extra credit: the vagina monologues

I participated in this year's production in “The Vagina Monologues” for several reasons. I had seen the play last year and I thought it looked like a lot of fun to be a part of. It seemed like a valuable experience. I also think that the work itself is very important and subversive for women today.

I think that “The Vagina Monologues” is relevant to women's & gender studies because it is a play about women's unique experiences. The play is all about gender differences and opening up to topics we don't normally discuss, like pubic hair and sex slavery and how awful gynecological exams are. I think that anyone who is interested in women's & gender studies should see or read the monologues because it's a much more entertaining and accessible way to learn about actual women's issues than taking a class is.

Taking part in “The Vagina Monologues” didn't necessarily raise my awareness of topics we were learning about in class, because I feel like I already had a good background of knowledge before taking the class and being in the play. But one monologue in particular is a good connection to the class: the monologue entitled “Hair.” This monologue is about a woman whose husband demands that she shave her vagina, even though she doesn't like to because it makes her feel like a little girl. But she does it anyway, to please him. “Hair” reminds me of the video that we watched about plastic surgery where one woman was requesting a labiaplasty, or surgery on her vagina to make it prettier. I think it's sad that a woman would feel the need to change the appearance of her vagina. It's such an unseen, intimate part of our bodies; the only thing that would make it seem like it needs to be changed is pressure from an outside source.

On the flip side, one monologue reflects a positive body image. It's called “Because He Liked to Look at It,” and it's about a man who loves looking at vaginas; when he looks at a woman's vagina, it's like he reads her palm, he knows things about her. The woman speaking the monologue says that his adoration is what made her love her vagina.

My reaction of being in “The Vagina Monologues” is exactly what I thought it would be. I had a great time with my own part (I was part of the angry gang in the monologue called “My Angry Vagina”) as well as watching everyone else do theirs. It was really wonderful to be surrounded by women who all wanted to celebrate our womanhood and start a celebration with the audience too! I can't wait to do it again next year.

Blog Six.

Gimlin says that, for a long time, most of the people getting cosmetic surgery were men who were disabled by accidents on the job or in war. At the end of WWII, there were only 100 plastic surgeons in the country, which is a statistic that blows my mind in juxtaposition to how many there must be now. If there were 3,850 in 1990, there must be thousands more now. Eek!

I think cosmetic surgery is a multi-faceted issue. I think that reactionary plastic surgery (people who have been deformed by an accident, burn victims, fixing a deviated septum or cleft palate, breast reductions to alleviate pain, etc) is totally fine, but that doesn't fall under the category of "cosmetic" for me because it is done either for health reasons or as a reaction to something negative.

I do think that people "take it too lightly." I don't really understand why it's basically acceptable to alter one's body so significantly. Everyone has insecurities about their bodies, but I don't think that's a strong enough justification for invasive surgery.

I think what is actually taken too lightly is that justification itself. Why are women (and men) so unhappy with their appearances? I think the answer is what we've been talking about in this class from the beginning, what we're reading about - The Beauty Myth. The image of the perfect woman that is projected into pop culture, and probably pushed/paid for by the plastic surgery industry itself. The reading said there were 2.2 million procedures in 1999 - wow! I wonder how many there were in 2009!

I think the phrase "vain and shallow society" is a bit too reductive. Sure, it's easy to blame it on vanity, but that would be denying what's going on under the surface. This is demonstrated by the story of Ann-Marie, the woman who got the face-lift. She said that she considered the surgery for years before she actually did it, and her reason for doing it was that she didn't look the way she felt on the inside when her face started to show the effects of aging.

As far as whether it's positive or not, I certainly don't want to take anything away from the people who have had cosmetic surgery and experienced higher self-esteem as a result. That's great. But, again, that's not the problem - the reasons for getting the surgery in the first place is the problem.

Three examples from pop culture:

• Heidi Montag, obviously. She recently, famously underwent 10 procedures at once. I recently saw some pictures of her from before any surgeries and I thought she was so beautiful! Now she looks like a real-life Barbie, which is not attractive in the actual world.
• Joan Rivers has also had a lot of work done...she looks really creepy now. It's kind of ironic that she has a career in body-snarking on the red carpet, when she's had so much work done. what an obnoxious cycle.
• J-WOWW!!! from "Jersey Shore." Her boobs are crazy huge and crazy fake-looking. That's what I REALLY don't understand - women who want to look completely unnatural. Why??
  

Random parts I found interesting:

• "many of the women I interviewed expressed enormous satisfaction with their procedures."
• "cosmetic surgeons are frequently critical of their female clientele, seeing them as obsessed and impossible to please."
• he determines "appropriateness" of surgery. "John positions himself not only as a surgeon but also as an expert in contemporary standards for female beauty." he examines psychological health as well - to see if they're getting the surgery for a non-physical reason, like a recent personal trauma. He rejects two to three requests per week.
• even the women who are happy with results are defensive when explaining.
• Ann Marie makes a point that is striking for me... she says that if you look better, you feel better, and thus become a better worker/family member/friend/etc. Why is it that appearance is the thing that starts that cycle of positivity? That makes me sad.
• Bonnie's liposuction eliminating the most "female" parts of her figure as a reflection of her identity problems. femininity = inherently imperfect, or at least that's what culture would have us believe...
  

