What feminists are secretly dreaming of...

“Young women – our friend or foe?” I recall Carie Bradshaw asking herself this question in one of the episodes of “Sex and the City”.

Recently, I've been thinking about generation gap between women. It seems like for whatever reason many older women feel threatened by younger women. "Threatened" might be too strong of a word here, but the idea of husbands abandoning their wives for younger women is present in almost every country on the planet. 

I have often witnessed women looking with nostalgia at younger girls… as if those bad hairstyles from their 20s were really something to be missed.  I see the longing for youth in my private life, but I also see the often exaggerated version of it in our stories, TV series and movies. Take fairytale about Snow White for example, or movie “Catwoman”. In so many stories there is an evil women, that is so terrified of losing her beauty and youth that she is ready to harm other, younger women. What we don’t see though is the probability that when Snow White grows to be 40 or 50 she will turn into the same evil women her step mother was.

Are these evil characters to be blamed for their evilness? Of course, we should never kill anyone or harm in any other way. I was thinking should we really blame women for their fear of aging and desperation that many of them feel about inevitable end of their youthful charms?

If you are a woman and you grew up on the same planet as me, you probably feel it on more or less conscious level that the most important thing that a girl can be is “beautiful”. You felt it at school, you felt it during family meetings, on holidays, while reading a magazine, while shopping, while meeting up with your girl friends. You felt that the pretty girls always attract attention first and for that reason, at some point of your life wished you were more beautiful. 

Now, unless you look like a goddess, you can probably agree with some of the above. Looks are not everything, but we all know that in current scenario we can be as successful as we want to be, but our weight, wrinkles or wardrobe will not escape the watchful gazes of our friends, colleagues and family. Positive attention gives illusion of power and for that reason when we feel invisible, we feel somehow powerless. This happens to our moms and grandmas, if we don’t take any action, it will happen to us. Getting old doesn't have to feel bad.

It’s sad that we live in the world that is hammering the image of “perfect beauty” into our heads wherever we go. The images of perfectly skinny, blemishless, young women follow us like a shadow. We all know it, we all feel it. You see, even in the era of Photoshop you can be lucky enough to be born with a body type of a model. It’s rare, but it happens. Plus we have make up, we can cover the occasional pimple and still feel fine, but even make up has its limitations. With all creams, pills, diets, operations and cosmetic procedures, there is no way we can escape our old age, erase all wrinkles, stop our body from going through natural process of aging.

Aging woman is hardly ever a symbol of wisdom, or symbol of anything for that matter, older women are not shown to us on TV or in magazines, they are invisible. Can you recall when was the last time you have seen 60 something women on the news as guest or show host? Women, just like men, have more and more to say as they gain experience with age, yet we don’t hear from them very often. Instead, pretty much all women over 20 are depicted as desperate to turn back the clock and be 20 again. (It’s actually ridiculous that I started this article with quote from fictional 30 year old women who already thought girls in their 20s might be her foe! As if 30 was already old!)

It’s incredibly sad how our culture treats older women, as if they were invisible or not good enough for our eyes. The same with obese women or short women – they are all treated like they are not good enough to be shown in our media. 

For example, it is utterly hypocritical how we look at pregnant women with joy and respect, but as soon as they give birth it’s like they don’t have any excuse for that big post pregnancy belly. All moms are supposed to quickly hit the gym to go back to their pre-baby body asap. Images of post pregnancy celebrities are again feeding us guilt about our body after birth. Internet is full of articles about "how to get your body back", as if women lost something. You gave birth and put on some weight, don’t be lazy or too happy, work that body girl!!! Sweat till you injure your recently torn vagina! One would think that at least mothers that we supposedly respect so much would have some time off from the body guilt game, but noooo…. Happy women who are ok with their body means no good business.

I have two brothers; one is 6 years younger than me. During her last pregnancy, my mom has put on a lot of weight and has been trying to get rid of it since I remember. Her dieting sent me a clear message – something is wrong with my mom’s body. Magazines and TV quickly provided me with the answer. My mom, with her body type, post pregnancy fat and stretch marks is not considered beautiful.

What a shame! After I realized that my perception of beauty is created by images that surround me I noticed how much of it is clearly wrong! The beauty culture that we see today is designed to keep majority of women, me and my mom included, desperate to change their body. Do I have to explain how extremely profitable is keeping women in constant need of magic diet pills, slimming creams and anti –aging creams?

