Okay so I don’t even know where to begin on this one.
I have a baby who is female and she gets given a lot of clothes by relatives and friends of my parents and in-laws etc, including lots of hand-me-downs. About 95% of these clothes we are given are “girls’” clothes. This means, in case you don’t know, that they feature one or more (usually a minimum of 3) of the following:
pink
lace
hearts
flowers
butterflies
frills
lilac
stupid comments along the lines of “daddy’s little girl”
I just threw a huge bag of these clothes away (gave them to charity) even though she had never worn them, because they were so disgusting to me. MOST of the clothes were pink with frills and hearts and flowers and butterflies on them. No joke. She is ten months old, but has been given clothes of this persuasion since she was born.
Why does a baby even need to have a gender?
Femininity and masculinity are concepts that exist, that people can choose to embrace or reject depending on how they feel about them. Or at least that’s how it would be in my ideal world. Femininity and masculinity are relevant to a person with a self-realised identity. They are NOT RELEVANT to a baby. A baby does not need to have a gender. A baby will likely come with a biologically determined sex, though not all of us do. And some who do come with a biologically determined sex cannot embrace the gender that is assigned to this biology and seek to change it. Gender is not a fixed thing, it is culturally imposed. It need not be imposed as such.
A baby does not need to be gendered. There is no reason that it does. Gendering a baby only encourages adults to treat it differently, to treat it according it to it’s gender. Which entails saying such things to it as, “Arn’t you a big man” and “Aww, daddy’s little princess” and other such disgusting things that commence the process of gender role stereotyping right from the outset.
Have you seen the clothes they make for baby boys? They feature one or more of the following:
blue
machines
sporting motifs
slogans about being “bad”
stupid comments along the lines of “mummy’s little man” (no joke I have seen it)
The inadvertent messages spoken by these two schools of clothing are:
And I find it intolerable. Thankfully there are some clothing manufacturers with some taste and sense who design clothes in plain primary colours or with stripes or spots or other inoffensive patterns.
It wasn’t the case when we were young. When I and my peers were infants and toddlers in the 70s, there did not exist this foul plague of horrendous gendered baby clothing. Sure there were dresses for girls, but they were just as likely to have been brown corduroy or nautical themed. Boys and girls alike wore brown, maroon, yellow, stripes, sailboats, whatever. Toddler clothing was for toddlers, not mini-teenagers.
Why has this dreadful phenomenon taken place? I do not know. Why did baby girls have to start being feminine and baby boys masculine from the age of zero? It is a truly terrible thing, as it just reinforces peoples’ already fucked up ideas about gender roles: that girls must look and act nice, and that boys are at the centre of the action.
Anyway, I wholly reject gendered clothing for babies and intend to dress my gal in gender neutral clothing until she is old enough to choose (save for the odd sailor dress).
So, last night for the first time in months BJ and I went to see a movie. We had the opportunity because my parents could look after Fox. I was thrilled to be going to a movie. It seemed like a really fun thing to do. We went to see Super 8. The problem was, that I basically thought it was a different movie. There was some movie I saw a preview for sometime about some people on a train and something weird happening, it looked kind of good, and I thought Super 8 was that movie. BUt it totally wasn’t. I don’t even know what that other movie was. But we saw Super 8. and it was total bullshit. Here is a list of reasons why it sucked:
1. It was so boring
2. The music was extremely annoying
3. Too many child actors
4. Too much child acting
5. What the fuck was Kyle “Coach Taylor” Chandler doing in such a piece of shit?
6. Such a dumb, played-out story
7. Little to no intrigue
8. It had this vibe of “wholesome family fun” but was actually full of violence
9. It relied on cute 70′s nostalgia to charm people–> bullshit
10. It was desperately trying to be E.T. for the new millenium. Which in itself was bullshit.
11. It was so, so boring.
12. There was, like, ONE female character and a hundred male ones
13. The one female character was a love interest to the male lead and her main job was to look “beautiful”
So obviously I shouldn’t have been in the cinema watching this movie that clearly wasn’t made for me. But I was there, and I was just so irritated that it was made, that it had to exist, such that I would end up sitting there wasting time watching it. I kept thinking, why is Steven Spielberg producing this rubbish, why why why. Why can’t he think outside the box and make an interesting film just once in his stupid life. I HATE HIM!!! This stupid-ass story has been told a million times already. And really, I just had to write this blog post to get this off my chest. A bit of culture rage for 2011… Thanks for tuning in. I love you.
