stereotypes

Stumbling never felt so dangerous

I have recently become addicted (in a good way) to this website/ search engine-type web page called StumbleUpon. I don’t know how many of you have been Stumbling, but I guarantee that it is worth a look. You never know what kind of site will be sent your way for you to Stumble across. Which brings me to the purpose of this blog. I tried posting it once already, but my laptop decided it was going to overreact to a momentary lapse of wi-fi action and kick me offline completely, taking my blog along with it. And of course, as I was writing it in between Ethics and Anthropology, I didn’t think it would be a big deal if I typed directly into the blog-posting page rather than on a word document.

After I graduated from college and left my dorm room, I moved back in with my parents for a while. At the end of next week, I'll finally get to move into an apartment of my very own. Well, almost my very own: I'll be sharing it with a good friend. This good friend happens to be male, and ever since we have shared our plans to move in together with our friends and family, we have been subjected to a never-ending stream of jokes and assumptions regarding our gender roles.

My parents have expressed happiness at my having a 'man in the house': Apparently, thanks to my roommate, there'll be no need for me to carry water bottles up to our 7th floor apartment, fix things that break around the house, put up pictures, put together my furniture after I move in, talk to the landlord about anything, ever, or worry about my safety.

Out of interest, curiosity and just a plain old need for money, I briefly returned to modeling last week. From the 15th to the 23rd, I worked as a hostess for a company exhibiting at the IAA in Frankfurt (an automobile fair, sort of like the Auto Show in Detroit). My job description sounded fairly innocuous: Show up on time, wear the prescribed outfit (consisting of a short, black skirt, high-heeled boots and a shirt with the company logo) and be friendly to the customers at all times. The reality was that I spent 10 hours out of every day standing around on those obscenly high heels, smiling politely at everyone and observing the people walking past.

The other day I read an article about a beach in Italy, in Riccione, that is for women only. There were pictures of women sitting happily together, wearing skimpy bikinis and expensive sunglasses, sipping colourful drinks and reading glossy magazines. The tone of the article suggested that the women of that region had demanded a beach of their own, where they could spend time enjoying the sun away from the lustful gazes of males.

The article went on to list the services the beach offered: you can get massages and facials and manicures; you can even get your hair done for the night on the town to follow the day at the beach. All these services were provided by women, even the bar was run by women. No men allowed.

I was really surprized this morning when I posted this quote to my MySpace:

"Because women's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love women it's because we can't get a "real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and...for lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement.

— Author unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987"

and received the following response from a good male friend of mine:

We all fall victim to the patriarchy's virgin-whore dichotomy--as women, real or fictional, we're assigned one or the other with no opportunity to plead our case. We're terrified of being overlooked and terrified of being oversexualized, which is a problem because most of us fall in a middle ground where we feel comfortable.

I acknowledged this truth early on and decided I'd rather be the sexy girl than the cute girl. I was open and confident, even brazen, with my male friends and always had a boyfriend; even since then not much has changed. Feeling that I had to choose one or the other, I chose the sexually adventurous, the flirtatious, the "yes" over the "no." And yet, in spite of this decision, I am still painted as one of the good girls. Now as a feminist, I'm still a good girl--but I have an asexual activist streak to boot.

There are some things that you don't expect people of a certain gender to know. Yeah, I know, I should be more enlightened than that; but everyone pictures a girl when told about a cousin who just learned to knit or a friend who found an awesome recipe for sugar cookies.

Recently I learned to drive standard... manual... stick, straight, whatever you wanna call it. Personally I think it's awesome: I always want to drive, and I doubt I'll own an automatic car ever again. But it does have its thought-provoking side (oh, and you knew it would).

Now I don't know where the comparison comes in, but I'm guessing the assumption is that a girl who drives stick must also know how best to handle other... erm... appendages? Again I don't know. Seems to me, though, that a female learning a 'traditionally male' skill gains a couple of attractive points. Which, really, doesn't make sense to me; isn't there that fear of a woman with too many male traits? I thought that made her undesirable?

I've been sitting here for ten minutes staring at a blank screen, not quite sure where to begin or how to introduce myself. Over the past few days I've been quietly reading your journal entries, so to some extent I feel like I already know many of you. The outsider looking in. I've been impressed, moved, saddened, enlightened, and confused by all the different things you've had to say, but the strongest sentiment I've brought away from my lurking is that I'm so very glad you (we) have a place to say it.

Last night I was telling a friend about AGA, and was countered with every possible reason why I could not (or should not) be a feminist. I like to wear short skirts and makeup, I enjoy watching chick flicks, I like boys, I come from a religious family – gawd forbid I don't fit any of the cliched stereotypes. The irony is that I hardly remember a time when I didn't consider myself a feminist. The word has been bounced around by my mother for as long as I can remember, and from a young age my identity as a feminist was simply something that I took for granted. The shift from being diffident in my feminism to taking an active stance has been a gradual one, and at times, a bit discouraging. What I really appreciate about a community like this is having a whole group of women and girls to hold my hand while I continue to figure out this complicated f-word for myself.

Let a man catch a woman crying and you can almost guarantee a response of, aww it's ok, she's just being a typical woman all emotional, or even, it's just her period, time of the month, PMS. This has been particularly evident in this year's UK Big Brother where on a lot of occasions when women were short tempered or irrational other members of the group were silenced in their complaints about her moods by words like "She can't help it, it's just her period, ignore it".

Growing up, in observing the sexes and indeed myself (and what men pointed out to be my flaws) I came to a temporary conclusion that the sexes are polarised in feelings, reactions and focusses on the world they can't help. I decided that it must be that women are and can't help being emotional, and men have and can't help an endless sex drive: horniness. Horniness that, like emotion in women, often persuades men to make otherwise less than sound decisions. Obviously, this conclusion wasn't brilliant. Give a man the womanly trait of being emotional and it's considered a disadvantage. Whereas give a woman an immensely boosted sex drive and it's considered an advantage. But there's an example of me considering general social view to be that of a man's. Something I sadly did subconsciously, that is, to a woman an emotional man may not be considered a bad thing and extremely horny women not necessarily an advantage.

My senior year of high school, I stopped shaving under my arms. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Most people think of women/girls who don't shave as "butch ugly bulld*kes." Sorry for the language, but I can't think of any other way to express how repulsed by the idea as well as ignorant some people were(and are, for that matter).

And, here I was, this thin, feminine girl dressed in cute little tanks and skirts, fond of pink, with long, flowing, curly hair. Aw, how adorable...

...until I would stretch my arms. Oops! It was wonderful. Other kids had trouble reconciling their mental image of the girl who doesn't shave and the actual, real life thing.