Light-hearted

Tonight, I’m feeling hopeful.

Tonight I’m conscious, aware of the good.

Since my last post, I’ve found a bit of a wave. A group of us here at Loyola have come together, named ourselves SAGE (Student Advocates for Gender Equality), and jumped right on in. We’ve held meetings that have brought in new people each time, we’ve already got some cool projects on the horizon, and I’m pretty darn proud of this group of ladies. Lucky to get to call myself one of them.

Last week, Loyola teamed up with two other universities in the area to “Take Back the Night” and SAGE helped out. This is a program that schools all over the place take part in. It is intended to raise awareness about and eventually put an end to sexual and gender based violence. Here, we start out the evening with some pretty moving speakers, followed by a candlelit march down St. Charles Avenue, and finally an open mic event where people share their feelings and stories.

There’s nothing quite like the chills you get when you’re marching for a cause so dear to your heart and you turn around to see hundreds of lit candles bobbing beautifully behind you. A profoundly metaphorical sea of bright lights amidst darkness.

We had a SAGE meeting tonight. At these full meetings, we choose a gender-equality-related topic and talk. A key thing to awareness and change, talking. Ask the coffeehouse-goers of the Enlightenment. Today, however, I had homework to do. I was dragging my feet on the way into that meeting, despite the ultra-rewarding discussion I knew we’d have. It’s course selection time again and I’m in the throes of what appears to be an ENDLESS what-should-my-major-be crisis. My "gotta" list was long tonight: gotta finish that homework, gotta pick my classes, gotta go to the SAGE meeting, gotta figure out my life. Of course the meeting was great. People were great. No surprises there.

But when I left that meeting, my "gotta" list had evolved, shape-shifted into something much less grumpy and foul. It was more of a THANK GOODNESS list. I was suddenly aware of myself: a nineteen-year-old woman leaving her university’s Gender Equality Organization meeting, trying to decide what she wants her career path to be.

WOAH.

I flashed on a memory from my tween-hood. My grandmother on my dad’s side was up at our house for a visit, and I asked her this question:

“When you were a little girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

She had absolutely no clue how to answer me. She listed a few of the jobs she’d worked before she married my grandpa, but that was all she could do. Growing up in the 30’s and 40’s she had no career goals! She probably knew some girls who went to college, but she certainly didn’t.

And there I was, walking back to my dorm with my backpack tugging on my shoulders, reminding myself to do my ancient Greek homework and worrying about which of many possible career paths I should pursue.

Gosh.

So tonight, I’m a happy lady. I’m happy to be working on a scale larger than just my blog. I’m happy that SAGE exists. I’m happy to have possibilities in front of me my grandma couldn’t comprehend. I’m even happy that there’s still work to be done because I’ve turned around and seen the candlelight trailing on, endless behind me, and I know it’s going to get done. I know it.

Riding the Third Wave

I’m a member of a movement that barely exists. Logically, I would be labeled a “third wave feminist.” One of very few. There are like-minded women and men my age out there. There must be. I’ve met a few of them. With our level of education these days and our state of hyper-connectedness, you’d think we’d have figured it all out by now. I’d like to tell you that we’re working on it—on all of it, poverty, injustice, discrimination of all shapes and sizes—but it doesn’t really seem like we are. And here I am, the living, breathing, blogging proof of what I think is wrong.

It used to take work to make a public statement. And it used to take work to support that statement. Now, all I have to do is post my new blog entry on my facebook and I feel like I’ve contributed to my cause. And all you have to do is ‘like’ that post and you feel like you’ve supported. In the olden days there was no ‘like’ button, no blog, no twitter, no forum for ideas at our fingertips. People had to write letters to the editor, to their senators, they had to march and sit and organize to feel as if they’d done something to further the causes they cared about.

Trust me, I’m aware of the humor inherent in blogging about this issue.

A few weeks ago, HBO aired a piece about Gloria Steinem called Gloria: In Her Own Words. It featured clips and photos from throughout her life and was completely narrated by Gloria herself by way of archive interviews and such. I was green with envy throughout the film. March after press conference after article after protest. I want to do that! I want to carry a sign. I want to spend a day out on the street, miserably uncomfortable, surrounded by a bunch of people. I want to make the ignorant mad. I want to ruffle feathers, because the people who make change always do.

