In the Style of Virginia Woolf: Marriage

Marriage requires the wife be her husband's property. For women are, after all, forced to take on, rather than given, their husband's surname after marriage; required to be their husband's property, so that they can be taken care of, oppressed, controlled; forced to have Mrs. as their only title; stripped of their name  like Virginia Woolf's Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway is "being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more... being Mrs. Richard Dalloway," and therefore loses her identity when she becomes her husband's property, for this is how the world sees Clarissa now (the title of the book itself shows how Clarissa must be forced to be identified as her husband's property, bound to their marriage; whereas Mukherjee's Jasmine gives her a choice of identity as she fumbles around redefining herself); like Martha Hale, of "A Jury of her Peers," written by Susan Glaspell, is primarily referred to as "his [Mr. Hale's] wife... Mrs. Hale" by the narrator, and her friend only as "Mrs. Peters;" therefore, it makes sense that these two women can only bring themselves to call their old friend "Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright;" they would like to continue to she their friend the way she used to be, rather than owned and identity-less (Woolf 8, Glaspell 2). Such are the small things women do in attempts to fight against their circumstances.

Such are the small things women do in attempts to fight against their circumstances only if ownership by their husbands is something they wish to fight against. For Jasmine, the character Bharati Mukherjee wrote as the center of her novel Jasmine, does not mind being her husbands property; as a fourteen year old girl in Hasnapur, India, she wanted the imagined joint store with her husband, Prakash Vijh, to be called "Vijh & Wife" even after given the option of "Vijh & Vijh" (Jasmine sees herself as Mrs. Vijh, because she does not know any better, while Clarissa is forced to see herself as Mrs. Dalloway by society and because of class); and this small detail of word choice, shows that some women, women unlike Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters (if only sarcasm could be read in the voice or written word) do not mind being owned by their husbands; do not mind being given the title "wife" and nothing more; not even her own husband's last name in celebration of her love for him (Mukherjee 89). For marriage, being Mrs. Hale or Mrs. Peters. or Mrs. Vijh, does not have to be a controlling system, or display the ownership of Mr. Hale, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Vijh; the ownership of a great, powerful man (just because he is a man) over the owned, controlled woman; for being Mrs. Hale can be being Offred, Offred with Luke, where, despite both poo-pooing her mother's feminist views, Luke treated Offred as an equal, just as Prakash did with Jasmine, who was, perhaps, too young to think and act against the world she knew in Hasnapur where a woman's whole life revolved around their husband and it was expected by society that she kill herself should her husband die; being Offred with Luke was equality between man and women before their society was gradually taken over by Gilead and Offred's access to money was dependent on her husband, her job stripped from her, her rights. Such are the small things that are taken away that further insinuate and create female inferiority.

Such are the small things that further insinuate and create female inferiority, break women, and keep women down; like Offred being owned by an atypical brand of marriage in Gilead, owned by Fred and Serena. For Gilead dictates that Offred has an obligation to Fred and Serena (different from the religious obligation Offred has to herself and to society to keep herself chase and respectable); Offred's obligation is to remain fertile; an obligation to be in the best condition possible for child bearing, child production, child birth; she is obliged to reproduce with her Commander, so that the two people she is "married" to, Fred and Serena, can be kept happy, can get what they want. Mrs. Peters is owned by Mr. Peters so that he may have a clean house, a nice meal, and endless jars of jam stacked in the cupboard. For "having things slicked up" is her duty to her husband (Glaspell 8). Such are the things that women are obliged to do in marriage.

Such are the things that women are obliged to do in marriage, like Clarissa is obliged to wear "a look of extreme dignity" at the possibility of the queen having driven by (as she is aristocratic and wears that burden through her marriage to an official); and like, also, Jasmine is obliged to take care of Bud, despite having never taken a legal oath to him, though they will soon have two children together (Woolf 13). Such is marriage that women have obligations, that women are made inferior, that women are owned by their husbands, forced to fight in small ways against their circumstances.

On An Interview of Caitlin Moran

My sibling, Jenna, and I went to a recording of a podcast tonight. We went to see Tim Minchin, who was interviewing some woman we had never heard of and had little interest in. This is a problem in itself. We went to go see a man. The man was famous. We didn't care to hear from the woman even though it was supposed to be the woman who was primarily talking. There's the issue of the fact that we new who the male celebrity was but we did not know the female celebrity. Caitlin Moran actually addressed the issue during her interview that there are just so many more famous men out there than women - and therefore so many less female role models.

