Why does this have to happen?

Why is feminism so often considered a dirty word?  I rather proudly attest to being a feminist.  Nebulous as the term can be, I believe anyone can call themselves a feminist if they feel women deserve more than being treated like a doormat.  It's that simple.  And this perspective is certainly not limited to women. There are many male feminists who will shout it loud and proud.

Images of perfection get in the way, though.  We are all socialized to think of women first in how they look.  Prescribing how a "perfect" woman looks makes women become a commodity, like their worth is ascribed to their appearance.  It is as if females are something to be owned, praised or berated, owned, "less than."

credit hollywood.com

So why is it that in the year 2012 we are still seeing the objection of females so prevalent in entertainment and advertising?  To this day, women are looked upon and treated as property.  They are portrayed as products, not people.  Not individuals with brains, goals, individual personalities, and earning potential.  

Most television shows, popular movies, and waaaay too many advertisements feature women's bodies or stereotypes of them as their fodder. (i.e. google Bedchel test) They get the slutty part, the stupid part, the victim, the character who never speaks, or they aren't there at all.  Looking totally perfect seems to be the most important thing about them.  It's everywhere!  I am most disgusted to see these impossible images directed at young girls.  The pressure has reached such epidemic proportions it even delves into the cartoon world.  This article about Minnie proves the point.  

What the hell, people?!  It's not bad enough to see size-2 to size-6 women are the supposed norm in real life.  Now it's freakin' Minnie Mouse?  I knew Olive Oyl must have been anorexic, but I thought that was somehow attributed to how she was carried around by Popeye and Bluto, and they couldn't have really been that strong (even in a cartoonish way).  I've ranted before about Disney princesses, but Walt's little rodents have gone to the dark side as well.  Sickening.  

If calling myself a feminist can be attributed to one thing, it may be these stereotypes.  And don't even get me started on the misogynists who hate feminists and send out their internet trolls to patrol them.

Young girls and boys need someone to tell them these images are messed up .. they're not right, they're not real, and that's not the way it should be.  For them to grow up and be treated equally, as they deserve, they are the ones to grow their perspectives, evolve, take up for each other instead of break each other down, and fight to change their own futures. 

Twitter party - media representation of women

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, CEO and Founder of MissRepresentation.org, has been quite an inspiration to me lately.  It seems I'd never post if it weren't for MissRep.  At the very least, her writing has inspired several of my blog posts here.  Her latest call to action includes:

Coupled with the recent news that the Kardashian family's reality TV show has been renewed for another three years, I am especially worried about the message the media is sending my daughter, my son and their generation. Who are their role models? Why are we rewarding reality TV's exploitation of women's bodies? Are looks, for women, more important than their brains or their talents? Is hyper-sexualization and self-objectification now a legitimate path to success in America?
These aren't rhetorical questions, but part of a real conversation we want to have with you - because each of us plays a role in healing our culture. Next Tuesday, at 4 PM PST, we're calling a Twitter party with hashtag #WhyKardashians to get to the root of America's increasing fascination with superficiality and the objectification of women in popular media. 

I keep going back to #TheConversation.  The conversation springs from the unrealistic images of perfection purported throughout the media.  We should, instead, consider what we can do to better value ourselves.  Our culture has been permeated with a distorted way of showing women and girls. I'm glad there are people fighting for an "international action-oriented conversation" around these issues.  I had begun to type our "American" culture, but the misrepresentation of perfect expectation is an international phenomenon and not specific to the U.S.  The status quo is not limited to American movies, television, books and advertising throughout all those venues.

My young life was spent with a slump-shouldered gait and an androgynous mousy brown pixie haircut that got me mistaken for a long-haired boy in our class.  Mother was always telling me to stand up straight, and I kept my posture the way it was just to spite her.  Our "measure of perfection" at the time was Charlie's Angels, a latter-day fictional Kardashians. 

If boys were going to kiss you during the moonlight skate, you had to look as angelic as possible to gain their interest.  Needless to say, I wanted to instead fade into the background.  Even if my mom wasn't telling me to stand up straight to necessarily boost my self-confidence, much less get me my first adolescent kiss at the roller rink, I wish I had heeded her coaxing anyway.  Not to gain the boys' attention, but simply to help me project a better self-image than I had back then.

Women now witness an even more overt push toward perfection by the current size two to four females in the media.  Charlie's newer angels were even updated a few years back to a politically correct modern-day troupe and later another (failed) television show.  


Young women apparently have to embody that kind of flawless figure and magazine cover made-up face to be attractive enough to draw positive male attention.  Realizing it is currently the look-at-me generation, girls are trying more than ever to get anyone and everyone to look at them.  Are they hoping to mirror the K sisters or some other cookie-cutter pattern?

I hope they choose to stand up straight for themselves and not for the gaze of others.

Madge was never my role model ...

She was never actually on my radar much.  A male friend of mine adored and still adores her.  He has always claimed to enjoy his "Madonnarama" of marathon Madonna music.  Sure, she was an icon of the '80s (my generation), but I was more of a Pat Benatar person.


It simply annoys me to still read so much about her in modern press.  I'll give her the fact that she branded herself well enough to still be relevant now, and she is super versatile in re-inventing her image.  But it was probably the Britanny kiss that changed my mind about her.  In my opinion, it was no different than wanna-be lesbians getting attention in a bar or party setting by kissing each other.  Pure "look at me" syndrome.  It's attention whoring.


Now Madonna is back ... again.  She's popping up in pop culture "news" because of her new album.  She's getting attention, so good for her.  It just pisses me off to have women of a certain age being referred to as menopausal, as it that is a classification for them.  

