That's an interesting point of view. Being only in my early twenties, fresh out of college and just on the horizon that overlooks what it is in life I want, I can't imagine fitting children into my life at all. In fact, I feel that if I were to become pregnant it would be the worst possible thing that could happen to me. I actually have nightmares about becoming pregnant. It's hard for me to imagine ever possessing that motherly desire. However, after watching the first two episodes of FLYING it got me thinking that in our "Modern Western Society" it seems we are maturing more rapidly in every sense but the will to parent or child bear. Why could this be? p.s. How brave is Jennifer? I can't imagine laying bare my soul like that for millions to see...

I'm so glad everything worked out for you! Seems like you got the best of both worlds: a full life AND children! You know what was really great about Flying: it brought up SO many relevant topics.. It really made me think about what I want from my life, and where having a family comes in, if at all! And it got me and my partner thinking and talking about what we want and whether or not our ideal futures are compatible. I guess you don't automatically think about things like that at my age, but it's probably time. At 26, just getting into my career, and starting to settle down, it might be important to know things like my partner wants a big family! (We're still in negotiations about that one!)

Thank you so much for the post. I think about it now, how many partners I couldn't see because I was so afraid to be controlled. But I also think about how it is all right for women to be single and how we can have good lives, without or with a man (or woman).

The fact that this is a legitimate question is indicative of our society's immaturity; I find America's female sexuality complex dangerous, considering the early age at which people are inundated with conflicting messages about chastity and promiscuity. In no demographic are words like "whore," "slut," and "skank" more prevalent than early teenagers; in this same demographic, those words are juxtaposed with a word that is used just as frequently - "prude". We equate images of chastity with a women's self-respect, yet we slobber over every jailbait 15-year-old who struts around a stage singing about things that 15-year-olds generally don't have the emotional wherewithal to understand. As people become adults, they may embrace and understand sexuality on a basic and personal level, but their general outlook on the phenomenon is largely informed by immature, confused, and underdeveloped messages that were indoctrinated subliminally upon them at an early age; the vicious cycle perpetuates itself from there.

Honestly, i think both men and women, girls and boys are equally sexual, but somehow we are afraid of young girls sexuality more than anything. My thinking is: it all comes down to the fact that girls (from puberty on) can get pregnant at the drop of a hat -- or to be more accurate, a few swimming sperm. Society is so afraid of that, probably rightfully so, that before the current rise in mass birth control, our birth control was morality itself. Here is where my head starts to spin. Because the "whore" curse was used to stop girls from have sex and getting pregnant before they had a man....

My mom is very similar to yours, it seems. Even though she is younger than yours, only 57, she views me in very much the same light. The frustrating thing is that I haven't even slept with many boys/men at all! Besides coming from a very strict Catholic background, my mother was very shy around men. She has told me that she never got attention from boys growing up and she was always very awkward around them. It's hard for me to believe this because I look at pictures of her from when she was my age and she is absolutely gorgeous! Seriously- thin, blonde, and beautiful! For some reason she had low self esteem or some preconceived notion that men were something to avoid or be reserved around. So when I started having friends that were boys -not even romantic interests- but just merely boy, friends, she totally flipped! I remember in high school if I had friends over to watch television she would storm in the room and turn it off if there was anything slightly sexually suggestive on the TV. It was "improper" to watch in the company of men. Another time I had three boys call me in one night and she said "I must be a slut!" if I was getting so much attention from the opposite sex. She would say that men only wanted one thing from women: "Sex". It was hard to grow up in a house hold like this. I was really confused about men and their intentions because my experiences with my guy friends were great. My mother is old fashioned and set in her ways, but I feel that she is not far off from some of the opinions of people shown in FLYING. I think it comes from her lack of association and normal relationships with men that has skewed her notion of the true nature of ALL men. I see similarities in the judgment of women in cultures that strictly define the limits of man and woman. Women must have little contact with men until they are married, otherwise they are considered to be up to no good.

yep. coming from a young male perspective, the idea of “one man, one camera,” used by Jennifer Fox is inspiring and incredibly empowering. I love being reminded how enriching and liberating travel can really be. "Flying" is well worth the time.

I agree with you casey. The series was a good way to learn more about women and their role in the modern world v. ours. Often times, women are difficult to interpret for men. Jen Fox rids that stereotype in this intimate confessional of her life covering her travels to visit girlfriends around the world. For an autobiographical doc, I have never seen any others cover so many important issues in one project. Good stuff.

