Previously

Previously, all the blogs prior to this one actually, this blog was indebted to a Women's Studies course which is a mandatory general education requirement at my women's college. That makes perfect sense and it was a great course though I really didn't learn anything new and was forced to write inane blogs about assigned readings but we won't go into that. However, I like the name and I love to blog so I thought I'd return to the standard 90's internet hobby here. I used to have one of those ancient MySpace blogs which...probably still exists somewhere out on the internet but I'm not sure I could find it now even if I tried. I currently just tumbl and Facebook and those are not ideal outlets for actual textual blogging. Reposting nifty pictures and whiny status updates can be easily avoided here where I hope to stick to the "traditional" craft of blogging, being mostly text and linkage where applicable. Still, I am an art historian at heart so if you find I become overly attached to posting new photos and writing about exciting new gallery openings, please forgive me.
This blog post will most likely be short and to the point, a preliminary sort of thing rather than anything profound of exhilarating. The primary reason for that being that I am currently making dinner and I'm going to need to jump up any minute and finish it.
The basics about me? I'm 22. I'm female, at least that is how I self identify and the world at large would define me based on my genitals and cultural roles. I do my best to buck convention in most cases, however, and am aided in my quest to live an exciting, beautiful, unconventional life is my amazing Lover. We've been together for four years and approximately 5 months and we're very in love and very happy. I'm currently finishing up my last semester as a senior at the aforementioned women's college. I'm a double major in English literature and art history and I intend to go on to get my Ph.D. in art history. I love the stuff and it's been good to me so I consider it a winning aspiration. I'd like to teach at the college level. No museums for me, thank you very much. I mean, I love to visit them, I just can't imagine reporting to one as my base of operations for years on end. I think I'd lose my bloody mind. Anyway, I'm currently awaiting rejection letters from the University of Toronto, Brown University, Indiana University at Bloomington, and the University of Chicago. If one or more of them decides to send me an acceptance letter instead, however, I will not complain. Not at all. In fact, I will dance with joy and celebrate until I collapse into a little jubilant heap on the floor. Then the stark reality of grad school will hit me with all the additional implications of moving to an entirely new place, trying to find funding, and hoping I manage to make friends and do well despite my crippling social awkwardness. I am currently still on holiday from ordinary classes but I am continuing to bagel slave as my form of employment and I am doing research for my art history thesis which is due next semester. My thesis for English literature was completed (except for minor editing) last semester so this is the semester I focus on Robert Mapplethorpe. He's rather an interesting fellow to say the least and I am thoroughly enjoying studying his life and art. I hope that my comprehensive work on his sculptural works and late career return to classicism will be substantial and maybe even publishable (?) so I probably won't post much about it here, aside from the few odd facts, quotes, images, etc. I think are interesting but mostly unrelated to my particular topic. So, that's me and what I'm doing at moment. Dinner is calling for me to complete it so, off I go.

Foci

I think the top three foci of the feminist movement should be: 1. The abolishment of violence against women, 2. The construction of a unified, globalized feminist movement, and 3. Equal rights for women in all areas of life, politically and in the domestic sphere. I think the abolishment of violence against women should be the most important goal of the feminist movement purely because it is the issue which is most pressing. It encompasses the most heinous atrocities committed against humans and must be stopped as quickly as possible. Too many women suffer too much for no other reason than that they are female and being oppressed for that characteristic. Only in a time of peace can other progress be made. When women are struggling to survive and fleeing for their lives, they have no opportunity to organize and fight against the systems which have initiated and perpetuated the violence being committed against them. Stability must be gained in order to make strides in other areas of women’s rights.

That said, I think these things are all interconnected. Violence against women is the result of institutional prejudices and cultural ideologies which must be altered significantly in order to abolish the acts of violence themselves. The feminist movement can only work toward preventing and abolishing violence against women by addressing the portrayal of women in media and culture as objects and possessing symbolic value as figureheads of ethnic, cultural, and religious identity. The feminist movement must work to alter these social, political, and cultural representations and expectations of women in order to abolish violence at its root causes.