For our own sake, we, women need to redefine beauty. My mom’s body is beautiful. She sacrificed her flat belly, perky breasts and tight vagina for me, for my existence. Isn't it amazing? I am responsible for at least 1/3 of these stretch marks! Looking at her from perspective of gratefulness is amazing. Her body produced my body.

This sentence should have the power to close all generation gap. Older women should be proud, not anxious, looking at younger women – relaxing in the idea that we literally came out of their bodies. And this pride should not be directed only to mothers. Women before me made my amazing life possible. I have tones of opportunities and it’s only thanks to them. They are pioneers who came before us, and they have awful lot to be proud of. My mother gave me my body, but there are countless women that I’m thankful for, because they have fought for me, for my rights that I enjoy so much today.

I’m an atheist and I attach my creation to the fact that my parents fucked, not to divine intervention of any god. There is surely something divine about it, but I prefer to thank my parents for my life, not god. I wish my mom could take full half of the credit for my creation and rejoice in the fact, that my young body is extension of her own body. 

I wish we could slowly create a culture where women take immense pride in growing older. I mean, it’s not easy to get old, just imagine all the stupid things you did when you were in college, or imagine how many people die in car accidents or from heart disease, it’s not as easy to grow old as we think it is… But I digress, where was I….

It isn’t true that feminists dream of dominating men. I am a feminist and one of my biggest feminist fantasies is women celebrating femininity. I want to see more women being supportive of each other. One of the feminist goals is creating society were women are friends, allies; not envious, vicious enemies, fighting for men or those few CEO positions. See, it’s not only about being equal with men, but also about being equal with each other, women to women. Without thinking which one of us is more capable to attract a male based on our beauty or age. “Sisterhood”, this word is so beautiful and yet sounds so… uncomfortable compared to “brotherhood”.

Perhaps dreams of sisterhood are not so uncommon if you look at the appeal of shows about female friendships, like “Sex and The City” or my favorite one, “The Golden Girls”. I have a feeling that we all secretly dream of heaving group of female friends where we could feel fully accepted. We all dream of some kind of women’s club where we could celebrate femininity more often than once, twice a year while choosing prom dress or wedding dress.

The only reason of writing this post was to express my mixed feelings about the way we currently perceive aging women and how women interact with each other. Beauty standards and pressure to be beautiful is disrupting completion of secret feminist “Sisterhood Project" and I dream of the time when we put those standards behind us, giving space to more inclusive and realistic idea of beauty.

Written by Innana

and inspired by "The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolf

WOMEN WORKING - ON THEIR LOOKS

Time to piss off some Ne-Yo fans! Time to prove, that feminist won’t stop moaning until they have it all! ;)

Since we started this month discussing popular movies, why not take a closer look at one popular video? Last time I checked it had over 65 million views and far more likes than dislikes. I’m talking about “Miss Independent” video and song. I guess some of you like it.

Before I come to bitter part, let me write something sweet first. Thanks Mr. Ne-Yo for trying your best to depict working women as desirable date and claiming that you love independent women, because they don’t want shit from you. That is progress from “gold digger” videos and yes, it feels much better to listen to a song about independent women, than “all the bitches love me” stuff. I honestly thank you for showing that man doesn't have to be scared by confident women.

However, the song and video are far from feminist dream, so sorry, I won’t be taking it as my “girl power” anthem.

First of all, how many offices have you seen filled with women who look like super models? I bet loving such a beautiful, independent women isn’t that hard after all. Women shown in the video conform to beauty standards that hardly any women meet, independent women are not exception here. If your secretary was as beautiful as a model, she would most probably become one and then play in Ne-Yo’s video about working women. I’m not saying being a model is not a job. Being a model is making money of beauty and that’s something majority of women don’t do at work. Naomi Wolf, in her book “The Beauty Myth”, calls modeling a “display profession” and describes it's correlation with feminist movement like this:

“Until women’s emancipation, professional beauties were usually anonymous, low in status, unrespectable. The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to display professions: they are held higher and higher above the heads of rising women, for them to emulate.”

Women face enough scrutiny in the work place for their looks and they don’t need any more reinforcement of the idea that they have to be beautiful enough, young enough or stylish enough to be worth of success.

