i have a confession. i’m a fair weather feminist. i like to pretend that the term third wave actually means that i can interpret feminism however i want to. that i can forgo independence, reproductive choice and egalitarian relationships when a certain mood strikes me. and that certain mood is loneliness. or rather, a fear of loneliness.
you see, i think that despite the best efforts of the women i’m proud to call my heroes–alice paul, eve ensler, gloria steinem, mary wollstonecraft, virginia woolf, adrienne rich and naomi wolf–women are still taught to be afraid of ending up alone. well-meaning aunts and grandmothers point to women who have remained single and then tell you what there flaws are:
she was too focused on her career. she wouldn’t have children. she was too independent. she didn’t know how to play the game. she wore her heart on her sleeve. she never got over a broken heart. she wasn’t feminine enough, boys don’t like that. she was too smart. she didn’t need anybody. she wouldn’t let herself be vulnerable. she has daddy issues. her parents got divorced.
really, the list goes on and on. some of them i’ve heard from my own family. some i’ve heard from guys i’ve dated. “ellen, you don’t need me…you don’t need anyone” or “you are too independent” or “what do you mean you wouldn’t change your last name if we got married” or “do you always have to win” or “you really wouldn’t give up a career to stay home with your children?”
these are the questions that, on occasion, keep me up at night. when i replay arguments in my head with past boyfriends to figure out where i went wrong. at what point did arguments like this start? what would have happened if i’d given the “right answers”? would we still be together? probably not, considering i have been the one to end all of my relationships. but what if i hadn’t told the truth…what if i had convinced myself that i had to be what they wanted me to be and what if i had figured out how to be that girl and be happy, instead of pushing these guys away in a cold panic at the thought of marriage. at the thought of babies. at the thought of being twenty or twenty two and having that much of my life decided.
what if i had never read gail griffin’s “calling” or adrienne rich’s “claiming an education”. what if i’d never taken my women in lit class sophomore year and finally found a voice for the injustice i’d been feeling for so long. would i be married now? would i be happy? would i be the one rewarded with thousands of dollars worth of gifts, a pretty ring, and a fancy gown? not to mention the tacit approval of (practically) everyone in my family? or if i had all of that and convinced myself that i was happy, would all of this have still surfaced at some point–some time in the future when i would have so much to lose by taking the time for self-exploration? by being selfish?
because i am selfish. right now. my life as a twenty three year old woman is all about selfishness. it is about indulging myself and figuring out who i am…and even though i will coo over babies or feel an occasional tug in my heart when i see a handsome man with a toddler on his shoulders…i know in my own heart that i’m not ready for that yet. its taken me two years to get back to a place where i might be able to fall in love with someone again. and where i come from, marriage and babies come after that.
but i’m still up at night sometimes, afraid of being alone. and what is so funny about that is that i am very much alone right now, in the exact way that i am afraid of. i’m not dating anyone. no one at all. in fact, my life in a volunteer corps with six female roommates means that i rarely interact with straight, eligible bachelors. if i could describe my life in one word right now, it would be cloistered.
but i have my friends. and i have my family. and i have my roommates. and they are all amazing. and presumably, will never stop being amazing. so i guess the worst that can happen is that i am “alone” like this for the rest of my life. so why am i so afraid?
i started reflecting on this two days ago when my roommate b. canceled a date with me. there is a new exhibit on afghanistan at the national gallery of art that i really wanted to see and because b. is something of an expert on the middle east, i invited her along so she could explain to me the political context of the art (that and i just like hanging out with her). we were going to meet after my church service was over, but she wasn’t feeling very well and ended up deciding to stay home. to be honest, i almost gave up and went home myself. i was afraid of going to the gallery by myself, i suppose. but then i thought of my mom’s accusation that i’ve had a serious lack of spunk these days, and i decided to go anyway. and you know what?
it wasn’t scary at all.
