The
F
Word
LET’S RUN DOWN THE LIST: FEMINISTS ARE UGLY, HAIRY-LEGGED man-haters. Feminists are women who don’t resemble doormats. Feminism is, as Pat Robertson infamously put it, “a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. Feminism is dead because women have rejected its tenets. Feminism is dead because it has succeeded in all it set out to do.
Feminism’s contentious position in the popular imagination is as old as feminism itself. Commentators both male and female, feminist and not, have tussled over its meanings, goals, intentions, and even its morals since well before the term even entered our lexicon. At the dawn of the woman suffrage movement, in June 1854, a writer for
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
(known to contemporary readers as
Harper’s)
gave his assessment of those who wanted to see women become full societal participants: “A woman such as ye would make her—teaching, preaching, voting, judging, commanding a man-of-war, and charging at the head of a battalion-would be simply an amorphorous monster … She might be very estimable as a human being, honorable, brave, and generous, but she would not be a woman.” (This anonymous man also conjured the hairy-legged manhater’s nineteenth-century foremother: “with horny hands covered with
fiery red scars and blackened with tar, her voice hoarse and cracked, her language seasoned with nautical allusions and quarter-deck imagery, and her gait and stop the rollicking roll of a bluff Jack-tar.” His inspiration was a Scottish sea captain named Betsy Miller.)
In the early ’70s, as the next phase of the movement bloomed, women’s liberation garnered national coverage every week, both negative and positive. Opponents pronounced the movement “absurd and destructive” (Midge Decter, author of 1972’s The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s Liberation) and its adherents “petty … and vindictive [women] who cannot solve their own problems and want the govenment to do it for them” (Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the STOP ERA campaign widely credited with torpedoing the Equal Rights Amendment). Major news outlets ran headlines referring to marches as “parades” and declaring, “Women’s Movement Is Seen as Leading to ‘Self-Hatred.’” They published observations that “the demonstrators were preponderantly attractive young women wearing miniskirts and boots” and articles about how President Nixon’s daughter Julie “says leaders of the women’s liberation movement are ‘alienating a lot of women and most of the men.’” Columnists insisted that although “a sensible case exists that women as a group are subject to certain unjust exploitations,” they’re not “oppressed” because they’re not “slaves toiling hopelessly for Pharaoh with no hope this side of death.”
Newspapers also devoted miles of column inches to feminist activities, most notably the fight for the ERA, often noting that the majority of Americans supported it and publishing editorials urging its ratification. The New York Times published articles by Susan Brownmiller, Betty Friedan, Robin Morgan, and others. There seemed to be at least a glimmer of understanding that the stereotype of the hirsute harpy was just that—a stereotype. An October 1971 poll conducted by Louis Harris Associates asked three thousand women and one thousand men what came to mind in response to the term “women’s liberation.” Twenty-five percent answered in the category “Women working for equal rights—opportunities—equality with men” and another fifteen in “Women wanting better jobs—pay—equal jobs—pay with men.” Six percent chose “Bunch of frustrated, insecure, ugly, hysterical, masculine type women.”
The nonnews media landscape was also transformed by feminism, from Mary Richards’s independent career-girl ways (and, less subtly, Maude’s abortion) to an Enjoli perfume ad featuring a dressed-for-success babe shedding
her work clothes for a slinky ensemble. (The soundtrack was a lyrically retooled version of the Peggy Lee classic “I’m a Woman”: “I can bring home the bacon / Fry it up in a pan / And never let you forget you’re a man.”)
Charlie’s Angels
may have been a jigglefest featuring glamorous gals taking direction from an invisible and all-powerful father figure, but without feminism, a trio of female undercover detectives would never have made it past the first network meeting.
The ’80s are usually what comes to mind when someone says “backlash,” and, as Susan Faludi’s landmark work amply demonstrated, that decade was full of breast implants and tales of unhappy professional women whose empty personal lives belied earlier feminist promises of “having it all.” But the ’90s also saw an explosion of work by a whole slew of backlash feminists, women who felt free to claim the label “feminist” even as their books accused the movement of ruining women’s lives and ruining everyone else’s fun. Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, and Christina Hoff Sommers got tons of press and were anointed as feminist spokeswomen, while folks like Peggy Orenstein, bell hooks, Paula Kamen, and Katha Pollitt were writing actual feminist—rather than just feminist-baiting—work on many of the same issues and getting way less attention.
