Monday News: Ageism and gendered rage, beauty and the male gaze, social media’s danger to women, and the feminization of domestic fiction
Publishing Newsage / anger / beauty / domestic fiction / feminism / gender / patriarchy / privacy / social media / social privilege8 Comments
The insults of age: A one-woman assault on condescension – After crawling out of the hole I’ve been working in for the past week, I found link to this story on Twitter from Kat (Book Thingo), which led to a long discussion about ageism, cultural privilege, and the limits of reasonable rebellion. Apparently this post by Australian writer Helen Garner has engendered a lot of positive feedback in Australia, although there have been several critical responses, including this piece by historian Therese Taylor. Like Taylor, I found Garner’s anecdote about her assault on a teenage girl disturbing, although I read her response to the male waiter in a completely different way.
In fact, I read the piece as revenge fantasy and as part of the literary tradition of the woman who gets pushed to the edge by a social norm that deems her unnecessary (I was actually thinking about everything from Sophia from “The Golden Girls” to The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening as I was reading the piece). I *hope* it was, at the very least, hugely exaggerated. Because Garner’s arguments about how older women are regarded (or disregarded) are important, I think, and deserve more discussion. For example, how many Romance protagonists do we see who are over 50, let alone 60? And why is female rage still so taboo? Still, Garner’s piece is problematic in several ways. First there is the physical assault on a teenager. Then there is the issue of Garner’s own social and cultural privilege, which complicates her claims of marginalization, not to mention the irony here in that had an unknown older woman wrote about the social marginalization of older women, the piece would likely have been ignored.
I had known for years, of course, that beyond a certain age women become invisible in public spaces. The famous erotic gaze is withdrawn. You are no longer, in the eyes of the world, a sexual being. In my experience, though, this forlornness is a passing phase. The sadness of the loss fades and fades. You pass through loneliness and out into a balmy freedom from the heavy labour of self-presentation. Oh, the relief! You have nothing to prove. You can saunter about the world in overalls. Because a lifetime as a woman has taught you to listen, you know how to strike up long, meaty conversations with strangers on trams and trains.
But there is a downside, which, from my convalescent sofa, I dwelt upon with growing irritation. Hard-chargers in a hurry begin to patronise you. Your face is lined and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. When they address you they tilt their heads and bare their teeth and adopt a tuneful intonation. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behaviour, that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business. By the time I had got bored with resting and returned to ordinary life, I found that the shield of feminine passivity I had been holding up against this routine peppering of affronts had splintered into shards. –The Monthly
Dear Men: Women Do Not Owe You Our Beauty – And speaking of women and agency, this is a great piece by Marquaysa Battle on the male gaze. Battle writes about how a famous photographer friend of hers wanted to take photos of her as a way to help her recognize and value her beauty. Battle explains her reaction to this likely wholly unconscious inference that women do and should see themselves through men’s eyes, and as an example of beauty as defined by the male gaze. A great reminder for the Romance genre, too, which sometimes has a tendency to rely on the ‘makeover’ trope as a way to rehabilitate the ‘unconventionally’ appealing heroine.
What the photographer saw was a girl who could care less about being “classically beautiful”. Or trying to be overly sexy. Or trying to impress anybody. Or trying to be anything that’s beautiful according to a man’s definition. Just because I didn’t place my hands on my hips and serve Marilyn Monroe pouty lips doesn’t mean I don’t know how beautiful I am. Just because I’m awkward doesn’t mean it isn’t something I embrace. Just because I wore a super loose jumpsuit instead of a flirty floral print dress and Mrs. Cleaver pearls doesn’t mean I’m not in touch with myself as a woman. It simply means I don’t express beauty or sexuality or self-love according to anyone else’s standards. It means I do me and let the chips fall where they may. I am a human being, not an ornament of yours that needs dusting off. Being a woman and being beautiful and knowing it aren’t always tied to mainstream standards and representations. . . .
So… to the men who are misogynists and don’t know it: Women don’t owe you our beauty. You don’t get to decide which women know, love, and value themselves. I know the world has told you that you own women’s bodies and thus, can police them anyway you want… But you can-freaking-NOT. You don’t get to decide how we dress, flaunt, cover, display, and enjoy them. You don’t get to decide if I smile or flatter your silly advances when I walk down the street minding my own damn business. You just don’t get to decide. –For Harriet
Why Social Media is Failing Creative Women – Author Carolyn Jewel (who is both a friend of mine and an editing client) wrote this post after seeing a complaint from an author loop about a Facebook page that was allegedly providing pirated copies of books. What Jewel surmised is that the page was more likely providing malware and stealing credit card numbers, and her post is about the way in which social media sites like Facebook are potentially harmful to women, and not just because people can use them to spread malware. More specifically Facebook makes it very difficult for people to use pen names to maintain pages, and given the number of women using these platforms for professional purposes (and other individuals who are known by their professional names), potential problems are increasing, and the media companies do not appear to be adequately responding.