i had a great time. i loitered in the manet room, spent a full ten minutes looking at both sides of the da vinci, breezed through the dutch masters (because i secretly hate them) and went back twice to view two paintings by martin johnson heade that i recently read a very interesting book about. had i gone to the gallery with anyone else, they would have been seriously annoyed. but i didn’t. i went by myself. and it was lovely. i spent a half an hour picking out a new book in the bookstore, treated myself to a salad and then sat outside in the sculpture garden with my feet in the fountain and read until dinner.
but i wouldn’t have ever gone if b. hadn’t canceled on me. sure, i may have thought about going, but i wouldn’t have actually done it. i would have sat around being afraid of it when the thing itself is not scary. kind of like being alone. so here is my (albeit long winded) vow, to stop being afraid of something so not scary. something i’m already doing. something i’m already successful at. and to trust that, if i keep going at my own pace i’m going to end up precisely where i was meant to be anyhow.
every week or so i get a copy of “the classical post,”minnesota public radio’s e-newsletter. it helps me feel connected to the music scene at home and usually has an interesting human interest story or two. this week’s newsletter featured a blurb about soprano deborah voight, who was featured last year on 60 minutes because she had gastric bypass surgery.
this, in and of itself, is perhaps not particularly interesting…but what is interesting is that ms. voight was fired two years ago from her title role in ariadne auf naxos because the costumer at the royal opera house in covent garden wanted her to wear a “little black dress” in a new, contemporary adaptation of the opera. it was determined that she was simply too overweight to wear the gown and so her contract was terminated. voight’s firing, and the flurry of media surrounding it, subsequently became known as the “little black dress incident.”
voight (who eventually lost 135 pounds), says in the interview with 60 minutes that she didn’t have surgery because of the royal opera house…but because of her health. she was a size 28-30 and was experiencing weakened joints and back pain…and because even climbing stairs was difficult. she also notes in the article that there was some concern over how her voice would fair when she had the surgery. would she still be able to sing without the weight? what if something went wrong in surgery? could she lose her extraordinary gift?
i (personally) am having a really hard time sorting through my emotions on this one. and although i rarely ask my readers to comment (mostly because of a serious fear that they won’t)…i’m curious as to what you all think. should she have had gastric bypass? risked her incredible talent? should opera singers be “allowed” to be overweight in a society that is forever judging everyone else?
this topic is tense. many of us struggle with weight and personal appearance issues (myself included). but i’m not an opera star. so i’m held up to the same, albeit unrealistic, standards as everyone else. but that doesn’t mean i try to get out of them any chance i can get. i can’t tell you how many times a day i tell myself it is “okay” that i’m not beautiful because i’m intelligent. because i’m well read. because i’m funny. because i have so much more going for me than my looks. is that why we sometimes let opera singers off the hook, too? as a women, if you are talented enough, does there come a point when people don’t expect you to be pretty and thin anymore? or are we always held up to those standards?
its the classic smart vs. pretty myth. and all too often society tells us we can’t be both. i’m not proud to say that i participate in this myth on a regular basis. whenever i have a meeting on capitol hill i give scathing glances to what i frequently refer to as the “clackety clacks” or the “skinterns.” the beautiful, well dressed, perfectly groomed women that seem to thrive in abundance anywhere along independence and constitution avenues.
i tell myself that it is okay that i’m not perfectly tanned or that my highlights have grown out…that most people would call me chubby…because I work on human rights. or because I am a feminist. or because I am a liberal. all excuses which could basically be boiled down to “no one expects me to be pretty and thin because i’m smart and empowered instead.” but what happens to the women who are pretty and smart? are they a double threat? or are they simply not taken seriously? and furthermore, what if i started viewing myself as genuinely beautiful in the same way i view myself as genuinely intelligent? then what? would i explode? would i spontaneously combust with the contradiction of it all?
i’m afraid i don’t have an answer to that. self love is a journey i’m still on. so is good health. some days the litany of excuses wins out–“yes, you can have that second piece of pie because you are going to end up with someone who loves you because you read books about the history of the english language for fun, not because you are a size four”–and some days it doesn’t. on those days my self dialogue is a little more like this–”not eating a second piece of pie isn’t going to get you to a size four (only a complete genetic overhaul would do that), but it is putting you on the road to better health. eventually.”
in the end, my hope for myself is that i’ll someday strike a balance between the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of my life. that is why i practice yoga. that is why i pray. that is why i drink eight glasses of water a day even if i end up eating three snickers bars too. i’m on a journey. and what i’m starting to understand is that i have to be patient with myself when there are detours. or when i don’t end up where i expected. and, in the end, i have to be able to laugh at myself. something deborah voight does beautifully in this skit about her return to covent garden:
happy thursday. i wish you all the best on your own journey toward self acceptance.
