What to wear
July 2, 2010
The other day, I was perusing the bargains in baby clothes at the Disney Store outlet – of course, I stick to Bambi and Dumbo and Pooh because I think surrounding my daughter with only princesses sends quite the wrong message about what to value in women (wealth and beauty rather than strength and intelligence – that’s the short of it) – when I came face to face with a woman shrouded entirely in black. Only her forehead and eyes were visible. There she stood, a statue wrapped in ominous cloth, amid pink and purple frills: princesses and their gender-based wiles that seemed to say, “Look at me; look at how pretty I am,” making feminists like me ask the knee-jerk question, “Who are you really?”
How much can you tell about somebody from their clothes? I’ll admit, I stole sideways glances at the woman and wondered if she were an oppressed person. I pondered, “Does she wear the hijab because she’s forced to do so; is she afraid of western men and their assumed inherent violence; or is this a religious choice?” Her garments looked uncomfortable to me, though I’ve never worn such things off stage. Perhaps cloaking herself in blackness makes her feel safe or strong or hidden, allowing her to observe without herself being observed by others. Perhaps she hides a secret physical ugliness. Whatever the case, unlike her adjacent counterparts, she seemed to be saying, “Don’t look at me; don’t look at how pretty I am.” She, owing to her precise geography, was one of the most incongruous sights I have ever beheld.
I didn’t draw any resolute conclusions about this woman in black; I had no basis for judgment. I had no knowledge of her beyond what I could tell by her appearance. But I thought about the baby in my belly and how one day she would certainly want to know what makes a woman dress this way and how I would want to be able to give honest, unprejudiced answers to questions like these. It’s important for mothers to educate their children, isn’t it: to be enlightened and to enlighten?
The New York Times ran an enlightening piece about Muslim American women and their attire on June 13. Perfect! I needed to learn. I had been preparing the basic egalitarian answer of “Every woman should be able to choose what she wants to wear and wear it without condemnation,” but really that’s a useless statement after the age of 5 and I had come up with several holes. For instance, once Ellie gets to school age, she’ll wear a uniform like every other kid in the county. I’m behind this measure because – even though jewelry and shoes will tell tales – uniforms neutralize socioeconomic backgrounds when kids are prone to making assumptions based upon appearances. All the children, wealthy or poor, will be the same in one sense: public school learners.
But Ellie will ask me, “If every woman should get to wear what she wants, why do I have to wear a uniform to school?” (Incidentally, I know she’ll ask this question because she’ll be my daughter and I would ask this question; and so would her father. I have never been able to stop viewing the world in terms of fairness: it’s not fair that we get this and they get that, that the world is so unbalanced a place that many are starving and unhappy while others are engorged with comforts. And I realized the other day that I am entirely devoid of the ability to kiss ass: a survival and advancement instinct that many possess. I can’t do it, for that is the definition of unfairness to me: that somebody should deserve more praise for less work than another because of status. And I like this about myself. It’s my best quality. And I sleep well at night without inherent duplicity.)
The Times article presents two Muslim American women from Tennessee and their experiences wearing Islamic attire in the United States. Apparently, they’ve been shouted out of stores for being “terrorists,” kicked off planes by nervous flight attendants, and continually subjected to public scrutiny because of their clothes: “a loose outer garment called a jilbab; a khimar, a head covering that drapes to the fingertips; and a niqab, a scarf that covers most of the face.”
Women can’t win, it seems. If we wear too much clothing, as with the Islamic tradition, we’re cultish or dangerous because we may be hiding too much. If we show off our flesh – in outfits with bare midriffs, short skirts, revealing tops or even nothing at all, we may be hiding too little. A woman who shows too much cleavage is a slut or a whore, right? Isn’t she asking to get raped? And a woman in a hijab or other religious covering is asking to be harassed for displaying her personal views and traditions, isn’t she?
We’re doing so little to correct these ideas. We have that idiot Sarah Palin making Facebook statements such as, “We have a President, perhaps for the very first time since the founding of our republic, who doesn’t appear to believe that America is the greatest earthly force for good the world has ever known.” It’s this kind of U.S.-centrism that allows people to go into stores like Wal-Mart and scream bloody terrorism at perfectly harmless men, women and children. It is misplaced faith in conservative capitalism to think that there is any way to calculate what may indeed be “the greatest earthly force for good.” Even good forces like love and compassion have yan to their yin.
Then there’s the awful world of Hollywood cinema, which churns out utter garbage like Sex and the City 2. What can be said about this train wreck other than, “I’m sorry it was ever made.” If it’s not making fun of homosexuals and their assumed signature indulgences, it’s pretending to tout women’s liberation through the argument that scantily- and ridiculously-clad American women visiting the Middle East are some how better off than heavily shrouded women who freakishly sneak French fries under their veils. It turns Muslim women and their lives into punchlines; and like Sarah Palin’s blathering, it’s dangerous propaganda for ignorance.
So what have I learned? The better answer for Ellie’s inevitable question of why that woman in the Disney Store was covered in black is, “Every woman has her own reasons.” The Times subject began wearing Islamic attire out of spite, because she was angry that American Muslim women who had once chosen the niqab out of piety were now going without owing to their fear of harassment. Her choice then evolved into something philosophical, for this is not a thoughtless person. “HEBAH AHMED (her first name is pronounced HIB-ah) was born in Chattanooga, raised in Nashville and Houston, and speaks with a slight drawl. She played basketball for her Catholic high school, earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and once worked in the Gulf of Mexico oilfields.” She’s accomplished and liberated from the constraints of the feminine ideal, and chooses to wear Islamic dress “because I want to be closer to God, I want to please him and I want to live a modest lifestyle…I want to be tested in that way. The niqab is a constant reminder to do the right thing. It’s God-consciousness in my face.”
