Im Still Upset About Momo

I’m still upset about Momo

…And it’s not about her outfit.

Okay so like.  I caught up in bnha recently, and it’s great and fun and much better than your run of the mill shonen. The characters are great and engaging, and all that, but I just want to make a comment about my gal momo:

And like, I know the subject of her outfit has been beaten to death, and that is definitely one of the things that pisses me off because it’s 100% designed to sexualize a 15-year-old, but that’s not even what has pissed me off the most.

It’s not even Mineta’s lecherous actions during the Tournament Arc, or even that stupid pointless cheerleader scene.

That’s all run of the mill genre grossness, and I hate it but it didn’t piss me off nearly as much as her internship:

For all intents and purposes, this is probably the most benign form of sexism Momo’s dealt with so far, but it struck a particular chord with me…and I honestly think it’s far more insidious than the more blatant displays.

So, basically, at the start of all this, Momo is reeling from a blow to her self esteem after the tournament arc, and signs on with a well known Pro Hero, Uwabami, for her internship. However, she and the other intern are quickly brought into Uwabami’s glamorous lifestyle, acting as PR people and background props in her commercial.

This is the first female-female mentorship that we see in an entire series about mentorship, and I was sorely, sorely disappointed.

I work in a male-dominated field, and let me tell you it is not a compliment to be told:

“Yes I know you’re smart and capable, but I don’t care. I hired you, first and foremost, for your pretty face.”

So here we have a brilliant 15-year-old girl, who is already struggling with her self-confidence, brought under the mentorship of a powerful and influential woman. And instead of creating a situation that would help foster these students, it’s instead communicated that none of their efforts really mattered. That it matters most that they look nice, and put on a show. And it’s played off as a joke, as though this is the way things are and it’s hilarious that Momo should hope for anything other than that.

The fact that it’s a female mentor figure sending these messages? It’s like a kick in the teeth.

And maybe at this point it seems like I’m hounding on a small plot point, and it’s true that I had an intense rush of empathy for Momo due to personal experience, but I think that here lies the core issue with sexism in BNHA. The concept of, “Yes you’re smart and capable, but I only hired you for your pretty face” is the recurring theme with almost every female lead.

Do any of the female characters get seriously beaten and battered in conflict, to the extent that we see happening to Deku? No.

Do any of the female characters have to face inner demons and potential darkness like Iida? No.

Do any of the female characters struggle with physical and emotional abuse like Todoroki? No.

Heck, do we even get to see any of the girls being outright bad, and portrayed with the same villainous inclinations we see in Bakugou? No.

Even in the tournament arc, the girls are more often pushed out of bounds, rather than suffer the heat of battle. And I know that Ochako has a moment to shine in her fight with Bakugou, but that is the first and only chance we really get to see her or any of the girls in that capacity. 

All of their character arcs are short and sweet, dealing with simpler issues of self confidence and image. We, as an audience, are not allowed to see them as anything less than cute, pretty, and pure–both physically and in their ideologies. They aren’t allowed to suffer from murderous rage, or be seriously injured, because that would sully that perfect image.

In other words, as interesting as they are, they’re literally only there to fill the space. They’re only there to look at. They’re fascinating characters, but underutilized to the point that it’s hardly worth praising as ‘progressive.’ 

Basically, the theme of the female characters of this series is:

“Yes I know you’re smart and capable, but I don’t care. I hired you, first and foremost, for your pretty face.” 

On Happiness and Home

Lady with grain stems caught in her hair, Lady with strong hands for kneading dough, Lady with strong arms for the dough-shovel, Lady with sun-darkened skin and oven-fires caught in her eyes, Lady whose finery is a worker's tunic, Lady whose perfume is sweetwort and honey, Your voice is the music of flowing beer, Your laughter the chuckle of a clay bottle. Come home from your circling dance around the fire, Passing hand to hand and lips to lips! Come home from the young lioness's roaring tavern, From the kissing of wounds, from the heat of the sun. Ninkasi who gladdens the heart, come home! You are expected, awaited, beloved. Your strong hands have browned like good bread in the sun, And they slide over the pale skin of a fine noblewoman. Her milk-pale skin like fine holy linen, Her slender arms like slim reeds full of grace. Fingers calloused from the churning dough-shovel Twine with long digits like fragile spiders, Graceful ivory combs that spin long hair into art. She is quiet where you are joyful, She is delicate where you are vivacious, Yet her skill speaks with a voice as complex as poetry, As colorful as a tavern tale And just as clever in her transformation. Press your glad mouth to her buttoned lip, Lady. Let Uttu weave your black, barley-flecked hair. Lahar and Ashnan look upon you and smile, Emesh and Enten break bread under your roof, For what has more beauty than such perfect union Of a glad heart and a beautiful wife?

May Uttu be praised, may the name of Ninkasi be honey on my lips, And for the pen of her servant may Nisaba be praised.

——— *I wrote this with a heaping spoonful of UPG. There is no historical evidence for Ninkasi being gay for Uttu. Cool? Cool. Sumerian wives did brew beer though, as far as I can tell. **Lahar, the 'sheep' god notably referenced in the debate between Sheep and Grain, is heavily important to Uttu the goddess of weaving, just as Ashnan the grain goddess is important to Ninkasi, who is the brewer and the beer. ***Emesh, the god of 'summer', and Enten, the god of 'winter', as seen in the debate between Summer and Winter, both have a great deal to do with grain and livestock. From what I can tell by making inferences from other cultures, Summer is the time for brewing and Winter is the time for weaving, and it seemed significant enough that I had to include them.

