Posts by Ashley:
-
- Burger King ad objectifying women
-
- Calvin Klein ad objectifying women
For Women, the Other Side of Work is Not Play
July 2nd, 2009This post is intended to be part of the Fem2.0 blog carnival about caregiving. For more information, or to participate yourself, click here.
Women are, by nature, multi-faceted. This isn’t to say that men aren’t, but that society dictates that a woman must wear many hats during her day: the professional hat, the wife/girlfriend hat, the friend hat, the athlete hat, the daughter hat, and the mom hat, just to name a few. Women are, in essence, excellent code-switchers, able to don a new persona for every occasion. However, I would like to suggest that, in almost every persona a woman adopts lies a caregiver, and because of this, women are placed under an inordinant and unnecessary amount of stress in almost every situation.
From the professional to the personal, being a caregiver is part of every interaction a woman has. Women, from a very young age, are encouraged to be caregivers with gifts of baby dolls, doll houses, and kitchen sets, and as their personalities are shaped, these formative toys are turned into desires to be teachers, nurses, day care specialists, and other similar jobs. (Please note that I am a teacher, and I love my job. I cannot think of a better job for myself. Nonetheless, it is all about caregiving.) Women then move from their professional lives to their personal lives, where they are daughters or mothers or wives caring for their families. They are expected to know what is in the food their children will eat that night, whether or not they prepare it themselves. They must be sure to know where their children are and what they are doing at every moment. They must carry band-aids and hand sanitizer and bottles of water in their purses just in case. Even at play, women must be sure to have these necessary items with them. They must listen carefully to their husbands and children and brothers and sisters and parents and friends talk about their days and lend a shoulder to cry on or a piece of advice when necessary. And through all of this, women are expected to be even-tempered – they are, after all, not typically the disciplinarian of the family.
All of these demands place an unnecessary amount of stress on women. They are pressured to be good at it all, no matter what situation in which they find themselves. If they are not, they are labeled as “failure,” or “unfit.” It is ridding our language of this label that I believe is the first step in helping women deal with their caregiving roles. Within this, we must remove the stigma that comes with asking for help. Women do not have to do it all! We should offer help to each other and accept help when offered. We should also not be afraid to ask for help when we need it. This, I believe, is the first step in making the caregiving playing field equal.
Contemporary Myths
July 2nd, 2009I have just finished reading White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness by Maurice Berger for my class on the literature of diversity. It is a decent read, especially for anyone interested in the problems surrounding race in our society; I particularly appreciated the mix between Berger’s academic style of writing and a more fragmented, story-telling style of writing, which I believe allows the reader to weave his/her own personal experiences with those of Berger’s and his interviewees.
Given the title, White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness, I think I found the thesis, or at least the premise for the book, in the chapter titled “Myth” (95-97). In this chapter, he talks about Barthes’ idea of contemporary myths. Berger says:
Barthes argued that contemporary myths play a central role in our media-rich society: They conceal the undesirable, make bearable the unbearable, and whitewash the contradictions and dissonances that threaten to disrupt social order. They are a “virus” that infects our reasoning and our politics. These contemporary myths, he concluded, serve “not to deny things” but to take the troubling images in our everyday lives – depictions resonant with our fears, our intolerance, our bigotry – and make “them innocent… give … them a natural and eternal justification.” (96)
He goes on to tie the definition of contemporary myths back into Barthes’ example, and then spread it out to his own, discussing the definition of contemporary myths as they apply to race and racism – namely that whiteness is pure and good and blackness is evil and violent. Also, he discusses the myth that “race and racism are too confusing or too dangerous to articulate,” (97) and he seems to work against that myth throughout the entire book.
I’m curious about this idea of contemporary myths in society. Since my paper for this class is about gender, I began thinking about the contemporary myths surrounding gender, particularly women, in our society. In my opinion the biggest myth in our society is that the fight for women’s rights is over – that after women earned the right to vote and started keeping the jobs they held when their husbands went off to war, there was no need to further the fight for equal rights. Of course, there were a few inequalities that have been brought to light since then: unequal pay for equal work, women being objectified, violence against women, etc. However, with the onset of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and the Gay Marriage movement going on right now, women’s rights has been put on the back burner. Women are not yet equal, and the biggest, most public example of this is seen in public advertisements, where women are still being objectified, and as Norman Douglas said, “You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.” These ads (two examples below) show that women are sex symbols, and not much more. These ads sell things to our youth, who will grow up with these subconscious messages that this is what women are good for; that they are not meant to be equal in this society. This idea that the women’s rights movement is over, that women are equal in our society, is one of the most pressing contemporary myths hurting women’s rights in our society today.