In order to be able to make such huge revolutionary changes in these areas of culture, society, and politics, it is necessary to have a strong, unified movement which is becoming easier and easier to do with globalization. A universal feminist movement which focuses on specific areas, regions, and issues but is united in a common cause for the safety and equality of women would be ideal. The resources are available to create such a network of support and a strong feminist front which can operate on a significant level through power of numbers to change society at large. However, the feminist movement is divided amongst itself in factions over petty ideological concepts. They argue about issues such as abortion and women’s rights and equality, over which issues should be given precedence and the solution which should be enacted. Yet, I think that in large part, the feminist movement is working toward the same end goal. The renunciation of concerns over small discrepancies is necessary for the movement to unite and be effective in producing change. If the movement could establish a set of common goals, then individual organizations could focus on their specific agendas at the same time as they unify and all work in common against the most major concerns. Only a unified, global movement can be strong enough to alter our societies and cultures significantly enough to make true progress. Additionally, there is much to be learned from sister feminist movements across the globe. If we can learn and give to one another in terms of theory, resources, and strategy, then we can make the world a better place for all women everywhere.

I think that a major focus for the feminist movement should be equal rights for women in all areas of life because it is only when women are empowered from the microlevel (domestically) to the macrolevel (global politics) that their voices can be heard and their concerns addressed. Without proper representation and rights, women are powerless to advance their cause and better the world for their children. This is a necessary result of a unified, global lobbying for change and advancement of the cause of women’s rights. They must be given the power to evoke change in their lives, in the world, and then to maintain it through continued representation and political power.

Marginalized Minorities

            Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article outlines a number of ways in which most women of color suffering from domestic violence are excluded from services which claim to protect them. Some of the reasons are less the fault of the service providers and more the fault of cultural and societal pressures. For instance, she says that as a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990 which as designed to protect immigrant women being battered by the US citizens they moved to the United States to marry. It prohibits application for permanent residency until after at least 2 years of being “properly” married and it demands the application be filed by both spouses. This act caused many immigrant woman to be reluctant to leave their abusive partners because they did not want to be deported. Even after pressure to create a opportunity for these women to leave their spouses without fear of deportation it took a while for a waiver to be made available to claim domestic violence. Yet, most immigrant women have limited access to the resources to file the waiver and provide evidence that they are, in fact, being abused. Many cultural barriers also contribute to their inability to file the waiver and their reluctance to report domestic violence. Many minority women live with their extended families which means they have very little privacy and no opportunity to leave the home and communicate their distress to help centers. Additionally, they are often entirely dependent upon their husbands as a link to the outside world and for information regarding their legal status.

Even women who are permanent residents remain with their abusive partners because their husbands threaten them with the fear of deportation. They could not possibly be deported but they are unaware of the reality of the situation and rely on their husband’s manipulative misinformation. They often fear that they will put their entire family at risk of deportation if they call attention to themselves. Additionally, Crenshaw’s article focuses on the issue of language barriers. Many shelters limit their services to individuals who are English proficient. They turn away non-English speakers because they don’t have bilingual personnel or resources. Efforts to include women who are of minority cultures or who don’t speak English are often merely afterthoughts for these institutions and when the shelter in the article finally did begin to make efforts to include a Latina board, they ended up driving off their minority committee members by refusing to recognize their feminist credentials and forcing them to struggle with the bureaucracy of race and class issues instead of actively helping women suffering violence. The Latina women walked out of the program sick and tired of not accomplishing any good and returned to their own community programs. This was counterproductive, obviously because these women could not assist the program in diversifying its services because their hands were tied by politics.

