The Beauty Blues

This Thanksgiving did more than rob me of my voice. It rattled my confidence.

I was moseying merrily along, my same-weight-as-always self, feeling pretty good. I am running a half-marathon this weekend, and I know I am stronger because of my training over the past four months.

But then, someone I know happened to mention something about my weight and how I don’t look as thin as I did last year. The comment knocked me back a few thousand steps, and I have spent the weekend talking myself out of the “you don’t deserve [fill in the blank] because you’re not thin” cave. The good news is that the incident gives me an opening to talk about the beauty myth.

When it comes to beauty and its stranglehold on women, there’s a lot to write about. You pretty much know the drill: Thin is valued; other is not.

What I learned in class, though, is a theory to understand why. Turns out, some feminists believe there is a relationship between female liberation and female beauty. Here’s the essence: As women have broken through glass ceilings and gained power, images of females have gotten thinner. Women gained power, and eating disorders and cosmetic surgery soared. Women gained power, yet the images of us in magazines look frail. As Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth, there is a “violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement.” We may have left the domestic life behind, but on the way to the office we ran smack dab into the “gaunt, youthful model” that was put in our path to remind us not to get too big for our britches (so to speak).

I am so freakin’ naïve. I never connected the two – that being thin is society’s way of keeping women powerless. I’m not sure I buy the cause and effect, but my gut tells me there something to this ideology.

You don’t need to look far to see what the beauty myth looks like. Virtually every cover of every magazine invites you to join the ranks of the thin. If that's not enough, we have websites like Miss Bimbo where the aim is to be the coolest, most intelligent, talented and happy bimbo in the whole world. (For those of you with kids, it’s Webkinz for women.) At Miss Bimbo you learn that your bimbo's healthy weight is 127.6 lbs. If she strays too much above or below this weight then it affects her happiness.

Unfortunately, it’s all too true. My weight affects my happiness. And I cannot name one good friend who feels differently. While I understand the argument Wolf and others make, for some reason it doesn’t make me feel any better.

Hey You Guys

The Thanksgiving holiday rendered me speechless – literally. I have laryngitis and have lost my voice. That got me thinking about sexist language.

According to those who study feminism, we live in a world where male-based language reinforces a system where women are folded—linguistically speaking—into a male society. According to many feminist scholars, this makes women invisible and turns them into objects.

Sherryl Kleinman, a professor at UNC, writes about this in an article for a rape crisis center newsletter. There are the obvious “man” words, like “fireman” and “freshman” (and all those other words that end in “man” that we tend to stumble over). Then there are what she calls male generics like “manpower,” “man-made lakes,” and “oh, man.” Her point is that when we use these words, we reinforce the reality of a sexist world, and that by being aware of how we use them is an action we all can take right now to start to create a new reality.

In an accompanying article, The Politics of Naming by Dale Spender, we studied how those who hold the power to name influence reality. When one group holds a monopoly on naming, it is able to enforce its bias on everyone. Since men have predominantly controlled language, they have created a sexist reality.

The Bible is a good place to demonstrate this theory. I don’t know about you, but I grew up believing that God is male. While there are many versions of the Bible, ultimately, the men who wrote it created a male God. God could have made women and men equal in his image. But “God the Father” made Adam in his image and Adam “gave birth” to Eve by using his rib (I won’t even get into the issue of man giving birth). There is no doubt that from “the beginning” males play a superior role. The article also points out that not only did Eve come from man, but she is also his downfall. Both male supremacy and the superiority/inferiority dichotomy are deeply embedded in our language.

The pattern is also seen in how we talk about women’s sexuality (or the lack thereof). Here’s one example: A man who frequently enjoys sex is described as being virile and potent. What is a comparable description for a woman who does the same? Nymphomaniac? Baller? Then there are “frigid” and “impotent.” Frigid is defined as failing to become aroused, while impotent is defined as unable to engage in sex. The use of “frigid” makes a woman a non-participant – as in she failed to become aroused when a man tried to arouse her. What if she just didn’t want to?

