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Guest post by co-organizer and co-moderator of Young Feminists Speak Out: LA, Miranda Petersen.
From left to right: 1. Myra Duran, Tani Ikeda, Jollene Levid, Brie Widaman, Miranda Petersen 2. Tani Ikeda, Jollene Levid, Brie Widaman
Last Thursday I served as Co-Moderator, along with Melanie Klein of Feminist Fatale, for the “Young Feminists Speak Out: Los Angeles†panel/mixer, which I helped organize along with Morgane Richardson, founder of Refuse The Silence, and Myra Duran.
The event was inspired in part by a recent piece in More Magazine that featured Morgane, along with other familiar feminist leaders such as Shelby Knox and Lena Chen. Our goal was to continue the conversation on what young feminism looks like today, while also calling attention to the often-overlooked work of feminists on the west coast, and providing a platform for young feminist activists to speak out in a forum where they would be shown respect and be taken seriously.
When considering potential speakers we aimed to capture the diverse, intersectional nature of LA-based feminist culture. The panelists included Myra Duran, Grassroots Community Organizer, Tani Ikeda, Founder and Co-director of ImMEDIAte Justice, Jollene Levid, National Chairperson for AF3IRM, and Brianne Widaman, Founder and President of Revolution of Real Women. Together, the panelists were able to speak to a broad range of issues—many of which are often left out of the mainstream feminist dialogue—including access to education/the DREAM Act, citizenship status and reproductive justice, anti-imperialism and anti-militarism, the fight against trafficking of women and girls, queer sexuality and sex education, body image and the media.
Our effort to include such a wide range of issues and individual styles led to an intense and empowering discussion on the need to address the underlying capitalist, patriarchal structure of our society, and the importance of re-framing the discussion in a way that is inclusive to everyone, especially those outside academia and the feminist blogoshpere. At the same time, having such a diverse group of panelists proved how challenging it can be to try and neatly encompass so many different approaches and ideologies within a traditional framework, such as a panel discussion. It is possible that trying to include so many different and unique experiences may have led to a less-cohesive dialogue than we anticipated, and it brings up the need to re-think our organizing methods and recognize our own assumptions of the “best†way to initiate a dialogue.
Written by Hugo Schwyzer. Originally posted at Hugo Schwyzer. Cross-posted with permission.
Last night, I went with some friends to the Young Feminists Speak Out event in Santa Monica, co-sponsored by Ms Magazine and other progressive organizations. I knew several of the organizers through Ms and the Feminist Majority (the offices of which are walking distance from my house).
But the speakers were terrific, including Melanie Klein (of Feminist Fatale and a fellow community college women’s studies prof); Morgane Richardson, Brie from Revolution of Real Women and Miranda Petersen and Myra Duran, both from Feminist Majority. (I’m sure I’m leaving someone out.) I got to meet some great folks whose work I admire, like Pia Guerrero, the founder of Adios Barbie. We had many of the heavy hitters of SoCal feminist activism all together, and that was wonderful.
Events like these, as several people pointed out, are less common in Los Angeles than they are in San Francisco or New York. Angelenos famously have a reputation for refusing to drive long distances for events on weeknights, though that’s more a stereotype than reality. I had students who came from the northern San Fernando Valley and from east of Pasadena, spending more than an hour on freeways to get to the event on Lincoln Avenue. Whatever the reason, gatherings like this are rarer than they probably ought to be.
The discussion got off to an awkward start, as the older folks in the room picked up on what we know was unintentional ageism. One panelist in her twenties said that an “older generation of feminists had fliers, we have Twitter.†My forty three year-old self looked at my dear friend and collaborator Shira Tarrant, who was standing with me in the back of the room. Shira and I are old enough to be the parents of most of the speakers – and we were the ones with our iPhones and Blackberrries in hand, tweeting live updates. (Check the hashtag #femla.) It was an innocent but annoying mistake that we hear a lot: the speaker had confused the kind of tools we used for organizing when we were their age with the kind of tools we use for organizing now. At least in my circle of activists, some of the most social-media savvy feminists (the ones with heavy Facebook, blogging, and Twitter presences) are old enough to remember Watergate. We don’t stop learning new tricks when we turn 40, people!
In light of Britney Spears’ recent unaltered photos, a recent guest post at Jezebel proclaimed feminism’s battle with the beauty myth as bourgeois and not worth the fight. Author, Helen Razer, claims that the efforts to expose the gruesome reality behind the beauty myth is a tiresome and unworthy battle that detracts focus from issues of “real gender equality.”
