Appreciation For The Vagina

Women's vaginas want to be heard, acknowledged and respected.  It seems that in the man's world, it is harder for vaginas to be understood.  Men in general don't separate the vagina from the one.  If a woman is attractive, they presume that's what counts.  They will look at all her body and how they can use it to please themselves and not necessarily how they can please the women in her most private and intimate part.  Most men get on with the pleasurable part of sex, without looking at the vagina.  Going back to the witch's trial back in 1593, the married lawyer investigating the case, "discovered a clitoris for the first time; identified it as a devil's teat, sure proof of the witch's guilt."(31) It is astonishing that he has not looked closely at his wife, and if he had, would he also label her as a witch?  While interviewing women between the age group of 65 and 75, Eve Ensler realized that with regards to vaginas not much has changed since the 1550's for these women.  She concludes that "..most women in this age group had very little conscious relationship to their vaginas."(23) This is why, it is important for women to speak more about their vaginas, to say the word out loud, although vagina "never sounds like a word you want to say. It's totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word."(5) During sex it is not mentioned, but other words like "cunt" and "pussy" are acceptable and there mention sometimes arouses men.  This is perhaps that these words invoke sex and are a bit derogatory, and in a bizarre way they put back the women in a place where she is looked at solely for sexual pleasure.  This relates to the women whose husband wanted her to shave her vagina hair.  She didn't like doing it because it made her feel like a little girl and yet the husband insisted on it.  He had "screwed around" because he was looking at the vagina just to satisfy his needs and not admiring it for what it was or for whom it belonged to.  Eventually, when the wife agreed to have him shave the hair, he did it in a very inconsiderate manner, and did not notice that he made her bleed and feel uncomfortable.  It also did not stop him from cheating on her.  Most women are uncomfortable talking about vaginas, so men are not made aware that they need to be sensitive in attacking this issue.  "Andy drove me home and he never said another word and when I got out and closed his car door, I closed the whole store. Locked it. Never opened for business again."(28) Women need to overcome their issues and concerns about the vagina, and must not think that because it is hidden inside their bodies, it should remain hidden.  The more the vagina is discussed out in the open, society will find "alternatives to the old patriarchal dualism of feminine/masculine, body/mind, and sexual/spiritual that is rooted in the division of our physical selves into the 'the part we talk about' and the 'part we don't'."(Xvi)

Discovering The Vagina

The Vagina Monologues are a rare treat on the inner thoughts of women.  Things women would not have dreamt of saying out loud, come out in a series of interviews done by the author Eve Ensler.  The interviews are so intimate; it is as if speaking to the women's private parts, and the things they would say if they had a voice.  In these interviews, the vagina has a voice, and it speaks of all the different ordeals it is subjected to; genital mutilation, menstruation, rape and have happier experiences orgasms and births.  The words seem to flow as if "it was like this force of passion, this river of life just flooded out of me."(27).  Once the vaginas started talking they had so many stories to tell, and they camped together in solidarity to tell the world of all the things that happen to them.  In order to be heard the vagina "needed a context of other vaginas- a community, a culture of vaginas.  There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them...(5) the darkness started unfolding with the stories of the rape camp in Bosnia.  During the war, like most wars worldwide, men raped women, and sometimes many men raped the same women regardless of age.  The women felt shameful and scarred, they could scream, but how could their vagina scream? How can it say stop to such brutality, and how can women remain sane and controlled after such horrific ordeals?  "Women's sanity was saved by bringing these hidden experiences into the open, naming them, and turning our rage into positive action to reduce and heal violence."  (xv) Apart from the violence the vagina is subjected to, be it rape or genital mutilation, there is also the biological aspect of the menstrual cycle.  Tampons are hard to deal with and most women wonder why not lubricate them in a way that will make it easier on the women to insert it in their vagina's.  It's as harsh as the cold tools the gynecologists use when examining the vagina.  It seems that nobody up till now thought of the vagina or of its identity. Most men tend to think of the vagina as purely sexual, while Lesbians insist that it's not just sexual but deeper than that.  For when they are playing with each other's vaginas, it's like touching themselves, "We notice our own". (116) The author herself was completely shocked, when after interviewing women about all the different things vaginas want to say, she realized that the only time she really understood what they about was when her daughter in law gave birth. "If I was in awe of them before the birth of my granddaughter, Colette, I am certainly in deep worship now."   

