My tits will be the death of me

Oh Jessica Valenti, how you are my hero lately. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find her book, Full Frontal Feminism, not only extremely eye opening and charismatically fierce, but also very informative and filled with so many valid points I never even thought twice about these past 20 years of my life.

Two points Valenti made in the reading really put a bee in my bonnet, and quite frankly pissed me off. She states on pages 197-198 that her friend who suffered from bulimia for quite some time knew she was slowly killing herself, yet she still continued bingeing and purging. Her reasoning was she “would rather live a shorter life as a skinny girl than a full life being fat.” Wow. The sad part about this story is most of us women (and some men!) think and feel this way in one way or another. I know I am guilty of going all 4 years of high school with one thing on my mind- being skinny and pretty. Scholastics were, sadly, at the bottom of my priority list. I felt as though this is what I needed to do. Not learning to my fullest ability and living up to my full potential is perhaps one of my biggest, if not only regret in life. These images and subconscious feelings and norms of what women need to be can greatly distort women’s focus. Naomi Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth, our standards of feminine beauty have greatly devolved into, essentially, anorexia. Wolf continues to say “But in spite of shame, guilt, and denial, more and more women are wondering if it isn’t that they are entirely neurotic but rather that something important is indeed at stake that had to do with the relationship between female liberation and female beauty.”
This brings me to the second point Valenti made that perturbed me. Valenti shares a story of how she was invited to a luncheon with former president Bill Clinton. She wears a modest crew neck sweater and is accused by bloggers and in particular, law professor Ann Althouse, of basically shoving her tits in Clinton’s face. This struck a never because it reiterates the fact that as long as I have boobs, I will never be taken seriously. Or, rather, if I do not have boobs and dress unfeminine, I am a lesbian.

Boobgate

I was outraged by the criticism that author and blogger Jessica Valenti received over a modest photo taken with President Clinton and other bloggers. Due to her youth, beauty and success she was automatically subject to remarks on how she got to where she is today. Many websites and bloggers tried to sexualize her based on her clothes and breasts. One blogger in particular said that Valenti chose too fitting of a blouse and was showing off her breasts to the president in the photo. Some commented on her looking like an intern, a reference to the sexualized Monica Lewinsky. Others simply called her ugly.

Looking at the actual photo (seen above: Valenti is in the light colored top), I cannot see any logic in the statements of the websites. Based on the beauty myth, young women cannot get far without being reminded that their worth is based on their appearances. Valenti calls this tactic the Shut-the-Fuck-Up Tool. When women reach a higher place they are ridiculed for their looks and are therefore shoved back into the place women should be: subservient to men.

The most upsetting part of this situation is that women were among the bloggers that were criticizing Valenti’s success. Is the Madonna/Whore dichotomy do ingrained in our society that even women will cannot stand up for one another and must criticize each other in order to bring ourselves up and others down? It seems that we as women should try harder to support one another upon reaching success. I think that this is something I will take away from this reading. In my daily life I will support women’s success and beauty and remind others not to criticize each other.

Playing Hangman

Both Scanlon and Kimmel make good points as to how society shapes gender. It is interesting to see the subliminal messages pointed out in such an obvious way. It feels like I’m playing a game of hangman and when looking directly at the answer seems so distant and unachievable, but when it is told to me it is a complete “Oh/Duh!” moment. Having grown up playing/owning the games that Scanlon mentions makes me wonder how many of the letters given to me were from society and how many were from my parents. I always thought that my brother and I were the exceptions to the rules and that our parents influenced us more than society. Neither of us were ever pushed to “do” our gender by our parents, but as I look back I realize that we “did” gender almost to a T and I think a lot of it had to do with the games we played. We weren’t avid TV watchers, but we loved to play games. Games that were very gender specific. Like I said my games included those mentioned and others like them. His games were Legos, Army men, cars, Cowboys and Indians, and other toys that involved imagination, but still kept to the norm of potential violence and aggression as well as domination. The games we played with our parents were very gender neutral and included a fair amount of intellect to play in relation to age. Those games, however, were not influential enough to change the outcome of our game.

While our games are not yet over they are proving to be tough to change, I with my happiness dependent on having a man in my life and he with his “strong” silence and lack of emotion are proof that society has made us who we are regardless of what our parents said or did. It’s difficult to accept that those subliminal messages actually worked and are still working 20 years later. I see the same games in stores with updated boxes, but with the same picture and description and I wonder if girls today are still buying into it. So far they appear to be, and the popularity of these games has crossed over into the virtual world which a much more powerful influence on kids and teens today.

What happened to Hide and Seek?

