Tag Archives: sexism

Thoughts that come with Dove’s footsteps by Melissa Duge Spiers, guest post

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Perhaps I am the wrong person to open this discussion, because I was raised in a house where being beautiful (if you were a girl) was everything – I was dragged from under my bed as a 6-year-old, kicking and screaming, so that my “ugly” straight hair could be permed.  I was the only pre-teen I knew who was forced to wear makeup.  And I existed on air-popped popcorn throughout high school because I dreaded being withdrawn from school and put on a liquid diet until I lost weight like a friend of mine.  I grew up to make my living for a while from my looks, modeling and acting.  So it would be silly to claim I don’t carry some baggage about beauty, and I won’t even try. 

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But I’m going to throw my hat into the ring anyway on the latest movement to redefine beauty, to make it more inclusive, to tell every woman she’s beautiful (yes, Dove, that’s you…and so many more).  I hate it.  I absolutely detest it.  Why?  Because even the most well-intentioned, politically correct, supportive, inclusive statements and movements can still be boiled down to this:  beauty is all important. 

The traditional wisdom – from my grandmother’s era – was a terse “if you’re not beautiful, cultivate a great personality, be the smartest, wittiest person in the world, be charming, develop great talents.”   This seems outrageously offensive in today’s era, yes?  It puts beauty in a removed and superior category which excuses the lucky ‘owners’ from doing anything else on that list (plus it reinforces the tired dichotomy of smart/witty/talented vs. beautiful).  As much as we sincerely applaud the use of larger-sized models and real women in these new campaigns, the honest truth is: nothing has changed.  We are still saying beauty is the defining item in women’s lives.  We’re just screaming for an expanded definition.    

If you take out the words “beautiful” and “ugly” in the widely celebrated, empowering “Everyone’s Beautiful!” campaigns and you substitute  the words “white” and “black” or “straight” and “gay” you begin to see how thoroughly stupid it is to waste time trying to define (or redefine) “beauty.”  Go ahead, try it:  “Everyone’s white! You’re white just as you are!” Or  “We just need to redefine straight to include all humans! Everyone’s straight!” 

It suddenly seems ridiculous (not to mention condescending), doesn’t it? These well-intentioned feel-good anthems really just posit beautiful (or white or straight) as the goal, as the “best” option, as the ultimate compliment/inclusion/approval.  Think I’m exaggerating? I can guarantee that someone in response to this article will think the most insulting, awful comment they can summon is “you’re just a jealous, fat, ugly dyke!”  But it’s not just those haters – it’s the advertisers, it’s the lawmakers, it’s the population, it’s each and every one of us.  We all keep thinking that telling women and girls they’re beautiful is the answer, as long as we adjust the definition to include everyone.  But we’re all still holding it up as the holy grail, the pinnacle of achievement, the most important thing they can be. 

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You know, my mother thought straight hair was disgustingly ugly (a fact she will still tell anyone to this day).  As a child, did I wish she would open her beauty boundaries, recalibrate her metric, until it included my stick-straight strands?  That would have saved me a lot of tears and chemical burns on my scalp, sure, but really I just remember fervently wishing she would stop focusing on my damned hair so I could go outside and swing on the monkey bars.  Did my young friend wish her parents would say “honey, a few extra pounds are beautiful!” Not at all.  She felt nearly the same shame and humiliation whether they praised her weight loss or put her on a diet.  She simply didn’t want them or anyone else to discuss her body, in any way, good or bad – it was mortifying.  She just wanted to be riding her horse.

Each one of us – me, you, Dove, everyone – needs to stop trying to expand our precious definitions  (“beauty is valued, so we need to make sure everyone feels beautiful!”) and figure out why (and if) they’re important to define at all.  Everyone should be accepted and given equal consideration and rights, even if we’re not all straight, we’re not all white, and we’re not all beautiful.   Who cares? Let’s  cultivate our talents, our charm, our smarts, our personalities.  And then let’s run out and swing on the monkey bars.

 “Thoughts that come with dove’s footsteps guide the world.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Melissa Duge Spiers is a writer whose work has appeared in Adventure Sports Journal, Vermont Sports, and The Monterey Herald, among other publications. She is working on her first novel. A graduate of Barnard College, she lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her husband and four children.

Read Melissa Duge Spiers previous posts on Reel Girl: “ChapStick sticks it to women” and “No comment! A commentary on the ChapStick story.”

 

 

Marvel markets sexism with Avengers T-shirts

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Just saw Marvel’s sexist T-shirts on the Huffington Post (there’s some link to Reel Girl but I can’t find it?)

