, but it was difficult to accept that I would be separated from my partner in crime yet again, after I'd moved 1,000 miles from home to a city I'd just started to explore. At the time I was dating my first serious boyfriend, so knowing I still had an emotional support in Boston lessened the sting a bit, but I had a hard time not resenting her for it.

Despite all the chaos (and there was plenty more to come), we remained close until we graduated college in 2008. At her enthusiastic prompting, we signed up to go on our 40-day Thailand adventure that June.

The end of the Thailand trip (photo bombed by a fellow traveler); Bangkok; July, 2008.

When we got back to the U.S., she moved in with her then-boyfriend, which rapidly led to their marriage and the birth of their beautiful daughter. I adore Ray and Ella, so as rough as it was to lose proximity to her a second time, her return to North Carolina turned out better than I could have possibly hoped. We're both now busy leading very different lives, but even after all this time, we do what we can to see each other at every opportunity and keep each other posted on our most important life developments. And I will never, ever forget that she found a way to come to both of my grandparents' funerals, pushing aside myriad logistical issues that would have stopped anyone else.

I tried drawing her approximately a million different times before I had to give up and settle on this one. As you can see in the photos above, she's much prettier than I'm able to draw her... but the photo I based this on captures the spirit that I love so much about her. We're both a little crazy, she and I, but we understand each other; she is, without a doubt, my best friend.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 4

I've entertained the idea of moving away from Boston once or twice, but it's really hard for me to imagine living anywhere very far from the ocean (sorry, Austin). A witch in Salem once told me that in past lives, I lived on the coast of England and on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Greece. She also told me I belong near the ocean, regardless of where I end up. Say what you want about tarot and reincarnation, but she was right about that.

I love to travel, and I've noticed a pattern in the places I'm drawn to: if I don't have access to a beach at some point in the journey, I am noticeably less excited. It's not about getting a tan (although of course that's a nice bonus); I just feel more like myself at the beach than anywhere else. No ipod or book required -- I'm perfectly happy to just sit on the sand and watch the waves crash.

Happy Mandy! Temple of Apollo, an hour or two outside of Athens, Greece; August, 2007.

My love of the beach started when I was a wee little Mandy. In addition to an amazing vegetable garden, my grandparents had a beach house in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I spent at least a few days every summer from the year they bought it (I believe I was around three years old) until I moved to Boston. Some of my happiest childhood memories took place there: building sand castles with my cousin Maggie, playing putt-putt (also known as mini-golf to you yankees) despite my utter lack of skills, eating blueberry pancakes and bacon, slurping down frozen lemonade from the wheeled carts on the beach (reliably driven by cute college students), trips up to Calabash, NC, for fried popcorn shrimp and hush puppies.

It's hard to articulate how devastated I was when I learned my grandparents would be selling that house in 2010. It was never really "mine," but it felt like it; in many ways it was more of a home to me than anywhere I'd lived in my hometown, especially because of my parents' divorce and the resulting housing changes. There were no traumatic memories attached to it -- it was my happy place. Even though I'd lived too far away to spend much time there for quite a few years, I couldn't imagine the option of visiting being removed.

Me and TJ on my final trip to the beach house; May, 2010. Photo by TJ Miller.

But more than that, the sale of the beach house was a painfully clear acknowledgment of my grandparents' declining health. Despite the physical struggles they'd faced across the previous decade, they always did everything they could to make trips to the beach house. It felt as if resigning themselves to Concord meant resigning themselves to death.

I understood intellectually that they couldn't possibly be around much longer -- they were in their 80s at that point -- but you can never fully prepare yourself for losing someone you love. Weirdly, it was my grandmother who went first, not due to some long-term health issue, but from a freak accident. The day of her funeral, my grandfather -- the man who I'd spent most of my life avoiding hugging because it was so awkward, who showed affection by teasing me mercilessly and hiding my shoes -- would periodically burst into tears and wail, "What am I going to do?" He would be gone about seven months later.

I don't believe in God, so I can't really console myself with the idea of seeing them again one day (although I do occasionally have extraordinarily vivid dreams about them, which helps). I try to be grateful for the time I had with them and forgive myself for the time I missed from living so far away. My grandmother really tried to understand why I chose to leave, even though she didn't like it, and I hope she forgave me too.

