Lavery-log

“I didn’t fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists,” writes Maureen Dowd. “I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex jeans and no-makeup look and drugs that zoned you out. . . In the universe of Eros, I longed for style and wit.”

I grew up without a notion of gender inequality. It wasn’t until my middle teens when I suddenly had the epiphany that I would, inevitably, be a victim of gender stratification. This notion was nevertheless put on the backburner for the remainder of my high school years. Once in college, though, women’s studies seemed the most enjoyable and beneficial choice for my humanities requirement.

I had no idea what to expect of my first day last semester. I nervously sat down in a room as diverse as any of my other classes thus far (with the exception of the female to male ratio).

After the hurdle of the unexpected, I anxiously anticipated every Wednesday night for impassioned discussion with a group of intelligent and inspired females-some were lesbians, some were heterosexuals, some black, white, or Asian, some butch, while some girly as can be. By the end of the semester, I suddenly realized what it meant to be a feminist, and from that general elective, a new passion was born inside of me.

But what at once seemed like an ingenious idea (a women’s studies minor and a dedication to focus my future career on the subject) has suddenly started to become polluted with preconceived notions of what it means to be a feminist. Suddenly, I feel as if my motives and maturity are constantly being tested and second-guessed.

How can I be a hard-core feminist if I’d rather wear heels than Birkenstocks, makeup rather than no make-up, polished hair rather than unkempt hair that makes a blatant statement of “I don’t care!”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care. We all care. Everyone has their unique style that makes them feel comfortable with themselves. It’s more about personal choice. It’s about dressing to make yourself smile. Isn’t that what the feminist movement was all about-not being judged or punished by a womanly-exterior or a lack of the Y chromosome?

Sometimes, I feel unwelcome in the feminist club. I feel as if, to truly be accepted within this group, I am going to have to give up something that has always been very near and dear to my heart-fashion. I feel as if I am seen as a feminist imposter.

Surely, Andrea Dworkin would snuff her nose at my trendy clothes and Betty Freidan would shake her head in disappointment at my three-inch tall heels.

“What I didn’t like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike,” again writes Maureen Dowd. “They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.” Just as the plastic-surgery epidemic has created a mass of plastic-like aspiring actresses and singers and trophy-wives, being selective in who can label themselves as “feminist” does the same thing.

Radical action is needed, however, to make all females understand our cause, no matter what their personal style. We are not an army of anti-femininity. Rather, we are an army of anti-gender inequities.

It’s easy to call a girl a slut.

It’s even easier, if you’re a female, to be called one.

And even though, for years, feminists have been screaming for sexual liberation and for women everywhere to throw away the misogynistic notion that men can have sex with whoever they want while their partners have to tiptoe around a bad reputation, their efforts have become a little misconstrued along the way.

Sure, women and men alike can rack up as many notches in their bedposts as they want. They can even write it off as an exercise of sexual freedom, but does that really make it a good idea?

A study done for the recent publication of the Journal of Sex Research, “No Strings Attached: The Nature of Casual Sex in College Students,” concluded that college-aged women who have a history of casual sex feel more depressive symptoms after their sexual experiences than men do.

Maybe it is because men have sex for the sake of sex. And women – aside from fictional characters like “Sex and the City’s” Samantha – have it in the hope of a relationship, in the hope of adoration – however fleeting – from their partner.

The study found that 18 percent of women and 3 percent of men thought their most recent casual sex experience was “the beginning of a romance,” and this disparity, the authors said, could be the reason for the gender gap in depressive symptoms.

Hm.

So, men want sexual conquests; women want roses brought to their doors. Could the findings of this study be any more cliché?

Samantha of “Sex and the City” is the quintessential sexually-liberated female. She has sex like men, with no deep desire for romantic commitment or romantic small-talk, and she is completely frank about her sexual experiences – no cutesy words where explicit ones will do.

Because “Sex and the City” is such a prolific show, since so many college girls watch it religiously and ascribe themselves and their friends to a particular character, it’s important to note one thing about Samantha that’s often left off the list of what makes her special.