I work out regularly but eat chocolate everyday
I don’t like chivalry but I will let a guy buy me drinks
I like Alanis Morisette and Dolly Parton
I am very passionate but rarely show emotion
I am not scared of large dogs, horses or llamas but I am terrified of rats, mice and long legged bugs
I think professional athletes are grossly overpaid but I watch the Superbowl every year I am easily bored by romantic comedies but I enjoy cheesy love songs
I have many strong opinions but I probably won’t share them unless you ask I am often annoyed by the way the media portrays women but I tune into Desperate Housewives every Sunday
I am very sarcastic but will lie to keep from intentionally offending someone
I think Facebook’s News Feed is a ridiculous invasion of privacy but I frequently read it
I love to be with friends but I will only exercise alone
I love to travel but I have trouble reading maps I am a pro-choice carnivore but I have trouble eating an egg when I think of a baby chick
I take pride in my independence but I am constantly seeking the approval of others I don’t like to fight but I love to win
I have many layers and wear many masks
I am complex, unpredictable and sometimes hypocritical I am a Katie Girl
special thanks to the author for this week’s contribution…a true study in paradox! interestingly enough, the word paradox comes from the greek word paradoxon which means “contrary to expectation or opinion” (para=contrary, doxa=opinion). kudos to all the katie girls out there embracing paradox in their own lives by being willing to defy the expectations and opinions of others in favor of being a better version of themselves. as walt whitman once said: “do i contradict myself? then i contradict myself. i am large. i contain multitudes”…maybe he was a katie girl too? (wink).
xoxo.
ellie
p.s. for more information on the katie girl project or to submit an entry, click here!
i’ll be the first to admit that i sometimes tend to focus on fashion and urban living in this blog. little do you know that inside of me is an outdoors loving, sigg water bottle toting, birkenstock wearing, rei shopping, bona fide crunchy. and although i do love a good pedicure…i’m actually at my happiest when i’m anywhere near lake superior or the boundary waters canoe area. so for all you katie girls out there who defy the socially constructed definition of what it means to be female…this one’s for you.
oh, and in case you are wondering…i am, in fact, tossing a log. this picture was taken last fourth of july in the boundary waters while i was competing in the caber toss competition at wilderness canoe base. as i remember, i came in third for the ladies. not a bad showing for an amateur!
I’m a Katie Girl because of society. Society has created a mold for me that I am simultaneously trying to fight and fit into. Societal pressures are so much a part of me that I can no longer figure out the difference between what I want and what society wants me to want. This makes me complicated.
Who I am in the context of my society allows people to make assumptions about me. For example:
I am female, and therefore must love chocolate and hope to one day have a family. I am from middle-class white suburbia and must therefore be naïve about issues like racism and poverty. I am 23 and therefore must enjoy alcohol and going out on the weekends. I am blond and therefore must be not so smart I am from Minnesota and therefore must like hot dish and cold weather. I am from the U.S. and therefore must know how to read and write. I am a feminist and therefore have to be pro-choice. I am a math minor and therefore must a nerd.