Other women’s services which discriminate against women of color are organizations such as Planned Parenthood (traditionally anyway). I think recently they have removed themselves pretty substantially from their past of forced-sterilization and supposed goal of “killing black babies.” Another organization which I know of locally is SOS. The program has recently enforced a strict dress code and  appearance guidelines which transform their advocates from the tattooed, pierced, alternatively hair styled women (and men) into upper-crust white-collar, pristinely dressed and sanitized “representatives” of the program. This has driven many of my friends away from the role of advocates because they felt that the limitation of their free speech and individual expression would have a negative impact for the victims they were attempting to help. If I were a rape victim I’d be much happier talking to someone pierced and tattooed, someone I could relate to, who wasn’t looking down on me from above (literally and figuratively) but someone like me. The program worried that victims would be made uncomfortable by the alternative appearances of their advocates, but I think it is quite the opposite. I think victims would be made more uncomfortable by being approached by women (and men) dressed professionally with supremely tidy ‘caucasionised’ dress. The victims of rape in South Bend are often members of minority cultures and subcultures who do not relate to the white middle class image, yet the program insisted that its advocates take it up in the name of helping the recipients of their services feel “more comfortable.”

The white, upper-middle-class women who dominate the antiviolence movement have the power to determine whether the intersectional differences of women of color will be incorporated into the basic formulation of shelter policies but they often fail to dos. This, as the article pointed out, often becomes a matter of deadly seriousness which decides which victims will survive and which will not. The powerful boards of these programs need to be diversified so that their members have a variety of experiences and understandings of minority cultures and they need to reevaluate their policies which are often made with good intentions but end up marginalizing those who are not white-middle-class. Additionally, law enforcement and minority cultures need to become more open to sharing statistical information about rape, sexual and domestic violence within minority communities so that the need for prosecution and investigation as well as increased protections and services for minority women can be understood, recognized, and acted on. If everyone keeps pretending that these problems are much less of an issue than they really are, then they will never be brought to full light and they will never be effectively resolved.

Miss Representation

Please craft a blog post that reflects on the film “Miss Representation.”

You may use the questions below to guide your reflections.

What most surprised you about the film?

What did you learn from the film?

Miss Representation director, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and many of the

interviewees, such as Margaret Cho, Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lawless, and

Devanshi Patel, talk candidly about their experiences with sexism. What

connections or empathy did you feel with the experiences presented in the

film?

What strategies are working to promote more women to leadership

I think the thing that surprised me most about the film, “Miss Representation” were the statistics. I hadn’t noticed, until the film pointed it out, that most of the women on television and in films are only in their 20s and 30s. The idea that a woman is only useful/viable while she has potential to bear children and then can be thrown away after she has served that purpose is staggering. The statistics that support that claim are even more noteworthy. While women aging from 20-30 years old make up only 39% of the population of the United States, they comprise 71% of the figures on television. Where do all the old women go? The idea that the female actresses interviewed were pressured to lose excessive amounts of weight, get botox, and undergo minor plastic surgeries to improve their appearances for the sake of television programs is ridiculous. I must admit that my knowledge of popular culture is so pathetic that I’m not sure of the name of the actress who found the botox procedure so incredibly traumatizing (was that Jane Fonda?) but her description of her experience alone is enough to make one stop and consider how one supports these industries. She got the procedure done reluctantly and was so objectified and made to feel so insignificant and dehumanized by it that it has had a lasting impact on her. She has taken the stance for now of refusing to have it done again, but she did make herself a pretty loophole should she decide it’s important for her career to have it done in the future.

I learned a lot about the representation of women on cable television from the film. I don’t have cable, nor do I watch much television that I don’t hand choose from Hulu (Modern Family, 30 Rock…those are about the only two with random geek attacks of Terra Nova when I really want to shut my brain off) so I had no idea what cable news shows looked like. They’re a far cry from the BBC broadcasts I watch I can tell you. (And my NPR intake doesn’t really help with my visual understanding of how women are depicted in the media). Imagine the outcry if a male newscaster showed up on screen in a Chippendale’s outfit. The things (and lack of things) those women were wearing was absolutely astonishing. The idea that a woman is powerful and authoritative (and that in only a limited scope) so long as she is also sexually interesting and entertaining is absurd.

