It occurred to me recently that the Beatles were roughly my age when they broke up. Let that sink in a sec: The Beatles produced some of the most revolutionary music of the 20th century by the same age as when I finally returned to Grad School. By 30, they had peaked creatively, accomplished all that made them the Beatles, and off of which they would coast for the rest of their lives. While they would all enjoy varying degrees of solo success in their 30s, it was nothing like that first exhilarating onslaught of their youth. Surely they were all more or less finished by their 40s, Paul creatively and John literally. It was all down-hill from their 30th birthday.
Of course, every field has these humbling wonderkids; in physics, for example, Einstein had theorized General Relativity by 24, and would never produce anything as ground-breaking again. And of course it's easy to compile the roster of famous folks who didn't succeed till well after their first flush of youth: your Colonel Sanders and Willie Nelsons; Joyce and Steinbeck didn't publish anything till their 30s, Robert Frost not till his 40s; the average age of Nobel Prize recipients has risen steadily since Einstein, etc, etc.
But I'm not worried about what I will or won't accomplish, that's not what I'm getting at; no, rather, what gives me pause, is that I fear my relationship with my favorite band may shift now that the young men who recorded those wonderful songs are no longer in my age-peer-group. Now, to be clear, the surviving members of the Beatles are of course no where close to my age-peer-group; John and George are long dead (John since before I was born), and Paul and Ringo are indisputably old men now (never again can Paul sing "When I'm Sixty-Four" in the future-tense). Yet no matter their ages now, the boys singing on those records will forever be the voices of youth in their 20s--and from here on out, that means they begin to be younger than I.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
On the Semantics of the Abortion Debate
Please note that I'm referring not to the semantics of abortion, but specifically of the debate.
For just a couple weeks ago, a colleague at SLCC overheard me mention the mere categories of "Pro-Choice," "Pro-Life," offhandedly, without even making a value judgment--I was merely talking with a friend about how one can always tell the stance of a person by the words one chooses.
As if to inadvertently drive my point home, this colleague, apropos of nothing, approached me and went off on this spiel about how "Pro-Life" is an inherently misleading label, for it implies that "Pro-Choice" is pro-death or forces abortion or something, that "Pro-Choice" in fact stands for defending a woman's right to choose when and whether to be pregnant, and therefore "Pro-Life" should be more accurately described as "Anti-Choice," and a bunch of other things I'd already heard before.
I learned on my mission the futility of arguing with a person who's made up one's mind, so I just bit my lip and nodded till she stopped.
I forgot about the incident until just the other day, when at much-more-conservative LDSBC, I once again found myself mentioning the categories of"Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice" as examples of the difficulty of being truly objective in language; when again, apropos of nothing, a student went off on a spiel on how she believed that the term "Pro-Choice" is inherently misleading, that it should more accurately described as "Pro-Death," for by allowing abortions this lobby is in fact allowing for infanticide and legalized murder and death, and a bunch of other things I'd already heard before.
This time, though, I did speak up, telling this student about my SLCC colleague's similar argument; what I found so fascinating, I told her, was that both she and this Pro-Choice colleague were making such semantic arguments about abortion! Not only that, they were making the same semantic argument, namely that the debate should be reframed so as to deny intelligibility to their opponents. The morality of their positions were rooted less in ethics than in wording.
That is, these two women, on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, were nonetheless arguing in the exact same way! Their opinions were opposed, but they sounded the same!
Cause I'll say this about the way both argued: I was never for firmly Pro-Life than when my SLCC colleague interrupted my conversation, and I was never closer to turning Pro-Choice than when my LDSBC student interrupted my class.
Please don't misunderstand me: the abortion debate is literally a life-or-death debate, and a debate worth having, but we are selling the debate short when we reduce it to arguing wording. Quibbling about semantics serves no one.
For in case you were wondering, I hold closest on abortion to David Foster Wallace, who said that when there is doubt about when exactly life begins or what qualifies as life, that it is better to error on the side of not killing it, all the while acknowledging that I'm a male who will never have to endure the pains of childbirth, and that this debate is far more complex than either side gives it credit for.