There are people that wonder what it is I’m so mad about, why I feel so full of fire sometimes and hopeless others. When we were sitting down to watch the Steinem documentary, my mom said: “See, Emma. Things have gotten much better since the sixties. We’ve come a long way.” How right she is! But there is still more to do. That’s why I love the term ‘wave.’ First-wave, second-wave, third-wave feminism. Waves rush in with collective fury, and once they reach their apex, they pull back, floating, content, and ultimately falling back into the next wave that surges onto the shore. And each wave wears down the rocks they roll over until those rocks become powder. What a boulder we began with. We had no rights. That first wave brought us the vote. The second wave eroded ignorance surrounding women’s intellectual and professional potential, sexual assault, societal expectations, and so much more. And that leaves me. A woman of the third wave who just registered to vote and is preparing to enter the work force for real. This third wave needs to wash away that whole 75 cents to the dollar thing and for GOD’S SAKE rid us all of the dehumanizing and pervasive sexualization of women and the crippling obsession with our bodies.

I want to do it like out mamas and grandmamas did it. I want there to be the kind of radical shift in thought that comes from real human-to-human, face-to-face discussion, no screens or keyboards or wi-fi involved. I want to know what it feels like to stand in a crowd of men and women that want the same kind of change that I do. After unsuccessfully clicking around the internet in search of any kind of demonstration or organization that would have me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably going to have to figure something out myself.

So once I find my outlet, you will be the first to know. And hopefully you will join me. I can’t make much of a wave all by myself.

On the Air

I was in the car with my dad today, listening to the radio, when a local NPR show called Radio Boston brought up a topic that caught my attention. The discussion was about pornography. A woman had caught her boyfriend, typically loving and respectful, watching aggressive, violent porn. The questions the show raised included "Should the woman be concerned?" "How should it affect their relationship?" and "Can fantasy and reality be separated?" It raised a very distinct and separate question for me: What about the porn itself? Is it ok?

From the passenger seat, I launched into a very animated expression of my thoughts on the subject. Suddenly, I stopped. The host was rattling off a telephone number where people could call in and contribute to the conversation. I grabbed my phone, typed in the number and took a deep breath while it rang and rang. An operator picked up and asked me my name. Emma. Where was I? Boston. "Yes," she said patiently, "Where in Boston?" I looked frantically at my dad. I had no clue where we were. My parents moved here after I started school in the fall. I didn't know I could get more specific than 'Boston.'

"Dad! Where in Boston are we?" My heart was pounding in my eyeballs. "South Boston," he told me.

"Um, I'm in the South Boston," I relayed to the operator, totally flustered. She asked me to summarize in a few sentences what I wanted to contribute. I hit the bullet points:

-19 year old feminist

-culture encourages acceptance of everyone's differences

-this is good but makes us passive to "sexual tastes" that encourage violence and unhealthy perspectives concerning women.

To my surprise/terror, they patched me through. I was on the radio, being a feminist IN FRONT OF MORE PEOPLE THAN JUST MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS.

(Here's a recording of the segment)

When I was done talking, they took a call from another Bostonian, a man who viewed violent/aggressive porn as totally ok as long as it was consensual (duh) because men have so much trouble being monogamous and porn acts as a pressure release valve in their relationships.

Gag.

I wanted to fire back and tell him sarcastically how glad I was that degraded and abused women could help him satisfy his all-powerful, all-important Male Sexual Appetite. I wanted to scream at him: "If you need offensive porn to stick around in real life and be in a relationship, maybe we don't want you in our relationships." But it was too late. I was off the air.

I sat in the car, sweating a mixture of of terror, pride, and regret. I felt like I had been too diplomatic. I was so scared I would step on toes that I didn't get to the heart of the issue like I'd wanted to. Instead, I sort of danced around my point like I wasn't exactly sure what I thought about it, like it had all just occurred to me.

In reality, I had thought a lot about this issue and knew exactly what I believed.

When we got home, I went to the radio station's website to see exactly what program I had been on. It was all a bit of a blur. Still mad as hell at myself for not being as articulate as I had hoped, I decided to post a comment on the segment's page, detailing exactly how I felt and what I would have said had my brain been full of more coherent things to say and less adrenaline. This is what I wrote:

There is a level of taboo that both keeps women from admitting they watch porn AND allows their degradation and abuse in porn to be acceptable. The bottom line seems to be "If it turns a man on, it's acceptable." 1. There's no REAL discussion about what turns a woman on and 2. What validity is there in an argument that uses sexual release as a justification for demeaning, violent behavior? Imagine the same argument but replace race as the issue: if people got some kind of release from watching people of a certain ethnicity being treated with brutality, it would be seen as evil, wrong, and unacceptable. When women are the victims in question, it's simply seen as "sexual taste." I personally think a little "sexual boredom" is something people can deal with if the alternative is indulging an industry that exploits women and promotes violent behavior towards them.

