Dear Victoria's Secret, get your paws off my feminism

Alright.  Victoria's Secret has really outdone itself this time. 

It's bad enough that this corporation promotes narrow ideals of beauty and sexiness that have horrible consequences on girls' and women's self-esteem, self-image, and co-ed relationship expectations.  But, in recent years, they've gotten hip to the fact that lots of us are sick of our bodies being chopped into scrutinizable bits by ads, and they've begun co-opting our media literacy efforts.  

 

First they featured the "Love Your Body" ad campaign, which twisted the Dove and other non-profit messaging intended to help women love their bodies and see themselves *apart* from commercial standards.  Now, they're touting the "Incredible" bra, which is advertised with a play on 70's bra-burning feminism: "Burn my old bra! This one's incredible!"  They may as well say, "Burn that old-fart, unappetizing sexism!  The coy, submissive woman is back!"

These 'clever' marketing techniques not only confuse public awareness while they poke fun and delegimitize the serious public health issues involved in low body image and sexism, but they go one step further in reaffirming and promoting the oppressive norms bra burning and self-acceptance initiatives try to combat.

I'm tired of living in a culture where women are taught to compare themselves to each other, to be jealous and competitive over men, and to never feel perfect or deserving enough to inhabit themselves fully.  I'm tired of living in a culture where women feel they must be like porn stars to make male partners happy, where the freedom to be sexually active has been usurped by the same old corporate interests, and male-pleasing, porn-performance promiscuity inserted where empowered fulfillment and true intimacy ought to be.  It's hard enough to get out a message celebrating uniqueness and real, personal beauty over the din of dollars and cents accumulating, without that same commercial monster using my cause...for their own profit, yet again.  Way to add insult to injury!

My panties certainly ARE in a wad.  Hm.  Maybe that'll be their next tagline.

After all this time, is acting 'like a man' still the most powerful thing a woman can do?

Today I attended the stellar Women Who Tech TeleSummit.  (Thanks coordinators, speakers, and sponsors who helped make it cheap enough to go to!)

The panel that gave me the most food for thought was called "Self Promotion: Is This Really a Rant About Gender?"  The main question, riffing off of the debate stirred up by Clay Shirky's article, "A Rant About Women," was: "Is it necessary to be a self-aggrandizing jerk to get ahead?"

So yeah.  Some questions that were debated were:  What does it mean to get ahead?  What's the difference between aggression and assertiveness?  How do you handle the double standard wherein men can act 10 times as aggressive as women while women get called a "bitch" when they act confident and powerful?  How can we change the standards on both the supply and demand sides?

One conclusion of the panel I found particularly salient and helpful was that when people moan about sexism and double standards, the retort "stop blaming men" makes no sense.  Demanding diversity on panels, at schools, in work places (minorities as well) is not a way of blaming men, but a way to improve the quality of, well, everything, by widening the pool of excellent candidates.  It was also pointed out that creating systems that invite women and people of color does not "lower standards" (I can't even believe how prejudiced a comment that is, but it's a common repsonse!), but rather acknowledges and addresses the issue that there are a bajillion qualified people out there, yet usually the white, male, "jerks" (to use Clay Shirky's word) are the ones viewed as successful and enjoying that so-called success.

As a result of all of this, I revisited Deanna Zandt's post, "Shirky to women: ur doin it wrong."  Definitely worth checking out her articulate post, as well as the debate that went on in the comments.  The blogosphere firestorm stirred up by Shirky's article may have subsided, but these issues are far from solved, so this is all certainly worth a read, a think, a comment, a talk with a friend about over coffee.  Who knows, it might even inspire you to hire a different employee, stick up for someone in the classroom, or go after what you think you deserve.  (For the record, I *do* think you can do that without being a self-aggrandizing jerk, a quality of modern masculinity that I hope we can all grow out of someday.)

Caught between casual sex and domesticity, women find regrets and false promises of empowerment

I'm liking this article by Jessica Grose, The Shame Cycle: The new backlash against casual sex, for the way she succintly ties feminist history and today's climate to real women's lives.

Grose talks about about why women might regret their casual sexual encounters and instead hanker for domesticity; one idea I want to add to that pot is--what ever happened to valuing the quality of relationships?  We don't think it's liberating, empowering, or fun to have a short, meaningless friendship, so why would having a sexual fling *not* take an emotional toll?  In wanting to be tough and independent, women have no space to think they deserve a loving, committed partner--and as Grose points out, when we crave that closeness with someone, we reprimand ourselves for being a crybaby who may as well aspire to '50s housewifery.  Women try so hard to deflect the demeaning stereotype of femininity as emotional PMS-induced hysteria, that we end up isolating ourselves socially.  And what exactly is powerful about that?

American pop culture tells us that sexuality is empowering.  But, in a way, not much has changed from women's powerless historical role: for today's Kill Bill-inspired feminists, sexuality remains wrapped in the pressure to *be sexy* for someone else...and to add insult to injury, we're now expected to somehow own and enjoy that feeling.

Rachel Simmons sums it up well in her post on hook-up culture, "As authors like Ariel Levy and Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin have shown, the sexualization of girls and young women has been repackaged as girl power. Sexual freedom was supposed to be good for women, but somewhere along the way, the right to be responsible for your own orgasm became the privilege of being responsible for someone else’s."

Update:  More on the freedoms and debate about hook-up culture by Shira Tarrant.

Well said

Katha Pollitt writes on the inaccuracies and "house-dividing" consequences of the feminist wave labels. Right on, well-said, thank you for putting it out there!

To society at large, feminist in-fighting and blaming only serves to highlight women's demands as disorganized at best and hysterical at worst. As a relative young'un who has instinctively resisted the wave label (yes, Katha, I *don't* think pole-dancing is "empowering"), I'm finding many young women who, like me, are turning to collaboration and understanding as the way to change.

Pop Politics

In honor of all the awesome political discussion, analysis, and action that went into and will come out of the NCMR, I thought I'd post some political links. I'm really glad to have met some of the awesome political feminists behind these sources like Jenn Pozner, Shireen Mitchell, Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Deanna Zandt at the conference as well!

From Feministing:
Politics Made Sexy for Men
GOP Consultant: Sometimes it's "accurate" to call a woman a "bitch"

From AlterNet:
Anti-Feminist Backlash Out in Full Force

From the New York Times:
Judith Warner: Woman in Charge, Women Who Charge
[In a nation indifferent to the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton, no wonder a film like "Sex and the City" is a hit.]

We of course still have much to do, but I do have a feeling of movement, and sharing information--spreading awareness--is the first step.