How to Be a Woman

Any writer, male or female, that can spend an entire chapter riffing on pubic hair so hard I nearly pee my panties and then turn around and deconstruct the entire recorded history of women into the depressing thimble of: we've-been-too-busy-and-tired-giving-birth-and-cleaning-up-after-you-twats-to-do-anything-important has my attention.  This lady is smart.  Smart and brash and awkward and so spot-on sometimes you'll want to argue with her but then you realize she's right.  The thing is, feminism has become a dirty word.  And not in a good way, like saying something naughty under your breath makes you feel powerful behind the back of an overbearing boss.  Feminism has become embarrassing, for everyone.  Conjure up the image of a feminist in your mind and I bet you picture a short-haired, ugly, makeup-less middle-aged woman screaming bitter tirades about absolutely NOTHING.  You just want to give her a valium and a warm bath.  Nobody in their right mind wants to be that woman.  Or sleep with her.

This is not Moran.  Moran wants us to take back the word.  She wants us to stand on chairs in bars, slightly tipsy, and shout, I AM A FEMINIST.  And not just us ladies, the menfolk too.  See, the problem is most people (that actually take the time to think about this) are walking around under the impression that feminism is a "female" issue, which is ridiculous.  Feminism is a female issue as much as civil rights are a "black" issue.  The right for one gender to be treated equally to another is a HUMAN issue.  Just like the right for one race to be treated equally to another is a HUMAN issue.  Feminism is a human right.  And men have as much to benefit from it as women, which is why we should all be standing on chairs right now shouting, "I am a FEMINIST" while wielding our furry muffs and spending our hard-earned paychecks on tequila shots.  Well, that's Moran's take on it anyway, but I'm pretty sure she'd be just as thrilled if you stood on a chair at the hairdresser and shouted while getting your eyebrows waxed.  The thing is ladies; no one is going to just give us rights and freedom, unfortunately.  The whole sad history of human affairs does not bode well for oppressed peoples being granted liberation from the money-hungry power mongers just because, well, the raging tyrants stopped raping and pillaging for a moment to say, "Hmmm....maybe we should share our wealth and power and get along!" 

My two grandmothers never learned to drive.  Not only were they not "allowed" to by their husbands, they didn't have the means to purchase and maintain an automobile or the freedom to use it.  And this isn't a story from 1688.  I'm not THAT old.  We're talking a few decades ago.  We're talking NOW.  These were my role models growing up.  That's why I get so bitchy and angry when I watch yet another movie/video game/advertisement/music video where the woman's role (sometimes we get lucky and there is two or three women!) is that of aggressive seductress or passive damsel in distress.  That's it.  That's what we are reduced to.  That's what all the little girls growing up have as role models.  Grotesque surgically-mutilated clowns teetering around in stilettos or else trembling ingénues waiting for a big strong man to protect them from the world and keep them safe.  Seriously?  Because that’s fucked.  Because that is not a single woman I know in real life.  And I doubt very strongly that’s a thinking-man’s idea of a solid life-partner.  A quick wank, maybe.  Real women are strong and courageous and tender and vulnerable and loving and sometimes horrible.  We are so much bigger and more complicated that society wants us to be.  And that’s what is so great about Moran’s book.  She wants us to celebrate the fact that we are bigger and more complicated than some puny, pathetic stereotypes.  As Meg Jay says, we need to get some identity capital: http://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20.html

We need to get off the poles, get into office, throw on our big-girl granny panties and get on with getting shit done.  If that means we need to put our kids in daycare or have abortions or stop spending money on “investment bags” or get a divorce or piss off a lot of people, then so be it.  We need to let go of the boring, heterosexual get-a-man-and-have-a-baby-and-everything-will-be-perfect dream we have been sold because it isn’t a dream at all, it is a nightmare.  Everything is not perfect just because you are married with kid(s).  Sometimes those husbands leave, or die, or hate you, or leave their damn shit all over the place and expect some magic fairy (you) to pick it up for them.  Sometimes your kids get sick, or die, or hate you, or leave their damn shit all over the place and expect some magic fairy (you) to pick it up for them.  Sometimes you stare in the mirror at three am with baby-vomit on your nightgown and think, “THIS is what I was waiting for?”  All those nights at the club grinding my pelvis against some over-cologned idiot hoping he was “the one” lead to THIS?  I could have been in Paris eating truffles!  I could have painted a masterpiece!  I could have slept for more than three hours in a row for the last ten years!  I’m not discounting the joy and delight there is to be had during the coupling of two people leading to reproduction and parenthood.  I’m just saying it isn’t necessarily the pinnacle of your existence.  We need woman doing other things.  Like men.  Because men can seem to have babies and wives AND also invent shit and lead revolutions and make art and get things done.  Because they aren’t usually the ones up at three am cleaning baby vomit off their nightgowns.  They are sleeping blissfully in their cozy beds with their hand down the front of their boxers dreaming of their next merger or the blonde next door.