Social Media has a hugely flawed view of the world. They’re so male-oriented that they have absolutely no ability to grok that women have a fundamentally different experience of social media, and the world, than men. And yes, the same is true for many many other classifications (Color, ethnicity, non-cis, not heterosexual and so on.) It’s why we see policies that actively endanger women and a big old “Huh?” when women complain. Real Name policies endanger women. Until these companies understand WHY that is, it’s not possible for the policy to be crafted in a way that reduces the danger. There’s a flip side to everything. Not having Real Names can also endanger women. Understand what’s going on, and there’s a chance you might have a more effective policy instead of one that serves the few with real harm to many.–Carolyn Jewel
Is There a Double Standard for Judging Domestic Themes in Fiction? – Let’s face it: the short answer to the question this Bookends column asks is HELL YES. But it’s still worth reading Cheryl Strayed and Pankaj Mishra discuss the persistent association of domesticity with femininity, as well as the deeply entrenched idea that there is a female realm (the home, aka the private), and a male realm (work, aka the public), which helps perpetuate the feminization of domestic fiction. As Mishra says about the American literary tradition, in particular,
In the United States, however, the male myths of proud autonomy and self-reliance have made for a hypermasculine intellectual and literary culture. Its custodians have ranged from Hemingway, the war reporter and boxer manqué, to today’s TV anchors lying about their proximity to war. Its insidious prejudices make men seem naturally equipped to tackle complex ideas, chart tectonic geopolitical shifts, summarize the diverse American condition and erect literary skyscrapers like the Great American Novel. Regional, racial and ethnic labels have obscured the reputations of, among others, Carson McCullers, Zora Neale Hurston and Maxine Hong Kingston. Paula Fox and Mary McCarthy, shrewd observers of the liberal imagination’s insincerities, must suffer oblivion in between occasional revivals. At the same time, cultural authority has been endowed on those who document the men in full (Tom Wolfe) as well as warn against the American will’s enslavement by technology (Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo). Novels about suburban families are more likely to be greeted as microcosmic explorations of the human condition if they are by male writers; their female counterparts are rarely allowed to transcend the category of domestic fiction.–New York Times
The article on Beauty by Marquaysa Battle is so full of juiciness – I felt like the comments in particular provided insight into this ongoing discussion.
I agree that women’s bodies do not belong to anyone but themselves, however I also know from a practical perspective that men do not respond well when they try/think they are doing something nice and then are smacked upside the head for it. I used to be a lot angrier when I’d get checked out by men, and of course there are still many issues to deal with here…but definitely demonizing men who are well-meaning isn’t the best approach. For many men, they just don’t realize their underlying assumption. Also, let’s be honest, how many times have we studied or ogled men and expected that they, too, should confirm to some stereotype about how we think men should groom themselves, dress etc. I guess my point is that she’s absolutely right…but then, OK, how do we work with men and other women to slowly change that? Some conflict is inevitable, yes, but we do need to all get on the same team at some point, which means education and patience and understanding (in the case of the photographer friend).
@Demi: I like your point about audience, and it makes me think consciously about something I just took for granted when reading the essay – namely that because it was posted on a site written largely by and for women, I took the “Dear Men” address as rhetorical schtick (like the “dear author” address here).
I agree with you that if the message is being delivered to men — especially those who are wholly unconscious of the implications of what they see as well-intentioned support — that approach is probably not the best. I read Battle’s piece as a, well, battle cry to other women, more than anything, which may have been the wrong way to read it. But if the audience is, indeed, men, and the goal is to raise awareness, discussion would be much more effective.
I’ve never experienced the “famous erotic gaze.” Some of us women are ignored in public spaces from day one. So maybe the upside to that is aging won’t be quite as traumatic?
Kat and I talked a little on Twitter about the Helen Garner article. Even though she is a “national treasure” I hadn’t even heard of her until fairly recently. So my reaction wasn’t about who she was, but what she wrote* and I was appalled. I couldn’t understand the reason for the “hear hear!” approbation.
I think a lot of the people who were applauding her essay were doing so because of who she is – if someone less popular or “treasured” had written it, the overwhelming reaction would have been condemnation I think. To me, the media’s reaction to the piece said a lot about the cult of personality and the double standards which attach to it.
*I’m sure there are other people who are well aware of who Helen Garner is and who also nevertheless reacted to what she wrote.