Marvel’s T-shirt for boys.

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Marvel’s T for girls.

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Argh!

This sexism, by the way, goes beyond the specific imagery of a superhero. “Be a hero” translates to “act, take risks, make choices. “I need a hero” means “I’m a minor character. I’m passive, and I wait.”

See the difference?

The insidious problem with this stereotyped gender casting is that women are constantly sidelined and marginalized, remarkably, in the roles they play in their own lives. Females are cast in the supporting role, defined by their relationships as girlfriend, wife, mother, or helper. This sexist narrative has been going on for a long, long time, and we keep recycling it. I just saw this Virginia Woolf quote Tweeted by Bitchflicks:

And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends…They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.

 

How small a part! But who would ever guess from looking at how women are depicted in the media– movies, TV, books, advertising– in 2013? Ironically, and this is what is so fucked up and twisted, females get to exist, get to play a part at all when they are sexualized and marginalized.

“Avengers” has the classic Minority Feisty ratio of 5 male superheroes to one female. As artist Kevin Bolk illustrates, the lone female is highlighted by her ass.

avengers

What is the solution to this sexism? Be a hero. Women, write your own stories. Make your own art. No one else can do it for us.

Update Here’s a comment from Nick:

The solution is not only for women to write their own stories, but for men to understand why this is sexist. There is a dearth of great female superheroes, and when they exist, they usually suffer from the Women In Refrigerators trope, where they die or lose their powers not doing something heroic, but assassinated while cooking in their kitchen, sometimes horrifically placed in the refrigerator, where the trope’s namesake comes from.

The solution has to be EVERYWHERE. Men and women alike should write compelling female superheroes. Some men don’t understand why Women in Refrigerators or Damsel in Distress tropes are inherently sexist, so education on this is also key.

For my part, I read up on feminist blogs like ReelGirl and watch Anita Sarkeesian videos (and the reaction videos, because she is very one-sided). I try to avoid making the same mistakes as other writers when dealing with women. I don’t ever assume I can write a compelling female character, I always question myself and I always push myself to do better.

I think that’s another good answer to this problem – each of us individually pushing the status quo.

And my response:

Hi Nick,

Totally agree the solution has to be everywhere. Thanks for this comment and for the thought and research you put into writing female characters.

Margot

 

Obviously, it’s a sexist world out there, and when women make art, it’s often ignored or marginalized. It would help if women were running the major Hollywood studios or had the funds to bankroll those studios, not to mention lead the prestigious organizations and comprise the boards that give awards to “great” artists.

That said, women need to keep writing and creating. Making art is risky and dangerous, engaging in the process is being a hero. Persevering is especially challenging when your work gets dismissed and rejected because stories about women aren’t valued. But, even with all of this against us, women must put our stories and visions out there. I really believe this is the only way we’ll ever achieve full gender equality.

Here are a couple posts I wrote on the issue of women making art: What if Van Gogh took Prozac? and Why aren’t there more women artists?

Update Miss Representation started a petition against these shirts. I signed and hope you do too.

Mr. President, the race for California attorney general isn’t a beauty contest

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President Obama,

Today, when you endorsed California attorney general, Kamala Harris, at her fundraiser, you said:

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake.  She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country — Kamala Harris is here.”

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I know you didn’t mean anything offensive by calling California attorney general, Kamala Harris, the “best-looking Attorney General in the country.” You probably thought you were being humorous or complimentary. You weren’t. Referring to Harris’s looks in support of her campaign shows how out of touch you are with the situation that women in America are in.

Women in America are constantly valued for how we look and not for what we do. This prejudice is something every female in America of every age has to deal with on some level every single day. For the President of the United States to refer to the attorney general’s looks is not a trivial thing. I wish it were.

Kamala Harris is California’s first female attorney general. The first one. Why do you have to call the first female AG the “best-looking?” It’s not funny. Not only are you the president, you’re the father of two daughters. You’re telling America and your own kids that you value Harris because of the way she looks. Would you ever consider introducing a male candidate as the “best-looking?” How men look is basically irrelevant when evaluating their performance. Unfortunately, the same is not true for women. Harris, the women of America, and your daughters deserve more respect and an equal playing field. When you called Harris “best-looking” today, you took that away from her. When Americans hear your words, they, too, will look at Harris and evaluate her appearance. If our daughters– and I have 3– hear you, they’ll get training to do the same thing. That training already exists everywhere around them. The last thing our children need is to hear their President focusing on the looks of a high ranking, female politician.

You need to understand this. It’s important. Women put you in office for a second term. Yet, it’s startling to me how few women you’ve appointed to power positions in your Administration. Your cabinet has more men playing starring roles than a Hollywood blockbuster movie.

