Never more “liberated”
Peggy Orenstein in Mother Jones:
I have spent three years interviewing dozens of young women about their attitudes toward and experiences with physical intimacy. On the one hand, girls would enthuse about pop icons like Beyoncé, Gaga, Miley, and Nicki who were actively “taking control” of their sexuality. Whereas earlier generations of feminist-identified women may have seen Kim Kardashian West’s “happy #internationalwomensday” tweet and accompanying nude selfie (Instagram caption: “When you’re like I have nothing to wear LOL”) as something to denounce, many of today’s generation talked about it as an expression rather than an imposition of sexuality—brand promotion done on her own terms.
As one college sophomore told me, she never feels more “liberated” than “when I wear a crop top and my boobs are showing and my legs are showing and I’m wearing super high heels.” She added, “I’m proud of my body, and I like to show it off.”
But that’s a very particular idea of “showing off” your body, and of being proud of it. What aspect of your body are you showing off that way, and what are you proud of? It’s not strength or health or ability. It’s hotness. That’s not the only thing a body is about, or for, or good at – and it’s not obvious in what way it’s “liberating” to single out hotness as the only significant aspect of one’s body worth being proud of.
And let’s be real: it’s not really “liberating” to wear high heels. Literally speaking it’s the very opposite of liberating, because it significantly impedes the wearer’s freedom of movement. The same applies, somewhat less obviously, to short skirts and crop tops. Sure, parading one’s hotness is liberating from repressive ideas about sex as shameful, but that’s only one form of liberation, and it’s not obvious that it’s still an urgent one now.
That’s Orenstein’s point, of course, but I wanted to zero in on that oddly limited idea of what it is to be proud of one’s body. But even if you do accept that idea, there are problems.
But a moment later it became clear that unless, through fortuitous genetics or incessant work, you were able to “show off” the right body, the threat of ridicule lurked. The young woman told me that a friend had recently gained some weight. It’s not that she couldn’t wear skimpy clothes, the woman explained. “But she knows how she would feel if there were asshole-y boys who were like, ‘She’s a fat girl.'”
Young women talked about feeling simultaneously free to choose a sexualized image—which was nobody’s damned business but their own—and having no other choice. “You want to stand out,” one college freshman explains. “It’s not just about being hot, but who can be the hottest.”
Well guess what: that’s not freedom. It may be a competition you want to enter, but don’t kid yourself that it’s freedom.
But as journalist Ariel Levy pointed out in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, “hot” is not the same as “beautiful” or “attractive”: It is a narrow, commercialized vision of sexiness that, when applied to women, can be reduced to two words: “fuckable” and “sellable.” No coincidence, Levy added, that this is “the literal job criteria for stars of the sex industry.”
And there are other things to be, other criteria, and by god there are other industries. Being fuckable and sellable has a short shelf life, and anyway those qualities are passive. Be passive if you want to, but again, don’t confuse that with being a Strong Powerful Woman in Charge of Her Own Destiny.
The situation that makes me feel really good about my body is when I swim. I love the sensation of moving through water, I love the sensation of pushing the water to propel myself forward. It is a rewarding feeling that my effort is doing something. This was a good and powerful sensation when I was 10, it was just as wonderful when I was 19 and it is still so at 50. It feels the same whether I am thin or fat, and it doesn’t depend on anyone else’s opinion. Even when I was recovering from an injury and wasn’t at my typical speed it felt just as good.
It’s an interesting piece and expresses thoughts I have had off and on for a long while. Yes, expressing and revelling in your sexuality/sensuality/Hotness is a form of liberation. An extremely narrow one. Even in our society it is more a statement of liberation in being able to do something that is permitted, but not necessarily universally approved of, largely without threat of direct consequence. Of course it is also really only an option for those who are genetically privileged to have the particular body form and hotness currently in fashion, or those who are so thick skinned they don’t care what others say or think.
That makes it a very narrow form of liberation not open to all, and therefore not really a form of liberation at all.
I don’t care if people want to parade around scantily clad (well I don’t care much anyway) or post pictures of their naked selves to the world. What I do care about is that some of those people will be lauded for being edgy, beautiful and hot, while most will be called some variation of ugly bitch fat whores. That alone tells us that there is a societal standard at work. We are not liberated to display our bodies, rather those who conform to certain physical and behavioural standards are rewarded and encouraged (which I’m sure feels liberating), while the rest are ridiculed, belittled, harangued or frightened into hiding.
That is oppression. It is what the majority experience.
We need more of the universal, slightly uncomfortable liberation ideology and less of the conformist and ultimately judgemental liberation.
Admiration and liberation are not the same thing.
And may I add . . . DUH!
(I can’t believe we’re to the point where that has to be said. Tell me again how far we’ve come in the last 50 years?)
Well said.
For women who’ve been harassed, the parading of hotness is only liberating insofar as one has just tested and proven that they are SAFE in this particular situation. And many women did have a middle or high school experience of being harassed. The sense of “empowerment” may be a sense of safety that they are having trouble naming.
What’s chilling is how deeply these young women have objectified and commodified THEMSELVES. ‘Proud of my body’ as if one were being ‘proud of’ a car.
We live in a culture where it is ‘normal’ for five year old girls to be ‘dieting,’ and 35 year old women to be unsure of what an orgasm is. The self-alienation, and the vast cultural pressure which commands it, are so ingrained that the whole project of heterosexuality seems doomed.
This form of “liberation” only works in a proper context, as Ophelia noted. A former Quiverfull daughter who decides to put revealing photos on Tumblr is being subversive. An Islamic woman, especially one in a country where Sharia is actively enforced, who goes topless except for the face veil is being downright revolutionary. A Yale sorority sister who grew up in a largely liberal urban center in the U.S. isn’t going to strike any sort of blow against the patriarchy by pandering to a narrow definition of ‘hotness’.
And…shouldn’t the whole concept of ‘hotness’ be about what SHE feels, thinks, wants, DOES. Rather than what she WEARS?