Madonna's Mighty Menopausal Comeback, Still Sexy or Still Selling Sex

These types of articles also beg the question, why do women have to use sex to sell themselves (literally and figuratively).  I don't think shaking your ass or spreading your legs in a video is role-model material.  As I've said before, it's all about perfection and touting an image that an aging woman can still be "viable" if she looks good enough.  


That has been the case all throughout movie history.  A film where an older woman is with a younger man, ala "The Graduate," is all about a so-called cougar (*gagging on that word*) chasing a kid.  Of course, the woman has to look especially good, like Mrs. Robinson in her day, to be able to score the man-ling.  It makes me think of the beautiful Julie Christie and a young Jonny Lee Miller in the '90s flick Afterglow.  Their affair, and her age, were central to the story line.


However, any movie -- and they're usually all doing it -- about an older man involved with a young woman is just a plain ol' movie.  Case in point, the biggie, is 1999's Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones and a 39-year difference in their ages.  Whoa.  Their love affair was a bit of an issue but not the central plot line.  There's The Island from 2005 with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, and the 13-year differences in their ages ... not a factor.  Another is Knight and Day from 2010 with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise and their 10-year age gap ... not a big deal.  In 2011's Crazy, Stupid, Love, at least Ryan Gosling only has eight years on Emma Stone.  And relatively closer in age were Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, paired in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in 2011 with only nine years  between their ages.  These older leading men with young leading women are totally commonplace and hardly, if ever, mentioned within the plot or any hype surrounding the films.  Why is this?


Which leads me to the menopause issue ... none of these iconic males are ever gigged for their ages.  Neither are they ridiculed for wrinkles or fat.  The timeline of a male's presence on earth is never considered relevant, much less a factor regarding his talent or notoriety.  Is there a male menopause they'll reach when their age will be a topic of conversation?  Hell to the no.  Their body chemistry is certainly never mentioned in any headline about a "come back" to fame.  


We all age.  Celebrities are human, and they age, too.  The viewing/listening masses would like to think these people are super human and do not grow old or go to ruin.  Except women AGE and men mature.  Males become more distinguished ... Sean Connery, hello ... or sexy with age, or so people say.


Maybe Madge is considered a role-model type because of her brazen behavior and against-the-grain choices made throughout her career.  And she seems to be intelligent when interviewed.  I just don't agree with the "shake your money maker" attitude of fame.  It comes with a high price, self-respect and dignity among those costs.  Pretty soon you're kissing a young woman at an awards show to stay in the headlines and placed as the butt of menopause jokes later.  If these women let the criticism wear on them enough, they may end up still grasping for perfection but in re-hab with Demi Moore as a result of their frantic efforts to look young and keep partying to feel young for the moment.  


No man has had to publicly defend his Peter Pan syndrome (except maybe Chaz Sheen), a weak prostate, or use of erectile dysfunction aids.  He's instead applauded as a renaissance man with a solid body of work in his past.  His face, gut, and butt stay virtually off the radar.  His "change of life" doesn't suffer a public examination.    


It's the human condition.  We all grow older, and our bodies change.  We can all rage against these facts, but aging remains a factual circumstance all the same.


I hope the newer generations evolve enough to try to equal such gender disparity in general and hyper-criticism of women specifically in the media.  Sure, lofty hopes but we can only try to set things right.  How can any of us be role models for children otherwise? 

inspiration from MissRepresentation

The latest newsletters I've received from MissRepresentation.org have dealt with how women view and try to enhance their health in the new year.

In my other blog (http://katybrandes.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/looking-good/), I took on the subject.  This one is admittedly more of a "rant" blog, but I'll try to tone it down a bit today.  Women usually compliment other women only on how they look.  "Oh, I love your hair."  "That outfit is so cute!"  "Have you been working out?  You look great!"  That's the way it is.  To the reverse, "You look tired," translation "You look like shit."  

It doesn't make it right.  It just is what it is (I hate saying that).  So my challenge before was to reach out of my comfort zone by telling the women around me something positive for a change.  It was different for me, because I honestly don't pay many compliments in general.  How rewarding to see the smiles on people's face or hear their words of gratitude for the simplest of kind words on another person's part.  In these times of boob jobs and Botox, actresses over-dosing and dying, girls working their way to the stripper pole, and misogynists expecting women to fall all over them, it's no surprise the notion of perfection has become so warped.

This time around is about combating the notion of perfection (see excerpt below).  We set standards for ourselves that are quite impossible to attain, and physical perfection can become an obsession.  Watching waifs in ads, movies and television doesn't help matters either.  

There is no way to become a size two, if your body is not tiny to begin with, unless you completely starve yourself to death or take something to make it happen.  Either way helps destroy your health.  Hell, over-exercising can do the same thing.  Good thing I'm never going to have that problem.  Don't they say (whoever they are) the average size of the American woman is actually 14?  I want to believe that's true.  

"This week's Get Healthy action is about giving yourself the gift of self-love and acceptance. It's time to stop being so hard on yourself, to let go of "perfectionism," and to celebrate your authenticity. Take 10 minutes this week to step back, breathe and appreciate who you are and where you are in your life. Write down or think of three things you love about your appearance, your personal life, and your professional life. "

So here goes:

1) I love that I have the greatest (and funnest) friends a person could find.

2) My job is where I feel I need to be at this point in my life, and I've never felt that way before.

3) Even though I'm not content with the way I look, I so appreciate my health.  There are so many other ways, like being sick or obese, that could make a person feel so much worse.

And that brings it all around to gratitude.  I appreciate these three things so much in my life, as well as my family's health, too.  There is not much more that can bring a person down than having someone close to them be ill, except them being sick.  With age comes great appreciation of these simplest of things.  

R.I.P. Brittany Murphy