I had a friend in high school — nice girl, smart, worried a lot.

She dated this guy (WhatsHisFace) sophomore year who, funny story, hung out with another guy (GirlName) who’d harassed me freshman year.  The funny part comes in where we four had PE at the same time and GirlName came up to me while I was reading an English assignment and said “We used to joke around with you, yeah?” all nervous-like.  You could see the sweat pouring off him as he tried to play it off as a joke that we could both laugh at.

I looked at him.  I held his gaze without smiling.  I looked back at my book and started reading again.

He walked away.

The unfunny part came later, after my friend and WhatsHisFace broke up and she learned he was telling his friends that they’d slept together when they hadn’t.

I talked her into asking him to stop.  She did, he didn’t.  I still don’t know how good that advice was, but it cemented him as a jerk.

I remembered this situation the other day and came to a careful realization: I never questioned if my friend slept with him or not.  She said she didn’t, I believed her.  I still do.

But if she had, she’d still be respectable to me.

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Half my friends refuse to take serious photos because they hate how they look.

I have a different way of thinking about it:

1. You look like yourself in photos.  Your friends do not see the weight you didn’t know you’d gained.  They just see you, their friend, whom they love.
2. You are your own worst critic.  Thinking you look horrible does not mean you do.
3. If you take a lot of photos, you’ll end up with at least one or two you like.
4. Don’t be afraid to get creative and try new things.  Sometimes you have to try out a lot of expressions and outfits and backdrops to find what you look best in.
5. If you know what photos you like best, you can try and recreate your best angle and expression when your friends want to take your picture.

It’s particularly easy to practice posing with a digital camera, because they have simple timers you can mess around with by yourself.  And you can delete anything you don’t like, which is a camera-shy person’s favorite word.  ^_^

I have a bit of writer’s block.  Not a lot, just a bit.  I haven’t been working these past few weeks due to worry over our move (picking up house and switching over a few states) and assorted responsibilities (birthdays and bills and new glasses and girl days and housework and appointments).

I finished my Frostbite synopsis while at my parents’ in early June, and now I’m just trying to pay our bills on time before I procrastinate us into a lower credit score.  ^_^;  The synopsis needs a bit of an edit and though I’ve been telling myself I need some “space” from it to give it a fresh eye, I just can’t bring myself to get back to work quite yet.

In good news, SWAC is making my creative wheels turn again.  I’m enamored.  It’s induced the same reaction that other things have in the past: Power Rangers (the Kimberly seasons), Sailor Moon, Ben 10: Alien Force, and even Mighty Ducks 2 (don’t ask).

Some bad romance novels make me want to write as a reflex reaction (much like gagging), as does Charmed.  I always want to write while Charmed is on.  I mean, if its between Charmed and something I’m meh about, I’ll default to Charmed because it has this whole train wreck appeal (and a snazzy fashion sense), but it always makes me want to fix it, which makes me want to write, which makes me want to work on my own stuff.

Anyway.  Bills now.  *picks up stack and pen*  You’d think Alex the Math Guy would do our bills, wouldn’t you?  But no.  I do them.  Because I enjoy it.  And he hates it.  Isn’t that weird?  ^_^  Hee.

I like Disney TV shows.

This last week, I’ve hunted down and lapped up episodes of Sonny With A Chance like a crack addict.  I first got exposed to it at my mom’s house last month, because she has Disney and I don’t (so I gorged).  I then took advantage of the episodes on disney.com and (this is where the crack addict comparison comes in) trolled the internet looking for more until I found the whole first season on YouTube and watched it in a single day.

I like SWAC better than Suite Life, Wizards of Waverly Place (although Selena Gomez = cutest girl ever), and even Hannah Montana for one simple reason — it has a better romance.

SWAC’s premise is of “girl joins cast of comedy sketch show” and requires plenty of slapstick and wacky things going wrong for the main character, but I don’t think it’s over-the-top except where it means to be.   A lot of shows like this don’t know how to tone it down when it’s time to play it straight, but I think Sonny does a great job, particularly during the awkward “I like you but I’m not going to admit it” scenes.

Some might consider SWAC a bit immature, but you have to remember the target audience.  (Tweens!)  I loved All That when I was younger, as well as I Love Lucy, and it’s the same kind of humor: straight comedy when they’re working and complicated plans that go awry when they’re not.

I also think the girl who plays Sonny has a freshness she brings to the role that another actress might have made cloying and annoying.  You just can’t help but like her, even if all her teeth are a bit alarming when you first see them.  I also like the guy who plays Chad — he’s capable of subtlety in an unsubtle role, which is something I always appreciate in an actor.  I think the rest of the main cast is capable as well, but their roles are even more unsubtle than his, so I’m hoping they get opportunities to show more range.

I may be exposing myself to ridicule with these admissions, but acting your age is overrated.  And, if you think about it, I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I wasn’t passionate about entertainment for this age group.  ^-^

I hate “feisty” female characters, particularly the Rebellious Princess.  I liked Jasmin (from Aladdin) well enough because her rebellion fueled the story aside from being just a character trait, but the trope of “rich/powerful/beautiful and still disgruntled” smacks too often to me of Cursed With Awesome and/or “Wangsty.”  I mean, really.  Thousands of little girls across the world want to be princesses and these characters have to whine about it?

I guess the big thing that bugs me about the Rebellious Princess is the brashness.  I’m not a brash person.  I don’t like brash people.  I just don’t.  They’re loud and pushy and startle me and I find their personalities obnoxious.

Still, American women seem to have embraced the rebellious, brash, feisty woman.

Embraced a little too hard, in fact, like that’s the only acceptable female role model anymore.  It bugs me because it seems to be a hard pendulum swing away from the modest and demure female archetype society pressed on us in the past.  Thus demure became taboo as a role model because it doesn’t “empower” young girls.

And yet, by denying more feminine female characters their place, haven’t we disempowered young women who are demure by nature?  Isn’t it equally important to encourage self-respect in young women who don’t fit the ideal America has envisioned for them? And isn’t one way of empowering these young women giving them their own role models to look up to?

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