Pressure on women to be beautiful makes them spend their precious time on unimportant tasks like researching what is trendy now, putting on makeup every day, making their hair look perfect, their nails look perfect, their butt look perfect– trying every morning to look elegant, professional, yet feminine. Even listening makes me sick. Biggest question is – for how many jobs out there, knowing what’s trendy is a crucial skill? Men simply take shower, shave, put on their suits and frankly, no one can really tell how many suits they have, because they all look so freaking similar.

Time is not the only thing working women have to waste. They also spent way too much money on beauty maintenance in order to be young for as long as possible and be visible in the work market for as long as possible. Designer clothes, anti aging creams and makeup are not cheap if any of you wondered ;) some say that professional women spend around a third of their salary to preserve their looks. Combined with the fact that average women still earns less than men for doing the same job, only increases the odds of women heaving less savings by the time they retire.

In this context, Ne-Yo’s video does a very good job for fashion and cosmetic industries, and big disservice to independent women. Keeping women’s self-esteem low (and it really cannot be very high if any women compares herself with models) is equivalent with keeping sales of often useless products high. 

Now my favorite part - lyrics. I’m always angry that the first compliment to give women is “you look good” or “you are beautiful”. It simply undermines any success you can achieve as a woman, because first and foremost you have to be beautiful. If you’re not considered pretty, but you are successful/happy, people say you are successful despite being ugly, as if it was a disability. Or they say... well you cannot have everything girl, but at least you’re happy with yourself.... Maybe you are not the most beautiful women on the planet, but hey, you are Secretary of State, not so bad! Ne-Yo’s song doesn't represent anything better, because the fist important thing is:

 “there's somethin about just somethin about the way she's move”.

What if she didn't move so sexily, would she still steal Ne-Yo’s heart?

There is something that puts me off even more than priorities, because those are really not such a big surprise. The secret to why “Miss Independent” is not so revolutionary is hidden in those verses:

“Cause she walk like a boss talk like a boss;

 Cause she move like a boss do what a boss”.

Yeah, she’s not really a boss; she just acts like a boss. Maybe that makes her so sexy? Paying her share of bill on a night out, heaving her own place, being self confident and not really putting him out of his comfort zone of being the true boss?

“She made for a boss only a boss;

Anything less she telling them to get lost”

There is no doubt in the video as to who is the boss in that office. Ne-Yo - the truly blessed man who works among the most beautiful office staff in history of this planet. Boss who has to be appeased since morning - “good morning Ne-Yo :) :) “, “good morning Ne- Yo”, because looking like a super model is not enough in that office to operate the copy machine, you also have to be pleasurable and likable without air of bossiness (licking fingers with sexy gazes at their boss or getting into his personal space are just some of the proposed ways they can achieve that). 

Honestly, evaluating looks he’s giving his employees are for me eligible for sexual harassment lawsuit. Unless of course, he’s official Head of Committee on Cleavage Supervision in his company.

In the world were money and sex appeal are often inextricable it shouldn't be such a big deal that men is confused about what’s so amazing about this girl. Is it her sexy moves, flirtatious eyes or “bills paid on time”? Even he “can't figure it out”.

Just putting it out to you girls that you should realize how deeply embedded beauty standards are in our society and even a song about independent, hard-working women has to feed us info about how we should look. I know, video without super models is not a popular video, so Ne – Yo probably “had no choice” deciding about actors – that’s exactly why I moan about beauty standards!

It is possible to be beautiful and smart, but thanks messages from popular media we began believing that if woman is not pursuing the ultimate goal of being beautiful, she’s lazy and she deserves (inevitable) punishment for not achieving this goal.

I hope you understand by now why those nasty feminists simply can’t be happy with anything or why it is, that “Miss Independent” didn't quite do the job of advertising strong, independent women in my opinion.

To summarize it quickly I would just like to say, that “half marathon” is only half of a marathon, even though it has word “marathon” in its name.

Written by Inanna

Lights! Camera! Action!

Small monologue about movies, Bechdel test, portrayal of women in movies, female representation and feminist criticism.

*Moderate spoiler alert*

I love movies. Who doesn’t. They’re a great entertainment, showing us somebody’s interpretation of reality, including reinforcement of stereotypes, discrimination, inequality…

Wait… what?

