Hypothetical Dystopia

The notion of “goodness” for girls was jettisoned partly for a valid reason: In the past, it had been taken to a stifling extreme. Professor Rosemary Agonito, who grew up in the 1950s and whose Italian immigrant parents had not wanted a girl, is well qualified to explain the problem:

“The ‘Nice Girl’ Syndrome: Being a ‘Nice Girl’ means putting ourselves last. It means pleasing others at all costs, accommodating their needs and wants - even when their agendas harm us. By striving always to be liked and accepted (which psychologists have long known to motivate women), we suppress our own desires and feelings, our own belief systems and values, to accommodate those of others. As ‘Nice Girls’ we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, so we don’t talk back and we don’t fight back, even when under siege. We go along; we take it….Long-suffering and uncomplaining, the ‘Nice Girl’ is ever dutiful. But being dutiful is defined as playing by somebody else’s rules, rules that we had no say in creating.

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Shalit, Wendy. Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect & Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good. Random House; New York. 2007. (pg. 177)

‘Bitch’ is predictable in only one respect: its unwavering support for the aggressive girl. An article about Pamela Anderson hopes for a time when she “gets another dread disease or her implants explode.” Those concerned about mean girls are merely using, “a safe cover for hostilities and fears about teenager girls and their power.” In another article, the film ‘Alive’ (based on a true story of passengers stranded after a plane crash) earns the author’s disapproval because a female character, Lilliana, refuses to succumb to cannibalism in order to survive. Her “inherently gentility” is criticized. Annie Garrett, in the fictional ‘Vertical Limit (2000), is criticized for refusing to steal vital supplies from a stranded companion who is suffering from altitude sickness. While this author acknowledges that Annie is the group’s “moral center,” her resistance to “the temptation to give in to savage instincts, even at the peril of her own survival” is looked at askance: “By straitjacking female characters into the position of civilized society’s spokespeople, these movies deny women both moral complexity and credit for having a dark side - a side that deserves to be examined for its real-life and metaphorical implications for gender roles.

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Shalit, Wendy. Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect & Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good. Random House; New York. 2007. (pg. 241)

Are there men who demand that their women wear a hijab? I am sure there are; just as there are men that demand their wife or girlfriend parade at their side in high heels and a sexy dress. The power play between genders is not exclusive to one religion or culture; it happens on an individual level.

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Inge Rombaut in an IPS News interview about the Muslim headscarf.

(via abudai)

(Source: ipsnews.com)

When men are serious, it’s sexy; it implies a commanding personality, someone who’s in control, someone with a backbone. When women are serious, they are bitches or unattractive, humourless hags, in need of sprucing up and “feminising”. How many times have I heard some of the cleverest women I know being called “feminist bitches” simply because they don’t conform to the “nice” girl image? Or, simply because they ask difficult questions and expect serious answers.

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Being Nice  (via sashanako)

men are always telling me to “take things less serious.” I feel like if I was a man this would never happen. I’m attracted to strong men, but only the ones who realize my strength makes me no less of a woman.

(via peacehon)

The whole “men initiate, women wait around” plan is bullshit. Newsflash: men who are shy, insecure, or afraid of rejection exist. They are not bad people. Many of them make awesome boyfriends. It’s also fucked to tell women that their sole recourse, if they want to date a dude, is to look pretty in his general direction. Instead of taking away women’s power and making men fit a role that they may not be comfortable with, why don’t we let people who like initiating initiate and people who don’t like initiating not initiate?

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(Source: goodmenproject.com)

A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

— Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (via themisseducated)