These are only a few examples, and while some of these stereotypes are true, some are false. Some I embrace, some I fight tooth and nail. Why do I do this? Why am I so afraid to either meet or not meet these expectations? Why do I care about what society says I should or shouldn’t be? I act different around my parents than I do around my friends. My co-workers see me in a different way than my clients do. I am always trying to figure out what people’s expectations are of me first and then deciding whether or not I want to try and meet them. I continually try to decide what I feel and what society has told me to feel. Despite years of searching, I still haven’t figured out who I am and who I want to be. That makes me complicated. That makes me a Katie Girl.
i’d like to offer my formal apology to this week’s katie girl for taking so long to put her entry up on the blog. and for always eating her chocolate chips. thanks for such a thoughtful response. for more information on the katie girl project or to submit an entry, click here.
i think it should go without saying that this woman is a serious katie girl. i met her at an awards ceremony this fall and couldn’t even speak in the presence of such an incredible activist. i tried to tell her all that her work had meant to me as a woman and as a feminist…but ended up only managing to cry and blubber something unintelligible. i would give anything to go to the upcoming v^10 conference, but since money constraints are preventing me from going to new orleans this year, i’ve been reading all i can.
so you can just about imagine my enthusiasm when i came across an entry on blogher.com informing me that maria niles was doing an interview with ms. ensler and would be taking questions from member bloggers. so i submitted a question…and maria asked it during the interview! click here to check it out! while you are at it, be sure and listen to the entire interview.
in case you don’t have time to check the whole thing out, i wanted to be sure and share this with you…a quote from eve that i think embodies the spirit of this project:
i think what it comes down to is this: we have a choice as women to be good or to be great. to me, what it means to be good is that you are polite and you’re well behaved, you don’t say what you feel, you don’t make waves, you don’t get in trouble and you’re not messy and you spend your life obsessing about your body and trying to be skinny…you are so good that you disappear and you don’t exist anymore. or you become great. you make a decision that you are going to be great. and what that means is that you are going to stand up for what you believe and speak your truth and know that there are going to be people who don’t like you and people who love you. and you’re going to be whatever shape, whatever size, whatever color, whatever age you are and you are going to be proud of it and you are going to stand in it. and you are going to end up having a life that is full of mystery and excitement and outrageousness and joy and difficulty. and you are going to be able to withstand being alone, in your own self, by yourself, in the world. and i think you have to make a choice as a woman which life you want…if we really are serious about saving the human species we must take the energy, time and attention you spend fixing your body and direct it toward fixing the world.
i don’t know about you, but i’m putting this up on my bathroom mirror. as i read this i keep thinking about the difference between journeying toward good health and a positive body image and being on a diet. what should our real goal as women be? i know for me it is all too often a number on the scale. a number that represents who i was before i was hurt…before i grew up and before life got so damn complicated. maybe the real purpose of this journey is to redefine strength. to redefine beauty. to create a space for myself where i can feel comfortable…somewhere between a box of thin mints and actually being thin, there has to be a place where girls like me belong. who are never going to be a gym queen and sometimes take a second piece of pie but who also love to hike, do yoga, and swim. who would rather beat the boys on a scrabble board than a soccer pitch. who want to be loved and seen and known as a whole person…not the sum of a few attractive parts.
since moving to washington d.c. i sometimes indulge in long, unadulterated fantasies about my little red ford escape. i catch my mind wandering to those blissful collegiate days, when i had to walk a mere half mile to the parking lot at st. olaf college and put the keys in the ignition for instant transportation to such exotic locales as cub foods, target, or the twin cities of minneapolis and st. paul.
life was good.
my escape (or as my friends and i call it, the escápe) is decked out with a six disk cd changer, sun roof, stow and go seating, and plenty of room for my dog. it got me safely to and from camp, work, school, art museums, band concerts…and before this year, before lvc, i may have never been aware of my cute little car’s dirty little secret. it is a bona fide gas guzzler.
at 28 mpg on the highway and an annual fuel cost of $1700 i am beginning to realize the environmental and economical impact of all the driving i did before moving to washington d.c. this year. in the volunteer program i am currently doing, my transportation stipend is $45 a month. i usually spend around $50 which brings my total transportation costs for the entire year to about $600, or a third of what driving would cost.
did i try to talk my middle-aged, slightly cranky father (whom i love dearly) into a hybrid? of course i did. but two years ago when we chose this car he still felt the technology was too new to invest in. he felt that, like the iphone, hybrid cars would reduce in price and increase in quality over the next several years and that it would be better to wait until we purchased one. while i’m not disagreeing, per se, what i am realizing is that it isn’t easy being green.