My Mom, for example, struggled with infertility for 8 years before having me, so she found voluntary pregnancy termination to be not only reprehensible, but personally offensive; yet also, when I've learned a friend was raped, I'd be lying if I didn't say my first thought was, "If she was impregnated, I hope she aborts."
Just FYI, rape-exceptions are part of the official stance of the LDS Church concerning abortion, wherein abortion is permissible in cases "of rape, incest, and where the health of the mother is in danger." Note that that is the health of the mother, not just the life--the woman doesn't have to be dying for her precarious-health to warrant termination of pregnancy. But how bad, then, does her health have to be? I might say one thing now, but another when it's my wife on the operating table. As with so many things, the debate is complicated, not clarified, by this position.
This stance puts the LDS Church to the right of, say, Planned Parenthood, but also puts us just to the left of Pro-Life hardliners (*cough* Todd Akin, etc *cough*), particularly the ones protesting General Conference every 6 months with signs saying "Abortion is Murder!" which just confuses the heck out of most Mormons. "But we're Pro-Life, too!" we laugh, not understanding that the problem is that to them, we're not Pro-Life enough.
That is, there is a range of stances in the abortion debate, a range that is ignored by this quibbling, binary semantics argument.
Nor is the LDS Church's stance some late-period concession: once, I stumbled across the 1962 Encyclopedia of the American Psychology Association. Out of sheer mindless curiosity, I looked up abortion. According to the APA in 1962 (barely a decade before Roe v. Wade), a woman desiring abortion was considered a deviant mental aberration; but they did, however, cite exceptions such as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," which scandalously permitted abortions in cases of rape and incest. Again, as with so many things, a stance that was radical 50 years ago is considered conservative today.
And indeed, most Pro-Lifers I know are uncomfortable with a straight ban on abortions, including in cases of rape; just as most Pro-Choicers I know get queasy with permitting late-term abortions, even in cases of rape. This is where the simplistic Pro-Life/Pro-Choice binary breaks down, and the difficulties begin.
But this is also where the conversation can really begin--or at least continue--of what are exceptions and what are not, of when and where is that messy line when abortion becomes morally objectionable, and in which circumstances; this is where the two sides can recognize that our senses of morality perhaps aren't quite so different or incompatible (heaven knows their semantic arguments aren't so different), where we can quit talking at each other and instead talk with each other.
But we will never get there if we keep on this forsaken quibbling about semantics. We are not mere words.
For just a couple weeks ago, a colleague at SLCC overheard me mention the mere categories of "Pro-Choice," "Pro-Life," offhandedly, without even making a value judgment--I was merely talking with a friend about how one can always tell the stance of a person by the words one chooses.
As if to inadvertently drive my point home, this colleague, apropos of nothing, approached me and went off on this spiel about how "Pro-Life" is an inherently misleading label, for it implies that "Pro-Choice" is pro-death or forces abortion or something, that "Pro-Choice" in fact stands for defending a woman's right to choose when and whether to be pregnant, and therefore "Pro-Life" should be more accurately described as "Anti-Choice," and a bunch of other things I'd already heard before.
I learned on my mission the futility of arguing with a person who's made up one's mind, so I just bit my lip and nodded till she stopped.
I forgot about the incident until just the other day, when at much-more-conservative LDSBC, I once again found myself mentioning the categories of"Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice" as examples of the difficulty of being truly objective in language; when again, apropos of nothing, a student went off on a spiel on how she believed that the term "Pro-Choice" is inherently misleading, that it should more accurately described as "Pro-Death," for by allowing abortions this lobby is in fact allowing for infanticide and legalized murder and death, and a bunch of other things I'd already heard before.
This time, though, I did speak up, telling this student about my SLCC colleague's similar argument; what I found so fascinating, I told her, was that both she and this Pro-Choice colleague were making such semantic arguments about abortion! Not only that, they were making the same semantic argument, namely that the debate should be reframed so as to deny intelligibility to their opponents. The morality of their positions were rooted less in ethics than in wording.
That is, these two women, on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, were nonetheless arguing in the exact same way! Their opinions were opposed, but they sounded the same!
