What does your body say about you?

Hello Blog land!
Ok... So I've been pretty remiss in my lack of blog posting this summer, and I very sincerely apologize. As per usual... it's been kind of insane. However, as the summer winds down and fall semester classes are swiftly drawing closer I'm getting back into the swing of things. I promise.
I've spent the morning thinking about first impressions. You know what they say... a first impression is everything. But... I've also been thinking that we all make up our minds, gather our own first impressions within a few seconds of seeing someone. That leaves the majority of this impression to be based on sight alone - since that hardly gives any time at all to consider any attributes other than those purely physical.
So, let's say on Wednesday, September first, I walk into my sculpture class and upon entering the studio, I see a girl. Is she thin? Is she curvy? What judgments do I make of her based on her weight alone before even learning  her name? (Her body type could mean different things - I could be *more* inclined to make positive judgments if she is a curvy girl, or I could think that means she is too lazy to go to the gym, a couch potato etc) What about how she is dressed? What about her hygiene? Is she attractive?
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this right now... But I promise a followup blog in the near future.

Change From the Ground Up

What is feminisim?

Better. What is feminism to you?
What is feminism beyond the definition, beyond your official beliefs. What is feminism in the real world?
What is my feminism? And where does it fit into my life.

Lately, I've been asking myself... where doesn't it fit?

Because it seems to me that feminism is not a shirt you can pull on, show the world (you know the ones I'm talking about - 'This is what a feminist looks like') and then take off, throw in the wash and forget about. Feminism is a belief, is a way of living my life, is something inside me.

Okay, so I know what you're thinking. Total cheese, right?

But the thing is, I am feminist because I not only believe that all people, regardless of their gender identity deserve and require equal rights, but I also believe that my actions - not just as an activist, but in my daily life- do in fact impact and support or detract from this belief. I think that in order to inspire real change, we have to stop separating our beliefs from our interactions in the "real world." I guess maybe I'm talking about myself here. When I first began this journey towards understanding the patriarcical society we live in, towards understanding the true meaning of equality (or something some like it, because really, who has come up with that definition?) it was a real struggle for me to take the knowledge I was gaining and to apply it to my life. That sounds simple, really. Right? I mean, just do it. Right?

The reality is that I was fighting against 20 years of subtle social programming, while living in a university setting where the student population is 60 percent male, 40 percent female, mainly white, middle class. I was caught between wanting to fight for my reble cause (no, today I would not call femisim a rebellion, but more a way of living) and a sort of constant shock and awe state of "how can it be this bad?"

My Dad rainsed me, telling me I was a strong, smart, capable girl, and I could be President, if I felt like lowering my standards to do so. He didn't qualify me as an individual with the words beautiful, pretty. His highest graces were always surrounding my ability to be a critical thinker, to learn and to want to learn. My parents shared finances and financial responsibility. My Mom stayed home to raise us when my brother and I were little, but then she went back to work because she wanted to, and my father supported that choice. Later in life, my Mom became the bread winner, and my Dad switched roles. They were not religious, they talked to us about politics, they told me to form my own opinions (even if that meant supporitng a Republican) and then to share those opinions. My half siblings are black and speak Swedish, as well as English, have lived in another country the majority of their lives. I have lived in other states, I have traveled with my family and on my own, I have experienced financial seccurity and inseccurity. My background has been diversity. My experience has been acceptance.

But outside my micro-family, I still grew up in social system where men walk with greater privilidge than women. My parents may have been wonderful as they raised me to be a strong, independant thinker, but I still grew up playing with Barbie dolls, knowing that karate was something my brother did and was something I did not do, knowing that my brother could run around in the backyard topless when it was sweltering,m but for some reason, I couldn't. I am certainly not attacking the way my parents raised me, nor am I attacking dolls - if little girls want to play with dolls, by all means, let them. The point in all of this, is that for the first time in 20 years, I was really consciously digging into the facts here. I was finally seeing the holes in the floorboards. I had the language and the knowledge to understand my own background in a way I never had before, and to understand why I am the person I am.

Yeah, it's been a journey to just where I am today as a feminist and as a woman. It's been an amazing journey of self discovery. Feminism gave me a way to understand my childhood, my youth, who I am and who I want to be. And that is the real world.

