August 17, 2010

Is it ‘Miss’ or ‘Ms’? Does it Still Matter?


Yesterday I received a tweet from the Oxford University Press account inquiring as to my feelings about the use of ‘Miss’ versus ‘Ms.’ in relation to myself and modern feminism. The question was accompanied by a link to this article by University of Illinois Professor Dennis Baron, which traces the term ‘Ms.’ to all the way back to 1767 and chronicles its’ various political meanings or lack thereof henceforward. He notes an instance as early as 1913 of feminist attempts to institute a title for women, like Mr. for men, that was free of reference to age or marital status, a goal that didn’t meet with much success until the Second Wave of feminism and the release of Ms. Magazine in 1971.

Like being able to sit unaccompanied in a bar or get credit in my name without a husband of male relative as a co-signer, the pretty much universal understanding that women as well as men should and do have a title that doesn’t convey marital status is one of those wins of the feminist movement for which my generation often seems ungrateful because it’s been a matter of fact our whole lives. Actually, the New York Times — about sixteen years late to the party as per usual – finally declared Ms. “fit to print” in 1986, the year I was born. Long before I consciously identified as a feminist, and even while I was calling myself a good Southern Baptist girl, I preferred the term ‘Ms.’ to ‘Miss’ simply because I didn’t want any part of anything that encompassed both Miss America and Little Miss Muffet.

It wasn’t, however, until I began to strongly identify as a feminist in college that I used ‘Ms.’ as a political statement, though not the straightforward one against the, to my millennial eyes, blatant sexism of the titles that Professor Brown and the Oxford University Press would probably expect. I read Gloria Steinem’s quip, “I refuse to be referred to as Miss Steinem of Ms. Magazine,” as both an example of the humor members of an oppressed group must possess while fighting that oppression and a reminder of the battle feminists before fought for me to be able to take for granted that women should have an equivalent to ‘Mr.’ Since I was deprived of this important piece of feminist activism in even my college classes, I began using the title ‘Ms.’ as a gentle point of re-education on women’s history as I traveled across the country speaking at universities.

That’s the political significance that influenced, in part, my choice to use ‘Ms.’ in the title of my blog. It serves as a short but meaningful signifier to my readers that everything in my life, and therefore the blog’s content, is shaped by my feminism. It’s also a reference to the humorous and common mistitling of the film made on my high school activism as ‘The Miseducation of Shelby Knox,” as if my journey from conservative Republican to feminist activist was an ill-fated comedy of errors. Most importantly, however, ‘Ms.’ in my blog title is a conscious homage to the Second Wave women who continue to be invaluable in my evolution as a young adult feminist activist.

I know there are women who choose to use ‘Miss’ for a variety of reasons, including as a rejection of the feminism that’s inextricably, at least in modern times, implied in choosing ‘Ms.’ instead. This is an exercise of the self-determination that’s inherent to feminism and I don’t take issue with these women or their decisions. I am less tolerant of companies, like Vista Print, that refuse to offer ‘Ms.’ as an option in the dropdown menu of possible titles when ordering a product online. Which feminine title is a lesbian woman who is prohibited by law from marrying her life partner supposed to choose? What possible relationship could one’s marital status have to a desire to order cheap business cards? As Professor Brown notes, ‘Ms.’ is now a commonly accepted manner in which to refer to half the population and modern companies should get with the times, if only to indicate to consumers like me that they’re not endorsing the sexism and homophobia underlying a forced choice between ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs.’ (For the record, Vista Print, me and several friends have taken our business elsewhere because of this issue.)

Am I going to spend much of my time lobbying companies to provide all three title options for women or monitoring media outlets to make sure they use ‘Ms.’ to refer to female newsmakers without regard to their marital status? No, mostly because that work was done by feminists of previous generations. Instead I’ll fight the sexism endemic in a society that still correlates a woman’s worth with a ring on her finger by getting rid of gendered pay disparities and establishing more social services for single mothers. And I’ll be Ms. Scary Feminist as I do it, thank you very much!

***Question to readers: Do you use the term ‘Ms.’? Why or why not? If you speak another language, what are the feminine titles that traditionally differentiate between a married and unmarried woman and is there an alternative similar to Ms.?

CORRECTION: Post updated at 2pm EST on 8.17.10 to correctly cite Professor Dennis Baron, the author of the Oxford University Press blog post, who was misnamed in the original post.

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August 11, 2010

Pink’s New Video Goes a ‘Little’ Too Far

I love P!nk, always have. As an angsty teen I superimposed onto my the life lyrics of “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” cheered her feminist appeal for more future female presidents and fewer video dancer wannabes in “Stupid Girls,” and played her empowering break-up anthem “So What” so loud the neighbors complained. More than once. So, I’m in her corner. That said, I have serious issues with both videos for her song “Please Don’t Leave Me.”

