Sam Carter/Amanda Tapping Discussion/Appreciation

[jckfan55]

I heard a bit of an interesting program on public radio today about a book called: Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb (I think I got this right). Anyway, they were talking about a lack of "real women" images out there for girls. Mostly it's scantily clad women, or helpless women and girls' products seem to be exclusively the "princess" stuff, etc. I was tempted to call in and ask if the author had ever heard of Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. There's a capable woman. And of course AT is a great role model too.

[JenniferJF]

I heard a bit of an interesting program on public radio today about a book called: Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb (I think I got this right). Anyway, they were talking about a lack of "real women" images out there for girls. Mostly it's scantily clad women, or helpless women and girls' products seem to be exclusively the "princess" stuff, etc. I was tempted to call in and ask if the author had ever heard of Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. There's a capable woman. And of course AT is a great role model too.

I'm almost afraid to bring her up again, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with a daughter who does this kind of thing, but my daughter, who does love the Disney Princesses BTW, has been known to tag along with her brothers while they play war wearing a tiara and carrying a water gun declaring herself an Army Princess.... So, yeah. Good role model there! It's not bad to want to be a Princess, but the definition may be changing a bit...

[jckfan55]

I'm almost afraid to bring her up again, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with a daughter who does this kind of thing, but my daughter, who does love the Disney Princesses BTW, has been known to tag along with her brothers while they play war wearing a tiara and carrying a water gun declaring herself an Army Princess.... So, yeah. Good role model there! It's not bad to want to be a Princess, but the definition may be changing a bit...

LOL. That's great! There's nothing inherently bad in playing princess, IMHO, but it was interesting that this author said "why not play Queen and be in charge?"
Personally, I think the more variety of roles seen for women/girls the better.
And it's good for the boys to see that too. One of the things that's great about Sam is that she's an equal to the fellas (or in some areas superior ).

[Mandysg1]

LOL. That's great! There's nothing inherently bad in playing princess, IMHO, but it was interesting that this author said "why not play Queen and be in charge?"
Personally, I think the more variety of roles seen for women/girls the better.
And it's good for the boys to see that too. One of the things that's great about Sam is that she's an equal to the fellas (or in some areas superior ).

Couldn't agree with you more jckfan, our young girls do need role models to look up to. Just as important is our young boys need to see strong real women, so they don't grow up thinking the way to treat women is by what they see on music videos and video games. We definitely need more characters like Sam Carter

[JenniferJF]

Couldn't agree with you more jckfan, our young girls do need role models to look up to. Just as important is our young boys need to see strong real women, so they don't grow up thinking the way to treat women is by what they see on music videos and video games. We definitely need more characters like Sam Carter

Yesterday at work (I'm a video game vendor) I was talking with a 12 year-old girl who was getting a Nintendo DS for Christmas. She was looking at games and complaining that very few of them allow you to be a girl character. Even ones that give you a choice of heros hardly ever let you be a girl. So even when girls want to be 'a girl' in the game, it's hard to do. Definitely an early bias toward "male heros". And like you said, it teaches boys bad things about what girls can do, too.

Hmmm.. Sam Carter, the Video Game... I'd buy it!

[minigeek]

I was always ticked off that we couldn't be girls in the video games, myself. It was always either a guy, a boy or an animal (what's up with THAT?!) lol

Hey, on a totally unrelated note... Skydiver should be back soon, I hope! Right?! She has a kick-butt SG-1 Sam Carter story she's almost done and I'm chomping at the bit to read it!

At AT2, I managed to ask her a bit about it (being as how I don't usually start multi-part stories until they're done), well, lemme tell ya, Sky gets this evil little glint in her eye and leans forward and proceeds to tell me a bit about the plot, and I'm thinkin' DAMN, this is a GREAT story!!! Then she STOPS! LOL! She says, "But I can't spoil it for you!", and I'm sitting there in the Ren-AYE-sance hotel lobby with a handfull of other folks, thinking: "How best to torture it out of her... hmmm..." LOL!