I think what really resonated with me is the struggle to decide how to be everything. I feel torn half the time by the demand that I should be tender and be able to talk like a girl, but macho and muscular and able to make a million dollars by the time I am thirty. I often don't know what to do! It is so overwhelming. I can see in FLYING that women struggle with this, but honestly, I don't think it is an issue of gender, I think it is an issue of freedom. We have so many choices, we think we should be everything, but we can't be.

As a man, I am not sure I agree with you. Sometimes I watch my wife with her girlfriends and I envy them -- the way they talk, what they reveal, their physical closeness. Even I think - "I am an open man" – I can never speak like them. my wife asks me to, and I just can't. Even I am a 'liberated man', I was still raised to be a boy and boys don't show their feelings! It's painful sometimes. I feel trapped in the cage of masculinity (which is ironic because Jennifer talks about being trapped in the cage of femininity!).

I think that Jennifer was able to help other women by showing her life this way. I know that after watching the episode last Monday night I felt better about my own complicated life. Somehow, she made me feel that if she could be that confused and still find a way to have such an interesting life, it was alright for me to live in my confusion. I also had two abortions and have always been ashamed of that, even though I believe in abortions. Mindy and Jennifer and her South African friend, all talk about their abortions and it seems OK. I felt better about my own after watching. Thank you Jennifer, if you are reading this for making the film.

I had a long conversation today with my aunt who has been married three times. Two of her husbands died on her and one of them left her for another woman. But even when she was married, she always said the sam thing: Freedom is being able to do what you want, when you want it, and not not having a man tell you what to do. now my aunt is 70 now, so she has always been in marriages where the men dominated her, but now she talks about how great it is to be single and eat what you want, when you want it and to not have to cook for anyone but her self. She says she only felt free when she finally became a widow at age 57.

I just saw the first episodes and for the first time in my life I feel like I was seeing a film that directly exposed what I have been living. I am younger than Jennifer - now 34 - but I could totally relate to everything she was saying! It's strange because I always think of women her age as so much different than me but one of the many things the film did was make me change the way I see age. I guess we all have so much freedom these days, that the issues of what to do as women is hitting many of us the same.

its so interesting you bring that up Red, because i watched the first part with two of my girlfriends. we had heard about the film already last year when it played in new york but we didn't get to go, so we had put it on our calendar to see it when it came on Sundance. anyway we had a big discussion after about the hetero/lesbo issue, but we all felt it spoke to us and we were surprised too. we are waiting to see the rest of the series before final judgement.... we were also wondering how gay men might see it...?

I must say when I thought of making FLYING many years ago (of course then it wasn't called FLYING, I called it "Women and I'), I thought I would find a male filmmaker to make a parallel film about the way men speak and male relationships. I still really want to see a man take up this challenge. I think men has a unique language just as women do -- and I think we don't understand it often any more then men understand women's language. That's shy I always wanted a man to lead me through his world so I could 'see' how it works and the nature of male relationships...

BEIRUT can be purchased at ARAB FILMS.... and LOVE STORY is only available on VHS still. I hope it will come out on dvd soon. Please keep checking our website at www.flyingconfessions.com. There will soon be a notice of it all.

I can't fathom men being revealing in the same manner because of the way men have been socialized. Men tend to internalize things; their special way of communicating could not be captured visibly. We tend to think of self-analysis as more of a private matter; I can't see a lot of men who would be really be willing to let themselves be psycho-analyzed with the world watching.

A film about the special way men speak could only be shown on HBO or Showtime, and only after 11:00 PM.

It spoke to me, and I, too, am a guy. But to be honest, I didn't feel like I was noticing gender for a lot of the film. I know that sounds weird, but what I was really noticing was geography. So many people from such different places, both within and without our country. And they all understood each other. I think it would be overly simplistic to say this is a woman thing - social norms trap people everywhere and nobody is really free. What really struck me was that, despite all of these cultural differences, and the contrasting social circumstances, everyone was able to look each other in the eye and say "I understand". And the camera looked them in the eye too, so we at home could nod our heads and say "I understand". As somebody who is pretty cynical about human behavior, and someone who is worried about the collapse of personal interaction in the world, it was nice to see that somewhere, people from different places were looking each other in the eye and understanding.

I have to say I agree with you, girlboy. I grew up in a family with five sisters and I was the only boy. We didn't do much chatting in my household. To an outside observer, it might have seemed like we weren't open with each other, but we were! We never hid anything from each other, we just didn't like to overanalyze things. We were taught that sometimes things like feelings weren't important in the grand scheme of things - or that they were your own problem and it would be inconsiderate of you to burden others with them. I don't know maybe I am off the mark on this one, but in my experience there is no special communication between women.