While reading Scanlon's essay on board games and the socialization of adolescent girls, it brought my memory back to my earlier years and I tried to see myself in the position that adolescents view themselves now through the boardgames. However, I was not compatible to any of the issues she addresses in her essay. Perhaps I was not as exposed to these issues because of my surroundings. I completely agree that the board games do encourage girls to use clothing and make-up to make them look pretty, but I beleive that the media is a major influence on how gender and sex impacts adolescents. Most of them are visual learners and if they like what they see then that's what they'll be.
The problems addressed in the board games are all issues present in the media today. For example, in any t.v. show we see a girls intent to get a boyfriend or to at least get close to a guy in some way or another. It didn't surprise me that the object of these board games was to get a boyfriend. Along with this objective came other obstacles such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Gender is portrayed through the games by having girls play feminine roles and having boys play masculine roles. The game defines for the players what they should do or how to act to be considered a girl or a boy. Race and heterosexuality are also important contributers to the game. Most of the characters are white with white-sounding names and if there were the posibility of there being a colored character it would be a male. Scanlon states that in one of the games, the directions specifically state that they cannot pair a girl with another girl or a boy with another boy. This encourages heterosexism and perhaps even triggers a bit of homophobia.
Not all is bad with these board games. At least girls learn to communicate with eachother. While growing up in my community I was surrounded by different ethnic backgrounds and was always playing outside. I never really liked the indoors so I was limited to the amount of media that I absorbed. I was always outside playing hide and seek with boys and girls of all ages. What happened to playing hide and seek? Have the board games and all other indoor activities taken over?

Sexism at an Early Age

I thought that Scanlon’s article really opened my eyes to how big of problem sexism and male privilege is in our society. Bringing children and their games into the cycle seems like a shameful act but it actually makes a lot of sense. If you train girls while they are young, it is easier to brainwash them. Society makes them think that the point of life is to have a boyfriend and that a career is not as important. If these values are established in their brains early, then they won’t question it when they get older. It’s actually a genius thought out plan that keeps males in power. Little boys do not have games where the point is to get a girlfriend or anything similar to the games that girls have. Girls learn early that they need to be dependent on males and the cycle continues throughout their lives. It is interesting that the people who create these games are all men. Why would a group of all men know what little girls want to play? They do not really care because they create turns into what threes girls want to play. I am sure that no matter what game was made these girls would play them so the people who create these games take advantage of this. I can remember when I was young I used to play a game called Pretty, Pretty Princess. The goal of the game was to collect different articles of jewelry like earrings, bracelets, necklaces and eventually the crown. Looking back, this game was shaping me and all the other girls that jewelry is important and supports the saying of many women,” Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” It’s unfortunate to see this take place at such a young age but it only supports the fact that males are in power and will do anything to keep that power.

Boys will be boys

Kimmel's article "What are little boys made of" exposes the ignorance of men when it comes to how boys are raised. This is shown when Kimmel shows us researchers who base boy's behavior primarily on biological differences such as when researchers use terms "testosterone surging through their little limbs", and "testosterone equals vitality". All these researchers refuse to acknowledge the fact that boys are raised to be the way they are. You know they are in complete denial especially when they come up with an excuse for boys not listening to well due to their own fact that boy's "ear canals develop in irregular spurts".

Looking at this article and looking back at my life I can easily identify moments in my life when my father told me to suck it up. My dad telling me to never cry. He even told me to fight back if someone dared to mess with me. And I wonder why I was so violent as a child. To generalize boy's behavior based on biological differences and ignoring the way boys are raised in eyes is complete madness. The reason being the fact that i have friends who were boys raised in the exact same way my father tried to raise me.

Gender Roles being defined by games?

Scanlon offers many points about defining what boys and girls are. She brings up many games that we don’t really pay much attention on how they influence young girl to focuses on their beauty over their success. For example, one of the games state as The Sweet Valley High board game emphasizes how young girls should be prepared with all the accessories needed to obtain a date but it doesn’t bring up the tools to be successful without a male present. As young girl, i was always encouraged to be successful and obtain a bright future by focusing on my education. I was not bought games such as the ones Jennifer discusses in her article. And when I was bought a game, my parents never really analyzed what the true message was aiming at. A recent experience I had was with the first grade girls was portrayed this exact message. The two girls asked ,” so how pretty do I look today?”. I was surprised at how concerned the young girls were over how important was everything else.  Young girls are encouraged to look pretty by adding accessories of make-up and cute clothes to attract the cute boys. The media, magazines, and even board games that are aimed at a certain gender to fufill their expectations is clearly stated  and reinforced by this type of media.

Another important point the Scanlon states in her works is the fact that girls must do whatever it is to obtain a boyfriend. This example is clearly stated in the game “Meet me at the mall” which I have never heard of. It’s amazing how the games objectives is to “steal a boyfriend” if that’s what it takes to live up to the role of being a girl. This “expectations” in girls states, all you need to focuse on is find the perfect male figure regardless of what measures need to be done. We need to change the way we portray girls by speaking out about what the media and board games are emphasizing our young children. We need to educate our children about what is important which is our education not our looks.