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Tag: The Hoopla

Dateless but not Desperate

The following post was originally published by The Hoopla, February 11.  

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As an educator who works with young women, during this the lead up to Valentine’s Day my Facebook News Feed is a virtual parade of teen girl sadness.

“Forever the Single Pringle.”

“The best thing about Valentine’s when you’re all alone? Knowing the chocolates will be half price come February 15.”

“My Valentine’s = a date with a tub of ice cream and a sad face. ”

In order to make their friends feel better, most of the comments following statuses like these are of the “Don’t worry, you’ll find your true love and live happily ever after” variety.

And whilst of course most of us do meet at least one love in our lifetime, not all of us will be with our partners forever. Many young women may go on to not only live without a partner, but to raise families alone.

In fact, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, almost fifteen per cent of all Australian families are one-parent families and almost two-thirds of these have dependents living with them. The vast majority of these families, eighty one per cent, are headed up by single mothers.

By the time girls become women, we are generally far less supportive of those who are not partnered up.

The terms we use to describe a single man make it sound as though he is having a ball doing the coolest things and having many a wild romance. He is a player, playboy, ladies’ man, lady-killer, womaniser, pick-up artist, bachelor, stud.

At best, a single woman might be referred to as a bachelorette, which implies that all she is doing is waiting for her husband to come along. Otherwise, she is labelled as the sad, lonely spinster.

And should she have children? Then she can expect to become the scapegoat for so many of society’s ills. Despite the fact that study after study show that a two-parent, financially stable home with stress and conflict is more destructive to children than a one-parent, financially stable home without stress and conflict, single mothers are frequently blamed for everything from the crime rate, to their own poverty.

As a single mother it might be hard not to take such criticisms personally. Yet my life, and my children’s lives, don’t fit the typical assumptions we make about single parent families at all – partly because I am fortunate enough to be financially independent and well educated.

Study after study also show that despite the rhetoric, it is poverty and instability that effects children – not family composition – making the Government’s decision to cut Newstart funding to single parents seem not just heartless, but ill informed.

Professor Katie Roiphe, in her eloquent “Defense of Single Motherhood” emphasises the necessity of a more balanced, compassionate approach when she concludes: “The real menace to… children is not single mothers, or unmarried or gay parents, but an economy that stokes an unconscionable divide between the rich and the not rich.”

One of my priorities in my latest book on relationships aimed at teen girls was, therefore, to teach our young women how to feel okay, with or without a partner. After all, the pressures placed on girls to meet their Prince Charming start very early.

In order to move beyond the myth that we are only whole if one of two, it is helpful, for example, to put the oppression of single women in a historical context.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a particular type of religious zeal took hold in Europe and led to tens of thousands of women being branded as witches. Approximately 100,000 supposed witches were put to death. Those accused of witchcraft were often poor, single women.

In the eighteenth century in England, women had very little choice but to marry. With limited educational opportunities available to them, and no pay equality, most women viewed marriage as the only stable path to financial security. Women also couldn’t own land, and all inheritance was passed down from father to son.

This made women vulnerable, because without a financially stable marriage they would be left destitute. And so the stigma around single women increased (globally, marriage is still considered a serious financial transaction, with dowries and bride-prices transacted as a way of allowing wealthy families to align themselves with other wealthy families).

For many women, the duty to marry well may also have produced great sadness. Once she was stuck in a loveless marriage, a woman often became isolated, her risk of domestic violence increased, her risk of death through child birth increased, and she had no option but to fulfill her conjugal duties. Bucking the trend was a big risk.

During Victorian times, women could be accused of being insane if they made too much of a fuss about their lot. In fact, if a woman expressed something that the male doctors of the day did not agree with, they could deem her words as hysterical ramblings. The term ‘hysterical’ derives from the Greek word meaning ‘womb’ (hence the term ‘hysterectomy’). A deep flaw within our wombs was considered to be able to make us insane. Women could also be sent to mental asylums for having an affair or being considered too sexually excitable. Single women were particularly at risk of being accused of these supposed misdeeds.

Although as single women today we are able to own property and are not at risk of being burnt alive, there is still a lot of work to do before society truly feels comfortable with, and is genuinely supportive of, those of us who are flying solo. Especially if we are mothering.

We still burn women who are seen as pushing boundaries — now we just choose to burn them with our words.

 

N.B – Enlighten launched its in-school one hour “Loveability”workshops for teen girls this week! The response so far from our clients has been phenomenal. To find more about this, visit our web site – www.enlighteneducation.com

You may also wish to read the A4 flyer here: LOVEABILITY – IN SCHOOL PROGRAM. 

NSW teachers can also join Nina and I at a special book launch for educators being hosted at Harper Collins. FREE copies of our book, and a fabulous teacher resource kit, will be distributed to particpants. There is no cost for this but those interested must RSVP:

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Click on both images to enlarge and read Invitation details.

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Judging A Book By It’s Cover

This week there has been animated discussion about book covers. Concern over the truly awful feminised version of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” went beyond merely that of taste.

1966 cover design
Faber’s 50th Anniversary edition

Writer Nicole Elphick highlighted the concerns of many in her excellent analysis over at Daily Life:

The cover also illustrates a larger problem in how women’s literature is treated. By making the cover so explicitly, narrowly feminine in imagery, it assumes that if a woman writes something it will only be of interest to women and should only be marketed to women, as if somehow women are completely incapable of speaking to the breadth of human experience.

Elphick goes on to site author Jennifer Weiner on literary sexism in a 2010 interview she did for The Huffington Post: “I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book.” Amen.

