difficult girls

Toxic (2024)

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Now look out the window, think you see something amazing out there. Kristina is on the bed being photographed and attempts to smile. It doesn’t come easy. Smiling is cheap and a forgotten thing or maybe never learned.

The line of wannabe models looks like a worm full of you girls, the single-color room is full of these girls, a worm of girls waiting for their opportunity. One of them named Kristina swallowed a tapeworm in a pill ordered from dark web, tapeworm to keep her slimming down in hopes of a career abroad. Losing weight makes her smile.

Lithuanian movie Toxic (2024) directed by Saulė Bliuvaite does an amazing job at picturing Lithuanian youth attempting to enjoy life and leave the desolate place of whatever. The modelling school is a trapdoor in a place that feels sealed off: industrial, emptied-out, post-Soviet in atmosphere even if the specifics are contemporary Lithuania. The Soviet architecture leaves one hopeless as Soviet state of mind thinks: what is there to hope for, what is there to smile about? Legacy of Soviet Union is profound recognizable feeling of loss. Places look hellish, unrepaired, people left at mercy.

The long line of girls is like a neverending story. Two girls Kristina and Marija practicing their model walk on a scrap of asphalt, high heels clicking, is one of the more quietly devastating but humorous images: aspiration reduced to a short loop, procession that never advances, imitation that should work out there. Worms rule and cause pain. Dreams are powerful and everybody has the same ones.

Kristina and Marija train their catwalk outside where nobody cares and everything looks abandoned, back and forth on a small piece of asphalt like going somewhere.

Modelling as an option is a weird one and so few really succeed, to be noticed and to have a career in picture beautiful is a dream for many girls. What is the walk? What is the act of modelling? Modelling agency tapes their posters there where nothing happens is like a trap. Girls look at the picture and draw genitals with boys, stick cigarettes in the eyes of the model in a poster. In modelling you pay to play like in art.

The line there already existed in Soviet Union to grocery stores, maybe boys are more clever driving around in circles. Difference between the sexes stays the same. Girls are their looks, that is the currency and sellable object. Comedy in tragedy happens: we have seen this before and you are never skinny enough. Parasite inside Kristina grows and she loses weight. 

In parasitic world terms are one is to walk the line like models, do what is taught, go back and forth in a very small space in specific manner, pay the people who show you the ropes, maybe be in debt for it, a way to enter the world, into another kind of abyss one learns about by jumping in, dreaming, admiring those who made it or just go with a limp with which Marija is born, she says she was born this way. Wearing an oversized Marilyn Manson t-shirt with slogan Bigger Than Satan in the back, she sells flowers with her grandmother.

Let the world happen. To learn to exploit is the way of the world, to get what one wants, knowing you will be treated badly regardless, is learned via experience, you can be the bad apple yourself and do ill. Kids are cruel, I suppose, there is a meaning behind, which is learning. What cruelty hides in pretty pictures, in human brain: the unavoidable hurt. How much is pretty worth? What is pretty enough? Who wins? The one who exploits the worst those who can’t defend themselves.

Marilyn Manson is an interesting idol for young girls. His music is maybe cathartic and speaks to people with an edge, on an edge, a flaw in them, to those who feel out of place, who are not accepted as they are etc. have a lot of rage, pain and anger. He is a show and has shown theatrical satanic-like moves that exist in show business, acts of abuse and behaviour that have never left the arts regardless #metoo. He still thinks he is the victim. As a role model he is a very poor choice. I understand the appeal, nevertheless, the danger in him, the music and people who take things far for art’s sake and to have power over people. Art is powerful. To analyse Marilyn Manson in this setting, in Lithuanian light, post-Soviet landscape in the world of teens, who think elsewhere is better, Manson sings about the darkness of humans and what they do. There are things as dark web where one can buy a child, such are like a gigantic black cloud in a landscape. Hard to believe it exists, but its there: things that happen to other people. Manson as art maybe a warning, a rebel or celebration of evil: he has tattoos of swastikas, which is weird, so he celebrates evil in humans, hate. Teens prone to hating without much empathy as they need to win, is also a pattern, a fight.

I don’t know if modelling is a worthy dream for anyone. Eating disorders like bulimia already rule both Kristina’s and Marija’s life. Kristina eats her dinner in her room so she can toss the food out the window where it piles up like compost.

Girl’s life with a limp means she gets bullied, fat girls too. Fat is an enemy not Marilyn Manson. What qualifies as ugly here is the now and the expected normal life one must escape from. Manson’s theater is an escape of course, art of loathing towards banality. Kristina’s dad sells his car for Kristina to get away for modelling, so there is tenderness. Modelling is for teenagers the princess dream sold by predators, even though girls seem predators themselves. Do girls seek predators is one question to match their own cruelty? Competition is as violent as is envy. Every woman and girl who gets anything better or says no, is a whore and a cunt. 