She, like the men in the study, enjoys sex, not the glimmer of romance.

But even Samantha gets her emotions all twisted up in the bedroom. In reality, most newspaper columnists don’t make enough money to afford Manolo Blahniks and brownstone Greenwich Village apartments, not to mention that people can scarcely engage in such intimate acts so casually without the tiniest bit of emotions – good or bad – leaking out.

Maybe women and men alike, unless they’re some rare breed of human like Samantha, should keep their belts tightly fastened until they’re in full control of what’s to come.

Maybe women should realize that, judging by the findings in this study, the majority of college-aged men don’t care about romance when they’re jumping in the sack. Maybe some women should start having sex for their pleasure, not to hopefully pleasure him so much that he suddenly wants a relationship.

It’s not the 1950’s anymore – and thank God for that. Couples no longer have to hide behind separate beds, birth control isn’t criminal and short skirts and heels are no longer just for your friendly neighborhood hooker.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying sex or safely engaging in it to your heart’s content; however, when female college students are responding to studies so negatively, there is obviously something wrong here.

On Feb. 2008, CNN anchor Toni Collins presented breaking news about a deadly shooting in suburban St. Louis.
According to CNN’s Web site, a gunman killed five people and wounded two Thursday night at a police station and City Council meeting before officers shot and killed him.
Witnesses identified the gunman as Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton, a man who they said regularly disrupted meetings to make complaints, though he didn’t make it clear what his concerns were.
CNN affiliate KMOV-TV in St. Louis provided coverage and interviews.
Thornton’s brother, Gerald, told KMOV-TV that his brother had serious grievances with the city government. He said that Thorton “went to war tonight with the people that were of the government.”
The interviewer then hounded him with interrogation, asking if he truly thought murder could be justified.
Thorton’s brother, clearly shaken, tried to explain the complexity of the issue. While he didn’t explicitly condemn his brother’s actions, he attempted to put the event into some context.
“The only way that I can [explain it] that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people that were of the government that was putting torment and strife into his life,” Thornton said to the KMOV journalist, who continued to ask how he could even remotely defend the incident.
The argument went back and forth for a while before Collins interrupted.
Collins, his voice-over silencing the interview, called Thorton “crazy” and said that CNN would have to stop showing the interview.
Yes, opening fire on a City Council meeting—or anywhere—is, indeed, crazy. And, yes, the idea of Thorton attempting to defend his brother’s actions is a bit crazy, as well. But it is not Collins’s role to label it as such, nor is it ethical to interrupt an interview that may have provided enlightening information just because he deemed it “crazy.”
I often find Collins’s commentary unnecessary. He spends a little too much time making jokes with his fellow anchors and inserting his personal opinions on breaking news.
But this particular interruption struck me as an ethical issue. Collins is not a psychologist. He’s a journalist. It’s not his job to decide whether CNN’s subjects are sane. It’s his job to straight-forwardly report the news.

The 2008 presidential race has an unparalleled number of firsts. We’ve seen the first African-American candidate reach near front-runner status. We’ve seen a president and congress with all-time-low approval ratings make way for a palpable eagerness demanding a fresh start.

And we’ve seen the arrival of Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be a serious presidential possibility; the first First Lady to try to make her way back to the White House.

These firsts have created a struggle within the media to give adequate and fair coverage to the many presidential hopefuls. With Bill Clinton’s wife and a Democrat with the middle name “Hussein” in the running, though, how much excitement can really be garnered for a flock of white, middle-aged men?

As the Democrat front-runner, Clinton is in the public eye more than her opponents. But after looking through the vast media coverage of her and comparing it to other hopefuls, it’s obvious that it has more to do with her lack of a Y chromosome. Clinton’s coverage is far from fair and balanced. Instead, the media has had a field day dissecting her every move and not-so-gracefully dealing with her gender.