It just goes to show you that you can never tell all about people by their clothes.
According to Islam for Today, a Web site dedicated to educating westerners, wearing the hijab may be a liberating act for some Muslim American and Canadian women:
Sumayya Syed, 16, says that what parents or men want have nothing to do with it. In fact, she astounds people who ask by saying that every woman should have this form of liberation. Syed maintains that when a woman is covered, men cannot judge her by her appearance but are forced to evaluate her by her personality, character, and morals. ‘I tell them that the hijab is not a responsibility, it’s a right given to me by my Creator who knows us best. It’s a benefit to me, so why not? It’s something every woman should strive to get and should want.’
…Some people may think that the more a woman covers, the less freedom she has. But, according to Muslim tradition, it is actually the opposite. The less she wears, the more she is degraded and the more she is put in the line of fire of male criticism.
All of this is not to say that Islamic dress doesn’t spell O-P-P-R-E-S-S-I-O-N for some women. According to the National Organization for Women (NOW), the piety and integrity that many women believe Islamic dress grants them as outlined in the Koran can be twisted into something that’s brutally enforced rather than respectfully encouraged. Ergo, the burqa, worn in Taliban territory, means incarceration rather than liberation.
Before the Taliban’s takeover, Afghan women were:
70% of school teachers 50% of civilians in the government workforce 60% of teachers at Kabul University 50% of students at Kabul University 40% of doctors in Kabul But when the Taliban took over the capital city of Kabul in September 1996, it issued an edict that stripped women and girls of their rights, holding the Afghan people hostage under a brutal system of gender apartheid. The edict forbade women and girls from working or going to school. It effectively placed all women under house arrest, prohibiting them from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. Women who had lost all of their male relatives in the war were literally trapped in their homes.
Women were prohibited from being seen or heard. The windows of their homes were painted, and they could not appear in public unless wearing the full-body covering, the burqa. Women were beaten for showing a bit of ankle or wearing noisy shoes. They could not speak in public or to men who were not relatives. They were beaten, even killed, for minor violations of these rules.
Women accused of prostitution or infidelity were hung in public squares or stoned to death, and persons accused of homosexuality were put in a pit near a wall, which was then toppled, burying them alive. Ironically, brothels proliferated under Taliban rule, employing educated women who had no other way to survive. The Taliban alternated between frequenting and raiding the brothels.
For women living under the rule of the Taliban, dress is just a symbol of their socially recognized inferiority: a tool used to segregate them and justify doing them harm. It’s important to tell Ellie these things when she is old enough to understand that this and any kind of hatred is wrong. And as for the Muslim women we encounter in our locale, it’s important to accept that their clothing choices may be their own for many different reasons; and, even though they are not being forced to wear the hijab by our U.S. government, a male relative should not be allowed to violently enforce such a dress code either. We believe that women should call the shots in our own lives without harm from men. (“Say that with me, Ellie: women should call the shots in our own lives without harm from men. Shout it.”)
Oh, back to that pesky uniform question: “Ellie, there are many children who don’t have nice homes to live in and pretty clothes to wear to school. And some people aren’t always kind to people who don’t have lots of money to spend on those things. Wouldn’t you feel very sad if you went to school one day and saw your friends picking on another friend who didn’t wear expensive clothes? You would feel very sad, and probably angry too. I know you would. It’s not fair to judge people by what they wear, or by what they have. It’s our differences that color this planet and make it a wonderful place to live. You kids will wear the uniform so that everybody can see and appreciate the wonderful differences in your characters and your personalities, rather than the differences in your clothes. Express your individuality through words and deeds. And later in life, when you’ve all learned that clothes are just for the eyes, you can wear what you like.”
Phew! I mean, she’s not even born yet…so I have time to perfect that speech.
Is motherhood under attack?
June 9, 2010
The countdown ’til baby for me is just under eight weeks. This time in my life has been a precious experience. There are days when I feel like the most beautiful and powerful woman in the world, and days when I want my body back so I can do all of the things I used to: drink alcohol in moderation, swim a mile with the crawl stroke, have comfortable sex with my husband rather than “Tetris sex,” or even just walk up a flight of stairs without becoming winded. And there are days when I look around the world – my locale, the newspapers, the blogosphere, etc. – and I realize that this exciting time isn’t universal even though it should be. Pregnancy and its resulting motherhood in its best form should be a choice lauded by others, for all women who want it. It isn’t.
Here are just a few of the pregnancy and motherhood related issues at large in the world today:
- Maternal mortality is on the rise. According to the Los Angeles Times and others, the maternal mortality rate in the United States has doubled in the past 10 years putting this country’s death rate higher than 40 other industrialized nations. Two women die from pregnancy-related complications every day in the U.S. And while that may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the 11,000 or so babies that are born here each day, it’s still a scary number when you picture the faces of moms-to-be whom you know. “For each death, experts estimate, there are about 50 instances of complications related to pregnancy or childbirth that are life-threatening or cause permanent damage.” What are the causes of these complications and deaths, a third of which experts say are preventable? Obesity, increases in age of expectant mothers, increased implementation of cesarean sections, increased elective induction of labor by medicines, and over-reliance on electronic monitoring devices are being blamed as the main culprits of maternal death.
- Is it okay to fat shame a mom-to-be? The New York Times reports that growing obesity among pregnant women is linked to higher risks of birth defects, cesareans (risky for moms) and even death for newborns. While this rise in obesity has been met publicly with disdain from the healthcare industry and subsequently a rebuttal argument of obesity support from those under attack – accounting for everything from the prevalence of high fructose corn syrup, trans fat and other additives found in inexpensive foods to even the perils of dieting and being too thin, etc. – in the case of pregnancy, obesity may have more to do with a failure on the part of the mother, putting her unborn child at risk due to her obesity, than her right to maintain her own body the way she wants to or is even able. It must be tricky for doctors to address this issue with their patients because conventional wisdom suggests that moms-to-be shouldn’t try to lose weight during pregnancy. (I had to drop out of Weight Watchers when I conceived because the program no longer offers a pregnancy plan.) But a doctor can’t tell an overweight woman not to have a baby, can (s)he? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to the pro-life argument: you can’t do with your body what you will because of the rights of your unborn child?