I also learned the neat tidbit that it is actually harder to induce men to watch television. That makes the programming being streamed today make so much more sense. Of course the advertisers are in cahoots with the producers of film and television (aren’t most of them produced by the same corporations anyway?) to make the programming appealing to men so that they will watch it so that they will see their ads. Yet, why do they undercut men to such a degree? Don’t they think there are any men out there who care about the content they view as much as they care about their visceral entertainment? Our media is undermining the intelligence and maturity of the men of our country. In so doing, they are producing generation after generation of men who don’t actually care about the more important things in life, who do only value women for their appearance and sexual utility, and who will only watch television if it is stimulating them on some base level. Yet, if we provided programming that was free from any of the superficial junk which we spoonfeed every member of our society day in and day out, maybe we’d all grow up a little. Maybe if the consumers demanded that the companies that produced their entertainment take a public interest, they really would.

Instead, we’re all happy to shut our brains off and veg out in front of television which objectifies and simplifies us all, especially women. I’m not saying we should “re-regulate” the industry. I think that the FCC was silly in a lot of ways in the ways it attempted to control freedom of expression. Yet, I think that it’s time for us to start voting with our remotes (especially where people are buying cable programming) and watching only things which promote the decency, respect, and civility of humanity. It might be hard to find shows which do that at first, but I’m pretty confident that once we decide as a whole, that’s what we want, that’s what they’d provide. Of course, with men in charge of the programming and men watching the programming provided for men and women watching it too because that’s all there is, this cycle should be difficult to break. However, steps are being taken to educate our younger generations about the harmful effects of what they’re seeing on television. They know the damage it can cause because they live with it every day. They’re voices are being heard and some of them at least are choosing to reject those messages of value rooted purely in appearance.

I, like most young women have struggled with my appearance, especially in terms of my weight. I have an on again off again eating disorder as a result of young men who took offense to my inability to live up to their expectations of femininity when I was younger. Their media intake caused them to produce output which was seriously damaging to my self image (which had been relatively unscathed by the media at large due to diligent parenting and free thinking). Yet, I didn’t manage to avoid the self-esteem problems associated with the warped media message being sent to young people because I operated within spheres with young people who were actively being shaped by it. Their perceptions of me in comparison to what the media had taught them to expect resulted in the message being passed down to me in a more personal way than simply subliminally through the advertising and programming of television and film. There is absolutely no escaping it.

When the population who is funding this kind of programming ceases to do so and ceases to stand up for individuals who condemn women in leadership because they are not perfect, things might begin to change. Those women who are in positions of power now are fighting for change and they’re being successful to some degree. They’re using their place to speak out and up for themselves and others like them so that they can carve a place of leadership in politics and in the media which is defined by intelligence and self-worth, not fashion and physicality. Respectable, strong women in positions of power are growing in numbers and as they become more and more visible, more young women of generations to come are seeing models they can follow to provoke change and to encourage them to follow in their footsteps. 

Awareness

I do not think that the breast-cancer culture helps women. I agree with Ehrenreich that the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s-1980s was crucial and very important to help women take a step up and begin to advocate for themselves and their rights as free embodied agents. However, I have often criticized the breast-cancer awareness movement myself. Watching 20-30 people wearing pink t-shirts, pushing strollers and carrying balloons down Main Street this summer made me angry. We’re all ‘aware’ of breast-cancer now. Mammograms are required by most heath insurance companies. Traveling mammogram busses make sure everyone has the opportunity to get one and every gynecologist I have ever spoken to or read has advocated for monthly self-examinations. So, since we’re all ‘aware’ now, why keep marching? I agree with the statements proffered by one of the men interviewed for the article, they’re better off writing a check and moving on, that’s much more effective. I realize this sounds unsupportive of those who are actually survivors of breastcancer but the author seems to have a very healthy perspective on the issue.