Wow, jimmy madison, you are really giving men way too much credit. It has nothing to do with internalizing. Men are just not that interesting. There is nothing to be revealed! Seriously, do you know what it's like to be the only girl in a room full of guys? My boyfriend and I live together, and his loser friends come over all the time. It's a case study in primitive human behavior. They sit around watching TV and talking about which girls they want to "nail" or "bag" (the girls they choose, by the way, are always out of their league). Then they start talking about baseball, and then one of them tells a penis joke, and then another one tells a penis joke built from the previous penis joke, and they build a little penis joke pyramid, and then one of them farts and they all fall on the floor laughing. And you are trying to tell me there is something psychologically complex going on underneath all of that? I'm not sold.

You are off the mark, clinch. There is a special way women communicate and Jennifer captured it - in my experience your sisters would be the exception and not the rule. I think you would be surprised if your sisters watched Flying - I bet you would realize that they have always spoken that language with other women and amongst each other. I don't mean to say you weren't close with your family, but there are different ways of communicating with different people, and I bet they communicated with you in a different way than each other. There are certain feelings that I think are innately female, and we all talk to each other through those channels.

I am thirty. I am a millionaire. And I live a very unhappy life. When you are a kid, you always say you want to be a basketball player, or an astronaut, or a ninja. Nobody when they are five years old says, "I want to be an investment banker." You do well in high school, you go to a good college. You do well in college, you get a high-paying job. You're 23 years old and making 90 g's a year, and you think you are doing well. Then all of a sudden you're 30 and you realize you've done absolutely nothing with your life. You wake up and wonder exactly when you stopped thinking critically about what you really wanted. You wonder why it became important for you to have a couch made from imported Italian leather, or why you need two BMWs, or why it is so necessary that your girlfriend be at least three years younger than you. Why couldn't I just do what Jen is doing? Why can't I just travel and film myself, find out who I am, find who other people are? I think I'm just too far gone.

I think it would be just as fascinating to see a man put on display in the same way Jen put herself on display. I think there is a common man language, but it would really take a man turning the camera on himself to allow it to come out.

I think men tend to get rowdy in a pack mentality, and sure, it can be primitive, but it would be presumptuous to think that is the whole of male behavior. I think two men hanging out together is a lot more civilized than five or four or even three men hanging out together; were a man to undertake a project of the same nature as Jen's I think it would have to focus more on one-on-one interactions between men.

From my experience, I can tell you that it is possible for a woman to be sexual and not be called a whore, but it is in no way under the woman's control. I have seen some relatively chaste women get stuck with the whore stigma, and also plenty of promiscuous women whose sexuality flies under the radar. I think women are pretty much at the mercy of the whims of people around them. Sometimes a very small incident or a comment here or there turns into a whore stigma that never goes away. I'm not really sure how I would deal with it if I was stuck with that kind of stigma.

I think being a free woman means living your life without caring what other people are going to think about how you live it. To me, you can either let yourself be trapped or you can not let yourself be trapped. Because in the long run, what difference does it make what other people think, as long as you know you are doing the right thing.

Cheer up man. I'm an I-Banker too, there is fulfillment in the job. Just know that you only need to deal with money when you are at work, and you don't need to take your work home with you. The world needs people to manage money - if you would like to do something else, you should definitely quit and do something else. If you want to travel and film yourself, I would love to see it happen. But you don't need to define your life according to what you do to put food on the table. I think deep down you probably already know this, but the problems in your life are not coming from your job, they are coming from the way you interact with the world. The happiness you get is the happiness you give. So keep your head up, you are still only 30 and you have your whole life ahead of you.

Right on - freedom is not letting anyone else decide what you are and what you aren't.

My wife and I had our first child when we were a lot younger, we were both 24, and she had to put off her career. She tried to go back to here career after a couple years, but actually just found that she didn't find the career thing as fulfilling as the mom thing, so she quit again and we made some more children. Maybe it's a little different that she was young enough that she wasn't really into her career at that point, but she totally could have pulled off both and just chose to be a mom. Maybe for some people that's a risk you take, that children can make other things seem less fulfilling.