Yes, both. If you too are a P!nk fan, you know that her album Funhouse, which includes “Please Don’t Leave Me,” is the artist’s heart wrenching, raw musical ode to her divorce from her husband, Carey Hart. The first video she released for the song, in 2009, was this disturbing depiction of the lengths she would have gone to keep him from walking away:

As in Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s Telephone video, P!nk seems to buy into the idea that domestic violence perpetrated by women is ok, even funny, even deserved. She orchestrates her soon to be ex-boyfriend’s tumble down the stairs, smashes his knee with a golf club, and comes after him with an axe. The video ends with the singer falling to her death after her boy sprays her in the face with hairspray. Anyone watching comes away with the idea that true love is literally worth fighting for, to the point of inflicting serious physical harm on your partner.

If I were in Hart’s shoes, I’d never come near a woman who play-acted my demise so convincingly but the couple reconciled shortly after Funhouse came out and are now happily remarried. Which brings us to the second video for the song, released on Sunday. Instead of love as beating each other senseless, she declares in this video it’s possible against all odds. How sweet! Except…not:

Shot in classic black and white movie style, the video opens with P!nk as a Giantess in a sideshow tent holding auditions for a husband. A line of potential suitors waits outside for their chance to impress her, including one who the others mock uproariously and claim “doesn’t have a chance.” The butt of the jokes turns out to be her real-life husband Hart, portrayed as a Little Person named Carey Big-Hart. He wins her heart with his personality and the pair frolics through the video, with P!nk kneeling down to talk to her suitor and picking him up to put him on a swing.

So what’s the problem here? Imagine if instead of being a Little Person, the mercilessly mocked Hart was in blackface or yellowface. Still adorable and funny? Not so much. Carey Hart is an average heighted man objectifying a Little Person for laughs. Hart can shed this persona without ever facing the heightism and ableism that accompanies it in real life, like being unable to reach an ATM or fearing for his safety around idiots who might see him as a projectile, vis a vis that horrible online “Midget Toss” game.

And here we get to the ‘M’ word. Widely considered offensive in the Little Person community, P!nk’s video has spawned a spate of blog posts throwing it around in the “aren’t midgets funny just by their very existence” way rather than the “midget originated as a term for acts in a freak show and therefore has a painful history, thank you much” way. P!nk seems to know that particular history of the term – the video opens with “Freakshow Theatre Presents” and the whole first scene is in a side show tent – and is more than fine with using it as a premise for her video. While she’d likely argue that her character, the Giantess, is the one that’s part of the freak show, she’s the subject of adoration rather than derision. Also, there’s the little sticking point that Giants aren’t a real group of people still fighting for equal rights.

I also don’t buy the theory, which I first saw posited by a commenter on The Frisky, that P!nk is using the Giantess and Little Person characters as an allegory for the marital pairing of a hugely famous rock star and the little-as-in-average guy. It’s not like she pulled a Britney and married her backup dancer; Carey Hart is an international motocross super star and was well known long before they met. I do think P!nk was trying to make the point that love can bloom between the unlikeliest parties but this is problematic, again, because of the way she chose to make her point. Little People and average heighted people have happy, successful relationships all the time – even with P!nk as Giantess, it still begs the question why people of different heights getting together is bizarre enough in itself to be a comment on unlikely relationships.

Do I think P!nk and Hart intended to be malicious toward or even offensive to Little People when they made this video? No. Do I believe they even thought about it being problematic? Again, no. That’s the evil, sticky wicket of privilege: you can’t really know what oppressions a certain group faces unless you’re part of that group and therefore don’t innately know what words, references, or depictions might be triggering or problematic. That’s not an excuse for being discriminatory. The key to combating privilege induced mistakes like this one is to run it by members of that group and really listen to what they have to say. Had P!nk floated her idea to a few Little People activists they might have suggested she celebrated unlikely love with, say, a depiction of the difficult partnership between a rocker and an extreme sports star. That don’t beat the crap out of each other. That right there is a video I’d love to see.

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August 9, 2010

On Rand Paul: “Boys Will Be Boys” Doesn’t Excuse Kidnapping

Rand Paul has done some, let’s say, strange things during his campaign to become the junior Senator from Kentucky. Highlights include insisting that the Americans with Disabilities Act should be abolished in favor of letting local jurisdictions decide if people with disabilities deserve equal rights. He feels similarly about the Civil Rights Act, insisting on the Rachel Maddow show that businesses should be able to decide whether or not they want to serve black clientele.

There’s no doubt Rand Paul is an odd duck. Or, I would say, a racist, ableist duck. But new reports that he kidnapped a female teammate during his college days, tried to force her to do drugs, and then made her bow down to an imaginary idol called “Aqua Buddha” go far, far beyond “strange.”

