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Tag: Paris Hilton

Raunch=Empowerment? Think again…

Guest post by Enlighten Education’s Victorian Program Director Sonia Lyne:

 

Why is it that popular culture has now connected the sexual excitement of men with the “empowerment” of women? Why is attaining sexual power through stripping, fishnets and mimicking porn stars seen as the only way to be desired and desirable? Why is sexual power an attribute that we value so highly?

Many women today are preoccupied with their bodies and looks and have forgotten about the power of their minds. We live in a world today that is saturated with products, services and advertisements selling us the idea that we need to always look “perfect” and appear sexually available. 

We are inundated with images of women that are not reflective of how women really are. We continually see a cookie-cutter stripper/porn star version of “sexy”. Real female sexuality can be far more contradictory, complex and interesting. Real female sexuality is not solely focused on being “eye candy” for men.

80 Year old Hugh and Paris. Is enticing “Granddad” really liberation? For whom?

Many young women feel defeated and engage in self loathing because they cannot live up to this “Hugh Heffner-esque” ideal. Ariel Levy’s insightful book Female Chauvinist Pigs, Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, looks at the new breed of so-called “empowered women” who are really only being sold a type of male centered pseudo empowerment and buying into their own sexualisation and objectification:

Only thirty years (my lifetime) ago, our mothers were “burning their bras” and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as supposed symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short period of time?

What was almost more surprising than the change itself were the responses I got when I started interviewing the men and — often — women who edit magazines like Maxim and make programs like The Man Show and Girls Gone Wild. This new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of feminism, they told me; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We’d earned the right to look at Playboy; we were empowered enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes. Women had come so far, I learned, we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture, where men had been enjoying themselves all along. If Male Chauvinist Pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.”

Just one look at the “Girls Gone Wild” brand reminds us that this raunch obsession has indeed become mainstream. In our hyper-sexualized culture, to gain attention even very young women will adopt stripper-like dance moves and bare all. How telling are the song lyrics to the hit song ‘I Kissed a Girl”:

“This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion…

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it…”
( I Kissed a Girl, by Kate Perry).

It seems for this girl the act of kissing another girl had more to do with the drink in hand and the coquettish desire to provoke her boyfriend than any real pressing sexual urge of her own. Teen girls tell me it is now almost passé to engage in a girl-on-girl kissing session in front of the boys at parties. One girl I spoke to explained it thus: “Getting smashed and then getting it on with a girl friend used to be a guarantee of getting attention at parties, but now the boys expect more. They’ve seen it all before. Now it’s like, ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’.”

A recent essay titled “The Pornification of Girlhood” by Melinda Tankard Reist, published in Quadrant Journal (JULY 2008 – VOLUME LII NUMBER 7-8) delves into this concept and highlights the disturbing home truths about the effect this is having on even our young women and girls. Tankard Reist writes:

…the movement for women’s equality was overtaken by the movement for sexual license-the sexual revolution. To be free has come to mean the freedom to wrap your legs around a pole, flash your breasts in public, girls-gone-wild style, or perform acts of the oral variety on school- boys at weekend parties in lieu of the (as traditionally understood) goodnight kiss.  In an age of “Girl Power”, many girls are feeling powerless. They are facing unprecedented social pressure, their emotional and psychological well-being at risk in ways never before imagined…

To quote[Joan Jacobs] Brumberg: ‘We have backed off from traditional supervision or guidance of adolescent girls; yet we sustain a popular culture that is permeated by sexual imagery, so much so that many young women regard their bodies and sexual allure as [their] primary currency.’ ” 

Sexual allure as our primary currency? It is disturbing that it has come to this.

Getting Trashed is SO HOT right now.

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New Foxtel show “Gossip Girl” is causing an uproar with its scenes of underage drinking – teenage star Serena downs vodka shots like Carrie downed Cosmopolitans. But is this just art imitating life? Young female celebrities are famous predominately because they regularly binge drink and go into rehab; there are entire web sites devoted to drunk celebrities ( all of those featured are female). Whilst back in the “real world,” Facebook features profiles with pictures posted by young women that proudly show themselves passed out when drunk, drinking beer on the toilet, vomiting…

American site Feministing, aimed at radical young feminists,  argues this phenomena is no biggie – girls and women should have the right to get just as trashed as the boys and should not feel pressured to act “lady like”:

“I can take the health line of approach that maybe binge drinking isn’t good for you, but the young women should know better or should be ashamed doesn’t work for me. I am always weary of shaming women for things that men do freely. Guys in college get wasted as a ritual, they don’t have to hide it from future employers, in fact they are practicing to drink with future co-workers. But women have to be careful not to ruin their ladylike manners.”

I don’t like double standards either but I do think binge drinking in women, and particularly in our young women, is deeply concerning.

The fact is that research shows teen drinking is on the rise and not just accepted, but expected. This is not new – all the “cool kids” got trashed when I was in High School too  – myself included. Why we thought it was cool to vomit all over ourselves and stumble about alludes me now but it certainly was the thing to do.  Drinking excessively has become a huge issue for teenage girls – recent Australian surveys show that half say they drink alcohol, with one in five confessing to having done something they regret while they were drunk.

The fact is that drinking, even in small amounts, affects women differently than men. And heavy drinking, in some ways, is much more risky for women than it is for men as we are more quickly affected by alcohol and much more vulnerable to the effects of overindulging. Keeping up with the boys is not a badge of honour – it is dangerous. The attached PDF put together by the Commonwealth Government is well worth reading:  womenshealth.pdf

I am concerned too by by the emotional damage our girls are doing to themselves – one in five confess to doing something they regret when drunk. 

The reality is that young girls are also at risk of sexual assault and violence when they are drunk and vulnerable. Let me be very clear here – I am NOT BLAMING THE VICTIMS. It is NEVER their fault. All I am saying is that being drunk does make you less able to think clearly and may make you a target if some vile predator is lurking…and of course the predator may well be a trusted friend of someone within the home. That is not fair, it is not right, it is unjust – but it is also reality. If girls are going to drink, they need to at the very least ensure they stay together and watch out for each other.

Blaming “Gossip Girl” and the media would be all too easy. I am more concerned by the prevalence of unsupervised teen partying.  Teens focus on the here and now, not the prospects down the road. A good lecture and then sending them off into the night won’t cut it. God knows I would glaze over when my mother talked about damage to my liver – I was 16 and invincible!

Do discuss the risks. But also be practical – know where your kids are, discuss whether or not alcohol will be present and how you both feel about this, know what time they’ll be home and how they will get home, and if the party is at your place – actively supervise.

Finally – consider cutting back on the chardonnay. It is unrealistic to expect your daughter to listen to you tell her that she doesn’t need to drink to have fun if every time visitors come around you drink excessively.  

Image from Gossip Girl – Blair and her Mother at Xmas:

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I stopped drinking completely over two years ago. I knew I was a born binger and wanted to hang up the wine glass before the kids got old enough to notice Mummy boozing on.

Sorry Feministing but it ain’t pretty and we should know better.    

P.S Talk about timely – a Government report widely published in the media on the 18th declares teen drinking is reaching epidemic proportions with children as young as 10 in rehabilitation for alcholism. The Sun Herald published a very interesting article blaming parents on the 19th: Parent’s Branded Gutless Over Teenage Boozers.

  

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