Helen's Ideas on Love

From Fascinating Womanhood, 2007 edition...

"Celestial love is what every woman has longed for since the world began. Even in childhood little girls have tender dreams of romance in which they are the beautiful princess sought after by the handsome prince. Snow White and Cinderella are favorites of little girls. During youth, uppermost in a young girl’s mind is finding a man who will love and cherish her. This tender love has long been the theme of great operas, novels, and songs. Romantic love, one of the most moving forces in life, rightfully deserves our study and consideration."

Helen's ideas on love are influenced by her Mormon background, hence the term celestial, which for Mormons represents an exalted heavenly sphere. But they are also influenced by her extensive reading of 19th century European literature (Hugo and Austen come to mind) and popular culture (the Disney films Snow White (1939) and Cinderella (1950) were incredibly popular).

And her ideas bring up questions. Is romantic love truly something we should associate with heaven? Should our wants and needs when we are teenagers dictate the rest of our lives, or should we expect our wants and needs to change and mature as we (and our relationships) mature? What does it mean to love, and which responsibilities does it entail?

Modern Mormon Men

We have a post on Modern Mormon Men!

Check out their blog here:

www.modernmormonmen.com/2012/08/guest-post-what-do-modern-mormon-men.html

They'll let us know what they think is fascinating.

Shirley Cox, Fascinating Womanhood master teacher

Thanks again to our Kickstarter supporters! We made our goal and some of the donors will be receiving a gift in the mail from Emily. The artwork has been featured in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Exponent II Magazine.

Last week I had the privilege of meeting with Shirley Cox and we filmed an interview for the film. Mrs. Cox has been teaching Fascinating Womanhood classes since 1968 with great success and dramatic stories from her students. She is currently teaching online classes to women from around the world (you can find more information about how to contact Shirley HERE). We're thrilled to include her experiences in the Fascinating Womanhood Documentary.

Future One-liners

Here we are hashing it out at the studio, reviewing footage, tying ideas together, living the dream. I've run across some great one-liners from our interviews. I may be saying these to the people around me over the next few weeks.

Sonja Farnsworth, Rhetorician. "As Mormon feminists, we didn't charm anybody."

Alissa Goodwin Snell, Dating Coach and Licensed Therapist. "A lot of women don't have confidence in themselves, don't truly love themselves. So they decide to read another book, or get another degree, because they don't think they're worth a man's attention."

Sannette Judy, Helen's sister-in-law. "You know, when Helen taught me how to do dishes, that completely changed my life."

Merrilee Saunders, Helen's youngest daughter. "Feminism has created a whole generation of weak men."

Stephanie Probst, Blogger. "I think each edition became longer because it took a lot more words to make the same concepts palatable."

Holly Welker, Scholar. "I wonder what Helen would think about 'cougars'."

Rough Cut

We're working on the rough cut this week, having rented a work space in the charming studio of Ink Run Press, in the heart of Salt Lake City. How could one not be inspired by the surroundings?

We hope to have a solid draft by the end of the week--lots of note-taking and discussions. Wish us luck and please tell your friends!

Pioneer Women

If you're in Utah, you celebrated Pioneer Day this past week. This holiday, celebrated both by the state and the LDS Church, marks the arrival of Brigham Young and the Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley.

And the week's festivities reminded me of something that one of our interview subjects argued...that Helen's ideas about romance and femininity represent a cultural shift away from the ideas about women just a generation before her. That, on the frontier, there was no room for dependence and childlikeness and flirtation. That pioneer women in Helen's mother's and grandmother's generation often needed to be hard-laborers in the fields and in the house, that they endured incredible privations complicated by high birth rates and isolation, that Mormon women were sometimes within polygamous relationships that demanded much and offered very little.

Helen's ideas about fascination then seem a conscious effort to escape the very demanding lives of the pioneer women who came before her. This is something we explore in the documentary.

Fascinating Women

Sally Ride died last week. She was an astronaut, physicist, teacher, tennis player.

But she wouldn't have counted as fascinating in Helen's book.

Sarah Palin, conservative doctrinaire, has taken it upon herself to remain a warning voice in American politics.

Also not fascinating.

Hillary Clinton...  I don't even have to finish that thought, do I?

Maya Angelou, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Toni Morrison, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, Madeleine Albright, Rachel Carson, Marie Curie, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel, Condoleeza Rice, Sandra Day O'Connor, Rosa Parks, Martha Stewart, Margaret Thatcher. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Parran.

None of these women rate very high for Helen. They are powerful, competent, articulate, successful women, whether or not we agree with their politics. Helen says often in her book that women's first calling is to be a wife and a mother. She repeats on her website that feminists have ruined our economy and upended our American values system. At one point, she even quotes Rush Limbaugh, saying that women have "screwed up America."

And she advises that if single ladies must work, they should try not to be more successful than the men around them. It's more important to be feminine and well-liked than proficient and accidentally insult a co-worker's masculinity.

Yet, Helen still has an incredible following on the web and in print. The latest edition of Fascinating Womanhood went to press in 2007. Her message appeals to many women, perhaps because they feel like their choices to raise children are denigrated by today's society. This is what our documentary hopes to explore.