And of course, then I can't actually do it because, well, Sky is absolutely *lovely and adorable* in person (I call her mini-AT! - though she doesn't know that yet so she'll probably freak when she reads it! ). And I since I can't torture it outta her, I'm gonna have to just WAIT for the darn story to be published like everyone else ((dramatic sigh))

Crap. Where the HECK is she anyway? Has her plane not landed YET?!

mini(the impatient for good Sky fic!)geek

[Agent_Dark]

Yesterday at work (I'm a video game vendor) I was talking with a 12 year-old girl who was getting a Nintendo DS for Christmas. She was looking at games and complaining that very few of them allow you to be a girl character. Even ones that give you a choice of heros hardly ever let you be a girl. So even when girls want to be 'a girl' in the game, it's hard to do. Definitely an early bias toward "male heros". And like you said, it teaches boys bad things about what girls can do, too.

Hmmm.. Sam Carter, the Video Game... I'd buy it!

Yeah, thats a stigma that is starting to change in the gaming industry (albiet slowly). RPG's tend to be ahead of other genres in that regard, since creating and customising your characters are usually the core of an RPG. I think the last shooter that I played where the player character was a female was Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64... And that's kinda old now...

[sg-1fanintn]

Oh, good. I came by and found you discussing something positive...what a positive role model AT is for girls...and that it's a shame her fame isn't more widespread.

Please tell me that (and I'm going to put this in spoilers because it's a fear I had tonight)

Spoiler:

SGA fans aren't going to start blaming AT for Paul McGillion's departure.

'Cause I wouldn't like to see that. I'm too scared to go look somewhere else. Does anyone know?

[Mandysg1]

Oh, good. I came by and found you discussing something positive...what a positive role model AT is for girls...and that it's a shame her fame isn't more widespread.

Please tell me that (and I'm going to put this in spoilers because it's a fear I had tonight)

Spoiler:

SGA fans aren't going to start blaming AT for Paul McGillion's departure.

'Cause I wouldn't like to see that. I'm too scared to go look somewhere else. Does anyone know?

here's a short answer to your question

Spoiler:

Most don't want her there because, they think she will take the scenes away from their favourite actors. In my opinion most don't blame her for PM's departure, but think she is just going to make things worse.

Hope that helps

[ann_sgcfan]

Oh, good. I came by and found you discussing something positive...what a positive role model AT is for girls...and that it's a shame her fame isn't more widespread.

Please tell me that (and I'm going to put this in spoilers because it's a fear I had tonight)

Spoiler:

SGA fans aren't going to start blaming AT for Paul McGillion's departure.

'Cause I wouldn't like to see that. I'm too scared to go look somewhere else. Does anyone know?

Spoiler:

some are, but mostly I don't think so. Some are thinking that she will be taking the place of insert favorite character name here... what I think most of them are forgetting is that she said a few episodes. So I think there are a lot of worse case scenarios going on. I think the fear is a little understandable because of the way SG-1 was treated in S9 by the decisions made from tptb and in no way do I mean the actors.

And I'm among those that feel AT is a great role model for young women. My poor nieces didn't even know that women could play basketball (note all the women in my family played basketball including my grandmother). I hit one of my siblings over the head for that one. He looked sheepishly at me and shrugged his head. He has watched a few women's basketball games with his daughters since then. And this is the sibling that used to spend so much time with me in the back yard practicing.

EDIT: I don't care if my nieces or nephews play basketball, as long as they know the options are open if they ever decide to. I don't want them to have any limitations, because they truly can do whatever they want. The world is open to them.

[Chelle DB]

Sorry to take this thread OT for a minute, but I wanted to do this before I get to bed so that (hopefully) everyone will get to see it or get wind of it.
Tomorrow I am getting baptised at my church, which is going to be awesome. I was christened/baptised as a baby, but this is different as it is believer's baptism and is a conscious choice on my part to follow Jesus.
Anyway, I would really love your prayers and support as I practice giving my testimony and the rest of it, so I just thought I'd shout out and let you know.
Thank you.

