Thoughts On Jane Austen’s Birthday

Tomorrow is Jane Austen‘s birthday.

She was a pioneer in so many arenas. She unknowingly developed the modern novel as we know it to be today. She was a feminist without overtly wearing the label of feminism. Unlike other women who quietly followed the rules of the period without question, Jane asked the questions, both in her fiction and in her own life.

For my birthday a few weeks ago, I received a magnet that states “nasty women make history”. Jane Austen was a nasty woman.  She had a sharp tongue, a quick mind, loved to laugh, loved to have a good time and most of all, never went along with the crowd just because everyone else was doing it.  It would have been easy for her to follow the path in life that according to her society was pre-ordained (i.e. marriage and children), but she didn’t.  Jane Austen knew that marriage for marriage’s sake was not what she wanted. Marriage, in her eyes, was for love, not to fulfill an obligation that she was told to fulfill.

Instead, she chose to remain single. While her ring finger was never covered in gold, she had children: her books. Referring to them as her own darling children, Austen published six of the greatest books in English literature: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Jane Austen will always be one of my heroes. As a writer and a woman, she paved the way for future generations of women to not only break from the expected roles of wife and mother, but she also paved the way for women to be themselves without having to put on a mask to be liked.

Happy Birthday Jane.

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Flashback Friday-Perfect Body (1997)

The statistics around eating disorders are startling and scary, to say the least. It has become an epidemic, taking the lives of otherwise healthy people.

In the 1997 television movie, Perfect Body, Andie Bradley (Amy Jo Johnson) has only one dream: to be a part of the Olympic American gymnastics team.  She gets her shot when David Blair (Brett Cullen), a respected gymnastics coach, agrees to work with her. On top of the pressure to train, Andie is also receiving pressure to lose weight. At first, she tries dieting, but that is not enough. Then her one of team mates shows her another way to lose the weight. Sure, it’s easier, but in the end, it may be Andie’s undoing.

While having the main character as a gymnast with dreams of going to the Olympics is a little too predictable, the movie overall is not that bad. The message about eating disorders is cloaked in such a manner that the audience forgets that there is a lesson and a warning underneath the narrative.

Do I recommend it? Yes.