After more than three decades, pop culture continues to suffer from a bad case of simultaneous progress and backlash—and the longer it’s been around, the more complicated the symptoms get. Ginia Bellafante’s infamous June 29, 1998,
Time
cover story, touted by the oh-so-original cover line “Is Feminism Dead?” declared that the movement had abandoned its social change roots to be “wed to the culture of celebrity and self-obsession.” Bellafante’s tone suggested that she longed for more activism, but had she done any substantive research, she could have reported on a whole lot. To give just a few examples, the Third Wave Foundation had been funding feminist organizing among women under thirty for more than a year when she wrote her article; Sista II Sista’s Freedom School began training young women of color in community organizing in 1996. Antisweatshop organizing was gaining momentum on campus, fueled in large part by female students putting their feminist principles into action. But instead, Bellafante took the mainstream’s word for it and anointed Ally McBeal and the Spice Girls as feminism’s flailing poster children. (As a
Salon
commentator quipped at the time, “Sure, ‘Ally McBeal’ is a popular show—but so was
‘Three’s Company’ in the 1970s, and no one ever accused Suzanne Somers of being a feminist icon.”)
Bellafante, unfortunately, is far from alone in her severe misunderstanding. The backlash years found feminists defending clinics against anti-choice protesters, staffing rape-crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, marching against U.S. intervention in Central America, flocking to women’s studies classes, familiarizing the culture with the term “sexual harassment,” agitating for lesbian rights, and much more—while most of the mainstream media was busy reporting that feminism was irrelevant to the average woman. Today, in the face of the oft-repeated cliché that young people aren’t interested in feminism, young feminists of all genders have been protesting the IMF, the School of the Americas, and the war on Iraq; they have been working to dismantle the prison-industrial complex and to secure living wages for tomato pickers; they have been organizing against human trafficking and for trans visibility. As Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin put it in the introduction to their 2004 anthology,
The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism,
“People wonder who is carrying on the legacy of the women’s movement, and they look to the same old haunts to find the answers. The problem is, they are looking in the wrong places.” Those old haunts may not be entirely empty—folks under twenty-five reportedly made up at least one-third of the million people who marched on Washington for reproductive freedom in April 2004—but they’re just a small part of the neighborhood now.
Without widespread recognition of the true scope of feminism’s influence on all social justice activism, the notion of feminism as defanged girl-power fluff is inevitable: It comes straight from the way record producers, screenwriters, women’s-magazine editors, chick lit publishers, and ad copywriters lift selections from movement rhetoric and use them to dress up their retrogressive pap. That Enjoli ad has more than a few contemporary equivalents: Take mining giant De Beers’s invention of the right-hand ring, which the company claims is all about “the strength, success, and independence of women of the twenty-first century.” Or check out Stouffer’s launch of a new frozen diet pizza, which was marketed with ads that said: “The vote. The stay-at-home dad. The push-up bra. The Lean Cuisine pizza.”
The distinction between feminism’s vibrancy, nuance, and commitment
to social justice and the superficial appropriation of its catchphrases could not be more crucial. The messages of mainstream culture, commercial forces, conservative political trends, and the like all too often combine to make audiences unable to sort feminism’s unfinished business from its failures; they make it all too easy to confuse the reality and range of our movement with distortions and misrepresentations of it. The writers in this section are wrestling with the way the mainstream seeks to use, abuse, and misuse feminism—and what we need to do to stop them.—L.J.
Feminism for Sale
Rita Hao / FALL 1998
AS WE APPROACH THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM, FEMINISM appears to have made significant strides into mainstream culture—we have a surfeit of women’s magazines aimed at all permutations of politics, ethnicities, orientations, appearances, lifestyles, interests, and ages (
Ms., Mode, Latina,
and
Women and Guns
, to name just a few), we have TV shows targeted specifically at us (leading women Buffy, Ally, Sabrina, Veronica), we have our own cottage industry in music (the Lilith Fair, Missy Elliot, Fiona Apple, the Spice Girls). This is indeed something to celebrate—but before we rest, smug and Katie Roiphe—like, on our laurels of “battle’s already won, stop whining already” feminism, it might be interesting to explore the ways the media has constructed its apparently unquestioning acceptance of women and feminism.