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Women make up 50% of the population yet we’re drastically under-represented in our U.S. government. In 2013, women are just 18% of the United States Congress. Throughout our history, only four women have held the office of Supreme Court Justice. There has never been a female President of the United States. Do you think a female president would introduce a female politician as “best-looking?” Or would she ever introduce a male politician that way, for that matter?

Right now, the U.S. has only five female governors, a low for this century. Harris has the chance be the first female governor of California. To get her there, it doesn’t help to have the U.S. President reduce the race for California attorney general to another beauty contest. That’s bad for women and bad for America.

Thanks for listening,

Margot Magowan

P.S. I’m crafting a summer reading list for you. I know you love books and some of these may help you understand this issue better.

 

Feminism, class, and the problem of privilege: Gloria Feldt responds to Reel Girl

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In defense of Sheryl Sandberg’s much maligned Lean In, I compared the book to No Excuses by former President of Planned Parenthood, Gloria Feldt. That book, which I read a couple years ago, has a similar thesis. It focuses on strategies that can help women succeed in the workplace, and it debuted with no feminist uproar.

Feldt responded to Reel Girl’s post:

Thanks for making the comparison between my book and Sheryl’s. You hit the nail on the head in many ways. I’d just like to say for the record that since my goal is to move women forward toward parity in top leadership positions, I’m thrilled that a woman like Sheryl in a powerful corporate position is so willing to say these things.

She and I have discussed that there is a need to be able to work in the system and to change it. I tend to come down more on the side of changing the system, but then movement building has been my career.

And I’m doing it again with Take The Lead (www.taketheleadwomen.com) if anyone wants to check it out and possibly hop on board to help us reach leadership gender parity by 2025.

sandbergl

Here is my comment back to Gloria.

Dear Gloria,

Thank you for your comment to Reel Girl. I’m grateful for your long career in helping women and happy that you wrote No Excuses which I learned so much from. I appreciate your support of Sheryl Sandberg’s book, though in some ways, your email perpetuates a misconception about “sides” that I want to address. You write:

 I tend to come down more on the side of changing the system, but then movement building has been my career.

 

There are no sides here. Women can’t change the sexist system if they the lack basic skills do so. This may not seem like a huge deal in your comment, but this schism is presented and replicated all over the media when discussing Sandberg’s book, just last Sunday again on “60 Minutes,” and it can be distorting.

In 1998, When I was 28, I cofounded the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership to address this lack of skills and also, the class divide in feminism. So many young women, including me, had big dreams, but little idea as to the practical tools of how to achieve them. It was like we’d missed out on a basic training course that the men had taken.

Woodhull’s mission was to train women ages 22 – 35 in the skills they too often lacked. We saw this age period as crucial for women to lay the ground work for successful careers, a time where they needed support and training that they weren’t getting. There weren’t non-profits that focused on career development of this demographic, so we created Woodhull.

Modules at Woodhull included: media training, negotiation, advocacy, how to get published, financial literacy, how to write a business plan, and public speaking. Every Woodhull module included a component on ethics. There’s no point in becoming a leader if you can’t be an ethical one, give back, help people, and do your part to change the world for the better.

Woodhull also provided graduates with an on-going support network and mentorship. Woodhull graduates include Lateefah Simon, who went on to become a MacArthur Genius, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who went on to co-found Miss Representation, and Courtney Martin, who went on to publish  Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, among many other Woodhull success stories.

Woodhull ran into challenges raising money. Foundations wanted to give money to non-profits that served 100% inner city/ low income women. Even when 2/3 of Woodhull constituents came from inner city/ low income and were scholarshipped, foundations weren’t interested in that ratio. Woodhull didn’t want to adapt to funders, because part of the reason Woodhull was founded was to bridge the class divide. Women who came to Woodhull valued that diversity. Many said they had no other place to address class differences and similarities openly and to learn from each other. Again and again, we witnessed that young women, across the board, whether from the richest or poorest families, didn’t know basic financial literacy or had difficulty receiving applause without flinching.

Then and now, I’ve got to wonder: When women with access to money and power aren’t achieving, how does that affect all women? Where are women in power? Why are they so invisible? How can we change that? What happens when a rare woman gets to the top, writes a book about her view from up there, and gets attacked for it? As Gloria Steinem wrote, “Only in women is success viewed as a barrier to giving advice.”