We shouldn’t be focusing so much on a cure which hasn’t been all that effective up until this point anyway, we need to be focusing on the cause. Just as those who purport the need to find a cure for diabetes should be focusing on the cause of diabetes in order to prevent rather than treat it. The number of cases of Type II diabetes far outscale the number of Type I. As my boyfriend and I watched the marchers move down the street he turned to me and asked when they were going to have a march for prostate cancer. I shrugged and said I doubted they ever would. Prostate cancer is highly prevalent in men but there is no great movement out there, no prostate cancer matchbox cars (as the author pointed out) and I suppose it’s understood that men will either heed or disregard their doctors advice to seek regular exams for early detection. Yet, with this huge prevalence of a man’s cancer which runs neck-in-neck with this female cancer (thought, unlike prostate cancer, men can and do get breast cancer) it is the woman’s cancer which gets all the hype, all the commercial opportunistic endeavors. I think it’s the same with the way that women are the ones who are most heavily hit in all consumer fields. We are the “shoppers” and we need teddy bears and crayons to make our “boo boos” go away.

Women infantilize themselves by parading around in pink t-shirts crying “save the tatas” and “hooray for boobies!/I <3 boobies” “walkin’ by buns off for boobs.” What kind of derision would a man face if he started making stickers or buttons with slogans like “Bros for balls” or “prostate posse” or “check your junk for cancerous funk” or for penile cancer “liveschlong” or, my friend, Mr. Robinson’s favorite childish slogan I asked him to come up with: “better spread than dead.” (He is a prostate cancer survivor himself.) Mrs. Deery (his wife) came up with, “If you lose your family jewels you’ll never become a prince charming.” The one slogan I managed to dredge up from the internet about prostate cancer was a mundane, “Don’t procrastinate…check your prostate!” Fabulous, right? It’s not that equivalent slogans for male specific cancers are difficult to come up with, it’s just that they are not dignified or proper enough to use for masculine persons but they are perfectly applicable and good for women. We participate and perpetuate our own denigration based solely in our breasts.

Ehrenreich argues that the breast cancer culture causes a woman with breast cancer become someone who is longer a woman, a person, just cancer (459). It “blur[s] the line between selfhood and thing-hood” becoming a composite of organic and inorganic materials (469). She notes that  “Awareness beats secrecy and stigma of course, but I can’t help noticing that the existential space in which a friend has earnestly advised me to ‘confront [my] mortality’ bears a striking resemblance to a mall” (460). It has reached an astonishingly commercial and superficial level. Ehrenreich notes, “The ultra feminine theme of the breast cancer marketplace –the prominence for example of cosmetics and jewelry –could be understood as a response to the disastrous effects on one’s looks. But the infantilizing trope is a little harder to account for” (460).

She writes extensively on the desire of the movement to infantilize women, especially citing the presence of crayons in the tote from the Libby Ross Foundation. She comments, “Possibly the idea is that regression to a state of childlike dependency puts one in the best frame of mind with which to endure the prolonged and toxic treatments. Or it may be, that, in some versions of the prevailing gender ideology, femininity is by its nature incompatible with full adulthood” (460).

I thought it interesting that she found the extensive availability of personal stories and experiences caused the author to compare her experiences to those of others, from the way she describes it, almost obsessively. The same way women compare themselves obsessively on the fronts of appearance, weight, attractiveness, etc.  “There is nothing very feminist—in an ideological or activist sense—about the mainstream of breast-cancer” (461).

