For this post, I would like to focus on the Alisa Valdes article “Ruminations of a Feminist Fitness Instructor” because I think her story is symbolic of the struggle many feminists face between being a feminist and being practical. Sometimes, as Valdes states, it is not always possible to act out our feminist ideals due to monetary constraints. As with most causes, the people in charge are people who have the time and money to do so. Not everyone can spend their time writing feminist manifestas, going to rallies across the country, and participating in other progressive activities for the feminist movement. Regular people need to work a 9 to 5 job, and then perhaps come home and make dinner, help their children with their homework, and walk the dog. As we have seen before with the feminist movement, it is often middle and upper class women who can afford to lead it. It is difficult for other women to find where they can fit into the feminist movement, or how they can live their lives as feminist when they have to do a job that might not be cohesive with feminist ideals, such as an aerobics instructor.
Valdes started her career as an aerobics instructor and was quite successful. But during this job, she realized the conflicted messages she was sending and felt a sense of failure: “I had betrayed myself, betrayed my dreams; most of all betrayed my gender” (Valdes 28). Valdes decides to pursue her dream as a feminist writer in addition to keeping her job, but finds that she cannot handle the pressure of both jobs. She realizes that she must quit her internship and reflects on the difficulty of balancing feminism and real life: “I watched as my lifelong dream of being a professional feminist writer slipped through my fingers and back into my spandex and sneakers, all because I needed to pay for a roof over my head and the food in my stomach. I realized that only the children of the rich are able to afford to be entry-level journalists for the progressive publications of our nation. The poor become, well, cheerleaders for the status quo” (Valdes 29).
Valdes raises the problem of class in the feminist movement. Class hierarchies are present even in the most progressive of movements. I think Valdes also raises another question unrelated to class, which is: how can we act out our feminist ideals in our everyday life? Even women of the upper class may have jobs as lawyers or doctors, or other professions where it seems impossible to work a full time job and be a contributing member to the feminist movement. I pose this question to my fellow bloggers: what ways can we act our feminist ideals in our everyday Colgate life?
I found it increasingly frustrating in this article to hear Valdes, who clearly is a feminist and an advocate for "girl power", engage in so much self deprication. It was disappointing to hear her think that the only way she could contribute to the feminist movement was through a very high powered job or with a higher socio economic status.
ReplyDeleteWhile I think it is definitely true that those in power with money are the only ones to bring about significant change or systemic change, I think Valdes paints a very dismal and not entirely accurate picture that women make no contribution unless they have money. I think many times change starts in small places and ultimately encourages those with the power and money to alter the system. She even acknowledges "the gym was one of the few places on earth that I felt I possessed an irrefutable degree of power." (Valdes, 27). I think this ties into Emma's question......In our everyday lives, we can find those places whether it is the classroom, or the gym, or among our family and friends where we are just ourselves. We don't need to reorganize society to make a difference. We can start small and hope that it catches on to someone with the ability and power to enact the systemic change that seems to be needed to make change on a larger scale.
Both the Fausto-Sterling article and the Valdes piece alluded to the fact that no matter which course of action a woman takes, she always has to make certain sacrifices. In “Hormonal Hurricanes: Menstruation, Menopause, and Female Behavior” women can either suffer in silence, or address a potential medical problem that might “prevent women from competing in the world outside the home” (Fausto-Sterling 95). Acknowledging PMS as a disorder would help the women who suffer from debilitating problems surrounding their periods, but it also highlights a weakness that women will never be able to change. Thus far science has been harmful by contributing to the societal idea that if a woman is being “a bitch” it must have something to do with her hormonal fluctuations. I think this relates to Emma’s question of how women can fight for feminism in their daily lives. Until science catches up, should we maximize our differences as women, or should we try to cover the potential weakness that is a monthly menstrual cycle? Valdes is forced with a similar paradox in her narrative, choosing between feminism and her source of income. In her case, she is faced with short-term (financial) gains for long-term (feminist) losses. Similarly with the case of hormones, women can either be upfront about hormonal issues and risk one’s emotions/feelings being labeled as only a result of hormonal fluctuation, or minimize the biological difference to (theoretically) advance. (Which seemingly resembles acting like a man.)
ReplyDeleteTo answer Emma’s question, I think what we should do to enact our feminist ideals is to be aware and unafraid to speak up when we see injustices, no matter how small. Feminism doesn’t require a prescription of a certain way to act. If it did, it would be just as rigid and strict as a patriarchy. I agree with Emily that we need to focus on being ourselves. However, while I say this, I have the concern that without a uniform action plan, the 3rd wave of feminism will lack cohesion and momentum. With the focus on personal identity and self-determination, one risks the situation of women throwing each other under the bus, as Levy describes in Female Chauvinists Pigs. 3rd wave feminists must dually respect their own identities as individual women, and be unified in the general causes, which presents quite the challenge.
Great thoughts, all. Emma, you raise a really great question: how can we be feminist in a daily way. You also raise a great point in these three posts: the most problematic aspect of the situations that both Valdes and Fausto-Sterling describe is the fact that women are trapped in a Frye-esque birdcage. As Fausto-Sterling describes, women can't acknowledge their physical issues because they will be treated differently, but they need to acknowledge them because they are normal and should be treated as such. Similarly, Valdes sees the gym as a space of empowerment, but also as a space of disempowerment: how to make her students feel powerful in a space associated with dieting and hating one's body? The problem, as I see it and you articulate, is not whether women go to the gym or not, but HOW we negotiate these intersecting pressures to be neither/nor.
ReplyDeleteAs Emma noted, Valdez writes: “I watched as my lifelong dream of being a professional feminist writer slipped through my fingers and back into my spandex and sneakers, all because I needed to pay for a roof over my head and the food in my stomach. I realized that only the children of the rich are able to afford to be entry-level journalists for the progressive publications of our nation. The poor become, well, cheerleaders for the status quo” (Valdes 29).
ReplyDeleteThis particular quote sparked recent memories of my exploration of the 1960s "New Left," a group of leftist student activists who began a movement geared towards social reform. Amongst their various causes at the time (civil rights, civil liberties, peace, even feminism) was that individuals were the source of humanity and equal opportunity--if, given the chance to cultivate their creative and humantiarian minds and participate equally in government, individuals could create equal opportunity for all. However, they found that the bureaucracy of U.S. education systems/workplace, in which everyone was aiming to get ahead and driven by profit-motivation and the "status quo" of the American dream left little room for individual, "creative" (or humanitarian) thought and action.
Indeed, the "New Left's" Manifesto, The Port Huron Statement, virtually echoes Valdez's complaints over the American "status quo" and her inability to pursue the activism that she was so passionate about. Does this mean that we are in need of a radical movement? One that puts equal rights and opportunity above all other American values?
This is debatable given the different contexts of the New Left movement (a period of affluence) and now (one in which individuals do not have the liberty of sacrificing profit-motivations for humanitarian dreams), but I did think the connection was worthwhile.