So I just have to say, that after making the commitment that I declared in the previous post, I have felt completely LIBERATED!! It is so great. I see lots of great clothes everywhere that ordinarily I would want to buy, but I am OUT OF THE GAME so I don’t even think twice about them. It feels exciting and liberating to not be wearing the ball and chain of fashion-concern. It is really very freeing my friends. It’s like I’m out of the fashion rat race and I love it. That’s all.
So I have decided I am not going to buy any new clothes for a year from today. It’s sort of a big deal because I do LOVE clothes and buying/having/wearing nice clothes.
BUT
The truth of the matter is I have enough clothes already.
I’ve got enough pants
I’ve got enough shirts
I’ve got enough dresses
I’ve got enough shorts
I’ve got enough shoes
I’ve got enough coats
I’ve got enough swimmers
I’ve got enough hats
I’ve got enough underwear
I’ve got enough socks.
My cupboards and drawers are full, folks.
I’m pretty happy with my current wardrobe and if I buy anything new it will be a frivolity that I don’t need. I’m rejecting over consumption! (2nd hand clothes allowed.)
People love to talk shit about facebook. People who are not on it and lots of people who are on it love to talk about it in a negative way.
For example:
“What a time waster”
“This is so stupid, people posting all these mundane details about their lives, who cares???”
“Oh wow look at how narcissistic everyone is posting all these photos of themselves looking hot!”
Those are some of the common put-downs people love to throw around regarding the institution of facebook. And sure, all of those things may be true. But I’m here to offer a different point of view. Because I love facebook!! I’m not even ashamed to admit it, I just freakin love it. I think facebook is great. and here are the reasons why I think it is great. There are 5 main reasons that I can think of right now:
1. Community Newsletter
Facebook functions like a community newsletter, but the newsletter (and the community) is custom-made for each person, i.e. your unique custom made community with all your community’s news. And your community is world-wide and from all different times and parts of your life, and you just get to hear everyone’s news and get to share all your news with your world-wide community. So if someone you hardly ever or even never see because they live in Norway is having a baby or got an exciting new job or ran a marathon they were proud of, you get to hear about it. And that is something I like. I like getting to know what’s going on with my peeps all over the world. It’s pretty AMAZING when you think about it that you get to have an instantaneous community newsletter of your friends from all over the place.
Also people post links to things they find relevant / interesting / funny so in that regard you can find out about different shit that’s going on and see funny things if you want to and share such things with other people and then talk about them. Shared cultural experiences.
2. Maintaining relationships
People say: “Oh you just have these stupid facebook interactions but you never have “real” interactions with people anymore, it’s taken the place of real life” etc etc. Well I think that’s BS, because I think facebook interactions are totally real, and it just means you have MORE interactions, because you still have the real life interactions, you just have all the facebook ones as well, and you interact with a much wider range of people than you would if you only had your real life interactions. And for me, cos I’m at home most of the time doing my mother duties and I’m not that mobile or whatever, I can have lots of interactions with people on facebook throughout the day which is nice. Because I don’t have that many “real world” interactions, but that’s because of my circumstances (it’s just easier to stay home mostly when you have a baby) not because facebook has taken over my real world interactions. They are different things and the two CAN co-exist.
3. Humour
There’s lots of humour on facebook and that is probably my favourite thing about it. Plenty of scope for making jokes with people. The perfect medium for “one-liner” type humour that has never really had a place before. You can really have a lot of laughs on facebook if you want to.
