Reading Lubu’s post on women, pantomimes and justification this weekend planted a thought in my head:
See, one of the lessons I learned early on as a cub was that women have to justify every. got. damn. thing. we do. We’re supposed to come up with some justification for the simplest activities, the basic fabric of our lives. We even have ready-made templates for the pantomimes we’re supposed to engage in. Single mothers (like me) are supposed to apologize for our singleness, explain our singleness, justify our singleness to all and sundry. We’re supposed to promise we didn’t mean it to be this way, that we did everything we could to do avoid that terrible fate, but it just couldn’t be helped. We are supposed to offer up the best made-for-Lifetime-TV movie script of our lives we can muster. Even for strangers. For anyone who questions us. There are pantomimes on just about every female-oriented subject under the sun.
I have to write on this later.
In the meantime, why does it feel like every feminist writer on the internet that diverges from the norm (or “admits” to participating in a norm) discusses this diversion/participation like it’s a fucking confession? Is there really anything in these “confessions” to be truly, honestly ashamed of?
Like on Alternet yesterday, there was an article by a woman who wondered if it was unfeminist to want to lose weight. It makes feminism seem really shit-tay if your card gets revoked because you take up jogging or shave your hoo-ha or get a manicure or whatever.
There was a post by another blogger who I won’t name who actually talked about conventional feminine accoutrements as infractions. Infractions. It’s like that passage in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where he talks about his prayers forming a slender thread of bright goodness climbing up to Heaven.
It makes feminism seem really shit-tay if your card gets revoked because you take up jogging or shave your hoo-ha or get a manicure or whatever.
It makes it seem trivial and fetishistic, like yet another load of accessories in this accessory-obsessed culture. The hard-on for ritual is something we need to get over, not make over.
That paragraph of her post really resonated for me, a single mother. I am looking forward to your post on it.
Or, well, I think ritual is a fine thing; the thing is to do it -consciously.-
Hello. My name is Arwen, and I apologize.
I wish we’d start with discussion, sometimes, before moving to critique. But I’m the sort that never gets anything done, I s’pose.
yeah, shout out to belledame-the fact that one is aware of the rituals one undergoes in order to achieve what is typically associated with women under the patriarchy, sort of absolves it to a certain extent - for a second. being a semi-femme myself with my love for moisturizer, I may be biased.
now I am thinking of the bit in “A Thousand Clowns” where the protag observes that you can basically just say “I’m sorry” to any random person in public and they’ll pretty much automatically forgive you. probably worth trying sometime…