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!