Week 12: Women in Comics

For this week's reading I had read the beginning of Fun Home during class and had decided to read all of This One Summer and the short women-centric comic strips from Buzzfeed (link: Here).  For this blog post, I will be exclusively talking about This One Summer.

 I really enjoyed This One Summer. Delving into the lives of young adolescent women brought a small form of nostalgia to me. Remembering my naivety and innocence when I was young always brought a smile to my face. I've usually enjoyed stories telling the age period of when children are trying to grasp how the adult world works. I found the relationship that Rose and Windy shared compelling, realistic, and relatable. I especially enjoyed reading when they would have small spats, like when Windy kept saying "kidding" or the more interesting conversation of Rose's views about the older women surrounding them.  As a child, its hard to completely understand the situation that adulthood brings and This One Summer really shows that perspective.  Rose's naivety keeps her from fully understanding the arguments that her parents have and the pressure that Jenny has to go through. Rose refers to the teenage girls as sluts and she includes her mother when she questions why women can't just handle their own problems. This is a recurring subject that Rose interacts with as she views the women that surround her, even the helpless women in the horror movies she watches with Windy influences her to have a negative perception of adult women.  She begins to build frustration against these women without completely understanding their situations, however later on she forms a small understanding of the internal struggle these women deal with (like Jenny attempting to drown herself in the ocean and overhearing her mother's miscarriage story).

For this reading, I had decided to look online and read some reviews. Most of the reviews that gave poor ratings had issues with its foul language and had complaints that the material wasn't suitable for their children who they purchased the book for. One of the aspects that makes This One Summer great is that the subjects it presents are a realistic representation of the lives of these adolescents. The topics that are brought up about womanhood maybe too intense or go over children's heads. The book is more suited for adults reminiscing back towards their adolescents rather than for actual adolescents, but I would suggest having older children read this while having a conversation with their parents about what they read. It would be an important influence on them to be exposed to some of the struggling situations pertaining to womanhood.

Also one final note that I would like to mention was that I thought the art work was fantastic!