From GQ:

The strangest episode of Paul’s time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul’s teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, “He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They’d been smoking pot.” After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. “They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’ At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no.

In Texas, where Paul committed this alleged crime, kidnapping is a felony offense that can carry a sentence of life in prison. But instead of reporting the story as such, the media is having a good laugh at what GQ calls “kooky” and The Atlantic calls “antics” of the misfit college kid turned politician. The Paul campaign has released a statement laughing off the accusations, saying, “We’ll leave National Enquirer type stories about his teenage years to the tabloids where they belong.”

“Teenage years” in that statement, as well as the descriptors “kooky” and “antics,” are code for “boys will be boys,” a catchall euphemism for the pass given to young men for behavior that we’re supposed to accept as inevitable, harmless, testosterone-fueled indiscretions. Broken down, the logic is that by simple virtue of their genetic makeup it’s impossible to expect young men to get to adulthood without committing some sort of crime and every boy should get one or two to get them out of his system. This deeply misguided, overwhelmingly sexist logic is used with frightening regularity to brush aside everything from hazing and property destruction to rape and, in Paul’s case, kidnapping.

When I use the term ‘sexist’ on this feminist blog, I’m usually talking about discrimination on the basis of gender directed at women but today Rand Paul has provided a perfect opportunity to discuss how gendered norms hurt men and boys. In this case, the norm exacted on boys is that violence, intimidation, and coercion are acceptable and even expected behaviors as long as they’re perpetrated before reaching some magical, unspecified age that signifies adulthood. This serves to discourage young men from taking responsibility for their actions and from policing unacceptable and often harmful and illegal behavior in their peers.

More so, “boys will be boys” casts a swath of shame over an entire gender when the truth is that most young men make it to adulthood without ever raping or kidnapping someone. What must it be like to walk around feeling that, due to your gender, you’re biologically prone to doing horrible, unspeakable things that you know in your heart are wrong? What might the result be if instead of laughing off things like kidnapping we taught boys that true manhood is about being strong enough to get your kicks without harming anyone else, about standing up to violence, respecting women, and proudly modeling these behaviors?

In his book Guyland, sociologist Michael Kimmel more accurately describes the “boys will be boys” meme as the “culture of protection,” a society-wide conspiracy to shield young men from the consequences of their actions. Kimmel notes that this shielding often includes demeaning the victims while explaining away bad behavior. While the woman who bravely came forward with the story about Paul wants to remain anonymous it’s likely that her identity will be made public by an enterprising blogger or fame-hungry former classmate sooner rather than later. At that point, watch as she’s painted as the one known for not being able to take a joke, or the girl who was down to clown so she was just asking to be taken from her dorm room, forced to do drugs, and humiliated at the foot of a country creek.

Kimmel also notes that anyone who engages in the “culture of protection” is complicit to the violence it condones and tacitly promotes. Today, the complicit parties include the GQ journalist Jason Zengerle who termed the kidnapping “kooky” instead of worthy of prosecution and all the bloggers insinuating that because Paul was under the influence of marijuana or in a secret college society that the incident is simply hilarious, or that the only point worthy of discussion is how the revelation might affect his political prospects. Kidnapping is always a crime, it’s never funny under any circumstances, and we owe our nation’s boys far, far better than “boys will be boys.”

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August 4, 2010

Dallas Police Chief’s Solution to Date Rape: Women Stop Drinking!

Erm. Right. There’s so much to unpack here it’s hard to know where to start so let’s begin with the whole quote, in context:

While discussing a 25% increase in reported rape in Dallas, Police Chief David Brown let loose this wisdom:

“We’re needing to create a message to the victims of this type of crime, related to, you know, someone you don’t know that well, you having a little bit too much to drink,” explains Chief Brown, suggesting women, “have your friends watch you” if you intend to drink in front of a man.

Thank you law enforcement official charged with preventing or at least condemning crimes like, oh say, RAPE for suggesting that if I get raped it’s my fault. It’s good to know that even though I live in a theoretically free country with laws against sexual violation, I should have no reasonable expectation of going out for a couple of drinks and not being assaulted because it’s just too much to ask guys not to sexually violate me. Guess I should leave the short skirt at home too, right Chief?

Chief Brown: I know you think your comments were misrepresented but any time you suggest it’s a woman’s responsibility to keep herself from being raped instead of reminding men that rape is a crime under ANY circumstance, including when a woman is drunk, you’re part of the problem. Men have a responsibility not to rape, you have a responsibility to never even come close to insinuating a woman is asking to be assaulted. Period.

Men of Dallas: Your Chief of Police doesn’t seem to think you possess enough self-control or self-respect to resist violating a woman who’s been drinking. Be offended by this and be part of the solution. You watch your friends and remind them that if a woman is too drunk to say ‘yes,’ she’s too drunk for sex.