Cause I'll say this about the way both argued: I was never for firmly Pro-Life than when my SLCC colleague interrupted my conversation, and I was never closer to turning Pro-Choice than when my LDSBC student interrupted my class.
Please don't misunderstand me: the abortion debate is literally a life-or-death debate, and a debate worth having, but we are selling the debate short when we reduce it to arguing wording. Quibbling about semantics serves no one.
For in case you were wondering, I hold closest on abortion to David Foster Wallace, who said that when there is doubt about when exactly life begins or what qualifies as life, that it is better to error on the side of not killing it, all the while acknowledging that I'm a male who will never have to endure the pains of childbirth, and that this debate is far more complex than either side gives it credit for.
My Mom, for example, struggled with infertility for 8 years before having me, so she found voluntary pregnancy termination to be not only reprehensible, but personally offensive; yet also, when I've learned a friend was raped, I'd be lying if I didn't say my first thought was, "If she was impregnated, I hope she aborts."
Just FYI, rape-exceptions are part of the official stance of the LDS Church concerning abortion, wherein abortion is permissible in cases "of rape, incest, and where the health of the mother is in danger." Note that that is the health of the mother, not just the life--the woman doesn't have to be dying for her precarious-health to warrant termination of pregnancy. But how bad, then, does her health have to be? I might say one thing now, but another when it's my wife on the operating table. As with so many things, the debate is complicated, not clarified, by this position.
This stance puts the LDS Church to the right of, say, Planned Parenthood, but also puts us just to the left of Pro-Life hardliners (*cough* Todd Akin, etc *cough*), particularly the ones protesting General Conference every 6 months with signs saying "Abortion is Murder!" which just confuses the heck out of most Mormons. "But we're Pro-Life, too!" we laugh, not understanding that the problem is that to them, we're not Pro-Life enough.
That is, there is a range of stances in the abortion debate, a range that is ignored by this quibbling, binary semantics argument.
Nor is the LDS Church's stance some late-period concession: once, I stumbled across the 1962 Encyclopedia of the American Psychology Association. Out of sheer mindless curiosity, I looked up abortion. According to the APA in 1962 (barely a decade before Roe v. Wade), a woman desiring abortion was considered a deviant mental aberration; but they did, however, cite exceptions such as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," which scandalously permitted abortions in cases of rape and incest. Again, as with so many things, a stance that was radical 50 years ago is considered conservative today.
And indeed, most Pro-Lifers I know are uncomfortable with a straight ban on abortions, including in cases of rape; just as most Pro-Choicers I know get queasy with permitting late-term abortions, even in cases of rape. This is where the simplistic Pro-Life/Pro-Choice binary breaks down, and the difficulties begin.
But this is also where the conversation can really begin--or at least continue--of what are exceptions and what are not, of when and where is that messy line when abortion becomes morally objectionable, and in which circumstances; this is where the two sides can recognize that our senses of morality perhaps aren't quite so different or incompatible (heaven knows their semantic arguments aren't so different), where we can quit talking at each other and instead talk with each other.
But we will never get there if we keep on this forsaken quibbling about semantics. We are not mere words.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Have a Romantic Valentines Day
I teach my freshmen Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," ostensibly as an example of an argumentative essay (the narrator's trying to convince you that he's merely "nervous" not "mad!") In the Fall, I of course like to teach it near Halloween. Spring semester, the best I can do is teach it on Valentines Day. It's a very Romantic story you see--Romantic in the oldest sense of the word, a sense that is too often lost today.
For Poe was a Romantic you see--but not in the contemporary Rom-Com sense of some hopeless and sentimental fool with a heart of gold, buying roses and Hallmark cards and holding stereos over his head playing Peter Gabriel, starring in brightly-colored romps featuring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey and '80s soundtracks.
No no no no--I mean Romantic as in the European art movement, the one that started in Germany in the late 1700s, then spread to England, France, Russia, and finally the United States. These Romantics wanted to live like Romans again--passionate, frenzied, excessive, self-destructive. They stood in contrast to their Neo-Classicist predecessors, who preferred restraint, calmness, elegance (Mozart was a Neo-Classicist; Beethoven was a Romantic). "Why all this passion and emotion?" sighed these Greeks, "You're being self-destructive!"