The feminists want a cure but they also want to understand the causes of the disease. “’Bad’ genes of the inherited variety are thought to account for fewer than 10 percent of breast cancers, and only 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have any known risk factor…Bad lifestyle choices life a fatty diet have, after brief popularity with the medical profession, been largely ruled out. Hence suspicion should focus on environmental carcinogens, the feminists argue, such as plastics, pesticides…and the industrial runoff in our ground water” (461).This puts the feminist breast cancer movements in line with environmental and anti-corporate groups while the fluffy bunny approach to breast-cancer remains mainstream. “sentimentality and good cheer” (462). It is the “Darling of corporate America” and “a way for companies to brand themselves friends of the middle-aged female market.” “Breast cancer provides a way of doing something for women without being feminist” (462). Because the movement is politically correct and a way for corporations to show their love and support for women without having to take a stance on anything controversial, those companies have found ways to cash in on the market of all female buyers by appearing sentimental and empathetic to their cause.

The author notes that all this hullaballoo and great affair begins to look like “a positive embrace of the disease” (462). She found numerous “testimonies to the redemptive power of the disease” (463). While, I am an advocate of finding the good in everything and learning through suffering, I don’t think that the vast corporate sphere needs to have a place in helping women make themselves over through cancer. The author writes,“in our implacably optimistic breast-cancer culture, the disease offers more than the intangible benefits of spiritual upward mobility. You can defy the inevitable disfigurements and come out, more femme. In the lore of the disease…chemotherapy smoothes and tightens the skin, helps you lose weight; and when your hair comes back, it will be fuller, softer, easier to control, and perhaps a surprising new color. ..opportunities for self-improvement abound” (463).

            The companies that fund and perpetuate the breast cancer culture cult are the ones who are cashing in on the $12-16 billion-a-year business in surgery, “breast health centers,” chemotherapy “infusion suites,” radiation treatment centers, mammograms, and drugs” (464-465). Even though, “The benefits of routine mammography are not well established; if they do exist, they are not as great as many women hope” (465). Mammography might not even be successful and sometimes, all early detection does is prolong the amount of time a woman was aware of her condition.

The author summarizes her viewpoint by stating, “America’s breast-cancer cult can be judged as an outbreak of mass delusion, celebrating survivorhood by downplaying mortality and promoting obedience to medical protocols known to have limited efficacy” and that “obedience is the message behind the infantilizing theme in breast-cancer culture, as represented by the teddy bears, the crayons, and the prevailing pinkness” (465).

I think this breast cancer culture makes breast cancer cute, cuddly, pink, approachable, and something which is almost to be looked forward to. It is something which permeates our consumerist existences and yet has little to no effect on the number of women who die from breast cancer every year. The fact that we pour so much time and effort into a movement which produces little to no results is disheartening and a sign that the author’s viewpoint is accurate. The industry which perpetuates breast cancer also claims to oppose it but it cannot successfully do both, though it can rake in vast amounts of money in both arenas. The movement is a rouse to keep us all buying in the name of righteousness while we ignore the real issues and problems at hand. Keep the women happy through material goods and cute slogans but don’t actually take a stand and do something about breast cancer prevention seems to be the underlying motive. I think breast cancer patients would benefit more from having others take the disease seriously and reverently rather than seeing it as a marketing opportunity.

Proving Something

Messner used sport to prove his masculinity by joining a “D Team” basketball team precisely because he was insecure about his “baby fat” his height (5’2”) and the fact that he was “still prepubescent with no facial hair and a high voice that [he] artificially tried to lower” (401). While on the team, he became “infatuated with Timmy” but later “aggressively rejected him” (401). His efforts to prove that he was an athletically competitive and competently aggressive player caused him to act out in aggressive violence against Timmy. Even though he was captain of the team, he wasn’t the best player and he wasn’t “happy or secure” in that position (402). He felt that he needed to prove himself a thorough heterosexual, “100% heterosexual” and so he joined in when his other teammates called Timmy a “geek” and a “faggot” (402). He used sport to underline his masculinity even though for a while, the delay he experienced before fully entering puberty at the onset of high school and his attraction to Timmy who later became the subject of disdain and ridicule seemed to be holding him back from being perceived as “100% heterosexual.” He wanted to be a “man” and men were rough and aggressive and good at basketball, they did not play on the periphery of the game or feel things for other players that wre anything but strictly platonic or competitive feelings. Messner unconsciously used the basketball team to underscore his vehemently heterosexual identity. He decided to have a “moment of engagement with hegemonic masculinity, where [he] actively took up the male group’s task of constructing heterosexual/masculine identities in the contest of sport.” His aggressive action toward Timmy served to underscore his commitment to that task and to quell his fears that he might not be failing at that goal (402). He picked on Timmy with the rest of the team and chose him as the “victim” for his aggressive maneuver primarily to underscore his heterosexuality in contrast with the weak, effeminate, and otherwise “unsuccessfully male/heterosexual” Timmy.