Appreciation For The Little Things In Life/ Shifts In Perspectives Part 2

At Jezebel's one of the first things that Offred takes notice to is the way all the women present themselves. She recounts, "all wear makeup, and I realise how unaccustomed I've become to seeing it, on women because their eyes look to big to me, too dark and shimmering, their mouths too red, too wet, blood-dipped and glistening, or on the other hand too clownish"(247). I think if she were to look at such a scene during pre-Gilead times nothing would really stand out to her. However with the lack of freedom and the current subjugation to women in Gilead, her perspective of the past is once again altered. She begins to question, "is there joy in this?"(247). "All you have to do, I tell myself is keep your mouth shut and look stupid"(247). Atwood's tone during this scene is patronising. When she goes to the hotel room with the commander she is unable to feel any sort of romanticism, as Gilead outlaws the freedom essential to passion, she instead lies on the bed "like a dead bird"(267). 

Deep into Offred's and Nick's sexual relationship, Offred talking about Nick states the desire to "see what can be seen of him, take him in, memorise him, save him up so I can live on the image: later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt...(281). She is making the most of her sexual relationship with Nick so she can pleasure herself in the unpredictable future. She regrets not doing the same with Luke. "... I didn't and he's fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless"(281). She regrets not paying attention to every detail, to really take in time to appreciate every bit of making love, of the body and skin. With the oppressive totalitarian theocracy set in place, it encourages Offred to take the most of every chance of liberty and pleasure she receives, whether that is making love with Nick or playing scrabble. And with this new form of sponging up reality she becomes enlightened in the way that she develops opinions that differ from her life before the creation of Gilead. The more she exposes herself to the oppressive nature of Gilead, the more she tries to remember her past in order to justify the present. 

Making sense of it all: Grandmother Interview/ Reflection

My grandmother was born in Nablus, West Bank, in 1934.  She came from a family of 8, and she herself nurtured five children into this world.  Her childhood home was filled with delicious food aromas, and the family always united around the kitchen and food time.  Her mother never asked her for help and her job was never ending.  It was like she almost worked 24 hours a day.  No wonder that " 61 to 85 percent of women, a 1944 survey found, certainly did not want to go back to housework after the war". (63)  Housework never ended, whereas a job outside the house was regulated by fixed hours.  However, having a job outside the home, did not stop women from continuing to take care of their household.  They ended up working in the office during the day and at home in the evening.  "Housework totals forty billion hours of France's labour power.  Women volunteer work in the United States amount to 18 billion dollars a year....the economics of industrialised countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free....". (23)

 Going back to my grandmother's childhood, it was spent doing simple things, like going to the cinema in secret, or singing and dancing with friends.  She had a uniform at her all girl's school, ( blue skirt and white shirt), so not much time was given on what to wear.  She never got into trouble although sometimes her own grandfather would tell her to wear a headscarf.  She never did, and her clothes outside school was casual, but trousers were never worn, despite the fact that she toured the farms with her family.  Often she used to help her seamstress aunt and create her own clothes.  There was not much exposure around, so she and her friends did not have a foreign figure to look up to.  My grandmother used to admire her Arabic teacher for her confidence and originality.   Women's magazines in Arabic were almost non existent.  "Women's magazines are the only products of popular culture that (unlike romances) change with women's reality and take women's concern seriously". (71) So current women concerns in the 1930's and 40's were not discussed.  Also there was no television, just BBC radio channel, that stimulated their visual imagination and increased my grandmother's interest in Politics.  To this day, she is an avid reader of newspapers and political magazines and have never seen her buy a Fashion magazine although she is up to date for fashion at her age.  

