Future Feminism

By Antony of Antony and the Johnsons

Found here

A Bit of a Rant

I find it interesting that men AND women are attacking the new HBO show "Girls" --which is written and directed by a young woman, and about young women -- after only one episode. Why is this show getting picked apart by uppity bloggers when there are other TV shows that have no female presence/intellectual heart whatsoever? I think it's because girls (and "Girls") are easy to pick on. We have to find something wrong with a woman, whether she's too skinny, not skinny enough, has the wrong family, relates to men in the wrong way (because God knows they've always treated us correctly), isn't perfect, is too perfect... the list could go on.

I'm not meaning to be a defenseless, boo-hoo feminist here. I just think that these stupid internet tirades in general need to stop (which may be something I'm doing right now, but whatever) ... Like Lena Dunham, the creator of "Girls," I am a writer myself, and have always dreamed about writing something of relevance about the modern female, be it a TV show, a movie, a play, or a book... So with all this negativity towards what Dunham is doing, how am I supposed to feel? If I put my voice out there, will I get unfairly criticized and snarked at as well? Let a female express herself without being shot down and torn apart.

Yay: Refinery29 wrote a nice little in-defense-of piece.

PS: The show is great. I watched the first episode, and loved it.

Women's History Month: Mary Cassatt

Here's to strong-willed visionaries and talents like Mary Cassatt, American painter.

Cassatt grew up in an environment that viewed travel as integral to education; she spent five years in Europe and visited many of the capitals, including London, Paris, and Berlin. While abroad she learned German and French and had her first lessons in drawing and music.

Though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15. Part of her parents' concern may have been Cassatt’s exposure to feminist ideas and the bohemian behavior of some of the male students. Although about 20 percent of the students were female, most viewed art as a socially valuable skill; few of them were determined, as Cassatt was, to make art their career.

Impatient with the slow pace of instruction and the patronizing attitude of the male students and teachers, she decided to study the old masters on her own. She later said, “There was no teaching” at the Academy. Female students could not use live models and the principal training was primarily drawing from casts.

Cassatt decided to end her studies (at that time, no degree was granted). After overcoming her father’s objections, she moved to Paris in 1866, with her mother and family friends acting as chaperones. Since women could not yet attend the École des Beaux-Arts, she applied to study privately with masters from the school and was accepted to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly regarded teacher known for his hyper-realistic technique and his depiction of exotic subjects. Cassatt augmented her artistic training with daily copying in the Louvre (she obtained the required permit, which was necessary to control the “copyists,” usually low-paid women who daily filled the museum to paint copies for sale). The museum also served as a social meeting place for Frenchmen and American female students who, like Cassatt, were not allowed to attend cafes where the avant-garde socialized.

In 1868, one of her paintings, A Mandoline Player, was accepted for the first time by the selection jury for the Paris Salon. Cassatt saw that works by female artists were often dismissed with contempt unless the artist had a friend or protector on the jury, and she would not flirt with jurors to curry favor.

Cassatt traveled to Chicago to try her luck at establishing herself as an artist, but lost some of her early paintings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

She was invited by Edgar Degas to show her works with the Impressionists, a group that had begun their own series of independent exhibitions in 1874 with much attendant notoriety. She had strong feelings for Degas but learned not to expect too much from his fickle and temperamental nature. Also, Mary had decided early in life that marriage would be incompatible with her career.

In recognition of Cassatt's contributions to the arts, France awarded her the Légion d'honneur in 1904.

Diagnosed with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts in 1911, Cassatt did not slow down, but after 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. Nonetheless, she took up the cause of women's suffrage, and in 1915, she showed 18 works in an exhibition supporting the movement.

Her paintings have sold for as much as $2.9 million.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cassatt

Women's History Month: Alice Roosevelt

Here's to sassy, trailblazing ladies like Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States.

Alice led an unconventional and controversial life. Despite her love for her legendary father, she proved to be almost nothing like him. Her marriage to Representative Nicholas Longworth was shaky, and the couple's only child was a result of her affair with Senator William Borah of Idaho. She proudly boasted in a 60 Minutes interview in 1974 that she was a "hedonist."

Two days after Alice's birth, her mother died of undiagnosed Bright's disease; on the same day, her paternal grandmother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, died of typhoid fever.

Theodore was so distraught by his wife's death that he could not bear to think about her. He almost never spoke of her again, would not allow her to be mentioned in his presence, and even omitted her name from his autobiography. Therefore, Alice was called "Baby Lee" instead of her name. She continued this practice late in life, preferring to be called "Mrs. L" rather than "Alice."

Despite strains between Alice and her demanding stepmother Edith, she would save her from life in a wheelchair or on crutches when Alice came down with a mild form of polio in one leg. By Edith's regimen of nightly forced wearing of torturous leg braces and shoes, even over Alice's sobs, Edith ensured that Alice would grow up with almost no trace of the disability. She was able to run up stairs and touch her nose with her toe well into her 80s.

She was as independent and outgoing as she was self-confident and calculating. When her father proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City, she pulled out all the stops, writing to her father, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will."

Alice became an instant celebrity and fashion icon when her father became president. She was known as a rule-breaker in an era when women were under great pressure to conform. She smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, kept a pet snake named Emily Spinach (Emily as in her spinster aunt and Spinach for its green color) in the White House, and was seen placing bets with a bookie. During a cruise to Japan, she jumped into the ship's pool fully clothed, and coaxed a Congressman to join her in the water.