            Waddell also used sports to construct his identity in regard to his gender but he also used sports as “his closet” (403). He clung to so called “masculine” such as football and track and field as a way to reinforce the perceptions that he was a “red-blooded American man” even though he would have preferred to participate in other sports such as dance and gymnastics but he grew up in the 1950s which he described as “a terrible time to live” (403). He says that it was obvious to him that “male ballet dancers were effeminate, that they were what most people would call faggots. And [he] thought [he] just couldn’t handle that…[he] was totally closeted and very concerned about being male.” (403) Thus, choosing sports that he felt men played helped him to assert his gender identity as male. He chose those sports in order to “do something to protect [his] image of [himself] as male…so [he] threw himself into athletics—[he] played football, gymnastics, track and field…[he] was a jock—that’s how [he] was viewed, and [he] was comfortable with that.” (403). He says, “I wanted the male, macho image of an athlete. So I was protected by a very hard shell. I was clearly aware of what I was doing… I often felt compelled to go along with a lot of locker room garbage because I wanted that image” (403). He entered sports and constructed “a masculine/heterosexual athletic identity precisely because he feared being revealed as gay.” (403). He used sports as a way to reinforce the idea that he was heterosexual even though he was not really. He needed sports as a way to project a heterosexual image in order to protect himself from the negative backlash of being anything but heterosexual. “Waddell seemed to be consciously ‘acting’ to control and regulate others’ perceptions of him by constructing a public ‘front stage’ personal that differed radically from what he believed to be his ‘true’ inner self.” (403)

Messner notes, “as young male athletes, heterosexuality and masculinity were not something we “were,” but something we were doing” (403). Both men used sports as a way to discover how to behave as men and as heterosexuals. He writes, “doing heterosexuality as an ongoing practice through which we sought (a) to avoid stigma, embarrassment, ostracism, or perhaps worse if we were even suspected of being gay; and (b) to link ourselves into systems of power, status, and privilege that appear to be the birthright of ‘real men’” (403). Both stories point “to the importance of the athletic institution as a context in which peers mutually construct and re-construct narrow definitions of masculinity—and heterosexuality is considered to be a rock-solid foundation of this conception of masculinity” (403). The institution of sports is an “institution of compulsory heterosexuality.” Messner notes that there are “extremely high levels of homophobia that are often endemic in boys’ and men’s organized sports” (403).

Women who play sports however, are often deemed “unfeminine.” By the very fact that they are participating in the realm of athleticism which is an institution founded basically to make men look masculine. It is firmly rooted in the effort of promoting masculinity as it is understood by our culture as traits of aggression, assertion, strength, and dominance. By participating in the institution of sport they are participating in one of the institutions which is utilized to formulate and maintain ideas of masculinity. This means that they are often ridiculed, considered homosexual or “unwomanly.” It is a major problem because there is nothing about athleticism which is inherently gendered or sexualized but society has endowed sports with those unspoken (and sometimes vocally spoken) characteristics and defining notions about gender and sexuality. When women cross over into realms which have been determined to be masculine they are deemed deviant and therefore ostracized and given a difficult time.