4. Love
There is also lots of love on facebook. No two ways about it. I find that because it is “your community” i.e. a social network, people are hardly ever rude to each other, and people pretty much only say nice things to each other and there is so much “congratulations” and “happy birthday” and that kind of thing going on all the time, it’s actually a very “positive” atmosphere on there generally speaking. This is very unlike other web sites where people comment, such as youtube or other forums where people don’t know each other and are anonymous, on those sites it is the NORM for people to be rude to each other, there is lots of sledging and insulting and assholery going on on so much of the internet, it’s nice that facebook is about people being nice to each other.
5. Getting information / opinions
Facebook is GREAT for getting information and opinions of people whom you know if you can trust. For example at any time if you are in a quandary and want a popular opinion really quick, you can just ask facebook and it will deliver. For example when I was at home all day breast-feeding I needed to find some good tv shows to watch so I asked facebook and got a million suggestions out of which I found some that were great. Or if you don’t know what to make for dinner you can ask for some suggestions and before you know it you’ll have twenty dinner ideas.
So these are the things I love about facebook and how it has been great to me. THAT’S MY EXPERIENCE!
But facebook is really WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT.
And that’s what I make of it and that’s why I love it.
So, I haven’t written on this blog for well over a year, but I’m back! The one huge thing that has changed since I last wrote here is that I am now a mother of a sweet human girl-child. What a total thrill! Yes, it is amazing.
This blog post is about one aspect of having a daughter.
An offhand remark that more than one person has made to me/my husband since having a daughter is something along the lines of “She’s going to give you some grey hairs when she’s a teenager!”
I’ll admit that when people have said this to me I think I laughed politely, because I know they are just “being friendly” or whatever, but underneath I have felt a hint of seething rage because of what is hinted at in this comment.
It seems like a predominant attitude in this culture that daughters will cause parents grief when they are teenagers. But WHY will daughters give their parents grief when they are teenagers?? The issue in my mind is: because of BOYS and SEX and YOUR DAUGHTER’S INVOLVEMENTS WITH BOYS and THE POSSIBILITY OF YOUR DAUGHTER BEING SEXUALLY ACTIVE. That’s what will give you grey hairs when she is a teenager.
I think that the underlying attitude is that your daughter will want to have boyfriends, will want to have sex with these boyfriends, and this is cause for you as her parent, to worry and be stressed —> and why is this? because these boys will take advantage of her? –> because she will “get herself into trouble”? –> with an unwanted pregnancy? with a reputation as promiscuous? with an STD?
And our role, as parents, as I understand it, is to worry about this, to guard and protect her from these hypothetical boys, to ward them off, to keep her chaste and free of pregnancy/disease/slutty reputation. And she’s going to go out with these boys and we’re going to try and make her not go out with them and also we’re going to have fights about it and that’s what’s going to give us grey hairs, I presume.
Well, I’m calling BULLSHIT on that attitude.
But first I want to talk about my own teenage years in relation to this attitude. Because that’s exactly what happened between me and my parents.
Right before my 17th birthday I started going out with my first boyfriend. My parents were not happy about this. They did not think I was “ready” to have a boyfriend. They discouraged it. We fought about it. They wanted to protect me and guard me from him. They would not let me sleep at his house or go camping with him in the summer holidays when I was 17. They thought I was too young. We fought about it. They were worried about what might happen. Probably all the fears I described above (pregnancy, disease, sluttiness, being taken advantage of…).
They treated me like I was too young to decide for myself, to have reasonable judgement, like I was naive, at risk, in danger.
I wasn’t.
The boyfriend in question was a good guy. (My parents came to know this eventually – we went out for nearly 2 years.) I went out with him despite the parental disapproval. I met his mum and sister, who he lived with, and they were good people. All his friends were good people. I had stealthy sleepovers with him that my parents were unaware of.
Anyway, he treated me well – I wouldn’t have put up with less. We started “getting busy” when I was 17, when I was ready and I had brought it up. We were responsible – we used contraception and I made sure he was STD free (he wasn’t a virgin but I was). We had sex and… nothing bad happened. We had great times together. We’re still friends now in our 30′s.
