--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_re...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jeff.evans60" <jeff.evans60@> wrote: > > > > Assuming it was a conscious decision how she was portrayed, > > I think the message the filmmaker was trying to give was > > that the Indians were happy to allow her to live with them > > without trying to force their cultural identity on her. > > The reality is less altruistic. In an article in > the Albuquerque Journal at the time of the movie, > Mary McDonnell comments that the decision to not > braid her hair was hers, in conjunction with > costume designers and makeup artists. > > They tried the braids, and both women felt that > they made her character look too "severe," almost > uptight, and that was the opposite of what they > wanted to achieve for the character and for the > film. So they tried out various looks and decided > on the one we see in the film.
Just as a followup, doncha think it's fascinating that a supposed "feminist" throws away several posts 1) picking a nit about another woman's "unkempt" appearance as if that somehow offended her, and 2) does so by suggesting that it is somehow "inauthentic" for a woman in any era to wear her hair the way she wants to? Presumably the ideal woman Judy has in mind would submit to what the society she lived in (*especially* other women who bitchily criticized her "unkempt" appearance) wanted from her, rather than express her own taste in hairstyles. :-) That said, having dated a number of women with naturally curly hair in my life, and lived with a few of them, I can attest to the fact that no matter *how* society-whipped or pussy-whipped Judy would like them to be, those curls are not going to stay "kempt" for very long if they live outdoors in the wind and the elements. Braid it however you want, bind it up neatly the way Judy thinks it "should" be bound up as much as you want, and within an hour you're looking pretty much the way Mary McDonnell looked to start with because she was smart enough to realize this. Long live "unkempt," onscreen or anywhere else. And may the control freaks who want to eradicate "unkempt" because it offends *them* and their neat-freak control-freak tendencies fuck off and die. Mary McDonnell -- in "Dances With Wolves" or "Grand Canyon" or "Battlestar Galactica" or any of the other 48 films she's been in -- pretty much encapsulates my vision of a certain kind of feminine (and feminist) beauty that is on the one hand lovely and on the other hand Don't Take No Shit. From men, or from women who try to shape her and her image to their desires even more than the men do. I'd do her in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd marry her in a heartbeat. I wouldn't touch any woman who can turn "unkempt" into a failing with a ten-foot teepee pole, much less my own. :-)
