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Me watching two characters in a modern tv show have sex: Huh okay
Me watching two characters in a period drama let the backs of their hands lightly brush in a moment of emotional intimacy so intense they can’t meet each others’ eyes:
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when the queen’s gambit said “all the talent in the world will only get you so far if you don’t work hard and take care of yourself” and “it’s never too late to start over” and “even if you’ve dug yourself into a deep hole you can still pull yourself out” and “accept defeats with grace and use them to your advantage, take them as the learning opportunities they are” and “recovery isn’t always a straight line but it’s always a good day to try again” and “even if you can do it alone, that doesn’t mean you should have to” and “sometimes you can’t do it alone, and that’s okay”
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Let’s talk about Harmon’s clothes in Queen’s Gambit and how feminine she is. Yet, about 2 episodes in, you suspend your disbelief in the fact that this “mad genius” is actually a really fashionable female with feminine clothes and nail paint and lipstick and mascara and all of that non-male stuff. Movies have ALWAYS depicted intelligent women to hate everything feminine in an effort to relate intelligence with masculinity. Like “if a woman is intelligent, she must hate feminine things.” This has usually been an effort to attribute intelligence as a masculine trait, so much so, that even if a woman displays it, they will do everything to dissociate her from her own gender.
“It’s difficult to play chess with an Adam’s apple” she responds when asked in an interview about her stylish clothing. She refuses to let herself be dissociated from the pleasures of being a woman, the pride in her beauty for the sake of the men who challenge both her intelligence and her dignity at every step.
The men around her, who love her and who care for her seem to quickly get used to her flamboyance and femininity. This is not shown by their constant flattery of her style and beauty because that would have sexualised her. Instead the brilliant creators of this show have used the subtle art of not mentioning it at all, creating a community based purely on the appreciation of her abilities as a world champion of chess. Therefore, when they stay awake all night trying to figure out how to beat Borgov, they didn’t do it because she was a woman they wanted to woo, but because she was their champion.