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Anyone wishing to see a thought-provoking film grounded in real-life issues should see “Dessert Flower”, a film that chronicles the life of Somali supermodel turned human rights activist Waris Dirie. Based on her 1998 bestselling autobiographical novel of the same title, the story is told through flashbacks. This film, written and directed by German director Sherry Hormann, features Ethiopian model Liya Kebede in the lead role as Dirie. The narrative begins where Waris does: in the scorching deserts of Somalia with her family who were nomadic shepherds. The opening shot of a brightly bloomed yellow flower is contrasted against the bleak landscape of the East African dessert, this becomes a lasting symbol of Waris, and of her ability to survive and thrive against suppressing odds. At the age of 13 Dirie takes a desperate journey across the Somali desert alone to escape an arranged marriage (as a 4th wife) to a much older man. She would later become one of the first to speak out against female genital mutilation (FGM), a brutal ritual that she endured as a young girl. Flashbacks show us the 13-year-old Waris who fled her homeland, and later the 3-year-old Waris who was taken to a female elder by her mother so that her external genitalia could be painfully cut away and her vagina essentially sown shut so as to preserve her virginity for her future husband. The procedure, which has no legitimate purpose other than to serve male interests, is still practiced in many countries today on what is estimated to be around 6,000 girls worldwide per day (according to statistics stated in the film), many of whom don’t even survive.
Hormann tells Waris Dirie’s story through a more contemporary and up-to-date lens utilizing a few aesthetic embell...
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...s still felt, the perseverance of Waris Dirie and the courage of the women she represents is deeply inspiring and remarkable. Waris now uses her recognition to make the world aware of the mutilation that still occurs today all over the world in the name of religion and tradition.
Word Count: 1250
Works Cited
Costa, Diego. “Dessert Flower.” Rev. of Dessert Flower. Dir Sherry Hormann.
Slantmagazine.com. 17 Mar. 2011. Web. 30 May, 2014.
Dessert Flower. Dir. Sherry Hormann. Perf. Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Juliette Stevenson. National Geographic Entertainment. 2011. DVD.
Ebert. Roger. “Dessert Flower.” Rev. of Dessert Flower, Dir. Sherry Hormann. Rogerebert.com. Roger Ebert Reviews, 31 Mar. 2011.
Moore. Omar. Desert Rose' a Majestic, Moving Journey of Supermodel Waris Dirie. Rev. of Dessert Flower. Dir Sherry Hormann. Examiner.com. 29 Mar. 2011.
Throughout Lives of the Boundary, many stories were told on how Rose had was able to help students with their education and how others have helped him with his education. All of the stories throughout the book have its unique background. Rose claims that giving students the individual attention that they need helps them thrive to meet the goals that they have in education. The examples that best support his claim are Harold Morton, Millie, Dr. Erlandson, and David Gonzalez.
These specific ploys that are performed by the Guerrilla Girls are in the way they dress, the masks they wear, pseudonymous names of dead women artists and the witty factual evidence in their works. These are all examples to evoke audiences in challenging not only the art society which dictates the value and worth of women in art, but also to confront yourself and your own beliefs in a way that makes audiences rethink these growing issues. Over the last twenty years, the Guerrilla Girls have established a strong following due to the fact that they challenged and consistently exhibited a strong supportive subject matter that defies societal expectations. In an interview “We reclaimed the word girl because it was so often used to belittle grown women. We also wanted to make older feminists sit up and notice us since being anti- “girl” was one of their issues....
In the world of feminist research there is an assortment of issues that can be studied, many of which are sensitive topics. An issue we chose to focus our research on is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). We have found that more research needs to be conducted on FGM, and it should be done in a way that respects the rights of the individuals and the culture in which it is rooted and practiced. Throughout this paper we will discuss the practice of FGM, how we plan to research it, theoretical considerations, methodological considerations, ethical considerations, as well as our anticipated results.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has often been viewed as a rite of passage for women in various countries within Africa, South America, the Middle East and Asia. However, due to societal norms and pressures, whether it based in culture or religion, forces women to partake in a practice that has serious health risks and takes away the rights of women who believe they have no other choice. The Universal Declaration of Human rights are applicable to all member states including most of the countries that still practice FGM. However, despite claiming that the human rights set forth would be observed as obligated in terms of their memberships, FGM violates numerous rights and freedoms that claim to be recognized but, are not known to the people. These rights are neglected, and frequently go unacknowledged within communities because of denied access to media or information. Nonetheless whether it is intentional or a direct result of the poverty levels within these countries these are rights that the people deserve to know they have. If women were exposed to various forms of media and knew of their rights, FGM would not be so highly practiced. Female Genital Mutilation is a flagrant violation of one’s human rights.
This trauma imposed on the girl child is indicative of a practice comparable to torture. FGM becomes a violation when this procedure is done on them as infants and young girls. The fundamental issue is at stake here is that of consent. Whilst an adult is quit free to submit herself to a ritual or a tradition, a child, having no formed judgment, does not consent, but simply undergoes the mutilati...
