My Feminism

This weekend was kind of weird. We had a lot of strange, unexpected things happen, some of which were kind of disappointing and some which were kind of cool. The first cool thing that happened was that we found a stray dog we named Spreckles. We could only keep him for about an hour because our apartment doesn't allow pets, but it was cool to remember what it's like to have a dog around the house. We got him to the pound and found out he may have another owner, so we did the right thing in not keeping him.

We also had Valentine's day, which was pretty fun. Matt got me a cactus he named Phillip. We found out that we can stick pom poms to him and it's almost like he has a little hat. We used the olympic colors because we're currently obsessed with the winter olympics. We go and watch them on campus because NBC is evil and doesn't allow any sort of online streaming of the olympics whatsoever. Talk about a monopoly.

It's like they're floating!

Anyway, it was on Valentine's day that this really weird thing happened that got me thinking very deeply. Matt and I had gone out to dinner, and as we were walking home we were having a philosophical discussion about Voltaire and Pascal (I'm taking a French literature class and Matt is taking philosophy, so we feel pretty sophisticated around the dinner table. We also stick pom poms on cacti and play Scriblenauts while waiting for our food so we can swing both ways.). As we were walking down the foggy, wet main street, Matt leaned over to scoop up a snowball as he pondered our deep discussion, and at the same moment, a car with it's windows rolled down slowed while a guy leaned out and yelled, "Shove it in her face!" I glanced at him, leaning out his window, casually yelling rude things at complete strangers, then looked away quickly and stared straight ahead. "Yeah, no thanks," Matt said back, and the guy and the other passengers continued to shout what I assumed were more unintelligible rude things. They drove off. I told Matt, "Why didn't you flip them off or something?" "That's just what they would've wanted." He was right of course.

I tried to continue our previous conversation, but I couldn't. I couldn't shake what had just happened. I didn't understand why it had bothered me so much. We're in a college town, so people do incredibly stupid stuff in public all the time. Matt calls it "Mormon drunk" which is worse than real drunk. With real drunk, they actually have given over their reasoning skills to alcohol, so of course they're going to be idiots. With Mormon drunk, they have no substance messing up their brains. They can still reason, but they just think it's hilariously good fun to act like a total idiot/jerk/weirdo in public just to see the shock and annoyance  on people's faces.

It's not like what he said was incredibly offensive either. Sure, it wasn't nice, but I'd heard much more insulting things before. I told Matt that it was still bothering me and I didn't know why. He pinned it down for me in one statement: "It's because they didn't see you as a person, as a human being. They saw you as a thing to sleep with." I was shocked. That seemed to be a large leap Matt was making, but as I thought about it, I realized it makes since. Would you feel like it was a good idea to tell some complete stranger to shove snow in his wife's face if you we're seeing both of them as human beings, with feelings like you have? He wasn't treating either of us like real people, but it's the fact that he addressed Matt, and was truly expecting Matt to shove snow in my face, that showed his complete inconsideration for my feelings or humanity. And if a woman isn't a human with feelings, what is she? Something to sleep with.

Now, you might think that's a huge conclusion based on such a small event and that I'm judging this rude guy wrongly, but I think Matt was right. And it made me realize how often that happens where women's humanity or feelings  are not considered, and they are objectified. I think people objectify women a lot more than they realize. What happened last night is just one example.

As I was thinking of other ways people objectify women, I thought about things like rape victim shaming, lower salaries, and blatant sexual harassment, but I realized that although I know that these things do happen to women, they've never happened to me or anyone I know. So I don't want to talk about them. I want to talk about things that have happened to me or do happen to me on a daily basis that have made me feel like an object because I'm a woman. I want to especially talk about how this shows up so often in the Mormon culture, and maybe not in ways you expect. (By the way, my definition of objectifying or dehumanizing someone is reducing someone into pieces instead of seeing her as a whole: she's just beautiful, she's a nice pair of legs, she's a blonde, etc.)

