Remembering beauty in the complexity of life

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. In the meantime I managed to finish my MA degree in one year and start a PhD program.  Now that I’m settling into a steadier pace in my life in Toronto I want to begin posting again. This post is different from the first four, as it comes from some old journal reflections.  I may return to writing about patriarchy in future posts, but wanted to also share a another side of me.

This first one I wrote upon a return visit to Washington, DC in 2008, and specifically to Rock Creek Park, where I used to spend time during the two-and-a-half years that I lived in DC (from 2002 – 2005).

Rock Creek Park – sitting after a trip down memory lane. I forgot my digital camera, so a journal entry will have to suffice. Everything is green and flowering. Spring is in full bloom.

I look back on my time here with gratefulness and love and a bit of a lesson to be, as much as I can, in the present moment. Two-and-a-half years in DC now seem so short, like I only got a glimpse of the true experience. I never really felt connected and didn’t call it home until my last few months. Now it feels a bit like a homecoming with missing pieces.

A bit of poetry for my trip down memory lane:

That’s the spot

Where John and I picnicked

Watching the dirty water of Rock Creek

While we ate our cheese sandwiches

On organic whole wheat bread.

Life is constant change and I still struggle with that change. Breathe into it. There are no answers, no simple answers. We all make it up as we go along, answering based on what we’ve read or observed or learned through experience. But it’s all too limited.

The next was something I wrote in the summer of 2008, during a camping trip next to a lake in Minnesota.

As the muskrat eats, I sit and watch and try to stay present. But even here my mind carries me away. The calm beauty of the lake in the early morning gives me life. And then I’m back in my mind in St. Paul, with my ex, questioning myself and my interaction with a friend and thinking about the dreams I’ve had lately.

The mosquitoes bring me back to the present moment with a buzz and I return to the appreciation of all life – even that life that stings and sucks your blood sometimes.

Women in Movies

I’ve been thinking a lot about the messages we receive about women through the media and I came across this short video about the Bechdel test for women in movies:

http://www.feministfrequency.com/2009/12/the-bechdel-test-for-women-in-movies/

It’s a really short video, only 2 minutes, on the presence of women in movies.  They describe the Bechdel test as having three components:

1.     If there are two or more women in the movie who have names

2.     If two or more women talk to each other

3.     If they talk to each other about something other than men

What was most fascinating to me about the video is when they flash through some of the movies that don’t pass the test.  The list includes: Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ocean’s Eleven, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, X-Men and many others.  It was particularly shocking to me because a few of my favorite movies are on this list.  I just watched the X-Men movies for the first time last year and loved them, particularly because of the powers that all the characters had to fight against forces of oppression.  I know that in the X-Men movies there are more than 2 women with names and I think they talk to one another. So, that means that if these movies didn’t pass the test, they only talk to each other about men! 

After seeing the Bechdel test video, I watched Oceans Eleven (it was on TV last weekend) and paid careful attention to the way women were portrayed in that movie.  Wow! I was surprised by what I saw when looking through the lens of the Bechdel test.  I have watched this movie probably 4 times before and this was the first time I noticed how women are portrayed. There is only one woman with a name in this movie, Tess (Julia Roberts), and she is talked about and to as if she is a piece of property.  She is the ex-wife of one of the eleven, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), and is currently dating the casino owner, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia).  Part of the movie plot revolves around Danny and Terry’s fight over Tess.  Tess’ identity is tied up in who she is with – Danny or Terry.  This is her only reason to exist in the movie, as she has no identity beyond her relationship with these men.

Just last night I watched the movie Puss-n-Boots through the Bechdel test lens.  This was my first watch of this movie and it wasn’t a movie that I saw in the video, so I had no idea what I would find.  What I found were 3 female characters with names: Kitty Softpaws, Jill, and Imelda (Puss-n-Boots’ mother).  These three characters never talk to each other.  They only talked to the male characters, while the male characters talked to them and each other in multiple ways (making plans, arguing about the past, sharing moments of nostalgia – all sorts of human interactions).

How can girls and women develop a strong identity and sense of self, when the conversations we hear between women are focused only around men?  The message we receive from these movies is that our identity is tied up in the man we are with or the man we are trying to be with. In short, the message in many movies is that without men, women do not exist. 