"Exactly the point," rejoined the Romantics, "We're all going to die anyways; let's live life fully while we still can."
And indeed, the Romantic poets tended to die young in the frenzy of their esctacy--John Keats and Percy Shelley at 29; Lord Byron in his 40s; Poe himself did not breach his 40th. Their lives were marked by alcoholism, Opium abuse, wars, fights, fetes, and sordid and forbidden love affairs of such passion that it nearly tore them apart. "Lord Byron is mad, bad, and dangerous to know" warned one of his affairs.
These weren't men and women seeking to simply "like" their lover, or deliver flowers, or live in tranquil harmony--these were love affairs that were built by design to fail spectacularly and hurt abominably, and possibly take one or both of them with it. This is the Romance of Romeo and Juliet, Triston and Isolde, and of too many a Dostoyevsky novel.
They were seeking the Sublime moment you see--in chemistry, the sublime is when a solid transforms into a gas, bypassing the liquid state; in art, it's when the mind moves from a solid to a gaseous stated, atomizing in the face of the overwhelming and all-encompassing awe. The Sublime by definition is self-destructive; it has to be, to deliver the full experience of beauty and glory. You are missing out on all the wonder that the Universe has to offer when you cut yourself off from Sublime experience.
Here in America, we still live in the shadow of the Romantics; our love of mountains and oceans, our veneration of James Deans and dead rock-stars--shoot, even our preference for marriages of romance, based not (as they have been throughout the super-majority of human history) on political alliances, economic convenience, or mere "mutual affection," but on bona fide passionate, painful, soul-searing, love-will-tear-us-apart Romance, is the heritage that the Romantics have bequeathed us.
But then, we are also living in the shadow, the dim and immaterial shadow, of the Romantics--today the term "romantic" has come to mean something far quieter than it did 200 years ago. Today, to be "romantic" is to do something cutesy and small that elicits an "awww!" as opposed to "awe." Today, "romantic" refers to roses and Hallmark cards and candy and quiet dinners and bad movies with predictable and monotonous tear jerks on cue, and carnal relations carefully hidden quietly behind closed doors.
Don't get me wrong: The quiet moments of mutual affection are necessary, even essential, to building a strong relationship. By way of corollary, I believe the most profound religious experiences can occur in the quietest moments. But maybe it's not a coincidence that America's unofficial holiday of romance is the same day as a bloody massacre and a martyrdom; I want you to have a Romantic Valentines Day. But I also want your Valentines Day to actually be Romantic! I want love to tear you apart.
For Poe was a Romantic you see--but not in the contemporary Rom-Com sense of some hopeless and sentimental fool with a heart of gold, buying roses and Hallmark cards and holding stereos over his head playing Peter Gabriel, starring in brightly-colored romps featuring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey and '80s soundtracks.
No no no no--I mean Romantic as in the European art movement, the one that started in Germany in the late 1700s, then spread to England, France, Russia, and finally the United States. These Romantics wanted to live like Romans again--passionate, frenzied, excessive, self-destructive. They stood in contrast to their Neo-Classicist predecessors, who preferred restraint, calmness, elegance (Mozart was a Neo-Classicist; Beethoven was a Romantic). "Why all this passion and emotion?" sighed these Greeks, "You're being self-destructive!"
"Exactly the point," rejoined the Romantics, "We're all going to die anyways; let's live life fully while we still can."
And indeed, the Romantic poets tended to die young in the frenzy of their esctacy--John Keats and Percy Shelley at 29; Lord Byron in his 40s; Poe himself did not breach his 40th. Their lives were marked by alcoholism, Opium abuse, wars, fights, fetes, and sordid and forbidden love affairs of such passion that it nearly tore them apart. "Lord Byron is mad, bad, and dangerous to know" warned one of his affairs.
These weren't men and women seeking to simply "like" their lover, or deliver flowers, or live in tranquil harmony--these were love affairs that were built by design to fail spectacularly and hurt abominably, and possibly take one or both of them with it. This is the Romance of Romeo and Juliet, Triston and Isolde, and of too many a Dostoyevsky novel.