Two examples of ads objectifying women, and making obvious that the fight for women’s rights isn’t over, can be found below. The Burger King image is courtesy of Buzzfeed.com, and the Calvin Klein add is courtesy of The Undomestic Goddess.
What do you think are the contemporary myths in our society regarding women and feminism? How are these myths hurting the feminist cause?
Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett
June 26th, 2009I just want to take a moment to pause and mourn two important people, one, a feminist icon, and one important to the issues of race and pop culture.
I don’t really know enough about either to create a really comprehensive blog post, but here are two excellent posts, one on Michael Jackson via Feministing.com: click here, and one on Farrah Fawcett from Examiner.com: click here.
Comments Off on Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett
Literacy Interview: Proposal
June 25th, 2009What follows is the proposal for my interview about literacy practices among feminist bloggers. Any one else want to participate? Any suggestions for improvement?
Project Proposal
I am fascinated by technological literacy and how social media, blogging in particular, is becoming the new face of activism. People are using social media to write and distribute their ideas to a broad audience and, unlike pamphlets or other hard-copy documents, the information presented in these blogs is both easily shared – via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc. – and is part of a conversation. Instead of Socrates’ concern with the written word “that it stabilizes ideas, so that writing falsely represents ideas as frozen in time, ripped from the living, human situations in which they naturally move” (Lindquist and Seitz 27), a blog is instead a living, breathing, changeable document to which an audience can respond, and an author can change as he/she sees fit. This kind of easily distributable dialogue is rapidly changing the way activists find and share their information.
In order to better find and share information, as well as cultivate a loyal audience, bloggers tend to form communities of people who have the same goals in mind. Each blogger has his/her own unique style (some might post cartoons, others might post academic responses, some might just muse on or share opinions about certain subjects, etc.), but bloggers with the same end goal are likely to combine efforts, collaborate, comment on each other’s stories, and share each other’s information. There is a whole set of rules and etiquette that goes along with participating in a community such as this, and literacy – reading, writing, and conversation – takes on a whole new meaning. Through Twitter and my own blog (http://smallstroke.wordpress.com), I have become involved in the feminist blogging community, and I am interested in exploring the definitions and uses of literacy within this community. Particularly, I want to focus on Szwed’s five elements of literacy – text, context, function, participants, and motivation – and how they play out among feminist bloggers.
The nature of the internet is such that there is no real “site” to observe, and because each blogger’s style can be so different and it takes a community of people to spread the word about blogs in order to get the kind of readership needed for real change, I would like to combine a participant-observation research of a field site and ethnographic interviews. I am interested in “the cultural identities [the bloggers] claim for themselves” and how they “affect the kinds of literacy behaviors they practice in different parts of their lives” (Lindquist and Seitz 231). In other words, I would like to use these feminist blogs as sites and evidence of texts, and I would also like to conduct several interviews with the bloggers themselves to collect their ideas of literacy and how this burgeoning technology effects how they read, write, discuss, and share information.
As I interview the participants and read their blogs, I will be looking for patterns or discrepancies in the way the participants think about their own literacy practices. I will then be using this information to discuss how literacy works and what types of literacy are employed within the culture of feminist bloggers, and hopefully I will come to a greater understanding of participation within this community.
Work Cited
Lindquist, Julie and David Seitz. The Elements of Literacy. New York: Longman, 2009.
Anti-Feminism?
June 25th, 2009Tonight, I was going to blog some thoughts about Toni Morrison, identity, and otherness. I might still if I have a chance, but tonight I am particularly interested in a conversation that ensued today on Twitter. Jay Breeds, (@objectifychicks) started sort of poking fun at my feminism, so I naturally started poking around his/her profile a bit. The bio reads: “Defeating feminism by revealing feminism” and the tweets are basically just poking fun at feminism. Although I think this might just be a gimmick, he/she touts him/herself as an anti-feminist, and even tags tweets as such. However, when asked to define the views of the anti-feminist, he/she said: “I believe, correctly, that one has to be retarded to believe that feminism is true.” This was unhelpful, to say the least, to my understanding of the anti-feminist mentality. I really didn’t want to argue; I just wanted to understand.