Bliuvaitė has said the film was partly inspired by the 2011 documentary Girl Model and by her own early experiences around that world. The result is neither pure social-realist polemic nor pure body-horror. It stays close to the girls’ limited field of vision: the concrete, brickwalls, the fluorescent lights of the agency, clean space of practice for modelling and taking photos where distractions are cleaned away, the private rituals of self-punishment, the occasional flicker of genuine attachment between Marija and Kristina. Marija waits outside the house where Kristina goes to give massage. Kristina gives Marija the money for photo shoot her mother refused to aid with. That attachment is one of the few things that feels non-transactional, and even it is fragile and complicated by the same scarcity that drives everything else. Real friendship is precious. Pursuing one’s dream is rebellion, girls rebel by hurting themselves, which is also a repetitious pattern. https://youtu.be/9ObumccSuXA?is=x141WQxr4cixp2hv

What is in need of change in the end?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Isn’t it a very groundbreaking question, what is there to be changed really in a world of constant tragedy and crisis. How do we evolve in this time of grief and do not torment those who will build the world in the future. Why for example girlhood is in constant crisis is that mostly the world is not for girls, girl is seen weak and girlhood something to grow away from. Girlhood is a crisis because the world around won’t let girls be cherished, won’t let girls think they are worthy and have potential of great amounts. This is crisis of girlhood which is made the crisis for girls, placed upon little shoulders and bodies, burdened with shame that should not be there, not their stigma not their crisis. Shame belongs to those who are grown-ups who own the shame planted in them by macho culture and society. There should be time right now to change this crisis which is intolerable, criminal and horribly wrong making girls think they are lacking something, unworthy as persons, incapable and stupid because of their gender. There is an enormous pressure for people to change something but not so much knowledge of what is in serious need of total change or maybe there is knowledge over what is wrong and a horrible scare that everything would change so dramatically if those changes were to applied fully, unquestionably, truly and humbly. People who are afraid of change and to change are the biggest threat, people who do not admit to their mistakes and think they are absolutely correct.
If you are people with God you let people learn their potential as people. I personally have zero appreciation for women who deny schooling and aims in life for girls and other women. Women who fight against other women are worth less than zero.

To become part of gender and sex-oriented society

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Sign is there between the legs, a message to people how child should be brought up. What would happen if it didn’t mean that much, that sex wouldn’t dictate how we are perceived and how we should be? Saying earlier that to be a girl is a full on crisis is exactly it, how to grow and adjust to the environment when to adjust is the most wrong thing there could be and do. Adjust and accept because one must. Firstly is the issue of where you live and what kind of atmosphere you are born to, what does your environment tell you, makes of you, lets you be, how you will end up knowing who you are and what will you be, what you should be and who to believe, what to be scared of and what life is worth, your life. To having accepted how to live when does the fun end if we are having fun in the first place.

To be an individual can be tricky. What does it even mean anymore. Young men and women on the video below which is an intro to the movie Spring Breakers 2012 by Harmoni Korine is truthful to reality of college students in the US. Both sexes are exercising roles that are heterosexual and oppressive, roles that are to be followed by students as fun but strict and fitting the idea of letting go and being young in a certain way. Equaling reckless behavior to fun where women are exposing themselves as willing pornographic wild sexual partners on beach with alcohol and drugs. Camera angles tell the story of where to look. Women line up in front of men to play blow jobs with open mouths in which men pour drinks from cans, cans posing penises. All happens on the beach, bright color swimsuits and ads, ecstatic faces and young people who want to go out of control and to be seen as such. Men are more of spectators and users of goods which women gladly offer since it is fun and there are many women instead of one. Grouping is essential of this fun, group dynamic, collective awareness of what is happening and what to do. Who will be wildest and sexiest. Do men expose themselves, do they get drinks on them like it was sperm? This scene is a collective dance of spring, ancient as it is unacceptable and blown out of proportion. Pornographic imagery is very clear as is influence of music videos. All bodies are trained to perform this act. What happens really is shaming and objectifying of women. Women willingly play cattle to be slaughtered and enjoyed, enjoyed and slaughtered. It is suicidal, destructive and dangerous, but that is obviously what they seek, what turns them on. It is one way of seeing student life and a break from studying.

http://time.com/3984218/joyce-carol-oates-marilyn-monroe/”“How could such a beautiful, successful and famous young woman kill herself?””

 

A void: Twinkle twinkle little star in this given space of cold.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

There stars and then there are stars far, close, inside, invisible, barely visible, new and old, hidden and exposed, exploded and beautiful.