Times have really changed.  Emphasis has moved from the home to the outside world now.  In the old days (according to my grandmother), all women looked pretty and natural.  They didn't have to rush anywhere or aspire to look like anybody else.  Instead, to bring out their beauty, they highlighted their best assets and always had a relaxed aura about them.  Nowadays, women are stressed, overworked, pressured into things, and therefore their moral on tired days is down.  "The closer women come to power, the more physical self-consciousness and sacrifice are asked of them. "Beauty" becomes the condition for a women to take the next step". (28)  As a result of their exhaustion, women are continuously looking at products and ways to make them look less tired, younger, and eventually happier.  They are constantly reminded by shop windows, magazine covers, even pharmaceutical products of the importance of taking care of your looks.   Advertisements are geared toward making women feel that they are inadequate if they don't follow certain steps.  "In providing a dream language of meritocracy(get the body you deserve", "a gorgeous figure doesn't come without effort", entrepreneurial spirit "make the most of your natural assets",)....keep women consuming their advertisers' products in pursuit of the total personal transformation in status that the consumer society offers men in the form of money." (29)  It seems that one has to defy nature, and that if you are "worth it", as the L'Oreal add always suggest, then you should aim for the perfect body and the perfect hair and make up.  These adds work on women's low self esteem, that surfaces after seeing such ads over and over again.  Without these ads, women would probably still purchase certain products but not with such intensity.   

The Gilded Society Vs. The Beauty Myth

After reading 6 headings (chapters) of Naomi Wolf’s “Beauty Myth”, I have come to understand the purpose behind writing Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”. In the society of Gilead, a totalitarian regime is established in which the aim seems to prosecute women specifically. In the Beauty Myth or I could say the society we live in, men “use women’s “beauty” as a form of currency in circulation among men, ideas about “beauty” have evolved since the Industrial evolution side by side with ideas about money, so that the two are virtually parallels in our consumer economy” (20). The way women are looked upon in today’s society is an exaggeration in the way women are looked upon in the society of Gilead. In Gilead, Women are reduced to different roles some of which like the Handmaids-to a mere procreational function. This is like many cultures of our society such as the music industry and huge beauty corporations that make it look like the only way to make it in the world is through your appearance, which demotes women to no better than sex objects.

In the ‘Handmaids tale’ the women are forced to suffer the limitations placed upon them, which try to isolate the women by hindering communication between them. They are isolated in the same way “middle class women have been sequestered from the world, isolated from one another, and their heritage submerged with each generation, they are more dependent than men are on cultural models on offer bad they are more likely to be imprinted by them”(58). ‘The goal of all this is too highlights the way in which the mores of contemporary society suggest ultimately repressive views when taken to their logical extremes’. I think Atwood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale”, in order to show how ridiculous and sexist society is towards women. In my opinion, Atwood is saying that under all the camouflaged reasons for why the beauty myth originated, women are being treated today in a totalitarian manner. The extremes that are presented in “The Handmaids Tale” are present today but are disguised in such a way that women do not notice. Wolf even goes on to say, “many [women] are ashamed to admit that such trivial concerns- to do with physical appearance, bodies, faces, hair clothes- matter so much” (9). Unfortunately in reality they do. Women in our society put themselves through pain in order to increase their beauty, very much like the “the high-heeled shoes…with their straps attached to the feet like delicate instruments of torture”(Atwood 38). In the “Handmaid’s Tale”, the women are being watched all the time. What does this constant surveillance do to women? Wolf say’s “an enforced lack of privacy strips dignity and breaks resistance”(99). The two investigations into the struggle of Women’s equality hint at the same obstacles that restrain women’s freedom and techniques used by external forces to subjugate women in all facets of their existence. 

Both authors are trying to illustrate the current situation of women through different diverse subjects and functions (no matter what the input is the output will be the same),  and in making the world aware of what they are not aware of, trying to make a difference. For me "to live in fear of one's body and one's life is not to live at all". 

Who's 'Killing Me Softly'?

"“In providing a dream language of meritocracy (“get the body you deserve”, “a gorgeous figure doesn’t come without effort”, entrepreneurial spirit (“make the most of your natural assets”)…keep women consuming their advertisers’ products in pursuit of the total personal transformation in status that the consumer society offers men in the form of money” (29).