Women of Dallas: Rape is rape is rape. If you were raped while drunk it doesn’t make it your fault or any less of a crime.

Commenters: Before you start lecturing me that this is simply about women taking personal responsibility for their safety while out with the opposite sex, just ask yourself why it’s up to women to make sure men don’t rape. Really, just think about that one really, really hard.

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July 26, 2010

Searching for America’s Invisible Women

Amelia Earhart and her famous plane to be made into a parade balloon.

Saturday marked the 113th anniversary of the birth of Amelia Earhart, the pioneering female pilot who blew the world’s assumptions of women’s abilities out of the sky by becoming the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Saturday also marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Alphonse Mucha, a Czech Art Nouveau painter known for his images of delicate white women with long flowing hair that you’re most likely to have seen on greeting cards.

Which one Google did decide to honor with one of it’s homepage Google Doodle designs? If you guessed the man who drew women instead of the woman, you’re cynical -  but rightfully.

Yes, 150 is a much rounder and bigger number than 113 – and that number seems a little sinister to the superstitious considering how Earhart died -  but 110 is also a much, much bigger number than 8, which is now the ratio of male to female historical figures Google Doodle has featured since it’s inception in 1999.

When I first wrote about the almost complete invisibility of women in Google Doodles, I explained why parity in internet graphics should concern feminists:

…we’ve lived with the myth that men created the world and everything good in it for long enough. As long as men get to designate who and what in history is important, young women will continue to learn that all their sex has contributed throughout all of history is their wombs. If we can’t see ourselves as the inventors, artists, revolutionaries and creators that came before, how the hell are we supposed to fashion ourselves into the modern versions?

Since writing that, I’ve become hyper-aware of the almost complete absence of women, especially women of color, in every venue and form in which we as a society honor our political, artistic, and cultural forebears. A sampling:

  • Of almost 150 historical statues in New York City, only 5 are women and only 1, Harriet Tubman, is a woman of color. Of 29 sculptures in Central Park, 4 are female: Alice in Wonderland, Juliet of Romeo and Juliet, Mother Goose, and Mary from The Secret Garden.
  • Of the 100 statues in the National Statuary Hall at the Capitol in Washington, DC, only 9 are women.
  • There is no national American holiday named for a woman. We’ve got MLK day, Columbus Day,  and Presidents Day (formerly Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays) – but not a single day for a woman who shaped America.
  • Despite being half the population, stamps memorializing men outnumber stamps memorializing women 3 to 1. Of the 55 stamps to be issues this summer, 16 will depict real people and 4 of those will be women. Puerto Rican poet Julia de Borgos will be the only woman of color honored, right alongside Kate Smith, infamous for singing the racist, pro-slavery song, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.”
  • The last time a woman’s portrait appeared on a U.S. currency note was in the 19th century, before the establishment of our modern monetary system. Martha Washington’s portrait appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896. There hasn’t been a single woman’s face on our paper currency since then. Women don’t fare much better on metal money – the U.S. Mint issued 50 new state-themed quarters between 1999 and 2008  and not a single one included an image or tribute to a woman.

Thanks to the work of feminists, most American young women go through life without ever being told they can’t grow up to be doctors or scientists, politicians or aviators. Yet by refusing to equally honor the women who’ve made significant contributions to the country as we do the men, we show them that women don’t and haven’t ever done the things that are worthy of respect and replication. This is as damaging as it is untrue.

Which is why the work of a new non-profit called Equal Visibility Everywhere is so, so cool – and so very important. Formed in March of this year, the organization is “dedicated to achieving gender parity in the symbols and icons of the United States.” Included in their 8 target projects are efforts to get more women into National Statuary Hall and on stamps and coins, encouraging municipalities to name more streets and schools after women, and monitoring how women are portrayed and represented in museum exhibits.

EVE’s biggest project – literally – is raising money for a 40-foot balloon replica of Amelia Earhart’s red Lockheed Vega 5B, with Amelia in her aviator’s cap waving from the cockpit, to appear in parades across the country. (Women are definitely disproportionately represented in the balloon line-up – of 108 characters depicted in the 86 year history of the famed Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade, only 10 have been women.) If EVE reaches their $9,801 goal by the end of this month, the balloon will debut in the Philadelphia Labor Day parade, with TV announcers reading text about the organization and the near invisibility of women in cultural celebrations.

EVE is also looking for volunteers to help them complete their other projects – I, for one, am excited about pushing New York to represent our state with a statue of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for President, in the National Statuary Hall. How will you show your mother, sisters, and daughters women made and are making history?

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July 16, 2010

What I Wish Rachel Maddow Would Say to David Vitter

It’s come to light that noted misogynist David Vitter, the Senator who protected his women’s rights staffer after he slashed his girlfriend with a knife and threatened to kill her and who doesn’t think abortion is a “women’s issue,” is also a raging homophobe. I know, I was shocked too – I’ll give you a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor.

