The Fascinating Scarlett O'Hara

I've never read Gone With the Wind. I've always intended to, but it's never actually happened. I finally watched the movie once or twice. I decided I needed to read the book.

So here it is. Summer!

Let me give you a math grad student translation of the above statement.

Summer = time to read books I've always wanted to read.

So last night, I bought the Kindle edition of Gone With the Wind. Why did I buy the Kindle edition, you ask?

Because I got a Kindle for my birthday!!!

Yes, I realize that a couple of weeks ago, I posted the Nook commercial. But I got a Kindle. And I like it a lot! It's pretty.

Back to my summer reading, though . . .

I just started the book, and I love it already.

I loved the first sentence. It's a brilliant first sentence, a brilliant first paragraph really.

Allow me to explain.

Exhibit A: Chapter One Paragraph One

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin--that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns."

Wow. The first sentence is perfect.

In order to convey my point, I will split Margaret Mitchell's audience into two groups.

Group 1: Women
Group 2: Men

Consider Group 1, shall we? As a young woman, I want to BE Scarlett O'Hara after line one. I think I speak for many women when I say that we all want to feel beautiful. However, most of us have those days where we get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and think something to the effect of "Why do I look so terrible?" A bad case of bed head does not help matters. Neither does the fact that we may have puffy, tired-looking eyes. Or sometimes, women spend two hours getting all dressed up, and then see their reflection or a photograph of themselves and think, "Oh . . . I thought I'd look better than that." Or the worst case. You see other women and decide that you are not as beautiful as they are. Oh, that cursed vanity and jealousy!

That being said, I think we also all hope that our charming personalities, wit, and intelligence will be enough to distract people from our bad hair day.

In the first line, Margaret Mitchell has affirmed women's hopes worldwide.

Read it again.

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarlton twins were."

Scarlett isn't beautiful, but she's so spectacular that no one even "realized" she was unattractive.

Everyday, normal-looking girls with puffy eyes across the globe are cheering and thinking that maybe, just maybe, if they were a character in such a book, the Tarlton twins would be caught by their charm, too.

It's true. It's corny, ridiculous, and anti-feminist, but I'm sorry. It's TRUE!

And personally as a Texan girl with the whitest skin you've ever seen, "magnolia-white skin" is one of the most flattering depictions of skin tone I have ever heard!!!

And that magnolia-white skin is considered to be "prized!" Granted, I don't carefully guard my skin with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns. I carefully guard my skin with SPF 50 Ocean Potion sunblock for sensitive skin. Unfortunately, I am not Scarlett O'Hara. I live in the decade of skin cancer and tan people are prized, regardless of the dangers of melanoma and the "prized magnolia-white skin" of Scarlett.

But such is life.

Anyway, Margaret Mitchell made sure that girls would like Scarlett O'Hara . . . especially us pale, porcelain, white girls.

Next, consider Group 2. Men like Scarlett O'Hara. It's in the first sentence. Didn't you catch it? The Tarleton twins are "caught" by her charm. She's so fantastic, they don't even "realize" her unique facial features.

This is another brilliant idea on Margaret Mitchell's part. She described Scarlett in such a way that men everywhere are picturing the perfect woman in their own minds.

Read it again. Margaret Mitchell has described a wide variety of facial features.

Let's say the male reader likes women with delicate features. Scarlett's "delicate."

Let's say he likes women with stronger features. Scarlett has "heavy" features.

Does he like Southern women? She's Southern.

American women? She's American.

Foreign women? Oh, well no worries. Her mother is a "Coast aristocrat of French descent," and she has a "florid Irish father."

And she looks like all of this blended together. So just take your pick, and let your imagination run wild.

Just in case men aren't "caught by her charm" and her unique, stunning looks, you should also notice that this face of hers isn't just any face. It's an "arresting face."

She has a "pointed chin" and a "square jaw."

