Thinking for a Thought

Reading the article by Lizzy Davies, taken off The Guardian website, it got me thinking about how each and every person alive and breathing on this planet has been socialised according to their gender. It seems ‘normal’ to us in most cultures that skirts and dresses are strictly reserved for women and girls and are forbidden or taboo to men and boys. But why? Where does this originate from?

My first thought is that it is because skirts are more feminine and therefore belong to the female race. However, that word itself, ‘feminine’, is constructed by society. According to my quick research, around 300 to 500 years ago, both sexes wore skirts and pants were a rarity. In the industrial age, pants became popular for men as they were more practical in the workplace. Because women were not yet recognised in the male-dominated working world, they were seen as the domesticated gender and were socialised to stay at home; cooking, cleaning and raising the children. However, as Moreau states in the article, “Women fought for trousers; we’re doing the same with the skirt”.

Although this is a comment about how both men and women should be “battling for equality and recognition in a world of prejudice and gender-based stereotypes”, it’s more a comment how everything around us has been gender socialised. Since the day we were born we were put into a box that tries to map out our identity for the rest of our lives; a blue room for a baby boy and a pink room for a baby girl… Because it’s more ‘girly’. What does ‘girly’ even mean? And more importantly, is it a positive or negative attribute.

I do understand that in many Asian and African cultures, men wearing their versions of skirts are not unusual. But for the majority of us, seeing a grown man in a garment of clothing that is ‘meant’ for women would be nothing less than a joke. But really, the joke is all the gender stereotypes that we conform and say nothing about.

www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/aug/04/fashion.gender

Feminism; a word I have not really contemplated or explored until this week. I guess if you do not know much about what a feminist is, you refer to stereotypes that society has created for us. To name a few characteristics of a stereotypical feminist would to describe an unattractive, single woman with elbow-length underarm hair and who does not wear a bra and hates the male species. This, as you can probably guess, is not true.

So, the question given to us in last week’s tutorial is ‘Why is feminism purely intellectual?’ And the answer; because it is not solely physical. Feminists can be anyone. They can be attractive, unattractive, loud, quiet, male, female, blonde brunette, tall, short and so on. They can be absolutely anyone! That means that feminism has nothing to do with a person’s physique and everything to do with their intellect.

I think the concept of social identity comes into play when looking at feminism. Social identity is when you have shared values, knowledge and characteristics with the people you socialise with. Feminists, regardless of their appearance, all believe in the same thing; equality for men and women and identifying with the people who have, in their past, fought for this equality. Feminists by no means think they are superior to men. Well…not the way that I look at it.

It also forms a person’s personal identity, because it is a way of thought, a way of life. You cannot be a feminist one-day and not the next. It is a lifestyle. However, this part of a person’s personal identity is only one component of a whole lot of components. Everything in a person’s life contributes; religion, culture, beliefs and so on. You make yourself who you want to be and if being a feminist is part of that, so be it.

Am I a feminist? I would like to think I am. Everything a feminist stands for should be what everyone should want to stand for. Who wants a world where one gender is superior to the other? Who wants inequality? But then again, who wants a sex that complains if the door is opened for them out of politeness? Or where wearing a short skirt with heels is frowned upon? I think, in this case, a good happy medium is the answer.

I am thinking about the story we were told in our lecture. The one where the boy had his penis taken off at birth (by accident) and consequently was brought up as a girl on female hormones. He, although now a she, still tended towards male-orientated activities and as a teenager decided to transform from a girl back to a boy. Wow, what a lot to deal with. Certain questions are raised with story; A) Who thought it would be best to bring this little boy up as a girl and not let him know the truth (although recommended by the doctor at the time)? B) Was his gender identity then decided from birth and not from the environment he was raised in? and C) Did he have mixed attractions to boys and girls or just one sex, although he ended up marrying a woman? 