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled, or ruined, because all around them society was still wrong.  Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc- and you’ll also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.  Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool.  Few girls would choose to be right – right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely. (p.10)

Just imagine how much other shit you could get done if, instead of worrying what your boyfriend thinks about how your butt looks in your new jeans, you just GOT ON WITH IT.  What if you took all that money you spent painfully and tearfully ripping downy little hairs off your beautiful body and went to Paris?  With or without said boyfriend.  Moran claims there are four things a modern grown woman needs, “a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff.  A big hairy minge”(p.45).  This big fluffy muff is not only a political statement, but it is also a subliminal message to yourself that you have better things to do than spend time and money making your front door look like a cold, itchy, child’s vagina.  Your vagina is worth more than that.  You are not going to hurt it any longer.  It has been hurt enough.  If a man takes one look at your lovely mess of curls and gags, well, let him.  I’m sure he’s no prize himself.  Maybe he’ll asphyxiate on his own vomit.  Any man who spends more than ten seconds tending to his own love triangle is a deranged sheep.  Leave him to the fold.  His vanity is his own affair.  If this narcissism also leads him to bake like a potato in tanning beds and hog the bathroom mirror during those crucial minutes you have to get ready when the kids are actually occupying themselves: RUN.  He is not a man.  He is a plastic Ken doll.  Spooning a pillow would be more emotionally fulfilling.

Even though Moran makes a thorough argument for all the ways she has been repressed or discriminated against during the long road to adulthood she never becomes morose or despondent, but instead encourages us to embrace the future with new hope that women will, one day, earn as much as men for the same work.  The future is bright; not because everything is just so much better, but because WE are getting so much better at standing up for ourselves.  Louder, more visible, angry, motivated, and banding together.  We now live in a world where Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris, and Caitlin Moran make a living BEING FUNNY.  Not being cookie-cutter sexy.  Not being rescued.  Being smart and witty and powerful and hilarious.  And there is pleasure to be had here girls.  Pleasure in making it on your own.  A deep, satisfying, post-orgasm “ahhh” in knowing you paid your own damn way and did it on your own terms.  And it doesn’t have to be lonely.  We’re all in it together.  And believe it or not there are men out there who don’t give one lick whether or not you have hairy legs.  Find them.  Don’t settle for less.

I’ll leave you with this from Moran:

Lying in a hammock, gently finger-combing your Wookiee while staring up at the sky is one of the greatest pleasures of adulthood.  By the end of a grooming session, your little minge-fro should be even and bouffy – you can gently bounce the palm of your hand off it, as if it were a tiny hair trampoline. 

Walking around a room, undressed, in front of appreciative eyes, the reflection in the mirror shows the right thing: a handful of darkness between your legs, something you refuse to hurt.  Half animal, half secret -  something to be approached with a measure of reverence, rather than just made to lie there, while cocks are chucked at it like the penultimate game on Wipeout.

And on proper spa days, you can pop a bit of conditioner on it and enjoy the subsequent cashmere softness, safe in the knowledge that you have not only reclaimed a stretch of feminism that had gotten lost under the roiling Sea of Bullshit, but will also, over your lifetime, save enough money from not waxing to bugger off to Finland and watch the aurora borealis from a five-star hotel while shit-faced on vintage brandy.

So yeah.  Keep it trimmed, keep it neat, but keep it what it’s supposed to be: an old-skool, born to rule, hot, right grown woman’s muff. (p.49)

oooooh....Fashion.

I am not a fashionable person.  If, by fashionable, we mean someone who keeps up with current cultural trends and clothing styles.  I am not by any means an "early adopter."  I've never owned a cell phone.  I don't have cable or satellite or Netflix or a TV that doesn't run on cathode ray.  I listen to CDs and vinyl and don't have an MP3 player.  I am proud to say I have never worn a pair of Uggs or Crocs.  I couldn't tell you what colour is hot this season.  I've never watched an episode of Sex and the City.  I think those shorty jumpsuits everyone was wearing last year looked like something I romped around in when I was wearing diapers.  I know women want to look young, but...toddleresque?  Then again, I still wear clothes I owned in high school...well over a decade ago.

So, that said, why the HELL do I read so many books about fashion and couture?  Because I have an ongoing and lifelong obsession with clothing.  Mostly, its shape, its construction.  Raised by a grandmother seamstress who made a lot of my apparel, I have been fascinated ever since with the design and drape and texture of garments.  Watch me walk through a clothing store and I could care less what everyone is wearing or what is most popular, I'm touching the fabric, looking at seams, collars, darts, watching it hang.  As a child, I would sneak down to my grandparents' basement to watch Fashion Television in secret, blushing at the occasional nipple or bum cheek and terrified I would be caught looking at "garbage."  I would spend hours and hours dressing my Barbies and drawing outfits for them and "sewing" them new ones from Nan's scrap bag.

