THE SAGE CHRONICLES: Chapter I

The SAGE Chronicles

Chapter I

My little corner of the internet has been quiet for quite some time, and it’s been bothering me. Driving me crazy. Nothing to keep you up at night like a blank canvas.

I’ve said a lot about the frustration of simply writing about gender-inequality-related issues when there is so much actual, physical, practical work to be done.  Well, over the past year, I’ve found it easy to be diverted from writing this blog because of a real life, tangible, organized project I have been oh-so-lucky to be a part of. 

Fall 2011.  Classes were starting up again, and a group of my brilliant friends approached me with their intention to start a gender equality organization on our campus. Obviously, I wanted in. In recent years, Loyola New Orleans’ only existing student-run organization of the sort and fallen ill and quietly died. 

One late night in the common room of my friends’ dorm, six of us sat around typing, discussing, backspacing, and typing again until we had a constitution.  My friends are self-motivated, organizational wizards.  They are smart cookies.  In no time we had two faculty advisors, officer titles/duties, a regular meeting schedule. And ideas! So many ideas.  All that real, big kid stuff.

Finding a name was the next order of business.  We plowed through a bunch of really stupid acronyms (most of which were suggested and fiercely defended by me) until Jenni, officer and resident artist, came up with SAGE: Student Advocates for Gender Equality.

And so we began.  General meetings were held every other Wednesday night at which we discussed whichever gender-equality-related topic we’d put on our posters for that particular meeting.  Now, attendance wasn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it was diverse, and sizable, and, most importantly, good enough to afford us some interesting discussions. 

I’m not even going to pretend I know all of the intricacies and inner workings of SAGE.  It took a bunch of people to get this on its feet. Marlee Clayton became our Treasurer.  My hat is off to her because the idea of the Student Government Association Fund Allocations process and all the incomprehensible stuff that comes with it make me want to take a nap.  Maddy Crabtree valiantly took up Director of Activities.  Jenni Austiff’s artistic talent was harnessed (mostly for poster-making), making her Director of Marketing. I am currently the Secretary.  I do lots of writing of stuff, but certainly not all of the writing of stuff.  Morgan Whittler and Beth Cook are our Co-Presidents, and they make an excellent team. Award-winning, in fact.

So, this is what we started with.  This and a whole bunch of ideas.  And from here we jumped off into an inaugural year full of encouragement, backlash, hip hop, magazine clippings, missing punctuation, economics professors, and lots of other strange little pieces that came together in such fascinating ways. All of which I will regale you with soon. 

I will try my best to do them justice. 

-E

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!