I remember this one really terrible thing that happened to a friend of mine. It was right at the beginning of freshman year in college, and she and a friend had both started dating these two guys who were friends. One night they were in the guys' dorm room and a little drunk and her friend decided to take off her top and just hang around the room topless. One of the guys broke out a video camera and the two girls started talking about sex and blowjobs and other things of that nature to the camera. The friend then got up, still topless, and started dancing. These girls thought they were just making a little funny tape for their boyfriends but then the guys put it on the internet and circulated it to the whole school. The girls were labeled whores everywhere they went - my friend almost transferred and here friend actually did transfer. It was one instance where just one little stupid blown out of proportion incident snowballed into the girls getting a whore label they couldn't shake.

Ha I always choose the bad for you guy that I can't get enough of!

To be a free woman means to have things because you want them, not because you need them. I have a man because I want one, but I don't need one. I have a job because I want one, not because I need one (actually thats not true, at this point in my life I really do need one). And if I decide to have a kid, it will be because I want one, not because i need one.

Well, yeah maybe they interact differently when they are not in a pack, but when are they not in a pack? And aren't some of the best parts of Flying when there are multiple women on the screen, sharing? I don't know, I just don't think it would translate well.

Whoa I can't imagine being so forward thinking about a family and everything. I am not even considering kids until I'm 30. And then, knowing me, it will take me a few years to even get around to it. I mean, it would be hard enough to find a guy I would really want to have kids with (I like my current boyfriend alright but I would NOT want to have his babies!).

Thanks, saltydog, for your words of encouragement. I didn't mean to be a downer, it's just that I think Flying brought up a lot of issues for me about my life, and I have to get them in order.

I don't know... let's be serious, men are not trapped in the same way women are. If nothing else, there is not the same emphasis on looks for men, and the same unrealistic standards they are held to, physically. Face it, there is a lot of everyday bullshit that we don't go through as men that women go through. And how about the whole childbirth thing? It's a lot easier to have a flexible career path without worrying about that. Yeah, everyone is trapped to some extent, but men A LOT less so.

Come on jane, there is a world of men that extends beyond your boyfriend's group of friends. I know a few men who are deeper and more open verbally than any women I know. I may not be very outward emotionally, but I know that my internal processes are indeed very complex (this should in no way imply that I don't find farting and penis jokes absolutely hilarious).

I have to give it up to Patrick - what a trooper. That's real dedication that he has stuck by her. I'm sure she will come to her senses and stick with Patrick, and get rid of Kai. Prove me right, Jen! Everybody wants to see Patrick win!

That's really awful. Those poor girls. I don't understand the cruelty of people sometimes. But that story just goes to show you - it's that easy for people to stick you with that label and then there is no getting around it. And it really had a large impact on their lives! One of them even transferred! I'm sorry for your friend, karma will get the perpetrators if it hasn't already.

I just really don't believe that common language thing works along gender lines. There are different levels of communication - I think a woman will more easily communicate with a man from his town than a woman on the other side of the country.

What I would really like to see is for someone to make a documentary that examines the inability of the special language of women and the special language of men to coincide in a way that lets them understand each other!

What I would really like to see is for someone to make a documentary that examines the inability of the special language of women and the special language of men to coincide in a way that lets them understand each other!

... Dude...

It's whatever a person chooses to make their life about. Not everyone chooses to define their identity so rigidly by basic gender roles, and even those who do won't necessarily use your measuring stick. Most born females will have a vagina, uterus, ovaries, will develop breasts, have XX chromosomes. That's a woman right there. Why should we have to PROVE the equipment works to gain a title that is no less than what we are born to? Nearly all women have the physical capability to bear children. That does not mean we HAVE to. The plumbing lets us gestate and birth the thing, but it's the whole person that has to handle the rearing and frankly, not all people are cut out for that. There may be stronger callings for an individual than reproduction, tasks better suited to their individual talents. We're finally at a point where we can look at our options and make that decision. There is nothing wrong with that and in no way does forgoing procreation make someone 'less' of a woman.

Pat, your music really is so great. You have some serious major league vocal cords! One of the reasons I've really loved watching Flying thus far is because the connection that you and Jen is so radiant on screen - you can see that the two of you are so close and really care about each other. It reminds of me how close I am with my friends! My girlfriends and I happened to be hanging out and found ourselves watching the first two parts a couple weeks ago, and then we made sure to all get together last week to watch the next two. I can't wait to see them all tomorrow to watch the last two! We have so much fun riding the emotional roller coaster with Jen, and I think Jen and all of her friends remind us so much of ourselves, and I bet we are not the only ones! :)

OK - i finally saw the last episode - wow! i hope that my mom can watch the film to see how you and her start to face each other finally. and the way she and your aunt loved your gram into her last breaths was so beautiful. it was really an inspiration to us all about dying and taking car e of our elders - which we will all be sooner or later. the film touched on so many issues i will be digesting for months. i want to tell all my girlfriends. i told one about it an we decides to buy the dvd together so that we could have our own screenings with friends and long discussions! there are so many people i want to watch the film.... thank you Sundance Channel for showing it!