In the society, women can be prone to different kinds of violence. The book “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced” is a true representative of this. Written from the first person, it is a real expression of the experiences of Nujood Ali and her suffering. This is a personal autobiography of the little Yemen girl who was married off when she was only 10 years of age. In Yemen, young girls are forcefully married off to men who are way ahead of them in terms of age. It might be that many of them do not come out to challenge the decisions that are imposed on them by their families. However, Nujood had the courage to come out and speak on behalf of other young girls like her and also women who are forced into suffering and oppression. Young girls should not be forced into marriage and it is
The story was written based on how the people that lived in province of Burundi had the ideals of how women women were meant to serve and where women couldn't be sexually active until they married. The fear of rape was very intense that parents wouldn't allow their daughters go out alone, being understandable because six girls were raped in the last two months.
Eight girls are standing in line at a movie theater. All smiling in a carefree manner that could be expected of any all American teenage girl. However, statistics say that two of these girls bare scars on their bodies that our society would deem, “self-inflicted”. The truth of the matter is, these two girls are wounded by the immense weight of our cultures requirements for beauty. Requirements that can potentially be explained by science, but neither the way in which our society allows itself to be controlled by such mundane fancies nor the effect on the people it oppresses is by any means justified.
In modern American society, women’s rights have become so much of a political controversy that oftentimes we forget the global reality of the female situation: that every decade, more girls are killed simply for being girls than all people in every genocide of the twentieth century combined. This is the reality that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn describe in their novel Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Half the Sky chronicles Kristof’s and WuDunn’s journeys across third world Asia and Africa to uncover the truth about three abuses that afflict the world’s women on a massive scale. Namely, the novel portrays how the devastating realities of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality are based in the cyclically oppressive, ultra-conservative cultures of the third world and lays down a clear path for how we, as citizens of the western world, can help.
She was the first of her kind. An inspiration to young and old. Someone who chased their dream and never gave up. She believed in equality among both sexes. Linda McCartha Monica Sandy-Lewis was her name. She was better known as Calypso Rose. Calypso Rose is the ambassador of Caribbean music.
Ramatoulaye writes this letter to her best friend as a way to cope with the death and betrayal of her husband; however, it is her, Daba, and Aissatou, that create awareness for the audience of how divided the perceptions held by both traditional and modern mindsets are. The author implements these characters to showcase the perpetual transformation of women in Senegalese society, through utilizing these women as liberal, rational women that question the societal norm. They are no longer remaining submissive and accepting the inequalities traditional practice has established; but rather, they advocate feminism and fight for equal rights for both men and women.
The author of the book Desert Flower, Waris Dirie, recalled her experience of “becoming a woman” based on the Somali’s culture beliefs. For this specific assignment, chapter four was read and she described her experience of becoming a woman. In the Somali culture, a girl enters into womanhood by circumcision. The circumcision involves the removal of the clitoris, labia minora, and most of the labia majora. The Somali ancestors believed that these parts of the woman’s body were unclean and needed to be “fixed” in order for the woman to be considered for marriage. The circumcision is done by a Somali gypsy woman, who Dirie referred to as “killer woman.” Dirie recalled the excitement that all the young girls have for this special day
A feminist analysis on the other hand shows that Anowa is a woman who is struggling against the 1870’s African feminist identity (the identity of weakness). The drama surrounds the story of a young woman called Anowa who disobeys her parents by marrying Kofi Ako, a man who has a reputation for indolence and migrates with him to a far place. Childless after several years of marriage, Anowa realises that Kofi had sacrificed his manhood for wealth. Upon Anowa’s realisation, Kofi in disgrace shoots himself while Anowa too drowns herself. In a postcolonial analysis of “Anowa”, we can see some evidence of colonialism.
Young women all over the world including places like Yemen in southwest Asia, Malawi, and Sudan, both in Africa, have dreams of being very successful independent women when they grow up. They envision themselves to become doctors, lawyers, and even teachers. They desire an education to make money and for once in their lives, to not live in poverty. Unfortunately, these young women will never live to see their dreams come true because almost fifty percent of them will be forced into marriage, with a complete stranger who is more than double their age. Child marriages are not uncommon issues in these undeveloped countries. Sadly, young women, as young as eight years old are forced into marriage. They are also forced into having the mindset where society’s sole purpose for women is only to reproduce. Child marriages happen for many reasons. For example, many girls are pressured onto marriages by their family members to they can receive dowry payments. Mothers and fathers are willing to sell off their female children for cows, cattle and other animals to escape poverty. Other young women become pregnant, nine and ten year old girls are getting raped by their boyfriends, or soon to be husbands (Human Rights Watch). They are unaware with what sex even is. They do not have any experience, they are scared and have absolutely no choice or say when put in these hostile situations. Child marriages violate young women’s human rights all over the world and there is not enough being done to stop this from occurring.
She goes by the name of Waris Dirie, a female Somalian desert nomad who lived to tell her story of pain and emotion growing up as a Somalian woman. The novel ‘Desert Flower’, written by Waris Dirie herself is about the revealing yet inspiring journey of her life, as she was introduced to the ‘Somalian womanhood’, at just the age of five, imagine the brutality on being mutated on just a rock in the middle of the desert, being left alone under a small tree with hardly any shade protecting you from the fiery hot sunrays being let off. Any minute you could die, the cause of death may be being bleed to death or an infection later on causing death. A few years later having an arranged marriage to a sixty year old man you didn’t even know, running away and escaping to England to becoming a model to then later on becoming an ambassador of the UN. (United Nations). These are some of the many experiences Waris Dirie went through during her journey of life.