The porn industry and the way that it has exploded into our lives via the internet presents a very dangerous problem. Boys are being raised on this stuff, expecting real-life women to be as hairless, noisy, and eager to be tied up and abused as the ones they see online. I know that the violent acts in most aggressive porn are consensual, but that is not the issue. If they aren't there is no question about how wrong they are. The issue is the message that that kind of exposure sends: one of domination and subservience and worst of all, enjoying it. I understand that some people have preferences that lead them in this direction, but that does not justify perpetuating an over-sexualized, obedient image of women.
I'm a freshman in college and I've talked to guys my age. They watch porn young. 11 years old seems to be a fairly average age. As they grow into sexual maturity, this is what they learn. This is their debut into their sexual lives. The "fantasy" is the first thing they know. Isn't that bound to affect the way they see women, sexually and overall?
And not to mention the fact that there is very little fuss made about how women mature sexually. That seems to sit permanently on the back burner.
Imagine the roles reversed for a moment: young girls, teenagers, women of all ages indulging in male-massochistic porn, male-directed domination and violence because it turns them on. If fact, watching it is encouraged to relieve female sexual boredom. Just to say something like that in the context of our culture sounds funny and unnatural. Obviously the scales are not balanced. And seeing as it would take far more effort to raise consciousness about the inattention paid to female sexual desire and diversity in women's sexual preferences, I say we just really think about the impact that violent porn can have a start discouraging it.
We (hopefully) teach our kids that violence is wrong. Every parent/teacher/lawmaker knows that when there is an exception to a rule, that rule is weakened, less important. Porn and male sexual gratification are some exceptions to the violence rule. We are essentially saying "Being violent is wrong. Being abusive is wrong. Binding and gagging someone to the point of helplessness is wrong. Unless it turns you on. Then, go right ahead."

I'm so glad I called in, but I'm a little bit (a LOT bit) disturbed, haunted in fact, by the passive way I behaved on the show. I'm not a wishy-washy gal when it comes to these issues. But as soon as I realized that there are people out there that wouldn't agree with me, people that would write me off as a "feminist" (with the bad word connotation it has revoltingly and unbelievably accrued) and discount what I was saying, I FREAKED OUT. That was scary as hell. Nobody argues with me on my own blog! So what did I do? I clicked right into the place where male chauvinists and sexists want me to stay, sounding noncommittal and diplomatic and, worst of all, unsure. All I can think of now is an issue many feminists (with the good, proud, brave connotation) have addressed: the fact that some women in power positions phrase their instructions and opinions as questions, rising in pitch at the end, to make sure they don't sound too bossy or bitchy. I'm smarter than that. But just listen to the recording of the segment! Listen to me dance around what I actually want to say! God forbid I offend anybody! Lord knows I've seen and heard enough offensive stuff. If our culture can dish it out, it should certainly be able to take it! At the end of the day, if I'm not disagreeing with somebody, I'm not doing my job. That's why I posted on the segment's page. That's why I'm posting this. Gotta love second chances.

I may not have been as eloquent as I would have liked to have been, but I'm damn proud of myself for getting on the air about this. And if you ever want to experience the magic of instantaneous pit stains, call into a radio show.

-E

(from "the South Boston")

Whatever I Possibly Can

First year of college: check.

Finally, I’m finished with what seemed like my most mammoth undertaking to date when I moved into my drafty dorm room this past fall.

I came to school ‘undecided.’ I had the thrilling pleasure of repeating that title ad nauseum near the beginning when the first and often only thing you were asked was “What’s your major?” I felt more uncomfortable each time I had to answer that I, in fact, did not yet have one.

‘Yeah, you know that quick and easy glimpse into my personality you thought you’d get by finding out what I want to do with my life? You can’t have it. Because quite frankly, I don’t know the answer to that question yet. If you have any ideas, please let me know.”

After taking the most ridiculous combination of classes ever conceived through my first two semesters, I finally settled on what looks like it might be my niche—for now at least.

English (Writing) major with a double-minor in Theatre and Women’s Studies.

Or as my friend Austin likes to say: “a major in starving arts with a double-minor in starving arts.”

I thought declaring my major/minors would bring a sense of relief. Finally! I would be able to answer that stupid question. Oddly enough, I’ve noticed that my embarrassment has sort of clung around. I feel like people will judge me, like I’m wasting my money getting a degree that is widely perceived as useless.

As far as English goes, whenever I start to feel self-conscious, I just remind myself that it will never ever hurt to be a good writer. Especially if I decide to become a writer.

A while back, I had a conversation with someone (I honestly can’t even remember who it was) and they asked me what my major was, so I dutifully recited: English (writing) major with a double-minor in Theatre and Women’s Studies. With an alarming amount of disgust they responded, “Women’s Studies?! What are you going to do with that!?”

My reply: “Whatever I possibly can.”

