yeah, why AREN'T we shocked?????
Stop whatever you're doing now. Take 5 minutes (perhaps less if you're a fast reader) and read this article. Do it.
As I checked new comments left on one of Nas's recent posts, I remembered the article from a couple of days ago, and I want to start some dialogue on it. I think it’s particularly fitting for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I don't know where it will lead, and I hope people will weigh in honestly and without filters. I know I have lots of questions and thoughts on the topic of safety and dignity for women and girls, and I'll offer just a few of them here since I could write for DAYS about this. I may meander a bit here…
I often lament the prospect of one day raising my children in this world—particularly my girls. (Enshallah.) I cringe at the thought of my 12-year old daughter feeling pressure to spend hours in the bathroom obsessing over her hair, makeup and outfit for school, just so she can look like a girl on a magazine cover who has the word “juicy” sprawled across her behind. My heart breaks when I imagine what music lyrics might teach her about her milkshake bringing all the boys to the yard, taking off her clothes ‘cause it’s getting hot in here, bringing it on back ‘til she feels something hard on her back, and her lovely lady lumps. And I shudder to think about her tender soul’s reaction to fgm, female infanticide, and the general assault of violence against women—all quite prevalent in today’s world.
When I reflect on my own upbringing, I’m really not sure how I turned out the way I am, and I am still puzzled by a few things. (I’ll get to the puzzlement in a moment.) For the record, I was never a girly girl. I was pretty tough and a bit of a tomboy from a very young age. Sure—I was just as into fads and trends as the next young girl. I watched MTV, was influenced by Madonna’s music and image, and was interested in being “accepted” by my peers. I had to have that Forenza sweater just like my friends. But I was pretty naïve about most things. Like music—when I was a child, I had NO idea what songs like “Angel is a Centerfold” and “Master and Servant” were really about. I just liked the way they sounded, and I liked dancing to those songs. (Go ahead—have a chuckle at my expense. I’m ok with it.) In high school, I valued sleep more than spending time on my hairdo, brains more than boobs, and eating dessert more than being super skinny.
I’m not sure where I got the “I could care less” attitude. My mom was (and still is) so beautiful—glamorous, even—and well-dressed. But I never really cared about all that, or that so many people would comment on how I looked exactly like her. Maybe it was my way of rebelling against my perception of society’s ridiculous pressure on women—a perception that strongly clashed with my spiritual training about gender equality and my understanding of what it meant to be a liberated woman. Maybe it was because something in me was painfully aware and disapproving of my father’s unfavorable and often inappropriate opinions of and relationships with women. Maybe my tough side came from having always been very different from my classmates (being a non-Christian brown-skinned kid—one of two in my entire elementary school experience) and having been teased a lot for it as a girl. I learned early on not to take any shit from anyone, especially boys. My response to one classmate who called me a hairy gorilla in 6th grade (no joke) was to kick him hard right where I knew it would hurt him most. (Ironically, we became good friends in high school. It’s amazing what a little maturity will do for a boy.) And maybe that tough side taught me not to care about what other people thought about me, especially boys.
Something interesting happened along the way, though, and things became complicated. For one thing, feeling beautiful or sexy and being intelligent or spiritual became mutually exclusive. Somehow beautiful girls were not smart in my paradigm of thinking. Somehow it was not ok to love your body and celebrate its beauty by dressing up or “showing some skin” if you were intelligent. Girls who had a sensual or physical sense of themselves and dressed up or dressed “provocatively” (that is SUCH a loaded word!) were just asking for attention—especially attention from boys. And that attention wasn’t “safe” as it might lead not only to sexual acts (not ok outside of marriage in my religious paradigm) but also to physically dangerous situations; therefore, it wasn’t intelligent. For me, it seemed having a sense of my sexuality was “dirty” and not appropriate or smart for a “lady”—especially a liberated one. This has led to so many body image and sexuality issues for me, and in talking with many girlfriends over the years, I have discovered that I am not alone in my struggles and confusion. So many of us have shunned any semblance of sexuality that we haven’t known how to develop healthy sexual intimacy in our most precious relationships.
This really gets at the heart of my puzzlement. Bob Herbert said this in his op-ed piece:
“We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we're still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.
“What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.
“A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the US. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels - objects - and never, ever as the equals of men.
“ ‘Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,’ said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.”
And I can’t agree more. I passionately, fervently, wholeheartedly agree. But where, then, is the solution? Where is the delicate balance? Clearly, we cannot and must not advocate the objectification of women. We have to uphold the spiritual principle of gender equality and apply it to all facets of life—economy, relationship roles, education, industry, etc. And we are morally compelled to teach our girls that they are NOT first and foremost sexual vessels and they are NOT designed solely to focus on their appearance and their ability to please men (or women) sexually.
A burning question on my mind is this: How do we raise our girls to have self-confidence, to trust their instinct and their body, be spiritually upright, dignified, and moral while having a healthy sense of their sexuality and true beauty and the appropriate expression thereof?
Our bodies ARE beautiful. They have been celebrated in art and literature for centuries. I think it’s interesting that we accept the Venus de Milo as one of the world’s greatest works of art while we decry the nude photography of Robert Mapplethorpe and similar photographers as being pornographic or degrading of women. So what’s the difference?
Perhaps what I’m exploring here has to do with intention, or at least our assumption of intention. I don’t believe it was a Greek sculptor’s or Mapplethorpe’s intention to degrade women by immortalizing nude females. I don’t think these artists were expressing a desire to dominate or objectify. And I imagine that’s what Mr. Herbert was pointing out as well.
Our intention cannot be the dehumanization of any member of our world culture—women, blacks, Chinese, children, homosexuals, the undereducated, or the homeless. Our intention cannot be the perpetuation of misogyny and the degradation of women in American society. And I will get on my “it starts with me” soapbox one more time—our intention, first and foremost, has to be a fearless assessment of the ways in which each of us as an individual contributes toward or breaks down gender equality. I will come clean about my own actions, as ugly and disgusting as they were in one particular moment. The other day I found myself unutterably frustrated with traffic, and I gasped in shame as I heard the word “whore” muttered under my breath while I angrily drove around a woman who was smoking, talking on her cell phone AND driving slow in the left lane.
Why aren’t we shocked? Indeed.
I am still trying to figure out how to be the woman I am meant to be, the woman I want to be, the woman I know myself to be in my heart of hearts. I am working on my self-acceptance and sense of nobility as God’s creature. I endeavor daily to align my actions and words more closely with my sense of the divine in each of us. I pray for love, surrender and compassion to be my guiding principles. I struggle with my body image and strive to find balance with my sense of my sexuality. And most importantly, I am eager to explore what still needs to be accomplished to create a safe, nurturing, healthy world for our girls. Some organizations are just beginning to graze the surface of this issue. One thing is clear—we’ve got a long way to go, baby.