This episode of “Saw That Coming From 100 Miles Away” involves Vitter’s comments on a right-wing radio show this morning about MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and her high school yearbook photo, which has been making the rounds on the internet. Vitter commented the photo “must have been a long time ago” because Maddow was then “looking like a woman.”

All the mainstream media I’ve seen on the incident shies away from using the “H-word” (HOMOPHOBIA), instead taking the cowardly route of assuming their readers will know why this is wrong and worthy of comment. This is shameful.

I’d bet the first journalist in the MSM to take this on will be Rachel Maddow herself, who has a history of taking on ridiculous criticism with humor and grace and at the same time, packing a powerful political punch. I’m a huge fan of Rachel Maddow and have devoted hours of my life wishing I could write for her show. If I did, here’s what she would say to Senator Vitter:

“It’s come to my attention that Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, made a funny on the radio by suggesting that my high school yearbook photo must have been taken a long time ago because in it, I look like a woman. I can only assume he’s referring to my short haircut and business suits, which don’t fit into his personal idea of what a woman should look like. Senator Vitter, I’m not one to make this accusation lightly but your comment on the radio was an attempt to get a cheap laugh on the fact that I am a lesbian. It was a political play to your constituents, who you evidently believe vote based on hate and bigotry. This, I think, is incredibly disrespectful to the good folks of Louisiana.

I think I’ve proved on this show that I have a sense of humor but this time I’m not laughing. For many people in this country and around the world, failing to fit into a random individual’s profile of what a man or woman should look like is no joke. For many, it is the difference between getting a job or not, the difference between getting into and remaining at their educational institution of choice or not, the difference between being able to safely use a public bathroom or not. For many, not fitting neatly into a gender category is a matter of life and death.

Senator Vitter, I’d like to tell you a story about a young woman named Sakia Gunn. Like me, Sakia Gunn had short hair and dressed in a more masculine way than, inferring from your comment, you’d think is appropriate for a woman. In 2005, fifteen year-old Sakia and her friends were waiting for a bus in Newark, New Jersey when they were approached by a group of men who made sexual advances toward them. When the women refused, stating they were lesbians, the men pulled out knives and started yelling homophobic slurs. Sakia was stabbed in the chest and she bled to death, in the arms of her best friend, in the middle of the street.

Let me tell you another story, Senator, about an eighteen year-old transgender woman named Angie Zapata. Again inferring from your comment, Angie Zapata, with her long hair and form-fitting clothes, fit the bill in terms of what you think a woman should look like. At her murder trial, Allen Ray Andrade’s lawyers claimed that since Angie looked like a woman their client just couldn’t help beating her to death with a fire extinguisher when it was revealed she was born biologically male. Angie Zapata wasn’t brutally killed because she looked like a woman; she was a woman. No, she was savagely beaten to death because of the type of hate you’re peddling, the kind that says a person’s gender expression, how they choose to dress and present themselves, and by extension, a person’s gender identity, how they choose to identify regardless of their gender at birth, are reasons to see someone as less deserving of respect, as less than human.

Senator Vitter, I’m not addressing you personally tonight because I was offended by your joke. I’m addressing you because your type of hate impacts the lives of thousands of Americans who do not, without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity, fit into capricious standards of what it means to look “male” or “female.” It’s time to toss these standards out the window because they are meaningless, destructive and sometimes, deadly. Moreover, it’s time to legislate against the hate bred by these standards by passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA and currently proposed in the Senate, that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which includes appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

I received your apology this afternoon, Senator, and your explanation that you were simply joining in on a joke made by the radio hosts. I accept your apology, sir, but not your excuse: you are a United States Senator and as such you have a responsibility to stand up and correct anyone making bigoted slurs against American citizens. It’s to the American public, not me, sir, that you still owe an apology – and actions that make good on it.”

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July 13, 2010

Guest Blogging at Feministe!

I’m sorry for neglecting my blog this past week. I’ve been cheating, posting elsewhere and not sharing the love – how not sex (blog?) positive of me!

I’m honored to be guest blogging at Feministe for the next week, as I have been the past week, talking about feminism, reproductive justice, and whatever else happens to be making me rage. I’ve already touched on Google Doodle’s gender disparity, the Jezebel v. Emily Gould kerfluffle, a new app to combat street harassment, and the Swiss/Roman Polanski travesty. I solemnly swear I’ll put future things here, too. (I also solemnly swear I’m up to no good…)

Got ideas for a post at Feministe or something not getting enough coverage? Leave it in the comments!

And because this is a short post and I can’t get this song out my head no matter what I do, a gratuitous earworm for you, ‘Eet’ by Regina Spektor.

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July 1, 2010

Wonder Woman in Pants is Not a Feminist Win

It’s the end of an era. At 69 years old, Wonder Woman has decided to put on some pants.