I realize that this has been a rambling, but hopefully somewhat interesting blog. What should someone take away from all this? My feminism is not your feminism, just as much as my life is not your life. But we are all similar, and our journeys sometimes link. So perhaps in our parallels, where they exist, can link this way of life, this feminism, to a movement that is greater than our individual selves. And that is the landing space for my thoughts today. Linking our individual feminisms.

Homework for the Summer: Lost and Delirious

I have been given an assignment. In exchange for staying in my friend's apartment for a month while she's off galavanting in her home turf, I must watch a number of gay films, get caught up on some lesbian short stories, and watch 5 seasons of The L Word. (I also must watch the first season of Glee, but that's besides the point...)
Since I intend to faithfully complete these assignments, I thought I would share my thoughts with you.

Being the good little student that I am, I started right away today with Lost and Delirious, a Lea Pool film.
The summary reads: "Mouse Bradford has just arrived at Perkins Girls College, leaving behind her father and stepmother and the small town where she grew up. Her two senior roommates, the striking, sharp-witted Pauline and the Charming and beautiful tory, quickly adopt Mouse who has lost her mother. When Pauline and tory are found to be lovers, Mouse is caught in the role of accomplice and confessor, and is left torn between her two friends."

The film won some awards too:
CSC award for Best Cinematography in Theatrical Feature

DGCATeam Award for Outstanding Achievement in a Feature Film
Genie Award for Best Achievement in Cinematography
ADF Cinematography Award
Stockholm Film Festival Audience Award

What can I say about this film? I think the real question is, what can I not say about this film?! It touches upon so many issues, including mother-daughter relationships, as well as father-daughter relationships - something I have been thinking about a lot lately."Janet, my fake mother smiles without her eyes, and her hands are cold."
The film also addresses some young-woman come-of-age and understanding sexuality stuff "Until that night, I had never had any feeling down there at all. I was, a kind of wooden doll, without blood in my body. But that night, that night I started to feel the blood moving."
There's some feminist stuff in there as well... Tory faces off with a young man, the contendor for Pauline, in a fencing match, and kicks ass. They also attend an all-girls college, with it's own interesting set of rules. Clearly the university seeks to be lady-like and appropriate, on the surface, but the reality of the institution is rather different. "Gabbing? I consider that word a punch in the face, Ms. Bennet. It's a word males use to shut us down; to trivialize our talking to each other. You wanna be a part of that shit? Huh?"

But of course... this is a film about the experience of two young women in love, from families where women do not love other women, and expectations will social requirements will hold you in your place. Tory and Pauline's story... is perhaps all too common. "Liar! Liar, Liar, Liar! You've all got your heads up your assholes because love is. It just is and nothing you can say can make it go away because it is the point of why we are here, it is the highest point and once you are up there, looking down on everyone else, you're there forever. Because if you move, right, you fall. You fall."

Sexual Assault

The following message was sent to all Plymouth State University students this afternoon at 1:52 this afternoon:

The following information is being provided in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.



University Police were informed this afternoon by the Plymouth Police Department that they are currently investigating an alleged sexual assault that occurred near campus earlier today.
According to a Plymouth Police Department spokesperson, a PSU student reported that at approximately 1:00 am this morning, Fri., April 30, 2010, she was outside a Langdon Street residence when a vehicle pulled up. One male exited the car, pulled the victim inside, and drove off along with three other male occupants of the vehicle. The victim stated that she was sexually assaulted while being driven around to unknown locations in the area. Approximately one hour later, the victim said she was dropped off in Lot 105 near Pemi Hall.

There are no usable descriptions of any of the alleged assailants available at this time.


This incident is actively being investigated by the Plymouth Police Department. Anyone with information about this alleged assault should contact Det. Matthew McCarthy, Plymouth Police Dept., at 536-1804, x-141 or University Police Special Investigator Jennifer Frank at 535-2330.


We encourage all students, faculty and staff to take normal precautionary safety measures. Walk in well lit, heavily traveled areas. Do not walk alone.


Report any suspicious activity to the University Police by calling 535-2330 or 911 as soon as possible, or anonymously by using the Tips Line at 535-8477 or online using the Silent Witness Web site at http://www.plymouth.edu/cpolice/witness/witness2

The assault occured at 1 in the morning. Students were not contacted or put on the allert until nearly 2 in the afternoon.