I have watched many, many movies through my childhood and into my adulthood. In my childhood, my parents often regulated the movies that I saw based on The Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) ratings (G, PG, PG-13, or R).   These ratings are based on how much physical violence, sex, and bad language exists in movies and my parents didn’t want to expose me to too much of these things growing up.  While I appreciate the effort to make parents aware of the violence and sex that exists in these movies, I’m appalled at the way the MPA conceives of violence.  Physical violence is only one form.  The message that women do not exist without men is also a violent act that damages girls’ psyches and our abilities to develop a strong sense of self.   It is also a damaging message for men because it leads them to conceive of women as their property and to an inability to have truly authentic relationships with women based on fundamental equality.

Try the Bechdel test out for yourself.  Watch a movie or two through that lens and think about the messages that our youngsters are getting about the humanity of women and men in these movies.  Then share what you find out. I'm curious to hear about other movies - especially the ones that are rated G and PG and according to the MPA do not contain violence.

Hey Beautiful!

There’s a common saying that goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and although I find the concept of everyone having a different understanding of beauty a lovely idea, I don’t think it is accurate or that simple.  Rather, I think there are dominant notions of beauty that most people internalize in a specific place during a specific time in history.  Take, for example, the idea that skinny women are beautiful. This idea is dominant right now in the U.S., but was not so at earlier points in history. I read somewhere that Marilyn Monroe, a famous actor, singer, and sex symbol of the 1940’s and 50’s wore a size 14, while the “most beautiful” actresses today look like they wear a size 2 or smaller.  The media plays a huge role in maintaining this concept of beauty and most of us have likely heard about its connection to eating disorders.

I have never been diagnosed with an eating disorder. However, like many women I know, in high school and into college I experimenting with dieting.  My adult self wonders now how I could have ever thought of myself as fat. In high school I was about 5ft. 6in. tall and weighed 125 pounds. I wasn’t obsessed with losing weight, but thought I could stand to lose some of the “fat” off my thighs. One of my diets was a soup diet that coincided with the middle of my softball season (my favorite sport).  This was not the smartest of plans - I ended up feeling dizzy and weak while practicing in the hot summer sun.

I could go on and on about the detrimental impact of seeing skinny as beautiful, but what I really want to focus on in this blog is the fact that society places a high level of importance or value on women’s beauty.  Assigning women value and worth based on physical beauty is one way that our patriarchal society keeps women down.  In whose eyes are women beautiful or not beautiful?  If women’s value is in their beauty, then who are they to become or not become?

I saw a documentary called Miss Representation on YouTube a few weeks ago that addresses how women are portrayed in the media and the way in which that representation both mimics and reproduces the way society values women.  You can view the trailer here  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFh5F8cFb3g&sns=fb and find the entire movie on YouTube.  It’s worth the watch.

In my life, I have received many messages about how beauty equals women’s value and worth, but the most obvious to me was when I went from “ugly, dork” to “beautiful, kid with friends” in the 8^th grade.  As most of you know, junior high or middle school is an awful time for a lot of kids.  When I was 12, I started getting zits and became a super self-conscious pre-teen.   I had worn glasses since I was in first grade and the ones that I had when I was 12 had large, pink frames.

When I moved from elementary school to the junior high for 7^th grade, I seemed to lose my elementary school friends, as they met new people, while I sat by watching and hoping to make some new friends myself.  I remember trying to get to know new people, sitting next to them in the lunchroom or trying to talk to them between classes, but I was so self-conscious that my attempts were small.  Instead of being accepted by my peers, I kept getting the feeling that I wasn’t wanted.

This was when I started praying to god to make me beautiful (now an obvious sign that I had already internalized the message that beauty equaled value).  I felt like my prayers were answered in the eighth grade when I got contact lenses as a birthday present from my parents.  I have really light blue eyes, which were considered a beautiful feature at that time and place, and with my contact lenses you could clearly see my eyes. Suddenly, with this small change, the junior high boys started to take an interest in me.  And once that happened, the girls started to befriend me too.  My ‘new’ physical beauty made me suddenly likeable.  It seemed like I was now considered worthy of knowing and hanging around.

In the time since I got my first pair of contacts, I’ve done quite a bit of experimenting with this concept.  Through these experiments, I realized that if I wanted to get noticed, I should wear my contacts.  If I wanted to be ignored, I should wear my glasses.

The valuing of physical beauty goes along with the devaluing of other attributes, like book smarts.  Although I got good grades throughout high school and even better grades in college, I could never convince myself that I was as smart as other people – particularly men.  No matter how much I had read about a certain subject or had a particular experience, I never trusted that my knowledge was enough to counter what a man had to say.  To this day, as I work on a second Master’s degree (and hopefully next year a PhD), I struggle to feel completely confident in my knowledge.  I struggle to feel smart. 