They were seeking the Sublime moment you see--in chemistry, the sublime is when a solid transforms into a gas, bypassing the liquid state; in art, it's when the mind moves from a solid to a gaseous stated, atomizing in the face of the overwhelming and all-encompassing awe. The Sublime by definition is self-destructive; it has to be, to deliver the full experience of beauty and glory. You are missing out on all the wonder that the Universe has to offer when you cut yourself off from Sublime experience.
Here in America, we still live in the shadow of the Romantics; our love of mountains and oceans, our veneration of James Deans and dead rock-stars--shoot, even our preference for marriages of romance, based not (as they have been throughout the super-majority of human history) on political alliances, economic convenience, or mere "mutual affection," but on bona fide passionate, painful, soul-searing, love-will-tear-us-apart Romance, is the heritage that the Romantics have bequeathed us.
But then, we are also living in the shadow, the dim and immaterial shadow, of the Romantics--today the term "romantic" has come to mean something far quieter than it did 200 years ago. Today, to be "romantic" is to do something cutesy and small that elicits an "awww!" as opposed to "awe." Today, "romantic" refers to roses and Hallmark cards and candy and quiet dinners and bad movies with predictable and monotonous tear jerks on cue, and carnal relations carefully hidden quietly behind closed doors.
Don't get me wrong: The quiet moments of mutual affection are necessary, even essential, to building a strong relationship. By way of corollary, I believe the most profound religious experiences can occur in the quietest moments. But maybe it's not a coincidence that America's unofficial holiday of romance is the same day as a bloody massacre and a martyrdom; I want you to have a Romantic Valentines Day. But I also want your Valentines Day to actually be Romantic! I want love to tear you apart.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Double-spacers of the World Unite!
"The abbreviation for doctor is Dr. Thomas did not know that."
Oh, I'm sorry, did that sentence make you do a double-take? Did it trip you up a second there, cost you a needless nanosecond of confusion? Here, let the double-space-after-the-period help:
"The abbreviation for doctor is Dr. Thomas did not know that."
Ah, much better! The double-space to the rescue once more!
Such strange, uncivilized times we live in, wherein the double-space is under repeated, ridiculous attack by reactionary, unthinkingly-dogmatic single-spacers (hereafter referred to as the SS). The way these grammatical busy-bodies carry-on, you'd think double-spacers were slash-and-burning rain forests, or murdering kittens, or using hotmail or something.
Funny, this SS religious intolerance, for I've never once tut-tutted an SS. Just what are these jihadists compensating for? Are they mad that double-spacing exposes and implicitly rebukes the needless ambiguity of their writing?
The double-space provides the "brain break" necessary for readers to fully digest the completed sentence. Far from some anachronistic "hold-over from the type-writer era," the double-space helps emphasize the sentence's completion, especially on a computer screen where the period and comma look small and similar. Since the computer-standard fonts of Times New Roman, Cambria, and Ariel all utilize different-sized letters (as opposed to the monotonous uniformity of Courier on typewriters), the need for clearer sentence-termination is greater in the computer age, not less.
Simply put, the SS hatred for the double-space is like hating the Oxford comma, or hating unambiguity in language. What reasonable defense can there possibly be for this bizarre single-space fetish? The SS, when faced with their lack of logic, inevitably cite the latest, faddist AP Style Guide (the same amoral scoundrels who assault the Oxford comma), as though both the APA and MLA style guides hadn't already out-voted them. Even their sorry Refuge in Authority collapses!
Moreover, if you want to talk about ridiculously outdated holdovers, twas the AP Style Guide that exiled the Oxford comma decades ago to help newspapers save money on ink, back when ink was a higher expense. Why not lift this petty Oxford comma ban, now that the economic need is long gone? But AP is much too stuck in its oldy-moldy ways. It's the AP Style Guide that is a hopeless throwback, not double-spaces; and I will listen to the much more modern MLA and APA before I listen to crotchety ol' grandpa AP and his sorry SS ilk.