- Abortion might mean eugenics for some. According to Womanist Musings, “(a)n anti-abortion group in Atlanta is targeting Black women by putting up billboards stating that Black children are an endangered species.” The New York Times also reports that some activists consider Planned Parenthood to be a racist organization that promotes elevated abortion rates among black women, with blacks accounting for 13 percent of the U.S. population yet 40 percent of its abortions. While Womanist Musings writer Renee upholds the validity of this fear while negating its foundations in a provable truth, she – as a womanist – asks for white pro-abortion activists to get involved in standing up for the rights black women share to elect abortion procedures. It makes me very sad indeed to think of a racist telling a happy expectant mother that she should abort under the guise that she’s better off without her baby, when really they mean that we’re better off. But I am sickened by the idea that some activists are telling women that they should keep their unwanted pregnancies because it’s their duty to their race.
- Men think pregnancy is ALL ABOUT THEM! According to CNN, dads-to-be run the risk of postpartum depression too. Okay, I’ll buy that. But they don’t run the risk of maternal mortality, fistulas, varicose veins, back spasms, incessant heartburn and much, much more due to pregnancy. So sack up, dads! Now, it is true that the males of many species can act as incubators for embryos during the early months of fetal development. But only seahorse males have the unique privilege of being “pregnant dads-to-be” simply because of their inherent anatomy. While transsexual human males have given birth successfully, their pregnancies are due to inherent female anatomy (though, by choice, these men are known as “males”). Why would a cis male want to serve as a fetus incubator? Is it that he just can’t stand that females have one power that he doesn’t? Why does science need to find out if this unnatural occurrence is possible when there are so many other challenges it could be conquering: Alzheimer’s, autism, maternal mortality, etc.? By the way, guys, early scientists believed that women were “just incubators” and, until a couple of hundred years ago, didn’t believe female anatomy played any special role in conception and delivery of newborn babies. We know better today. I happen to believe that our reproductive anatomy may be the one cis privilege women have over men. So back the fuck off! And just because your wife has given birth, doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me how to run my pregnancy “the right way.”
- Feminist mothers are under fire. I recently read more stay-at-home mom hatred on a radical feminist blog. One writer posted something about moms being too preoccupied with baby stuff “to do the reading.” What the fuck does that mean?! Do women who go off to careers or jobs every morning outside the home have more time during the day to read than moms providing in-home childcare? Do childcare workers also fail “to do the reading” too? Is it the baby stuff or the mom stuff that cuts into women’s “intellectual development?” (Apparently, I’m standing on the precipice of ignorance because of the major time-suck my child – wanted as she is – will be for me!) Intellectual development like exercise is something we make time for. And there are many fine activists who are also mothers. Crystal Lee Sutton (the real “Norma Rae”) died in 2009. She had three children and worked as a union organizer in North Carolina during the 1970′s, that lazy bitch!
Furthermore, an overview of Elisabeth Badinter’s new book “Conflict: The Woman and the Mother” (Badinter is of course the heir apparent of Simone de Beauvoir because she’s, ya know, French) reports that Badinter “blames feminists for inventing the idea of women as victims, putting men on trial and making maternity itself a political act.” (And she’s a feminist because…?) Badinter also thinks that women are being socially pressured into unsafe situations: “The ‘green’ mother, she says, is pushed to give birth at home, to refuse an epidural as the reflection of ‘a degenerated industrial civilization’ that would deprive her of ‘an irreplaceable experience,’ to breast-feed for both ethological and environmental reasons (plastic baby bottles) and to use washable rather than disposable diapers – in other words, to discard the inventions ‘that have liberated women.’ Which of any of those green alternatives is unsafe? Home births are controversial in the U.S. but not necessarily less safe than hospital births. As I mentioned earlier, doctors are considering what caused the rise in maternal mortality here. Funny they aren’t looking into washable diapers, right?! - Pregnancy choices are dwindling. What I mean is this: women may not feel empowered to give birth the way they want to. And really, shouldn’t we be calling the shots? Isn’t how you give birth just as important as why and if you give birth at all? The choice to deliver naturally is in the same league as the choice of whether or not to deliver at all. Now, if your birth plan calls for an elected cesarean, a premature induction of labor, a preemptive episiotomy and the biggest, badass epidural you can find, go for it! Enjoy your “twilight sleep.” (That’s an Edith Wharton reference not a condemnation.) But if you’re like me and you want to have a natural birth unless there occurs a medical emergency, you should have that right too and not feel pressured by your obstetrician to lie flat on your back and throw your feet up in the stirrups like a cowgirl. You should be allowed to stand or squat or roll on your side or face the mattress on all fours…whatever works for your body and your baby. And you should be allowed to choose your place of birth: hospital, birthing center or home. Medical organizations in the U.S. oppose home births claiming they’re risky for moms and babies alike – but we must be skeptical about this stance since healthcare in the U.S. is centered on a capitalist, for-profit model. It is currently legal to hire a midwife and conduct a home birth in 37 states, though no state prosecutes mothers for electing to give birth at home. In Britain, Canada and Australia, to name a few, midwifery and home births are much more prevalent than in the United States. (Incidentally, it is very difficult to find reputable statistics about the (un)safety of home births. Please feel free to chime in if you have any.)