Hair Free – The Only Way to Be?

Hair Free – The Only Way to Be?


Hair hair hair! What does your hair say about you? Cut it, shave it, prune it, curl it, dye it – who are you? Who does your hair say you are? Young? Old? Flaxen and silky, or black and coarse? Are you... bare? In a classic example of the hairy truth, Julia Roberts, the then epitome of sex, class and style, was treated to gasps of horror when she exposed a bushy armpit, waving to a previously adoring crowd at the Notting Hill premier in 1999. “Shock! Horror! Could that really be brown curly hair under her delicately toned arm? Men groaned in disgust. Women gawped in disbelief. And the media went wild” (Middleton 44). The 'incident' made waves, and is still written about today.

In an anonymous article, “The Bare Truth”, published in the Economist, a journalist writes about her experience in a London hairdresser's shop.

“An Irish beautician called Genevieve is explaining what a 'Brazilian' is a she practices the art on your correspondent. ... Between each excruciating rip, she explains that she is going to remove nearly all my pubic hair, except for a narrow vertical strip of hairs the width of a couple of fingers. This is known colloquially as the 'landing strip.' ... In only a few years, this form of waxing has gone from the esoteric to the everyday and is starting to rival the ordinary bikini wax in popularity. At the same time the bikini wax is becoming a normal procedure for women of all ages: the youngest person Genevieve has waxed is a 12-year-old girl” (111).

The removal of female body hair has become such a social norm and furthermore, social requirement that little 12 year old girls are being subjected to it. It is a lengthy, costly, painful process that has even been favored with it's very own name: depilation. On the flip side, it is socially accepted for men walk around with scratchy beards, dangling goatees, hairy backs, hairy chests; tt is an expression of their manliness. In fact, thick, full hair is so completely associated with masculinity that “many men go to great lengths in their efforts to keep the hair on their heads. ... The main reason a man will have cosmetic surgery ... is for the transplantation or restoration of his hair” (“The Bare Truth” 112). Femininity equals hairless. Masculinity equals brawny man fuzz! If a woman has hair she is not considered sexually attractive. If a man does not have hair he is not considered sexually attractive. What a catch twenty-two!

Susan Basow and Amie Braman two researchers at Lafayette College held a unique study to test the importance of the hair question. Viewers were shown one of two possible short films – each film showed the same attractive woman, doing the same exact thing. The only difference was that in one film, she had completely removed all her body hair, while in the second film, she had allowed it to grow for two months. The participants were then asked to rate the actress on certain qualities on a scale of one to five. So, did they notice? Oh, yes they did. 100 percent of the participants who viewed the second film noted the actress had bushy armpits, and 85 percent of them noticed her hairy legs. Not only did they notice these changes but the results showed that the participants, both men and women, found the hairy actress was less socially attractive, less sociable, less intelligent less happy and less positive. On the flip side, the version of the film in which the actress had shaved resulted in participants finding the actress less strong, less active, less aggressive. According to this same study, it appears that other women and people who identified themselves as feminists were much more tolerable and accepting of the second film's hairy actress.

For the vast majority of the population – hair is the norm. So why do we care about body hair? According to Susan Basow in her article, “The Hairless Ideal : Women and Their Body Hair”, there are two main reasons for women to shave: “feminine/attractiveness reasons and social/normative reasons” (83).

Although men and women have been selectively removing body hair since ancient Egypt, the mainstream idea of women shaving first exploded in 1915, when new dress styles suddenly exposed womens' armpits, and unsightly, excessive, disgusting armpit hair (Middleton 45). In order for society to continue rolling forward in the 1920s, middle class white men needed to settle down and have families with middle class white women. This movement towards the hairless female expanded to the idea that it was a woman's duty to be sexually attractive in order to catch and keep a man, to this end, which meant that she had to shave her armpits (Bower 84).