Furthermore, SS accusations of Luddite inflexibility in double-spacers is likewise laughable, since these SS complain of how it be their younger students, not just older, who still insist upon the habitual double-space (the children of the internet age, after all, would best understand the need for clarity on computer screens!).
What's more, claims that double-spaces waste space are simply uproarious, for wouldn't typewriters be more worried about wasting physical paper than computers wasting screen space? Yet the SS insist that typewriters created the double-space convention. Thus even the "typewriter holdover" argument hilariously explodes in the face of the SS fundamentalists.
The purpose of language is to communicate, and so the more ambiguity you introduce into language (as the single-space does), the more you undermine language's primary function. The double-space is less ambiguous, more aesthetically pleasing, and is already an ingrained habit, the breaking of which has made typists more self-conscious and thus less efficient. Comrades, stand with me against the SS barbarians, and proudly type the double-space after every period!
Double-spacers of the world unite!
(Now, will someone please show me how to disable the auto-space-changer on facebook, so that I can type a double-space after periods like a civilized human being?!)
Oh, I'm sorry, did that sentence make you do a double-take? Did it trip you up a second there, cost you a needless nanosecond of confusion? Here, let the double-space-after-the-period help:
"The abbreviation for doctor is Dr. Thomas did not know that."
Ah, much better! The double-space to the rescue once more!
Such strange, uncivilized times we live in, wherein the double-space is under repeated, ridiculous attack by reactionary, unthinkingly-dogmatic single-spacers (hereafter referred to as the SS). The way these grammatical busy-bodies carry-on, you'd think double-spacers were slash-and-burning rain forests, or murdering kittens, or using hotmail or something.
Funny, this SS religious intolerance, for I've never once tut-tutted an SS. Just what are these jihadists compensating for? Are they mad that double-spacing exposes and implicitly rebukes the needless ambiguity of their writing?
The double-space provides the "brain break" necessary for readers to fully digest the completed sentence. Far from some anachronistic "hold-over from the type-writer era," the double-space helps emphasize the sentence's completion, especially on a computer screen where the period and comma look small and similar. Since the computer-standard fonts of Times New Roman, Cambria, and Ariel all utilize different-sized letters (as opposed to the monotonous uniformity of Courier on typewriters), the need for clearer sentence-termination is greater in the computer age, not less.
Simply put, the SS hatred for the double-space is like hating the Oxford comma, or hating unambiguity in language. What reasonable defense can there possibly be for this bizarre single-space fetish? The SS, when faced with their lack of logic, inevitably cite the latest, faddist AP Style Guide (the same amoral scoundrels who assault the Oxford comma), as though both the APA and MLA style guides hadn't already out-voted them. Even their sorry Refuge in Authority collapses!
Moreover, if you want to talk about ridiculously outdated holdovers, twas the AP Style Guide that exiled the Oxford comma decades ago to help newspapers save money on ink, back when ink was a higher expense. Why not lift this petty Oxford comma ban, now that the economic need is long gone? But AP is much too stuck in its oldy-moldy ways. It's the AP Style Guide that is a hopeless throwback, not double-spaces; and I will listen to the much more modern MLA and APA before I listen to crotchety ol' grandpa AP and his sorry SS ilk.
Furthermore, SS accusations of Luddite inflexibility in double-spacers is likewise laughable, since these SS complain of how it be their younger students, not just older, who still insist upon the habitual double-space (the children of the internet age, after all, would best understand the need for clarity on computer screens!).
What's more, claims that double-spaces waste space are simply uproarious, for wouldn't typewriters be more worried about wasting physical paper than computers wasting screen space? Yet the SS insist that typewriters created the double-space convention. Thus even the "typewriter holdover" argument hilariously explodes in the face of the SS fundamentalists.
The purpose of language is to communicate, and so the more ambiguity you introduce into language (as the single-space does), the more you undermine language's primary function. The double-space is less ambiguous, more aesthetically pleasing, and is already an ingrained habit, the breaking of which has made typists more self-conscious and thus less efficient. Comrades, stand with me against the SS barbarians, and proudly type the double-space after every period!
Double-spacers of the world unite!