I have a joke with a friend of mine that college is about learning that you’re f**ked and that there’s nothing you can do about it. In my feminist philosophy class I often felt that way. Those feelings usually manifested themselves as frustrated, rambling posts on this blog. There are a lot of BIG issues I examined this year (feminist and otherwise) that we can’t just vote or protest our way out of. And that is scary.

There is a LOT of power in education, though. I think I get fired up about pretty much anything a passionate professor teaches me. I trust my professors to give me that little push in the right direction towards a clear and progressive and proactive way of thinking.

Sometimes, they let me down.

About a month ago, one of my classes took a canoe trip. The professor was talking about the rowing situation and made a really sexist comment, implying that the women on the class wouldn’t be as strong or as motivated or as valuable to the trip as the men in the class would be.

Yeah, I got pretty angry. It was that kind of angry where your whole face starts to burn and you can hear your heartbeat in your ears.

I demanded that he clarify as soon as he finished his sentence. I was on my toes. I stood up for myself instead of passively laughing or feigning indignation the way TOO MANY women do.

I made a point to include this little story when I did my teacher evaluation.

My biggest beef lies with the fact that the sexist professor in question teaches science. It’s horrible when any person makes a sexist comment, but professors of Math and Science in institutions of higher learning are the ones we are relying on to encourage female students to stay in those fields. We need their help balancing these gender inequalities in the professional world that are keeping some really crumby stereotypes in tact.

So I’m going to do whatever the hell I want to do with my Women’s Studies minor. My current agenda includes things like LEARN, and RAISE AWARENESS, and STAND UP TO IGNORANT PROFESSORS.

And RIGHT ALL CURRENT GENDER-RELATED WRONGS.

I’m doing well with the first three.

The last one may take me a while.

-E

Silent Treatment

Anyone who has ever been to the theatre or been in an argument knows that silence is a very powerful tool. It makes people uncomfortable—there is nothing to do but think when everything is silent. Think and wait. Sometimes more is said in silence than in words.

I’ve inadvertently used this tool over the last month. I haven’t posted anything since March 26^th. At first my writer’s block was nothing more than a source of shame. Why couldn’t I think of anything to write? Our culture has quite unfortunately given me a wealth of material on my topic. In fact, sometimes, there seems to be too much to write about. For some reason I could not organize my thoughts enough to say anything even marginally important. What was stopping me?

Then, one morning a little over a week ago, I realized why it was I’d been silent so long. I was trying to decide what to wear, and I was stumped and frustrated. I started to feel that burning anger and disappointment in the pit of your stomach that comes with disliking your own body. Then a thought crossed my mind: “Who are you to be promoting healthy body image when you can’t even practice what you preach?”

I snatched that one out of mid-air and examined it. Am I really a hypocrite? Do I have zero credibility because I tweeze my eyebrows until my eyes water on a regular basis?

After giving it some thought, I realized that my credibility comes from the fact that I am living the issues I am so passionate about. First hand. As are we all. I fight it hard every day.

My month of silence reminded me of how intensely difficult it is to be conscious of the sexist issues in our culture. It is hard to be aware the stuff that locks us into demeaning and insulting stereotypes and the experience it day after day after day.

It hurts.

But it’s worth it.

So keep me loud, internet. Tell me what you want to discuss. Cause we’ve got plenty of stuff to talk about.

-E

The Wise Words of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf says in A Room of One's Own that "we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure." While I don't agree that great men writers are useless to us, I see Woolf's point about our "mothers." The women writers' tradition is a very young yet very important one. As women writers and women readers, we need to explore the work of our literary mothers. It shows us where we've come from and who we are and what we are capable of doing. Something as slight as my little blog has showed me just how tough it is to capture the female experience with words. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for Currer and Ellis Bell.

I have spent my first year at college thinking back through my mothers, and have been collecting little pieces that I think every woman needs to read. And I want to share!

So. Take a look to the right and notice the tab called "Through Our Mothers". That's where I'll keep my collection. I'll add to it whenever I find something new or think of something old.

Here's a poem from the Myth of Amherst herself, Emily Dickinson, reflecting on those facets of womanhood she was fascinated with and managed to avoid her entire life:

271

A solemn thing—it was—I said—

A woman—white—to be—

And wear—if God should count me fit—

Her blameless mystery—

A hallowed thing—to drop a life

Into the purple well—

Too plummetless—that it return—

Eternity—until—

I pondered how the bliss would look—

And would it feel as big—

When I could take it in my hand—

As hovering—seen—through fog—

And then—the size of this "small" life—

The Sages—call it small—

Swelled—like Horizons—in my vest—

And I sneered—softly—"small"!

Emily Dickinson

Liz

One day last July, I was in the grocery store with my parents. When we got to the check-out, I was doing the obligatory skim of the trashy magazine headlines, checking out the different kinds of gum, when something caught my eye:

In grainy, gorgeous, dated Technicolor was Liz Taylor on the cover of Vanity Fair. Classically, stunningly beautiful.