I read the hair-tugging in the Garner article as that moment of impotence in the face of injustice. How do you react? How do you deal with it? Garner isn’t defending violence. Her immediate response to the teenager’s (unacceptable!) behaviour is crass – and then she moves onto dealing with the issue at hand in a more constructive and nuanced way. It’s not a case of ‘Garner is getting away with this because she’s a national treasure’ – it’s more a case of THIS is what Garner’s cultural status is based on – exposing her/our weaknesses, and looking for ways to move on from unhelpful binaries.
I think that in talking about privilege and irony in relation to the Garner article it’s important to acknowledge where the article was published. ‘The Monthly’ stands out in the Australian journalistic landscape for its track record of publishing well written, thought provoking articles about Australian politics and culture (as opposed to myopic, prejudiced rants). Its raison d’etre is to promote informed discussion. The audience of The Monthly is on the whole well educated, on the liberal-left end of the political spectrum, and likes to discuss things! This is the audience Garner is writing to (and it is a contributing factor to the extent to which Garner’s article has been discussed). In this context, part of Garner’s point is that everyone gets old – even the culturally privileged – and that when they do, they will be subject to whatever values/preconceptions our society holds about age, and in particular, about aged women. Garner’s article is an exploration of her personal experience of this. The fact of her ‘cultural privilege’ does not invalidate her experience, and it certainly doesn’t reduce the value of her presenting her observations in a compelling way to a well educated readership who (I propose) are more engaged in enabling egalitarian social change than most of the Australian population.
Garner’s article would have also attracted attention because of Garner’s track record with controversy. Garner’s literary career was launched (in the eraly 1970s) by her semi-autographical story about a single mother who is immersed in inner-urban bohemianism and who is in a co-dependant relationship with a junkie (Monkey Grip). In the mid 1990s Garner published a non-fiction book (The First Stone) that caused a ruckus in Australian feminist circles. Readers might want to keep in mind that some responses to Garner’s article will be coloured by the view that Garner has no moral compass, and that all her writing is suspect. Just saying…
@Shannon McEwan: You and I disagree on whether Garner moves on to deal “with the issue at hand in a more constructive and nuanced way”. Me, I thought it reeked of entitlement. She may be faced with challenges because she is an older woman but she has bucket loads more privilege than the average Australian woman. If one were an Australian woman of colour? Multiply that by a thousand. Frankly, I read her essay and thought boo freaking hoo.
As for what I would do if I saw a student disrespecting someone that way? I certainly wouldn’t put my hands on her. That’s assault. It’s not crass. Let’s call it what it is. Garner, in her article, calls it “technically assault”. No, it’s ACTUALLY assault. It’s not okay. Not for anyone. Getting old doesn’t give one the right to go around assaulting people.
She had plenty of options: she could have spoken sternly to the girl – in front of her friends; whatever their outward reaction may have been it would have been mortifying. She’s articulate. I’m sure she could have come up with a brilliant set down. She could have taken note of what school they were from and made a complaint to the principal. These options are so much more worth cheering. She wasn’t at all impotent. She had power and she used it but she used it badly. An illegitimate use of power is not something to cheer about.
Given what you say about The Monthly (I’m not a regular reader of it), I’m even more surprised it got published.
My own comments about her being a “national treasure” reflect actual tweets and references to her that I saw when I looked a little into the article. All I know about Garner is that she’s older and she wrote a true crime book recently. So her controversial background was unknown to me. I very much took the essay on its own. She just seemed like a grumpy old woman saying “get off my lawn”.
There is definitely a conversation to be had about how we treat our aged population and how we treat women (and the intersection of those two things) in Australia. But I’m not convinced the essay added anything useful to the mix. JMO.
‘ Garner, in her article, calls it “technically assault”. No, it’s ACTUALLY assault. It’s not okay. Not for anyone. Getting old doesn’t give one the right to go around assaulting people. ‘
Garner’s ‘technically assault’ is not a claim that getting old gives someone the right to go around assaulting people. It’s a wryly self-aware – and deliberately provocative – reminder of how relatively recently disciplining children using physical force has come to be viewed as assault in Australia. Readers of The Monthly would, on the whole be aware that it references social debate that was white hot in Australia less than ten years ago (social debate that inspired Christos Tsiolkas’ ‘The Slap’), and that it reflects an aspect of the controversy surrounding Garner’s ‘The First Stone’.
The comment that went along the lines of ‘I didn’t know whether to wince or applaud’ reflects the real, challenging work of adapting habits of a lifetime to fit new cultural norms – even when you recognise the value of a paradigm shift.
@Shannon McEwan: I’m sorry. Clearly I lack the intellect necessary to understand the essay sufficiently. To me, putting unwanted hands on another person is assault. Strangely enough, that is also the law. But what do I know?