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by Susannah Breslin
Like it or not, women today in large part understand feminism in terms of the
women's movement of the 1960s. Angered by the patriarchy's incessant
oppression, the women of that time bonded together in order to break out of
the confines of man's scopophilic gaze. Because feminists believed that their
sex — and sexuality — was used to objectify them, it became necessary to eliminate any and all embellishments to the female form that would encourage
such objectification. Hence bra-burning has become one of the pivotal symbols of the feminist agenda at that time. This manipulative female maneuvering did
work to emblazon across the mind of every man that women were not objects,
but forces to be reckoned with. Certainly, today's pro-girlie feminists must credit their feminist predecessors for the power in which they now take such wicked pleasure.
"Women feel comfortable enough today to go back and reappropriate some of the sexiness they burned in the bra pile."
But 35 years later a new battle is being waged within the feminist
ranks, positioning pro-girlies against overly-serious feminists. Women now telegraph a sense of realized power through their fashion choices, makeup usage, and attitudes. Whether or not full equality has been attained, these women feel comfortable enough today to go back and reappropriate some of the sexiness they burned in the bra pile. And why shouldn't they? Sexual energy is a primary resource of energy for all humans — male and female alike. For women to deny their sexuality and their right to display it is to deny themselves one source of their own power. Every movement contains within it a form of reappropriation, from African-Americans' reuse of the word "nigger" to some gays' recycling of the word "queer." While feminists perceive this push towards hyper-femalehood to be a neo-conservative backlash committed by women blindly brainwashed by the still-existing patriarchal order, the reality is that changes must be made to fundamental feminist doctrine in order for it to retain relevance today.
Brought up in Berkeley, California — a hotbed of feminist activity even
today — I perceived feminism to be my mother's movement. I considered myself female, not feminist. As an undergraduate at the University of
California at Berkeley in 1993, I took women's studies courses in order to critique another field of interest. The all-female members of a feminist film studies course I enrolled in were interested only in replacing phallus-worship with womb-worship. My lone dissenting voice attempting to intellectually critique women rather than coddle them and ensconce them in immortal victimhood was swiftly — in feminist jargon — "silenced." My love of makeup and my latest mini only made the class of junior feminist academics rail against me harder.
"In its obsessive knee-jerk need to bash men,
feminism has once again been blind to what
women are doing, saying, and wanting."
Why has feminism become such an anti-female sexuality "tyranny"? Certainly,
it has always lacked any true diversity within its ranks. Gloria Steinem has attempted to equate the women's movement with the civil rights movement in order to conceal feminism's monolithically white-girl, upper middle class reality. But the parallel falls short of redeeming mainstream feminism. Within feminism, no diversity or dissent is allowed — no lace bras, only fried ones; no heavy makeup, only "the real me." Today's highly female fashions don't come from Barbie's closet, but from New York's early '90s "ghetto glam" style. Like almost every other fashion movement, today's heavily girlie styles can be traced back to African-American "street" style. It was black women who were the first to flaunt their sexuality in designer style, sporting Versace-cut hot pants and stacked stripper-style heels. In its obsessive knee-jerk need to bash men, feminism has once again been blind to what women are doing, saying, and wanting.
In a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Camille Paglia
asserts that, "Since Madonna, younger women no longer feel that makeup and sexy outfits are incompatible with feminism." While I would hesitate to attribute anything of great social importance to Madonna, the duality suggested here by Paglia is an ideal one that through its inclusiveness embraces the reality of what it means to be young and female today. If women are given permission — by themselves, by men, and by society as a whole — to be powerful and sexual beings, then we have come further down the road to a newly formed and fully emancipated equality. To deny women permission to explore, exaggerate, and assert their sexuality is to speed the death of feminism.
Join the Girl Power debate in the Women's Zone Conference.
Susannnah Breslin is co-creator of The Postfeminist Playground. She writes for Details.
© 1997 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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