E-mail Address : spamme@yahoo.com
Comments : trendy trendy trendy! from your coach handbags, bowling shoes, and fabricated pop music. oh yeah throw in a little feminist jargon and Ani Di Franco just to prove youre not like every other privileged sorority chick. Protest the War with a march on D...(the rest was cut off)
A&A.com readers! We’d like to bring your attention to a guest book entry that was posted by “fashionablefeminism” – “FF.” We think of this as a perfect jumping off point to talk more about a cause that is very important to us—the equality of women. This website brings aspects of our lives to you for your entertainment, and hopefully also for your education. We hope to move further in that direction with this website in the coming weeks.
To address the entry, we’d like to explain the term “fashionable feminism” and how it has been used to describe many things, including pretentious intellectuals who would like to diminish the work of other academics in the area of gender studies, and also to describe those who buy a magazine, read the so-called empowering articles, buy red lipstick to prove they are bold, and deem all these actions feminist.
Both are low blows and gloss over many challenging aspects of those labeled that the labeler would rather not take on or acknowledge. In an attempt to create a dialogue with FF, we emailed the email address given only to find that it doesn’t exist. A&A will post our retort here, and we do wish that FF will reply and continue the conversation in hopes that we can learn from each other.
For now it seems we can only ask FF more questions, and address the gist of her/his entry. FF, how exactly would you describe a feminist? Personally, we think that feminists are women and men of all types. There just aren’t enough raging hippies out there and it’s hard to have a movement if you insist that everyone who stands behind it is the same. And speaking of fashion, if Anne and Ashley were dressed in flowing skirts and peasant blouses, wouldn’t we truly be following the trends these days? That’s all we can find at H&M, and frankly it’s annoying as hell.
We’re not sure what you might find fashionable about Ashley’s entirely TJ Maxx outfit—she’s just trying to stay warm on her way to class. She studies feminism in grad school, and thinks that it would be hard to justify $1000 a credit purely for the sake of being “fashionable.” Anne, thank goodness, can dress down a little at work. She turned down a job making well over twice what she makes now to work for a firm she believes in. Are these things the ultimate sacrifices for the cause? No. But they’re something. Are Anne and Ashley privileged as hell? Sure we are. And we hope to use the $8.95 a month we can spare to pay for this web space and carve a little world for ourselves, and hopefully someday soon use it for even more good.
Also, this attack is not new. Gloria Steinem has for years been put down for not being crunchy enough. She turned the attacks back around on her critics and demonstrated the hypocrisy that was underlying the comments. Feminism is about CHOICE—choice to be a mother, a business woman, or both; to wear men’s clothes, to wear women’s, or both; to embrace any and all characteristics on the masculine to feminine spectrum; to carry purses, to wear make-up, to have a wallet chain, to not pluck your eyebrows, and to not be judged or valued by ANY of these decisions, because those values are the basis for the subordination of women. Those who condemn other women for actions that seem too feminine perpetuate the patriarchy.
Unfortunately, this is something that we ALL do—participate in this perpetuation. Society—the way we live, the way in which we categorize, the process through which we understand and assign meaning—is synonymous with the patriarchy. Men and women both reproduce this culture daily. The best we can do is to subvert it in the little ways we can, to be aware of when and how we contribute to it, and also to be aware of how all of these “little ways” add up. But we need a lot of people making these small actions to make a change. So let’s not be picky about who gets to be in “the movement.”
We enjoy your opinions and welcome them, but we support our website and what it represents. We are open and honest about all parts of our lives—the personal, the political, the seemingly inconsequential, the trivial, the hilarious, and the serious. And while we hope to segue into more activism online, we feel that what we do currently works to raise consciousness within the group of people we know. No act too small, right?
A&A are interested in changes in the everyday life of women and men who identify with feminism. How does one prove that s/he is a feminist? We agree that neither marches nor music can prove it. Do you cringe at the degradation of the word “pussy” when it is used to mean weak? Do you make sure all of your family members—male and female—get up and do the dishes after Thanksgiving? Do you watch Lord of the Rings and wonder where all the women are? Or do you wonder why no one else wonders? And then wonder what effect that has on the gendering of our society? We do. We may not have the answers yet, but we’re young and we’re looking.