The photograph transports you to a time when one-pieces weren’t just for people too self-conscious to put on a bikini and something as simple as her strap sliding off her shoulder was pretty darn provocative and the media portrayed people as PEOPLE.

Among her peers on the magazine rack, Liz seemed the only human represented.

(July 2010)

When you look at the three of these together, your eyes play tricks on you. What’s pretty and what’s weird? What’s perfect and what’s not? Do we trust old photographs or HD to tell us the truth? As my dad pointed up (thank goodness he's so conscious. Dads shape their children’s feminist consciousness just as much as Moms do, but that’s a topic for another day.), One of These Things is Not Like the Other. Liz is the only one who hasn’t been photo shopped within an inch of her life. The ONLY reason I recognized the practically comical perfection of the other two is because Vanity Fair very kindly reminded me what real people look like. Otherwise, I would have glanced at the Cosmo and the Glamor and thought nothing of them.

All of our generations with Barbie and her various mutations have finally caught up to us. We want plastic. We want giant eyes and tiny waists and other weird, crazy stuff that makes beauty so unattainable that no one will ever look like Jessica Biel. Not even Jessica Biel.

And don’t even get me started on the article titles.

All the memorial coverage of Elizabeth Taylor (and most of the coverage throughout her life) made sure that we knew just how beautiful she was. And she was incredibly beautiful. BUT she was also awesome. She was a gifted and accomplished actress. In fact, she won the Oscar for best actress twice. She was also a vocal and instrumental HIV/AIDS activist and humanitarian.

Count her husbands and talk about her lavender eyes all you want. She was a talented, deserving, well-respected artist and a self-sufficient, dedicated, WOMAN.

Rest In Peace, Liz.

(2/27/1932 - 3/23/2011)

-E

Mine and No One Else's

All over the world, women alter themselves surgically as part of their quest to be enough. Cosmetic surgery is considered a very legitimate option in most cultures. Here in the US, we are quite familiar with the idea of tummy tucks and nose jobs and liposuction and breast lifts and implants and Botox. There is a silent accord among women not to judge those who get plastic surgery—they are simply doing what they must to cope with that pressure. Cause all of us feel it. It’s actual pressure, pushing on our stomachs, breasts, noses, faces, trying to get them in and up and out of the way.

Many may argue that they do it for themselves, so that they can feel more confident. But why is it that these women didn’t feel confident enough in the first place? Because they didn’t feel beautiful—a “virtue” to be evaluated by heterosexual men. Now, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t want to feel beautiful. I’m not passing judgment on those that get plastic surgery. I just can’t wait for the day when we don’t feel like we need it.

I, personally, am terrified to get my wisdom teeth out—and that’s something I HAVE to do. The idea of going under and getting cut open isn’t something I handle very well, so a completely voluntary surgical procedure like a face-lift or a tummy-tuck is quite foreign to me.

I was reading a book the other day and came across a passage that I stopped and re-read three or four times. It was a quote from author Inga Muscio’s interview with Somali film maker Soraya Miré:

“In America, women pay the money that is theirs and no one else’s to go to a doctor who cuts them up so they can create or sustain an image men want. Men are the mirror. Western women cut themselves up voluntarily. In my country, a child is woken up at three in the morning , held down and cut with a razor blade. She has no choice.”

Her reference, of course, is to female genital mutilation. When you step back and look at it, plastic surgery is remarkably similar- both require a woman to mutilate her body to fit what society thinks she should be. The BIG difference is that here in the USA, where we have the physical, legal, and fiscal ability to be whoever the hell we want to be, and we CHOOSE to mutilate ourselves. We elect to be changed. We’ve internalized the kind of hatred that is inflicted on little Somali girls in the middle of the night; nobody has to hold us down. Yes, the procedures serve different purposes and have very different end results, but it all boils down to the same principle: “Women, when you came into this world you weren’t how you should be. So change.”

The next time I find myself begging all the magical forces of the universe to make me taller or skinnier or whatever, I’ll take a second to thank my lucky stars that I live in a country where I can have money, a body, and a voice that are mine and no one else’s.

-E

Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is fast approaching, and all of New Orleans knows it. The whole city is green, purple, and gold and the St. Charles neutral ground is so covered in post-parade trash that you can barely see the grass.

Of course, we all know the reputation Mardi Gras has and why it’s a terribly dangerous place for a feminist. Maybe dangerous is the wrong word. I just find myself struggling to have the same incredible time as everyone else when surrounded by objectification in its purest form.