Popular movie cultures has a great impact on people’s perception on current affairs and general hierarchy in a society. Have you ever thought about why there is so little positive heroes of other ethnic origins than white? How there is almost never a white person being a sidekick to a black person? How every war movie glorifies main hero soldiers and justifies their actions, while demonizing the enemy and his actions? How popular movies set in third world countries usually concentrates on modern day corruption, deterioration of societal ties and poverty instead of complicated mechanisms that put people in the poverty, caused corruption and destroyed societies? Have you ever wonder how those movies impact on your perception of reality?

Same thing applies to the women in the movies. For some time now I am really conscious about female representation in the popular culture and I check whether the movie passes Bechdel test. Sadly, most of them don’t.

Bechdel test was developed by Liz Wallace, but was named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who featured the test in her comic “Dykes to Watch Out For”. It tests the female portrayal in media, mainly in the movies. To pass Bechdel test, the movie need to fulfil these three wonderfully simple requirements:

1. There has to be at least two women characters (with names).
2. These two women need to talk to each other at some point of the movie.
3. And the conversation need to be about something else than men (or one specific man).

Easy enough, isn’t it? Now think about the most recent movies that you’ve watched and think about these requirements. How many of them passed? How many of them failed?

If most of the movies are not able to fulfil those criteria than there is something wrong with the movie industry, don’t you think? And it’s even not about women being heroes, saving the day, kicking ass or whatever. It’s simple presence of women, when they are something more important to the plot instead of being an unimportant background.

It begs the question, what are those movie showing us? What are they teaching our children? What kind of reality do they create and how does it impact on our society?

Apart from Bechdel test, in those movies which are starring a female protagonists, the construction of strong female characters leaves a lot to be desired. Strength is usually portrayed as ruthlessness that most often is a result of some troubled past ergo women are never strong, they are just good at hiding their weaknesses and emotions. Moreover, many of the female heroes has some daddy issues. And each time, when she finds a man (or gets the man, or even better – has been won by a man) she abandons her strong personality in favour of being mishy mashy girl in love.

But let’s say that the main female protagonist is this strong, assertive and respected person. Did you noticed that most of them are always an exceptionally beautiful and sexualised characters? As if women were not full heroes if they do not show their cleavage. I just love when the female warrior fights entire armies with just few straps of metal covering sexual parts but exposing all of the vital parts.

And apparently most of the normal and all of the fuller women cannot be just that: strong, assertive, respected, successful. One of the few curvy female characters that was enjoyable and funny and desired, was Bridget Jones. But yet again, the whole movie was about her and a guys, so we couldn’t enjoy her iggly wiggly awesomeness independently from the men.

It seems that there is little hope in movies, but there are always animated movies and they are amazingly influential on our youngest population. And in this area I see the light and hope for feminist values. Although most of the animation feature boy heroes, the era for kickass, complicated and well-developed female and girl characters begun. 

First, there was Brave with unruly Merida who got her mom and herself into the trouble and at the end saved the kingdom, together with her mom. And together they deconstructed unfair and ancient marriage traditions.

Then, there is Frozen with Anna and Elsa – two absolutely different personalities and experiences. Elsa, powerful and wise, however always afraid of what she is capable of. Anna, sweet, naïve and hopelessly optimistic. What’s most surprising, is that the movie absolutely smashes the omnipresent “love at the first sight” depiction of relationships and “love conquers all”. Two sisters raise havoc, freeze kingdom, almost die and finally break the “curse” with sisterly love. Girl power all the way! And the "love at first sight" prince turned out to be a total asshat and absolute mistake. And the guy who got the girl is antisocial and has weird relationship with stones and reindeer.

Many feminists praise the emergence of strong female characters and herald the change in modern cinematography. However, what many of us are missing is that most of the animation has been secretly and in a sneaky way feminist in nature. Even with boy heroes and supporting female characters.

How?

Animated movies all this time were slowly and indirectly deconstructing stereotypical gender roles and definitions of masculinity and femininity. After all the princess movies, we had a wide range of different protagonists and much richer female characters, even though they are not leading heroes.

Lion King – Nala regularly kicks Simba’s ass. And he doesn’t mind this much, because he doesn’t see a strong female as a threat to his masculinity.

