Disappearance

If you have the stomach for it, I've just read a really interesting article about the disappearance of female bodily hair and what it means. It brings together a lot of strong arguments, many of which I hadn't thought of before, and makes comparisons to how hair has been perceived throughout history as well. I found it really fascinating, but be warned – it is quite graphic.

Disappearance by Roger Friedland

On Appearances

“After all, I know I’m no match for This Morning’s pulchritudinous host Holly Willoughby, nor are male politicians spared ridicule about their looks (even I have noted David Cameron’s startling resemblance to Henry from Thomas the Tank Engine.)

But there is a difference in the treatment of men and women here.

A A Gill didn’t just mock Mary Beard’s hair, he suggested she shouldn’t be on our screens at all. Similarly, my not looking like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was seen as a weapon to invalidate my opinions — something that doesn’t happen to equally genetically challenged male commentators. Beard has given a perfect illustration of how to handle such criticism, though: women mustn’t let the b******s win.”

 

Yes! This is exactly the difference between the way that women’s appearance is commented on and the way that men’s is. There was an article by Bryony Gordon in The Telegraph arguing that men are judged on their looks as well, it’s just that we choose to ignore it. This argument misses the point entirely. If a comment is made on a man’s appearance, such as the example she used about David Cameron looking like ham, then it doesn’t imply that because of the way they look, they are not qualified to do their job or have an opinion. However, if a woman’s appearance is commented on, such Rosamund Urwin who wrote this article being called too ugly to be a stripper, then it is a way to bar them from having an opinion. It shuts them up, undermines them, and implies that they are not qualified to be in the position they are in. That is the difference between commenting on a man’s appearance and commenting on a woman’s.

Top Girl, The Game Where Makeovers Are Mandatory and Being Hot Is Everything

“And I was disgusted: young girls already get the idea that looks and possessions matter more than personal achievements and healthy relationships from movies, TV, popular music, tabloids online and off, teen magazines, and every sort of advertising. Do they need games to reinforce that, too?” (via Jezebel)

Top Girl, The Game Where Makeovers Are Mandatory and Being Hot Is Everything

This is so true. Games aimed at boys (as they have been for most of the time they’ve been around) are about achievements, about challenges, about beating levels and bosses and being the strongest or the most intelligent. Are games aimed at girls just going to be, as this one is, about being the prettiest, the most popular, having the most boys try to chat you up?
For another terrible example of a typical game aimed at young girls, there is this game where all you have to do is kiss Justin Bieber. That’s the whole game.

Please please please let’s not do this – for one thing, these games are SO BORING. People like Jane McGonigal have argued that games can encourage creativity and learning, but I don’t see any redeeming qualities about games like these whatsoever. Sure, young girls like them and play them, but is it good for them? Aren’t there other games that are far better that they would equally enjoy, if only they knew they were allowed to play them?

The media focuses so much on the effect of violence in videogames on young boys; how about focussing on the corrosive effects of ‘games’ that tell young girls that they are only useful if they are pink, pretty and have as many possessions as they possibly can?

A Site Called Vagenda

“‘Militant feminism’ is another 21st century scare, like the bird flu ‘pandemic’ and eyebrow cancer, both of which have been extensively covered by the Daily Fail. And let’s deconstruct for a second here: ‘feminism’ does, after all - and as everyone seems to voluntarily forget ALL THE TIME - mean ‘equality between women and men.’”

“That’s all feminism boils down to, at the end of the day: choice. The choice to be the most traditional homemaking mother of the pack, or the most cutthroat human rights lawyer in the Supreme Court. The choice to go out on a million, er, ‘test-driving’ dates, or to lose your virginity on your wedding night to a guy your parents introduced you to at church camp.” (The Vagenda – Have we Gone too Far?)

Yes! So glad this blog exists.

Guardian Articles

So many good articles in The Guardian today!

Feminists can be Christians, too

Victoria Coren - it's the Church's job to stand up for the poor

Julie Burchill on moaning women giving feminism a bad name

This last one is particularly interesting... and controversial.

"But moaning about men doesn't make you a feminist – it just makes you a moaner who can't get along with men for reasons that are probably at least as much to do with your failings, flaws and foibles as they are with some imagined horridness on the part of men."

'Why Men Hate Women'

Time to dump another interesting article! This time it's from one of my favourite magazines, the New Internationalist, but from way back in their archives. Slightly inflammatory title but interesting reading.

 Insert inflammatory article name here

Here's a little extract that does a good job of explaining why forcing men into a hyper-masculine role is so damaging for both men and women:

"Why do men express such hatred of women? Psychoanalysts suggest that men's gender identity is very fragile because, within typical child-rearing practices, girls can identify with their primary care-taker while boys have to separate themselves from their mother in order to achieve and assert their masculinity.