When I found out I was pregnant, I excitedly booked an appointment with my OBGYN and skipped merrily into her office where I was greeted by one automaton nurse after another shoving paperwork I didn’t understand into my face. The two big questions: do I want to elect a cesarean section and do I want to bank my baby’s cord blood? I hadn’t give either any thought. I mean, I’d assumed I would give birth vaginally because that is, after all, how birth happens. What they were telling me, in essence, was that I could elect to forgo all of the hassle of nature’s greatest surprise and declare upfront that I wanted to deliver my baby “painlessly” and according to schedule so that I didn’t miss a day of work beyond my planned maternity leave. And as to the cord blood, they were telling me that the hospital where “we like to deliver” only works with one private bank. For weeks, my husband and I tried to find a public bank we could give Ellie’s umbilical cord blood to for the good of the many and the integrity of our checking account. No public banks in our area are currently accepting blood. I have been guilt-tripped by the established medical machine into feeling like a lousy mother because I am throwing my daughter’s cord blood away.
I hired a doula. She’s going to help my husband and I experience this birth as a rite of passage instead of an emergency pathology if possible. When I talked to my OB about working with a doula, she asked rather abruptly, “She’s not going to tell me how to do my job is she?” I muttered “no” under my breath, lamenting that this doctor couldn’t look me in the eye, remember my name or think about my birthing experience beyond her role to play in it. Under the advice of the doula, I asked what position the doctor was comfortable delivering my baby in, and to my dismay, she told me that she’s only comfortable “the normal way” with me on my back and my feet up in stirrups. I was heartbroken and didn’t want to tell the doula that my voyage of discovery was going to end “normal(ly.)” How I wish medicine could be there for our risks and emergencies and leave us alone to find our inner peace. I should have made better choices or stood up for my wishes or felt empowered to choose earlier in my pregnancy…but I just didn’t know any better until now.
So, as I mentioned earlier, there are some days when I feel like a goddess and other days when I feel like I’m doing just what every other mother-to-be does and I and my baby are nothing special. Western medicine has a plan for us. It, like other feminists, has rules and expectations. My pregnancy and motherhood are violating somebody’s idea of how they should be.
On those goddess days, I fight back assumptions and shaming. But today I feel defeated. It’s time to do yoga.
Privilege, shmivilege
May 12, 2010
Over the past two years as I have blogged about my feminist concerns and read those of others, I have become increasingly wary of the word “privilege.” It gets wielded an awful lot in feminist circles, most commonly attached to the word “male.” “Male privilege” is the go-to term when a feminist doesn’t have a fact-based argument to oppose one made by a man, feminist or otherwise. “Oh, there you go inflicting your male privilege on us,” is not uncommon to read in the feminist blogosphere. (Incidentally, for making this observation, I shall now endure scrutiny from other feminists who will call me an “MRA” – Men’s Rights Activist.)
I am not interested in eroding the rights of men; merely enhancing the rights of women.
I was asked to leave one feminist blog and have been blocked from two threads on another. How did this happen? I thought we all wanted the same things. In each case, it seems that two concepts of privilege became wedge issues between me – strange, proactive feminist that I am – and others: male privilege and United States privilege. Let’s define privilege for clarity’s sake:
I find that privilege is something that is often unique to each individual, unless you’re talking about privileges granted a class or faction under the law. For instance: I am privileged to give $20 to this charity, while he is privileged to give only $15 because he makes less money than I do.
In the first case, I accused a blogger of “hating men.” She spammed me. Okay. It wasn’t good for me to stay there anyway. I had just learned I was pregnant and had simultaneously observed some very negative attitudes about motherhood in that arena. Additionally, the group of radical feminists who frequented that blog seemed convinced that transsexuals (male to female) are ruining feminism for ciswomen (born women). I found this hateful and counterproductive to the feminist cause. One particular argument back and forth consisted of a “you have more privilege than I have” war, which is ultimately futile because it’s simply impossible to prove which group (cis or non-cis) has more privilege than the other; it’s subjective. The transsexual women were arguing that to be cis is to be privileged, while the ciswomen were arguing that transsexual women wield leftover male privilege from before surgery. The ciswomen demanded that transwomen stay out of women’s public restrooms because they are a rape threat to women with original vaginas. And they also claimed that being a born woman comes with no privileges in and of itself, hence the constant use of the term male privilege. (I have decided that motherhood is the ultimate privilege of women; and even if one can’t physically give birth, serving as a mother – step-, caregiver, etc. – is a privilege of our sex because it is an endeared and exalted position amongst our class. I never felt more empowered as a woman than the day I took my first pre-natal yoga class with a group of mothers-to-be. We are goddesses!) I think that being a feminist and also hating being a woman cannot coexist in one body. Ergo, you either learn to love your womanhood, or you give up your claim to feminism. This is one reason I welcome transwomen into the fold: hey, you want to be a woman, more power to ya!
All of this warring over privilege read as completely absurd to me and I found myself crying several times because of the lack of tolerance being executed by the so-called radical feminists writing into that blog. Hate, hate, hate… When the moderator sent me an email and asked me to leave, I complied without hesitation, especially considering the contradiction: she had spammed me on a thread for accusing her of misandry, and yet her blog’s sub headline is “a nice cool sip of misandry, on a hot day” and she had confessed in one thread (emphasis supplied):
frankly, i think that if my partner and i ever broke up, that i would probably not be able to be with another man due to my increasingly “radical” feminist beliefs. we have both changed over the years and are still compatible for the most part, and he also hates men which is to his credit! he knows what i mean when i say that men, as a group, suck. he doesnt take it personally. he is also a first-generation american raised in abject poverty so has more compassion and didnt/doesnt have a lot of the privileges normally associated with white men. which works for me, as i dont think i could tolerate most “normal” (entitled) men anymore. but i am pretty much resolved to having him has my last male partner, no matter what happens to him, or to me, or to us as a couple in the future.
