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.)

[Re-post] The Dating Game: Sluts Don't Get to Be Happy

Just wanted to re-post this article from Bitch Mag by Megan Carpentier

 ...definitely some great food for thought for the ongoing debate. (I'm not saying I agree with all of it, but I like how she digs in and provokes thought.)

If you haven't heard, there's only one possible result when you're a "slut"—particularly if you have the audacity to do it without shame and—clutch your pearls, ladies—talk about it in a public forum.

 
Read more at Bitch Mag...

Sexism at Work: Young Women, Newsweek, and Gender...and Race

I'm joining the Ms. Blog in its hearty hoorah to female Newsweek staff (and to Newsweek itself!) for publishing "a brave and candid piece calling out sexism at the magazine and in the publishing industry as a whole"...and also want to include Allison Martell's response piece pointing to the issues of race not addressed by this article.

I'm impressed that instead of silencing or punishing the authors, Newsweek is running a story that at first glance doesn't make the magazine look too great.  (At second glance, of course, running the article is a hip, face-saving way of not having this expose printed *about* them somewhere else.  But still!  Let's commend honest media.)

However, it's painfully true that, despite representing a cross-section of age (kudos for making women past 35 visible!), there are no women of color in the photo.  Does this reflect a creative oversight or the larger fact that in a more just society, Newsweek would have more women of color on its staff? 

Newsweek's sexism authors Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball are blogging at Equality Myth, and are upset that discussions of racism divide feminism, diminishing the power of women's efforts in an already-anti-feminist mainstream culture.  Martell replies to their call for feminists to "stick together": 

"I just don’t accept the premise that feminism is an easier sell without anti-racism. All of the major outstanding feminist issues are deeply entwined with issues of race, in ways that I think a broad, mainstream audience understands. By ignoring race, we only make ourselves more irrelevant." 

If Newsweek had added women of color to "correct" their photo, is this not just a form of tokenism?  Isn't it offensive to think that all minorities should be satisfied by the inclusion of a few (or as often happens, only one) in a photo?

I agree with Martell that pretending that race issues don't exist to show a veneer of unity only creates resentment and more reluctance to take part in a feminist movement.  I also believe in the virtue of critique and speaking up as pointed out by another blogger, Doree: "feminism can only get stronger when we allow ourselves to think critically about what it means and who it represents." Surely debate is the enactment of democracy and many horrifying historical events could have been stopped by louder dissent.  But, speaking from personal experience, I also resonate with the Newsweek authors' point that women fighting women--no matter what age, class, race, or background--negatively impacts our larger fight for common goals. 

With these issues being as complicated as they are, how can we truly address racism and sexism at a deeper level?  And how can we do so in a way that builds strength, rather than more division and disenchantment?  I would love to learn how, without glossing over or ignoring the various issues at hand, we can support each other and continue to make progressive change.

Some more mixed messages for the feminist file...

 

Just got a kick out of this juxtaposition of articles on a women's site someone sent me.  No wonder we're all so confused!

Diane Levin on the bigger meaning of Senator Brown’s “available daughters” comments

Diane Levin comments on why Senator Brown's “available daughters” comments are not light and funny.

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Hottest Hip Hop Glorifies Pimping

Experts: Hottest Hip Hop Glorifies Pimping | Womens eNews

Source: www.womensenews.org

 

Hip hop is commercially hot, culturally influential and replete with references to pimping and prostitution. Critics say this not only sends teens a pro-pimp message, it puts some girls even more at risk for becoming prostitutes.

It's time to challenge casual sexism

Check out this article from the Times UK about challenging the casual culture of sexism that we all accept.

I love the author's point that we all stay silent because eh, what's the big deal--we want to be cool, not uptight.  And when we do speak out, we get the response, "Geez, why can't women take a joke?"  We can take a joke, but sexism isn't funny.

Now go read this really articulate, awesome article!

Addendum:  I was just reading Lucinda Marshall's blogpost on "Objectifying and Belittling Women In The Name Of Breast Cancer Awareness," when I got to her line, "At the risk of being called a humorless feminist [this campaign is] sophomoric and deeply insulting to both men and women."  There it is folks.  The humorless feminist is a total stereotype, a dirty joke.  Our aversion to standing up for everyone's right to act as a full human being (yup, that's my definition of feminism) is our own obstacle. 

And in the meantime, this cancer awareness campaign is a perfect example of casual sexism, where the physicality of boobs as objects is used as the attention-grabbing aspect of their ads.  But what else are companies to do than concoct a sexy message to garner support and awareness?  Perhaps if the general public were to make some noise and let them know we don't need ads like this to care about the *people* we're losing to breast cancer, companies wouldn't need to rely on sashaying body parts to get the word out.