The one thing that has helped in this regard over the last couple of years has been recognizing that, in general, women in the U.S. are socialized to concentrate on their own physical features instead of intellectual pursuits.  We are socialized to believe that we are not as smart as men, while men are socialized to believe that they should have all the answers.  Once I realized this, I started noticing how many times men spoke up in conversations with conviction and how often women held back or said something in a way that recognized the doubt they felt about the subject.  I started realizing that men aren’t smarter than me, they’ve just been taught to pretend like they know things for sure, while I have been taught to second guess all my answers. 

This knowledge made me angry and now, whenever I start having severe self-doubts about my ability to do graduate-level work, I remember that patriarchy wants me to doubt myself so that women remain in subordinate positions.  In order to change this system, I need to recognize that I am intelligent and capable of great things.  I also need to reject the notion that my the way my physical body looks, particularly when I’m wearing my contacts, gives me value. I am not interested in living in that lie anymore.  I am worthy, valuable, and loveable because I am a human being.  I know the beauty that is inside me (soul, heart, spirit, mind, etc.) and I am working to change patriarchy by embracing that beauty instead.

Sexual Abuse

A few weeks ago, a friend posted this article on facebook - http://preventconnect.org/2012/01/rape-more-common-than-smoking-in-the-us/

The article states that 18.3% of women over the age of 18 reported being sexually abused, while only 17.4% reported smoking.  I looked at the article and immediately became flush with anger. As my body heated up, I thought about two things:

1.     That statistic must be low.  I have had conversation after conversation with women who have been sexually abused in their lives.  In fact, I bet if I were to survey the women I know personally about sexual abuse, the results would be more like 25 – 30%.

2.     I have been told directly and given messages indirectly over the years that sexism is not a problem in the U.S. When I see these statistics and know that they are low, I want to scream, “How much proof do you need in order to start doing something about this?!!”

It was then that I realized I needed to tell my story.

When I was approximately 6 years old, my 12-year-old, male cousin sexually abused me.  We were at my house and all my cousins and sisters and I were playing in finished part of our basement, while the adults were upstairs. I remember them coming downstairs occasionally to check on the ice cream maker, which was churning quietly in the unfinished part of the basement.  

A bunch of us kids were playing a game of “truth, dare, double dare, promise or repeat”. Do you know this game? Everyone sits in a circle and when it’s your turn you pick someone else in the circle and ask them one of these 5 things.  For example, I might pick someone and say to them, “truth” and then ask them a question about their life.  When you’re as young as we were when playing the game, the game tends to go like this:

Me: “Jenny. Truth. . . what’s your favorite color?”

Jenny: “Yellow”

It tends to be simple and innocent. However, when it came to this older cousin’s turn, he dared me to let him "get his hand wet."  I remember feeling confused by what he meant, and then thought he must be saying that we would go together to the faucet and he would put his hand under it while I turned it on.  I worked out that understanding in my own head and then I agreed.

We went back to the corner of the unfinished part of the basement where there was a sink, far enough into the corner that the adults couldn’t see us if they came down the stairs.  Instead of moving his hand toward the sink, my cousin stuck it down my pants.  Now, I don’t remember the details of how it felt to have his hand down my pants or how long this lasted, but I do remember feeling immediately ashamed.   At 6 years of age, I instantly believed that it was my fault that he had done this to me because I had agreed to the dare.  I felt so dumb and ashamed that I didn’t tell anyone about it and I repressed it completely for a long time.

Growing up, I recognized my discomfort whenever I was around this cousin, but I did not know why I was so uncomfortable.  Fortunately, we only got together with his family once or twice a year. During those times, I usually stuck very close to my immediate family members and kept my distance from him.

It wasn’t until I was 17 or 18 that I began to remember the abuse.  It started coming back to me in visions and at first I thought my mind was creating something that did not actually happen. But the visions gradually became clearer and I began to remember.  During the summer after my senior year of high school, I told my best friends about it.  They were the first people I ever told and as I told them, I still felt ashamed for not knowing what “get my hand wet” meant and agreeing to the dare. I still felt like I should have known better.   And it was because of this shame that I largely kept silent about it for most of my adult life, only confiding in a few very close friends or those who confided in me about their sexual abuse.

It wasn’t only the shame that kept me silent, but also a fear of how it would impact my family and a false belief that it wasn’t a big enough deal to speak out.  Although this abuse is minor compared to the sexual abuse that many women I know have experienced, I have still been permanently impacted by it.  

bell hooks and other feminist scholars tell us that young girls are constantly receiving messages from the media, their families, and the other adults around them that they are not as valuable as men.  This sexual abuse served to reinforce some of those messages for me.  It reinforced the idea that I wasn't as smart, that I did not have as much power, and that I was not really human.  Because my cousin used my body to experiment on sexually, my value was reduced to that of an object.  The experience also reinforced a message that I was responsible for the things that other people did to me. That I caused the sexual abuse by agreeing to it.