In all of my conversations about civil rights, I have come to accept a few things. There are racists, white supremacists, chauvinists, homophobic people, and those against certain religions. I’m sure I’m missing some group here, but my point is clear: hatred is alive and well in the world. The thing is, as misguided as I think they are, I understand the arguments behind most of these forms of hatred. Mostly, this is because the arguments are detailed and supported. I was looking for the same thing from @objectifychicks, but didn’t get it.
Maybe I can’t wrap my head around this because I grew up encouraged to be independent and outspoken, with an understanding of feminism. I understand there are men out there who want their wives to be trophy wives or to “know her place” as it were, but I thought general chauvinism and societal inequality was the end of it. I did not think anti-feminism was alive and well.
My question to you is this: Without getting snarky, can someone explain the concept of and rationale behind anti-feminism to me? What is the difference between anti-feminism and chauvinism? Are there any famous anti-feminists I can point to in further research and writing?
Interview?
June 24th, 2009OK, so here is where this project might get really cool or really tricky… or both.
I want to combine this blog with my literacy class. I would like to research (via interviews) what literacy means within the context of the community of feminist bloggers. I need to write the proposal for the research by Thursday, and I probably won’t have more information from you until then, but I need volunteers for interview participants. It won’t take much of your time; all you’ll have to do is answer some questions about being a feminist and participating in a feminist blogging community. I need to know things about dialogue, function, motivation, audience, etiquette, etc.
I have a few people in mind (you probably know who you are), but I wanted to see if there were any volunteers before I start prodding. 🙂
What makes a good woman, part 2
June 22nd, 2009What follows is the introduction to my paper for this class. It is what is called a “quest paper,” meaning my thesis is a question that will be answered by using specific examples from our readings in class, as well as any other research I want to include. The professor wanted a narrative before the question, and I might have gone a little bit overboard with my stories, but I wasn’t really sure how much backstory he wanted. I suppose we shall see, but until then, I could really use some feedback. What do you think? Should I rework some of the narrative leading up to the question? Where should I go from here? Do you have any suggestions for things to read and work into my paper? I appreciate any and all feedback.
There is a picture of me in my family room; I am three years old, wearing a teal shirt with pink flowers on it. My hands are sort of propping me up as I am leaning against a table in front of me. I am smiling sweetly, and all of this makes for a very cute picture.
The story behind the picture, and the reason this picture still resides in my family room, is indicative of my personality throughout my entire life. My mom took me to get my picture taken professionally. The photographer wanted me to sit in a white, wicker chair for the photo, and I would not do it. Apparently, the photographer ensued in a power struggle with me – never a good idea with kids – trying desperately to get me to sit in the chair. I simply would not do it. I wanted nothing to do with that chair. He tried coaxing me for quite some time before he gave up, let me do whatever I wanted, and we ended up with this adorable picture. At the end of the session, he turned to my mom and said, “Well, she certainly won’t need any assertiveness training,” and my mom replied, “I hope not.”
My mom loves to tell this story when friends are over and I’m doing something particularly bold or assertive, but she always seems proud of me that I have continued to be this way. I really believe this episode – and others similar to it – has shaped my life: how I deal with students, boyfriends, coworkers, family, other girls, random people who irritate me, etc. I think, as an adult, I am more assertive because I was always encouraged to be that way when I was younger, even though it may be a detriment to me sometimes, as people generally seem cautious of assertive women. It definitely caused some issues among my girl friends while I was growing up, and still does, because I often say what I think and stick to it without thinking. I do find this characteristic of mine helpful more often than not, and I’m glad I was raised that way. It has, however, gotten me into a few arguments, especially with women who were very different than myself.
The argument that has stuck with me the most was with a woman who was supposed to me a role model to me. She was my mentor at my first teaching job in a very small town in North-Central Illinois. I was far away from my friends and family, living by myself, and feeling as if I didn’t fit in at all. I made friends with a few of the other teachers, but their mindsets were very different than mine.
I suppose I should pause here to talk a bit about my relationship with these teachers, and their relationship with each other. That age-old stereotype about people in small towns, that everyone knows everything about everybody, turned out to be more or less true in this case. What happened in school and out of school was more or less the same thing, and it was all open for discussion. There wasn’t much of a division between work and personal life; it was all sort of lumped into a community life.