I think about those trips to North Myrtle Beach and feel instantly calm every time I step foot on sand, so in response to Day 4's prompt: my favorite place is anywhere with a beach.

Aruba; January, 2012. Photo by TJ Miller.

Based on a photo taken in San Francisco; May, 2011.

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 3

A lot of people think they don't like tomatoes. (A lot of people are crazy. I think there may be a connection.) I have to assume that some of them don't like any tomatoes under any circumstances, ever... but for most of them, I've long held a theory that they just don't really know what a tomato tastes like.

See, those tomatoes you buy at Stop & Shop are not real tomatoes. The poor little guys have been plucked long before they've reached their true potential. They are sad imitators of tomatoes -- imitomators? -- that taste like dirt and sorrow. I beg of you: do not judge all tomatokind based on the mega-depressing stock at Stop & Shop.

To be fair, I'm kind of spoiled. Growing up, my grandparents had a large garden in their back yard in Concord, North Carolina, and every summer it provided a steady supply of luscious and delicious produce for my family. Okra, green beans, butter beans, summer squash, zucchini, corn -- it seemed totally normal at the time, but I realize now how incredibly lucky I was, especially when I think about those tomatoes. Gawd.

Of course, anyone who has gone out to eat with me (or spent a few hours with me when I'm upset or depressed) knows that I love rich comfort food. When I first started contemplating today's prompt -- my favorite food -- many of those dishes crossed my mind: mac and cheese, fried chicken, biscuits and sausage gravy, country-fried steak and mashed potatoes (and again with the gravy... mmmm... guess you really can't take the South of the girl, eh?). Even as my palate has become more sophisticated over the years and I've learned to appreciate textures, flavors, and spices that I never would have imagined for myself ten years ago, my tastes are, at the core, pretty simple.

Thus, on this, the third day of the 3o Day Drawing Challenge, I give you an unremarkable depiction of a remarkably tasty fruit: the almighty tomato!

30-Day Drawing Challenge: Day 2

"An elephant's faithful -- one hundred percent!"

- Horton Hatches the Egg, Dr. Seuss

I don't remember when, exactly, I became obsessed with elephants. At some point in my elementary education I must have learned something about them -- learned how the females form tightly-knit family groups, how intelligent they are, how well they communicate with each other, how they mourn their dead. Whatever the trigger, I became more and more obsessed with them over the years until, at last, I found a way to meet a few.

My best friend, Alana, and I had signed up with a Canadian travel group to spend 40 days in Thailand. We'd both just graduated college, and Thailand was our last hurrah before feebly attempting adulthood. I love to travel and there were a million things to be excited about, but more than anything, I was counting down the days until I got to hang out with elephants.

We journeyed into the jungle of Khao Sok to meet our river-trekking pachyderm pals. I was on the verge of hyperventilating with anticipation. When the moment finally came, it was hard to fully comprehend that these enormous, dinosaur-like creatures were real, live animals. I'd seen an elephant or two from a distance at the zoo, but it was nothing compared to walking up to one, touching one, climbing on its back and scratching the rough skin behind its ears.

I would have been happy to spend the rest of the evening feeding them green bananas, awed and delighted by the immense power of their trunks. (Those things are totally genius, right? Why didn't evolution pass those out to more species?) I will never forget that feeling -- a purity of joy I don't experience in my day-to-day life.

The next logical step in the progression of my elephant obsession was, of course, to get an elephant tattoo. I did that in Thailand, too -- bamboo-style, the design an original from the Thai tattoo artist. (Up next? Landing myself some sweet elephant-created art.)

Thus, it was a no-brainer what I would draw for today's challenge: my favorite animal. I picked one of Alana's photos on which to base my drawing. That very quickly got out of hand -- it was entirely too ambitious... but then, I've never been good at setting realistic goals. It's not finished (and it's certainly not perfect), but it's a start...

P.S. If you want to have yourself a feel-good cry, check out these videos about Shirley the elephant. Part 2 is especially gut-wrenching -- elephant besties! Snuggling with their trunks! Aaaaagggghhhh ::heart 'splodes::

Shirley, Part 1

Shirley, Part 2