'The whole process of becoming masculine is at risk in the little boy from the date of his birth on; his still-to-be-created masculinity is endangered by the primary, profound, primeval oneness with the mother.'⁶ It is only by setting woman apart as Other, by resisting intimacy with her, by treating her with contempt and aggression, that men assert their own independent and fragile masculinity.

And because men have distanced themselves from 'the weaker sex' over the ages, setting themselves up as superior, it must be unbearably humiliating to need and desire women so much. [...] In heterosexual intercourse men risk discovering in women an unsettling power which contradicts and undermines their own more obvious social, political and physical power. No wonder male sexual desire is so desperately tormented and full of conflict"

Jordan vs Jo Brand

Graham Norton interview with Jordan

Norton: "But does your mum, or your girlfriends, or do you ever consider that thing that like someday, Junior, Princess -- they'll turn to you, and they'll kind of go 'What the hell were you thinking that you dragged us through this circus? Why didn't you kind of keep us out of the limelight?'"

Price: "They might do, but I've been doing it since I was 17. I don't push 'em in front of the camera. They like it. Harvey's always saying 'Smile at the camera', and he's always following it about. I would never ever ever put them in that situation, but they don't know the difference."

Norton: "But they're kids, they're kids, I mean, you should kind of be making the decision for them."

(Audience claps)

I remember watching this episode at the time and being shocked by what she said. And thinking that what he said in reply was a good way of telling her to look after her damn children without offending her. It doesn't seem quite so shocking watching it again. What I noticed more this time is how clever and hilarious Jo Brand is (of course, I noticed last time too, but watching this with fresh eyes and after reading Caitlin Moran's comments about Jordan, the contrast between the two women's mental capacities seems enormous). "Hey, that's enough of the 'bleating on', thank you very much. Bleating on about children? Yeah, 'cause they're not important. I don't feed mine, they're annoying." More Jo Brands in the world, please. Also, she looks lovely and she seems to have really found her style. I remember seeing her on an episode of QI dressed in 12th century style clothes and they really suited her. She looked like she had stepped right out of a Chaucer tale. It's so nice so see people being different and looking great. Feels like an 'in your face' to the homogenization of, well, everything. Plus, according to wikipedia, she shares my birthday.

The end of men

I'm aware that all I seem to blog about here is feminism, but this is just too brilliant not to share:

"What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men? For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, and that shows up now as a drive to win on Wall Street; women are programmed to find good providers and to care for their offspring, and that is manifested in more- nurturing and more-flexible behavior, ordaining them to domesticity. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order. But what if men and women were fulfilling not biological imperatives but social roles, based on what was more efficient throughout a long era of human history? What if that era has now come to an end? More to the point, what if the economics of the new era are better suited to women?"

An article from 2010 about the position of women in society shifting since they seem to be more suited than men to do the kind of jobs that are around. Well worth a read, and it's by somebody who shares my name. It can only be good.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/

Being

A sensible and interesting blog post that sums up many things I have tried to express before:

http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/when-being-yourself-is-dangerous/

I don't know how to be a woman

My boyfriend lent me Caitlin Moran's new book, 'How to be a Woman'. So far, everyone I've mentioned that fact to has asked why he bought it. It is, after all, a book about feminism. Perhaps this confusion points to why a book on feminism is still so necessary.

It's easy to dismiss anything to do with feminism as unnecessary, or boring. I did myself before I went to university, and met people who showed me that it was very much relevant and necessary in tackling issues such as rape and domestic abuse, issues which are still tainted by sexism. The recent 'slutwalks', sparked by the remark of a Canadian policeman that "Women should avoid dressing like sluts to avoid being raped" have shown that society still has a tendancy to blame the victim rather than the attacker. It would also be easy to mouth off on a moral crusade about why you're so much better than everybody else because you're into feminism. Well, you could do that, but it wouldn't help much. But there is still the assumption that the word 'feminist' means 'man-hating', even amongst the most enlightened people.

Caitlin Moran is a little weird, which is good. I remember coming across a copy of the book she wrote when she was 16 when I was clearing through the books in the store room in Oxfam, and it had a quote from Terry Pratchett on the back saying how amazing it was, and how surprising it was that someone so young could have written it. I also knew that she had a column for The Times, I think, although it might be the Guardian. Either way, she writes and makes a lot of money from it and is famous. The one column I've read by her was about how she wanted unique hair all her life, and she has now, finally, got it -- black hair with a silver streak down the front. Amazing.

And I found it really fun reading her book. It was hilarious (who says women can't be funny?) as well as addressing so many issues in a logical way. I think I'm inclined to agree with her when she says that high heeled shoes are absolutely pointless -- "No one can walk in them, not even the models" laughs a photoshoot photographer she once came across. So why do we wear them? Just because we think that everyone else is, and that is what is normal. We don't want to be strange. Well, we don't want to be THAT strange, although we do like to think that we're a little different, a little unusual, a little unique. But not TOO unique.