Actually, the new duds are not an act of self-determination by the woman (formerly) in red, white and blue. According to the New York Times, the new head writer of the series, J. Michael Straczynski, wanted to “toughen her up and give her a modern sensibility.”

This is modernity? Where are her red boots? What about modernization requires her trademark “W” emblem to fade into the background? How is covering her once rippling, now wimpy, muscles a nod to evolved images of womanhood?

I know what you’re thinking: Shouldn’t feminists be happy that Wonder Woman now looks more like a young woman freshly off a college campus, at once ready to go fight some bad guys in an alley or in a pay discrimination lawsuit? Haven’t we been fighting for women role models with more clothing as well as more substance? She couldn’t really fight evil in a bustier—is this not a feminist win?

No, not by a long shot. In fact, it feels like the sad loss of America’s first truly feminist comic book heroine.

This isn’t the first time DC Comics has tried to “modernize” the Wonder Woman character, which debuted in 1930 as the creation of psychologist William Marston. Marston, with the encouragement of his wife Elizabeth, designed her as a “new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love.”  Wonder Woman, her creator said, was “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.”

As such, Wonder Woman, alias Diana Prince, was introduced as a protégé of the classical goddesses and, like her male crime fighting counterparts, possessed a variety of powers and tools, including superhuman strength, agility and cunning, the ability to fly, bracelets that made her invincible and a “Truth Lasso” that barred those bound by it from uttering lies. Unlike her male counterparts, however, she sought to rid the world of evil by first employing logic and mutual human understanding before breaking out the fire power.

A generation of role-model starved women, finally presented with a truly powerful heroine, proved themselves a reliable comic book fan base—at the height of her early popularity, Wonder Woman had a readership of ten million, appeared in four comic books, and a daily newspaper comic strip, reported Philip Charles Crawford in School Library Journal.

Yet, social progress for women wasn’t correlated with the evolution of their superhero. In 1968, DC Comics debuted a “modern” version of Diana Prince who’d lost her goddess heritage and all her superhuman powers, gained a male mentor and his martial arts skills, and developed a propensity for the domestic arts. She also came equipped with a new “mod” costume: a pantsuit with no “W” emblem, no flags, and no invincible bracelet cuffs.

Feminist outrage at the devolution of their heroine was quick. A group of activists, led by Gloria Steinem, leaned on DC Comics to scrap the “new” Wonder Woman in favor of the more powerful original—and they won, convincing the company to restore Wonder Woman’s powers and history during the next version of the series. They understood that along with equal pay and childcare and the right to hold  credit in their own name, young women need to be able to see themselves in strong pop culture role models in order to fashion themselves into the real life versions.

Here we go again, it seems. Wonder Woman donning what looks like skinny jeans is being spun as a direct result of the successes of the Women’s Liberation movement, a reaction to requests that female superheroes do a little less baring of buns and a lot more kicking them. Yet in stripping Diana of her overt sexuality the new writers have missed the reason Wonder Woman was a feminist heroine in the first place. As originally portrayed, Diana Prince was sexy not because of her bare legs and cleavage but because her personhood wasn’t defined by them and her powers not derived from fashioning herself for the male gaze. She could work a 9 to 5 job, hold down a relationship, subvert international conspiracies and toss the villains in jail, and perhaps, as the first cover of Ms. magazine suggested in 1972, even be president—and the way she looked was, as it should be, simply an aside.

While it’s yet to be seen whether this costume change signals an intent to again strip Wonder Woman of her super powers, it’s disconcerting to learn that the writers are creating a new back story for the character that deprives her of her upbringing on Paradise Island with her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and her Amazon sisters in favor of being smuggled out of her homeland as a baby as it was destroyed. Wonder Woman’s original feminist creator’s intent in giving Diana the Paradise Island upbringing was to insinuate she knew gender equality existed because she’d lived it and that her powers were derived from living with and learning from her sisters. In effect, all women could become “Wonder Woman” if they tapped into the feminine power around them and strived for a gender just world that, we know from real live history, really did and can exist. Is this rewrite an attempt to impose the myth of “post-patriarchy” on the character, in which she no longer needs to dream of and fight for equality because she’s achieved it?

If the folks at DC Comics weren’t aware, 2010 America is far from a mythical Amazonian paradise. Take for example new statistics from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media pertaining to female role models for young girls. In G rated movies, just one in three speaking   roles is female and in PG and R rated films, about 73 percent of the characters are male. While there are notable exceptions, like Dora the Explorer and the girl superheroes in The Invincibles, young women are still hard pressed to find pop culture role models that look and sound like themselves. If, as it seems, Wonder Woman is truly losing some of her characteristic fierceness, that’s one fewer strong female role model for girls to aspire to be.

