Things We Forgot About Childhood Movies: Suffragettes in Mary Poppins

In the original Mary Poppins books, Mrs. Banks was simply a “struggling mistress” of the household, “easily intimidated” and treated with contempt by the books’ namesake, presumably for her need to even have a nanny. In the 1960’s Disney movie, she was updated to a loving mother who nevertheless cannot care for her children alone because she is frequently carried away by waves of excitement for the fledgling suffragette movement.

Dubious “proper motherhood and feminism = oil and water” implications aside, holy shit, look at the history in my Disney movie! This is better than the prostitutes in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Anyway, as a daughter’s daughter: Happy 100th International Women’s Day.

(via Full of Woah!)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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