Marika Tiggemann and Christine Lewis, two researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia, delved deeper into this trend of body hair triggering a disgust response in their article, “Attitdues Toward Women's Body Hair: Relationship With Disgust Sensitivity”. Disgust has evolved from a primordial defense mechanism to a social construct. “...[D]isgust has evolved into a more abstract emotion, and the elicitors of disgust have expanded to include inappropriate sexual behaviors, poor hygiene, contact with death or corpses, body “envelope” violations (gore and deformity), as well as inter-personal and socio-moral elicitors, all of which are viewed as offensive and potentially contaminating” (Tiggemann 382). So why do many people experience a disgust response to female body hair?

The ancient Greeks were highly preoccupied with developing the ideal figure – first for men and then for women. One glance at the Spear Bearer or the Aphrodite will tell you they valued smooth, uninterrupted, unblemished skin. This seems to be some clue to the body hair disgust response. Body hair becomes a blemish on the skin – something that should not be there. Women should not have beards – hair that happens to grow on a woman's face must be either carefully shaped (in the case of eyebrows) or bleached or waxed (in the unfortunate case of darker hairs growing above the lip or along the jaw). If a woman has this hair and does not get rid of it in a timely, regular fashion, the hair is disgusting, and she, in turn is also disgusting (Menninghaus 53).

Dirty is disgusting. It is a generally accepted fact of life. Some women claim they shave because they like to feel clean – thus not disgusting. In the 1920s, when hair removal was new and all the rage, advertizing geared towards women proclaimed the need for “cleanliness and meticulous hygiene” and this equated shaving legs (Basow 85). In more modern times, “companies that advertise female shaving, waxing and depilatory products often play on the fear that hair is dirty. The message is clear: if you don't want to look like a dirty man in a hygiene-obsessed world, get rid of your body hair” (“The Bare Truth” 112). The majority of the population has a lots of hair growing on their heads. However, as Mark Pagel, an Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Reading, England, describes” 'It's like saying 'Look at this large area of my hair-free skin – look how unmarked and unblemished it is. I don't have any parasites living on me – mate with me'.'” (Middleton 45).

Susan Bower ventures to claim that body hair equals unbridled sexuality. Body hair generally develops during puberty, amongst the raging sexual hormones and developing breasts and feminine curves. “David Stoddart, an olfactory biologist with Australia's Antarctic programme, points out that armpit and pubic hair grows just where the major scent glands are to be found. Hair is a means of wafting this scent about. Thus a tuft of hair allows humans, life other animals, to advertise to mates that something of interest is happening on the skin below” (“The Bare Truth” 113).

If that is the case, then, why is hairless sexy? Bower quotes Ewen and Ewen 1982 237 “Amid an ideology of unsullied chastity, women were reduced to a primarily sexual identity, or to the identity of a child.” In shaving off their body hair – not just their legs and their armpits, but their genitals as well, womens' bodies become child-like, innocent and pure. Just the way women should be. Perhaps then, it's not that hairless is sexy – it's that hairless is safe. “Women's bathing suits increasingly reveal the pubic area; women are now encouraged to remove or bleach those hairs that show. Visible hair, not the pubic area, is considered too risque to reveal” (86). A woman's wild sexuality is carefully maintained, coiffed and hidden.

According to Merran Toerien, Sue Wilkinson and Precilla Choi in their article, “Body Hair Removal: The 'Mundane Production of Normative Femininity,” as time passes more and more women are removing body hair. “...[S]ignificantly fewer participants aged 51 years and older ... said that they had ever removed their leg hair than did those aged 20 years and younger” (Toerien 403).

However, despite the numbers, many women are asking, what's the harm? Compared to plastic surgery, sex changes, what is the big deal with waxing the hair from your body? The problem is, women are not just fighting the battle of the fuzz. A woman's body is a hunk of meat, and every company in the multi-million dollar cosmetic industry has sliced off its share (Tiggeman 381). Like makeup and anti-wrinkling products, removing body hair instills in women the belief that their natural bodies are wrong, bad and unattractive.

“Thus with the help of Maddison Avenue, hair removal behavior had become normative. This pattern of convincing women that the are inadequate without a particular product has been the hallmark of advertizing at least since the 1950s... The primary message in most of these ads is that women need to change their looks and their bodies in order to be socially acceptable, especially to men” (Basow 85).