Reading an article, they call this ‘gender identity disorder’. A disorder? I thought that things like this were natural and were right. However, in this little boy’s situation, his fate was decided for him before he had a say in anything. Although he was biologically classified as boy at birth, his physiology was changed so he could be a girl. His personal identity changed because he was socialized as a girl. What I do not understand is why his parents or guardian just didn’t raise him as a boy and not a girl. He would have still had the same hormones in his body, and his penis could have been reconstructed at an older age (like it was done anyways). They put their child through serious emotional and physical stress. 

Transvestites are men that dress up as women. They do this because they do not want to be in the make gender role, so for them, dressing up in women’s clothes makes them feel part of that gender identity of female and not male. It tells us that because of socialization, a small thing like skirts and dresses can classify and identify us into boxes and affect our gender identity. But I think our gender identity is much more than that; I think it does involve what we wear, but also how we were raised, who we share our time with, our perspective on ourselves and our gender identity and who we actually want to be.

“Jess is looking forward to the weekend”, “Jess is hung over”, “Jess has sooo much work to do”, “Jess is in love”… and so on… These are tame examples of people’s statuses on Facebook. Don’t know what Facebook is? Where have you been for the past few years? Facebook is the fastest growing social-media, networking site in the world! It is the place where people market themselves to each other and stay in contact.  

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, with co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, in his Harvard dorm room, Facebook now has more than 100 million active users (see statistics). Facebook is a part of (almost) everyone’s life, with it having a translation application for 21 languages, it is almost impossible to avoid it. It is a way of communication, interaction, networking, staying in touch with friends and even a way of flirting. It is everywhere. 

Now there is the thing called the Profile Page. The Profile Page is where you set up your virtual identity. A space is provided for the best photo you can find of yourself posing like a supermodel, or for those nonchalant types, a space to put the craziest picture. The status bar; an expression of feelings or just a place to whine and show off? Then there are the applications and wow, there are many of them; from games, to online dating, to diet diaries, to learning French. There is always something for everyone.  

But what does Facebook really do? What is its purpose? For the common man, or woman, it is a chance to put forward the best you can do and market yourselves as the person you want to be seen as. Accumulating as many "friends" as possible is a must. Areas for comment are always available as well as the opportunity to stalk other people on their profile pages. Of course, privacy and security can be as limited or unlimited as you want. But for Facebook? A source of 100 million people and their information. Basically, it is market research in the large scale, a business that doesn’t have to look for the information because the information is given directly to them; a world-wide database of who likes what movies or listens to what genre of music; a chance to access what you, as the user, have wanted the world to know. An archive of identities.  

Identity forms a large part of Facebook. The whole concept is made up of you creating a supposedly compact version of yourself to fit into a page; picking up on the best assets and omitting the bad liabilities. This personal identity may not correlate one hundred percent with your real life identity, but that’s the point. It is a chance to create what you want to create and add what you think is applicable. And together, Facebook forms a virtual community with many identities. 

If any of you have watched Minority Report, the scene where Tom Cruise is walking through a shopping mall and the interactive advertisements are individually talking to him, which is an advanced version of how the information that you provide to Facebook is used. I know perhaps I am exaggerating a bit, but Facebook is a social directory for sharing information with one another and without us knowing it, we are participating in the largest global-research project known to man kind.

The United Nations Development Programme describes globalization as “a process which is aimed at integrating the world market where national commodity capital, financial and currency markets are joined together into a single market which operates according to a set of rules which apply are universal” According to them, it is trans-national corporations, multi-lateral institutions and governments of advanced industrialised countries that are driving globalisation. In laymen’s terms, globalization is the force that drives everything to become global. For example, a chain of McDonald’s stores can be found in most countries around the world and in poorer countries use they use their farmlands for cattle ranches to supply the USA. 

It can be argued that globalization is the cause of the growing gap between the rich and the poor in South Africa; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Because of these large multinational companies coming into our country and expanding their products in a land where we are dealing with bigger problems than every household not having luxuries, the essential and fundamental needs of the people are not being met or properly dealt with. Globalization has also created a gap between countries and their level of wealth; we are competing with countries that are not dealing with the same crises as us. 