I know now that it was not my fault and that I couldn't have known what was going to happen.  But, the shame and dehumanizing effects still sometimes surface in me and it's something I still need to heal from. Just recently I realized that in protecting my family members from the pain, I was neglecting to care for myself and help myself to heal.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that one 12-year-old boy was a "bad kid".  My sexual abuse was not the fault of one kid.  He learned this behavior from the multitude of messages he received about girls. Abuse of any sort can never be tracked back to only an individual.  There are a myriad of ways that he could have received the message that it was ok to experiment sexually on little girls.  It's a societal problem and we can see evidence of that fact in the statistics and in the stories I hear from my female friends.

We all can contribute to changing the things that maintain a society where sexual abuse happens.  One of the ways we can do that is by no longer staying silent about our experiences with sexual abuse and other experiences with sexism.  I hope you’ll join me in raising our voices.

The Subtleties of Patriarchy

When I was a kid I dreamt of a time of my life when I would get married to a tall, blonde man and have four children. I was a housewife in my daydreams, always taking care of my children and husband.  If you would have asked me what else I wanted to do when I grew up, my answer would have been, “teach”.  Teaching was something that I knew I could do, but it never felt like the first priority for my life.  Family was to be the first priority.

In my adult life, I have come to understand that this dream – both to be a housewife and a teacher - was a product of my socialization as a woman.   I know this to be true because I am now a strong, intelligent woman with many options for professions and other life activities. If I were a boy, I would have known what else I wanted in my life as a child and would not have been limited to dreaming about a role as a caretaker.  If you don’t believe me, do a little experiment.  Ask the men and women in your life if they ever felt limited to a caretaking profession (whether that be as a wife and mother or as a teacher or social worker, etc.).  Then ask yourself why it is that women are always the ones taking care of others. We are NOT biologically predisposed to caretaking.  That’s a myth.

I believed that I wanted the life of a wife and mother (with the specific role of taking care of my family) until the age of 23, when a deep place inside me created such a conflict and commotion that I called off my impending wedding.  At this point in my life, I still hadn’t developed any other dreams for my life outside of having a family and calling off my wedding was a bit like staring terrified into the blankness of my future.  Needless to say it was not an easy choice, but I made it because a voice inside of me that had been silent for so long needed to speak.

Patriarchy exists at all times and in all places, but in my life it has been very hard to see. I wasn’t aware that my choice to call off the wedding was a choice to give me voice about what I wanted for my life.  This awareness came upon me gradually and only really took hold in the last couple of years. Now that I have become much much more aware of the impact of patriarchy on me, I am incredibly saddened and frustrated by it.  I often feel like screaming about it, but when I imagine screaming, I feel unheard. I am able to recognize patriarchy and my internalization of it, but still feel at a loss as to what to do about it.

Now that I’m in my thirties, and waking up to patriarchy, I want to know the specifics.  I want to be mad at the instances of dehumanization and at the people who dehumanized me.  The problem is that they are sometimes so subtle that I don’t recall exactly what they are.  And my analytical self knows that individuals are not really to blame.  There is no one person to blame or be angry at.  It’s a systemic issue that people can collectively change, but it will take time and lots of people with lots of effort.

A dream I had recently reflects well my frustrations.  I dreamt that it was my graduation day.  I was feeling very proud of myself and excited for the ceremony. I was getting myself ready while my family members busied themselves with other things around the house. My grandfather, however,  sat in a recliner reading the paper and as I passed him he stopped me and asked, “Susanne, could you please vacuum the carpet?” No mention of my scholarly achievements. I immediately felt invisible, but shook my head in agreement because he was my grandfather – someone who I needed to show respect, even on my graduation day.   I wanted to be proud of myself and my accomplishments, but these weren’t valued by my family in the dream and instead I was asked to fulfill the role that was expected of me – to care for my family.  And I didn’t say a thing.  In my dream I felt angry, but went along with it anyway.

So, what can I do with all this anger and frustration? I’ve decided that I need to feel heard and to feel heard I need to speak.  And so, I will write.  I will often write in this blog about my experiences with patriarchy because even though many of the stories are subtle (without overt abuse), they have and continue to dehumanize me and other women I know.  I will write because I hope that it will help me process the pain and anger I feel towards this dehumanization.  I will write because I need to do something.  So, here are my stories. . .