Male supremacy also carries over into the language of reproductive biology. In The Egg and The Sperm, Emily Martin writes about how scientists describe the remarkable process of men producing hundreds of sperm versus a woman’s degenerating supply of eggs, of which only one is shed during menstruation. Then there are the descriptions of the thrashing and thrusting sperm on a mission that swims through the darkness to penetrate the egg. Like Sleeping Beauty, the egg awaits rescue by the superhero sperm or it will die. In actuality, recent research has found that the sperm’s tail is very weak and that the stickiness of the lining of the egg plays an active part in not only capturing the sperm but judging which one to hang on to. In other words, just like sex itself, reproduction is an equal endeavor. Based on the historical “sperm as aggressor” language of science, it is easier for me to understand how we have a popular culture that glorifies male domination.

What I have learned is that women have an option to reclaim language – either by choosing to not use male generics like “you guys,” or by replacing patriarchal names with ones that reflect a woman’s reality. By doing this, women can be liberated and find their own voices.

I’m going to try to be more aware of this when my own voice returns.

Bad Sex Sucks

Last night on the way home from class, I spied this lone bumper sticker on the pizza delivery car in front of me: Bad Sex Sucks. How ironic that I had just spent over an hour talking about sex trafficking as part of my women’s studies class at UNC. Talk about bad sex!

Here are some sex trafficking stats compiled from the United Nations that you should know about:

• Between 600,000 and 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year


• The estimated total market value of illicit human trafficking is $32 billion


• Approximately 80% of those trafficked are women and girls; up to 50% are minors


• The majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation


• The U.S. is the second highest destination in the world for trafficked women (yet we don’t categorize our status as an offender in the global Trafficking In Persons report card because we give the grades)


• More women come from Russia than any other country, yet women are trafficked into the U.S. from Asia, Central and South America and Eastern Europe


• Trafficked women are sold for about $2,500


• They serve as many a 20 clients per day at the price of about $200 per client
  

Traffickers lure women into this modern-day form of slavery through force, fraud or coercion. They beat, starve, rape and gang rape the women they traffic. In Victor Malarek’s book, The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade (which we read for class), one trafficker states, “You can buy a woman for $10,000 and you can make your money back in a week if she is pretty and young. Then everything else is profit.”

Poverty is one of the many factors that make individuals vulnerable to trafficking. In addition to being drawn in by a promise of a good job in another country, women are sold into slavery by friends and family, kidnapped or are victims of a false marriage proposal.

Many experts agree – the sex trafficking industry is founded on the buying, selling and marketing of the bodies of women and children solely for the sexual pleasure of men. At the same time, men are the purveyors in the industry. Talk about the ultimate slap – women don’t even control the market for their own bodies!

Why? Why is the demand for trafficked women for sex so huge? Why is it that men’s sexual needs are so great that the rights of vulnerable women are violated? Why isn’t there an equally robust global market for male sex slaves?

If you think you know the answer to these questions, I need you to weigh in. We didn’t get very far in our class discussion. We talked about how through Western culture, men are taught that domination of women is the norm. For example, rape is often portrayed as a romantic notion, and power and violence against women are eroticized in our popular culture. In other words, we teach men to dominate women through sex.

I cannot figure out why we put up with this crap. Can you?

For more information about sex trafficking, visit the Polaris Project at:
http://www.polarisproject.org/?gclid=CMqY19eRkZcCFQpjnAod418C_Q

Thinking Outside The Gender

When did you first realize you are heterosexual?

This question may not apply to some of you following this blog. The point in asking is to remind us that we live in a society where sexual attraction is oriented between and among two genders – male and female – and that is considered the norm.

In fact, John Money of Johns Hopkins University, who studied congenital sexual-organ defects, estimated that 4% of births are “intersex.” That is:

• Hermaphrodites (one testicle and one ovary)
• Male pseudohermaphrodites (testes and some female genitalia but no ovaries)
• Female pseudohermaphrodites (ovaries and some male genitalia but not testes)

Based on the number of followers of this blog, that means one of you could be sporting a vagina and a penis!

Are you uncomfortable or intrigued?

If it’s the former, don’t worry. Our medical community is pretty set on “saving” intersex babies from a “life of misery.” Doctors use their “bio-power” to catch these “mistakes” at birth, surgically correct them and assign gender. Lord knows, we would not want any confusion on the birth certificates.

