Flashback to My Childhood (OK, Pre-Teen Years)

Today I watched 10 Things I Hate About You for the first time in a very long time (inspired by the premiere of the show based on the movie, which I won't watch, the commercials for it just made me want to watch the movie).

10 Things I Hate About You may not be a high quality movie, it's a classic teenage comedy. I loved this movie when I was younger. And I still do. I love Julia Stiles' character, Kat Stratford. While she may be the stereotypical feminist of movies, she's just great. I think I loved her so much when the movie came out was because I identified with her but was still developing in my feminist consciousness and didn't really know how to deal with all of my opinions that conflicted with my peers.

Kat is called a "heinous bitch," told to "take her Midol before class," and sits around reading The Bell Jar. She's not appreciated by her peers for her opinions, which is very common for teenage feminists, at least in my opinion. They even throw in a comment about feminism being for white, middle class women (I wish they had addressed this more, but, admittedly, it is a teen movie - no excuse, but it's all I got). She does what she wants and doesn't apologize for it. She is someone for teen feminists to identify with in mainstream media (maybe not so mainstream anymore, but with the show coming out, who knows how she will be portrayed).

I'm not going to claim that this is a great movie, because it isn't. Especially when you get into the gender and racial stereotypes that are often found in these kinds of movies. I just wanted to point out the presence of a feminist character in a teen movie, because it seems to be lacking.

My desire for this post was not to go too in-depth about Kat's feminism in the movie - I wanted it to be a short-and-sweet post. And I just wanted to have a brief reminiscence on this movie that I loved so much earlier in my life.