When women value things which are unnatural to their own bodies, such as the perfect fat-to-muscle ratio, the perfect breast shape, the smoothest skin, and non-existent body hair, women disassociate themselves from their own bodies. “Everything disgusting solicits an ethical reaction: this thing here - ... anticipating our presence as stinking, rotting bodies- should not be, at least not for us and in our presence. It should go away. The theoretical equivalent of practically avoiding the disgusting is defining it “away” either as “unnatural excrescence” or simply as a disease” (Menninghaus 53). A woman battling undesirable body hair views her own body as unappealing, disgusting, raunchy.

In a society where studies have shown anywhere from 80-92 percent of women remove body hair, a large part of the problem is women ignoring this vital fact (Tiggeman 381). Many women have a tendency to feel they do it because it makes them feel attractive, not because of social norms. “Women were able to recognize the normative pressures on them to shave their legs and underarms, but only when looking back in time” (Tiggemann 382).

Women who chose to fight the man, (literally and metaphorically) and allow their underarm and leg hair to grow face a great deal of social pressure and contempt. Ashley Hawkins wrote about her experiences as a hairy lady in “Reflections on Body Hair”.

“The first thing other women usually say about my underarm or leg hair is, 'How do you get a boyfriend looking like that?' All at once, I am embarrassed, enraged and disappointed. ... I feel enraged because I feel that all women should be confident with how their bodies look unaltered. ... Her comment makes me wonder, what direction are we going in as women? The woman that has just said this to me claims to believe in the right of a woman not to be governed by a man, yet sees no contradiction in asking me why I don't alter my body for a man?” (40-41)

Just as “The Personal is Political” served as a rallying cry for feminists in the past, it must serve as a reminder in the present. Women are not on their own, slipping in the shower as they struggle to shave their legs, soothing red, angry skin after a wax treatment, spending far too much money on depilatory supplies. Women must make an effort to understand why they feel they must go to such lengths to remove their natural body hair, and why other women refuse to remove any body hair at all. The personal is still political.

Works Cited

“The Bare Truth.” Economist 20 Dec 2003: 111-113. Print.

Basow, Susan, and Amie Braman. “Women And Body Hair.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 22.4 (1998): 637-646. Print.

Basow, Susan. “The Hairless Ideal: Women and Their Body Hair.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 15.1. (1991):83-96. Print.

Hawkins, Ashley. “Reflections on Body Hair.” Off Our Backs. 34.11. (2004): 44-41. Print.

Menninghaus, Winfried . Disgust: the theory and history of a strong sensation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Middleton, Lucy. “Smooth Operators.” New Scientist. 184.2471. (2004):44-45. Print.

Toerien, Merran, and Precilla Y.L. Choi, and Sue Wilkinson. “Body Hair Removal: The 'Mundane' Production of Normative Femininity” Sex Roles. 52. (2005): 399-406. Print

Tiggemann, Marika and Christine Lewis. “Attitudes Toward Women's Body Hair: Relationship With Disgust Sensitivity.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 28.4. (2004):381-387. Print.

I Hate Carnations

For todays blog post, I wanted to tell you about a well-know (and yet horrifyingly little-known to me) photographer, Cindy Sherman.

"By turning the camera on herself, Cindy Sherman has built a name as one of the most respected photographers of the late twentieth century. Although, the majority of her photographs are pictures of her, however, these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits. Rather, Sherman uses herself as a vehicle for commentary on a variety of issues of the modern world: the role of the woman, the role of the artist and many more. It is through these ambiguous and eclectic photographs that Sherman has developed a distinct signature style. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art." (Cindysherman.com)

In my Women, Art and Society class at Plymouth State, my friend Olivia Nelson (fellow art student and fantastic writer) took one of Sherman's compelling photographs (below) and wrote her version of the story behind the image:

It was August and the sun ws hot on the roof of the Saltbox house that Gloria had spent half the day in, boiling the meat off chicken thighs. Dust rolled in the window over the kitchen sink and the familiar sound of the pick-up pulling up the driveway filled the air. Licking sweat from her upper lip, Gloria looked out on Phil grabbing his battered briefcase from the bed. She smoothed her skirt and picked up plates. She prepared the table for dinner, as she had every day for the past thirteen months. Everything was as it was, unfailingly, every evening at roughly 6:30. The sturdy clopping of men's shoes on wooden steps and he was there in the doorway with peach carnations wrapped in plastic from the supermarket. Gloria smiled as Pete handed them to her and set his briefcase at her feet.