Yesterday evening I went to see a parade. This wasn’t the heart of Bourbon Street. I certainly wasn’t among the worst of it. There were families and children everywhere and the atmosphere was fun and celebratory. In short, I wasn’t concerned. But there was a woman about my age standing near me who chose to wear only her bra and a pair of shorts during the parades. Of course I pass no judgment; everyone has their own comfort levels. But the mere fact of her shirtlessness managed to raise so many questions for me.

For these parades, the “krewes” were all-male, meaning that only men were riding on the floats and throwing beads to the crowd. When a float rolls up in front of you, it obscures everything else. You can see nothing but papier-mâché and the eerie partially masked faces of the men staring down at you, searching for a worthy recipient of whatever they have to throw. It’s a very disorienting experience, losing all reference points, surrounded by screaming people. There are moments that I can’t tell if its me or the float that’s moving.

As floats came and went, I began to realize that standing near this woman made me (and most everyone else) practically invisible. She was a bead magnet. I began watching the men on the floats, marking how they responded to her. Sometimes they would indicate with nothing but an anonymous stare and a subtle gesture that they wanted her to bare it all. I’m not sure if she ever did or not. I just know that the krewe responded favorably.

I felt positively puritanical standing next to her in my dress and tights and boots. I noticed an unexplainable (and definitely not indulged) urge to compete. And that’s what made me stop and ask myself some questions.

1. Why is objectification such an excepted part of this celebration? What makes Mardi Gras different from any other time?

2. Was there something admirable about how comfortable she was with her body? When I first saw her, I thought to myself, “Wow, she’s brave. I wish I were that confident.”

3. If I did manage to be as comfortable with my body as she was with hers, why would I have to immediately become a sexual object?

I found no answers to these questions and the many more that arose throughout the night. I will add them to my never-ending list of similar questions. Undeniably, Mardi Gras is determined to show me the kind of stuff that makes me so incredibly angry at the world that I stew and stew until I can articulate it enough to put it in my blog. There is no getting around that. It exists. Objectification is out of my control. People will see and say and think what they please. I do, however, control whether or not I indulge it.

I was here for Mardi Gras 2006—the first after Hurricane Katrina. I remember distinctly walking through the airport and noticing that it was completely empty. There was no carnival tourism boom that year. There were only brave New Orleanians who had returned to rebuild, coming out from under their blue-tarped roofs to celebrate life as the city always has. I remember the exhausted but tireless spirit of the crowd, the elaborate satirical floats that rolled through the streets. That Mardi Gras was for everybody that made it home and for those that couldn’t come home yet. It was broken and genuine and beautiful.

So let the terribly sad and sexist things occur. I will have no part of them. I’m celebrating the rich, exhuberant, resilliant, hilarious holiday with my new and beautiful city.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!

BIRTHday

It happens consciously, unconsciously, and constantly: I compare myself to other women. I think it’s part of the perpetual quest to prove to myself that I’m actually ok, to illustrate to that loathsome little critical voice in my head that I’m just like everybody else and that it should just shut the hell up. This backfires on me more often than not as I always find somebody taller, prettier, skinnier, sexier etc. than me. This kind of thinking is not entirely some diabolical invention of cosmetics companies, but it is most certainly perpetuated by them. The model we see in shampoo/mascara/wrinkle cream/underwear/lip gloss commercials is not someone many of us can identify with, and she is held up as the ideal feminine, what we all could be at our most perfect. We are trained to look at women to see how we measure up- to see how much more we need to change.

These comparisons work because we buy into an understanding that other women are radically different from us. They’re skinnier or fatter or prettier or younger. We obsess over these differences and blind ourselves to what it is we share...

We all have the ability to do something so huge and amazing and unthinkable. We can nourish and bring into the world another human life. Today’s my birthday, and as a nineteen-year-old and a person to whom childbirth seems so distant and superhuman, I’ve spent some time thinking about exactly what it was that went on nineteen years ago today. The ability, the strength to be pregnant and have a baby is preposterous and gross and beautiful and wonderful, and I salute every woman that has ever done it. EVER. You are awesome.

That is what we share. We are not just our differences, our placement on the perfection scale, skinny, curvy, tan, or tall. We have a common history, a tradition, and a future of bringing life into this world. We ALL do.

So, happy BIRTHday to you, Mom. Today I celebrate you.

Drive-by

I was walking down the street this afternoon when some men in a passing car decided to let me know through a variety of quick unintelligible noises that they found me sexually attractive.

I have experienced this more than once since I turned fourteen, and never once has it made me feel good. For the most part I’ve encountered situations similarly involving a passing car, but there was one exception. This past summer, my good friend Stephanie and I spent the day in New York City together. A middle-aged man came out of a shop we were walking past and made some completely degrading sexual remark to me. It wasn’t until after he’d passed that I realized what he’d said and that it had been directed at me. The part that sickens me most is that when I turned and reacted, he smiled, quite satisfied with the offense I had taken. I can still see the smug look on his face.