Blog Five.

There are some toys that are incredibly gendered, like dolls and GI Joes, for example. Some toys can be gender-neutral, but I honestly think that "they" are trying to divide the genders from birth pretty much. It starts with pink for girl babies and blue for boy babies, and it continues with toys. I don't think toys should be gendered, because it diminishes creativity and imagination in children if they get such intense division messages from an early age.

The Toys R Us website actually has a function where you can click on either "girls" or "boys" to find toys. In the 5-7 year old age bracket, when I click "girls," there are some neutral toys like LEGOs, walkie talkies and play castles. But it's mostly dolls, little toy animals to nurture, and lots of pink. When I click "boys," there are the same animals, but the rest is cars, sports toys, video games and action figures.

I do think that toys influence the way children play. Take Barbies, for example. One of the most fun parts of playing with a Barbie is dressing her up in all kinds of different outfits, doing her hair, etc. GI Joes don't have different outfits or long flowing blonde hair. Therefore little girls are concentrating more on making their toy look beautiful, as a reflection of themselves, or as living vicariously through their doll. The beauty myth starts early. Little boys, on the other hand, get right to the action with their toys - no need to worry about looks.

That's why I do think that the toys influence what kids grow up to be, to a certain extent. I mean, just because a girl played with Barbies as a child, doesn't mean she will grow up to be a bimbo or materialistic. But it may be a good explanation for the beauty myth and how it affects grown women.

My favorite toys when I was a kid were my "hard animals." I guess I called them that because they were small animals made of hard plastic. I had my own little menagerie that I'd bought with my hard-earned lemonade-stand money. They all had names and identities, and I liked to make up stories and act them out with the animals. After doing this blog, I realize that my hard animals were not specifically gendered, because I could assign whatever gender I wanted to each of them. I think that boys and girls could have an equal amount of fun playing with them. Also, I think that making up the stories helped develop creativity.

I also liked playing outside, climbing trees, riding my bike, playing with American Girl dolls and Beanie Babys. The point is, there are some toys that are extremely gendered, but as long as a little girl doesn't play with ONLY Barbies and a little boy doesn't play with ONLY cars, it's perfectly fine. I just don't like the whole "girls like dolls, boys like trucks" concept that I suspect some parents may inflict on their children.

Blog Four. (Sex)

The most basic idea I got from the chapter on sex was that beauty pornography is put in place to suppress female sexuality. When we see women that fit the ideal body image in extremely sexual ways (sexual ads, photographs, and in actual pornography), it sends the message that we need to look like THAT in order to be sexual.

Beauty is socially constructed because, as we've discussed in class, the ideal image of beauty is created by the diet, cosmetics, and cosmetic surgery industries. The ideal is perpetuated by advertising and the media, and it is also perpetuated by those of us who subscribe to it. Believing in the false ideal influences our own body image. If women don't feel beautiful, they don't feel sexy, and thus sexuality is not what it should be.

Something that struck me in the reading on sex was the whole section on violence. Wolf says that in the 1980s, as more women were graduating with professional degrees, people started to get angry at women. Thus, images of women in the media in situations of violence started to increase.

Wolf says, "Sex just wasn't sex anymore without violence."

She says that violent sexual imagery has made rape more acceptable, even if it's on a subconscious basis. Men and women now have rape fantasies because those fantasies are projected. She says that "our culture is depicting sex as rape so that men and women will become interested in it." WOW.

Also, the idea that huge industries are "selling sexual discontent" is crazy and interesting. Wolf says that "product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies." To keep us spending money, society tries to keep us from getting laid.

In Wolf's words, "the myth wants to discourage women from seeing themselves unequivocally as sexually beautiful." Feeling beautiful is an important part of having good, fulfilling sex. If one doesn't feel beautiful, "one objectifies oneself or the other for self-protection." Women don't like their bodies because they are constantly confronted with naked or near-naked images of the ideal body. Then when they are naked for sex, it makes them insecure so they can't enjoy sex the same way. Thus, they are unfulfilled and still a slave to the beauty myth.

Thoughts on the "Religion" chapter...

The repeated, general ideas I found from the reading were that as our society has become more secular, women find their lives ruled by a different type of religion. The religion of beauty. And the religion of beauty gets its language from actual religion, such as ideas about "temptation" (with food versus actual sins) and following strict rules about diet and fitness.


I found that body image, beauty and sexual attraction are functions of "social construction" in that society, mostly men, seem to decide what makes someone or something beautiful or sexy. Such as the example about skin cream - aging doesn't have to be ugly! But someone decided that it is so now we have $250 skin creams, despite the fact that aging can not be reversed...
I also thought it was interesting, the idea that men die once and women die twice: once when our beauty fades and once when our bodies die. How sad is that? Why are we so separated? Why does it matter if our beauty isn't as radiant as it was at age 20? Does that signify a lesser contribution to society??


