Assignment 5: Playlist

#1, I Kissed a Girl: This is such an obnoxious song, but I have to admit, it was the first thing I thought of when I read this assignment. On the one hand it presents a hilariously casual view of lesbian encounters, with lines like “You're my experimental game” and “I hope my boyfriend don't mind it”. On the other hand, though, it also seems to have some pro-girl and pro-lesbianism undertones, particularly with the lines “Us girls we are so magical/Soft skin, red lips, so kissable/Hard to resist so touchable/Too good to deny it.”

#2 & 3, Marry Me and Miss Lucy: Emilie Autumn is such a stereotypically bitter feminist that I just had to include two of her songs. Marry Me is said to be about Catherine Howard, who was married to King Henry VIII against her will because the marriage increased her family’s power and because there were rumors that she was pregnant with his child. Miss Lucy is about the treatment of women in insane asylums in the 1800’s; in many cases these women were completely sane and had been institutionalized for a variety of reasons from disobedience to menopause.

#4, Mariella: The girl in this song is clearly her own person. She is strong, smart and independent, and would rather have no friends at all and live ‘in her own world’ than try to fit in. I think today’s generation of girls could use more songs like this.

#5, Wet Blanket: A tribute to the ultimate jerk boyfriend. The man described in this song is sort of an everyman of patriarchy—so much so that it would almost be funny, if I hadn’t seen women in relationships like this before.

#6, Rebel Girl: I didn’t think this playlist would be complete without a riot grrrl song. The blatant references to lesbianism give it a similar shock value to I Kissed a Girl, though toned down a bit (it is, after all, circa 1993); instead the focus is more on the rebellious spirit of the singer’s idol.

xXx

The ‘beauty myth’ is a complicated problem. Naomi Wolf talks about a “prowoman definition of beauty” as including avoiding pain, and to me that means working to be as healthy as possible. But is health really a good way to define beauty? What about those who were born with unavoidable health problems; surely they can be beautiful too? Also, the beauty myth includes more than just the state of your body; it also includes how you decorate it. As Linda M. Scott points out, the decoration of one’s body is a basic human tendency, one that is found in cultures all around the world. Perhaps it is just human nature to judge people based on how they decorate themselves—how a person looks is, after all, generally the first thing we learn about them.

Bell hooks advises feminists to take back the fashion industry, but I doubt that any one fashion could ever define all women everywhere. Instead, I think the best thing we can do is seek to define our own beauty for ourselves, and then respect the ways in which other women chose to define their beauty. This is easier said than done, because how can we create a definition of beauty that isn’t influenced by the culture we live in when we’ve been exposed to that culture all our lives?

Tricky business…

Assignment 4: Gender and Career & Boys and Girls

Although I have some vague idea that I’d like to become a professor ‘when I grow up’, the question of what exactly I would teach is still very much up in the air. I haven’t been able to narrow my area of interest within my major down any further than Japanese culture; within that culture, I’m interested in religion, pop culture, and issues of race and gender. I think many of the courses in the Women’s Studies program would apply, from general courses on women’s issues such as Body Image VS. Reality (WS 3413) and Women’s Health (WS 4243) to courses like Women and World Politics (WS 3563) which might deal specifically with women’s issues in other parts of the world. I am also interested in the course Motherhood in Society (WS 3810); I think this sounds like a useful course for any woman who wants to have both a career and a family.

I have only had two part-time jobs so far, but both of them have been somewhat stereotypical “female” jobs, and most of my coworkers were women. In high school I had a secretarial-type job at OU’s Center for Independent and Distance Learning. The majority of other office workers and teachers with whom I worked were older women—out of the four administrators who I regularly interacted with, though, only one was a woman. While it was usually a very friendly place to work and the office workers were treated with respect, I can’t believe that this was just a coincidence. Now I work at the History of Science department at OU’s library; as it is a library job, it’s probably not surprising that nearly all of my coworkers and even my boss are women. However, administration of the department is split between a woman and a man.

xxx

For the most part, I found that this week’s chapters from Feminism is for Everybody simply reaffirmed my beliefs. It is clear to me that feminism has to be about more than making women ‘equal’ to men—it must also be about making women equal to each other. I don’t think you can support equal rights for women without supporting gay rights or equal rights for members of under-privileged classes or minority races, religions and ethnicities—because don’t women exist in all these groups? In fact—at the risk of being labeled a dangerous liberal nut—I would even go so far as to say that I don’t see why women deserve equal rights any more or less than any other group of under-privileged human beings…

The other two readings were both eye-openers for me. The Will to Change filled me with this crazy urge to have a little boy of my own just so that maybe I could raise him to ‘not’ be utterly twisted and miserable, and Reviving Ophelia shocked me into realizing just how much I’ve changed since I was nine years old. As a child I was tomboyish, overconfident, disobedient, intensely creative… I am none of these things now, but I can hardly remember anymore why the change occurred, or when. I wonder if all my classmates have changed as much as I have in the past ten years?

Assignment 3: Iron Jawed Angels

I was fascinated to learn how much women had to go through to gain the right to vote. It is a right that I have always been able to take for granted, just one of the many privileges I gained on turning 18—and yet it is a right that women have had for less than 90 years. Although it has been such a short time since then, some of the ways portrayed in the movie in which women were treated are incomprehensible to me—like how Senator Leighton cuts off his wife’s allowance exactly as if she is a disobedient child, or the blatantly false charge under which the protesting suffragettes are arrested, or most of all the inhumane force feeding of the women who went on hunger strikes.