 After watching ‘Killing me Softly”, narrated by 
Jean Kilbourne, I was shocked that their were was no higher authority that could do something about how women are being degraded in pop culture today. Moreover, the advertisements that she explores reinforce ‘unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality’. Contemporary pop culture has augmented and strengthened the beauty myth and installed it into the minds of children at a dangerously young age. “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing the women’s roles, and throughout that time-today more than ever- they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during the wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women”(64). It makes me feel frightened that people who we are supposed to trust control women for economic reasons. There’s a lot to say about advertisers and pop culture these days, and looking into the future it doesn’t look like the beauty myth will last a very long time. Since 1991 clubs have been using a certain method to employ waitresses. “The club’s employment standards ranked waitresses on the following scale”:

1.     A flawless beauty (face, figure, and grooming)

2.     An exceptional beautiful girl

3.     Marginal (is aging or has developed a correctable appearance problem)

4.     Has lost Bunny Image (either through aging or an uncorrectale appearance problem)

Sadly, not much has changed today. Whether you are looking through magazines, dining at fancy restaurants, or even strolling through an office building, you will see that the women who are usually standing on the front desk, or waitressing tables all try to reach this flawless beauty’ that is sold to women through cosmetics, which in the end are unattainable. Scarily, some women “…will buy more things if they are kept in the self- hating, ever-failing, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring beauties” (66). The figures speak for themselves: “in 1988 skin care grossed 3 billion in the United States alone, 337 million pounds in the United Kingdom, 8.9 trillion lire in Italy, and 69.2 million guilders in the Netherlands, up from 18.3 million in 1978”(109). The amount of products sold to women is increasing annually, as well as the amount of women going out to get facial, body and breast surgery. “…95% of enrolees in weight loss programs are women” (94).

 

This system and the existence of the beauty currently remain intact because these magazines “offer women power” and in return “promote masochism” (77).

Therefore when “our eyes are trained to see time as a flaw on a women’s faces where it is a mark of character on a men’s” the myth lives on (94). In a world where “beauty is heaven or a state of grace; the skin or fat cell count is the soul; ugliness is hell” and “the beauty product is her mediator: healer, angel or spiritual guide”, women are forced into buying and doing what the advertisers want them to do. In killing me softly women are go through extreme diets that make them loose weight at the expense of their health. If you …”tell a women she is ugly [that] can make her feel ugly, act ugly, and, as far as her experience is concerned, be ugly, in the place where feeling beautiful keeps her whole” (36). Advertisers, fashion designers and the whole beauty industry rely on women’s submissiveness and credulousness to survive. 

Hip- Hop Culture

Originating in the Bronx and spreading around the world as a multi- billion-dollar business, “hip-hop has created a culture and spawned a lifestyle that incorporates politics, style, art and technology”. However even though Hip Hop has affected many, influenced and inspired generations of people to create better circumstances for themselves it has also been charged with praising violence, misogyny and homophobia. In the Hip Hop world women are seen merely as objects, put into music videos where they are the majority and made to look sexy in order to increase the masculinity of the male performer. A common music video these days would have a female to male ratio of around 10 to 1, and these completely naked women would be huddled around the performer, as if they were servants or “whores” ready to heed to his very command. However looking at it in a different perspective these men only show that they are incredibly insecure, and need to where flashy objects and have women around them all the time in order to feel confident of themselves. In the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf argues“... Women must make their beauty glitter as a bid for attention that is otherwise grudgingly given” (106). “Men who glitter, on the other hand, are either low –status or not real men: gold teeth, flashy jewellery, ice skaters, Liberace. Real men are matte”(106). With this said, men in hip-hop videos have been sucked into this culture that is fake and superficial. By wearing chains and expensive clothes, these men like women are trying to breach a higher status. However in the Hip Hop culture these women are referring to as bitches’, ‘hoes’, adding to their image of being nothing but eye candy. This culture however is not different from the rest of American culture where female bodies are objectified in magazines, movies, advertisements, and TV shows. As a result the only way men can make a connection to women in popular culture is through sexuality. This why “a girl learns that stories happen to ‘beautiful’ women, whether they are interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not beautiful” (61).

With Hip Hop culture objectifying women’s bodies, creating them to be sex objects it is even more horrifying to find out that it is that kind of talk that will get you signed as an artist. I cannot think of a case where an artist has made it in the industry without referring to a woman as a “bitch”. In this culture “Beauty is a currency system like the gold standard.” (12). The beauty ‘myth’ may appear to audiences out their to be about ‘intimacy and sex and life, a celebration of women” when it is actually “composed of emotional distance, politics, finance, and sexual repression”(13). Therefore even in the Hip Hop world “it is about men’s institutions and institutional power”(13).