There were so many parts of the chapter on religion that made me think to myself, "Wow! That is so true, but I'd never made that connection before."
Like the part where Wolf lists off a bunch of slogans from anti-aging creams' ad campaigns. They all suggested that the creams were a "barrier" or "shield" from "irritants" or even the "daily environment." This plays on the actual fear that many women have about being raped or assaulted. Women are receptive to this advertising because, Wolf says, "it is about the unspoken underside of the life of the successful, controlled working woman: about sexual violance and street harassment and a hostile workplace."


Ideals of female beauty function as a form of social control in so many ways!
First of all, this constant guilt thing. Wolf called it "original sin"... this is a concept from religion that in the New Religion is a socially constructed problem of gender. "The Rites of Beauty define original sin as being born not mortal, but female." She says that now, no matter how young or old a woman is, she is never free of worry or guilt about her beauty!
Also, we have sexual guilt, but since sex is less of a taboo (well, kind of) in America, food has replaced sex as a sin. Especially delicious food is branded as "sinful" or "tempting"...Wolf gave this example comparing sex and food: "Sex within marriage, for procreation, was acceptable, while sex for pleasure was a sin; women make the same distinction today between eating to sustain life and eating for pleasure."


Women's choices and lives are limited by the social construct of beauty. Women are told that we need anti-aging creams, we need to be a certain weight, we need to be radiant. We need to be all these things because by being born women, we are inherently wrong, inherently sinful. We can combat this original sin by succumbing to the religion of beauty.
Going back to the idea of radiance: Wolf talks about this word when used to describe brides and pregnant women....women are most radiant when they are serving a man (brides) or a child (pregnancy). Thus, women are most beautiful when they are fulfilling their purpose as servants to men and children. It's so painfully obvious!!

jersey shore article

This is a really interesting post from the site Jezebel about the messages in "Jersey Shore" about body image. Seriously. Here's a quote:

"...it's oddly refreshing how much artifice itself is celebrated, with everyone participating mightily, and openly, in becoming the ideal Guido. No one is just born one, or supposed to make it look effortless. There are communal visits to tanning salons and unblinking references to fake breasts, and everyone takes hours to get ready."

Here's a link:

Jersey Shore: On Beauty and Not Even Looking Italian

Blog Three.

I just want to say before answering these questions that I really enjoyed both readings for this blog!

According to Friedan, the problem that has no name was the feeling of pointlessness or perhaps restlessness that housewives felt in the 1950s and 1960s. The women's lives revolved around their children and husband, women were not encouraged to pursue education or a career; the most important role for a woman to play was that of a housewife. So when women felt unsatisfied or unfulfilled with her life, she began to feel insecure about her abilities, and very alone. That was the problem that has no name.

It has no name because in most cases it wasn't spoken about. Friedan cites women's therapy sessions in which the problem is discussed, but even in such an open setting, women still verbally dismissed the problem, saying "There's nothing wrong" or thinking there was nothing wrong with them.

I think the feminine mystique is the idea that "feminine fulfillment" is attained through a husband and children. The image of a perfect and happy woman was that of a smiling suburban housewife who sent her children off to school, cleaned the house, cooked for her family, used brand new appliances, went to PTA meetings, and "pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career."

OCCUPATION: HOUSEWIFE.

It is promoted by the media: television shows, commercials, women's magazines, print advertisement... the patriarchy! Women suffer for it. And men do as well because people deserve to be equals and be allowed to strive for the same goals; it's unfair for the beneficiaries of inequality too.

Friedan mentioned that she was raising three children while also working as a reporter.

Friedan's evidence includes magazine articles from the time period, quotes from therapy sessions, personal interviews with women, statistics about college enrollment and age of marriage.

I think that despite many of feminism's victories, women are still oppressed by the beauty myth. I have read an excerpt from this book before, in which Wolf presents the concept that as women gain more power (politically, in the workplace, etc) and therefore become symbolically larger, the more the patriarchy wants to reduce them to smallness. Wolf says that's why we are bombarded with images of very thin women. The "system" is threatened by women who are more than wives, mothers and secretaries; so it basically forces them to develop eating disorders and terrible body image.

Anyone can choose to overcome the beauty myth. Well, I actually don't think it's as easy as that sounds. Not even close. I am a feminist. I love my body. I know, logically and emotionally, that it's okay that I don't look like every girl in magazines or on television. I see beauty in myself and in others, despite what outside appearances are.

Yet I still feel self-conscious about my body hair, about my stomach, about my broad shoulders. I think my nose is too big. I compare myself to other women. I make fun of how other women look, if they are too fat or they wear too much makeup or have a bad haircut.

No one is untouched, no one is free. But we do have the power and the intelligence to recognize when the beauty myth is being inflicted upon us. And we have the power and the will to resist. It won't always be easy and it won't always work. Insecurities are a part of being human. But it is possible to change.