Three sentence movie reviews: Inside Out

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This movie continues the tradition of Animated Films Watched at the Laurelhurst Which Affect Me Much More than I Thought They Would.  This is a brilliant film, crafted much more for adults than children, but be warned, it is a heavy film.  I attended it with a full-grown adult, but if I had brought children along, there would have been more than one place where said child would have asked me, “Why are you crying?”

Cost:  $4.00
Where watched: Laurelhurst Theater with Matt

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2015/inside_out.html
Boy-oh-boy do I hate the poster.  The German one is a little better:

http://www.impawards.com/2015/inside_out_ver19.html

 

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Requiem: YRUU sweatshirt.

It was 2002 when I signed up to be an advisor for the Young Religious Unitarian Universalist (YRUU) group. That’s code for “high school youth group” at the UU church.  I had recently 1)moved to Portland, 2)joined First Unitarian Church. When I signed on, I was still living with my Aunt, Matt and I were flirting, but thing had gotten going, and I was temping at Wedbush Morgan.    By the time my first year of YRUU was done I had moved into a studio apartment downtown, Matt and I were a thing, I had quit working for Wedbush Morgan and started graduate school at PSU.

When I signed on, it was only me who had made a firm commitment, with maybe Jimmy, one of the current co-advisors, sticking around for another year or so.  By the time we started in the fall there were five adults total: myself, Jimmy, Frank, Chris and Eric.  Dana, the head of Religious Education for Youth, broke us in.  We had an amazing group of kids that year, with Kitty, one of the few seniors, setting the tone.  She loved the song “Take me Home, Country Roads” and we sang it a lot that year and in nearly all the years to follow.  She also realized that by pressing your hands together you could make a chalice, which is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.  So that was cool and it went on the back of our sweatshirts.
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On the front it said YRUU, which was not only the name of the group, but also an excellent question.  We had shirts or sweatshirts every year, but this first one remained my favorite.  For seven wonderful years I got to hang out with incredibly cool high school kids.  Seemingly a million things changed during that time, while everything also stayed the same.

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It is with sadness I say goodbye to the YRUU sweatshirt, but it lives on in many happy YRUU memories.

This is why I’m not so hard on girls about their clothing choices.

A middle school student was waiting in the office this morning, and asked us what kind of consequences his infraction usually carried.  As both myself and the school secretary are new and didn’t have any idea, we gave him the handbook to read.  He found what he was looking for and, having nothing else to do, kept reading.

“What’s a midriff?” he asked me.

I explained, without mentioning by name the middle school student whose midriff is always bare. (Victory!)

“What does ‘plunging neckline’ mean?”

I told him.

He read some more and then he said, “Wow.  There are a lot more rules for girls dressing.  Boys only have one, and girls have a ton.”

And this picture illustrates why.  The student in the office wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat, but he was just as covered as Mr. Brad Paisley.  There is very little men’s fashion that involves exposing skin.  And look what the girls have to live up to.  Aside from hosting an awards show, this outfit isn’t practical for anything.  It’s too skimpy on top, too short from the bottom and those shoes are not made for walking.

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At my previous school (an elementary school) some girls wore skirts that were too short to sit cross legged.  They also wore heels, even though walking, PE and recess were still a regular part of their day and they wore quite skimpy shirts.  We had to revise the dress code and the burden of meeting our dress code requirements fell on the girls, not the boys.  Male clothing is appropriate for most anything, women’s isn’t. When girls are constantly given images of women wearing clothing not realistic for daily activities, it is those images some of them emulate, and not the clothing that the women around them wear for daily activities.