Hey TJ...hope all went well...sorry I didn't respond sooner but I haven't been in for a few days...so I missed it all...sorry!

[Chelle DB]

Just wanna quickly say hi to everyone...and thanks for all the posts about Avalon!!
Gotta choof...have a gazillion things to do and only a few hours left to do them...take care everyone, be safe and be happy!!

[Gate gal]

I heard a bit of an interesting program on public radio today about a book called: Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb (I think I got this right). Anyway, they were talking about a lack of "real women" images out there for girls. Mostly it's scantily clad women, or helpless women and girls' products seem to be exclusively the "princess" stuff, etc. I was tempted to call in and ask if the author had ever heard of Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. There's a capable woman. And of course AT is a great role model too.

Try finding pink (yes, pink) camo material for a Gate (bed)room. Everything premaid for little girls is Barbie, Princess, Brats. Those things are cute, and my daughter has lots of that kind of thing but it really isn't sending out much of a message to little girls. I don't want my daughter growing up thinking anything is off limits to her just because she was born a girl. I want her to reach her full potential whatever it is (preferably M.D. but...) without buying into the stereotypes. (Man, it's 2006 and we're still dealing with stereotypes.) I'm my dad's only child, and he swears (and mom confirms) that he never wanted a little boy. He wanted to raise his daughter to not only survive in a man's world (ugh, I so wanted to word that differently) but run it. I did the career thing and now I've chosen to do the stay at home mommy thing. I want all those options for my daughter too, and I have a feeling that's the way Amanda's Dad felt too. We need characters like Sam Carter for this next generation to look up to, and we need women like Amanda in the public eye making it happen.

Sorry, didn't mean to let my feminist side show. I just get a little emotional when I think about stereotypes for women.

BTW, Jen I wish we lived closer together so our kids could have a play date. I think they'd get along really well.

[NearlyCircular]

Yeah, thats a stigma that is starting to change in the gaming industry (albiet slowly). RPG's tend to be ahead of other genres in that regard, since creating and customising your characters are usually the core of an RPG. I think the last shooter that I played where the player character was a female was Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64... And that's kinda old now...

Well, in the Metroid games, which are pretty popular, the main character is female. Of course it would be hard to determine that by just looking at her, because she wears armor most of the time. The game is a first person shooter, which is a genre I didn't think I'd like, but they're a lot of fun. Lots of exploring to find extra stuff in addition to the fighting. Samus is a kick-butt character, so if you've got girls who want to play as a female in an action game, you might want to take a look at them.

NC

[Mandysg1]

Try finding pink (yes, pink) camo material for a Gate (bed)room. Everything premaid for little girls is Barbie, Princess, Brats. Those things are cute, and my daughter has lots of that kind of thing but it really isn't sending out much of a message to little girls. I don't want my daughter growing up thinking anything is off limits to her just because she was born a girl. I want her to reach her full potential whatever it is (preferably M.D. but...) without buying into the stereotypes. (Man, it's 2006 and we're still dealing with stereotypes.) I'm my dad's only child, and he swears (and mom confirms) that he never wanted a little boy. He wanted to raise his daughter to not only survive in a man's world (ugh, I so wanted to word that differently) but run it. I did the career thing and now I've chosen to do the stay at home mommy thing. I want all those options for my daughter too, and I have a feeling that's the way Amanda's Dad felt too. We need characters like Sam Carter for this next generation to look up to, and we need women like Amanda in the public eye making it happen.

Sorry, didn't mean to let my feminist side show. I just get a little emotional when I think about stereotypes for women.

BTW, Jen I wish we lived closer together so our kids could have a play date. I think they'd get along really well.

Consider yourself lucky Gate gal, I'm the second daughter and grew up hearing "You were supposed to be a boy" Well guess I gave my dad a surprise