In her article, The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough, Anne Fausto-Sterling, imagines a more Utopian society where we would permit ambiguity about sexual difference in our culture. She acknowledges that raising intersex children in our current culture would be very difficult.

Next time you start to automatically check the “F” or “M” box on a form (especially when it is completely irrelevant), take the opportunity to think outside the gender box. Or maybe just write “who cares.”

Burn Baby Burn

A friend of mine said the other day, “Isn’t it amazing when you take a women’s studies class for the first time.”

Sure is. You get to learn things like this: They did not burn their bras.

One of the outcomes of consciousness-raising sessions in the 1960s was “zap actions” to bring attention to women’s issues. One of these actions was the 1968 protest of the Miss America Pageant. The demonstration was the idea of Carol Hanisch, the woman who also coined the term “the personal is political.”

The goal of the protest was to bring attention to women being viewed as objects to counter the social conventions of beauty and how it oppresses women (yes, we were talking about that 40 years ago as well). Outside the pageant hall, women discarded their bras into trash cans, but never set them on fire. (One article I read said the protesters intended to burn their bras but could not due to fire safety codes.)

Ultimately, Hanisch was disappointed with the event, because the media frenzy that ensued depicted a protest by women against women, instead of a protest against a cultural structure that oppressed them. Yet, the demonstration had value – it was a high profile event that introduced many to the women’s liberation movement.

As a so-called feminist, I am slightly embarrassed I spent a good part of my 46 years believing that women burned their bras. Though I know now it is one of the myths intended to denigrate feminists, I liked the idea of women heating things by lighting a fire under the issues. In fact, I think we could use a little more of that kind of radical zap action these days.

Given the number of female broadcasters in the media, how do you think an event like the protest of the Miss America Pageant would be covered today?

If I called you this week and asked you to join me in a bra-burning protest to bring attention to today’s completely unachievable beauty standard, would you join me?

Just Get A Job

Yesterday, President Bush signed a measure to extend unemployment benefits by at least 7 weeks in every state and for 13 weeks in states with an unemployment rate of at least 6%. This news came on the same day that the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the number of people filing for unemployment insurance has reached a 16-year high.

Now might be a good time to talk about welfare – that aid given to lazy folks who milk the federal government coffers because they don’t want to “get a job.”

Former welfare recipient and journalist Rita Henley-Jensen writes in her article Exploding the Stereotypes: Welfare that welfare mothers “are a lightening rod for race hatred, class prejudice and misogyny.” Henley-Jensen also states that most often when one hears “welfare mother” the listener hears “black welfare mother.”

Myths about welfare recipients are rampant. Here’s some of what I’ve learned to debunk them:

• As with other women’s issues, poverty is often viewed as an individual problem (lack of responsibility) or a social issue rather than an economic issue. Actually, poverty comes about because of low wages. When rates fall, they fall for all workers, but the largest losses most often hit the lowest paid workers.
• Children (not African-Americans) are the largest group who receive public assistance. In fact that majority of welfare recipients are white (38%), followed by African-Americans (37%). Other minority groups (Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans) make up 25%. However, African-Americans are disproportionately represented on public assistance because they are only 12% of the population.
• To learn more about other commonly held beliefs about welfare recipients, read here: http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/myths.html

In 1996, significant changes were made to the nation’s welfare laws. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC was a 61-year-old cash assistance program that was passed in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act. TANF is a block grant which requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance.

Critics cite a few problems with the 1996 reform – called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

• Giving power to the states eliminated a national standard by which to implement the reform measures. Now, individual states, not the federal government, set income eligibility levels for TANF.
• By requiring that 50% of welfare recipients spend 30 hours in “work-related” activities, societal factors that may perpetuate unemployment (inadequate education, transportation, child care, and mental health problems) are ignored.
• The five-year lifetime limit for receipt of TANF is too short and doesn’t take into account the time in which an individual is actually working while receiving the benefits.
• Learn more here: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguide_welfare_facts

Finally, many believe that any welfare legislation has to consider the particular needs of recipients who are victims of domestic violence (there is a high level of domestic violence among TANF recipients). Abusive partners can sabotage women’s efforts to become more financially self-sufficient by preventing women from working, attending interviews, or studying. I learned this and more here: http://endabuse.org/resources/facts/Welfare.pdf

There are a number of things we can do to improve conditions for the working poor. The first of which is to provide accurate information that dispels welfare myths. I admit, I used to think it was a “Black Thing.” And I have thought, “Why can’t these people get jobs?” Not only do I now know more. I know better.