Something personal, painful and bloody which menstruation perfectly correlates and stands for as image of a girl who has to stitch herself up over and over again. Pain and blood which repeatedly appear every month just as bloody and painful as if her body was against her, hates her, is disgusted by her and wants to get rid off her. Pieces of her that have written text on which she did not write but gets written nevertheless, cannot be erased as they are the same for all who look at her, with the same meaning of what this piece of meat is. The text is not hers, not her idea, pieces are hers and make her, somehow still are loose and fall apart. She falls apart very young and tries to do her best to stay whole, as a whole person, grow to be sane in insanity. How does one stay whole when such strength is deemed impossible for her. Her weakness is her sex, her whore gender. The void around her from where air has run out. She cannot be ugly because she will be shamed for not looking acceptable, she cannot be too beautiful because she will attract attention that is shameful, she will be too much for other girls to take and tolerate, she cannot be poor because she does not have what money can buy. She is shamed all the same. Her menstruation is a shame. That it is a flood which is laughable and has to be hidden as a secret. Her vagina is funny. She should be a little bunny.

What kind of personnel and students universities have? Is there a pattern?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
As it seems to me questioning and jeopardizing status quo make those who dare unfriendly and unwanted, meaning that there are things somehow perfect that are offered to the students on a platter to kindly eat and be grateful. There will be hurt feelings when those offerings are strongly objected and quality of teaching is critiqued. Please do understand if you are a teacher: it is your job to make people think for themselves. Students’ intellect and abilities are continuously underestimated. People are treated as if they were youngsters who were born yesterday. Quality feedback is difficult to get, which would mean actually being interested in students’ work, thoughts and progress. But as it goes research is more important that teaching, this is what we get and it should be praised. What is there to praise in a system that does not want to evolve because it thinks it is perfect? What kind of education do we get in a system that has such high opinion of itself hiring airheads instead of intellect?

Threatening woman is to be threatened. Woman as a threat to norm is powerful.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

It is interesting to talk about sub-being, sub-human, since it is clear despite the beautiful talks and speeches the inequality is kept alive because it is serving and pleasing, nourishing vanity and desire to be powerful in relation to others. But the groundbreaking changes always tend to begin from the ground, within below point, in despair and a kind of dead-end. The more people drop on to the ground to be spat at and left behind as unnecessary the more anger and need  for change there will be. Those who refuse the role of only to-survive-you-need-to-do-this, to whom it is not good enough to be instructed how to live in a world that is based on extortion and lies, will grow bigger as mass to threaten stability of the ruling few. The more there will be ultra-rich the more there are those who wonder why such enormous wealth concentrates in so few hands. How is it possible and who allows it?

Within the world of making money and making it, being a woman is out of ordinary. It is wondered how she did it. The disbelief is unbelievable. How is it possible to have a mind of one’s own, is this what is the question? When woman is a threat to male clubs, male rule and dominance it is a wonder how women make it. Another wonder is why the difficulty and threat? From whom is it away to see women succeed?

What does it mean when a girl is being difficult?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
It means quite a lot. It is the very social change embodied right there. Same goes with youth in general. There has to be a continuum of youth rebellion every time all the time.
What about when she is testing her limits, testing limits there are, testing nerves, ideas, conventions and habits, habits of thought? Limits that are there for obvious reasons, for sensible reasons, religious and traditional reasons, maybe reasons that are not valid anymore. Talk about matters of defining difficult behavior, difficult personality and what are the expectations for girls and women when we talk about personality and what girls can do. Where is the difficulty? To me it seems there is nothing but hardship and struggle what comes to gender gaps and fulfilling expectations. Easily females are as we know taught to fulfill expectations (we are brought up more or less to act up, behave, learn to live up to our civilization’s demands) as are boys, but in a different way and there are people who do not tolerate any kind of rebellion, anger, mind of one’s own for a girl to have. If life is a list of demands to be lived up, list that one has not made oneself, list that is not your own but is given to you without thinking there might be a different kind of dreams and lives to want. Difficult many times begins when expectations and manners are broken, when girl shows she has a mind of her own, life of her own to have and make. What is the difficulty in there, I’m not sure, I’m not getting it fully, but I put it on people who dislike and fear the unexpected, fear change, growing up, who are actually afraid of their children, afraid that children are not the same as parents. What is difficult? To understand your children are not yours? What is a difficult child too difficult to handle and why do we need to handle a child? To be afraid what children will become, that they will bring shame to the family is a common fear anywhere in the world. Why would you be ashamed of your child? Therefore discipline and scare are used to keep children from having strange ideas like becoming what they want themselves to be. A difficult child is something who is giving parents a hard time. We can ask who would not be a difficult child and why rebelling against parents is so terrifying that many won’t dare to follow their dreams or be open about what they are as people. Afraid that love and acceptance is taken away.
Question is why girls and boys are set different boundaries, given different goals, ideas of life? What is with bringing up kids? It is clear genders do get brought up in a different way, how could this cage where we are put in be opened up and people wouldn’t be afraid to test themselves and society more. What are we protecting when we focus on girls to be careful and obedient more than boys? How to be more tolerant of and open about the difficult in us?