Sure, it’s great that we have, for once, so many options to choose from. But the main reason the media can support this diversity of voices rests on what the corporate world refers to as … well, money. So who’s paying for those articles on Courtney Love in Spin magazine? Who’s supporting the WNBA on ESPN? Who keeps
Jane
afloat? Advertisers. And what are they saying?
I’ve noticed recently that advertisements have started trying to speak to me in my own voice. Part of this stems from the fact that, as a twenty-five-year-old woman working a corporate day job, I represent that new cash cow,
the Generation X slacker/corporate drone. (I “slack.” Yet I also save in a 401(k)! I am deeply cynical yet also hopeful in the new economic upswing! I am replete with contradiction. Make colas and candy and clothing for me!) But advertisers have also learned that the best way to sell to women is to make them feel as if they’re important. As if they matter. In short, to speak to them as feminists.
Okay, I admit, I fall for this trick every time. Give me a pseudofeminist slogan and I’ll go for the product in a second. Strong enough for a man—but made for a woman? I love that shit. This little light of mine? Well, of course I’m gonna let it shine, goddammit. Give me two pairs of Lees, posthaste! Sports gear? I don’t even play sports, but you know I’m elevating my self-esteem with those grainy black-and-white shots of women doing something sports-related to inspirational music. And the ad for Clairol where the women all turn down dates with “Steve” to “wash their hair”? I mean, the Beavis and Butt-Head-y turn of phrase (“a totally organic [huh-huh, huh-huh] experience”) indicates fairly clearly to me, at least, that this particular ad campaign was penned by some sweaty twenty-six-year-old male, but I must admit I find the implication that Steve is somehow, you know, not a hot tamale in the sack to be hysterically funny. Sisters doing it for themselves is always a good message to send.
So—on the one hand, I guess it’s good that advertisers have finally realized that smart women are a viable market at which to aim their pitches. I mean, I’m heartened that
Ms.’s
No Comment page, once chock-full of pictures of women being torn to pieces by dogs or something similarly horrific, has now been reduced to a bare three or four entries, one of which is usually a nude shot from a European magazine and another of which is usually an ad for skateboarding equipment. I’m pleased that those throat-clearingly discomfiting douche commercials have been replaced with up-front and frank (but, interestingly enough, equally discomfiting) yeast infection medication ads. I’m glad that the market now views women in a variety of roles—daughters, schoolgirls, teenagers, sexual beings, mothers, businesswomen, sports figures, activists, everything. Rah, rah and yay for us.
But what makes this particular cultural manifestation of quote-unquote feminism (which, arguably, is nothing more than the advertising industry’s realization that “hey! women buy things!”) an effective way to move units? And what makes this particular movement one that makes advertisers
think you’ll spend money to hear its messages? What drives this union of feminism and capitalism? I mean, I have my doubts about
Baffler-
chic cultural punditry (“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” is a particularly wanker way to view culture, I think), but let’s explore a little, shall we?
Clearly, the strong, self-actualized woman is an image that sells. It makes sense, right? You see one of these ads, you get that strange sensation of—could it be? Could it actually be? Elevating self-esteem? Identification with an image in the media? Oh, my God! Ideally, advertisers are thinking, you’ll associate that good feeling (especially since it’s so rare) with their brand and think, “Wow, Nike—they make me feel great!” Then you’ll rush out and spend the seventy-five cents that you earn to the male dollar on their product.
It strikes me as hypocritical, though, to push this limited, you-can-do-anything vision of feminism on women when even
Vogue
admits that part of the reason why women have self-esteem low enough to need to hear that we can do anything is that this same industry goes around telling us we’re too fat/too dark/too loud/too aggressive in the first place, and thus need retail therapy to make ourselves feel validated again. This little light of mine is supposed to shine in jeans that I swear must be deliberately cut to make me look both hipless and paunchy? I’m supposed to feel better about myself because I run my anorexia-inducing fitness routine in “if you let me play, I won’t drop out of school” shoes? I don’t care if Calvin Klein is telling me to “be fun. be fearless. just be.” I still don’t think his company puts forth a particularly helpful vision of womanhood. (And, for God’s sake, like I really want to be like Kate fucking Moss. Excuse me, I practice dental hygiene.)