I was, by far, the youngest teacher in my department, which meant not only were the other teachers in a different generation altogether, but they all had known each other for a very long time, and most of them were friends outside of work. They would talk about each other’s quirks and complain a bit, and then say, “Well, that’s just how she is,” but they would never once defend me by the same means. They would be constantly trying to tell me how I should be, or what I was doing wrong. It was almost as if they were trying to undo my college years and tame me a little. I needed to be “tamed,” I guess you could say. I was definitely way too fidgety and easily angered and I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut, but I believe that is something that comes with age, not with demeaning comments.
I made my opinion on that matter, and many others, clear, but that did not stop these women from making such comments. For example, my mentor and friend that first year was a married woman in her mid-30’s. She seemed relatively happy with her life, you know, aside from talking about how she wished everything was different. On one specific occasion, we were sitting with another woman, her friend and another teacher, enjoying a few beverages and talking about men – a typical Friday night. They were talking about weddings and marriage and all that, and I said something to the extent of, “I totally refuse to give up my last name,” or something that equally asserted my independence, and my mentor said, “Yea, and that’s why you’re not married.” This totally implied that, unless I gave up my independence, I would never find marital bliss. I think there was some concern on her part that I hadn’t found my future husband in high school or in college, so where was I ever going to meet someone? They were worried that I might end up alone, and I was more than ready to leave that all up to Fate.
We butted heads quite a bit over my two-year tenure at the school, and the conversations always started with her telling me about how I was too opinionated or too self-assured or too self-confident – from my earlier story about assertiveness, it is clear that I didn’t know such things existed. I thought these were all good qualities – and always ended with her telling me that if I kept up this attitude, I would never find a husband. I always told her that I would eventually find someone who wanted to be with a woman like me, and the wait would be worth it.
Over the years, I wondered more and more what the difference between us was. On the outside, we were very similar, and probably would have been good friends were it not for this continued argument. Why did this woman feel the need to “coach” me into being a “good woman” or a “good wife,” and why was I so resistant to her ideas, to the point that it ruined our friendship?
When did you lose your gravity?
June 18th, 2009For Eden Abigail Trooboff, the loss of gravity happened the first time she felt her body in relation to a man:
…But I was wearing a pink dress with a big V in back and I felt too female to be a child. He danced extravagantly with all three of us, my sister, Anna, and me, maybe just to cross that line which exists in every wedding reception between the adults and the children. I was twelve, flattered and amused to be feeling the silly tingles of flirtation. With him leaning over to put his arm around my back, I felt my body for the first time in relation to a man’s. At the end of the song, he scooped up my legs and twirled me around. With the myopic vision one adopts of childhood memories, I remember everyone turning around to watch this little pink girl get picked up so easily by this charming man. I was unable or unwilling to show my anger at being lifted without being asked. I smiled a little uncontrollably, conscious that any other response would betray the sensitivity that my parents reminded me I had far too much of.
…Gravity is taken from women. My friends have told me slowly of their weightlessness, not saying the R-word they know applies to their loss of themselves. How can I form an allegiance to a group that is victimized? Why would I want to belong? How can I think about my female consciousness when I am forced to feel it every time girl friends get together and talk about mistrust, loss of power, and violence? The process of finding identity becomes emotional rather than intellectual when the loss of control means abuse (“The Gravity of Pink”).
Was there a moment that you felt you lost your gravity? What was the first time you felt vulnerable as a woman?
For me, I think it was relatively late in life, but I think part of that is because of my generation. I was raised to believe that women are just as strong as men, so it never occurred to me to be bothered by a dance with an older man at a wedding. (Either that or I was simply naive…) The moment I’m thinking of is when I was 17, a junior in high school, and one of my male teachers put his hands on my shoulders to sort of rub them. This was the first time I felt afraid of my size, of my gender. I knew, if it came down to it, I probably couldn’t defend myself. Luckily, it never did come down to it. (Shortly after this, complaints were lodged against him – not by me – and he was fired.) But what would I have done if it had?
Do you have a moment like this? Please share! All thoughts and comments are welcome.