I fully respect this statement as something one ruminates about during a voyage of self discovery. I do that here in my space and am entitled to do so as she is in her space. What’s of particular interest to me about this revelation – aside from the fact that it proves I am right about this blogger hating men – is the use of the concept of privilege to justify worth. “Men, as a group, suck,” she claims, but she exempts her partner because he has the least amount of male privilege that men inherently come with because of his lowly economic status, and thus has greater human worth. Because this group believes that cis womanhood contains no privilege over manhood, to them, even a man suffering economically, physically, socially, mentally, etc. still has more inherent privilege than does any woman, even the most economically, physically, socially or mentally elite woman. And because women lack privilege, they have greater worth than men. It’s an interesting theory, but I reject its practical usage because it is just that: a theory. It makes assumptions about personal goodness based on wealth; and I’m sure we can all agree that poor people aren’t inadvertently good and giving to others without conscious intent just as wealthy people aren’t heartless by default. I believe that theories such as this keep healthy, happy women from helping women who are less fortunate. More than a few times, I witnessed radical feminists on this blog declaring that it is the job of men to fix the world for women because women have no real power/privilege (paraphrase). I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to wait for men to rescue me and other women from any place of abuse or subjugation. Men really don’t have as great an incentive to “rescue” women, as a class, as I do.
That’s the first banning from a feminist forum I endured. I’m intrigued by it and it’s good to vent now, but ultimately, this experience did not damage me. I’m no victim, but I have carried around a lot of anger about my second negative online experience in the feminist blogosphere (as follows), and that isn’t good for me – especially pregnant me.
In my ignorance, I didn’t realize that many disabled people don’t like the use of the term “healthy” because they think it is a judgment upon them: they can’t be healthy by certain standards because of their disabilities. So when I commented on a blog post on another site – a heavy traffic site to boot – about what’s wrong with skinny, and suggested that a healthy standard rather than a too skinny standard in Hollywood would benefit the whole of American, and perhaps international, womanhood, I was surprised to find myself accused of ableism. Another commenter and I tried to explain that “healthy” for our purposes simply meant not starving to fit the standard of beauty, but the damage was done. One writer even accused me of personally attacking her because she is very thin and cannot gain weight; and I must have responded at least three times that if she’s not starving herself she’s not perpetuating a negative standard for women. It got very hostile over there even though I had the best of intentions, as did others, I’m sure.
An insult like “you’re an MRA” is easy enough to laugh at. It’s ridiculous. But, considering my professional status as a special needs writer, the accusation that I am ableist hit me pretty hard, especially since I didn’t know if it were true, entirely or in part. There are many schools of thought on this: all able-bodied people are ableist until they become disabled; all people, disabled or otherwise, should try to make healthy choices to maximize health whenever possible (don’t smoke, don’t eat fatty foods in excess, etc.); the idea of “health” is a judgment, and more. Somehow, even with the best of intentions, I had come across as prejudiced against the disabled…and I know that to be untrue even though I am still struggling to understand the various approaches to the concept of health. I did a lot of soul-searching to make sure I was earnest in my commenting. I researched heavily the “healthy” debate and brought my findings to my boss. This experience was one to learn from: not because the accusers were right and I was wrong, but because I was not making my points clearly and instead was causing offense.
I began to get angry in this second feminist space when the thin woman wrote:
I also made the mistake of reading part of your blog. Apparently you also believe women who get raped while drunk are at least partly responsible for getting raped. Quite nice. Not only are women responsible for having eating disorders, but we’re responsible for men committing sexual violence against us.
Alright, that fact that she claimed to have read “part of” my blog should have red flagged for me right there. But I got really angry at being misrepresented yet again by this same poster. I wrote in to defend myself:
You are totally wrong again about me with regard to rape. TOTALLY! And I’ll thank you to STOP misrepresenting me. I do not believe that a woman who gets raped is ever at fault for her rape. EVER. I do believe in telling young women to avoid becoming intoxicated in environments where they are with men they do not know. I do tell the young women I know to protect themselves. This is not equivalent to telling women it’s their fault. Getting drunk in an unsafe environment is a mistake I made many times in college. And I repeat for the last time: women are not to blame for their eating disorders, only for starving by choice to fit the rigid standard of beauty our planet upholds, as I have done (starve) as well. I am not some sanctimonious asshole who sits in front of a computer screen without experience and blames women for all of our woes. I am a real woman with real issues and real ideas. If you misunderstand them because I have been unable to express myself clearly, try asking me questions about them rather than condemning me.
However, this comment was never published. I wrote to the moderators asking them to publish it. I received no response. Again, I question the relevance of the “feminist” label if you are prone to silencing women in feminist forums.
In another thread, “Dear USians on the Internet,” one of the moderators banned me for making a tone argument. I think that means that I dared to infer tone from posted comments. (Shrug.) But this didn’t happen until the U.S. privilege debate began. The post was a complaint from an Australian feminist about how (some) Americans are rude to foreigners online – and “USian” is apparently the politically correct term per this writer because the U.S. has robbed other (North and South) American nations like Mexico and Canada of the “American” designation; personally, I didn’t realize Canadians for instance were desperate to be called American and I had always taken for granted that we call ourselves Americans in the U.S. because the word America actually appears in our country’s name (U.S. of A.). I’m sure some Americans are very rude online. But what shocked me about this, especially juxtaposed next to the skinny thread, was how offended the writer of the post was when comments came in complaining about how closed-minded this post was. Were we possibly just in the middle of a misunderstanding again, jumping to conclusions about people’s beliefs rather than asking them to clarify them?
ME: I just think this kind of negative posting leads to a mob/ganging up commenting spree. We all have valid perspectives. We all have good intentions, don’t we? Sometimes we misunderstand each other. But we shouldn’t be hateful in this forum, which, as I understood it when it was recommended to me, is a safe place to discuss women’s issues and concerns.