My first impulse was to blame myself. God, I was asking for it, I though. I shouldn’t have worn this dress. As I kept walking and more distance was put between me and this man, I gradually saw the flaw in my logic. The fact that my body is made a certain way, and a dress I love hits me in certain places does not give this stranger the right to address me like that and leave me a buzzing, angry mess for as long as it takes me to shake it off. I continued to blame myself, however, this time for not confronting him. What a fool I said to myself. And you call yourself a feminist. The anger I was feeling towards myself was slowly redirected as I realized that there was nothing I could have said. Any response, anything—positive, negative, hateful, flattered—would only have made him feel bigger and more important. If I’d said something along the lines of “Hey, that was incredibly disrespectful of you. I am much more than my body and you had no right to comment the way you did,” I seriously doubt he would respond with “Oh wow, you’re right. I apologize for offending you. I hope you have a lovely day.” No, he would have kept smiling his haunting, smug smile and gone on his way.

I tried it once, confrontation. I was out with a group of my friends and a car full of guys passed us, shouting out rude and derogatory things, and I flew off the handle. In the foggy, emotionally charged heat of the moment, I let the obscene words and gestures fly. They found it hilarious.

Then there is the question of flattery. What do you do with the fact that, despite the anger and feelings of dehumanization, there is always this instantaneous response of Oh, he thinks I'm pretty! I mean I guess it makes sense if you think about it. More civilized versions of this kind of response are the reason we spend a bazillion dollars on make up and clothes and heels and such.

So, this afternoon as I stood there alone and watched those men drive away, the feelings of blame and shame and doubt (and short-lived, misguided flattery) came rushing back. As aware as I am of their irrationality, they come none the less. It is the human response to being rendered an object by someone you’ve never met.

Thank you, Denise Levertov, for putting these feelings into words better than I ever could.

The Mutes By Denise Levertov

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it's a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they'd pass her in silence:

so it's not only to say she's
a warm hole. It's a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can't,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
'Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.'

Countdown Clock

I sit down to write sometimes and find myself staring at the flashing cursor on my empty page, fingers heavy and sedentary on the keys. That cursor is like some kind of countdown clock, tick-tick-tick, gently reminding me that every second I’m not writing is indeed a second gone by, one I can’t retrieve and have done nothing with.

When writing about a cause as close to my heart as this one, those wasted seconds pound heavier and heavier on my conscience as they fall away. There is simply so much I want to address—the [sad] truth is that the universe has given me an abundance of material.

A professor of mine told me, after reading the blog so far, that I need to remember to pace myself. I come from a generation of instant gratification—I would like to see it all fixed now. I would like my friend and my cousin and my mother and my grandmother and your grandmother and every woman everywhere to realize how much they love themselves, mind, body and soul.

But I’ve realized that, while looking at the endless to-do list is immeasurably important, it’s just as important to look at successes, things that have been “crossed off” so to speak. To understand that what’s still to be done is do-able, we have to remember where we as women have come from.

For instance, it’s so infinitely exciting to wonder what Betty Friedan would think of this:

Thanks to my roommate Kate for posting this on her Facebook wall!

The Cosmic "No"

I am tired of living in a contradictory world. I am tired of hearing a cosmic “no” as soon as I start to feel good about myself. I am tired of being reminded I should be sexier whenever I feel really creative or smart.

Because that’s the way it works, ladies. We have moments of complete confidence and contentment. We look in the mirror and love what we see, or we bask in the success of some new idea. But those moments are fleeting. They are gone before we can experience them enough to be able to remember them later. Leave the house beautiful and a billboard or TV show makes you chubby. Do something you’re proud of and a movie will surely remind you that there’s no sexy in that.

This week is what my University calls “Love Your Body Week,” and tonight they had a speaker named Stacy Nadeau come to talk to us about “real beauty.” Stacy’s credibility comes from the fact that she was one of the six models in Dove’s Real Beauty campaign… and from the simple fact that she is a living female in our society. In her presentation she threw out a terrifying statistic: when asked if they feel comfortable calling themselves beautiful, 2% of women said yes and 98% of women said no. This shows me two crucial things

1: Women cannot feel proud of themselves the way they are. The unrealistic, crazy, pretend idea of beauty projected onto us is something that 98% of women can’t identify with. Instead, they spend their lives wishing they were something or somebody other than themselves. That kind of hate can’t be good for the soul.

