This was a radio show aired on This American Life (several years back) that I heard recently and though it was very relavent to some of our class discussions about gender, and the pressures put on modern women to conform to societies construction of beauty. There were several acts that were especially interesting to me.
In the first act of the radio show, David Sedaris adresses this idea through the story of a girl who goes against her father's wishes for her to be thin and pretty and focused on marriage by wearing a suit that made her look 80 pounds overweight.
In act two, Writer Sarah Miller attends a class in NYC that teaches women how to walk, talk and act masculine and how hard they find it is to "cross the gender line" convincingly.
And in act four, a polygamist wife who describes herself as a "modern working woman" argues why having eight women married to one man is the ultimate feminine lifestyle.
It's interesting to hear stories of people's personal experiences with their gender, and to see how gender constructions and the pressure to look and act a certain way effects people so differently.
I think the polygamy part especially just goes to show that things are not always black and white. There is not just one view of feminism. In regards to polygamy, what some hardcore feminists in the US may see as wrong and as a man having control over several wives... possibly the epitome of patriarchy, others such as the woman featured in this story may think of that lifestyle as "the ultimate feminine lifestyle." I may not understand things like polygamy, or other supposedly anti-feminine acts such as female circumcision (not to say I'm for it, but from a cultural standpoint people have their reasons for doing it!)...or whatever else the Western world deems as anti-feminist, but who am I to tell others what to do when they, according to their culture, might see it as perfectly normal and not infringing on their rights as women.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a fine example of there being two sides to every story. I know that most consider polygamy in negative light (including me), but this example just goes to show that there is no such thing as black and white and there never will be. With an ever increasing population, there is just an ever increasing amount of diverse opinions in the world, and if someone has an opinion, no matter how universal it may seem, there will always be those in opposition and those who do not even care. And that is the hardest part about educating people about cultural paradigms, some people are just simply apathetic and others, no matter why, just will not see the utilitarian detriment of the issue.
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