Packaging Feminism

One of my favorite books is called Packaging Girlhood, by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown. I don’t have my own copy, but I might as well because I’ve checked it out from the library at least five times. Over all it’s a good book, the main premise being that marketers are selling young girls a very, very limited idea of femininity, and the authors make some good points. But they also present a very limited (liberal, feminist) ideal of how they would like to see girlhood portrayed.

This morning I was reading a chapter that discussed cheerleading. It mentions an article in a popular cheerleading magazine that described the other interests and accomplishments of a few featured cheerleaders. They volunteered, raised money for charities, and got good grades. The authors don’t like this because they think it tells girls that they are only supposed to be nice and help others. They imagine what the magazine would look like if it featured “real” girls with “real” interests. They picture a drummer who starts a “funk/groove band,” a snowmobiling champion, the founder of a gay-straight alliance group, and an author of a one-woman play. They idealize girls who reject traditional femininity and champion liberal causes. Why do they envision the girl drummer playing in an alternative style band? Why couldn't they envision her playing in the worship band at her church, for example?

To be fair, the authors might be trying to appeal to as large an audience as possible by avoiding potentially inflammatory topics such as religion. But they mention the gay-straight alliance, and elsewhere in the book, one of their chief complaints is that girls portrayed in the media are almost always heterosexual. What they want is for girls to reject the media’s “packaged” version of femininity, but, though they don’t say it, they also seem to want girls to reject traditional values and anything that might be remotely conservative or religious. Why don’t they want girls who have strong faith and firm values (which, I would think, would make them better able to resist the onslaught of the media)?

Along with liberal, secular values, the authors also hold math and science up on a pedestal. Girls who play sports do better in science, they say. Could this be because both sports and science teach girls to reject their feminine traits? And one redeeming quality of music (an activity perceived as “girly”) is that it leads to better performance in math. Never mind that music is enjoyable and requires passion and diligence. Music is good for girls because it helps them do better in math so that they can someday have high powered careers and prove that women really are equal to men. Wouldn’t it be better if we encouraged girls (and boys) to pursue careers they are passionate about, instead of telling them to use their occupation to make a statement?

The authors reject and condemn any toy, book, song, movie, magazine, or article of clothing that suggests to girls that they will someday be mothers or promotes an interest in household things such as cooking. But there are girls who enjoy cooking and caring for children. To take a leaf out of the authors’ book, these skills and interests could lead them toward careers as professional chefs or kindergarten teachers. Even if they don’t, what is wrong with wanting girls to grow up to be loving, dedicated mothers who can cook healthy meals for their families instead of feeding them processed junk? What is wrong with wanting girls to be feminine, to be girls?

What bothers me is that they describe everything as an either/or situation. In their world you can be feminine or a feminist, but not both. That doesn’t seem to be what they want, since they’re envisioning cheerleaders who snowmobile and support gay rights. So why can’t they also imagine a world where girls can take calculus and dream about motherhood, where they can sing and play ice hockey with equal passion, where they can be conservative, religious drummers, and where they can reject the media’s version of femininity without rejecting all femininity? To me, that sounds much more equal and balanced than the packaged feminism they want to replace packaged girlhood with.

The authors sum up the chapter on cheerleading (after discussing the expectation that cheerleaders be athletic while still smiling and looking pretty at the same time) by suggesting dance, gymnastics, rap, and track as alternatives that use some of the same skills as cheerleading. One of the perks of these activities: the girls doing them don’t have to smile. All I can ask is why? Why, why, why would the authors not want to encourage the natural, beaming, impossible to hide smile that comes from doing something you honestly and truly love? Surely even the most ardent feminists wouldn’t have a problem with that.

Teenagers Sacre the Living S*** Out Of Me

DISCLAIMER: This post is very antagonistic as I was in a terrible mood when I wrote it. Please don't be offended. I was really just venting.

I’ve been in a very anti-teenager mood these last couple of days.

Partly this is because I’m happy again. I don’t know what it is, but something about the combination of cooler weather, November, the countdown to Magic Wednesday, the Christmas music we’re singing at choir rehearsal makes me happy. I want to skip and sing and clasp my hands together out of pure joy. It’s been a long time since I’ve been consistently happy for more than a couple of days so this is really nice. What does that have to do with teenagers? I’ve never met a less happy bunch than teenagers. It’s hard to be way excited about Magic Wednesday when everyone around you is moaning about how horrible it is that they have to spend Thanksgiving with their families. If one of the most relaxed, stress-free holidays of the year can’t make them happy, I don’t know what will.