(Now, will someone please show me how to disable the auto-space-changer on facebook, so that I can type a double-space after periods like a civilized human being?!)
On The Tyrant Beauty
So I know these twin sisters, pursuing PhDs in Comm, researching unhealthy portrayals of women in mass-media. They have a website called "Beauty Redefined." They give presentations and run workshops for teenage girls about resisting oppressive media stereotypes of women and so forth.
I admire their intentions and efforts, and any work to counterbalance harmful media constructs is better than none. But I sometimes wonder...
Let me try and articulate what I'm getting at. I knew one of these twins once, in my ward. Great girl, Relief Society pres, boundless energy, very friendly, charismatic, outgoing, compassionate, deeply intelligent...
...and who also clearly spent a lot of time on her make-up, her hair, her outfits.
That is, she expended a lot of energy worrying about her looks, even as she taught young girls to not worry so much about their looks. Her very act of railing against mass-medias' obsession with beauty is itself indicative of an obsession with beauty. Very Foucaultian.
I know, I know: News-flash! Women care about how they look! Who'd-a thunk!
But I know a bit about the history of Women's Studies, and I know that much of the movement against media objectification and exploitation of women was spearheaded in the 80s by feminist Andrea Dworkin. Now, here's the thing about Andrea Dworkin: she is, by every modern American standard, unattractive. She's overweight, wears no make-up, doesn't shave, her hair is frizzy, and she wears unflattering overalls. In fact, she is a punchline of sorts for the male chauvinists and counter-feminists who snear that feminism is just the ugly women trying to level the playing field.
But that's just it: Andrea Dworkin has the courage to be ugly. She's absolutely dead-set opposed to mass-medias' objectification of women, to the point where she refuses to participate in the game altogether. She wishes to be totally free of the male-gaze, so strives to not be subject to male-gaze in the first place. She does not try to redefine beauty; rather, she refuses to be defined by beauty at all.
And that's the thing: I support Beauty Redefined, but beauty is still a tyrant, no matter how it's defined. I feel as though these girls are merely moderating the tyrant, not overthrowing it. Perhaps the yardstick of our progress against the tyrant is by how little we obsess about beauty, either for or against it. Yet I would not live in a world sans beauty. But how do we make beauty our friend, not our master? How do we depose the tyrant?
I admire their intentions and efforts, and any work to counterbalance harmful media constructs is better than none. But I sometimes wonder...
Let me try and articulate what I'm getting at. I knew one of these twins once, in my ward. Great girl, Relief Society pres, boundless energy, very friendly, charismatic, outgoing, compassionate, deeply intelligent...
...and who also clearly spent a lot of time on her make-up, her hair, her outfits.
That is, she expended a lot of energy worrying about her looks, even as she taught young girls to not worry so much about their looks. Her very act of railing against mass-medias' obsession with beauty is itself indicative of an obsession with beauty. Very Foucaultian.
I know, I know: News-flash! Women care about how they look! Who'd-a thunk!
But I know a bit about the history of Women's Studies, and I know that much of the movement against media objectification and exploitation of women was spearheaded in the 80s by feminist Andrea Dworkin. Now, here's the thing about Andrea Dworkin: she is, by every modern American standard, unattractive. She's overweight, wears no make-up, doesn't shave, her hair is frizzy, and she wears unflattering overalls. In fact, she is a punchline of sorts for the male chauvinists and counter-feminists who snear that feminism is just the ugly women trying to level the playing field.
But that's just it: Andrea Dworkin has the courage to be ugly. She's absolutely dead-set opposed to mass-medias' objectification of women, to the point where she refuses to participate in the game altogether. She wishes to be totally free of the male-gaze, so strives to not be subject to male-gaze in the first place. She does not try to redefine beauty; rather, she refuses to be defined by beauty at all.
And that's the thing: I support Beauty Redefined, but beauty is still a tyrant, no matter how it's defined. I feel as though these girls are merely moderating the tyrant, not overthrowing it. Perhaps the yardstick of our progress against the tyrant is by how little we obsess about beauty, either for or against it. Yet I would not live in a world sans beauty. But how do we make beauty our friend, not our master? How do we depose the tyrant?
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