My judgement was good. And why wouldn’t it have been? Like plenty of well-adjusted teenage girls, I was an intelligent and perceptive person, I didn’t have low self esteem. I was informed and educated and empowered. I wasn’t naive or ignorant and needing of protection and shelter provided by my parents. They didn’t need to chase off this guy who was trying to get in my pants, or whatever the fuck. I knew what I wanted, I knew how to go about it, and really, there was no cause for my parents to worry.
Their worry was actually insulting and belittling. It was infantalising. Instead of worrying about me and fighting with me about the idea of sex, they could have talked to me. They could have started by assuming I wasn’t an idiot going out with a guy who was an asshole.
They could have asked me: “Is he a good guy? Do you trust him? Do you feel like you can say no if you want to? Do you know all about contraception and STDs?” (of course I did, sex education was actually taught in great detail at high school in Australia – I hope it still is. I was very aware and knew the importance of safety.)
They could have said: “Come and talk to us about anything if you need to.” They could have trusted my judgement and sense. But instead they just kind of freaked out about it, and their reaction did not credit my intelligence, judgement or sense.
Why do we think women and girls need protection from men, and from themselves? What is this dumb attitude? Yes there are some men who are dangerous predators, but most of us who are sensible people, when we choose a boyfriend, choose decent guys. It pisses me off that teenage girls are viewed as naive, ignorant prey, and teenage boys are viewed as inconsiderate, sex-obsessed predators. (Some guys may be – but most self-respecting, aware women or girls are NOT GOING TO GO OUT WITH THEM!)
[And yes, I guess there are some teenage girls who "get into trouble" - by getting pregnant before they are ready, by getting taken advantage of sexually, etc. But rather than struggle and battle with them to protect them from themselves, wouldn't it be better to see that they are informed and educated and empowered to make good choices???]
I had an extremely positive experience of love and sex with my first boyfriend. And this is how I imagine it will be for my daughter. This is what I want for her. (Though I will not, of course, assume she is straight!)
I will raise my daughter to be informed, educated and empowered to do what’s right for her. If she wants to be sexually active, it’ll be on her terms. I see our role as parents to encourage self-empowerment. I will keep the lines of communication open. I won’t assume she’s naive or lacking in judgement. I won’t shelter and protect her when she is capable of independence. And I wont fear her independence, I’ll foster it. And I will not discredit her by assuming that she can’t make good choices.
Feminist country songs are not exactly a dime a dozen. Everybody is familiar with the likes of “Stand by your man”, and “Jolene” (about a hot woman who may or may not steal your husband). Not very empowering for women, as it were.
But do many people know Dolly Parton’s first album, “Just because I’m a Woman”? In the title track Dolly sings about the injustices of the double standard applied to men and women who act promiscuously. Apparently Dolly wrote this song in response to a controversial conversation she had with her husband Carl.
Now a man will take a good girl And he’ll ruin her reputation
But when he wants to marry Well, that’s a different situation
He’ll just walk off and leave her To do the best she can
While he looks for an angel To wear his wedding band
Now I know that I’m no angel If that’s what you thought you’d found
I was just the victim of A man that let me down
Yes, I’ve made my mistakes But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours Just because I’m a woman
Admittedly she becomes a hapless victim in the scheme of things, but at least she’s calling the scene for the bullshit that it is. The song was recorded in 1967. Pretty daring for that time. Pretty bold to call out that old double standard back then. In country music especially – hardly a progressive culture.
The following clip is pretty damn cute, someone has edited shots and information commemorating famous women through-out history to go along with the song. CUTE.
Another song that is feminist in its refusal to romanticise the traditional woman’s role as wife and mother is “Single girl”, a very old trad folk song, that I know from the lovely Kossoy Sisters. Other versions vary and have been sung by many. Apparently some version of the song dates back to 1850:
Single girl, single girl, Always dressed so fine
Oh, she’s always dressed so fine.