You don’t get much more privileged by birth in America than me. My great-grandfather was Charles Merrill, the founder of Merrill Lynch. He was an early investor in Safeway stores, and my grandfather became CEO of that company, building it into the world’s largest supermarket chain. My father was also a CEO of Safeway until he left the company to buy the San Francisco Giants. I think that part of the reason I became a feminist so early is because in the world that I grew up in, the gender disparity was huge. Sometimes it seemed like all of the men were running the world and all of the women were dieting.

Following my college graduation, many of the privileged men I had grown up with went on to start their own companies, open restaurants, publish novels, and produce films. Most of the women I knew, who were smart, creative, and had a sincere desire to have a positive impact on society, took low-paying, low status jobs for big corporations or non-profits.

What I also noticed in these women, and not the men, and an issue that you address in No Excuses, was a profound ambivalence towards success and power, basically what it means to be successful and powerful as a woman in America. For all of these reasons, I founded Woodhull.

The class divide among women, whether it manifests as the stay-at-home vs working mommy wars or feminists against Sheryl Sandberg, is the major challenge keeping women from achieving parity. Even the foundation and non-profit worlds systemically reinforce this fatal gap. If women can’t bridge the class divide, we’ll stay stuck, but if we can overcome it, nothing will stop us.

I can’t wait to check out www.taketheleadwomen.com

Best,

Margot Magowan

M & Ms sells sexism to kids

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When tobacco companies used a cartoon camel to sell cigarettes to kids, the U.S. government stepped in to stop the manipulation.

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When M & Ms uses extreme gender stereotypes to sell sexism to kids, it’s supposed to be funny. Here’s the back cover of the 2013 swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.

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If M & Ms used a marketing campaign based on racial stereotypes, would we think it was funny? Apparently not. There’s an uproar about SI using people of color from all around the world as fashion props. That’s offensive and gross and so is this: Ms. Green getting stalked ha ha ha.

coconut-mms1

The first anti-stalking law wasn’t passed until 1990 and the crime is still only slowly gaining recognition and credibility as a serious infraction. Stalking hurts females: 4 out of 5 victims are women. Obviously, M & Ms still thinks a dangerous situation is a joke.

Here’s Ms. Green “working the polls.”

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Here is Ms. Green at Party City, where my daughter and I went shopping for her birthday celebration.

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When I went on M & Ms Facebook page to complain, I saw this picture of Red.

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Wow. Talk about gender stereotypes. Not even “Mr.” Red?

Please Tweet: “M & Ms Stop selling sexism to kids #NotBuyingIt”

Please go to M & Ms Facebook page and ask them to stop selling sexual stereotypes to children.

Why isn’t Pebbles on the Cocoa Pebbles?

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I was always kind of bored by the Flintstones when I was a kid, but the episodes where Pebbles came on were my favorite. As were the episodes with Tabitha, Samantha’s daughter on Bewitched. Probably because I was a kid and a girl and I liked seeing a kid and a girl on TV. Remember Pebbles? Fred and Wilma’s kid?

Well, guess what: She’s gone missing from her eponymous cereal. No kidding. It’s all Fred and Barney. Do you know how hard it is for a girl to get a cereal named after her? And then no picture? WTF?

I know what you’re thinking. Cocoa Pebbles is bad for you anyway. Who cares? But this is fucked up. Kids study these boxes.

The only female represented on all four sides of this box is one small picture of Wilma. She’s not in the games or activities section either. She’s not doing anything remotely fun or cool. Unlike Fred and Barney, she’s not driving  a car. I suppose women in the Stone Age couldn’t drive.

What’s Wilma doing in her little pictture? She’s pouring milk above a caption that reads: “Are your kids getting enough Vitamin D?”   See her there above the advertisement for no less than four products starring with Fred? I guess the moms are supposed to relate, but what about the kids? The female kids.

Why is Pebbles missing? Where has she gone?

Cereal boxes are yet another way the media tells kids: males are important, females are invisible.

And let’s not forget that the Flintstones is derived from The Honeymooners. All these shows, all these narratives about women and men and the roles they are supposed to play are in life are showing up to teach our kids in 2012.

Read more about gendering cereal.

If you can’t see it, you can’t be it

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I am reposting with art for those who argue “Tintin in the Congo” is not racist. Also, one more time: the point is that the lack of female roles in the Tintin movie’s cast is consistent with most of the movies made for kids today. Girls have gone missing in kids’ movies and that means that both genders learn that boys are more important than girls. Parents, this is not okay. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.

Commenters are defending the Tintin movie, writing that creator Herge’s sexism was simply a product of his times.