Jim Lee, the artist responsible for Wonder Woman’s new design, claims he wanted her to look strong “without screaming, ‘I’m a superhero.’ ” Even today, in this “modern era,” it’s still hard not to wonder, what’s so wrong with screaming that?

(Agree? Hate the new Wonder Woman and want the old one back? Join the Facebook group: DC Comics: Bring Back the Original Wonder Woman!)

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June 22, 2010

My Day as an Anti-Feminist (Role) Model

A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post soliciting advice and conversation about the request that I “dress like a feminist” for a photo spread to be featured in a mainstream women’s magazine as a representative of the next generation of feminism, or as they keep putting it, “the next Gloria Steinem.”

The shoot was last week and I took my readers’ fantastic advice – thanks for that, by the way! – and packed in my hanging bag several outfits in which I feel comfortable, happy, and most of all, me.

Yet the clothes I’d worked so hard to pick out were destined never to make it out of the bag.  Instead, the fantastic stylist had gone through the mag’s generously stocked designer closet and picked out clothes for us that will be at the peak of style when the issue comes out in the fall. This, at first, was fine by me – this thrift store girl will transform into a fashion diva on your dime any day!

Let me stop here and explain something that’s not shocking at all considering I was socialized female in American society: I’ve struggled with my weight and body image issues for as long as I can remember. I went to Weight Watchers for the first time when I was 11 and tried out every fad diet I could find in my mother’s magazines. I spent many years sobbing in dressing rooms, at swimming pools and school dances and talent shows, because I could never fit into the blonde, rail-thin ideal of a pretty Texas girl.

After I got to New York and into feminist activism, I gained a perspective on beauty that eased my body hatred a bit. I realized that what’s ugly in one culture is desirable in another and vice versa and that this constant pressure – applied to women by the media, our friends, our family, random strangers on the street and online – to be unnaturally thin is another form of sexism that at best hobbles women by making us spend unnatural amounts of time concerned with our appearance and at worst, kills.

So, when I walked into that photo shoot last Wednesday, I thought I’d made a fragile peace with my size 12 body. I’d decided that I liked the young women I speak to on campuses seeing a real-looking woman speaking her truth and making waves in the world. I know in my feminist heart of hearts that my words and actions matter far more than the packaging they come in– and, by Goddess, a little extra packaging can be just as hot!

That peace started to crumble fast when all the other women profiled – an amazing cast, including a playwright, a politician, an FBI agent and a fashion designer, among others, who for some reason all happened to be thin and drop dead conventionally gorgeous  – were given 7 or 8 fantastic outfits to try on. Since designers don’t usually provide size 12 samples, I got a wrap dress that made me look like a sail, a silk dress that made me look like a sail boat, and an embroidered leather jacket that, had it fit, would have been a huge break in solidarity with my allies in the animals rights movement. I pushed back tears, told that evil voice in my head saying, “disgusting cow” over and over again to shut up, and willed myself to smile and walk out of the dressing room in the “sail boat” option.

A pair of fierce, black, six inch platform boots and really awesome snake bracelets made me feel slightly better, but not for long. When we lined up for a once-over from the staff, I was transported back to Lubbock, TX and into a picture of me and a group of friends dressed in the same white dress, except mine was three sizes larger. I was then, and I realized standing in the line-up, always will be, the “smart one” or the “talented one” but never, ever the “pretty one.”

I know how it works at group photo shoots: the director pulls different people in and out of the shot to see whose outfits and look work together. Yet as I got pulled in and out of every single shot, I couldn’t help but be sure it was because of how horrible I looked. I cried in the bathroom three different times – the make-up artist loved that – and in a moment of being truly flustered, fell to the asphalt in my impossibly high heels and ripped up my legs, as you can see in the photo below.

My bruised, scraped up legs and the perpetrators, fantastically fierce black spiked heel boots.

I was eventually photographed in the last shot of the day and that part was surprisingly fine – years of posing for headshots, newspapers, and Facebook photos kicked in and I needed the least direction of anyone in my group. As I took off the dress and heels and prepared to leave in my own long, flowing skirt, I couldn’t decide if I was more pissed that I’d been made into some editor’s idea of “High Fashion Feminist Barbie” or that I’d failed so miserably in executing the role at every possible turn. The next Gloria Steinem, huh? Yeah – without the beauty or the grace!

So I signed on to spend my life fighting against the beauty myth in all its insidious forms and what did I do? Fall hopelessly prey to it, and on my face too.

Even though that evil voice in my head – which is, not coincidentally, male and hisses like Hanibal Lecter – is telling me this makes me a bad feminist, it simply means that I, like most women and some men, can still succumb to society’s false paradigm that beauty and worth are correlated. It reminded me how invaluable feminism’s campaign for real beauty standards is because I never want another woman to feel the way I did during that shoot.

