Is this what feminism has lead to?
I've been thinking about this lately in light of a recent article by Maureen Dowd in the NY Times Magazine where she points out that in this post-modern society " women of all ages are striving to become self-actualized sex kittens". I've never really thought of myself as a sex kitten. I do value my sexual (and reproductive) freedom, but I don't feel the need to take a strip-aerobics class to feel better about myself. I'm hardly bound for the world of June Cleaver, nor am I as radical as Andrea Dworkin or Catharine MacKinnon since I don't think that all porn can be equated with rape.
Some girls in Pennsylvania are staging a 'girlcott' against Abercrombie & Fitch. They feel that the some of their t-shirts enhance negative images of women. While the shirts do make me chuckle, I kind of agree that they're not helping my gender get the amount of respect we deserve. Would my mother and her contemporaries have worked so hard to make the struggles against sexism and gender bias less prevalent for my generation if they knew that 14-year-olds were going to wander around the mall in shirts that say things like "I make you look fat" and "if at first you don't succeed, try buying me some diamonds" ?
Posts
1 comment:
This was the part I found most acerbic.
Or, as Craig Bierko, a musical comedy star and actor who played one of Carrie's boyfriends on "Sex and the City," told me, "Deep down, beneath the bluster and machismo, men are simply afraid to say that what they're truly looking for in a woman is an intelligent, confident and dependable partner in life whom they can devote themselves to unconditionally until she's 40."
Post a Comment