i am thinking seriously about moving back to minneapolis next year, a city almost completely devoid of convenient public transportation of any sort. a bad bike accident in my younger days (and by younger i mean 18, which found me in me in the cat scan machine in the emergency room with a slight concussion and some memory loss, has left me leery of two wheeled transportation. i do enjoy walking, but it doesn’t always fit so neatly into my type-a, over scheduled lifestyle. so what is an eco-conscious girl to do?
this is one of the many dilemmas i have faced while exploring sustainability this year. for those of you who don’t know, it is one of the core tenets of lutheran volunteer corps. my house of seven female volunteers is working toward the goal slowly…but we have had some hilarious moments along the way. take the diva cup disaster for example.
i am grossed out by diva cups. there, i said it. i know i am a feminist. i know i’m not supposed to think that the menstruation cycle is dirty. i’m supposed to celebrate it, right? be a womyn, connect with the moon goddess or some sort of new age bull shit. but the honest to goodness truth is that i hate blood. in any form. and after several conversations in our house about how bad for your body, the environment and society in general tampons are…all of my roommates ordered diva cups. except me. my one requirement for this arrangement was that i didn’t have to see them. ever. i didn’t even want to know they existed. my roommates agreed and i spent the first six months of this year living in my bleached cotton, plastic applicator fantasy land where i pretended i wasn’t destroying the environment every month and that alternatives simply didn’t exist. and you know what? it worked.
it worked until, after work one day, i saw one of the alternatives staring back at me from the sink. and i screamed. i started jumping up and down, shaking my hands, and yelling at my roommates to come save me. i hadn’t behaved this way since a wolf spider the size of my hand crawled into my sleeping bag at bible camp last summer. the offending roommate came and removed the item. life returned to normal. but i’ll be darned if it hasn’t been bothering me since. in my mind’s eye there it is, little…convenient…reusable. next to its little purple pouch. do i love the environment this much? i’m still deciding.
the truth of the matter is that being green is complicated. “eco-chic” has begun to permeate our lifestyle. a blog post i read recently from her bad mom asked if eco-moms could be the new soccer moms. she wisely asks:
But what if it undermines the cause? What if the ‘trendiness’ of eco-maternity really does just make it seem as though eco-moms are just another version of soccer-mom: fundamentally absorbed in their own interests and disinclined to think beyond their own communities?
greenlagirl also points out that the sheer trendiness of “organic” and “eco-friendly” products have created an undeniably lucrative new market, with some companies failing to deliver what they promise to conscious consumers. apparently, some of the most beloved brands in the business (kiss my face and seventh generation) are being sued by the organic consumers association for containing carcinogens.
so now what? will we ever be green enough? do even the smallest efforts count? i hope so. it may take me awhile to get my hybrid car or to discern which shampoo is going to be least likely to cause cancer…but until then i’ll have my re-usable bags and in season produce. i’ll continue turning off lights, showering every other day, and not drinking bottled water. i’ll keep using all-natural cleaning products and laundry soap. i’ll ride the 80 bus, the world’s most inconvenient method of public transportation, and i will walk. i will drink fair trade, organic coffee and shop at the co-op. i will calculate my eco-footprint and think about ways to reduce it. i will add complication to my life to preserve the beautiful complication of our planet’s delicate ecosystem.
and who knows? i might even start using a diva cup.
so, i am new to the blogging world. and although i would like to admire my own creativity, i’m not sure i would have come up with something quite as clever as blogher.com. i came upon it while procrastinating at work, and interestingly enough, found myself quoted! in a very well written and thought provoking article, nonetheless! check out suzanne’s blog, here.
i immediately signed up (duh) and started checking out some of the blogs. what a cool community of women. they also have “assignments” from time to time, one of which is to write a letter to your body. i think i might do this, and you should too. in fact, a letter to your body would make a great submission to the katie girl project (hint hint).
happy thursday to you all (maundy thursday if you are of the christian persuasion).
