In Hollywood and the media, fictional women may be stronger than real women. This week, we’ve discovered that Pixar will feature its very first female animated lead character.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/one-female-lead-does-not-a-zeitgeist-make–but-its-a-start-20110826-1jefv.html

So, could this mean the animation industry’s portrayal of women and girls might be changing for the better? Fat chance.

Fictional role models
Celebrities and public personalities shape our views and those of our children more than ever before. In the past, we may have admired a teacher, world leader, politician or scientist. Since the 1970s this focus has shifted to “people” created by the film and media industries. Fictional characters now have a stranglehold on our value systems, and those of our children.

Imaginary people from Carrie Bradshaw and Ally McBeal to Mrs Soprano, Mrs Bartlett and the many women of Mad Men shape adult fashion choices and buying decisions.

Children are influenced in their buying decisions at a very young age. Surely most kids in Western countries have seen a cartoon or animated film by the age of two or three? Who are their early role models? Buzz Lightyear, Power Rangers, Star Wars characters?

Shaping girls’ brains
A study by the Geena Davis Institite in America found that of 122 family films made between 2006 and 2009, only 29.2% of speaking characters were female. An earlier study that covered general release films from 1990 to 2005 discovered that only 28% of speaking characters were female. What’s the message we’re sending to girls?

Animated leading ladies used to be popular. Walt Disney had many female leads -from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – but they were all waiting for a man to save them from their dreary lives and bestow them with a castle full of kids and pretty dresses. Many women still believe they’ll be swept off their feet by Prince Charming. These fairy tale role models are not fair to the fellas either. What man – besides maybe a lead male ballet dancer – could look good in those tights and actually sweep a lady off her feet?

Media complicity
Film and animation are from the make-believe world but the media – the factual kind – also reinforce these stereotypes. Women are bombarded with the “you need a prince and lots of stuff” message in magazines, blogs, tv and radio shows and newspapers because it makes us easy targets for the advertising industry. The advertising industry has traditionally supported the media through ad sales.

We’ve been brainwashed to believe we must have stuff to stay pretty/ slim/ young to attract our prince. How on earth would any man love us without the latest nail polish colour, high heels or hair conditioner? We buy certain magazines so we know what’s in and what’s out. (Have you ever caught your fella reading one of these publications? Are you suddenly more or less attractive to him because your nail polish is “on trend”?)

The ideal woman we see pictured in the daily newspapers is super slim, model-like with perfect hair, teeth, boobs and more. The newspapers think they need this “totty quotient” to sell papers. Apparently the research tells media executives that women want to be like the women pictured and men want to have it off with her. That sells papers.

These fictional role models feed the media, advertising and film industries and those who work in them. But they also feed women and girls a negative image of their opinions, bodies and minds.

So, until we stop holding up fictional creations as role models I’m not convinced that women and girls’ position in society will change. Are you?

Fragments: reflections on 9/11, a decade on

Margaret E. Ward

I don’t really talk about this. To anyone. It’s so incredibly personal. Yet that stifling September day I put on my reporter persona to write about an attack on my city for the Sunday Business Post. I guess writing is easier than talking. You can catch your breath.

Words don’t really belong to the memories. They are shards, images; like pulsing flashes of foreboding from a disaster film.

Scene 1: I’m telling my Dad I’m going downtown – towards the towers – while stuffing an NUJ press card, camera, reporter’s notebook, pens, US passport and builder’s dust mask into a backpack. In the background, the news is replaying the first plane crashing into the tower. He’s puzzled. He thinks it’s just a commuter plane. I say:¨“I have to go. This is what I do Dad” even though I’m not really sure I want to leave. Reporter autopilot kicks in.

Scene 2: On the Westside Highway in Manhattan I’m looking south, down a line of empty ambulances, towards a smoking crater where the towers once stood. The place is very familiar. I used to work at the World Financial Centre, just to the right, and got engaged on the river looking out towards the Statue of Liberty. My husband in Dublin does not even know I am covering this story. The phones and internet are down. I have no idea how many of my friends, family, neighbours or former colleagues are alive. I start looking for emergency personnel to interview. You can smell the burning. The smoke tumbles, head over heels, towards the river.

Scene 3: As freckle-faced Shannon, a paramedic from New Orleans, tells me that they have nothing to do and a fellow journalist gets confirmation that the morgue has no bodies, I see a film poster in the distance. Collateral Damage is an Arnold Schwarzenegger film showing a plane flying into a building. It’s due for release in three weeks.

