Monday, June 25, 2007
Buzzing
My most beautiful friend, Ella, c/p-ed a link to an article about emancipation to me: Click here (sorry, it's in Dutch). It's really about two books: "Female Chauvinist Pigs" and the dutch book "Stout" (meaning "Naughty" in English). The first is about how emancipation missed the mark and the second apparently confirms this by being a really stupid book.
Intrigued by the subject I bought "Female Chauvinist Pigs" by Ariel Levy. I devoured it, cover to cover and feel horrible now. I discovered I am a chauvinist pig.
The thing I'm doing is called 'Tomming', after "Uncle Tom's Cabin". To make black people look good the writer made them act like white people. At the time this didn't piss anyone off, but later on people realized it and wrote some angry essays. Girls are Tomming in the sense that they act like men, either because they feel that's the way to be strong or because they think "if you can't beat them, join them".
I do degrade other women by calling them girly-girls and I do like to look at sexy girls and act loud and boisterous from time to time. I'm a bad feminist.
That's not all there is to it though. The book covers a lot more and makes a lot of sense from time to time. My mind is still buzzing from the information overload and all the things I knew but forgot or didn't know, but just realized.
I will have to think about it some more and will refrain from using the term 'girly-girl' until I figured it out. posted by Marian @ 11:21 AM 4 comments
4 Comments:
Please read todays newspaper (de Volkskrant) specially written for you I think!
greetings
Never looked at it this way... don't trouble yourself too much;-) Anyway, how's the project going?
The feeling I get with Girly girls is that they are women that behave as if they are fifteen but did pass the age of thirty a little while ago. Sort of midlife crisis for women I guess. To behave like a teenager to try and freeze time. I must admit that I’m behaving exactly like that sometimes. But I also must admit that my behavior is weird most of the time so I stopped worrying about it a while ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girly_girl
And If Heleen van Rooyen becomes the new role model, I’m going to kill myself. If they just could let her stop talking on the TV. Her voice sounds like a razorblade on iron. "We know you are a naughty girl/woman/whatever, now go and enjoy the enormous amount of money you got by telling us that. Leave me in peace please!" I always think if I see her on TV. But there is a point. Her books sell.
On the other hand: ‘Joe Speedboat’ sells too. And ‘Boven is het stil’ also. Not to mention ‘The shade of the Wind’, by Zafon. All beautiful books that are much richer in language and storytelling.
But maybe, news needs bad or provoking news to sell itself. Working in the media for 2 years made me realize that most of the times the truth of real life is hidden because it’s simply not newsworthy.
While women need to be, according to the media, some kind of superwomen. Or are being criticized by women because feminine behavior seems to flood the public terrain (as Dorien Pessers stated today in her Volkskrant bijlage http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/bericht/137177 sorry couldn’t find the articles ). Man have to become more feminine. Because that is a trend.
Who Says?
Well. The media off course. And the people who work there, mostly live in cities. Trying to be hip and trendy all the time themselves. Because I was working in the commercial media for 2 years I can safely say that at least 70% of the man working there is gay. I have no problem with that. But I don’t see why every man should behave like one, because it is a trend. Apart from that: my neighbor in my hometown doesn’t even know what metro sexual means. And I suspect that beyond the city, most of the people don’t even care.
Do we need to act like men or act as some kind of superbimbo?
Life is sometimes simple I guess: Women need to attract man if we like them. In order to do that we dress up nice, use perfume, lipstick and our smile. Stuff like that. If we get them, the mating season is over and you live happily ever after. Or not. There is nothing wrong with that and u don't need to have the looks of a pornstar. Men do this to. Especially in Italy I noticed. Never saw so many men use perfume and spend so much time on making themselves look good. And I was in a camping. Tssk. Weird folk. Italians.
On the other hand: making being beautiful your main goal in life is a trap u don’t want to fall into.
Everybody gets old and ugly in the end.
Interesting footage:
http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/id/VARA/serie/VARA_101141952/VARA_101153087/bb.20070617.asf
It's a long comment. Sorry about that. But I was inspired :-)
Love Sya
OK. Here I am again. I suffer from word-diarrhea sometimes.
I just still had to think about it.
The whole thing is, you have to want to be successful in being beautiful. I can imagine u don't like that way of thinking and therefore dislike girly-girl's. That doesn't mean u are a male chauvinist pig.
But I do think that fighting it is like saying: hey, I don’t like you to judge me on my looks. But I need you to say it does not matter. Fighting it is submitting to it. Because that means u care about that.
It is all about choices. I think.
Riek Bakker looks like a bloke, is lesbian and one of the most successful women in architecture in the Netherlands. http://www.wereldomroep.nl/actua/nl/samenleving/riekbakker060308
On a larger scale: Madame Rice does not need to worry about her looks : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice
And Oprah isn’t exactly a role model for the standards u apparently need to have these days. And she is successful to say the least. (nice appearance in Ocean’s thirteen by the way).
It’s marketing. That’s all. Madonna does it. The pussycat dolls are a good example: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4kWTsbJOntQ. I hate that song, it’s just awful. It just isn’t my taste. Although I liked the latest Madonna CD to be honest. But I didn’t had to look at her to like it. I just liked the music.
At the same time I understand your concerns about girls/women that fall in the trap of commerce and want to be beautiful all the time.
Or mistake behaving like a porn star for emancipation. They can do whatever they like. I don’t mind. It just is a really bad career choice I think. Because what u achieve in the end is old-age and uglyness. Instead of happyness in being ugly and old and having a fulfilling life.
There is so much more to see, hear and read. There is so much freedom if u just don’t care what they say and do your own thing.
Creativity does not need looks. Well a little. Anyway…Depends on taste but I kinda liked this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z-DIAthbM
That does not mean I do not hate it if people call me ugly. I do. And I think everybody does. Man and women alike.
But I'm open for other opinions off course.
Well I think I have said all I wanted to say about that. (finally...pfff)
With love,
Sya
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