THIRD PARTY: Also, it’s amazing how people come out of the woodwork to complain about privileged folks being stereotyped/spoken down to/condescended to/etc. when there is never the same volume of reaction to nonprivileged folks being treated the same. It is an outrage for the privileged person to be given an ounce of the same treatment that they drench nonprivileged people with every single day.
ME: “people come out of the woodwork to complain about privileged folks being stereotyped/spoken down to/condescended to/etc. ” (Third Party), not all Americans are privileged folks and their ignorant declarations on the Internet may result from their lack of financial or educational privilege.
THIRD PARTY: Actually, yes, if you are from the US, you have a privilege. US privilege.
What I make of this privilege argument is the same as what I make of the other: all men of all levels in the socioeconomic structure in which they live have more inherent privilege than all women, and likewise all Americans of all levels in the American socioeconomic structure have more inherent privilege than all or most other countries on Earth. This reeks of ignorance and prejudice in both cases. While I can somewhat wrap my mind around and even agree with the male vs. female assessment of privilege because it is universal and historically true that men have ruled the world – even though, as I’ve written, I think this argument is problematic and useless beyond academia; I need to make a very important distinction between classifying men and women as distinct collectives versus classifying Americans as a collective: there is way too much diversity involved amongst designated “USians” to simply blanket us with possessing a U.S. privilege. For starters, the statistic that 25 – 40,000 people die in the U.S. every year simply from lack of health insurance, which was thrown about during the healthcare reform debates of 2009, already divides us into strikingly different levels of privilege: the insured (read: privileged to receive medical care as needed and desired) and the uninsured (read: not privileged to receive medical care as needed). So when we’re talking about health and the right to live one’s life, already we’ve come to a point where we can clearly state that not all Americans possess “U.S. privilege.” Another example: if you’re a fisherman working in the Gulf of Mexico, your livelihood has just been wiped out for perhaps years by the recent oil spill. Where’s your U.S. privilege now? (Probably, in the same place as that of the Katrina victims still residing in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers: up the asses of our wealthiest one percent!)
Speaking of healthcare, you might be surprised to know that American expectant mothers such as myself also find themselves disadvantaged below other countries when it comes to our motherhood privilege. According to Save the Children, the U.S. ranks as only the 28th best place on Earth in which to be a mother:
Why doesn’t the United States do better in the rankings?
The United States ranked 28th this year based on several factors:
•• One of the key indicators used to calculate well-being for mothers is lifetime risk of maternal death. The United States’ rate for maternal mortality is 1 in 4,800 – one of the highest in the developed world. Thirty-five out of 43 developed countries performed better than the United States on this indicator, including all the Western, Northern and Southern European countries (except Estonia and Albania) as well as Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. A woman in the Unites States is more than five times as likely as a woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece or Italy to die from pregnancy-related causes in her lifetime and her risk of maternal death is nearly 10-fold that of a woman in Ireland.
•• Similarly, the United States does not do as well as many other countries with regard to under-5 mortality. The U.S. under-5 mortality rate is 8 per 1,000 births. This is on par with rates in Slovakia and Montenegro. Thirty-eight countries performed better than the U.S. on this indicator. At this rate, a child in the U.S. is more than twice as likely as a child in Finland, Iceland, Sweden or Singapore to die before his or her fifth birthday.
•• Only 61 percent of children in the United States are enrolled in preschool – making it the seventh lowest country in the developed world on this indicator.
•• The United States has the least generous maternity leave policy – both in terms of duration and percent of wages paid – of any wealthy nation.
•• The United States is also lagging behind with regard to the political status of women. Only 17 percent of seats in the House of Representatives are held by women, compared to 46 percent of seats in Sweden and 43 percent in Iceland.
Now, I’ll admit that perhaps the only reason Save the Children bothered to explain why the U.S. came in as low as it did is because we have a great public relations machine at work: the U.S. and yes! certain “USians” claim that the U.S. is a superpower, militarily, socioeconomically, etc. This is a bit of a fraud: image conquering truth for all the world to witness. As an American mother-to-be, I confess that I am hiring birthing help (a doula) outside of the health insurance network (to the tune of $1,400) to help avoid many of the surgical impositions placed on women during childbirth automatically by the Western medical establishment; I am not receiving any maternity leave pay during my “disability” leave from work, though I am entitled to collect disability insurance for up to six weeks; and my job is not protected by federal law, which means that my company can choose to downsize me during my absence, putting me in the position of having to find a new job and raise a newborn baby simultaneously.
Now, before you send me hate mail about what a big, whiny baby I am – a white “USian” with truckloads of socioeconomic privilege, know this: I know I’m privileged. I don’t claim to be less privileged than Afghan or African women, etc. I don’t spend much time making the comparison because I think it’s a useless comparison to make. I had a great education – apart from an appalling lack of herstory, always enough food and a roof over my head, loving support from family and friends, opportunities to work and earn my living as well as give some of it away to charities I am compassionate toward, and access to medical care at every stage of my life. I’m not complaining about labels of privilege being forced upon me; I am complaining that some people would try and force the assumption of my privilege onto others. Just because I am a privileged American doesn’t mean that ALL Americans are privileged. I am perhaps one of the last of a dying breed: the American middle class. So, when Save the Children, decides that Norway is the best place on Earth to be a mother, I don’t immediately assume that all Norwegian mothers have Norway privilege… I just strongly consider moving there. (Hey, I’m no patriot! I too think the U.S. at large is full of itself.) That doesn’t mean, however, that hating the U.S. or any of its ill-mannered online representatives is what should pass for feminism in the blogosphere.
