Keys in My Hand

I'm a huge fan of the blog, It Just Gets Stranger (fellow Strangites unites!), because the posts are hi-la-ri-ous. However, in the post "Falling in Amsterdam," the blog's writer, Eli McCann, had attached three videos of him wondering the streets of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo late at night alone. He also mentioned, even recommended, in a later post, "10 Tips for Traveling on a Budget" that travelers should meet locals and get them to show you the sights since locals know their country better and can help you avoid expensive tourists traps. True that.

But as I watched the video, I couldn't help but think that I, a single young woman, will not be able to do what he did. Wonder the streets late at night alone in a foreign country? The thought makes my hair stand. And don't even mention making friends with locals. I have a difficult time trusting those around me, much less strangers in a foreign land (male or female).

As safe as these cities are, the reality is that male privilege does exist in subtle ways. McCann had the freedom to travel so freely, and even share it with his blog readers, an experience I can only envy and observe, but never replicate.

Photograph by Taylor Yocum
I so relate to this subject.

The reality is that women have to be on guard much more than men do in public spaces. A few months ago, BuzzFeed published an article about Taylor Yocum's Guarded project. (More details found on Yocum's website.) Yocum had photographed women holding items they carry with them in case of an attack-- keys, pepper sprays, rape whistles, etc. I was RELIEVED to learn that I wasn't neurotic after all, for I wasn't the only one who held her keys/ cellphone in her hand when walking home alone at night. The feeling of always having to be on guard is common among many women.  As Yocum wrote about her project,

"In the wake of the taxicab sexual assaults in the Iowa City community last year, my female classmates and I discussed how we keep ourselves safe on walks home at night. We pulled our mace and rape whistles out of our pockets and showed them off---not one of us was fazed. The men in the room were taken aback that we even needed to think about this. This discrepancy between men and women's vulnerability hit me on a deep level... They were the physical manifestation of the realities that women have to face every day: the necessity to be 'on guard' in a society plagued by rape culture and victim blaming."

And this is in the United States. Imagine how much harder it is for women visiting another country.

How do we know we have become a more gender-equal (and safer) society? When men and women can wonder the streets late at night alone, be it at home or in a foreign country, without fear of being assaulted. The fight continues.

You Know Modesty is a Problem When...

Society today has a problem with modest dressing- no surprise there. But you know it has grown in  very big GINORMOUS proportion when even liberal-leaning celebrities are criticizing dress standards of today. This year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover featured Hannah Davis in a bikini (of course), but what got tongues wagging was her bikini bottom. Not only did it barely cover her crotch, readers were supposed to infer from her pose that she was in the act of pulling it down.

I'm disgusted by it, but I'm a Mormon feminist, so duh. But apparently, I wasn't the only one. Guess what appeared on The Tonight Show with John Oliver. (Oliver is political comedic commentator, like Jon Stewart):

I was very surprised that Oliver would tackle this issue since, well, he's a man taking on Sports Illustrated. That takes guts...
And then as I was watching Ellen DeGeneres on her YouTube channel, she brought up the same subject!

Just another reason why I enjoy watching both of them. Sadly, it's doubtful Sports Illustrated is going to do anything about it when it profits from the millions it makes just from that issue alone. It's time we take the question John Oliver asks more seriously-- how is this still a thing?

In case the video links don't work, the John Oliver video is HERE, while Ellen's is HERE.

It's All about the Balance

I saw this image on my friend's blog, and had to share it because it sums up my thoughts about body shapes in two succinct sentences:

I love how it advocates a balanced approach. So true.
[The post from which this image was taken from is also very worth a read.]  

Street Harassment is NOT Right

I don't know how and when society evolved to the point where street harassment/ cat-calling/ wolf-whistling is acceptable male behavior, and I'm glad that women are coming together and standing up against it. YES!!! It's disrespectful and frightening. Let's produce more videos like the one below to educate people that street harassment is NOT right.

In case the video doesn't play, click HERE.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

I had the opportunity to watch a special screening of She's Beautiful When She's Angry, a documentary about the Second Wave Feminist Movement (more info about the film HERE). If I could, I would buy it on DVD and screen it whenever possible, because it explains why I self-identify as a feminist. The title seems to reinforce the stereotype that feminists are a bunch of "angry" women, but don't be turned off by it--I think it was a deliberate choice by the producers to use this word, and refers to the fact that the movement united angry, fed up women against an excessively condescending patriarchy.

The film was deftly edited, and allowed movement women to speak for themselves. There wasn't a narrator to tell you how to think or make the connections between scenes, and yet the film came together in one coherent narrative. Kudos to the producers for also giving a balanced portrayal of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, what it accomplished and what it failed to do. If there was one glaring weakness about the film, it would be that it was silent on the issue of full-time homemakers. This shouldn't be a surprise since much of the movement was about getting women out of the home, and ignored how some women wanted to stay at home (hence the strong backlash by more conservative women and failure to pass the ERA). Perhaps this is one failure of the movement that even feminists today are still not ready to discuss.