London Fashion Week stylist resigns over designer's decision to use size 14 models in show

via dailymail.co.uk

My reactions:
1. Hooray, someone used normal sized women to display fashion!
2. Ick, women on the runway still look like mannequins. Who cares what size we are when we're still objectified and obsessed with looks?
3. Who is this dude who resigned and what is *that* about?!
4. Why isn't the headline "Fashion Designer Uses Normal Sized Models"? Is the fact that that's *not* news, good news? Have teeny steps actually been made in an altered public consciousness? Or is there no attention being paid because nothing has changed and no on cares about a drop in the bucket?
Lots of mixed feelings here, folks. Help me out.

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Mixed messages don't get more confusing than this

I just came across a Fox newsflash about a Shape Magazine article, called "Country's Leading Ladies Discuss Body Image, Confidence and Jessica Simpson!"

In this piece, Martina McBride, Julianne Hough, and LeAnn Rimes talk about their concern for young women who base their beauty ideals and self-esteem on "what they see in TV or in magazines." They also talk about how hard it is to maintain self-confidence and be a star under scrutiny.

But wait, yup, their photo on the cover of the magazine shows them in bikinis, looking teeny and flawless (next to other cover article headlines about losing weight and looking good). These women are famous because they are *musicians,* yet their appearance is just as important to their success as a model's. While they recognize that being ostracized over appearances can be really hurtful, they also contribute to the social norm that being worried about 'being beautiful' is important: “I’m 26 and I’m still a little self-conscious about my looks," Rimes admitted. "When I was a kid, I had psoriasis over 80 percent of my body. Luckily, I’ve found a medicine that helps control it, but I never know when it will stop working or if I’ll have to deal with it again. It’s still a struggle, but as you get older, I think your perspective changes."

So while the stars try to be candid and encourage women to feel confident, they are simultaneously icons on the front of a magazine who fall into the same shape and size as the prescribed ideal.

Is there any way for celebrities to break out of this mixed messaging? Is there any way for everyone else to stop our collective obsession with looks?

While Tony Snow Fights Cancer, Dana Perino Takes Over the Press 'Gaggle' ...with her "Big Girl Panties" on?

According to the Washington Post, Dana Perino, deputy press secretary who's stepping in for Tony Snow, was told by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to "Put your big-girl panties on." In the same 'tough panties' vein, PoliticsDaily has a sub-site called Woman Up. The motto: "Woman Up: Where Big-Girl Panties Are Always a Fit."

There's been some debate amongst feminist circles lately whether phrases like "woman up" and "put your big girl panties on" really do women any favors. I'm especially intrigued with the panty reference. Are we saying that being a larger, more mature woman is where the power is at? Or are we yet again just talking about something kind of petty and taboo (mature women's sexuality), and hindering women's real power?

I do like the "big girl panties" phrase because in it female power is cleaved from sex/beauty and put in a legitimate arena (i.e. gaining a political job takes qualifications and hard work, not thong underwear and blowjobs).

But, it bothers me that when a woman takes a powerful position, this news is often accompanied by media queries or jokes regarding if she's tough enough (the second sentence in the Washington Post article talks about Dana Perino sobbing), as well as references to her appearance and sexuality or asexuality that distract--and detract!--from her validity (the third sentence is, "Three hours later, her face freshly powdered and every strand of her neat bob in place, Perino crisply fielded questions at a televised briefing").

Hillary Clinton's media treatment during her presidential campaign was a case in point: She was picked on for showing weakness when she cried at the same time as she was put down for being too tough (the infamous "b*tch" label). Criticisms (and reactions to criticisms) of her "ugly" pantsuits and the size of her thighs garnered more attention than the content of her campaign speeches.

Repeatedly, women are depicted as emotional roller-coasters who vacillate between complete hysteria and total dictatorship, while the importance of their looks is played up. Doesn't all this negative and contradictory focus on gender maintain levels of sexism and prevent women from concentrating on the work they want to do? (Nobody was quoting cutesy lines in major newspaper articles--at least to my knowledge--about Obama putting his big boy undies on...) I'd say that in this climate, references to big-girl panties probably don't help to put the spotlight back on women's legitimacy and brilliance.

Read, Watch, Check Out

I've been stockpiling some links definitely worth checking out...

Double standards turn up at, yup, the dry cleaners
NEW YORK REGION | February 05, 2009
At the Cleaners, One Woman Seeks Gender Equality
By CARA BUCKLEY
Women's shirts often cost much more to launder than men's, even if they are smaller and made of the same cloth. Janet Floyd is out to change that.


Where media, pharmaceuticals, and women's health intersect (and I love that this is in the Business section, and not Fashion or Lifestyle for once!)
BUSINESS | February 11, 2009
Advertising: A Birth Control Pill That Promised Too Much
By NATASHA SINGER
As part of a settlement, Bayer is running ads that clarify the side benefits of its birth control drug, Yaz. Regulators say earlier ads played down the risks.


Very much in line with articles and books written by my contemporaries on the pressure on girls and women to be perfect...
According to new research at UC Berkeley, Pressure to be a supergirl is causing teen mental health crisis

*I'm excited to say that more on this topic will be coming up as well: An interview with Liz Funk, author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Lives of Overachieveing Girls, will be posted here during her virtual book tour March 12th.

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.