Margot, you are aware that Hergé wrote most of his comic books (including the three on which the film is based) before WWII, at a time when women in his home country of Belgium as in many others didn’t even have the right to vote? Of course his work reflects the prejudices of that era, not only towards women but towards just about everyone who wasn’t a white Christian male (the most egregious example being Tintin in the Congo)!

Would Steven Spielberg adapt Herge’s racist views (“of his times”) expressed in Tintin in the Congoto make a movie in 2012 and market that movie to kids?

Of course not. No one would see it. People would be horrified. Herge’s racist views are universally recognized as the aberration that they are. Why is Herge’s “dated” sexism celebrated in a loyal adaptation from one of our most acclaimed directors?

There are two answers, both are true. The first one is that in 2012 sexism is, in many ways, just as accepted and “normal” as it was in 1932. Women are humiliated and degraded all the time, but while racism is seen as a political issue, sexism is still seen as a “cultural” one.

The second, less controversial explanation is that in Herge’s comics, he directly degrades and humiliates Africans whereas his sexism mostly manifests as an omission. His racism is worse. Herge believes women have no place in his imaginary world. Is that offensive? Is it even sexist?

It’s an annihilation.

What is remarkable about this annihilation, and what I was writing about, is that it’s consistent with the casts of most animated movies made today. A story originally created by an artist who spoke openly of how he didn’t think females should be included in his imaginary world is almost indistinguishable from the majority of films made for kids right now. Steven Spielberg probably didn’t even notice.

What does that say about how important we think girls are?

See Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing from Kids Films in 2011.

See statistics on the lack of females in animated films from the Geena Davis Insititute on Gender and Media.

Gray Lady leads with sensationalist sexism

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Yesterday, The New York Times reported on an exciting, potential political candidate with a stellar resume. Which of these two photos do you think appeared on the paper’s front page?

Diana Taylorwww.nytimes.com 

Diana Taylor

Diana Taylor and Michael Bloombergwww.nytimes.com 

Diana Taylor’s career began as an investment banker with Smith Barney; she then became superintendent of banking under Gov Pataki, emerging as a prescient watchdog who predicted the mortgage crisis; she was chair of Action, a leading microfinance lender which has distributed more than 23 million worldwide, and since last July, has been a member of the board of directors of Citigroup.

But New York Times readers don’t learn any of this information about Taylor’s credentials on the front page of the paper. Reading through this muddled article, whenever I found an actual fact on Taylor’s career, I felt the kind of joy of discovery I see my on my kids faces during a scavenger hunt.

It’s not only the cover photo of Taylor in evening wear with her boyfriend, the Mayor of New York, along with the late placement of her substantial qualifications, but the language of the article that continually sexualizes and trivializes Taylor’s ambition and her candidacy.

The headline reads: “She has the Mayor by her Side, But Politics is Wooing Her, Too.” When has politics ever “wooed” a male candidate? When considering a senatorial bid a few years ago, this dreamy lady “muses” what kind of “relationship” she’d have with then senator Chuck Schumer. Bill Paxon, former congressman, recalls a “previously undisclosed meeting…at the Ritz Carlton hotel,” but details of Taylor’s “flirtation” with the senate run have “remained hidden.” Is this a story about a tryst or a political career?

When The Times finally gets to reporting on Taylor’s professional history, page A-3, she “mixes” with global leaders, sounding as if she were flitting about various soirees. Describing her position as chair of Action, there is no quote from Taylor from that time, but instead rockstar, Bono, saying: “Diana, you know how I feel about you. But don’t tell the mayor.”

Isn’t the New York Times supposed to be a bastion of the liberal media elite and sensitive to sexism? I guess when it comes to reporting on women, the only party that matters is the kind you dress up for and running for office is just like dating.

Order sEXISTs shirts and stickers

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Too often, sexism is invisible to us, whether it’s too geographically distant or we’ve just become immune to witnessing women treated like objects instead of like humans. In 2010, naming the enemy is half the battle.

Rumplestiltskin Campaign

In her new book Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert used a Rumpelstiltskin simile applicable here. The story of Rumpelstiltskin is about a girl forced into slavery; she must spin straw into gold. She will only be freed when she can name one of her captors. When she discovers his name and calls it out, he loses all his power and must set her free. Gilbert wrote, “Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstiltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names.”

I’ve launched The Rumpelstiltskin Campaign: sEXISTs EXIST. Post news about sexism, when and where you see it, on ReelGirl. Photos welcome. The campaign won’t end sexism, but it’s a crucial step towards setting us free.

Email me your info if you want stickers or T-shirts. T-shirts come in all sizes and baby dolls $25 each. A percentage of proceeds goes to The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization I cofounded to train young women to be leaders and change agents.