It is undeniably safe to use the term privilege when you are speaking about yourself; but beyond that you run the risk of making a lot of assumptions and those assumptions can often lead to prejudicial treatment of others. I wonder if you’ll agree with me that the greatest privilege that a person can ever experience is knowing the value of him- or herself to be equal to that of others. And the real value of feminism is that it can ensure that every woman knows her worth and her right to a happy life – that she is entitled to human egalitarian privilege, which is greater than the rights known by other forms of life; not by begrudgingly taking away the rights of others – of men and transsexuals or members of other races or dwellers of other countries, etc. – but by raising up the wonderful aspects of her self and her femaleness, those aspects that make her a valuable member of collective society: her motherhood, her sisterhood and her ability to love and care for others.
My pretty girl
May 1, 2010
With all of the well wishes and God’s blessings and good luck and wood knocks in the world, in about three months, I will give birth to a baby girl. And I’m not the least bit scared.
Okay, that second sentence isn’t really true. I’m not scared of delivery and all the pain it brings. I’m practicing yoga, eating well and working with an experienced doula. I only experienced an evanescent moment of terror when the nurse at the OB/GYN asked me during my last visit if I have a living will and then expressed shock when I told her that I did. (Women still do die in childbirth.) I’m not afraid to “be” a mother. I’ll make mistakes along the way, but I’ll also do a lot of things right. I anticipate being able to keep my writing job, which I love, and transition it to home as much as possible; so I don’t think I’ll lose myself or my mind to a sea of diapers and drool and doo doo, oh my! My husband and I are joining a wonderful church full of wonderful people who will love our Ellie (Bean). We have a wealth of friends and family who will love her too. And certainly there is no shortage of love to be found in our home, with two dogs and the world’s most affectionate kitty at play.
So everything is fine and I am not afraid of having this baby emerge and become a real, autonomous person. It’ll be great!
There’s just one thing: body image. As a woman who has always run toward heavy, one who was told at a very young age that I’m predisposed to obesity and would have to work harder than most to stay trim, one who found herself in Weight Watchers by the time she was 11 years old, and one who was teased by some really mean-spirited girls in elementary and middle school for my chubby physique; I have founded fears that Ellie too may have to wrestle with the question, “Is my body good enough?”
Gabourey Sidibe
Kevin James
Were she a boy, it wouldn’t be the issue that it inevitably will be. (I’m trying to be realistic about this.) Boys and men have a much wider spectrum of socially acceptable appearance than do women. Think about the movie stars who have achieved a-list celebrity status: sure, there are your Brad Pitts and your George Clooneys out there, but you’ve also go a lot of famous male movie stars that don’t possess six-pack abs and GQ style. Funny man Kevin James headlines movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop at well over 200 lbs., yet he doesn’t face nearly the scrutiny and ridicule of similarly obese female Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe (Precious).
I hate to single out either of these two people because I think they’re both lovable, but the fact of the matter is, Sidibe has been slammed from all angles about her weight. She’s gotten support from some who challenge the suggested norm of Hollywood actresses. Casting Director Rachel Tenner (not affiliated with Precious) told CNN, “Obviously, there aren’t a million parts made for her. Do I read 50 movies a year that are for her physicality? No. But, there are a lot of directors who appreciate the work that she did, and that may help her get considered for roles that are not written for her.”
But outspoken radio personality Howard Stern – who claims to like Sidibe’s work in Precious – condemned the actress to a limited film career saying, “What movie could she play in? You feel bad because everyone pretends that she’s part of show business, and she’s never going to be in another movie.”
Further compounding the double standard facing Sidibe – and women in general, Columnist Jeffrey Wells emailed, “Gabby is a lovely person and a fine actress, but the hard fact is that she’s way, way too fat…I don’t want Gabby to not work, but the only roles she’ll have a shot at playing will be down-market moms and hard-luck girls working at Wal-Mart. No casting director would choose her to play anyone in the upscale executive world…because no one in the executive world looks like her.”
I don’t buy that “no one in the executive world” looks like Sidibe, or James for that matter, because obesity is a trend in the United States right now. I’ve worked with plenty of overweight executives throughout my career (granted, the higher-ups are usually male and white so you’re perhaps more likely to see James in a board room than Sidibe). Regarding the size of Sidibe, there seem to be three angles at work: 1. is she healthy, 2. is she representative to a portion of humanity, obese or otherwise, and 3. is she pretty?
Too thin?
The road to the answer to the first question is full of pitfalls. Ask a hundred people and you’ll inevitably get a hundred answers about what constitutes healthy; and if you ask somebody with a disability, they’ll probably tell you you’re being ableist for using the word “healthy” to begin with. Some would argue that one’s healthy weight is completely unique to his or her build. Perhaps, Sidibe’s doctor would recommend a maximum weight of 150 lbs., but does that account for her bone density and any other special considerations such as thyroid or heart disease that might make it difficult for her to achieve such a goal? Some would say that being “too fat” is better than being “too skinny” in the long run because being overly thin can cause people to suffer anemia, broken bones or fatigue, etc. What do I think? I think the “perfect weight” for me is something my doctor agrees to: between 135 and 155 lbs. for my 5′ 5″, bone-dense frame. In other words, I think weight is personal. Would I love to weigh less than 135 lbs. and re-assume the size 2 clothes I wore in college when I ate about 500 calories per day and smoked like a chimney to stay lean? Sure! That’s what beauty is in our culture isn’t it: skinny and nothing else? But I love myself more than beauty these days so I’ll stick to “everything in moderation” and a size 8.
The answer to whether or not Sidibe is representative to a portion of the population and whether or not they and others can relate to her in movies and television is a resounding “yes.” There are plenty of overweight people in this world, enough to fill a couple of thousand theaters on opening weekend, just as they and others did for Precious (domestic box office gross: $47,566,524). Ultimately, it will probably be box office numbers and not weight analysis that keeps Sidibe in or out of roles.
