'I Shop, Therefore I Am' - Welcome to Generation Misogyny

Art by Barbara Kruger

Recently I read my good friend J’s article on Gender and its Complications, and it got me thinking about gender and how much ‘what you look like’ is indicative of it.

Everyone is aware of what feminine stereotypes exist. Germaine Greer personifies ‘The Stereotype’ wonderfully in ‘The Female Eunuch’. The Feminine Woman is, essentially, the girl in the magazine or on the TV smiling with pearly white teeth, decked out in the latest fashions, trying to sell you the latest type of lip gloss so-and-so designer has created. She is thin, beautiful, and infinitely happy because she has bought this particular product, and it has solved all her problems. Never more will she have to worry about a bad hair day, her nail-polish becoming chipped or unwanted body odour – life is perfect thanks to this product! And there she stands, an immovable idol, not a hair out of place, no unsightly flab, not a blemish in sight.

Greer describes her thus:

‘Her glossy lips and matt complexion, her unfocused eyes and flawless fingers, her extraordinary hair all floating and shining, curling and gleaming, reveal the inhuman triumph of cosmetics, lighting, focusing and printing, cropping and composition.’

This is what you must look like to be the feminine ideal. You must hide behind a painted smile, wear what’s ‘in fashion’, and look, smell, feel and even taste like unruffled perfection. This is what little girls spend years dreaming, wishing to look like – ‘inhuman’. Like Barbie, with perfect plastic proportions (this means big boobs and a tiny waist), flawless symmetrical features and an expression of permanent ecstasy (this is where that DIY Botox that J mentioned would come in handy!), girls want to become dolls:

‘For she [The Stereotype] is a doll: weeping, pouting or smiling, running or reclining, she is a doll. She is an idol, formed of the concatenation of lines and masses, signifying the lineaments of satisfied impotence.’

Impotence? But hang on – isn’t this picture-perfect face what’s meant to be defining womanhood? For surely that is what ‘feminine’ should mean; what defines us as women, our femaleness? Surely The Stereotype should portray our sex properly, including our lusts, our restless imagination and our brilliant intelligence? Is that what we are – weak, powerless, lacking in sexual desire? Or is this what ‘they’ want us to be?

We must think of how the modern concept of ‘femininity’ is defined.

In the Victorian era, the Feminine Woman would be meek and mild, with delicate features and health. She would have no ideas of her own, be totally subservient to her husband, and was devoted to the care of her children. No self-respecting middle-class woman would wear makeup, because this show of vanity was considered to be a sign of a prostitute. This ‘angel in the house’, as she was later to become known, was basically the personification of men’s desire for the perfect subservient wife. ‘Feminine’ came to mean the opposite of ‘masculine’ because women must accommodate to men’s needs and not desire to be like him in any way – for that is not her place. As Virginia Woolf says in ‘A Room of One’s Own’:

For man wants to see something attractive when he looks in this looking-glass, doesn’t he? Something weak, delicate and beautiful that reaffirms his superiority over it. Because he can only be superior if something is inferior to him – and that is women’s role.

‘Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing
the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.’

So men and our patriarchal culture define what ‘feminine’ is, as they define what ‘masculine’ is. These two ‘labels’ (as they do not, in reality, stand for ‘femaleness’ or ‘maleness’ at all) have become the ideals that both sexes respectively aim for. And who doesn’t want to fit into the ‘popular’ concept of the ‘ideal’, to be accepted, to be loved? For these wishes are human nature – we are, after all, dependent on love.

But luckily, society has made becoming the feminine ideal attainable for all womankind. You can now spend, spend, spend and become just like her! Because if you buy all the right products, dress yourself in the latest fashions and hide your face behind a load of slap, you too can be happy. With an eternal pearl-white smile, you too can be the Feminine Stereotype!

You shop, therefore you are, darling!

‘Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to
body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.’
Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘A Vindication of the Right of Women’, 1792

And what effect is this having on our society? Surely by now, in this affluent age, we should all be happy? Teenage girls are afflicted with eating disorders, anxiety and depression because they don’t fit into the popular definition of ‘perfect’ – but everyone’s happy, right?

Recently, I came across a series of photographs by dA artist, Maryana. Her whole Statistic Series is great, and you should definitely check out her gallery, but a couple of facts from two of the pictures really stuck-out for me. Firstly:

And secondly:

Girls see over 400 advertisements per day telling them how they should look

I don’t think you need me to tell you that these two facts are linked.

50% of girls between the ages of 8 and 14 are dieting

I don’t want the Feminine Stereotype to equate to Girl Poison any more. I want femininity to be what I make it. What it means to be female is different for every girl and woman out there, dependent on their class, race, personality, etc. and no one should be told how to be themselves. Being feminine should be about embracing your womanhood, warts and all, and loving yourself for who you are - not lusting after the plastic-fantastic face of some photoshopped doll in a magazine. Let’s take back our own identities, and be who we really want to be.

Because we think, therefore we are.

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For more on this, see this article from Feministing.com with a short film on ‘Generation Misogyny, which puts my point across far more eloquently than my article!