The first way I've seen this is in how people treat women as objects of beauty. There's a commercial, (now that we watch the olympics we have to deal with commercials) on television where a woman says she's jealous because her husband looks younger than her. She stands there, depressed  at a dinner party, as her husband flirts with another woman in the background. Then she uses miracle eye serum and suddenly she looks younger than her husband, and he's ignoring the other woman, giving full respect to his beautiful, young wife. This one is obviously reducing women's importance down to their looks. And as much as the media does this every day, it doesn't bother me as much as how much it's pushed in the Mormon culture. 

I was a teenager in Utah, which was beneficial in some ways and ruinous in others. I've always been a little odd about my appearance, especially when I was a teenager. I couldn't give a crap about how I looked in public. Thus, I often had greasy hair, torn jeans, and hairy legs. I eventually realized that I wanted to look good for myself, so I started taking more time to get ready in the mornings. For me, wearing some make-up, always having clean brushed hair, and shaving my legs occasionally in the summer was a huge step, but once again, it was mostly for my own benefit of seeing my pretty face in the mirror. In Utah, it was in no way good enough. I remember sitting in shorts next to another girl at girl's camp, waiting for some activity to start. She looked down at my (shaved) legs and said, "Wow, Esther, your legs are pasty white. Why don't you lay out in your backyard for a couple minutes a day?" I could never understand why my whiteness made me unattractive. I've always thought my legs and porcelain skin were beautiful, but this is a culture where the biggest amenity in a girl's apartment complex is free skin cancer tanning beds. Why would it matter if my legs were three shades darker? It wouldn't, but it's the idea that beauty for women is not defined by if they're truly beautiful or not, but if they follow the strict guidelines set out by their society which dictate what is beautiful.

Being beautiful or following those beauty guidelines is not the problem though. It's the idea that our value to men increases with our beauty. Once again, as a teenager in Utah, I remember having a lesson in young women's about being a good wife. My leader talked about how we should always be presentable for our husbands. She said, "He doesn't want to come home and find you squatting on the floor in your pajamas, with no make-up and your hair all messy, scrubbing up spilled syrup." Now that I'm married, I know exactly what my husband's reaction would be if he came home to that: "You're scrubbing the floor? You're so awesome!" I've told people this story, and their reaction is usually, "What is this, the 50s?" Even though not every young women's leader believes this way, I've felt the push my whole life to be beautiful, not because it would make me feel good or because I want to look good for my husband, but because it's what my husband deserves, or because no guy wants that, or you'll never get a date if, etc. 

Girls, be beautiful, but be beautiful by being a creator of beauty, by seeking out beauty, by cultivating beauty. Don't be beautiful by spending all of your time and money on make-up, hair products, and tanning beds and don't be beautiful so men will accept you. Real men will accept you in whatever state of beauty you're currently in. When my husband met me, I was wearing a grey sweatshirt, baggy camo pants, and grey Napoleon Dynamite snow boots.  I had just taken a shower so my hair was in a wet knot and I had no make-up on. He immediately wanted to get my number and ask me out because he saw something inside of me, a spark of liveliness and beauty that was in my eyes more than in my eye make-up. With the way I grew up in Utah, I honestly never would've believed that I could've met my husband looking like that. This belief that women need to be beautiful for men to like them is so ingrained in our culture, but it's a complete lie. It's a destructive lie that makes women feel inadequate and self conscious. As an object of beauty, if you believe that guys will only like you if you're beautiful and attractive, and guys don't seem to like you, that means you're not beautiful, which means you have no purpose. Isn't that a ridiculous formula? And so obviously untrue. But it's used as a way to make girls sacrifice everything to be attractive, therefore sacrificing everything to be an object of beauty, or dehumanized. What's more destructive then that?

The second way people objectify women is seeing them as things that are begging to be slept with. There's a movie called Crazy, Stupid, Love. that features this very idea. Ryan Gosling who is the ultimate player can get any girl he wants. He tells Steve Carrell's character that the war between the sexes is over and men have won. He demonstrates this by showing him how he can get any girl to sleep with him if he follows certain guidelines: pretending to listen to them and care about their problems, flattering them, and basically charming the pants off of them. 

Ryan Gosling. The sexist. Shut up, Ryan. I don't need your baby face.