Bliss Can Be Bought

When I dogsit, I tend to watch copious amounts of “Say Yes to the Dress” which is Tivo’d by the family I housesit for. Since I can’t work the remote to watch television being currently aired (I don’t have cable and really can’t maneuver around 3,000 channels) I watch what they have “taped.” This also includes “16 and Pregnant” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”. These are not shows I watch on my own, or really care for aside from a minor sociological curiosity. However, I am strangely fascinated by “Say Yes to the Dress” simply because I like to gawk over how utterly insane and inane these women and their families make the event of getting married. I don’t plan to get married to my life partner, though we are currently, casually, planning a commitment ceremony which is a gesture to our families and an excuse for use to get needed gifts such as a mattress and maybe a blender (Though, we’d really love a waffle maker if anyone here is looking for “John and Alex Love Gift” ideas.). However, that sense of obligation to have any kind of formal recognition of our love is one that is only being casually entertained and is by no means a necessity or end-goal for us. We are us and will be regardless of official approval granted by family, government, or gods. The institution of marriage itself has been deemed discriminatory and embodies a certain set of associations and societal expectations that we do not condone and will not approve by entering into any formal “contracts” of that nature.

Still, I watch “wedding porn” and sometimes gaze at table center ideas and invite formats simply out of curiosity and a kind of horror to see what sort of superficial value people place on what should be a very serious and deep time in their lives. I can’t imagine spending $38,319 dollars on a wedding like one couple I read about in Modern Bride. Their itemized list of expenses included $1,000 for hair and makeup for six people, $900 for stationary, $2,306 for flowers, and $4,000 for photography (http://www.brides.com/wedding-answers-tools/wedding-timeline-budget/2011/07/how-much-does-a-wedding-cost-venue). That sort of extravagance is something I cannot conceive of both because I don’t have the financial backing to dream of doing it myself but also because I wouldn’t if I did. $38,000 is a house payment, several house payments. The kind of attention paid to dresses, floral arrangements, catering, lighting, photography, gifts for the wedding party and guests is seriously overemphasized. All of the categories the website is broken into are concerned with some kind of commodity that entails weddings. Even the links and stories about “real weddings” are not so concerned with the relationship details of the couple but rather their financial and decorative choices. They have a brief bit about how the couple met, perhaps their age, and then they jump straight into location, dress brand and cost, catering details, number of guests invited, invitation quirks, etc. They are also very interested in helping the reader discover how they can have a similar wedding experience. How to recreate the table settings, make their own invitations or find the same press or floral companies to make them for their very own use. These weddings are about spectacle and the magazine serves to flaunt and perpetuate that sort of thinking.

Modern Bride also turned out to be extremely hetero-normative, though not entirely. Five out of the five hundred “real life” couples I looked at were same-sex couples. That’s…you know, 1% of all couples represented on the website. However, they did have a section on “fun summer hues” for cakes where they featured various rainbow decorated wedding treats. They were advertised as seasonally appropriate for a summer wedding but also doubled as an appealing option for an audience who might be looking for a nod to gay pride. It was irritating and confounding that the website would bury these kinds of acknowledgements of same sex unions under mounds and mounds of heterosexual propaganda. Their attempt to escape criticism for being tolerant of non-normative wedding practices is almost the equivalent of not including them at all. Their attempt to walk the fine line between appealing to both groups was not very successful or convincing.

Overall, I discovered that the conception of weddings represented by Modern Bride was one which presents them as an event designed to impress and please other people. They even had a whole article about how to “Create a memorable event by putting your guests’ needs first” (http://www.brides.com/wedding-answers-tools/wedding etiquette/2010/05/BLM FW09 WeddingGuestNeeds). These representations of weddings do, as Morrison asserts perpetuate “traditional American values” that is, they are “big, expensive and involve a lot of shopping.” Additionally, they are celebrations of “well-off white people” with the occasional “bridesmaid of color thrown in as a nod to multiculturalism” or the occasional “couple of color,” or same sex couple all included in the name of diversity within an industry concerned with exclusivity.