Post 217.
Contemporary celebrity-led, liberal feminism mass markets a super-feminine image to young women today. This brand of empowerment-on-stilettos shouts out independent ladies who make their own money and it promotes unapologetic sexiness as ultimate self-expression and woman power.
This ideal didn’t come from nowhere. In the last decades, as women began to enter the formal economy in droves, they encountered a backlash telling them they were stepping out of their pre-ordained, natural spaces, jobs and roles, and were acting like men or like they wanted to be men. Imagine the pressure to find ways to not be de-sexed, to not be considered the wrong kind of too-mannish woman, to access the validation of femininity as well as education and the economy. Women were, after all, still being brought up to identify with and desire all three.
They had to be better than boys at school and men at work to get to the top, but they also had to make sure they didn’t end up without a man, marriage and children, in case they failed to be ‘real’ women. In addition to leaving room for men to be men, desirability was the other key balance all women had to negotiate, or be labeled too masculine. Failure to be successful in this way came with myriad costs. The fashion industry stepped in to make sure that brains in no way made beauty obsolete.
This brief history explains how smart, qualified women all over can today be seen in offices in five-inch heels, unheard of thirty years ago. It explains how women came to see shoes and makeup as empowering, and why so much hard-earned money is cycled back into lipstick rather than owning land. Do as well as they could in the job market, women would be left feeling like the carpet if they were also not responsible enough to become ‘appropriately’ feminine, meaning as they are expected and are told.
Women get endless messages that being sexualized remains important and defines our worth. Scan months of Carnival photos, magazines that stare from racks, billboards and commercials. We produce a brilliant array of women’s mas, yet one newspaper’s Carnival Wednesday front page was a full-page photo of Amber Rose. You are invisible and undervalued if you are not sexy and beautiful. Even independent ladies hear this loud and clear.
Except Shannon Gomes. She’s among young women denied by such packaging. Intending to be beautiful without stilettos. Looking good and being empowered on her own terms, wherever she goes. Wanting to be seen and valued as a woman without Maybelline making her ‘you, only better’. What happens to her form of femininity in this terrain of empowered womanhood as stereotypically sexy?
Unsurprisingly, it becomes cast as failure, as disallowed, as inappropriate, as ‘man’. And, there are costs for such women. There was a cost for Shannon. Denied her womanhood. Denied her femininity. Denied self-determination regarding her body. Stigmatized for not obeying the fashion fix. Told that this is private property, you have no rights. Made to pay.
Imagine your daughter or sister being told that if she does not make herself desirable on the most patriarchal of terms, then she is not a woman at all. This is how sexism and homophobia police sexuality and gender.
For months I wanted to write this column, highlighting the risks of selling women’s empowerment within hyper-femininity, sexiness and beauty. These normalize and glamorize narrowed options for women to challenge power. They create hierarchies between women. Exclusions are borne by those who don’t conform. Aria Lounge’s petty tyranny isn’t just theory.
Young people are protesting there on Friday night, as they should, for sexist discrimination is worth shaming wherever it occurs. Support them with engagement rather than ridicule. Shannon’s experience is but another example of negations reproduced in media images, religious messages, workplace expectations and relationship negotiations. This is why feminists challenge the beauty myth, though its glamour appears innocent. This is why schooling and jobs don’t mean women are yet free. Women should not be forced to fit stereotypical femininity, and feminist bright lights should also highlight those who don’t live by such rules, and who more greatly face a reality of being denied and demeaned. #solidaritywithshannon
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December 21, 2015 at 10:57 am
Reblogged at https://tiffany267.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/thoughts-on-women-entering-the-workplace.
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December 21, 2015 at 10:57 am
[…] This brief history explains how smart, qualified women all over can today be seen in offices in five-inch heels, unheard of thirty years ago. It explains how women came to see shoes and makeup as empowering, and why so much hard-earned money is cycled back into lipstick rather than owning land. Do as well as they could in the job market, women would be left feeling like the carpet if they were also not responsible enough to become ‘appropriately’ feminine, meaning as they are expected and are told. Read the rest at https://grrlscene.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/diary-of-a-mothering-worker-december-15-2015. […]
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December 20, 2015 at 11:52 am
I appreciate this article. It cleared up my thoughts on this issue. Thank you.
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December 21, 2015 at 9:53 am
thanks for your feedback, much appreciated!
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December 17, 2015 at 1:41 pm
Some continued clarification for those who miss the point entirely:
1. Hyper-femininity should not be the basis of a woman being recognised as a woman. Femininity exists in many forms (some of which cross into those stereotypically marked masculine, but which women have long challenged).
2. Compulsory femininity, like compulsory heterosexuality, should not assert punishments, penalties or exclusions of women who do not conform.
3. This is not an issue of men being discriminated against and it is not an issue of all clubs typically being racist, sexist and elitist – though these can be made into another issue, another time.
4. This is about the disciplinary power of compulsory hyper-femininity, and the way that it de-sexes women who do not conform, labelling them not real women.
5. This is not the same as women choosing to resist gender ideals in a range of ways, including through forms of femininity. There was no choice here, there was in fact denial of the choice of women, as women, to not have to be feminine as they are told.
6. It is a women’s right issue to, as a woman, live a self-determined life rather than one of dictated by masculinist ideals.
7. It is an experience of sexism that this one woman experienced – and there are many other experiences out there. All of them are wrong. All hurt. Why criticize those who support Shannon for not supporting others? That’s both irrelevant and small minded. Just get out and support those other women yourself, thanks.
8. Whether all women similarly felt this way, or not, or whether all men similarly feel discriminated when they pay at the door is another matter – worth discussing. This is about solidarity with one young woman, who is a woman, and who was demeaned because of patriarchal ideals. That’s okay too.
9. Why not just show solidarity with her, and if you really have a lot of say on all these other issues, say it after you give clarity to this one moment so that people understand how such experiences come to happen to women at all, are they widespread across other fora, where, in what ways, with what implications, why are some describing it as sexist or violence or an issue of rights – you know, actual attempts at analysis.
10. Please note that this is not a ‘gay’ issue. It is an issue of the intersection of sexism with homophobia. Homophobia doesn’t only affect LBGTI people. It also affects women and men regardless of their sexuality because it polices gender. Such policing is the issue here.
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December 16, 2015 at 1:20 pm
[…] Diary of a Mothering Worker […]
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