The women experience various tensions amongst themselves in the course of the film—racial and generational tensions, and tension over whether it would be necessary to sacrifice romantic relationships for the sake of the cause. Alice Paul eventually leaves the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which is run by an older generation of feminists, and forms her own party, and she also chooses not to become romantically involved with Weissman. But her stubbornness eventually pays off; when news is leaked to the public of how the suffragettes are treated in prison, popular opinion turns in their favor, and the 19th amendment is finally passed in 1920.

xxx

Especially in light of the film, the statistic presented in chapter 4 for The F Word that only 35 percent of women ages 18 to 24 voted in the 2000 presidential election is downright depressing. At first glance it doesn’t seem to make any sense, especially when these young women have so many issues they feel strongly about—from equal pay to reproductive rights to violence against women—and yet I can sympathize with the sense of dissatisfaction one student mentions. Although I did vote in the 2008 presidential election, the first election for which I was old enough, I can’t help but feel a little cynical about the whole process. It’s not just that I don’t feel like my vote counts for much—more than that, I’ve heard about so much corruption in the government over the years that I have a hard time putting my faith in any politician. I will continue to exercise my right to vote but, like so many other women of my generation, I feel like there are other ways to make a difference which are also extremely important and should not be ignored.

Assignment 2: Interview

For this assignment I decided to interview my mom, Janet Croft. At 47 years old she is a tenured faculty at the University of Oklahoma, the editor of Mythlore (a scholarly journal) and Oklahoma Librarian, and the author of several books, and I’ve always looked up to her as a good example of what a woman can accomplish in this world.

When I asked how she experienced gender growing up, she said: “There was perhaps more of an expectation that girls would go into certain careers and not others, and that girls would adhere to certain standards of femininity, like not asking boys for a date or dressing up more for school. We still had Sadie Hawkins Day in high school, the one day when girls were supposed to ask boys out! On the other hand, I was among the first group of girls in my high school that was allowed to take the intro to shop sequence -- metal working, wood working, and drafting -- and I don't think we were treated that much different from the boys... At the same time boys were allowed to take the intro to home ec sequence -- cooking, sewing, family management -- and I don't recall much in the way of tension except in some of the family management discussions. I think I went to high school at a time when things were in a state of major flux, and roles were becoming less rigid.” About her experiences with gender today, she added, “I haven't encountered much trouble in my professional career; librarianship is a female-dominated profession, and as far as the literary criticism goes, no one seemed to find it the least bit odd that my first book dealt with war.”

When I asked her about her history with feminism, she revealed that while she once joined a campus pro-choice group, she never voted while she was in college. But she went on to say that “equal pay and reproductive choice are major issues for me now, and I vote in federal and state elections.” I asked her if she thought that it was important for concerned feminists today to vote, and she said: “It's important for everyone to vote, but I wouldn't mind if the people who want to lock women into traditional roles would just stay home on election day! That said, I think one has to look at a range of issues; voting only based on "feminist" issues may not be the best way to bring about a just and equitable society. Though it's hard to picture such a society without a concern for feminist issues… still, you can't always get everything at once.” I thought this was an interesting (and perhaps characteristically second-wave) contrast to Bitch editor Jervis’s opinion that “Anti-poverty work, international human-rights work, and labor are all issues that are feminist issues, but they aren’t all about women,” (Rowe-Finkbeiner 103).

When I asked her to define feminism, she responded that “the classic definition is still the best—the radical notion that women are people, too.” She acknowledged, however, that the idea of feminism has changed since she was growing up, saying, “I think there is less expectation that you have to adhere to certain rules to be a feminist—that you have to burn your bra and never wear makeup or skirts and hate all men, or that you have to act like men to get ahead in the world. There's a lot more openness and variety now. I also get the impression there is less tension between lesbian feminists and heterosexual feminists now that there was in the sixties and seventies. On the other hand, there are too many young women who reject the term feminist and don't realize the debt they owe to the people who earned them the opportunities they have today.”

I agree with my mother that I’ve had more opportunities growing up than she did. When I was in high school, it would’ve been unheard of for me to be discouraged from taking a class based solely on my gender—in fact, because I was good at math, I was encouraged to pursue a college degree in mathematics or a ‘hard’ science. I’ve grown up in a time when it’s perfectly acceptable for a girl to ask a boy out—in fact, most people would say that it’s perfectly acceptable for a girl to ask a girl out.

Of course, there is still work to be done. At first I had trouble thinking of any one incident in my life that made me conscious of gender—but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’m made conscious of it in little ways every day. There are awkward moments, when boys refuse to go through doors that I’m holding open. There are sorority girls who stare when they think I’m not looking, just because I have short hair and don’t dress like they do. There are ads and magazines and TV shows that I can’t avoid seeing which tell me that I would look so much better if only I could drop 10 or 20 pounds. There are articles by people like Kingsley R. Browne, who tell me that women are more likely than men to give up, that there is no shame in a woman losing to a man, that women ideally achieve high status through their association with high-status men.

There is still work to be done. But how, by whom, and where? I like the third wave’s increased interest in culture (as Bust editor in chief Debbie Stoller says, “Pop culture is as influential on our lives as who is in the White House and laws,” [Rowe-Finkbeiner 94]). I like the idea of reaching out to people and trying to change their opinions through pop culture, rather than forcing our agendas simply by way of having the majority vote. However, in the end I have to agree that it’s still important for women—for everyone—to get out and vote; if pop culture were the final answer, how could Prop 8 have happened in a world that has The L Word?

Enough rambling for now, and I look forward to finally actually having class again,

-Sarah