Nevertheless, South Africa still depends on the relationship with the global economy and therefore cannot shut itself off from the world because of this problem. The ANC has decided to implement itself and the country in order to benefit through globalization by capitalizing the opportunities it comes with it and trying to overcome the disadvantages. Besides, even if this action was not decided by the ANC, South Africa’s participation in the global economy is already influenced through organizations such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the International Labour Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  

A government no longer stands alone in running its own country and economy; it is controlled by a force greater than itself – globalization.

It is impossible to watch a television (TV) programme (without PVR!) and be bombarded by many mixed messages during the advertisement (ad) break. We live in a society where we claim that women are equal to men, that careers are not gender-orientated anymore, that identity is who you are and not what you have, and that globalization is overwhelming the globe. However, this is not what I seen when I turn on the tube.  

I am not sure if I am the only person in the world to feel this, but I absolutely hate those advertisements that ‘sell’ those ring tones for your cell phone. For example, the one that has a baby singing Rhianna’s ‘Umbrella’. If you watch TV after eight at night, in one ad break there is at least two or three of them that pop onto your screen. eTV is the worst. The fact that these silly mobile ads outnumber the adverts promoting HIV/AIDS or missing children tells us that the priorities of globalization are very different to the priorities of our country. The adverts would not come on as often if the market for them was not there. This comments on the fact that globalization has affected every market, in every possible place; influencing the world view and not being country-specific. We are told that globalization is not the best thing for South Africa at the moment (see Blog 5), yet the results are not reflecting this. Consumerism, due to globalization, controls our everyday lives. 

The other ad that brings up conflicting issues is the Danon Clover advert for their new children’s yoghurt. It is of a pre-school teacher walking around the playground and telling the viewer the advantages of a child eating this specific product. More calcium for stronger bones would be one for example. This teacher, however, is of curse female and dressed like a librarian. In contrast, an advert for Eno has a boardroom of men dressed in black suits conducting a meeting. Where are the male pre-school teacher and the woman in the business suit? Yes, nowadays, it is acceptable to be a male nurse, stay-at-home dad or a female engineer, but this is not reflected in the advertisements we see on TV. Careers are still being put forward as gender-orientated roles that are structured and finite regardless of what is now acceptable. 

I laugh when I see adverts for ‘feminine products’. They always show such independent, free woman doing extreme sports and living life to the fullest with no regard to men or their agendas. But in contrast, an ad for washing powder shows a women being the traditional housewife and kissing her husband goodbye as he goes off to work. These two advertisements juxtaposed show the two ends of the spectrum of gender identity. The media draws on these stereotypes; they do not create them. This means that although society wants men and women to be equal in all ways, in reality, it is not really like that. Although women nowadays do go to work, it is still in most cases them using the washing powder, and not the men.  

Globalization, consumerism, gender identity and career-orientated roles are all commented on by the media we are exposed to on an everyday basis. A simple advert can speak a thousand words. It is important to listen to what we say and to look at what we do, because in most cases these two are very different.

I think everyone was quite amused the other day when Shathley requested me to continuously play the Pussycat Dolls’ song ‘When I Grow Up’. As irritating as the song is, when I saw the music video on TV last night, it got me thinking; are these six women really meaning what they say or are they just saying what sells? 

Googling this to see what the world thinks, I came across a blog titled ‘Pussycat Dolls: Feminists or Half-Naked Puppets?’ I chuckled at this at first but then realised that this person had been wondering the same question as I had. I checked out this bloggers comment on the Pussycat Dolls not writing their own music and it’s true – they don’t write it. So what does this fact comment on? The Pussycat Dolls could just be singing what their record label tells them too and what will bring in the cash OR they are part of the third-wave feminism movement and only choose the songs that for their identity.  

What I understand about third-wave feminism (or post-feminism) is that it is when feminists acknowledge that we are all equal and that they are now trying to distance themselves away from the movement, in a variety of ways, but not in an approach that undoes history’s work; a ‘new-age’ feminist would probably be a better suited term to use. The Pussycat Dolls do this by singing about dreaming big and not listening to anyone but the self, “this is true 'cause what I do, no one can do it better”. However, in their music video, they are still dressed in minimal clothing, with maximum eye makeup and provocative attitude. They are affirming that they are independent, but not independent enough to stop dressing for men (and some women) just so that the record sells, “I see you watching me, watching me, and I know you want it”.   