I now can sew for real, but I spend most of my time making pedestrian things like pyjamas and sundresses, napkins and place mats.  There is not a lot of time in my life for couture.  But a girl can dream, can't she?  Which is why the bedside floor is always covered with beautiful hardbacks, begging for a ruffle.  Here's what I'm currently drooling over:

Great picture book and inspiring read.  Goes through a timeline of realistic fashion purchases for those who actively seek vintage garments, either for real-life wear or collecting.  Points out key pieces from each decade and suggestions of how to shop smart for these fragile used goods.

This is not a coffee table book but a resource for the serious fashion researcher.  More encyclopedia than Cosmo.  If you want to read an essay on the folklore of sneakers, this is the book for you.

My all-time fav stutter-inducing picture-perfect book from Taschen, it gives us a tiny but unforgettable peek into the vast Kyoto Fashion Institute's collections.  Your mind will be blown. 

Most of the crazy crap that is churned out of the Japan clothing market either confuses, mystifies or worse, disinterests me.  Mostly, I just don't get it.  Why do 30-year-old women want to dress like creepy babies?  Why do some Japanese men call themselves "Mamba" and go tanning and wear make-up to try to look black and therefore more "hip-hop"?  Why is it all so extreme?  Surely not everyone in Japan under the age of 40 is THAT attention-starved?

Yohji Yamamoto, from the "Wedding" Collection, Spring/Summer 1999

That said, there is a lot of awesome happening right now in the Japanese high-end fashion scene.  I'm thinking of the well-tailored menswear being created by Hiroki Nakamura for visvim or the stunning sculptural formalism of Yohji Yamamoto.  As usual, anything mass-produced for popular culture seems to turn me off, but the real artwork of master creators is enough to make me want to sift through any culture's junk drawer and pull out the gold. 

This book is a real hodge-podge of both high and low end Japanese fashion and is worth a read if you are even slightly interested.

Lastly, a weird one.  My interest in fashion occasionally forays into decorating and architecture, but rarely for long.  This book attempts to take interesting or famous people (often not mutually exclusive) and document their houses, gardens and lifestyles.  Some of it is interesting, but mostly is just leaves me wondering: do people REALLY have THIS much MONEY?  People LIVE like this?  Every day?  It's too depressing.  It's the kind of book that belongs on a coffee table in a yacht, not on the dusty floor next to my unmade bed and pile of snotty kleenex.

Geek Girls Unite

I really wanted to like this book.  After all, with a subtitle like: "How Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and other Misfits are Taking Over the World"...how could I not?

It's no secret I'm a geek and proud of it: Geeky employment and educational history?  Check.  Glasses?  Check.  Obscure record collection?  Definitely.  More bookshelves than appropriate wall space?  Wouldn't have it any other way. 

This book didn't excite or inspire me, it just made me tired.  Tired that we live in a culture where women who have chosen to think for themselves have now been offered a book where we get....GUY ADVICE?  Seriously!?  Depending on the kind of "geek" you are (Fashion Geek or Film Geek, but never both!) you get advice on the kind of guy that would best compliment your "geekiness."  Yes, seriously.  I may as well have been reading an article in Cosmo.

I therefore refuse to waste anymore type on this schlock so here is my uber-concise summary:   Bleh.

What Do Women Want? Bread, Roses, Sex, Power

I love Erica Jong.  I don't always agree with her, but she always gives me a good kick in the ass when I need it most. 

This book came out in 1998 and I'm only getting around to reading it now.  It is a collection of essays centering around the essential question of what women most desire.  And the truth is, as any lover worth his (or her) salt knows: we want everything!  Drawing on such varied figures and topics as Anais Nin, Nabokov, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband's penis, Princess Di, James Joyce, pornography, plastic surgery, and Viagra; Jong skewers politicians, porn stars and virgins alike.

Though not always an engrossing read (I skipped around from chapter to chapter depending on my current attention span), the book has its memorable moments.  My favourite being when Jong recalls throwing a glass ashtray at the television in her hospital room after enduring a painful C-section with the birth of her daughter.  The program?  An anti-abortion diatribe by a priest and male politician; people without a uterus who have the nerve to tell us what to do with ours! 

The book is full of great Jong one-liners: "You were born to breed and die and the heart breaks either way."

The best chapter, for personal if not political reasons, is The Perfect Man.  Because, if we are going to be frank, and Jong always inspires frankness, is that is what almost every heterosexual woman is in search for, resenting, frustrated with, or completely given up on.  Keep in mind Jong has been married four times, so I consider her to be quite an expert on the relentless search for "getting it right."  As she admits, sometimes the man who is perfect for one stage of your life, say the stable provider, is not who you need twenty years later, when you want a passionate best friend.  As Jong points out, for years women had to sell their beauty and sexuality in order to acquire social status and financial stability.  Now that we no longer have to give up our sexuality (I can live in my own house and sleep with whom I please thank-you-very-much!), why should we?  Most men certainly don't!  Three cheers for freedom of speech and freedom to choose!