brazen beauty feminists
Maureen Dowd's article in the NY Times "What's a Modern Girl to Do?" is compelling. She hits all the major points, I agree with most of her musings. But WHY must she then qualify with this glam pose of her lugubriously vamping in the bar? Her shiny red hair set off by her even shiny-er, redder, shoes: "There's no place like home! " her picture seems to cry, "But I can also run the boardroom".
Well that's great. Good thing you've shown us you are beautiful, I'll listen more carefully now.
Read and see her at:
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html
posted by Arty Povera @ 10:31 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
ha ha, no place like home. love it.
ok, let's assume dowd actually had some creative say in the photo (we have all seen 'single and fabulous?', carrie bradshaw's heinous nonconsensual NY magazine cover shot). i think dowd's objective in being so-photographed is to reinforce her point in the article that second-wave feminism was too hairy/stinky for some women who just can't help liking looking/smelling clean. it is still very irritating to be a feminist in circles that are often dominated by hairy armpits who consider their well-groomed (and likely just as educated and angry) sisters to be traitors. (i am kidding here a bit, people, given my hairiness). but i do think this is a very difficult thing for women: do we want men to also be subjected the beauty mythologization...recalling that argument that bush won on his better looks, gag? (no, but we still like men to be handsome, often in very old-school ways). Do we want to dress ourselves without feminazi eye-rolling? (yes, because the paternalistic gaze is paternalistic, even from a woman). Do we want a visual culture that does not understand style as trampiness? (yes, for the mental health of our young britneys in training, expecially). How to make this happen? Demonizing beauty as backlash against the beauty myth will not do it; beauty is nice. Creating space for women in public domains (such as international journalism) inherently disarms the discourse of objectification where a woman is a public agent only in so much as she is a personified petting zoo.
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