2: This statistic is shocking because feeling beautiful is something we count as very important. What about feeling smart? Or clever? Or funny? Or industrious? Or successful? Or happy? There is so much more to the self than that which we can see. That’s why we’re sad when people die. Its not their physical bodies we miss, it’s their true, precious, valuable selves. Everybody has one, but it breaks our hearts when people don’t feel beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong. I think feeling beautiful and comfortable with yourself is a terribly important thing, but I’m working for the day when it is just as important to feel smart or caring or ambitious.

So I have decided: I’m not going to listen to that cosmic “no” anymore. I’m going to embrace the immutable aspects of life and not try to be more of anything. I am determined to be “enough” for the rest of the world and for myself, and I would love it if you would join me. And let me tell you, tomorrow is a much more exciting day knowing I get to wake up and just be OK.

-E

"Girl" Power?

I’m about to open a big can of worms. This is something I’m sure I’ll come back and address time and again because there is such a wealth of material to write about.

Infantilization of women: the tireless commitment society has to ensuring that we are perpetually seen as children. When this concept was first presented to me a few weeks ago in my “Philosophical Perspectives on Women” class I was completely blind to this phenomenon—now I see it everywhere.

In the typical child-adult relationship, the child has an undeveloped sense of reason, and the adult must handle the reasoning. The child cannot make decisions or take care of themselves. They must be protected and possibly educated by the adult. Children are not equal and have very few rights.

Society, through language and images and cultural patterns, has infantilized women, producing a dynamic frighteningly similar to the one above. They don’t have to do much; just little visual or aural reminders are enough to subconsciously associate women with children.

Where do we see this? I’ll throw out a couple examples:

FASHION. Look at the whole baby doll trend. Betsy Johnson is a prime example. Everything has bows and ruffles—it’s like a little girl’s Easter dress

SHAVING. This is a big one. In order for us to be feminine, we must be hairless… like a little girls.

WEDDINGS. The bride is escorted by her parents and given permission like a child while her fiancée waits for her on his own, mature and self-sufficient. Not to mention she has to be carried into the honeymoon suite…

GIFTS. What do you get women? Teddy bears. What do you get men? Tools, pocket knives, ties.

The list goes on and on and on and the evidence starts popping up everywhere once you’re aware.

When I was getting dressed the other morning, I turned to my roommate and I said, “I want to look cute today.” How do you replace that word? Is there more affirming synonym? How can we take infantilization out of our lives if it is built into our language?

Baby steps.

-E

Marnie: Portrait of a Strong Woman

My paternal grandmother “Marnie” is 83 years old. Just a quick character sketch: she still dyes her hair jet black, she refuses to wear her dentures, she is quite liberal with the term “mother f**ker,” and she spends a good deal of her time playing the slots. These are the eccentricities that stand out most about her, the ones that hit you the way her cloud of overbearing perfume does when she wheels into the room on her “Go-go.” This is the caricature I have of her in my head. But when you strip away this idiosyncratic character, she is one of the strongest women I know.

Margaret Moosa was born and raised in New Orleans, the 11^th of 12 children. Her father died when she was young and her mother was the matriarch of the Lebanese immigrant family. Her closest friend and younger sister Lucy inexplicably died in her early thirties. Many of her siblings met similarly tragic ends. She married my grandfather, a Naval officer, and over the years they had 3 children. When they weren’t moving from base to base they lived in the “crazy house” with her entire family. My grandpa was away on leave for months at a time, and when he came home he brought his alcoholism with him. He died in 1992.

Fiercely independent and insistent upon living on her own, she’s been battling stage four cancer for a few years now. Frankly, she’s kicked its ass. That’s not to say that she’s cancer free. She’s quite the opposite, really, but she’s been fighting tirelessly in her own obtuse way.

My clearest and most poignant memory of Marnie finds her sitting at my kitchen counter in the fall of 2005, a Hurricane Katrina refugee. Constant CNN coverage streamed on the TV in the background as Marnie talked to our relatives in Texas to get the status on her two 80-something-year-old brothers. They had finally made it to Houston after spending days in the New Orleans convention center without air conditioning or water. It was just Marnie and me alone in the kitchen, and I watched in silence as she pounded her fist on the countertop repeating a visceral “No, no, no.” Her autistic brother Rudy had been put on life support, and she didn’t want him surviving on machines. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her break.

She came to me later, privately, and, without reference to the incident in the kitchen, told me that sometimes we can’t cry. Sometimes we just have to be strong and keep going. She has a passion for giving directions, but she has never been clearer or more adamant with me than she was that day.

After she broke her hip on Sunday, she told her surgeon that she didn’t think she could go through another surgery and another recovery process. In response, her surgeon antagonistically asked her if she was a quitter.

“I’m not a quitter,” she said.

No, Marnie, you certainly are not.

I’m lucky to have lots of strong women in my life, but I’m luckier because she’s one of them.

-E