Let's Get This Party Started

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was ushered into office in large part due to women voters. Sound familiar?

After he was elected, Kennedy created the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW). It was the first federal body established to examine women’s issues. On one hand, the PCSW reinvigorated the discussion about women's rights – that these issues were worthy of political debate and public policy-making.

But, as with most politics, it wasn’t that simple. The PCSW was actually set up as a compromise measure – a method to placate women’s rights advocates who might alienate Kennedy’s labor base by bringing up the Equal Rights Amendment.

The bad news: Women settled for a commission to study “our” issues. The good news: The PCSW report, released three years later, addressed a cross section of issues impacting women (workplace issues, guardianship for children, tax deductions for daycare). Many believe it was the spark for the rebirth of feminism in the 1960s – the second wave of feminism as it is called. The report’s findings served as the launch pad for the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (abolishing wage differentials based on sex) and called attention to the lack of oversight from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on sex discrimination issues. As a result of the report, Kennedy passed federal funds for day care for working mothers. Finally, it eventually spawned several new women’s advocacy groups, including the National Organization for Women.

It’s been 45 years since the PCSW issued its report and 18 days since women helped to elect another Democratic president – one with the most ambitious work-family agenda in history.

All I can say is, “Let’s get this party started.”

In A Perfect World

Let’s pretend:

• The economic crisis is solved and the economy is stable.
• The ozone layer is healed and 84% of drivers use hybrid vehicles.
• Harry Potter has put Bin Laden and his followers in Azkaban.
• We have determined that Santa owns the North Pole – not Russia – no matter whose flag sits under all that ice (that is no longer melting).
• Teaching in public schools is the most sought after profession.
• Racism is a new NASCAR computer game.
• We agree that marriage is historically a social construction and that the benefits associated with it should apply to all

What’s left? Oh crap, we forgot about women’s issues.

• Equal pay
• Sex discrimination
• Welfare
• Healthcare
• Childcare
• Domestic violence
• Violence against women
• Ageism
• Poverty
• Anorexia
• Compensation and tax benefits for stay-at-home caregivers
• Reproductive rights
• Sex trafficking

"The personal is political” is one of the most important ideas generated from contemporary feminism. It was coined by Carol Hanisch, a radical feminist, as a result of consciousness raising sessions in the late 1960s. Hanisch argued that what happens in our private/personal lives is a part of something much larger – the political.

Most often, the topics on the above laundry list are viewed as the personal problems of individuals. Yet:

• Men commit over 99% of rape, and the overwhelming majority of violence against women is committed by men (this is not a woman’s issue!)
• Elderly women are highly vulnerable to poverty. On average, they are likely to live 13 or 14 years longer than their male partners. And they are more likely than men to run out of resources in late life.
• Sex trafficking is one of the most globalized markets in the world today and the third most profitable business for organized crime, behind drugs and arms.

In a perfect world, there would be space to confront “women’s issues.” But we never will live in a perfect world. Hanisch argued that our ability to control our own lives is limited by the environment in which we live. She said we should take collective action for a collective solution. Don’t kid yourself. Women may be able to collectively elect a president, but when it comes to taking collective action to improve the quality of life in America, we’re still in a position where women have to convince a predominantly white male political leadership system that “our” issues are important and deserve collective attention. In that sense, we’re still asking for the right to vote.

Troublemaker

To borrow a phrase from Oprah – This I know for sure: I am not a radical feminist. But I can’t decide if it’s because I don’t have the guts to act out or if it’s because there is no nationally organized venue, protest, march, parade in which I can take part. Would I step up to the radical plate if the cause was good enough? Would I use money from my own pocket, leave the comfort of my home and my children to join in – to take a stand? Would I be willing to be arrested?