Lessons on Sex? i.e. What my spam mail has to say on the topic

I get a lot of spam in my email. Today, instead of just grumbling about it, I began to actually *read* the subject lines on these emails, and they are really ridiculous. But obviously not that ridiculous, or someone wouldn't be writing them thinking that I'll open the email.

So let's see...I'm an alien from the next galaxy and I drop in to do a little anthro study on junk email topics. And imagine that, they're all about--sex. And they're all addressing men. And yep, they're all rather macho and violent, or at least James-Bond-sexy-dangerous. Here's a sampling:

"increase girth, length, and thickness"
"don't settle for anything less than 9 inches"
"length translates directly to happiness"
"cuum [sic] on her face longer and harder"
"penetrating deeper and harder"
"be a lethal weapon in the bedroom"
"you banged her while her guy waited"
...and the oh-so-believable "mariah carey wants to have your kids"

But how do these spammers propose males do these things? With pills and porn (and plastic surgery). And if you don't want to spend money trying to be SuperSexman, well shame on you. The "stop being the joke around town" type of subject lines I also see in my inbox imply that if you're not super macho, you'll be laughing stock. Which means women are laughing stock. And men who are caring are laughing stock. Couples who have loving sex are laughing stock. Just brilliant.

It's not healthy for men to feel this much pressure to be sexually aggressive, and it's not cool that insurance companies continue to cover costs of Viagra etc. while not covering birth control pills (not to mention medicines that help cancer patients and so on). When women spend money, effort, and time whittling themselves away into the "perfect" skinny body while men do the same to be bigger and more physically aggressive than ever, I'd say feminist work is really not done yet.

We all could benefit from a wider spectrum of acceptable behaviors, appearances, and ways of being. We should be free to just be who we are, since we're each all these things--simultaneously sweet, tough, sexy, powerful, and kind.

Sexy Empowerment is a Tough One

I have to hand it to Christina Aguilera for promoting messages of female strength in many of her songs, where most popular entertainers don't. But at the same time, her career seems to depend on her sex appeal, which of course embodies the same old confusing message about female power as ever.

I discovered her video for Can't Hold Us Down the other day. To me, this video seems sadly to enact the double standards of gender that we navigate all the time, while attempting to speak out against them. (It also plays heavily on race and class issues as well: the way Aguilera sets herself in the dress, body movements, and neighborhood traditional to black rappers and singers who perform about their oppression, poverty, and so on is a whole other sticky identity politics blog post!...and interesting in light of something I just learned today: a Girl Scouts study about girls and leadership recently found that black and latina girls are more likely to imagine themselves speaking out as future leaders than caucasian girls. Hm. Help me with that one!)

The entire song is portrayed as the reaction to a man physically harassing Aguilera (in this case, grabbing her ass) on the street. The lyrics to "Can't Hold Us Down" are a global call to feminist community and to not staying silent in the face of oppression and abuse, which are messages I think we need to hear more often in commercial media outlets: "This is for my girls all around the world/Who've come across a man who don't respect your worth/Thinking all women should be seen, not heard/So what do we do girls?/Shout out loud!" She also gives context to why women often stay quiet when raped, molested, or abused, mentioning that, "If you look back in history/It's a common double standard of society/The guy gets all the glory the more he can score/While the girl can do the same and yet you call her a whore."

BUT. As she sings that no one "can, never will...hold us down," she struts around in runway sashay and slides her crotch on a hose spouting between her legs. (I'm quite sure I don't need to go into an explanation of the symbolism on that one!) During Li'l Kim's mid-song rap about the player/whore double standard, she does a hip-hop version of strip tease meets lap dance choreography. Later on, she gives a fierce look to camera while pushing up her boobs. So while these women sing about the power of speaking out and sisterhood--two aspects of feminism I'm all about!--they suggest through their visuals that these things come from sexual appeal and aggression.

The video and song itself pits men against women, excluding men from joining feminism through blame (which I think is ultimately hurtful to feminist goals--men need to care too or we'll never get anywhere!). And confusingly, while pointing an angry finger at men, the women's power and enjoyment in this video seem to come from making the men want them, and themselves being in a perpetual state of heat. The sexually charged dance-off (plenty of crotch-grabbing and eying-up amongst the break dancing and hip-hip moves) depicted between genders culminates in faux violent footage at the end of the video: women form a front to push the men back in a style reminiscent of riots, ironically tying violence back to empowerment and sex appeal.



And while I'm at it, I'll throw in my usual commentary on media and body confidence--Isn't it easier for us to hear this message from a thin, toned, made-up and digitally-retouched celebrity than women at home, work, or in our government!?

As usual, I feel conflicted. This is not a video I'd want a girl to watch, yet Christina is taking feminism mainstream, which is normally a difficult thing to do--but a thing that is necessary for widescale social change for women.

What do you think? Do videos like this aid or impede, crystallize or muddle a revolution? Is flaunting sexuality equal to true power? Should we be thankful for or disappointed in her voice amongst other pop stars'? Do videos like this damage or create respect for women? I'd love to hear.