It was also a reminder that, even if people are calling me a role model, or perhaps especially so, I’m still very much in the process of birthing myself into the woman I want to be and stripping away the layers of myself that have been torn and scarred by sexism and oppression and personal pain. It’s an excruciating process at times, but a necessary one.

In this case, I’m vowing to do some reading on feminism and body image – suggestions in the comments appreciated! – and feed and exercise my body in a manner so that it’s healthier, if not smaller. I’m going to consciously banish that creepy, self-hating voice from my head and ask myself each time I want to succumb to it’s lull if I would say to a fellow woman such awful things.

After all, it wouldn’t do the movement any good if I or anyone else waits to do radical social justice work until we’re “feminist enough,” unblemished, for public consumption. I don’t believe my sisters will be put off by my scars and scrapes but instead will see them and be more able to see, accept, and heal their own.

Or, at the very least, they’ll see my legs and skip the six-inch heels.

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June 18, 2010

How Many More Tears? – A Pro-Choice Lament

(This post is cross-posted over at The Abortion Gang blog, a fantastic space for unabashed reproductive justice activists – check out their awesome content!)

There are days as a pro-choice activist that I close my computer, go sit down on my bed, and cry.

Truth be told, there’s nothing the anti-abortion movement can do that really surprises me after eight years of doing this work. I know how it feels to have “baby killer” screamed menacingly from across the parking lot and to wade through protesters with gruesome signs to give a speech about sex education. I know what it’s like to hide my trembling hands in my pockets and look calm and resolute for the cameras as I evacuate a pro-choice meeting because of a bomb threat. I’ll never forget what it’s like to cry with a room of advocates, gathered to celebrate a woman’s lifetime of service to the movement, after learning that yet another doctor had been gunned down for trusting women.

I know the more political ins and outs, too. I know that after the anti-abortion movement figured out that America really is a pro-choice nation and it would be harder than they thought to overturn Roe, they turned to chipping away at access state by state. TRAP laws. Parental notification and 24-hour waiting periods. Legislating the denial of access to reproductive health services for poor and military and Native women. The list goes on and on.

So no, I’m never surprised anymore. But that doesn’t mean that each and every time, it doesn’t make me overwhelmingly, incredibly sad.

The particular instance that set off the waterworks recently was hearing that Louisiana became the 13th state to pass a law mandating ultrasounds before abortions – paid for by the woman. This one stipulates the ultrasound must be performed even in cases of rape.

This is a favorite tactic of the anti-abortion movement and a cruel, ridiculous one. No woman chooses abortion lightly, or comes into a clinic without a list of reasons why this is the right decision for her life and situation. It’s a tactic that, based on the anti-abortion rationale that preventing a woman from having an abortion is a win, simply doesn’t work – showing a woman an ultrasound beforehand doesn’t make her change her mind about having the procedure. Given that, it seems these laws serve little purpose beyond traumatizing women and making them feel guilty.

That there is the difference between anti-abortion activists and me: there is a real, living, breathing, feeling woman behind every choice that’s impacted by these victories in the name of a fetus.

This time, the woman is a rape survivor in Louisiana. Her violation has replayed in her mind and in her nightmares since it happened. When she finds out she’s pregnant, she cries. She cries because there is a physical manifestation of her assault to go along with her emotional bruises. She cries because she wants to be a parent or already is but this is not how it was meant to happen. After more tears and prayer, she makes an appointment to have an abortion, scrapes together the money, and goes to the clinic. Shielding her face from screaming protestors outside, she makes her way in, where she’s told the law says she has to look at her rapist’s spawn on a screen. When she sees it, she’s thrown back to smells and sounds and feel of the day she was assaulted and she cries some more. This woman has the procedure and goes back home. She doesn’t regret it – there’s no way she could have raised a child born of that horrible violence. But now, an image of exactly what a man’s penis forced inside of her created plays along with her nightmares, forever burned in her mind.

I may sound dramatic. It may piss you off that I’ve given a hypothetical situation before this particular law has even been put into effect. Fine. Real women are impacted by these laws every day and for some their lives are never the same.

It’s not for these women that I cry but with them. I cry because the onslaught is never ending and I’m afraid that I will be surprised someday soon by yet another tactic to control women’s reproductive decisions that will kill some and harm many more. I cry for the anti-abortion activists whose lack of empathy will be foisted on the women in their lives and ones they’ll never know because they don’t see them as human enough to know what’s best for their own selves.

I don’t cry for too long. I get up, write this post, and get ready to go to a fundraiser for an abortion access fund. If I can’t wipe away that rape survivor’s tears the least I can do is make sure she doesn’t cry because she can’t find the money for an abortion she wants and deserves.

Scientists say that we’re the only species that cries due to emotion. I just wonder how long it will be before our tears can be used to prove, for once and for all of time, that women are human too?

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