Still, the film reminded its audience of how much good came out of it, positive changes that women in America (including me) take for granted today because it seems so commonsense. Yet, if it wasn't for the Feminist Movement...

• Women would be solely defined by their sexuality and relationship to men, e.g. you should only dress/ act to please your man, not yourself; your needs need to revolve around your man. 
• Men would consider it their prerogative to rape women, and doctors would still blame victims for it. (A fight that is still ongoing)
• The medical field would continue to be all-male, and male doctors tell order women how to think and feel about their bodies. 
• Pharmaceutical companies and doctors would not be held accountable for selling harmful birth control pills with insane levels of estrogen.
• No one would highlight how Miss America and beauty pageants objectified women (reminds me of John Oliver's brilliant commentary about the pageant).
• Women wouldn't realize that they can speak out against street harassment 
• It would be totally acceptable, even expected, for job postings to still have "good looks" as a mandatory requirement, while having a brain was optional. 
• Women would be limited to secretarial positions or menial labor jobs. Glass ceiling? What's that? 
• Disgusting male professors won't be charged with sexual harassment for telling his graduate student, "If I don't f*** you, I will f*** you." True story related by one of the interviewees in the film.
• I won't be able to blog. Who cares about my opinion? I'm a woman so I should shut up. 

Why am I a feminist? Because I want to follow in the footsteps of these women who raised awareness about these issues. I'm not saying that I agree with their entire platform, and even feminists fought among themselves (hence the inter-movement divisions as seen in the film), but I can still recognize and applaud their courage to organize and speak out. And because of them, I live in a society that is safer, more accepting of women in powerful positions, and where women have more control over their bodies.

New Year, Same Old Issues

Happy New Year Everyone! Another post to bring your mind back to the awful state of earthly affairs that continues to plague society today on this brand new day and year- sorry! That's what you get when you follow the blog of a feminist who reads the news everyday (:p)

Anyway, today's post doesn't come from the news (although I just read in the New York Times that the 270+ girls kidnapped by the Boko Harem in April are still missing... my guess is they have since been sold to slavery, and my heart aches for them). Rather, it's about how numbed society has become to using women's bodies. Take, for example, last night's television program, New Year's Eve with Carson Daly. I was at a friend's house celebrating the New Year, and we began watching the show around 11:40pm. There, on the host platform, sat Daly, actors Terry Crews and Ken Marino, and (gorgeous) model Chrissy Teigan, hurdled around a fire to discuss what went down in 2014.

Everything's cool, except that poor Teigan wore a short dress that exposed her bare thighs, and an unbuttoned jacket that covered her bare hands and shoulders but did nothing for her bared upper chest area. As for accessories, she had gloves and knee-high boots on (thank goodness!) but no hat--didn't want to mess up her beautifully-styled hair, you know.

In contrast, her fellow hosts, all male, were bundled up to the max! Hats, gloves, scarves, layers of tops... the only skin exposed to the camera were their faces. Terry Crews tore off his shirt after the countdown (ha ha ha), but put it back on soon afterward because, guys, DECEMBER NIGHTS IN NEW YORK CITY ARE FREEZING COLD.

So, why is it that women are expected to freeze their butt off for television, but not men? Double standard yeah?

I don't dress celebrities so I don't know how the process goes, but I'm guessing that it's a negotiation that takes place between the producers/ crew and the celebrities. In all likelihood, the producers asked Teigan to expose a little more skin, and she agreed to it, so it's not as if she was coerced to do so.

I just think that we have become a society that is too used to this double standard of using women's body to "oomph" the sex appeal of a television program in order to increase viewership. I'm not saying that to solve this, 1) we ask the men to strip too, OR 2) women should all start dressing in dowdy, baggy, long-everything clothing. No, no, no. Even I, as a heterosexual woman, can appreciate a little sex appeal from women (emphasis on the word "little").

"Wait, how can you as a Mormon feminist say things like that?" you ask. My reply is long and complicated, and I can elaborate more on another post, but the short answer is: Look, in an ideal society, women wouldn't  need or want to use their bodies to fight for a place at the entertainment table. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen, carnal world where human beings, male and female, are visual creatures. And because I personally am an extreme realist, I understand the power of visual appeal. Even church leaders have commented that we need to take care of our physical bodies and strive to look our very best (see last 3 paragraphs of this article), albeit in a modest manner.

However, there needs to be a balance, and I don't think it is too much to ask that Teigan bundle up a little more for a) practical purposes of health preservation. There is no way she was not freezing her tail off dressed like that; and b) to combat this double standard. Surely she can still remain appealing (and even sexy) without having to resort to skin-baring on that frigid winter night.