one of the things about being an educator is that you hear what parents want their kids to be able to do a lot. they want their kid to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a politician. they want them to get off that damn phone. be better about socializing. stop spending so much time indoors. learn to control their own temper. to just "fucking listen", which means to be obedient.
one of the things i learned in my pedagogy classes is that it's almost always easier to roleplay how you want someone to act. it's almost always easier to explain why a rule exists, rather than simply setting the rule and demanding adherence.
i want my kids to be kind. i want them to ask me what book they should read next, and i want to read that book with them so we can discuss it. i want my kid to be able to tell me hey that hurt my feelings without worrying i'll punish them. i want my kid to be proud of small things and come running up to me to tell me about them. i want them to say "nah, i get why this rule exists, but i get to hate it" and know that i don't need them to be grateful-for-the-roof-overhead while washing the dishes. i want them to teach me things. i want them to say - this isn't safe. i'm calling my mom and getting out of this. i want them to hear me apologize when i do fuck up; and i want them to want to come home.
the other day a parent was telling me she didn't understand why her kid "just got so angry." this woman had flown off the handle at me.
my dad - traditional catholic that he is - resents my sentiment of "gentle parenting". he says they'll grow up spoiled, horrible, pretentious. granola, he spits.
i am going to be kind to them. i am going to set the example, i think. and whatever they choose become in the meantime - i'm going to love them for it.
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It's actually so important to me how flawed Penelope is you don't get it. She's complex and she's kind and sweet and caring and loving and bitter and manipulative and insecure and she's young and hurt and fucking up and making mistakes and hurting people and loving people and handling things in the worst way possible with the resources she has on hand and she's allowed to.
So often for a fat (and I say that within the context of the show, Pen is a fat/pus sized character within the narrative even if Nicola isn't) character to have any storyline outside of mother or joke they have to be the perfect victim. To be fat is to be victimised by society to some degree, it is to be told you are unloved and unwanted and unworthy without anyone saying those exact words, we all know this even if we don't want to except it. It's why almost every fat character is bullied in some way even if it's passed off as a joke, and they are just expected to take it because to actually acknowledge the pain and hurt and damage that causes is to acknowledge their humanity.
There is no space for complexity when you do not recognise the humanity of a character, there is no room for mistakes or grace or forgiveness in a narrative when the character is presented as lucky to simply be there. This goes doubly so for romance, as rare as it is to even see plus sized girls as a romantic lead, when they are there is no room for mistakes, the standards they are held to are so vastly different because they can't fuck it all up, they have no room to make mistakes when people question why they're even there in the first place.
But not Penelope. She fucks up so many times over, she creates half her own problems trying to fix things or make herself feel better. It dose not shy away from the damage and underlining issues and insecurities the life she has lead has left her with, and it's sympathetic to be sure, but what she dose with it isn't. Because fat people do not have to be the perfect victim and honestly most of the time are not. Because when you tell someone how little they are worth and how out of place and undesirable they are at every turn and expect them to internalise that, especially a young girl with very little power at her immediate despoil, it doesn't always come out in a very nice palatable way. It doesn't always create nice sweet uncomplicated people who cry a little when insulted but otherwise brush it off. It creates people like Penelope, it creates anger and resentment and bitterness and a need for control.
Whistledown is so many things, not all of them negative, but it is the cause of so many problems in her life after she made it as an attempt at a solution. It has caused her to hurt people and betray people and lose some of the very few genuine connections she actually has. She manipulates people and misleads them to keep her secret, because keeping a secret like that will always result in that. Her motives are sympathetic, she rarely dose anything to bad without reasoning, she has all the excuses in the world and still at the end of the day she fucked up. Her and Eloise are the second love story of the season for a reason. She adores that girl so much and she is absolutely miserable without her, as Eloise is without her. They love each other so much and there is so much pain between them now, they're practically crying every time they look at each other. And even tho the situation was complicated an messy and not completely her fault, she did in a way cause it. She's hurt people and she's hurt herself. And I love that.
Because she's a main character. We know her and Eloise will make up even if it isn't the way it was before (arguably a good thing but that's a different post.) Because she's a romantic lead, because we know, even if we don't know how they get there yet, that she will get her happy ending with the man she absolutely adores and who loves her just as much. It will not be easy I don't want it to be easy, Colin has every right to be angry and hurt and betrayed and he deserves to have the space to say whatever it is he's feeling and to have a negative reaction, but he will forgive her. Part of that is just because of who he is and the relationship he has to her (mandatory Colin appreciation moment) but it's also because the narrative has given her room and grace to be flawed.
There is so much to love about Penelope. She's so intelligent, and she's funny, she's a good listener, she makes people feel heard and important, she's kind, she's attentive, she's romantic, she's creative, she's beautiful. She is a victim and people and society do hurt her, but that's not all she is. She's given the space to be more and still be forgiven and loved just like anyone else. Because her actions is what she's apologising for not her existence. She dose not need to earn her place in a love story just because she's fat, it's her actually flaws and mistakes that exist in abundance no matter how sympathetic some of them might be, that she has to make up for. And I adore that and her.
You take away so much of her character and her agency and her complexity when you say she did nothing wrong or that she's the absolute devil. Let her be flawed, let her be someone trying their best and failing at it, let her make mistakes. But give her some grace, for once the narrative is. Her happy ending will come Bridgerton is a romance show, but she'll have to work for it. Colin and her will work for and earn their happy ending together, because they love each other and because of who they are and what they mean to each other they will find a way to make it work, but also because the writers let them and her find it.
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