Don't Call Me "Widow"
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| Title: | Don't Call Me "Widow" |
| Creator: | Mary Jo Fox |
| Date(s): | summer 1999 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Wars |
| Topic: | |
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| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Don't Call Me "Widow" is an essay by Mary Jo Fox. It was published in Blue Harvest #17 in the summer of 1999.
Some Topics Discussed
- females in Star Wars fandom
- fandom and visibility
- having to share the stage with netfans
- the terms fanboys and fangirls
Excerpts
Like those helicopters coming over the horizon to the tune of "Flight of the Valkyries" in Apocalypse Now, the medio spotlight has descended upon the heretofore unknown world of SW fandom. Unknown to the rest of society, anyway. With SW so hot these days, the press is fishing for new angles other than what's going on with TPM itself and fandom is that new angle. In addition, editors and reporters are finding "pundits" within the fan scene who are handy for an opinion or two from a "fan's perspective."
Some people blanch at the attention we're getting. After all, we'd been safely ignored since 1983, continuing our lives "underground" while other subcultures like the Trekkers and Deadheads were under the microscope. That suited a lot of us just fine. SW fandom became a secret society, a Cosa Nostra of kindred spirits continuing their SW worship away from the public's eye. I used to say you're never sure who a SW fan might be, because you couldn't tell by just looking at somebody. Then he or she pulls out a copy of "Heir to the Empire" or casually drops a line from the movies into conversation. We were like the early Christians hiding in the catacombs during the Roman Empire, and in a way, it was sort of cool. When you met a SW fan in those days, you knew you were meeting the real thing. Ah well. However you felt about Those Days, they're over. Personally, I don't necessarily think media coverage of SW fandom is in itself a bad thing. I have been contacted by the press and I've spoken to members of the press about SW and the fans. I think if s kind of nice we're able to get some recognition after being laughed at, scoffed at and plain dismissed in the 1980s. But mere's a downside (isn't there always...). I think we can all groan at how we're portrayed at times as neo-Trekkies by people who obviously have a hostile view of genre fans or at the very least, don't understand genre at all. But there are other kinds of media distortion and worse yet, the fans themselves seem to sometimes believe it.
For instance, notice how everybody interviews only the folks who run the fan websites? Now I have absolutely no problem with the sites or the people who run them, but the way these stories go, you'd believe that the web is all there is to SW fandom, and it's not. I've noticed how reporters gauge "fan opinion" exclusively by what's on message boards and newsgroups. This is sort of like gauging American family life by watching The Jerry Springer Show.
Or this whole "fanboy" business. "Fanboy" was a pejorative term used mostly in comics and sci-fi circles to describe someone who generally lacks basic social skills, obsessed to the point of being unbearably obnoxious. I believe the fat guy who runs the Android's Dungeon comic book shop on "The Simpsons" typifies what "fanboy" was all about. SWfans would look at someone like that and say, "At least we're not that way." Oh, but now the press would have the world believe "fanboy" is popular SW fannish lingo for a typical fan. Now I see people referring to themselves as "fanboys."
"Fanboy" also implies that well, there are no "fangirls." Or that there shouldn't be. I'm sure many of you read Newsweek's article back in January about SW fans and TPM mania. What really set my teeth on edge was the article describing fandom as "mostly male." What made me start cursing and throwing stuff was that the only women mentioned in the article were beleaguered "widows" who don't understand all of this SW stuff and don't care. Annoying me even further was some "inside" info on how a female web staffer who had been interviewed and photographed for the article was excised from the final version. Now I'm not what you'd call a feminist. I have never belonged to NOW, I have never picked up a copy of Ms. in my life, I don't hate Barbie, and think Bettie Page is way cooler than Betty Friedan. But I'll be darned if I'm going to let the folks at home reading Newsweek believe that this portrayal of fandom as a men's club is accurate! So I fired off a letter and they printed it. But alas, I may have been too late...within weeks of the article I saw a number of rather sexist posts on various message boards about female fans. Stuff like "No wonder you like Titanic,' you're a girl!!" or "girls just aren't as fanatical as we are" or "girls just don't seem to know as much about SW." There were posts from teenage girls who complained they ran into sexism from guys their age all of the time. To me that's crazy; nobody in 22 years has ever expressed disbelief that I'm a "chick" and yet a SW fan.
[Now I'm] seeing other articles describing SW random as "male-dominated." Worst of all, a certain editor of an official SW publication recently claimed 80% of the fan club's membership is male. I wanted to strangle this one guy on a mailing list who kept insisting, "even if we assume that 51% of SW fandom is male, that STILL makes it mostly male." I felt like I was personally under siege. I worried that people wouldn't let their little girls see TPM, or would take them to shrinks if they started pretending they were Darth Maul or something. Why, all of a sudden, is a fan scene once proud of SW's universal appeal tryng to push me out the back door because my plumbing, never mind the two decades I've dedicated to the "cause." I don't believe for a minute that I'm out-of-the-ordinary; the very first group of SW fans I came across, the the fiction crowd, was almost entirely female. Over half of the volunteers at the SW exhibit and half of the visitors were female-BH manages to have a sizable female readership.
The Internet has been a very useful tool for reporters, but I also think it has made them lazy. Why get off your duff and drive around town, making phone calls, waiting for the next con to come to town, and so forth trying to find a cross-section of the local SW contingent when you can get your quotes zapped to you via e-mail? If s no big secret most of the fans behind the big-name web sites are male, but those web sites cover TPM specifically, which interests journalists more than the kind of sites women fans put on, like fanfix.com or the Luke Skywalker Estrogen Brigade.
In the end, it's up to us to keep media coverage of fandom honest. No one fan can speak for everyone, but if something makes you say, "Hey, that's not true!" don't just sit there and grouse about it. Let the media know and let the world know the truth.