“It's hot in here,” he said as he tugged at the neck of his tie with his forefinger, “What's for dinner?”


“Chicken and rice. There's pie in the icebox, if you like.”


“From last night?”


She nodded.


“No, it was a one time thing. Definitely not a 'do again'.” He sat at the table and she spooned his meal onto the plate in front of him. He grunted with approval and she went to find a vase. She settled on a mason jar and put the carnations in between them on the table. She peered through the peach petals as he chewed and occasionally picked his teeth, waiting. He looked up and saw her watching him through the flowers and raised his eyebrows in an bored questioning look.

“I got my period today.” His normally expressionless face briefly clouded with a mixture of annoyance, disappointment, and frustration. He sighed and shook his head, still shoveling the remains of rice and flaky chicken into his mouth. He picked up a bone and leaned on his elbow, sucking the bits of flesh clinging to it and looking at her.

“Well, what'd you do? How many times has this been?” His tone was even and betrayed no emotion.

“I haven't done a thing. I did what the doctor said.” He shrugged and let the bone clatter to his plate.

“ Well, that biological clock don't stop tickin'. I'll be upstairs waiting once you cleaned up down here.” He scraped his chair back and took off his overcoat, dangled it on his finger over his shoulder, relaxed the finger and let the coat fall to the floor behind him in front of the doorway to the stairs.

Gloria sat in relative silence as the shoes clopped up the stairs. She put her hand out and rubbed a petal between her fingers and narrowing her eyes at the deceptive flowers. She got up and took the overcoat off the floor, brought it to the coat hook. She dusted her hands on her apron and looked back at the door he'd left from.

“I hate carnations.”

Check out Olivia's blog

Want to learn more about Cindy Sherman?

Women Men and Accountability

Quick quiz!
Do young women hold young men (and/or older men) accountable?
This is not a researched blog post. This is a personal experience blog post with a wee-bit of background knowledge about privilege.


If a man does something that inconveniences or troubles a woman, is she likely to say so and to express to him how he has made her feel or the impact his actions have had upon her, even in less dramatic, more "minute" cases? Will other people, not directly involved, allow for that kind of an interaction? Today, my experience has been NOOOOOOOOOOO. To all of the above.

And... hey.  Lets talk about emotions. I have often said that we don't allow men to be emotional. I think that can often be true. Instead, however, it is entirely acceptable to allow a male to be angry. This is a healthy male emotion: "RAWR I am angry! I'm going to make cross faces, talk with a raised voice and close doors and drawers with a bit more force than is technically necessary!" I recognize an issue here. I think it's worth talking about. But right now, I want to talk about why the deuce it is we do not allow women to be ANGRY!


If a woman is angry, it is cause for general unease and discomfort, something to be ratified as soon as possible.
My experience has been that if I am sad and/or emotional in some other way, I can be ignored, seen but not really seen... It is alright for me to be "upset" so long as I am demure, wallowing in my emotions and generally not bothering anyone else. HOWEVER if I am angry - particularly AT a male OH NO!  Not only is my reaction not really acceptable, but it needs to be changed as quickly as possible, so as to prevent some sort of a problem.

How do we react if, in the same exact circumstance, a male is angry. "Oh well, he's upset. Give him his space to work it out and be angry." HE is allowed to be angry! Because his anger is acceptable.
Worse, in a way, women do tend to recognize that men face social pressures to not be emotional. So, if a man happens to expose some sort of emotion, regardless of how many times that very man has ignored her emotional "outbursts" she will take him by the hand, treat him carefully, attentively. Little do we realize that we are falling into this cycle where we allow men to express emotion and anger to us as women, and do not require that they allow us to express our own anger and emotion. Additionally, I would suggest that often women do not allow other women to express anger to one another.

I will not apologize for the abruptness and seeming randomness of this blog post, ladies and gentlemen, because I AM ANGRY - and it IS acceptable. That being said, I hope I can write a more thoughtful blog post about this later, because I feel it is an important aspect of relationships between men and women, men and men and women and women. Happy Easter.