Personally, I've been striving toward equality to empower my fellow women with the desire and opportunity to get boob jobs. Also, cardio strip classes are waaaay more practical than kickboxing. The moon is also made of cheese and Jesus rode a T-Rex to school, which makes me happy.
No?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Mmmm Equality
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12 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
That's just the sort of smear I'd expect from someone indoctrinated by the patriarchy with the idea that hair, celebrities, fashion, and other traditional "women's obsessions" are trivial and shallow!
My haircut is EMPOWERING, Moles. I spend thousands of dollars and endless nights thinking about how much it EMPOWERS me by making me more attractive to dudes!
Before I started obsessing about my hair, I was spending all this time on shallow and trivial "women's obsessions" like world peace, curing cancer, universal healthcare, and improving communication to eliminate stereotypes, racism, and promote gender equality!
But I don't have time for all that now. I have a pole dancing class in a hour (just think, after this, boys will LIKE ME!!!).
Yet my novel still won't be finished.
Hmmmm... funny how that works.
Just like a butch.
This must be why I'm not getting laid.
It also ignores the fact that most women who spend time on their appearance are actually primarily concerned with impressing other women--it's as much or even more about female-female networking and bonding as it is about interacting with the other sex. Just as catcalling is usually about male bonding. Yes, the male-female, female-male dynamic in both those cases does show a clear power structure in favor of the males, but you should not ignore the primary function of same-sex bonding.
(Which, by the way, defeats your theory of "why you're not getting laid." Sorry.)
I'm not buying that pole dancing and boob jobs are about impressing other women.
And aren't we generally looking to intimidate other women in order to attract more male attention?
I don't buy that we're spending money on Botox to break the glass ceiling. I think a lot of our culture's obsessions are about distracting us from actually getting shit done.
So should we likewise discourage men from "metrosexual" pursuits, such as paying attention to their figures and grooming habits and going shopping for slimming clothes?
Call a halt to rampant consumerism, you mean?
It might help with our very American reliance on credit cards.
And I say that as an American who is hip deep in credit card debt. One of the things you do, as a marketer, is make people either hate themselves, dislike themselves, or believe that the only thing that makes them better is your product.
Women are especially vulnerable to this because we're on constant display, and told early on that our greatest wealth, our greatest asset, is our beauty, our ability to look good. It just hits us harder than guys, but guys get it too.
And yeah, I don't think it's always a particularly healthy pasttime when it's a pasttime that becomes an obsession and results in, particularly, mutilation and self-hatred.
I might have liked that card at one point, but lately I have heard those kinds of things used to dismiss what I think are perfectly valid politically and socially aware arguments and the people who make them.
Renegade Evolution is a prime example of this. At first I bristled at her identification as a "feminist expatiate" rather than a feminist, but after reading some of what she had to say about her work and her activism, and then reading some of what some radical feminists were saying about her (much of which bears a strong resemblance to the card and your response to David), I started to understand her decision a whole lot better.
This is not to say that I don't get annoyed when certain things get labeled "feminist" when they are devoid of any kind of real political or social criticism, or even that don't see any merit to any merit in criticizing the trappings of femininity, but I am starting to see this disdain for traditional femininity as just another of the patriarchy's divide-and-conquer tools.
Renegade Evolution's blog is here:
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/
(may not be safe for work)
*reviews last comment
Ugh, typos!
I totally agree that the butch vs. fem thing is a divide & conquer tool, and it's something I've been working really hard to break myself out of (I was a misogynist long before I was a feminist, and it shows quite often).
At the same time that I'm a totally sex-positive person who's battling against the "knitting=weakness" bullshit, I find it really hard to get totally behind a culture that tells women that aspiring to look and act like a sex doll should be their ultimate goal in life.
There is nothing *wrong* with being a sex doll. There's nothing wrong with having an interest in fashion. I'm just not comfortable with the idea that women and girls think fashion and being a sex doll should be the primary focus of our lives, that it's all we're good for.
Let's round it out, shall we?
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