Female politicians have long struggled with a permeating damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don’t attitude running in American politics. Women in power are oft criticized or perceived as “soft” or “weak” if considered too traditionally feminine, while they are also accused of being too “hard” or “strident” if they come off as assertive and powerful — traditionally masculine attributes. Looking through the media coverage of Clinton over the past year, it seems that a lot of journalists just don’t know what to do with a strong, female candidate. Old-fashioned sexism prevails, as seen in the repeated scrutiny of her appearance and the concentration on her role—and attitude toward—marriage and motherhood.
Here is just a sampling of the sexist coverage of Clinton over the past year: An opinion article in The Oklahoman referenced her “frequent wearing of dark pants suits to conceal her bottom-heavy figure.” Political cartoonist Nick Anderson created an animated cartoon which ran on the Houston Chronicle website featuring a curvaceous Clinton being asked, “What you gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside your trunk?” Though this comic was clearly an opinion piece and not bona fide hard news, it is important to note that, had it been commentating on a male candidate’s figure, it would have been unprecedented and shocking.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (who I usually look to for a strong feminist perspective), has written pieces denigrating Clinton such as her “Mama Hugs Iowa” column on Jan. 31. Dowd asserts that as First Lady, Clinton showed off “a long parade of unflattering outfits and unnervingly changing hairdos.” Not only is Clinton’s current wardrobe an issue for media scrutiny, but what she wore (and how she styled her hair) in 1992 seems to be as well. On Feb. 9, Reuters reported fashion designer Donatella Versace’s advice that “Hillary Clinton should tap into her feminine side and wear dresses and skirts instead of trousers.”
Florida paper Sun-Sentinel added insult to injury with a Feb. 16 article by Jura Koncius about Rosemarie Howe, Clinton’s interior designer, and how she helped the Senator decorate her Embassy Row house in a “comfortable yet elegant” scheme of “camel and coral.”

U.S. News & World Report’s Gloria Borger accused her on Feb. 12 of using a “mommy strategy” to feminize her image and appeal to voters by playing up her role as a mother and wife.
Hardball host Chris Matthews has become, in my eyes, synonymous with sexism and Clinton. On Dec. 19, 2006, he compared her to “a stripteaser saying she’s flattered by the attention,” and on Jan. 25 and 26, 2007, he referred to her as an “uppity woman.”

Most of the journalism aforementioned in this argument came from op-ed pieces. But these are not the only outlets with permeative misogyny. The Washington Post ran an article on July 20 entitled “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory.” The article’s lead: “There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.” After briefly discussing what it was that Clinton was discussing (the burdensome cost of higher education, a worthy topic), the article divulges: “She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape.

The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.”

Unbelievable.

It is refreshing, however, that some journalists have actually been able to recognize the pervasive sexist tone of Clinton’s coverage. Salon.com’s Tim Grieve writes in a Jan. 22 column that, “although national polls show that more than 90 percent of Americans say they’d be comfortable voting for a qualified woman to serve as president, NIU political scientist Matt Streb says that a ‘a significant percentage of people are hiding their true feelings’ because they know that opposition to a candidate based on gender alone is socially unacceptable.” Grieve goes on to assert that Clinton isn’t running for “first woman president,” she’s “running for president, period.”

USA Today’s Annette Fuentes expresses a refreshing point-of-view in a Feb. 13 op-ed article. “Women in government stand out because of their strength, intellect and ideas — not because of their hemlines,” she writes. “Yet here we are in 2007 still treating powerful women like a novelty.” Gail Dines, sociology and women’s studies professor at Wheelock College in Boston, told Fuentes that women politicians are often valued more for their appearance than their ability. “To be a woman politician,” Dines suggests,” you have to strategize and work hard, and yet what matters is what designer you’re wearing. It’s a way to make women in power less scary. It’s putting women into a comfort zone for those who are still baffled by how to treat strong women.”

According to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy conducted on October 27, 2007, the tone of coverage of Hillary Clinton was far more negative than positive. Clinton received the most coverage out of all of the candidates (17% of stories), though she can assumedly thank the overwhelming and largely negative attention of conservative talk radio hosts for much of the edge.

