My Late Blooming class today was in the doldrums after congressmen grilled Hillary Clinton like they were auditioning for the primate version of Survival. Despite the mud and sticks, Hillary acquitted herself well. Yet it was profoundly disturbing to see this retro attitude toward women surface once again.
Boomer women can't really think about Late Blooming without realizing what it took to get here. The legislation, the protests, the way we had to prove ourselves, over and over, in the workplace. What last week's spectacle brought up was our role as front-runners in the way women are perceived.
A few days ago, I went with a friend to a supposedly "fun night" at the Mill Valley film festival--a look back at dance music on Dick Clark and a few other TV bandstand shows. We were reminded of what teenagers looked like in those days. In one clip, the boys are jumping all over, strapped onto rocket-shaped guitars while the girls are immobilized in barrels of dry ice, scantily clad and made up to the hilt. (The warmest things they've got on are their false eyelashes.) These clips brought back memories of an impossibly idealized Barbie and Phyllis Schlafly's flawless imitation of The Stepford Wife. ("I think I'll bake a Bundt cake--if my husband lets me.") No wonder we considered it progress when women were let out of the deep freeze and recast as go-go girls!
"Did we really live through this?" my friend asked as we hastily walked out, feeling like our feminist mojo had been caught in some sadistic time warp.
If those of us who fought like tigresses for women's rights have forgotten what things used to look like, how can we blame the next generation for saying "Gee, Mom. Feminism is a little out of date"? Maybe it's time to treat our grown children to some reruns of Donna Reed and Dick van Dyke. Or grab a few old copies of Look or Life, with blatantly sexist ads like the ones pictured here, created by real-life Mad Men after a three-martini power lunch. Once younger people get the drift, maybe they'll recognize the retro attitude toward women that's creeping back into the mainstream now.
My point is this: We can't sit back and say, "Look how far we've come." Instead we have to say, "Here's where we went wrong."
The bad news is that we have monetized every aspect of woman's labor and defined her as an ersatz man. Female executives can only get to the top by hiring other women to care for their homes and children. Nancy Fraser, author of Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, says we've separated production from reproduction, creating a society where to "lean in" means to lean on others. Is it any wonder that women are working longer, harder than ever before and feeling less content? How can we, as feminists, face up to the fact Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer are another version of the "one percent" and that their solutions aren't one-size-fits-all? European women did this better, focussing on childcare and work-life balance, with the help of socialist governments.
My point is this: We can't sit back and say, "Look how far we've come." Instead we have to say, "Here's where we went wrong."
The bad news is that we have monetized every aspect of woman's labor and defined her as an ersatz man. Female executives can only get to the top by hiring other women to care for their homes and children. Nancy Fraser, author of Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, says we've separated production from reproduction, creating a society where to "lean in" means to lean on others. Is it any wonder that women are working longer, harder than ever before and feeling less content? How can we, as feminists, face up to the fact Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer are another version of the "one percent" and that their solutions aren't one-size-fits-all? European women did this better, focussing on childcare and work-life balance, with the help of socialist governments.
In the US, we have been giving capitalism all the glory despite its staggering inability to address human concerns. Our wholesale belief in free-market, for-profit institutions has not only produced a ridiculous concentration of wealth, it has ignored women, minorities and the elderly and literally taken them off the map. The worst thing to be in this country is female, poor and black or undocumented....and of course, over 65. Who gets to bloom in that situation?
Globally, policy makers have been touting microloans as the solution for women in developing countries. Yet the fact is these women have little control over their childbearing and are still considered their father's or their husband's property. As governments promote microcredit they are shying away from tougher, more systemic issues like the stunning prevalence violence against women and children, human trafficking and domestic abuse.
A few years ago, funding for women's programs was pretty bleak. For every dollar that went to aid women in third world countries, roughly 20 dollars went to men. Even though research shows that if you help a woman she'll help her family and help her village--and there will be a trickle "out" effect.
While the UN talks a good game on women's issues it has yet to show any serious support for a Fifth World Women's Conference (now more than two decades overdue). It's most serious failing is not realizing the power of a gathering like this to provide important opportunities for mentoring and networking--passing the torch to the next generation.
I'm probably the wrong one to talk this morning if you want cheering up. But if you've made it this far, you might as well hang in here for another rant.
This season, women are getting a bad rap on primetime television as well. Even Shonda Rhimes, usually a cheerleader for women's issues, has gone a little squirrelly. We have the President's bimbo headlines on Scandal with a Hera-Zeus feud center stage. Every female surgeon on Grey's Anatomy is behaving like a narcissistic twit, and last season's How to Get Away with Murder cast the great Cicely Tyson as a deranged Lorena Bobbitt with a flair for arson as revenge instead of a dull kitchen knife.
This season, women are getting a bad rap on primetime television as well. Even Shonda Rhimes, usually a cheerleader for women's issues, has gone a little squirrelly. We have the President's bimbo headlines on Scandal with a Hera-Zeus feud center stage. Every female surgeon on Grey's Anatomy is behaving like a narcissistic twit, and last season's How to Get Away with Murder cast the great Cicely Tyson as a deranged Lorena Bobbitt with a flair for arson as revenge instead of a dull kitchen knife.
The opening salvo of Downton Abbey, I've just learned, is another study in feminine stagnation. No spoilers here. But Violet is 123 and still stuck in the same whalebone corset, and the widowed Mary is still dawdling, perhaps wishing to be done with all those pesky suitors so she can get on with life.
Readers, please! Let's take a break from all of that and go see Sara Gavron's gutsy piece of story-telling, Suffragette. Those of us who worked hard for equality are watching very closely---writing and volunteering and fundraising--to be sure that all of our landmark accomplishments don't simply disappear.
One final thought: Struggling with recidivism might just be the penalty of aging. We get to hold our breath and hope that every social movement we spearheaded isn't rolled so far back that we find ourselves longing for the development of the rotating femur and opposable thumbs.
If that happens, I'm to going to barbeque a wooly mammoth, paint my face with possum grease, and head into the woods.
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