Reality television pseudo celebrities, ultra-thin models and highly polished, high profile film stars are not the only women available for girls and women to emulate and admire.  In our continued effort to bring you new sheroes, women past and present, who have made and are making incredible contributions on a political and/or cultural level, we ask you to link to the Women’s Media Center.

If you’re not in the know yet, you should be. What is the Women’s Media Center?

The Women’s Media Center makes women visible and powerful in the media. Led  by our president, the former Rock the Vote head Jehmu Greene, the WMC works with the media to ensure that women’s stories are told and women’s voices are heard. We do this in three ways: through our media advocacy campaigns; by creating our own media; and by training women to participate directly in media. We are directly engaged with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, as sources and subjects.

The Women’s Media Center was founded in 2005 as a non-profit progressive women’s media organization by writers/activists Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of Women’s History Month, they’re profiling 30 extraordinary sheroes making history and contributing in vast and innumerable ways to all girls and women.

March is Women’s History Month! In recognition & honor of that we will be posting some pieces on historical female figures that we feel a special connection to. The first woman that always comes to mind when I’m asked that question is Simone de Beauvoir.

I was exposed to feminism for the first time when I was 19. My roommate at the time had just changed her major to Women’s Studies and – as such – was always going on about women in the military or single mothers or some other idea that at the time felt revolutionary and subversive (yeah, we felt that way in 2003). Well, I moved out and all of those crazy thoughts stagnated. I decided to take a philosophy class a year or so later.

I believe philosophy is still offered in college for one reason and one reason only – to infuse students with the drunken effects of the realization that they’re intelligent and capable of abstract thought. I loved philosophy! It was the most incredible class I had ever taken. Though, it was strange to me that we never talked about any women. I still have that text book. I remember getting to the incredibly tiny section of the book dedicated to feminist epistemology and our professor (who was a woman) telling us that it was “optional” reading. Of course, I read it.

Though she was not one of the few feminists they were focusing on, Simone was mentioned in the section by virtue of “The Second Sex.”  It was not even a paragraph. They mention her long enough to quote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” But that was enough….I was curious. I went to the library after class and picked up their copy. “The Second Sex” was originally published in 1949. It proposed such radical ideas as men creating  a false air of “mystery” and “piety” around women so as to avoid understanding them or their issues (still not so far from reality today). She also maintained that women were the ultimate “Other” in society. This book is credited with starting the Second Wave of Feminism, and she its mother. What resonated with me in was her admission that she had been oblivious to these states of being for most of her life. Up until that point she had felt empowered to do whatever she wanted with her life (by virtue of her race & class standing, of course).

I read every thing I could find about she and Jean-Paul Sartre, her life-long partner & philosopher. Sartre gave her credit as being his “filter” which many have taken to mean that she not only edited his work, but also may have wholly written much of it. When you google her name much attention is paid to the relationship that she had with Sartre in part due to his fame, but also because she herself said that her relationship with him was “the greatest achievement” of her life. They were in effect the poster-couple for open relationships and polyamory. Simone had a highly publicized and passionate relationship with American author Nelson Algren when she was in the United States doing research for “The Second Sex” in 1947. (Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis are making a film about their relationship set for filming this year!) 

Simone’s realtionship with Sartre has earned her a great deal of criticism and scrutiny from her fellow feminists. We can postulate as to why that is or whether or not she was happy with him, but it doesn’t really matter. She chose to stand outside of the norm and engage in a relationship that is just as radical today as it was in 1929 when she and Sartre agreed to it! She wrote autobiographies and metaphysical novels. She was active in the French feminist movement, and human rights campaigns. But, she lived in Sartre’s shadow. Even still, on the day of her death in 1986 the newspaper headlines read: “Womens, you owe her everything!”

I’m not sure what it was about her that moved me initially, but she became this ideal in my mind. A hero. Something that I had long maintained I didn’t have, didn’t want and was not seeking. But, her intellect and beauty inspired me to become a more grounded, active, and knowledgeable woman. A woman of action and thought. Her words are my personal mantra: savior et expriemer (to know and to communicate)!!

Mots à vivre près!!

Yes, I watched The Bachelor finale last night. Jake’s final pick, Vienna, the young and controversial self-professed “princess,” got the tabloid tongues wagging. But, I’m less interested in Vienna versus Tenley or Gia or Ali than I am interested in the lack of real kick-ass role models for young women and girls. As I search the cultural landscape, with it’s endless cheaply produced (and asinine) reality show fodder, I see few female icons that contribute anything meaningful to women’s and girl’s lives as a whole.

Hawking the latest diet pill, discussing how they got their bodies back 2 minutes after baby or how they lost weight and transformed into someone entirely new and entirely better is not exactly a pro-woman message and is lacking any sense of collectivity. Unfortunately, we have too many Heidi Montags, Viennas and single gals looking for some guy to “put a ring on it” on a variety of reality shows serving up played out and unrealistic gender roles. Most young girls and women know more about celebrity dating and diet habits than they know about the women (and men, of course) who made personal sacrifices and ushered in changes that many take for granted, from voting rights to reproductive rights.

So, it is time to resurrect the Featured Feminist (see previous posts for names and information) which was an effort to bring the names, faces and lives of in-the-world feminists to light. In celebration of 30 years of Women’s History Month, we’ll be bringing you feminist bios on some of our favorite feminists through history in a continued effort to raise consciousness and banish the collective amnesia that trades real effort and change for lap dogs in pink sweaters and diet secrets.