Response to “The Gravity of Pink”
June 17th, 2009I was originally attracted to this essay because of the title. Over the past few months, I have had several discussions with friends and participated in a few interviews and conversations about feminism, and immediately I knew that this essay would be about feminism. On the first reading, I was fascinated by Eden Abigail Trooboff’s ideas about chosen identities (56) versus those we cannot choose; “the given identities, especially sexual identity, which … becomes problematic in the context of Biblical gender roles … I was born into this role of temptress and scapegoat without any say” (57). I also found her claims: “I have become protective of my gravity” (58) and “The process of finding identity becomes emotional rather than intellectual when the loss of control means abuse” (58) particularly thought provoking. I, too, have felt a sort of tug-of-war between loving and hating my body – the way I can or cannot dress it; what it says to other people about me and my priorities, my habits, my confidence (or lack thereof); how people look at me and judge me and, hopefully, how I can surprise them; how all of this shapes my identity when I walk into a room, before I can even say anything. As a slight woman, I find it particularly difficult to command attention in a room, and I find that people – mostly men – tend to treat me differently than they would other men before they get to know me. I, too, have become very protective of the identity I have chosen rather than the one chosen for me. I want to make sure that people know I am emotionally and physically strong, despite my lack of obvious muscle; I want people to know I am not afraid to share opinions and speak up loudly when I need to, despite sometimes seeming (or looking) sweet and meek. Perhaps, like Trooboff, I work hard on my chosen identity because the one I could not choose, my gender, defines me before all else.
In rereading the essay, however, I found a point I completely disagree with. Trooboff says, “I feel sick to my stomach when I wear pink, as though my insides had lost the weight that keeps them together” (58) and “I am very self-conscious about my hands, but also very proud of how used and unkempt my left hand looks – the leathery writer’s bump, the guitar calluses, the nails cut below the quick” (59). I truly believe that statements like this are how feminism gets a bad wrap. In all of my conversations about feminism, I have found women who refuse to identify themselves as feminists because they like painting their nails and wearing dresses and want to get married and have children, and they think that feminism refutes these options for women. Feminism, in my belief, does just the opposite. Instead of dictating that feminists should not be feminine, feminism gives women options for how they want to live their lives. For example, I boasted pink for two days last weekend (and several days before) as I walked 39.3 miles around Chicago to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research and treatment. I wore pink and walked for two days because I am proud of being a woman, and I am proud of what pink means. I also wear dresses, get manicures, and want to get married and raise a family some day. Does this mean that I’m not a feminist? Quite the opposite: it means I am a feminist who has exercised her right to choose pink.
Work Cited
Trooboff, Eden Abigail. “The Gravity of Pink.” Beyond Borders: A Cultural Reader. Ed. Randall Bass and Joy Young. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. 56-59.
Comments Off on Response to “The Gravity of Pink”
What makes a “good woman?”
June 16th, 2009Let’s start with a story and a few questions. All comments welcome.
My first teaching job was in a very small town. I was far away from my friends and family, living by myself, and feeling as if I didn’t fit in at all. I made friends with a few of the other teachers, but their mindsets were very different than mine. For example, my mentor and friend that first year was a married woman in her mid-30’s. She seemed relatively happy with her life, you know, aside from talking about how she wished everything was different. On one specific occasion, we were sitting with another woman, her friend and another teacher, enjoying a few beverages and talking about men – a typical Friday night for these women. They were talking about weddings and marriage and all that, and I said something to the extent of, “I’m not giving up my last name,” or something that equally asserted my independence, and my mentor said, “Yea, and that’s why you’re not married.” This totally implied that, unless I gave up my independence, I would never find marital bliss. It also implied that I was too much like a man to be a good woman.
We butted heads quite a bit over my two-year tenure at the school, and the conversations always started with her telling me about how I was too opinionated or too self-assured or too self-confident (I didn’t know such things existed. I thought these were all good qualities), and always ended with her telling me that if I kept up this attitude, I would never find a husband. I always told her that I would eventually find someone who wanted to be with a woman like me, and the wait would be worth it.
For my class this term, I will be exploring the question: Why did this woman feel the need to “coach” me into being a “good woman” or a “good wife,” and why was I so resistant to her advice? Do you have any thoughts? Do you have any of your own situations like this that you would be willing to add to the discussion?
About the Small Strokes Project
June 16th, 2009I believe that “small strokes fell big oaks.” In my case, these small strokes are most often strokes of a pen or of a keyboard, and the big oaks social issues – feminism, equal rights for all, etc.
Here, I will be blogging about civil rights as a whole, sometimes in relation to my work in my graduate classes and sometimes just to talk, but I’m hoping to get some feedback from other women, men, feminists, not feminists, activists, students, teachers, etc. As humans, we all have something to say about human rights, and with the Small Strokes Project, I hope to open up the dialogue to your strokes of genius by posting your comments, stories, opinions, and answers to really pressing questions about the changing face of civil rights.
Comments Off on About the Small Strokes Project