Kiri Davis - A Girl Like Me

[Lene]

CosmoGirl is having a film contest about issues relevant to girls.

http://www.cosmogirl.com/entertainment/film-contest

You can watch all three and place a vote. Multiple voting is allowed, but you can only do it once a day.

Now, not to influence people but imo Kiri Davis's film is the only one with the emotional punch.

Lynn Telzer's video could have been another video that really hit me, but she never really got real personal. She could have asked her interviewees harder questions. It wasn't anything that I hadn't heard before, and it didn't make me want to talk. I also think that it wasn't so much a film, but someone putting a camera on girls. Little narration (if any).

The Choices video was well edited and the girl could sing (decently), but what exactly am I supposed to get out of it? Don't shoplift or smoke? The Choices you make have consequences? Oh wow, hard hitting (girl) issues there.

I was almost in tears after Kiri's film though. Her recreation of a famous psychological experiment was inspired, because frankly I've never heard about this until now. Her video is the only one out of the three that has the potential to inspire discussion between people that needs to happen. Hell, me and my sister had a field day about this the other day.

Anyways, vote for Kiri! :D

 

[Bogus]

That video made me cry, not until the test with the kids on which doll they would choose and why. When the little girl said the one doll was bad because it was black got me. It shouldn't be an issue..I hate that it is.


I grew up in a predominately black and mexican neighborhood, I was the only white girl in my school and I never looked at anyone differently, but was treated differently by my peers. I'm Cheyenne and Irish. I have the dark brown hair, oval eyes, wide nose and pale skin that made most assume I was either Japanese or Chinese, I remember girls coming up to me and speaking in Japanese. I just shook my head and tried to explain that I didn't understand them, and they'd either give me a dirty look or apologize and start speaking in English. That may have no relevance on the rest of this, but it was important to me because it left me confused. I didn't look like the white girls on television, and I didn't look like anyone in my school. I didn't even look like my parents much, as mom looked like your stereotypical white girl sans the blond hair and my dad looked Native American. I never fit in anywhere, which might be why I never paid attention to the color of those around me, it just never really occurred to me that they were a different color, I just saw a nice person or a mean person and went from there.



I never understood this idea that black people should be treated differently, I see it everywhere but it never made sense. I remember when I switched schools in fifth grade, my best friends were these two awesome brothers and one day I caught a kid, an annoying bully, picking on the younger one. He called him a nigger and shoved him off his bike. I blew it...I shouldn't have done what I did to him, as it got me in a lot of trouble, but it was worth it. It took three other kids to pull me off the punk, and he told me that I shouldn't be defending the kid, I was white like him, why was I against him? I told him that skin color didn't matter, he was a human being and did not deserve to be treated that way. My mother grounded me for a few months, but my dad and the kid I defended told me I did the right thing and thanked me profusely. I still think I was in the right, even if violence may not have been the best way to do it, he was my friend and I don't take well to my friends being bullied.


Racism pisses me off, I never understood why skin color even matters. We're all living, breathing people and that should be enough. To find out that little kids are questioning their worth just because society tells them white is prettier is ridiculous...those poor kids. It may not seem like it relates, but the video made me think of this, my mother told me that she used to wish she were black when she was a teenager. If not because she'd fit in better, then because she'd be prettier. She was always amazed by these women, flawless ebony skin that just made her think they were goddesses. She also told me how many times they'd blush when she told them that, her friends thought she was crazy to want their skin color, but she always insisted that they were the most beautiful creatures she'd ever laid eyes on and she wish she could be them.


So this thing about women not being pretty simply because they have dark skin is ridiculous, I don't know about everyone else, but I think dark skin is beautiful. I caught myself staring at this woman in the store the other day, she was looking at me like I was crazy and she had an angry look in her eyes...I told her she was the most beautiful thing I'd seen all day and her face turned red and all that anger went away while she tried to find the words to thank me for the compliment. I wish she didn't have to jump to the conclusion that I was staring because she looked different, I wish she didn't immediately feel hurt or threatened. I just want everyone to get along, treat people as people...society needs to learn to become color blind, maybe then they'll stop caring so much about skin. It's just skin, we're all the same underneath...so what's the problem?


I apologize for the length of that, but it was an incredible video and nothing has made me cry in a long time. Thanks for sharing it. I'll go vote for that one now. = )

Edit: Seems the online votes were corrupted and no longer count, so we can't vote now.

 

[Lene]

EDIT: Bleh, that's the problem with the internet. Stupid scriptkiddies trying to spoil everything. Oh well, I wonder how they will decide the winner. Hopefully Kiri Davis (and the other two girls) continue to make films that have some meaningful impact, not matter how small.

I'm glad I saw the film, not only because I agree with some of the issues that they present (don't get me started on the hair thing) but the film inspired discussion and it's making me want to speak out. It's made me see that the consequences of not trying are dire.

Just this past holiday season, I was working at Target. One thing I noticed while working in the toy section (which I hated, it was a circus at that time) was that there weren't any black dolls.

I know that in a lot of stores you have to rush and get the black dolls really quick before others get them, because in certain places, they aren't stocked as much as their lighter skinned counterparts. I would hear my mother's friends around Christmas time, talking about having to go 20 minutes out of their neighborhood in the hopes of finding the Black version of Malibu Barbie.

However, I don't think it was the case that they were sold out. No, this Target didn't see it fit to even have them in stock. I restocked all kinds of dolls during my employment at Target but not once did I see a black doll.

Yet I saw black parents in the stores buying up any doll they could get their hand on.

And you know, what to an extent it shouldn't matter that a kid from one race has a doll from another race. However, I think that it's a parent's responsibility to provide their kid with as many positive reinforcements of self image as they can. At a young age, what can do that better than dolls?

So yeah, I'm working on trying to write a letter to my local target. Like I said in the beginning of my post, now I see how important this is.

Internalized racism (or you could say self-hatred), as you see in this film, starts early and quick and the effects of it are heartbreaking.

When that black little girl was asked the question "Which doll looks like you?" she instinctively reached out for the "good" white doll, before backtracking and pushing the "bad" black doll towards Kiri.

No kid wants to be bad, and it's sad when the media continues to perpetuate negativity like that.