Sexuality and the SlutWalk

While strolling through a bookstore some years ago, I noticed the book Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch by Elizabeth Hilts about how assertive and confident women are labeled “bitch”, thinking surely there aren’t women out there that want to be called something that means a female dog.  Yet, I remember that I was in my young twenties when I really starting to self-identify as a feminist simply because I refused to accept the “caricatures... drill[ed] into [me] through popular culture and education” (Feinstein 188).  So I read the book and learned to accept with pride (after all, female dogs are very smart, protective, and confident) and embrace the reality that until antiquated notions of what a respectable woman is supposed to be behave like evolve, I will be called a “bitch” every time I stand up for myself in the same manner a man would defend himself.

Having stated the above, I wholeheartedly believe that the notion that a woman can reclaim the word slut is something, as the Open Letter from Black Women states “we cannot afford to label ourselves” (admin).  The group AF3IRM furthers this ideology on their website stating the argument “we cannot truly ‘reclaim’ the word ‘Slut’. It was never ours to begin with. This label is one forced upon us by colonizers, who transformed our women into commodities” and being personally involved with issues of human trafficking, in particular the sex trade, I wince every time a woman tries to reclaim this word. The subjugation and oppression of women involved in the dehumanizing sex trade is no one that can be understood by women claiming they can dress however they want and thereby shouldn’t live in fear of unintended consequences.  The Black Women’s Letter agrees with the SlutWalk‘s stance that victim-blaming is one of the core issues to be addressed, they can still “continue to fight for the development of policies and initiatives that prioritize the primary prevention of sexual assault, respect women and individual rights, agency and freedoms and holds offenders accountable… without resorting to the taking-back of words that were never ours to begin with” (admin).  In the same sense that Leslie Feinberg expresses her preference for “gender-neutral pronouns like sie… and hir” (Feinberg 188), so too should women express their objection to a term the Black Women say “may compromise more than we are able to recover.”  To provide understanding to core issues Feinberg states “we must not forget that these widespread discussions were not just organized to talk about oppression. They were a giant dialogue about how to take action to fight institutionalized anti-woman attitudes, rape and battering,… and other ways women were socially and economically devalued” (189).

Works Cited

admin, . "An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk." Black Women's Blueprint, 23 Sep 2011. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://www.blackwomensblueprint.org/index.php/an-open-letter-from-black-women-to-the-slutwalk/>.

"AF3IRM Responds to SlutWalk: The Women's Movement Is Not Monochromatic." AF3IRM. AF3IRM, n.d. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://af3irm.org/2011/9/af3irm-responds-slutwalk-women’s-movement-not-monochromatic>.

Feinberg, Leslie. "We Are All Works in Progress." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 188-89. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.

Birthing Contrasts

I chose to watch Episode 4: Mama Knows Best of the Liftime television series One Born Every Minute.  In that episode, three married couples all gave birth to girls.  The first couple, Christian and John-Mark, was very different from the couples on the video The Business of Being Born in that the women who chose midwives were not moaning from the pain as much as Christian moaned.  Even after telling the doctor that she had previous bad experiences with epidurals only numbing half of her body, they gave her one anyway so obviously her voice did not matter too much to her doctor.  The second couple, Nicole and Irvine, had a very long 24-hour labor that resulting in the mother being too tired to push and needing a C-section, another example of the doctor going against the mother’s beginning wishes, since Nicole wanted to be able to hold her baby right after birth.  The last couple, Kara and Kyle, had a scheduled appointment, the only male doctor in the whole episode broke her water for her, and then her doctor tried to move Kara’s baby in the birth canal from its posterior position to ease Kara’s labor time.  Each of these labors entailed the women coming into the hospital and getting put in the hospital bed, not walking around like in the movie and only Christian and Kara were complimented by their husbands for being strong. 

Women and advertising

Jennifer Rey

October 10, 2011

WST 3015

Professor Meredith Tweed

Women and Advertising Assignment

Authors Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey contend that “[h]ealth is a complex mix of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 207) and the October 2011 cover of Psychology Today only supports their claim.  Judging the cover text alone are various articles about health issues that seem targeted for a woman: mental health is addressed by the article on ways to “Stop Self-Sabotage” for tips from procrastinating to overeating; physical health is discussed in the piece on “The Genius Gene” and the “Cure Indecision”; and emotional health is covered by the headline “What Your Partner Thinks About in Bed” and the piece titled “Get What You Want” about the “9 Keys to Persuasion.” (Psychology Today)

The picture on the cover is of a thin, flawlessly light-colored woman in an old-fashioned white and light blue polka dotted bathing suit, wearing bright red heels and lipstick, sitting on a large stick of dynamite, holding an oversized match, perpetuating the oppressive “ideals of beauty” (208). The woman on the dynamite stick appears to be in control of whether she lights the stick or not, inferring perhaps that women themselves make these issues relevant.  The readers of this magazine issue do not have to be told that they likely “internalize ideal beauty standards” (208) when the headlined article on the cover itself paves the way to self-doubt in regards to partner bedroom behavior.  The articles chosen for the cover assume its women readers are not dealing with issues of “infant mortality,” “toxic workplaces” or “tuberculosis” (217-218); rather these women are more likely to deal with issues of “successful aging” (221) and  “obsessive dieting” (208).

I see the objective of this magazine cover is to get white, middle-class women to purchase it (not to shamefully sift through the magazine publicly) and read its contents by playing on women’s sexual and social insecurities.  While the articles do not state they are specifically targeting their content towards women, it would be a severely uncalculated bet to say that Psychology Today is counting on the majority of its revenue to come from men who want to become better decision makers or need assistance in how to persuade others, characteristics stereotypically thought of as for weak men.  For a macro level, the psychology industry is becoming ever more linked to modern medicine (i.e. pharmaceutical companies) and it would not be surprising to find other advertisements that focus on relieving women’s ailments with some form of pill or cream since “[t]he Western medical model focuses on illness and disease,…  often treating symptoms rather than causes.” (221)

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women's Bodies, Women's Health." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 207+. Print.

Psychology Today October 2011: Cover. Print.