Body Parts
Ever wish you could take your body into a repair shop and fix it, or replace it with a better, more beautiful model?
We’re taking a focused look at how women view their bodies. Do we learn to love our bodies or hate them? Do we violate or cherish them? Do we celebrate them or hide them from view?
Join us for some body talk! |
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I understand the pressure that women of my generation feel to look beautiful, but I know that what I see in magazines and on television are not an accurate reflection of who I am, or who the countless women of the V-Day movement feel they are. I know I am not alone in not feeling defined by the fashion and beauty industries. As women, we are more than just body parts.
We are whole people--thinking, breathing citizens of the world who are powerful and beautiful in our diversity. While some people like to reduce women and girls to the way we look, my experience with V-Day has proven that women are concerned about more important things--like ensuring that young girls in Africa get to keep their body parts and live a life free of female genital mutilation.
At V-Day, I've seen time again the power my words and actions can have in bringing about change. I’ve also learned about the sanctity of my body. What if we all stepped away from the mirror and from the clichés of who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to look like? What would our world be like then?
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Posted on Sunday, September 02, 2007 7:19 PM
I just finished reading the LA Times article by Ann Ream that Sanja pointed out, and I am both outraged and horrified about what Ream identifies as the false modesty movement.
My first problem (with the more religious aspects of this movement) is that it seems to blame women for men’s bad behavior, harkening back to original sin and evil Eve, who is seen as responsible not for the downfall of humanity, but of man. Ream quotes Wendy Shalit as saying, "many of the problems we hear about today -- sexual harassment, date rape . . . are connected to our culture's attack on modesty.” I think it’s irresponsible of Shalit to suggest that a woman who has been victimized has been victimized at least in part because of this supposed lack of modesty. It erases all the modern advances of the women’s rights movement to begin pointing the finger at women, so that they are no longer the victims, but the perpetrators. Speaking from an American woman’s perspective and speaking about America, I find it completely offensive that if a woman is dressed “immodestly” and is attacked by a man, that that has more to do with “our culture’s attack [or lack of] on modesty,” than it has to say about the men of our culture.
I think Ream cannot be more accurate when she writes, “It's not a lack of female modesty but a sense of male entitlement that leads to sexual violence.” Perhaps instead of a modesty movement, we ought to consider raising our young men better. It is my understanding that part of the rise or need for the modesty movement is that because these groups feel that young women are too exposed (both in a fashion sense and in a personal sense, those who support college campus curfews and the end of coed bathrooms, for example). Why can’t women be exposed and still be safe? How about raising our boys to treat women with respect? How about raising boys to refer to women as “women” and not as “ho’s” and “bitches.” How about raising our children to view sex as more than just a physical act? How about teaching boys that a woman, regardless of how much of her cleavage is showing, is still a woman and not an object which men can dehumanize and sexualize.
I ask this question: are we really trying to protect our young girls’ virtue or are we reversing the advances of feminism under the guise of modesty? In this modesty movement, why is it that young women are the only ones changing? Why is it that young women have to change their behavior to suit that of men’s?
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Posted on Sunday, September 02, 2007 3:44 PM
After you have seen all the amazing stories featured in Body Parts (I highly recommend “What I Was Wearing,” “Can You Go Thorough,” “I Love my Vagina, I Hate my Vagina” and "Why Me?"), please take an extra step and read an article by Anne Ream published last week in LA Times on the false (and hence incredibly dangerous) modesty movement. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ream21aug21,0,5669391.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail.
Anne criticizes a movement best described as a wolf in a feminist’s clothes—it pretends to empower young women and calls on them to free themselves of their servitude to appearance and sex, and instead search for and build a more meaningful sense of self, their bodies, and their sexualities.
At first glance, their message sounds a lot like what our moderator, Laura Waleryszak from V-Day, has said she and V-Day stand for. But this movement is the exact opposite of V-Day. This wolf has figured out that dressed as a feminist, it could trick as many Little Red Riding Hoods as possible. It hoarsely bleats about the sanctity of women’s bodies, something I completely agree with, but all for the benefit of you-know-who.
But Ream is not as naïve as Little Red Riding Hood had been, and nor are we. She sees the sheep’s big, wolfish ears, eyes and mouth and realizes immediately that she has a big bad wolf before her and not a feminist proposing a “21st century rebellion” for young women.
I don’t have a problem with modesty; I respect it in all who chose it, I admire those who proudly identify with it; sometimes I consider myself modest (whatever being “modest” really means to you!). But I have a problem with using modesty as a response to our fashion-and-appearance obsessed society. I don’t see a return to modesty as a “rebellion” or “revolution,” as Wendy Shalit calls it, but simply as a return to the same-old. Isn’t a rebellion or revolution, by definition, a breaking with the old and established, and a creating of something absolutely new? Well, I don’t see anything new or liberating or empowering in this “modesty” movement.
Read the article, and say what you think. You might not agree with me at all. Please disagree. And write an e-mail to the LA Times editor at letters@latimes.com commenting on this article. Whether you disagree or agree, these types of issues need to be discussed publicly in our newspapers and commenting and showing interest for this article will enable like articles to be written in the future.
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