Partly my anti-teenager mood is coming from my wish that everyone would follow the rules, just a little bit. What rules? Well, I’d settle for even basic ones like not texting at the table. I was writing a post about the evils of Twitter but I think my computer ate it so that it would have energy to spontaneously restart in the middle of the night. Silly booger. Anyway, whatever your actual person is doing at the moment automatically trumps anything that your cell phone might be doing (unless it is an emergency), particularly if whatever you are doing is a class or involves your family or someone more important than you. If teenagers could get their minds around this and this alone, that would be a great start.

Then there is the fact that I’m sick of all the rejection of families that’s always going on in teenage land. Whether or not you like your family, your first loyalty is to them and unless they’ve, say, committed an actual crime, you’d better keep your mouth shut about how much you don’t like them, especially your parents, and especially around the holidays. It’s not nice to ruin everybody’s holiday just because you think Aunt Jane doesn’t get you and you wish she didn’t have to come over for Thanksgiving. Friends are important, but friends can abandon and betray you in an instant. Your family is there forever. The holidays are nearly upon us. This is the one time of the year when anybody can be happy and no one can accuse them of not living in the real world. I don’t understand why teenagers don’t want to take advantage of that.

And there are the books. Now, relax, because I'm not going to start spouting about book banning and censorship. I don't really believe in those things, at least not where the printed word is concerned. But I'm as tired of futuristic dystopia and teens with huge problems as some people are of vampires. It always seems like those troubled teens and the citizens of the dystopia could have avoided a lot of problems if they had just followed the rules. If you're fifteen and your parents say you can't date, guess what, they know what they're talking about. And governments make laws. Not everybody is going to like those laws. That does not make them evil.

And finally, if I see one more pair of skinny jeans (particularly in acid was or in some obnoxious color) I’m going to poke somebody’s eyes out. Put on some real clothes and dress like an adult. Maybe people wouldn’t look down on you so much if you weren’t dressed like some sort of alien/juvenile delinquent hybrid. Whether you like it or not, first impressions matter.

I’m not trying to be mean to anybody (although I did say I was in a mood). But being polite, participating in family events with a happy face (if you can’t manage a happy heart) trying to look like a respectable citizen isn’t too much to ask, is it?

Fire, Fire

They say weird things happen on Halloween. But yesterday had to be one of the weirdest Halloweens ever, at least for me. Here's what happened while my mom and I were out doing errands:

The smoke detector in my brother's bedroom went off. Now, I burn candles so I've set the smoke detector off dozens of times. Usually it just stops going off once the candle smoke sort of dissipates or whatever. Anyway, the point is, I wouldn't be that freaked out by a smoke detector going off unless there was an actual fire of some sort. But my sister decided to get everybody outside and call the fire department. It's not what I would have done, but there's nothing wrong with that. You can never be too careful. Well, the fire department came and I guess they didn't find anything but a burnt piece of paper (?????) that my brother claims he was burning outside two weeks ago. But no fire. So everything's all good...except that my sister was running a bath when the smoke detector went off and she left the water running while the fire department came. It flooded the basement. This was about the time that my mom and I got home. The fire department must have just left because the door was still open and the dogs had got out, but fortunately they were still right there. My brother and sister did put towels all over the flooded basement so we just dumped all the towels in the washing machine and it was mostly all cleaned up. Stuff happens, you know.

But I was thinking, fire alarms make interesting stories. Think about it for a minute. How many stories have you heard about fire alarms going off when there was no fire? How many times have you actually been there when the fire alarm when off and there was no fire? When I was in junior high, somebody apparently took up pulling the fire alarm as an extracurricular activity. It happened at least once a week for about a month. It was fun if it happened in class because then you got to go stand outside and wait for the fire department to come and make sure there wasn't really a fire and you didn't have to do any work. But once it happened right after school and everybody who hadn't finished collecting their things from their lockers had to wait to go home until after the fire department came. I don't remember if they caught the fire alarm puller or if he just found a new hobby, but after awhile the extraneous fire alarms stopped.

Once the fire alarm went off in church. In the middle of a church service. In the middle of the sermon. I was in choir, and we all stood on the sidewalk in our choir robes and sang songs while we waited for the fire department. That sounds cool, but nobody was listening to us and it's really hard to stay in tune outside on a windy sidewalk. But we all laughed about it. That morning also became the inspiration for the opening scene of my trilogy (which, alas, is most likely going to be replaced by another opening scene that better shows what the story is about).

So that's my story of the crazy thing that happened on Halloween. And remember, fire alarms always make good stories.