"Does this floor make me look fat?"
Sometimes, I just get pissed.
Pissed at society, at men, at how tough it still is to be a girl in 2010.
As you can perhaps surmise from my fascination with sexist vintage advertisements, this is a topic I feel super-strongly about; it almost makes me want to put a tampon in a teacup. (Any Ghost World fans in the house?) But I know that sexism and feminism and gender roles are big issues to tackle in a single blog post, so I just intend to dance around them a bit. You know, like a lady.
I once asked my friend if, knowing what she knows now about the world, she would choose to have been born a guy. Without hesitation, she said, "Fuck yes. Are you kidding?"
"Really?" I replied, then paused in thought. "But... then you'd have to walk around with a penis every day. That would be terrible." I was only half-joking.
I guess I didn't expect my friend to react so strongly. I mean, this is a tough question. I personally think about it all the time. Because, much like Nancy Kwan and Doris Day and Sarah Jessica Parker, I enjoy being a girl... but I see my friend's point.
Men have it easy. (White men have it easy.) Rather than being instantly sexualized or judged, they are treated as professionals- intelligent, capable, strong people who can get the job done. Women still have to fight for respect when we crawl out of our dens of domesticity.
On the other hand, sometimes I think that overt sexualization and feminine mystery give us a little bit of power over men. As much as the media treat us like objects, men are still utterly mystified by us.
Let's break for story time. Growing up, I never had a super strong feminine role model. My mother had three older brothers and is a tomboy in every sense of the word. I had to learn how to put on make-up and curl my own hair. I remember friends' moms looking elegant and effortlessly put-together. My mom was always a bit quirky with a big warm personality. She never wore clothes that flattered her enviably tiny frame, choosing to live in oversized men's tees, baseball caps, and jeans. She would sometimes top off an outfit with gaudy make-up and costume jewelry, as if imitating what she thought a woman was supposed to look like.
As a teenager, my family made me feel guilty for wanting to feel feminine. On the weekends, my mom, dad, and brother, a stellar athlete, would play baseball or basketball or tennis, and I was constantly teased for being "girly" and uncoordinated.
One day, I realized that I shouldn't feel ashamed for happily being a woman. Now, I own my femininity instead of trying to hide it. I am proud that my silhouette is curvy. I know femininity isn't just about my sexuality, but I like the feeling I get when buying lace underwear, the way a dress swishes against my thighs as I walk, the way tight jeans hug my butt, and that indescribable feeling of making that click-clack-click-clack noise when strutting down a hallway in pumps. And even though I'm terrified of it, I look forward to a day when I might carry a tiny human in my body.
Being uber-feminine doesn't mean I'm not an uber-feminist - quite the opposite, in fact. I am a raging crazy when it comes to issues of inequality between the sexes. I am the first person in a room to get offended by an offhand "that's what she said" comment.
As an undergrad, I took a class called the Sociology of Gender. One day, we were looking at pictures of "girls' toys" and "boys' toys" on the Toys-R-Us website. Girls' toys were pastel-colored and domestic: kitchen sets and vacuum cleaners and baby dolls. Boys' toys were primary-colored and involved occupations outside the home: pilots, doctors, firefighters, scientists.
This pattern wasn't shocking or novel to any of us. But then my teacher posed the question: why is it generally acceptable for girls to play with both types of toys, but when a boy plays with girls' toys, parents often worry that he will be gay? When you look a bit deeper, you see two forces at play here: one, that society celebrates any desire to be masculine, even a female's desire, but condemns a male's desire to be feminine. In other words, we are all supposed to want to be men. Secondly, in a certain way, parents generally aren't as concerned about what their daughters want to be than with what their sons want to be. This practice has a name- androcentrism - and there is clearly a hierarchy here.
That being said, it's tough dating a med student while studying art. I can't help thinking that he is saving the world one life at a time while I am looking at pretty pictures, and that I subconsciously chose a "feminine occupation" and rejected math and science because of my Barbie dolls and Fisher Price kitchen set. How will I ever know for sure if I am doing this because I love it or because I am supposed to love it?
Cheer up, ladies. Things will get better... sort of.
We all watch Mad Men, and last week's episode "The Beautiful Girls" taught us that we've come a long way from Peggy and Joan and Mrs. Blankenship. We've got our own slim cigarettes now, for example - tailored for the feminine hand.
Still... sometimes I'd rather be Don Draper.
1 comments:
Any tips for the Don Drapers of the world?
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