I recall an era when feminism’s purview was not limited to banging on about the need for more fat chicks in glossy magazines. While others fight for the right to force-feed Kate Moss, I continue antique fretting over equal pay, domestic violence and federal representation. At 40, I am old and clearly out of step with a movement that demands Size 14 representation.
She continues:
Yes. This just in: heat is hot, water is wet and teenagers are obsessed with their appearance. As such, let’s spend money on developing an industry code of conduct so that we can all enjoy the spectacle of more cottage cheese on Britney’s thighs.
Is it as simple as “teenagers are obsessed with their appearance?” I don’t think so. While the obsession with beauty has long been considered a narcissistic rite of passage among teens, beauty and body image issues are not limited to this demographic. Research shows that eating disorders and the preoccupation with beauty is found younger and younger girls as well as increasingly older women. Disordered eating, eating disorders and an overall obsession with the physical form is not limited to teens as part of a passing trend.
Not only are the consequences of the beauty myth not limited to a specific age group, it is notlimited to rich (“bourgeois”), white girls. In fact, the Eurocentric beauty ideal is exported the globe over via the mass media and continues to erase our physical diversity. The global reach of these manufactured and altered images result in more and more individuals conforming to homogeneous definitions of beauty.
As Brumberg traces in The Body Project: An Intimate History of Young Girls, physical beauty has become the sole measure of the worth of girls and women. This reduction of value and self-identification to the numbers on the scale and shape of one’s figure signals a sociohistorical shift in the ways in which girls and women are valued. It doesn’t matter if you’re intelligent, independent, competent, charismatic, artistic, or successful unless you’re thin, toned and flawless. In other words, you’ve got to be hot, too.
Gabriel Aubry just dumped Halle Berry. Apparently, she has peaked and is now well past her prime. As quoted in the Huffington Post on Friday:
“Gabriel just felt it wasn’t working anymore,” the source said. “When they were first together the 9-year age difference between them didn’t faze him, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever dated and he was totally in love. But as time went on he started feeling it more and more. Also, Gabriel started noticing other women, and being attracted to other, and he felt it just wasn’t right to stay with Halle in those circumstances.”
Despite the recent rash of over-40 celebs touted as hot and youthful such as Demi Moore, this is a prime example of the consistent ageism that exists for women in the entertainment industry. I have yet to hear of a younger woman dumping an older beau because the age difference became more pronounced and she began to notice other (presumably, younger) men.
That’s the implication in the statement above. “She was [italics mine] the most beautiful women he ever dated…” but time marched on he started to feel the 9-year age difference “more and more” and “began noticing other women.”
For women, our physical appearance and conformity to the dominant beauty norm (and adherence to the beauty myth), is the primary way we’re assigned value. This factor is even more heavily pronounced for women that make their livelihood in front of the public eye. It’s no wonder these women have difficulty resisting promises of youth in the form of expensive services and cosmetic surgery.
Suzanne Somers appeared on Oprah today and discussed her use of bioidentical hormones which she has sustained for a decade.
Not surprisingly, this fountain of youth can be obtained through extensive time, effort, and cost. Yip, that sounds realistic for the average woman. 60 pills daily? Sure. Estrogen daily? Bring it on. Progesterone two weeks a month? Check. A husband to make me my smoothie each morning to choke down those pills? Yup.
Somers invited cameras into her home to show her daily routine, seen below. First she rubs hormone lotion on the inside of her upper arm, always estrogen and two weeks a month progesterone. She then injects estriol vaginally, which she did not let cameras see.
Then there are her pills, all 60 of them. 40 in the morning with a smoothie and the rest at night. She admits the pill quantity is extreme, saying, “I know I look like some kind of fanatic.”
Hey, you said it.
This is a prime example of the five feminist critiques of the beauty norm in our culture:
1. COST (Hello!): time and money
2. Double-standard: her husband doesn’t seem too tripped out about his age and he looks FAR older than she does.
3. Choice and control: embracing a cult of youth and thinness as established, designed and perpetuated by large institutions that profit from this standard measure of beauty
4. Physical and mental health: dangerous drugs, toxic cosmetics and toiltries, barbaric exercise and food practices
5. Maintaining other forms of inequality: ageism, racism, classism