It is refreshing that the format is a man asking a woman her opinions on things. A man encouraging a woman to speak. A man expressing how brilliant he thinks a woman is. A man and a woman equal in regards to one another. They commented on the fact that they were the exact same age and came from a similar left-wing background; this made them the same. They respected each other's opinions and listened to each other's thoughts.

So although Jenna and I went into the situation with a male-centered focus, what we entered was a very level playing field.

One thing that was said during the interview of Caitlin Moran, who I learned, is a feminist journalist, is that as long as women have a choice in dressing like, excuse my word choice, a slut-whore, it is alright for them to dress that way. I take a bit of an issue with this. I would argue, not all that confidently might I add, that women are told by society and men that they must dress and act a certain way, that they must be sexual. I use a story from Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues here in which a women is forced by her husband to shave her pubic hair. Her husband, thinking on behalf of and as a result of society, thinks a hairless vagina is sexier. "Many people do not love hair [on vaginas]" the speaker tells us (9). Their couple's therapist perpetuates this negative idea - a woman keeping women down, The Handmaid's Tale-style. The therapist "asked me [the narrator of this story] why I didn't want to please my husband" (10). She describes her shaven vagina as "puffy and exposed," and yet, for a time, she keeps it this way, because this is what her husband perceives to be beautiful. Because this is what he was told was beautiful.

In just the same way, women have been told they have to dress like, here it comes again, slut-whores in order to be beautiful, in order to be valued sexually or otherwise. I do not think it is a situation in which women actually have choice, because I think it comes down to societal beliefs, societal pushing. Women may think they are choosing to dress in a certain way, but if it is the way men and/in society want them to dress, how do we know women are making the choice themselves? It cannot be classified as a choice, I hesitantly believe, if it does not actively fight against the choice others are forcing on you.

But my opinion here is a conversation, like Caitlin Moran said of hers. I am open to being proved wrong.

Women's Fat and the Supposed Dangers of Dieting 3

Upon further reflection, I reaffirmed my belief in dieting. I think it is a healthy choice for me to remain on Weight Watchers. On my mom's side of the family, heavy women and men compose my family. We are built bigger; we have bigger bones. Perpetual weight gain is inevitable if I do not do something to prevent it. My grandpa got so big, doctors told him he was in danger of getting diabetes and so we quickly started walking at the mall to get the weight off. My mother has been on and off Weight Watchers and other dieting programs since she was in college. I have determined that, because of my family history, I should really sort this out while I am young and able, while I have the chance, while I am still thin enough that it is easier. 

When I began Weight Watchers in September, I was a stone above the heaviest side of my healthy weight range. I was technically overweight. Not massively so, but overweight enough that I was concerned. I have made my goal weight smack dab in the middle of the healthy weight range for someone of my age and height. I figure that this will give me some cushioning for when my body wants to being weighing more as I get older, as has happened in my family. This way, if I gain ten pounds, I'll at least be on the edge of my healthy weight, so I will not need to fix this just because it is what society wants. I can be content in that I was built bigger; I can be proud of that, because it's a family trait, and I love my family. 

I worked out with my leader Nicole that if it gets to a point that I do not lose or gain any weight for weeks, that is a sign that my body is not supposed to weigh less, which, in part, accepts Wolf's claim that women's bodies are "programmed to weigh a certain amount" (192). I will not push myself past that point. I am not aiming for Ann Hollander's "'look of sickness, the look of poverty'" (184). I am not engaged in "adolescent starvation;" I am being smart about this (203). 

Although, admittedly, I did not initially begin dieting purely for health reasons. I also wanted to feel better about myself. I had not realized at the time, that it was not me who had to change, but society. Naomi Wolf taught me that. This is why I can now say that I would be accepting of gaining ten pounds later on, if it happened naturally after I met my goal weight or somewhere near it. 