Here’s the extent of my radical gestures thus far: I have four bumper stickers on my van – two are in support of Obama. The others state that I did not vote for Bush. I attribute the key scratch down the side of my vehicle to the latter.

The truth is that without radical leaders, it would have taken longer than the 88+ years for women to win the right to vote. I’m speaking of one in particular – Alice Paul. If you’re wondering if our “an-sisters” did more than march in their dresses and purple sashes – yes.

Alice Paul and her cohort, Lucy Burns, spun off from the National American Women Suffrage Association and created a more radical group – the National Woman’s Party. They had the audacity to petition a war-time president (Woodrow Wilson). It was the first political protest to picket the White House. For their act of free speech, they and others were arrested on charges of obstructing traffic and thrown into the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

Alice Paul was tortured. She went on a hunger strike. She was moved to the psychiatric ward and force-fed raw eggs through a tube jammed down her throat.

In January, 1918, after pressure from the press about the treatment of Paul and others, Wilson announced that women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure" and urged Congress to pass the legislation.

It worked – barely. It came down to one vote from 24-year-old Harry Burns, a Republican Legislator from the state of Tennessee, but the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed on August 18, 1920, and secured the vote for women.

Alice Paul and her followers’ radical approach (demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, picketing, suffrage watch, fires, and hunger strikes) is documented in the HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels, which features Hilary Swank and Anjelica Huston. It’s a must see in my book (even though some of the torture scenes are hard to watch). If you can’t get to it, then check out these photographs on HBO’s site at http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/history/.

Based on the recent Prop 8 initiatives, it appears the protests du jour are for gay and lesbian rights. But I wouldn’t let the absence of women’s rights parades fool us into believing we’re on equal footing with our male counterparts. Far from it. Earning 76 cents on the dollar might not make us angry enough to pour into the streets, arm-and-arm with banners held high. But we do need to find something to rally around.

I know that Alice Paul would not want us to give up.

Is it just me?

Welcome to My So-Called Feminist Life. So what exactly is this?

1. An attempt to use new technology to raise some consciousness
2. A “feminist action” descended from the women’s movement in the 60s and 70s when women’s voices shined a light on oppression and ushered in changes we had not seen since 1920 when we secured the right to vote
3. The means by which 25 percent of my grade will be determined in the women’s studies class I am taking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

All of the above. This blog is a way to document key learnings from that class in the spirit of virtual consciousness-raising. My professor believes that feminism is not just about learning – it’s about action.

I am not an expert on women’s issues, and I am by no means a scholar. I am a 46-year-old mother of two young children. I am married. I chose to take this course because, while I consider myself a feminist, I didn’t really have much knowledge to back it up. The best I could do was to argue equal rights were “fair.” In addition, I hoped to:

• Expand my base of knowledge about feminism in order to be able to articulate the challenges – and solutions – to today’s women’s issues
• Give myself the freedom to express my views without being concerned by those who roll their eyes at my arguments for women’s rights
• Educate my daughter – to instill in her a sense of gratitude for the women who have gone before her to pave her way to greatness and goodness
• Discover more about myself

At the end of this semester, I will have read more than 80 articles and two books and seen hours of films and documentaries. In addition to an historical review of the first and second waves of feminism, we have discussed the relationship between hip-hop music and misogyny, “queer parenting,” ageism, the beauty myth and anorexia, domestic violence and rape, marriage and motherhood, women in the workplace and politics, and, of course, reproductive rights.

When I entered this class, I had a rookie’s definition of feminism: The right to be who you are in the world regardless of gender, and the right to make decisions freely. So far, I haven’t changed my definition. I have, however, been changed by what I have learned. I am grateful for the opportunity to step outside my everyday routine to explore issues, even if I don’t agree with all of the ideologies. My feminist action is first and foremost a selfish act. I need to meet my curriculum requirement and, by writing just a little about what I have learned, I can further cement and integrate knowledge. But the “action” part of this effort also entails a desire to broaden awareness among an audience that, like me, may not be actively discussing women’s issues.