However, some of the commentary on the new-look Anne of Green Gables cover (pictured below) is frankly ridiculous. Sure, the new look may feature a traditionally attractive blonde posing in an unnatural way, but to say she has a “come-hither” look, is a “bosomy vixen” and packaged to be like a “porn star” is crazy. She is wearing a high collared button up shirt for goodness sake! Crazy over-reactions like this do nothing to further the very real issue of the premature sexualisation of children and only undermine the valuable work being done in this area.

The controversial new cover of Anne of Green Gables.

I assume the publishers were hoping to update the look and appeal to the young Saddle Club audience with this version. Boring? Yep. Inappropriate to use a blonde rather than a red -head considering Anne is quite famous for the colour of her locks? Agreed. But let’s not start implying that girl’s bodies are innately dangerous and sexually provocative; that even in buttoned up shirts they could be leading people on ( “She’s asking for it by leaning back like that…”).

I’ve previously cautioned against over-reactions, and explained why they are so dangerous, over at The Hoopla. 

Love to hear what you think of both covers…

 

Size Apartheid. We’re Over It.

In the past week there has been much discussion over size. A diet book aimed at girls from 6 years old and up caused outrage by nutritionists and lead to me having a rather heated debate with Kerri-Anne on her television program regarding the current hysteria over the widely reported obesity crises (my argument? Basically that health may take many shapes and sizes and we need to stop obsessing over numbers, particularly when it comes to measuring and weighing our children). The National Eating Disorders Collaboration Conference (NEDC) was held in Sydney just yesterday too; its aim was to collaborate on best practice approaches towards treating and preventing eating disorders which are sadly on the increase and are now manifesting in children as young as 7. Simultaneously (in perhaps one of the worse examples of poor timing ever) Fairfax fashion writer Georgina Safe  caused an on-line furore over her opinion piece which slammed a plus-size fashion parade at the Fashion Festival of Sydney. 

Given the debates that are raging over how much space women should be allowed to quite literally take up, I thought it timely to offer a response to Ms Smart and turned to the fabulous Wendy Harmer for this. Wendy has just launched a new “online playground”, The Hoopla, aimed at women. I  was a guest over there earlier this month: you may like to read my post “Love thy daughter, Love thy self.” The following guest post is also featured at The Hoopla this week.  

 

Try as she may, there’s no way Fairfax fashion writer, Georgina Safe, can dress this one up. In her opinion, some of the plus-size models in the recent Myer “Big Is Beautiful” catwalk parade were fat and ugly.

How else can you interpret this: “While there were some pretty faces, others were wanting. Granted, some of them were regular citizens rather than professional clotheshorses, but this still defeats the purpose of inspiring consumers to buy the clothes.”

Hmmm. That’s as plain as the nose on your, or their faces. Safe even takes a swipe at one model who, on being selected for the show, said she’d be able to relax and eat a few cream puffs.

Oh, the outrage!

Safe goes on to say: “Plus-size shows and models should be judged by the same standards as any other fashion shows and models, as was observed by the director of plus-size agency Bella Model Management, Chelsea Bonner… ‘Plus-size models have to be just as aspirational, just as tall and just as heart-breakingly beautiful as any other model,’ Bonner says.”

But, hold on. Weren’t some of the models “regular citizens”? I imagine that was partly the point of the exercise, wasn’t it?

The parade took place as part of the Fashion Festival of Sydney and, as far as I can tell, was supposed to be an inspiration for big women who want to be fashionable.To make fashion more democratic and accessible for we ordinary schlubs.

But then there was the problem, according to some, that the plus-size models were not integrated into the main catwalk shows, but relegated to their own frumpy parade.

No problem for Safe, who clearly agrees with size apartheid, and writes: “But I disagree with Bonner on another point: while she applauded Fashion Festival Sydney for staging a plus-size show, she says true size equality would not occur until models beyond sample size were integrated into all runway shows. ‘Just chuck one or two in each show; don’t make an issue of it, just do it,’ she says.

“Frankly, why should we? Standard-size models, like Olympic athletes, are a genetically gifted species. Most consumers understand they will never look like them. The simple fact is that clothes look better on beautiful, slender young women. If the collection is lacklustre and the models are less than top-notch, what was the point of Tuesday’s show?

“The only truly stunning model on the runway was Lawley who, by the way, appears to have whittled down from a size 14-16 to a size 12.”

(Which means, given her height, she wasn’t a plus-sized model anymore by the standards of the majority Australian women, who, in most statistics I read, come in a comfy size 14-16.)

Safe misses the point, in my opinion, when she compares models with Olympic athletes.

Our athletes are applauded for their strong, fit bodies. By contrast we know that young women in many runway shows are dangerously underweight and when young girls try to emulate them, they risk developing eating disorders.

We also know that so many “regular citizens” look at fashion shows and cannot see a thing to wear as modelled by size 6, teenage coathangers. With the fashion industry in the doldrums, it would seem sensible to appeal to the majority of larger-sized women, of which I am one (too many “cream puffs” I suppose). I took a lingering look at many of the clothes and found a few there I’d buy.

Really, what is the point of sending a snippy fashionista along to a show that’s trying, for once, to make bigger women feel good about themselves?

If the clothes weren’t exactly “inspiring” as Safe says, that’s one thing. Making rude comments about women’s prettiness or otherwise is another. And in this article, Safe reveals her own character as “wanting”, if you ask me.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a breakfast of cream puffs.

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