Scene 4: Police officers are keeping everyone away from the scene. We can’t get any closer but watch the emergency services vehicles going in and out of the scene like ants. Bystanders are cheering and applauding them as they pass. The firemen’s nostrils are black with soot. Everyone outside is ashen with dust and debris. There are makeshift stations for clothes, water and food. Despite the chaos, it’s uncharacteristically quiet. I keep writing notes, taking photos.

The air is so dry. The day is close. I remove the builder’s mask to pause to drink water. I’ve been through two packs of throat lozenges but I can’t get the taste out my mouth. We are inhaling ashes. We are inhaling the souls of the dead.

Scene 5: The nightmares have nothing to do with the city. I am on the planes. I can’t breathe again. My throat is being cut by men with bloodied knives who hate me because I am American, a westerner, because there is a fatwa on our heads from Osama Bin Laden. I wonder where I left my Irish passport. The screen goes blank.

*****
Margaret E. Ward is a financial journalist from New York who has lived in Dublin since 1995. In 2001, she was visiting her Irish father in New York. More than 70 people from her hometown, a Wall Street commuter town, died that day and many former colleagues witnessed bodies hitting the pavement beneath the towers or were injured themselves. She has never been back to Ground Zero.

Profile: Entrepreneur Dr George G. Moore
By Margaret E. Ward

When Louth business tycoon George Moore was just a boy in Pearse Park, Dundalk a local priest was inspired by a Cooley legend to launch a hurling competition. In the epic Táin Bó Cuailgne the Irish warrior Cúchulainn, who was then a boy called Setanta, set out from his home by hitting his sliotar before him and then running ahead at great speed to catch it.

In 1961, the first Poc Fada distance hurling competition took place over a 5 km course in the Cooley Mountains. Contestants then, as now, must hit the sliotar as far as possible and the person who finishes the course in the fewest pucks wins.

Growing up with legendary competitions like that, perhaps it’s no surprise that Dr. George G. Moore’s life has gone further, faster, than anyone in Dundalk might reasonably have expected.

Although the 60-year old entrepreneur now spends most of his days working as Chairman and Chief Executive of his Washington-DC based marketing software company TargusInfo, overseeing his investment in The Belleek Group and dabbling in a few angel investments, his wee county origins are still important to him.

The scholarship kid
Dr Moore came from humble beginnings. “We owned nothing and had nothing so we had only one way to go,” he says.

As a young man, he worked hard at school and says academic scholarships played a key part in shaping his future. “If I did not have that I’d probably be a bank teller in Dundalk. It was significant. I was a scholarship kid all growing up. I was in a grammar school and won a scholarship to UCD.”

At University College Dublin, he studied economics and commerce and he was mentored by Professor Tony Cunningham and John Teeling [Cooley Distillery]. Thanks to another scholarship, this time to George Washington University, Moore found himself in America’s political power centre, Washington, DC. Although the 1970s were one of the most turbulent times in American history, the newly married young Irishman kept his head down and quickly completed a PhD.

After graduation, he and his wife Angela sought their fortune on the west coast. He worked for California Analysis Centers Inc (CACI) International, a good training ground for entrepreneurs.

In 1983, he started at National Decision Systems (NDS) in San Diego, a marketing software company. The innovative company did extremely well and seven years later Dr. Moore sold it to Equifax for more than $100m.

Shaping an empire: from software to pottery
Twenty-one years on, Dr. Moore’s business interests range from high-tech software to traditional pottery reflecting both the new and old images of Ireland abroad.

How did it all come about? The proceeds of the sale of NDS became Dr Moore’s springboard into a number of businesses. It was also fortuitous for struggling County Fermanagh-based Belleek Pottery Limited. Moore was already running a new software company but he was never one to shy away from a challenge. Besides, he thought he could turn Belleek around quickly and flip it for a profit. He bought the legendary pottery producer for an estimated $6.1 million.

Since then, Belleek has rebranded from the ornamental porcelain with shamrocks displayed by your granny to everyday pottery through its Belleek Living range. The company, which is overseen by a Fermanagh-based executive team, has also expanded to more than 10 times its original size.

Things are ramping up at Belleek in 2011 with a new US-based sales and distribution operation just outside Washington DC in northern Virginia. The Belleek Group, which comprises Belleek Pottery, Galway Crystal and Aynsley China, has estimated sales turnover of $5 million a year. The company is projecting a15 per cent growth in sales over the next three years.