I feel like these two facial features don't go together. Think about it for a moment. If you have a square jaw, "square" implies straight edged. "Pointed chin" implies that your face is shaped in such a way that it comes to a point . . . which means isn't straight. If you have a pointed chin, I would think you'd have a heart-shaped face. If you have a square jaw, you'd have a square face.

I'm not criticizing Margaret Mitchell.

I'm saying she's brilliant. Readers everywhere are picturing the perfect blending of all these contrasted features and then topping the whole image off with a dollop of charm and green eyes "starred" with naturally curled black lashes.

Let's summarize, shall we?

She's not beautiful.

She's better than beautiful.

She's exotic, unique, Southern, American, Irish, French, delicate, strong, magnolia-white, prized, and exudes a captivating, arresting charm which renders men incapable of thinking of her as anything but beautiful.

Gracious.

Scarlett hasn't even said anything yet, and everyone is already fascinated by her.

Or maybe it's just fair-skinned girls like me.

Either way, I applaud you, Margaret Mitchell.

I will now proceed to page two.

Don't worry. I won't write about every page. It's much too long of a book for commentary by Ashley.

Leadership and Such

I work for my cousin, Christy, online. I don't know if I've mentioned that before. She runs a database/web design business out of her home, and when I graduated from college about a year ago, she offered me a job as her first part-time employee.

She didn't know what exactly she'd have me do, but she believed I could learn anything. As a result, I started to believe that I was capable of learning anything.

At first, I did some data entry for her. She lives in Houston, so we would have phone meetings or webcam meetings once a week or so, and she would teach me to do whatever it is she was currently working on.

Then, she taught me how to use QuickBooks, and I entered the hours into the program and learned some basic accounting.

During this first year of grad school, I barely worked for her a couple hours a month due to the insane amount of studying and teaching and grading and learning I was doing.

Having said that, however, on days when I felt like I couldn't possibly learn what I was being taught in Intermediate Analysis II, I would sit down at my laptop and do some work for Christy. It didn't matter that I'd never taken an accounting class. It didn't matter that I'd never been to a team meeting with a bunch of engineers discussing million dollar projects. It didn't matter that I live so far away from Christy that it's a good nine hour drive to get there.

Christy trained me and taught me how to do a specific task.

And I could do it.

Better yet, I got paid to do it!

Also, I understood what I was doing! …Something that very rarely happens when I’m trying to solve problems for my math grad classes.

Working with Christy has taught me a valuable lesson.

When Christy has an idea, she acts on it. She pursues it. She makes it happen. She takes initiative.

As a result, I have to try to follow her lead.

This summer, she said: “Ashley, I think I want you to work on my web page.”

“Oh Christy, I don’t really know anything about web design.”

“Well, I’ll just send you the program and the book. You can do the tutorials and teach yourself. I know a little; you can ask me for help if you need it. We can figure it out.”

“Okay. It might take me a while.”

“That’s fine. You’ll get the hang of it.”

This is what I’m talking about. Oftentimes, I don’t try to learn new things or jump into things I have no experience in whatsoever. I’m too afraid of failing.

Christy isn’t like that.

For Christmas my senior year of college, my Christmas present from she and her husband were two books.

Not fiction books.

Not fun books.

They gave me: 48 Days to the Work You Love and Dave Ramsey: Financial Peace Revisited.

Since then, every time Christy gives me a book to read for a bonus for work or to read with her business in mind, I’ve noticed a common theme.

I’ve read The Question Behind the Question, which was about avoiding procrastination and taking lead in the workplace.

I’ve read Who Moved My Cheese? This book was a parable teaching that we must adapt to change, not be paralyzed by it.

Last week, she told me to read Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

So I did. Next, I’m supposed to read Guerilla Marketing.

At some point, I’m supposed to read The Go-Getter.

I read a lot.

Anyway, while Tribes may have been my least favorite of my assigned reading, I stumbled across several poignant quotes.

I thought I’d share.