Married girl, married girl, She wears just any kind
Oh, she wears just any kind.
Single girl, single girl, Going where she please
Oh she’s going where she please.
Married girl, married girl, A baby on her knee Oh, a baby on her knee.
Single girl, Single girl, She goes to the store and buys
Oh, she goes to the store and buys.
Married girl, married girl, She rocks the cradle and cries
Oh she rocks the cradle and cries.
It’s not often you hear the life of a single woman being celebrated over the family life that all women are supposed to dream of. In that time it must have been quite irreverent to paint a miserable picture of a married girl, tied down to a life of hardship and woe, and the single girl as having all the good times. The baby represents not parental joy, but bondage to a life of giving and living for others. It is the married woman who is jealous of her single counterpart, and not the other way round. Radical perspective. Even for today, you might say, when popular culture stigmatises single women.
Ironically, there is another song of the same name by another country singer called Sandy Posey sung in 1966 that features quite the opposite sentiment, one much more typical in country music:
“Someday I’ll have a sweet loving man to lean on The single girl needs a sweet loving man to lean on”
In 1952 a country singer called Hank Thompson sang a song called “The wild side of life” where he bemoans that his love has left him, or as wiki describes it, “the story of a woman shedding her role as domestic provider to follow the night life”. This song spent many weeks at number one on the country charts in 1952:
The Wild Side of Life
You wouldn’t read my letter if I wrote you
You asked me not to call you on the phone
But there’s something I’m wanting to tell you
So I wrote it in the words of this song
I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels
I might have known you’d never make a wife
You gave up the only one that ever loved you
And went back to the wild side of life
The glamor of the gay night life has lured you
To the places where the wine and liquor flows
Where you wait to be anybody’s baby
And forget the truest love you’ll ever know
As it says on Wiki, “the song appealed to people who thought the world was going to hell and that faithless women deserved a good deal of the blame.”
That was released in March 1952, and the following song, an indignant response, a big “F YOU!” sung by a woman (albeit written by a man, though I sort of love that it was a man who got indignant about it), was released three months later in June ’52, also reached number 1 and became the first #1 hit for a woman on the country charts.
As I sit here tonight, the jukebox playing
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying
It brings mem’ries when I was a trustful wife
It wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they’re still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women
It’s not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that’s ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame
I love this. Here is a version of Waylon Jennings doing a duet with Jessi Colter where he sings the old version and she sings the response, with the verses mixed up. It’s pretty GREAT.
Another old song worth mentioning is one called “Don’t put her down, you helped put her there”, by Hazel dickens and Alice Gerrard. This song is basically reprimanding men for speaking ill of a “slutty” woman that they have “enjoyed”. Just reiterating the old bind of being a slut if you do and a prude if you don’t. You can’t win.
You pull the string, she’s your plaything
You can make her or break her, it’s true You abuse her, accuse her, turn around and use her
Then forsake her any time it suits you
Well, there’s more to her than powder and paint
Than her peroxided, bleached out hair
Well, if she acts that way, it’s cause you had your day
Don’t put her down, you helped put her there
She hangs around playing the clown
While her soul is aching inside
She’s heartbreak’s child cause she just lives for your smile
To build her up in a world made by men
At the house down the way, you sneak and you pay For the love, her body, her shame
Then you call yourself a man, you say you just don’t understand
How a woman could turn out that way
I really like that a woman is standing up for another slutty* woman in this song. A common theme in popular music is for woman to sing mean songs about each other, especially in regard to sexual promiscuity. It’s nice how this woman sings in the other woman’s defense, and tells the men to piss off with their bullshit.
These are just a few country songs by some rebellious women who dared not to sing about desires of men. There are probably more out there that I’m not aware of. The world of country music is conservative and male dominated and although it’s not much I love that these old songs exist. A little voice of feminist dissent from the past.
*I use the term slutty in the most sex-positive manner.