The solution is easy. Journalists, collectively, need to take a stand. Remember why they got into the business in the first place (I would be even more worried if they became reporters to discuss necklines rather than actual politics). Next time a reporter, op-ed columnist or cartoonist decides to weigh in on Clinton, they need to fight the urge to focus on her aesthetic or their own sexist notions, and listen to what the woman has to say. Chastise her for her politics, not her “uppitiness,” her “mommy-factor” or her interior decorating techniques.

Gender stratification has come a long way in the United States, but it still has a long way to go. Women still only make .75 cents to every man’s dollar, and Hillary Clinton still has to worry about her cleavage getting just as many headlines as her policies.

The popular notion is that fashion equals silly and mindless, while rebellion from “trends” equals individualistic and intelligent. It is hard to be taken seriously on an academic level while still clinging to a love of the aesthetic.

It’s understood that fashion and brains just do not mix.

However, President Bill Clinton had a personal stylist. President John F. Kennedy had a personal stylist, or an impeccably styled wife. President George W. Bush – though not the most shining example of intellectualism – has his suits, his casual wear, his ties and shoes carefully coordinated to appeal to the public.

Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in the short political history of the United States, dresses immaculately. Her Armani suits and perfectly coiffed hair are pervasively analyzed by the media, somehow finding its way to infiltrate even the most straightforward of news stories. Hillary Clinton, too, is repeatedly put under the sartorial microscope.

We take for granted the choices of the men appearing on our television sets day in and day out, with all of the subtle variations of navy blue and black shades of their suits.

When it became public that Al Gore, during his bid for the 2004 election, was paying a consultant to help him appeal to women and appear as an “alpha-male,” he became the laughing stock of the media. Nobody congratulated Gore’s attempt to play into the zeitgeist of social-cultural trends in the country – something that every politician, whether made publicly or not, undeniably does.

Instead, his new three-buttoned, earth-toned look was hilarious in the eyes of the media and of Gore-skeptics.

And still, amidst the undeniable fact that fashion plays an essential role in the approval of politicians, in the understanding of each other, the word “fashion” alone is enough to ensure a guffaw from most academics.

Political revolution is, for the most part, driven by fashion. From the eradication of corsets to the bellbottoms of the ’60s, men and women have articulated the will for historical change in their chosen aesthetic. On the other hand, fashion itself represents its changes as revolutionary advancement, liberations, experiments in shocking forms of life that challenge the ideals of the past.

Right alongside this exchange between fashion and politics is a deep hatred of fashion, a heretical desire for a rebellion that will eradicate the masks, the costumes and “fakery.”

The first thing Adam and Eve supposedly did after eating the forbidden fruit was to adorn themselves with fig leaves. Most attribute this to shame, but, who knows – maybe the green of the leaves really brought out the hazel in Adam’s eyes. The aesthetic of humans isn’t inherently that vibrant – we don’t have loose skin we can puff up or feathers we can stick out. Instead, we use clothing.

Take a look at your shoes. If you’re on campus and wearing a pair of stilettos – first of all, you’re insane – but you’ve chosen the image you want to send. You’re sexy. You’re fierce. You don’t care if you’re in agonizing pain on your way to class; looking hot takes higher priority. If you’re wearing a sleek pair of flats, however, you’re telling the world that you want to look good, but you have work to do. If you’ve chosen worn-in, well-loved, holes-in-the-soles sneakers, you’re making a definite statement that you don’t care – comfort matters more than anything else, which is, essentially, just as much of a fashion choice as over-the-knee pleather boots.

I love fashion. I love it almost as much as intellectual pursuit and politics. This sad thing is, though, this makes me somehow less credible among academia.

The pervasiveness of fashion is undeniable. Just because you’re too cool to pay attention to trends or too unique to shop at mainstream stores – the fashion industry has you by the neck and is rippling its way through your closely guarded closet and those of every major politician and public figure.