Silim! I'm so happy to have found your blog, and even moreso to see I'm not the only Meso polytheist here in America. Reading over everything has made me feel a lot more connected with my own beliefs as well as this little community, so thanks for existing!

You’re definitely not the only one! I’m doing my best to let other people know we’re here, I was convinced I was on my own too. Stay awesome out there, anon. I’m glad I could help.

how to get a boyfriend according to the epic of gilgamesh

be a terrible demigod king who rules his people so cruelly that they must call to the gods for help

be so horrible that the gods literally create a man just to deal with your bullshit and let him loose in the woods

send a prostitute to introduce the man to civilization by having sex with him for a week straight

literally have dreams about how much you will love this man

get punched in the face by this man that the gods created for you because you are terrible and need to be stopped

congrats, you have a boyfriend now

Love is always a very awkward conversation. I've had a lot of talks about it with various people, not just concerning my own relationships. I knew a girl with nine siblings in middle school, even more worryingly thin than I was, who picked up the slack where her mom couldn't. It's been an ongoing project over the course of several years between my dad and I to try to define love in a clear, logical way. I have a friend who dated a suicidal boy because she didn't want him to kill himself, and it was one of the unhealthiest relationships I've ever seen, second only to perhaps the story of a man who loved his son and tried to beat the sociopathy out of him. I've had happy accidents, like living for a lonely four months in Spain and getting a housemate who was absolutely torn up about his sexuality, and telling him about my own experiences. I can't say I've gone through the same sort of stress as other LGBT people, but. Comparing pain is sort of pointless to begin with. It was enough that I understood, cared, and did my best to help when I had the chance. My relationship with my mother is complicated, in that she loves me with a fiery passion but expresses it through control. She feels responsible for my actions in a way that... doesn't function well. There is no line between personal and professional action, and a lot of times I feel more like her psychiatric patient without the benefit of a professional distance. She resents me, is confused by my actions, and frustrated. She loves me and only wants me to be my best, so by her logic I should just do everything she says, but it really isn't that simple. I'm 21 years old with my own life, and I'm afraid of her calling the police on me or banging unexpectedly on my door. I am comfortable with who I am. LGBT in a three year strong relationship, pagan and more certain of it than I ever was just shadowing my mother at church, fairly decent looking aside from the scars and split ends, capable of quite a few basic things and able to learn anything I need to. My anxiety stems from how other people respond to me, and my history. That's hardly unique, more a simple fact. I started this post off my saying that love is complicated, and I meant it. I've been listening to a lot of documentaries today, reading about gay history. I ran into a particularly misogynistic story that made me physically ill in a way that stories usually never do, and it made me think. It made me think about my mother, who's fierce and professional and feminist, but who admitted to me once that if I ever turned out lesbian she would outright sob over having failed in her duty to save my soul. It made me think about my dad, who's definitely not sure what to make of my sexuality (I came out to him) but doesn't care about making it his business either so long as I'm careful and safe. Acceptance from someone who's just starting to untangle his culturally trained misogyny, and isn't that funny? People are complicated. Just take a brief glance in a neurology textbook, or a psychology textbook. The ways we learn by building associations in particular fascinates me. It explains a lot, to me. Love is complicated. The Greeks had multiple words for it, Eros and Agape and Philia and Storge. We have multiple ways of referring to it in English, too. Roughly 220,000 words are in the Oxford dictionary, but I still haven't found a good way to describe how I feel when I see other people trying their hardest out of good intentions and having it go terribly, awfully wrong, without any possibility of understanding. I don't understand everything. I definitely don't claim to. But it's a gift that I understand what little I do, and I'll keep trying to understand what I do not. I hope other people will do the same. And I hope that little by little, some of the solipsism will be filed away from the world. Not everyone will accept everything. Not everyone is willing to be conscious of the ways their actions affect others. Maybe I'm a naïve idiot venting my rare moment of optimism. I didn't really have a plan when I started writing this, you know? I just have this aching fire in my chest. For myself, for the people I've met, for every time I've seen one person blank faced and going through what amounts to a "Windows.exe has stopped working" every time their locked-in worldview is faced with strange and alien data. It's definitely not going to change anytime soon. But hey. At least the government will let me get gay married. That's more than I expected, I'm kind of curious to see what will come next. Which will be put a stop to first, gay people and non-whites getting lynched in the next county over, or pagan merchants being run out of town? Does anybody actually listen to questions like that, or just nod and smile as they recycle their plastics and move on?

One of the most powerful moments I experienced as an ancient history student was when I was teaching cuneiform to visitors at a fair. A father and his two little children came up to the table where I was working. I recognised them from an interfaith ceremony I’d attended several months before: the father had said a prayer for his homeland, Syria, and for his hometown, Aleppo.

All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”

And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.

This moment showed me, in a concrete way, why ancient studies matter. They may not seem important now, not to many people at least. But history represents so much of our cultural identity: it teaches us where we come from, explains who we are, and guides us as we go forward. Lose it, and we lose a part of ourselves. As historians, our role is to preserve this knowledge as best we can and pass it on to future generations who will need it. I helped pass it on to two little Syrian children that day. They learnt that their country isn’t just blood and bombs, it’s also scribes and powerful kings and Sun-Gods and stories about immortality and tablets that make your hands sticky. And that matters.