Finally, the question of Sidibe’s level of pretty is perhaps entirely subjective. I remember having lunch with a friend who said that, while he admired her work in Precious, he was disgusted by her defenders who call her a pretty girl. “Because, let’s face it,” he said. “She’s not pretty.”
Hmmm. I actually think Sidibe is quite pretty. She has beautiful skin, hair and teeth. I was mesmerized by her in the movie because she was such a new thing to see on screen, like a Na’vi Avatar. Director Lee Daniels found Sidibe at an open casting call because she couldn’t be found affiliated with a casting agency: she isn’t the norm for Hollywood. But not normal doesn’t mean not pretty, does it? Is there an objective science to female beauty that can prove Sidibe is or isn’t pretty?
According to Discover magazine, and others, there is:
The mathematically perfect face?
(Los Angeles Plastic Surgeon Dr. Stephen Marquardt) collected photographs of faces the world deemed beautiful and began measuring their dimensions. Whereupon something peculiar and thrilling presented itself: the golden ratio. Beautiful people’s mouths were 1.618 times wider than their noses, it seemed, their noses 1.618 times wider than the tip of their noses. As his data set expanded, Marquardt found indeed that the perfect face was lousy with golden ratios. Even the triangle formed by the nose and the mouth was a perfect acute golden triangle…Marquardt contends that the golden ratio can be detected in the iris, the colored part of the eye. Take 10 golden triangles, arrange them with their sharp points touching, and you have a golden decagon, fitting perfectly within the iris of the eye, vertices neatly touching the rim.
So, you see folks, you’re only as beautiful as your mouth to nose to eyes ratio.
That may be the way Pythagoras saw things and it may play a part in our subconscious urges to ogle and celebrate certain faces? The same thing goes for arm to hand to torso to leg to feet ratios and the “perfect body.” (I myself have a long torso and a short inseam, much to my dismay.) But I think that in America, our standard of beauty has to do with two things: economy and repetition. It’s more expensive and therefore elite to buy organic produce, diet aids, personal trainers and weight loss programs than it is to fill your kitchen cupboards with high fructose corn syrup-filled non-perishables and forget about the rest. And wouldn’t we all like to be members of the elite? Ergo, wouldn’t we rather buy fashion magazines with Keira Knightly on the cover than Gabby Sidibe, the former representing who we want to be and the latter perhaps who we are? And that brings me to repetition: we consume images of slender women on television, in movies and on the newsstand like we do peanuts at a baseball game – one sweaty fistful at a time in rapid succession. With so many images bombarding women with how we’re supposed to look – oh so many more than those that bombard men, it’s no wonder we’re weight-obsessed and full of self-loathing, regardless of our unique states of “health.” Why, just the other day, I was driving to work when I found myself stuck behind a New Jersey Transit bus wearing a vodka print ad with a bikini-clad female torso – just the torso, no face. Clearly this ad is aimed at heterosexual male consumers rather than my kind; I read it and did not think to myself, “Gee, I’ll get abs like those if I drink that brand of vodka.”
This ad was temporarily banned in New York City.
If I can’t escape the world of female body shaming even in the privacy of my own car with the windows rolled up and the Back Street Boys blaring on the radio just mildly drowning out my singing along – and I’m a confident 30 year-old mother-to-be, than what is in store for Ellie? However she comes out, she’ll be beautiful to her parents, even if others squeamishly nod at her in approval and then lament her less-than-attractive looks behind our backs. I thought I’d found a solution to this fear that I’ll raise a daughter who’ll hate her body when I came across an article in The New York Times Magazine on April 18, 2010: “The Fat Trap.” It asks the question: Can a mother simultaneously encourage her daughter to watch what she eats and to accept her body?
Oh joy! Somebody did all of the legwork for me! Well, not the case: this article provides no answers to this query except to say that conversations about food and fat and body image cannot be entirely avoided. What?! That’s all we well-intentioned mothers-of-daughters-to-be get for reading this essay! For shame!
But the truth of the matter is that there probably is no answer to this question – or rather the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no; not just because every mother-daughter relationship is unique, but because self-esteem is something that’s fluid: it comes and goes with the tide. I love my body until I read a report that Jennifer Aniston just lost 7 lbs. in 7 days…and then I feel guilty for that 2 oz. bag of trail mix I just scarfed. And if I tell Ellie she’s pretty, she will probably love her body until Suri Cruise turns out to be anorexic or has cosmetic surgery to fix her flaws, or a mean little girl on the playground makes fun of Ellie’s nose to mouth ratio (only she probably won’t be that scientific, read: nice, about it).
Turn to page 22 of that same magazine and you’ll find “The Anatomy of Desire,” which asks the question: What is a man’s ideal female form? A study of the blind tries to find out. What the fuck?! This is the “health” issue, right…not the drive women to anxiety, depression and eventual suicide issue? So now women not only have to worry about what seeing men think of our bodies, we have to worry about what blind men think too? That’s preposterous…yet it proves my point: women and our bodies are at war with the standards of beauty – many of them rooted is misogyny – that our society upholds to be perfection, and nothing less will do.
Okay, I’ll definitely be revisiting this topic in the future. I have years before I’ll have to worry about having the talk with Ellie about health and beauty. In the meantime, we’ll just refer to my Weight Watchers meeting as “the meeting” I attend with Aunt A** and Aunt N*****. And fruits and vegetables will be just as fun to eat as candy because they can come with a dollop of peanut butter on the side. And we’ll dance our afternoons away to groovy Sesame Street tunes on CD. And, unless the next Hannah Montana has an eating disorder, Ellie probably won’t notice the difference between her looks and Montana’s. And we’ll tell her every day how beautiful she is and how much we love her.
I’ll try to be brave.
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