i’m going to start with a disclaimer. i majored in women’s studies in college, so i tend to see everything through a feminist critical lens. that being said, i have several thoughts about the spitzer scandal.
first, some thoughts on the “high priced call girl”. it is impossible to ignore the media’s quest for information about ashley alexandra dupre, aka “kristin”. over the past few days, t.v. shows have interviewed her friends, excavated her myspace profile, and stalked her family at their home. anybody with internet access now knows ashley dupre is an aspiring singer who has struggled with drugs. a woman who left a broken home at age seventeen to “make it in the big city”. someone who knows what its like to “wake up one day and have the people you care most about gone”. a young girl (and i can say that because we are the same age) who saves restaurant leftovers for the homeless and who desperately wants to be a star. who encourages others on her myspace page not to let anyone hold them back. a woman who is, by the very definition of this project, a katie girl.
we’ve all made mistakes. we all have a past. a history that includes things we are embarrassed about. those of us who are lucky share that history with the people who love us. we are known. what is ironic about “kristin”, about ashley, is that if governor spitzer hadn’t been caught he wouldn’t have known any of this about her. ever. and neither would we. he wouldn’t have known her real name, her checkered past, her mistakes, her aspirations. to him she was just another call girl. a high-priced good time. she was her sexuality and nothing more. we live in a society where men can pay to eliminate the complications of a relationship. where they can purchase false intimacy. people can point fingers all they want to, talk about her “seductive eyes” or her choice to be a prostitute. but the truth of the matter is, that if we lived in a truly egalitarian society, men wouldn’t be able to purchase sex. we wouldn’t be able to reduce females to their sexuality, to determine the worth of a woman based on her cup size or the way she performs in the bedroom. we wouldn’t set unrealistic standards, that even when met, don’t guarantee happiness.
take silda spitzer for example.
even pat buchanan would have a tough time finding fault here. brilliant, beautiful, harvard-educated lawyer gives up a promising career to raise three daughters and support her husband’s political ambitions. she stays thin, attractive and in shape. she is a good mother and even (for good measure) starts a nonprofit to educate privileged children in manhattan about poverty. heck, she even changed her name! while she was known in her professional life as “silda wall”, for the sake of her husband’s career she was silda spitzer. possessed yet supportive. the woman who would stand up next to her husband as he proclaimed to the world that he was either arrogant or stupid enough to pay for sex. silda spitzer is a katie girl, too. she is a katie girl because she has to function in a society that tells her to “stand by her man.” because she has to figure out a way to reclaim a personal identity as she accompanies her husband into political exile. because love makes us do complicated things.
so before we judge either of these women, let’s remember that they are each functioning in a society that is still telling them, as adrienne rich so eloquently puts it, that women should “be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us.”
we don’t live in a post-feminist world, contrary to what we all want to believe. the united states still suppresses women, not by laws, but by the implicit expectations we have to meet lest our identity and choices be questioned and criticized. it is not enough to be thin, beautiful and smart…you also have to get married young and be willing to give up everything to raise your children. and even if you do all that, your husband might still pay for sex with a woman half his age.
i am tired of hearing “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” i am exhausted of hearing my choice to prioritize myself and my career questioned. i don’t want to see my friends open up lingerie and kitchenware at their wedding showers because i hate what that implies about a woman’s role in marriage. i don’t want anyone to tell me that i can’t do it all. i’m not sure if i want kids. i’m choosing not to marry young…and that doesn’t mean that i haven’t ever been asked. that i haven’t ever been in love. that i haven’t ever given up a relationship because i realized it was holding me back from the woman i’m meant to become. i hate that i live in a world where i have to see women like ashley dupre and silda spitzer suffer as a result of what can only be classified as gender violence.
simply stated, i want more than this.
for me, for my mom, for my grandma, for my friends. for the daughter i might have someday. power is still based on gender, on race, on socio-economic class and until that structure changes we will still see women like ashley dupre being victimized and women like silda spitzer standing by the men who do it. their silence indicating complacency in a system that they didn’t help create but are forced to participate in for their very survival. something has to change.