Women's Fat and the Supposed Dangers of Dieting Continued

Even if Naomi Wolf were not on the too thin side of the weight divide, I find it hard to believe "that women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier if they weigh... [more] and they refrain from dieting'" (187). I think that since she has this history being underweight, she sees gaining weight as only being a positive thing. However, there are articles that I found which clearly illustrate that being overweight or obese is a problem. Obviously, Wolf is not encouraging obesity, but I think encouraging weight gain as a hard and fast rule is not the way to handle the problem of women's weight. I will give the author the benefit of the doubt; perhaps in 1990, obesity in women was not a national problem across the United States and the United Kingdom, among other countries. However, in the twenty first century, encouraging weight gain is not the answer, because although there are many women and girls who are unhealthily skinny, there are also women and girls who are unhealthily heavy.

I take Wolf's subtle attack on dieting somewhat personally. As a member of Weight Watchers since September, I do not see dieting as a negative lifestyle change, but rather, a positive one. Wolf claims that women's bodies are "programmed to weigh a certain amount" (192). However, my personal experience throughout my older years proves this false. Looking at my weight from seventh grade to now, it has fluctuated massively. By about tenth grade, I resolved to keep three difficult sizes of clothes in order to combat this: big, medium, and small. Therefore, once again, I do not think Wolf's weight claim is applicable to everyone.

She then goes on to say, quoting Roberta Pollack Seid's research, that dieting "'may indeed cause... obesity itself,'" which I find to be an outdated statement (196). My Weight Watchers leader Nicole recently said at a meeting - and I agree - that the causes of obesity have to do with fast food, increased portion sizes, and decreased movement required for daily tasks, just to name a few. I personally, felt I reached a point where I needed to join Weight Watchers when I realized my portion sizes were too large and I was eating beyond fullness, in addition to making the wrong choices about what food to eat in what amounts. I did not exercise. I think I was eating the wrong things in the wrong amounts and not moving enough to put any of the food to use.

Women's Fat and the Supposed Dangers of Dieting

"'The results of recent studies have suggested that women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier,'" Naomi Wolf recites from Radiance in her book The Beauty Myth, "'if they weigh ten to fifteen percent above the life-insurance figures and they refrain from dieting'" (187). Though I agree with much of what Wolf has to say regarding women's obsession with being thin and so achieving "'the look of sickness, the look of poverty,'" as she cites "fashion historian Ann Hollander in Seeing Through Clothes" as saying, I take issue with a few specific beliefs she has on dieting (184).

Wolf's tragic personal narrative of her battle with anorexia at the age of thirteen, which she calls "adolescent starvation," is heartbreaking, and it brings new light to her reasons for writing the novel (203). It makes the reader even more sympathetic to her cause, even more on her side. The reader, who may have previously been in denial of the beauty myth's affect, sees Wolf as a living example of everything the beauty myth has done to women. However, her personal narrative also gives the reader a new understanding of what side she is coming from and of the extreme degree to which she is on that side. If this book, and the criticisms of diet within it, had been written by a heavier women who shared Wolf's grasp of the beauty myth, I would be more inclined to believe her accusations of diet. In the same way, when the health teacher at my school dismissed the question asked in class, how to lose weight, with "you just eat healthier," I knew she had never dealt with being above a healthy weight before, and therefore her weight suggestions were much less relevant to me. I feel that women who deal with the other side of the problem - being too skinny - do not have an understanding of the position I am coming from, which is, even if not by much, the heavier side. To be fair, I do not understand the too-skinny perspective, but at least, unlike my old health teacher or Wolf, I do recognize that not every women has the problem of weighing too little.

Grandma Interview & Mad Men

While I was watching the TV show Mad Men, I wrote down something Betty said about her mother: "She wanted me to be beautiful so that I could find a man. There's nothing wrong with that." She was referring to her mother's concern with her weight when she was a child. I couldn't help but relate this to my own grandmother and her daughter. While interviewing my grandma, I asked her about my aunt's nose-job. I knew that my grandma had paid for it, and I wanted to hear what my aunt had said to convince her to allow this. As it turns out, the story behind the nose-job, which I have only heard spoken of twice in the family, was different than I imagined. "I encouraged it," my grandma said right away. She explained, "Her nose was like Uncle Barry's was... it was, um, big and crooked, so I encouraged her to do it."I was surprised by this. The same woman who, earlier in the conversation, told me how she would meet with girls in "woman's rights groups" and write letters to "political officials" about woman's issues that were important to her: "about abortion and birth control and jobs". "Woman didn't have very much rights" when she was a kid. She went on to say, "women got paid less than men and didn't have as high positions." I did not understand how she could care about women's rights issues as a teenager, but encourage her daughter's nose-job as a mother. Speaking about motherhood, she told me she "consciously made an effort to treat her [daughter] more equally [to boys]," because she wanted her daughter to have the opportunities woman of her time did not.