The group’s creator and lead singer, Robin Antin, comments by saying, “First of all, there's nothing slutty about it, there's nothing skanky about it…Yes, the clothing, it's sexy…" So there’s another view to think about; sexy versus skanky clothing (see photo of the girls performing 'When I Grow Up'), what’s the difference? But alas, that is another blog. For now, the Pussycat Dolls, for me, remain an ambiguous group undecided about whether they are emancipated or reliant on the attention from the male species. Post-feminists or not, their song still irritates me.

Stumbling across Nancy Gibbs’ article “The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity,” I was taken aback when I found out about these ‘purity balls’. A purity ball is, according to Wikipedia, a formal event attended by fathers and their daughters that promotes virginity until marriage for teenaged girls, and are closely associated with U.S. Christian churches. The Time Magazine does this odd event justice by explaining all the rituals and happenings of the evening.  

The basic jist of the purity ball is daughters taking vows to swear their purity and remain a virgin until they are married. The fathers take an oath to protect their daughters and their chastity and become “a shield of her heart”. At their wedding day they will hand over their daughters to their future husbands, in assurance that they are pure and intact. The event, as ABC News descibes is, it much like a wedding; white cakes, exchanged vows and rings, and first dances are all involved.Although the whole event is run by the US Christian Centre, I think religion is not the main issue her, but the actual event itself. 

For me, the purity ball seems more like a way of controlling the daughters and less like a father-daughter bonding evening. The young girls are taught, from ages as young as four, to remain abstinent. Four! How is a four-year-old even meant to understand the concept of sex, let alone a relationship? By them taking a vow to ignore all desires and urges, it will just set them up for masses of guilt when those feeling come along with puberty. In addition, if they are taught to not have sex before marriage, it is unlikely that they will be taught safe-sex precautions. Therefore, if they decide to break the vow, the chances are they will have unprotected sex. The role of a parent is to educate and support, not inflict decisions that will statistically (88% of the girls who take the vow have sex before mariage) go against the child. 

The purity balls, it seems, is just another way of society remaining and sustaining patriarchy. As a critic in Time suggests, why can’t the dad and daughter just do a leisurely activity together, such as taking up a hobby? The vow the father takes is as follows: 

I, (DAUGHTER'S NAME)'S FATHER, CHOOSE BEFORE GOD TO COVER MY DAUGHTER AS HER AUTHORITY AND PROTECTION IN THE AREA OF PURITY. I WILL BE PURE IN MY OWN LIFE AS A MAN, HUSBAND AND FATHER. I WILL BE A MAN OF INTEGRITY AND ACCOUNTABLITY AS I LEAD, GUIDE AND PRAY OVER MY DAUGHTER AND MY FAMILY AS THE HIGH PRIEST IN MY HOME. THIS COVERING WILL BE USED BY GOD TO INFLUENCE GENERATIONS TO COME. 

By the fathers vowing to control their daughters, the girls are left with no choice and no knowledge of how to have adult relationships. A 12-year-old girl attending a ball with her father says she won’t kiss or have sex with anyone until she is married. She also said she won’t look for a relationship because it will find her. I do not understand how a parent can think this is best for a child; the whole experience of being a teenager is learning from your mistakes and gaining your own knowledge and experience, not shutting yourself away from “sex-craved boys” and waiting around for Prince Charming. Also, it is sending a message that girls are not allowed to have sexual relations, while boys can do whatever they want to. 

I suggest you read ABC News and Time’s articles on purity balls because they can’t be properly explained or understood unless you have read something about them. For me, I see an event reinforcing a male-dominated private sphere where control is covered up by words such as protection and love. Although these purity balls happen in a land far far away from us and in a community different from ours, the theme of patriachry remains constant and the same. Purity balls in South Africa? We’ll just have to wait and see.