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.