“Isaac Newton was totally, fantastically wrong about alchemy, the branch of science he spent most of his career on. He was as wrong as a scientist could be. And yet, he’s widely regarded as the most successful scientist and mathematician ever.

Steve Jobs was wrong about the Apple III, wrong about the Mac FX, wrong about the NeXT computer. Insanely wrong. You know the rest.

The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong!
The secret is being willing to be wrong.
The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.

. . .

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.

People will follow.”

All of the books Christy has given me to read share this vision. The fear of failure is the only thing that stands in the way of following your dreams.

We may fail repeatedly. But if we never try to take a risk, if we never seek to better ourselves, we become . . . mediocre.

None of us want to be mediocre.

There was one other quote from Tribes that I wanted to share.

This section was titled “The Obligation.”

“Not too far from us, a few blocks away, there are kids without enough to eat and without parents who care. A little farther away, hours by plane, are people unable to reach their goals because they live in a community that just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support them. A bit farther away are people being brutally persecuted by their governments. And the world is filled with people who can’t go to high school, never mind college, and who certainly can’t spend their time focused on whether or not they get a good parking space at work.

And so, the obligation: don’t settle.

To have all these advantages, all this momentum, all these opportunities and then settle for mediocre and then defend the status quo and then worry about corporate politics—what a waste.
Flynn Berry wrote that you should never use the word “opportunity.” It’s not an opportunity, it’s an obligation.

I don’t think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible.”

I agree with him. He’s completely right. Grad school is miserable; we all know how much I hate it. The reason I stay, though, is because I know I can finish. I know I can’t let the fear of failure defeat my dream of teaching college level math one day. Not only am I blessed enough to have the opportunity to attend grad school, I’ve been given the ability to go, and so for me, it has in a sense, become an obligation.

I have an obligation to be the best that I can be. I have an obligation to never settle for mediocre.

Why? Because there’s nothing standing in my way.

Nothing except excuses.

In working for my cousin, I have watched as she makes the best of every situation. If things in her business don’t go as planned, she adapts. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t stop. She just adjusts her plans.

If she can dream it, she can do it.

She’s trying to teach me to do the same.

I’m not saying she has no fear; I’m saying she doesn’t let fear stop her.

And that line a few lines above this one? I didn’t make that up. I stole it from someone else.
Actually, two of my favorite quotes come from this same person.

1. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
2. "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

Do you know who said it?

Walt Disney.

Winnie the Pooh!!!

I'm so excited about this movie. And it's coming out just in time for my birthday. Actually my birthday is the 14th, and Winnie the Pooh doesn't come out until the 15th. This is perfect, however, because I already have a midnight ticket to Harry Potter on the evening of the 14th. It's like Hollywood found out my birthdate and then planned to release the happiest, most exciting movies Ashley could ever dream of going to see within a 48 hour period. LOVE.

Last Saturday, I went to see Larry Crowne starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. It was hilarious and great. Great and hilarious. It made me glad that I hope to be a professor someday.

Oh, also, perhaps you remember a few posts back when I wrote about my dilemma in buying music and then I described how I went about deciding to buy the entire first album by She & Him. Well, I love all of the songs. I know all of the words. So I bought Volume 2. I love all of the songs. I know most of the words. I've decided Zooey Deschanel is one of my favorite actresses/singers. Just yesterday, I discovered that she's contributing several songs to the Winnie the Pooh soundtrack. I pre-ordered the soundtrack from Amazon. Oh, and I ordered the piano sheet music for all of the songs from Volume One so I can learn how to play them just for kicks and giggles. It's official. I have a problem.

Oh and don't judge me for googling and you-tube-ing Winnie the Pooh clips all day yesterday. It's not like I'm about be 22 years old on Thursday. Oh wait . . .

Fine. You can judge me. I don't care. I'm young at heart, okay?!

I'm not dressing up as Hermione for the midnight showing of Harry Potter this year.

See, I'm grown-up!!

We're just making Harry Potter t-shirts.

:)

Life is good.