Gender equality clearly matters to my grandmother, so how is it that she promoted that my aunt fix her nose? I wonder if she had the same thought Betty and Betty's mother did, that her daughter should be made "beautiful so that... [she] could find a man." Who was the nose-job for? For herself, for other girls, or to impress boys? This links directly with a conversation I had with my mother yesterday during breakfast. She was asking me when I would "grow up" and start wearing makeup. (I can currently count on my hand the number of times I have worn makeup and I am happy to keep it that way; I told her prom and my wedding are the only two times she will likely see me in makeup again.) I identified those three as being the only reasons a heterosexual woman would wear makeup: herself, to impress women in competition, to "find a man." I see makeup and a nose-job both very similarly. Some woman view both as optimizing a woman's beauty. I see them as falsifying a woman's beauty, creating a fake version of herself to fit into society's version of "beauty." The plastic surgery and makeup perpetuate a one sided idea of what is beautiful, so that a woman must be society's idea of "beautiful so that... [she can] find a man."

Jasmine and Karin: Female Competition and Togetherness

(Continued discussion of Jasmine's relationship with women in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine)

Karin explains to Jasmine, "'I feel hate for you'" but does not want to (202). "'Help me not to hate you, Jasmine,'" she begs her in an interesting turn of events (203). Karin and Jasmine's competition has been a reoccuring theme since Jasmine arrives in Iowa. When Karin cries, "'I have no way of competing with you!'" it becomes clear that the rivalry between them is mutual (205). This is something we, as readers, could not be sure of before, as we only have insight into Jasmine's thoughts. So, although there is still a clear hatred and tension between the two women, Karin asking Jasmine for help "not to hate" her shows themes of female togetherness and unity (203), like my favourite line in "Wild Geese": "Tell me your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." This unity, as explained in my previous blog, is common between Jasmine and other women she encounters, such as the village woman in Hasnapur and Wylie in New York City, but it is not expected between Karin and Jasmine. When Karin asks Jasmine this, admitting that she hates her, we see Karin telling Jasmine "her despairs" in the hope that Jasmine will relate to them, so that they can work together to fight this hardship. Karin admits to Jasmine, "'I don't know if I could have nursed him,'" referring to Bud (228). They finally achieve this togetherness Karin hopes for when they gain an understanding of each other's difficulties. This also shows that Jasmine is not the only one comparing herself to the other. There is both competition and female camaraderie between them. When Jasmine is unhappy in this scene, Karin offers to stay with her to comfort her. Karin later comforts Jasmine again, saying "'Don't blame yourself, Jane'" (240). She empathizes with the struggle Jasmine has gone through taking care of Bud and then deciding to put herself first, and they ultimately show themes of togetherness and unity.

This is all to similar to the relationship between the speaker and the giggling "girls with lacy dresses" that she slaps in Andrea Lee's short story "Brothers and Sister Around the World" (Lee 5). She shows the reader that she feels as though she is in competition with the girls throughout the story up until this point, because she is older and made to feel that she is less beautiful than the girls who show more skin than her and receive her husband's attention. She points out that they are "probably about eighteen years old, both good-looking," and when they "burst out laughing," she is sure it is at her (Lee 3). When she slaps "the one with straight hair" she "feel[s] the strange smoothness of her cheek and an instantaneous awareness that my hand is just as smooth" (Lee 4). In other words, she realizes she is just the same as them. She reiterates this: "it is clear we are breathing the same air, now" (Lee 6). Later, "[b]oth girls look straight at me," showing they now respect the speaker (Lee 6). She responds to the girls in "my politest voice," showing she respects the girls as well (Lee 7). The three people realize they have gone through the same thing as women, and so they must unite, just like Jasmine and Karin.