Furthermore, this sort of pro-woman schlock isn’t even about feminism at all. It’s not like we’re all supposed to get together and think about the ways gender roles have created artificial barriers between people, or how sexism keeps us from reaching our goals. Oh, no—we’re supposed to race out to the mall and buy things. Yeah, that’s going to help women secure their right to choose.
Now, I’m not saying that buying things is automatically antifeminist. I, for one, have been espied at Union Square toting bags from the Gap, Macy’s, Virgin, Nine West, and Ann Taylor. All at once, even. I love to shop. (Thus, interestingly, perpetuating the idea in some adman’s mind that I’m buying nicely made business casual because “Ann Taylor is about being
real.” No. Ann Taylor is, in actuality, about an extensively stocked line of petite clothing. You compromise where you have to.) But capitalism is a system that maintains its momentum by encouraging people to think only in terms of me, me, me. Interesting that now it’s using rhetoric from a movement that has tried, since its inception, to encourage people to understand the ways that sort of self-centered thinking exists as a cover for the exploitation of the labor of people who, for reasons such as color, class, and gender, have been historically considered somehow inferior to the people who actually count. Capitalist feminism welcomes the woman whose Visa card will be accepted at the door into the ranks of the worthy. But what about everyone else?
Ultimately, these ads put forth a vision of feminism that is increasingly devoid of any sense of community or vitality: I am a strong feminist, thus I deserve new shoes/cute clothes/fattening food/beauty products.
And that I have a problem with—because if feminism is about anything, it’s about the hidden power dynamics of entitlement. You don’t deserve to make more money than me because you pee standing up. You don’t deserve to get into college just because your dad went there before you. To take feminist rhetoric and turn it into just another self-centered Ayn Randian trip (Fuck everyone else! Where do I want to go today?) is dangerous.
That said, I feel slightly guilty trashing these ads because I know they disturb the status quo in a lot of ways. I know this because, you know, the only thing in advertising that irritates me more than faux-feminist ads is the backlash against faux-feminist ads. Nike, for instance, has an ad that says, “Breaking the glass ceiling … What do[es that] have to do with shoes?” In other words, “Fuck all that pro-woman shit we told you last year; why don’t you just go running instead?” Feminism sells, but backlash sells even better.
Even worse is the way Sprite’s “image is nothing, thirst is everything” campaign has taken on the recent rise of the Angry Rock Chick with its parody of Courtney/Alanis/Meredith Brooks, which runs basically to the point of: “I can’t write lyrics and I can’t sing, but I look really good in tight skirts. I hate men and I can’t play guitar, but I sell lots of records because I talk about sex.” And they also have a Spice Girls version: “We look cute and we
look sharp, and we have to do what Sprite says because next month we won’t be famous.”
Okay, now. Deep breath, deep breath. Let’s think about it this way: I know I’m ambivalent about the recent marketing of girl power. But I’m ambivalent about it in a different way than Sprite is. It’s not like Sprite’s ads are saying, “Hey, Rita, you are so totally right about this angry-Alanis phenomenon turning riot grrrl rhetoric into the same old I-can’t-live-without-a-man shtick. Gosh, Rita, isn’t it irritating that the Lilith Fair is turning girl rage inward again? We hear you about how the Spice Girls end up pushing a vision of femininity and feminism that re-creates women as rather dim.” Oh, no—Sprite’s ads are for that most bizarre of phenomena, the nervous Ben Folds Five/Verve Pipe fan who feels threatened by feminist empowerment (“How come them chicks get their own concert tour and us guys don’t?”).
These advertisers are ultimately trying to have it both ways—get those Gen XX girls who already feel ambivalent about the marketing of feminism by the media, and those Gen XY boys who just feel ambivalent about feminism. Capitalism isn’t about welcoming women into the fold, or using our newfound economic clout to make changes in the way the system works. It’s about making money. It’s about tapping into what really is a very new and powerful phenomenon—the woman who makes enough to pay the rent and several credit card balances, but is young enough to be free of major money-sucking responsibilities—and channeling her for its own ends. So go on, go buy cute things. Buy cute things you want. But make sure you know why you want them. Retail therapy works only if you know what you’re trying to cure.