look i don't think the issue is jennifer exposing her life like this. we live in an age of exposure. the phrase 'the age of narcisism was coined in the 80's i believe? no? anyway it is common now for people to tell their real stories on screen and in print. the issue is more if the telling is useful. and i think jennifer's journey was very useful for all of us. why she did it i snot my problem - i appreciate that she did it.

fuck i don't have children and i feel like a woman. that is so retro to think you need a screaming-bottle-sucker to be female!

jmzeiger, I think it is that kind of attitude that enables the perpetuation of problems like abuse, FGM, and honor killings in other places. All Jen has done is bring awareness to these issues; her privileged upbringing is really irrelevant. The assumption that affluent Americans are incapable of maintaining a sound perspective on these issues implies that the issues are not worth considering as universal moral transgressions. Failing to include them in a film about stories of women would be intellectually impotent and would only further isolate their occurrence.

My Dear Sweet Jane, You couldn't imagine my amazement when I saw that someone responded to my post. After all, it's not in the group with the other FLYING blogs, in fact, you, your girls, and me, seem to be tin a world of our own. Great big thanks for your kind words about my pipes. I appreciate that. Don't take this as a plug. If you are curious, there's lot's of my recorded music on the myspace site. The sound is very good, and the songs are all my own. I watched some of the last episode. I wanted to catch my Mikey. He is so gorgeous on camera. That was about 6 years ago. Today he's a father with a fabulous 5 month old baby girl. Some smart woman was going to scoop him up eventually, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. This last televised episode was more difficult than I thought that it would be. Is it a vanity issue? With my dreadlocks gone, and total the mess that the surgery left my face, I don't recognize the woman I'm seeing in that box. She resembles the older women of my family, but.. . Fortunately, due to lot's of exercises, my face is back to being almost symmetrical. Since I dropped a lot of the excess weight, the chins are gone. I believe that the surgery has hastened the normal aging process, and it pisses me off. I haven't been ruminating over these issues, no. This has been the effect of the TV version of Flying, of examining myself so closely. Growing up with a catholic school education, before entering the darkness of the confessional, we were taught that a good child must "examine her conscience." Now, in the darkness of my living room, on the comfort of my sofa, I find myself examining my face, and every single flaw that the brutal honesty of TV forces me to see. I don't like it. The ending of the story makes it look as if everything is swell with my career. Not true. Things have changed radically in the years since I'd been "away." The work isn't there anymore, not like it was pre-2001, which was the year that I checked out. I continue to plug away, and every day I expect a miracle. Doesn't everyone?

I am totally tranfixed. wow. more please

Me too! I was so impressed with the first that I saw of it when she went to India (about over a week ago); and I don't have any idea how many episodes exist because I fell into it by accident when just tuning in to tv that night. I had to miss the next follow up episode so reminded myself that I could catch it this last Saturday at 4pm but again had to miss my date in order to finish Memorial Day weekend food shopping. How many episodes are there? It is insightful to any woman watching it, I think;because this young woman seems so unaware(and possibly we all were that way)of why her personal life is the way that it is, at the same time she is learning such great things about women in other cultures. One would suppose she could apply this opportunity, this insight, toward her own culture and her place in it as a woman and then determine what she is going to do about her life, from all the experience she is gleaning as a traveler? I thought it was very clever to call this,"Flying" because it calls to mind that silly Erica Jung book "Fear of Flying", which apparently everyone at the time of publication thought was a breakthrough for women's "sexual" liberation, as if that was all there was to it in our culture,ha,ha,ha!

A reply to my own post: I watched three hours at least this last Saturday and learned a lot.Surprised to learn her name was the same as a Bavarian priest who had been pastor where I went to school in childhood; although toward the end of episode, we learn that Flying's heroine is Jewish, when they show footage of her grandmother's funeral. This was the most worthwhile of the episodes documenting the death of her grandmother and the tight pattern of relationship among the women as it was passed from one generation to the next. This of course leads in fact, although in the sequence it may follow, to the desire to have a child. Her Swiss boyfriend turned out to be a nicer fellow than my first impression of him. The discussion among the group of Somali women was truly illuminating as to the psychological difficulties of our films' creator; the comparison helped put it all in perspective and be more thoroughly examined. Or, as her German girlfriend clarified for her,"You are stuck at age sixteen".