Mulan – girl who saved China. China! That’s a huuuuge country! And she did that alone. With her wit, egocentric little dragon and unlucky cricket.

Lilo and Stitch – amazing story without the hero and “save the day” plot. Of course Stitch saved Lilo, but it’s hardly a strong man saving a weak princess scenario.

Atlantis – that’s a choice of personalities! We have masculine general, sexy army woman, female mechanic, man with explosives, again kickass princess from ancient land and brainy but hardly masculine scientist, who happens to save the day. And defeats the masculine and strong opponent. Gender equality and deconstruction of gender roles at its best!

Among others, there is favourite animation, How to Train Your Dragon. Again not a female hero movie, but I couldn’t have dreamt about more feminist movie with a boy hero, even if I try. It’s about the boy who is clumsy, non-masculine, quite antisocial and yet he happened to be the hero at the end. We also witness great array of characters and personalities. We have Stoick, the sturdy and hot-headed but otherwise great chief of the village; Astrid the girl who was the bravest, smartest and most-skilled student in the village. We have few other male and female characters who are more in a background, such as fatty dragon specialist kid or weird twins.

In the sequel, we meet Hiccup’s mother, a great woman, with conflicted past and very strong personality. She was brave, powerful and successful in her endeavours. This movie can be acclaimed another feminist animation of the year, however… not all feminists agree. Well, it’s fine, everybody has a right to their own opinion. But some neutral/negative opinions were quite… farfetched. Basically, the main reservation was that Valka (Hiccup’s mommy) didn’t had her moment in the movie. That even though her persona is well-constructed, but isn’t developed properly. And there’s the men that came and saved the day.

I think that’s quite unfair.

I didn’t see any woman in this animation whose character hasn’t been developed properly. I’ve watched with admiration the appearance of this conflicted women, who had a purpose in her life and didn’t know how to reconcile her passion and beliefs with a family who didn’t supported her views. But I also have seen a man, who after 20 years of being left alone to raise his son and thinking that his wife was dead, had no anger in his heart, no blame, no hatred. He could only think about how much he loves his wife and how happy he is to see his family reunited again. That’s all. I think that’s pretty amazing scene.

Article by Gina Luttrell lists 7 moment’s that make How to Train Your Dragon 2 a powerful feminist movie: when the men follow the woman; when the women had power of presence, not brute force; when Valka leads a dragon resistance; when Astrid takes control; when the parents had a healthy (if complicated) relationship;  when the father sacrificed for his son and when Astrid and Hiccup are established as equals.

I could list many more reasons how this movie follows feminists values. For instance, women are fighters; the elder and wise one is a woman; when we find out that Valka did not come back all these years because she was fighting for something she strongly believed in and was very important for her; and again there is no blaming her for abandoning her family.

Furthermore, this movie teaches us a lot about equal and healthy relationships: forgiveness, even if it’s difficult; compassion; need for compromises on both sides; the need for listening to each other; and most importantly that the strongest doesn’t always have to be dominating one. We see that in relationships: father – son; husband – wife; and girlfriend – boyfriend.

What I love most about the Hiccup’s and Astrid relationship is that even though she obviously is the physically stronger one, she acknowledges Hiccup’s weaknesses and allows them to exist. And probably if she wanted, she would save the day ten times over and be back home to do some pushups. But she allows her boyfriend to have his moments, develop his ideas, be the hero. Her support doesn’t rely on leading, but on supporting the independent thinking process of her boyfriend. And as such, she is invaluable part of the process of heroism and hero-making.

I think that’s the part of male – female (or any other) relationships that’s sometimes is missing. We forget that allowing for independence and supporting somebody else’s decisions is extremely important in healthy relationship. And woman supporting a man does not have to assume submissive role, but can offer support that come from strength and intellect, and result in cooperation and mutual appreciation.

Animated movies have a greatest potential for bringing down misogyny and sexism by deconstructing stereotypical gender roles and attributes. I love the idea of complex female characters, but we have to acknowledge that the presence of boy heroes as main roles can also work towards gender equality and propagating feminist values. Because sexism doesn’t only hurts women – it’s harmful to the entire society. And I believe that if we want to bring down misogyny, the process has to start from dismantling stereotypes and boy heroes are doing exactly that. 

Written by Vespertilio