Obviously, this isn't quite the same in Mormon culture. Sure, there are womanizers and players that go through girls like jars of Nutella (does no one eat as much Nutella as I do?), but that's not where I see this most evident in my culture. I see this as the idea that all women are begging for someone to marry them. When I was eighteen, I broke up with my first boyfriend, and I realized that I didn't want another boyfriend; I wanted a husband. I wanted someone that would sincerely care about me and who I could confide in completely. I wanted a best friend that would be there for me the rest of my life. The next semester, I was very outgoing, joining clubs to make new friends and meet new people. I talked to everyone, which is hard for me, but I was searching for good friends. Was I begging every boy I saw to marry me? No. Did I want to get married? Yes. There's a difference.

How I normally am...

When I was doing the whole "be social and make friends" thing, I noticed that if I initiated conversation with guys, or showed any interest in them whatsoever, they'd ignore me/run away from me/act really weird around me like I was in love with them. Now that I'm married, I have male classmates who I met yesterday come up and tell me their life stories without me even prodding because I'm married so I'm "safe." As if when I was single and they talked to me like that I would've fallen at their knees begging them to be my one and only. My main intention during that social stage was to make friends and meet new people. I gave up on it after a month (then immediately met my husband two weeks later) because I hadn't even made any friends. It felt like guys were afraid of me. I was trying to be assertive, but to them I was desperate for their love.

My mom noticed this ridiculous fear in Mormon boys and exploited it well. At dances, she'd be talking with some uptight Utah guy, then she'd look at him and say, "You know what, you're really great. Hey, will you marry me?" He'd freak out and she'd laugh at how conceited he was for believing her. But that's the thing. LDS colleges sometimes feel like marriage farms. You think that a large portion of people who are there are there to get married. That might be true, but that doesn't mean that just because someone wants to hang out with you or talk with you, they're in love with you and want to have your babies.

If you've ever seen this sketch,  it's kind of the epitome of how LDS women are seen.

How is this idea any different than Ryan Gosling's idea? Assuming that when a woman talks to you and shows interest in you, she is actually in love with you and wants you to marry her is the same as assuming that any woman who will talk with you, will sleep with you. It's not only conceited, it's once again reducing women into things to be slept with, not people trying to create meaningful friendships and relationships.

I probably could write on this topic forever. In fact, when I was walking home last night, thinking about how many pressures there are when you're a woman, I realized that this may be something I will keep writing about and speaking about. It needs to be discussed. I'd say I'm a feminist, but I really don't agree with a lot of the feminist movements. I like my bra, I'm fine without having the priesthood, and I plan on being a stay at home mom. My feminism isn't where women are more powerful than men or take over the role of men; my feminism is where women are appreciated and applauded for their many unique qualities and not simply celebrated as beautiful pleasure items. 

As a final note, I want to thank the incredible men in my life who have not fallen in with these beliefs and have always treated women with respect and honor. My dad, for instance, encouraged me to go to skate board camp, ride a motorcycle, and get an education because he knew it would make me intimidating. He knew that if I believed I could do anything, that would scare off any guy who wanted me for shallow reasons. He taught me that only the bravest men of the highest character want smart and confident women. Which brings me to my husband, who loves me for everything I am and encourages me to embrace my emotions. He doesn't get embarrassed or awkward when I have random moments of crying, but holds me and says, "It's okay to be sad." He doesn't put me down for watching Barbie movies, buying hoards of nail polish, or stopping at every dress store window display and criticizing every dress. My brother has always been my best friend. We would always spar in the kitchen, play video games together, and go to Brick Con (a Lego convention). He grew up with three sisters and probably enough estrogen to strangle him, but he's always respected, protected, and stood up for us. He might hate me for sharing this, but he once called me at midnight, distraught over how his friends had crudely mocked a girl he knew behind her back. He was so upset with himself for not standing up for her. To me, his sympathy in that moment defines his incredible character.

When I look back on last night, I realize how our smallest actions can carry with them the most disgusting follies of our society. Sexism exists, but it's not always in the loud abusive ways people shame women, but in the small prejudices and oversights that may only sting slightly at first, but can have a lasting infectious affect.