TargusInfo is also once again expanding its headquarters and offerings in Vienna, Virginia. Although Moore sold a percentage of Targus to a private equity firm a few years ago he remains in charge and seems to have little taste for selling it and running it as a public company. “I’m gonna run it the way I think it should be run. If shareholders want to run it they should choose a different CEO.”

Looking for the next big idea
His advice for anyone looking to start their own company? “When I started my own companies, I never took on debt. I always used customer money. Before you go, find customers who will buy your product or service. Do not rely on ‘build it and they will come’. Too many times people have an idea, go to VC, built the company then try to find the customer. I would say idea and customer first.”

Meanwhile, the self-confessed explorer keeps looking for new things to play with or fix. “For me, there are shades of grey between working and relaxing. I have a number of investments that I really enjoy.”
His latest business baby, called Eades, is a single malt whiskey producer based in Charlottesville, Virginia. “We’re producing a scotch style boutique whisky in the US. It will mirror the styles of Scotland and Ireland,” says Moore.

There’s no place like home
Dr Moore had a few landmark events earlier this year: he turned 60 and became a grandfather. His two daughters and one son have all completed their education; the youngest just graduated with a degree in medicine from UCD.

The family has been in the US for the last four decades but Carlingford, where they have a second home, remains the place they choose when they want a break.

“For the last 30 years, we’ve always come back to Ireland. We come five or six times a year for a couple of weeks. The US is home ─ it’s where our kids live ─ but when we come home to Ireland I’m not sure we ever left,” he said.

Cúchulainn would be proud.

***
[Sidebar 1]
A day in the life
Rising time:
Moore is both an early bird and a night owl. “I’m up at 6.15am. I like to get up and get going. I’m in the office by 8am.

Turning off the lights:
“On average, I like to go to bed at 11pm…I sleep seven to eight hours if I can get them.”

On the way to work:
He might use his iPad to read the newspapers

Relaxation:
Swimming in a pool or walking in the mountains

Reading material:
Moore likes popular novels by detail-oriented authors such as Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Bill Flynn.

Something you might expect:
He has a knack for anything mechanical and likes to figure out how it all works.

Something that might surprise you:
Moore is developing a single malt scotch whiskey business in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Favourite quote…
“Do what you love and love what you do” If you don’t like what you’re doing, do something else.

Advice for students:
Study the hard sciences if you can. “In all developed economies we’ve seen a trend of graduates going into business and law. We need to make sure there is a balance between hard science and business. The cross-over between those two disciplines is where all economies have grown.”

[Sidebar 2]
By the numbers…
TargusInfo, a privately held company, had an estimated value of €200 million in 2005. The company employs close to 500 people in 13 offices.

Belleek was purchased for around $6.1 million in 1990. Today the combined Belleek Group has estimated sales of $5 million a year.

Personal net worth. According to The Sunday Independent Rich List 2011, Dr George Moore has estimated wealth of €153 million – up €5 million on last year, placing him at number 60 on the list.

Awards
In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him an honorary CBE in recognition of his contribution to Northern Ireland’s economy and his international work supporting Ireland.

He has also been awarded the influential Irish America magazine’s “US Top 100 in Business: 1991-2006″ and University College Dublin’s “Outstanding Alumnus 1991 Award”.

Scholarship funds

In 2009, Moore announced a €100,000 third-level scholarship fund over five years for qualifying students at his alma mater, De la Salle secondary school in Dundalk.

He’s notoriously private but one of Ireland’s best known broadcasters. He works six days a week and spends the seventh day reading or watching classic films. He’s a self-declared geek and bookworm but is considered one of Ireland’s sexiest men.

This Saturday, I’ll be at the Dalkey Book Festival www.dalkeybookfestival.ie interviewing the man behind the microphone… Ryan Tubridy.

We all know him as a broadcaster but few of us know the archive-loving, fact-digging, Kennedy-obsessed man that lies within. At 3pm on June 18th I’ll be chatting to him at the Dalkey Heritage Centre in the style of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” and trying to find out more about Ryan Tubridy, author and archive nerd.

We’ll cover his early life, the first book he ever read, his passion for history, his writing process and we’ll ask him the big question: why on earth would someone who is at the top of his career and works six or seven days a week bother to write a book?

Come join us for a laugh.

My Newstalk interview with highly influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue January 25, 2011.

Part 1

Part 2