I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences.

(Source: , via littlestory)

In many ways, I yearn for the partial exposure of the femme fatale to the overexposure of the ingénue. While the camera lingers on the body of vamps and vixens, their façade still seems one of power, rather than powerlessness. The femme fatale, unlike other kinds of sex bombs, is dangerous not because she is desirable, but because she has secrets. Her desires are wild and untamed, and her motives are private and unclear. The femme fatale is threatening because she is a free agent who operates according to her own moral code. Not giggly and coy like a Marilyn, not bouncy and bold like a Britney, not regal or refined like Grace Kelly, the femme fatale is blood and ice and grit. She is a hot throb of sex, naked but never exposed. Her drive is insatiable. She gives away nothing. She takes and takes and takes.

I have felt drawn to these types of female characters since I was a little girl. The minute I saw Jessica Rabbit walk onstage in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, all slinky red dress and deep-throated whisper, I thought, “This is what it means to be a woman.” Since then I’ve loved every femme fatale I’ve seen on screen. Marlene Dietrich. Greta Garbo. Barbara Stanwyck. Rita Hayworth. Lauren Bacall. Sharon Stone. Angelina Jolie. Dangerous, powerful, sexual women.

In contrast, scenes of women exposed horrify and sadden me. I can’t watch Hannah Horvath lean over the couch and get told to “play the quiet game” while her obnoxious boyfriend may or may not be unwrapping a condom in preparation for anal sex without getting incredibly upset. The modern woman on film has been presented as a warrior (Katniss from The Hunger Games, The Bride from Kill Bill) or an ingénue (Bella from Twilight, any number of romantic comedies which fail the Bechdel test time and time again). Neither of these presentations of femininity gets us any closer to true personhood. Perhaps this is why my love for the femme fatale figure remains: if my only choice is to be a symbol then let me keep my secrets rather than confess them all away. Let me be fire and ice and blood.

The qualities I admire most about Lena Dunham are the ways in which she is pure steel. I love how she refuses to capitulate to the criticisms leveraged against her body, even though I feel this focus detracts from other important aspects of the show. Our fixation on female bodies highlights just how much we still need to be shocked into paying attention to young women’s wants and needs. Many times the bodies we are presented with are static—photo spreads, billboards, scenes of women posing, rather than actually doing anything purposeful at all. Images that illustrate the female body in motion, whether it’s Jessica Rabbit sauntering on stage, or Hannah Horvath dancing around her room, are empowering precisely because they are about claiming ownership over one’s own body, about not being a metaphor or symbol or fantasy for anyone else. They are about being a person in the world.

Arielle Bernstein —

GIRLS on Film: Secrets, Seduction and Reclaiming the Body on Camera

God is like Robert Pattinson: It’s not the person you have a problem with, it’s the fan club that freaks you out.

(Source: really-shit, via littlestory)