Alice was not without a sense of humor. She once amused herself in the House of Representatives by placing a tack on the chair of a "middle-aged" and "dignified" gentleman. Upon encountering the tack, "like the burst of a bubble on the fountain, like the bolt from the blue, like the ball from the cannon," the unfortunate fellow leapt up in pain and surprise.

When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard. At many White House social activities, Alice frequently mocked the First Lady, rendering Mrs. Taft rather uncomfortable in Alice's presence, though Alice was some 20 years her junior.

Later in life, she had a double mastectomy. Taking the medical procedure in stride, she referred to herself as the only "topless octogenarian" in Washington.

In 1965 her African American chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Alice to an appointment. During the trip, he pulled out in front of a taxi, and the driver got out and said, "What do you think you're doing, you black bastard?" Turner took the insult calmly, but Alice did not, telling the taxi driver, "He's taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!"

To Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had jokingly remarked at a party, "Here's my blind date. I am going to call you Alice," she responded acidly, "Senator McCarthy, you are not going to call me Alice. The trashman and the policeman on my block call me Alice, but you may not."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Roosevelt_Longworth

Reposted: "A (Love) Letter to the Ladies" ... Dedicated to my lady friends

"Today I found out that this lively young lady has stage IV cancer in her reproductive system. Immediately, I wrote down every resource I could think of for her on a Post It note and gave her a few books I happened to have in my bag. As we talked, I couldn’t help but to ask her if the doctors thought a hysterectomy would help her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and I felt my own eyes filling with tears as well.

'I hate the doctors when they tell me that, like it’s just so simple!,' she said angrily. 'I’m in my twenties! It’s not fair! How can they think it’s okay to take away everything that makes me a woman?!'

She stood up straighter, as if she was strengthening her resolve. I stood next to her, a united front, silently admiring her bravery, and thinking that if I knew I was Stage IV, my ovaries would have quickly become 'no-varies.'

I remembered this past summer, when my then boyfriend (now my ex, because of this) told me that if I had to have a hysterectomy, our relationship would be over, because I couldn’t have children and that was important to him. (Ultimately, I didn’t make the decision to have a hysterectomy; my doctors are taking a more conservative approach, but I did make the decision to get rid of him!)

We stood together silently for a few minutes, reveling in our two separate universes that had suddenly collided into a beautiful, tragic, supernova of sisterhood.

I didn’t share with her what I would do if I was her, because I didn’t want her to think I was passing judgement, and more importantly- I’m not her. But I did tell her that I support whatever decision she chooses, and I am here for her.

She told me that she never talks about this with anyone, and she thanked me, and she left- hopefully to go home and let the hope I’d tried to instill in her grow and become plentiful.

I too, headed home.

On the way home, while waiting for the train, I was suddenly stricken with the urge to write. I haven’t put a pen to paper the old fashioned way to write a piece in ages. The pen danced across the paper; it was almost seductive. The words that poured out from my heart to the paper, I will share with all of you- all my ladies, can you feel me?

Dear Sister,

If I could give you my womb, my womb I would give. Sadly, I cannot give you my womb, but I can offer you what my womb gives- life. Birth. Rebirth. Dearest, please take these words from one woman to another- one cancHER survivHER to another.

We as women have often been defined and assigned value as a womb-man. We’ve been denied rights because of our wombs. We’ve been blamed for seducing Adam and bringing down Eden, forever damning mankind. We’ve been told that p*ssy is power. Yet we’ve been sold as sex slaves, abused, raped, and imprisoned by a society that doesn’t value women for what we are and what we do; instead we are valued because of what we have.

We pay higher health insurance premiums because we are women. I quote Nancy Pelosi when I say that now is the time when being a woman no longer means being a preexisting health condition.

Preexisting health condition or not, as women, we have been standing up for ourselves and others, and we continue to stand strong. We are healers, teachers, mothers, and givers of life. We raise not children, but entire villages. We have run entire countries behind the scenes, while letting “the man” take credit for it, and simultaneously running our homes.

We are women, and like Maya Angelou said, we are phenomenal: Still we rise!

It’s in the sway of our hips. It’s in the confident strides we’ve made for our sisters and the world. It’s in the way we love, and how hard we love. We love so hard, but sometimes we forget to love ourselves.

When that happens, we stop listening to our “women’s intuition” and start listening to society. Society, who has, at points in time, decided that we were second class citizens, and that we need to stay barefoot and pregnant, slaving over a hot stove.

Sister, I know it can be scary, and the decision to have (or not to have!) a hysterectomy is a personal one. You will be loved regardless.

But don’t let them label you.

You are not a woman simply because you have ovaries and a uterus. That just means you are a female, and possibly fertile. You are deeper than the walls of your vagina.

What makes you a woman is the way you love your daughter. (I’ve seen you with her, and you’re great. She’s a great little girl and she has a wonderful mother and big high heels to fill!) What makes you a woman is the way you love your (wo)man. (Nothing makes a (wo)man feel better than woman.) What makes you a woman is how you breathe life into everything you come into contact with, with the breath of fresh air that you are. What makes you a woman is that you can create and design a life and future like no other. Woman, get it together! You are, and always will be, a beautiful, strong, amazing woman. And my hero!

What makes you a woman is that you are a nurturer, a defender, and a lover of life. Make the best decision for you. Nurture, defend, protect, and love your own life- whatever that decision means for you.

That, my beautiful friend, is what makes you a woman.

And NOTHING can change that.

All my love.

All my ladies… can you feel me now?

---Written by April Ricchuito, for Hello Giggles

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

By Dr. Maya Angelou