Natalie Wilson

Hey Girl w/Pen readers! Don’t miss Girl w/Pen’s Natalie Wilson great post, now up right over here.

I loved doing dot-to-dots as a child. There was something grand about linking all the tiny dots together to reveal a bigger picture. As an adult, I still love dot-to-dot, but now I attempt to link various “dots” into larger pictures that reveal cultural trends and ideologies.

This week, a number of “dots” sat scattered across my computer screen, in the form of various posts and podcasts, waiting for me to have time to more thoroughly connect them – the wonderful “Letter to Bella” post from Ms. Blog, Are Boys Natural Born Killers?, a podcast about war and gender, the “Born to Breed” interview with author Vyckie Garrison, news about JC Penney’s t-shirt “Too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me” t-shirt, and, as I am about to head off to Forks, Washington to speak at Stephenie Meyer Day, a number of Twilight related posts.

When the metaphorical dots between all these pieces are connected, the picture I am left with is one of a world that has definitely not gone “beyond pink and blue” (to borrow the title of another Girl with Pen column).

As Melissa Wardy points out in one “dot”, her post to the young Bella, “grown ups try to fit kids into little boxes that are labeled ‘Boy’ or ‘Girl’, and then they only let certain colors or ideas into each box.” As Wardy further points out, four year olds are sadly more likely to “know that girls can like or do anything boys can” than their grown up counterparts.

This claim was confirmed by heated comments in my War Literature class last evening. I had students listen to one of the dots coloring my desktop, the podcast Are Boys Natural Born Killers?, which includes Professor Joshua Goldstein, author of War and Gender, talking about the fact that boys are not “natural warriors” and that the only biological claim that seems to hold up this widely held cultural view is their propensity for more upper body strength. Though the entire podcast emphasized that gender is constructed and downplayed biological essentialism, the one comment made by Goldstein about upper body strength was latched onto. One student, for example, insisted men are built to fight whereas women are not. In this “Me Strong, You Weak” debate, I found myself thinking back to yet another dot, to the “Born to Breed” piece I had read earlier in the week.

In the piece, Vyckie Garrison, a former member of the Quiverfull movement, talks about the growing religious movement and its grounding in the belief that “the husband is the head of the household and the wife is the submissive ‘helpmeet.’” As Garrison documents, “A Quiverfull daughter is taught from a young age that her purpose in life is to serve the man whom God has placed in authority over her,” as well as to have as many children as possible. As such, “Her education is geared toward developing domestic skills–college is generally considered unnecessary and even dangerous for her spiritual well-being.”

And this brings me to Twilight, that oh-so-popular saga that has the heroine Bella (who shares no resemblance to the blue-shoe-wearing four year old feminist Bella above), giving up college to marry Edward and bear his vampire/human baby.

As I argued in my piece Wed, Bed and Bruised but Certainly Not Equal, the romanticization of sexual violence that texts like Twilight entail is part and parcel of the continuing inequality of our society. But, as lamented in “In Defense of Twilight,” this type of criticism is, like, a major bummer. The author writes: “Have you noticed Twilight gets attacked a lot? It gets attacked by men & feminists all the time & also by other fandoms. The latest thing I’ve heard is how Twilight romanticizes “domestic violence” & supports “inequality.” What a downer!” What a downer indeed. Far better to take the view enthusiastically supported by the author of the post that “It’s a love story and nothing more.”

Supportive of this enthusiastic love of love is the tendency to frame females and males as entirely opposite species, as in the post “Julia Jones Calls ‘Twilight’ Wolf Pack a Boys’ Club.” Author Brooke Tarnoff starts her gender essentialist piece with the following: “You might think you understand the plight of a woman in traditionally male-dominated fields — but none of them have anything on Julia Jones.” Suggesting that being an actress playing the lone female werewolf in an otherwise all male pack is far more heinous, say, than being the only female soldier in your regiment or than a lifetime of butting your head against the glass ceiling, Tarnoff’s piece not only brushes off male domination as something to joke about, but is also grounded in the “opposites attract” type of mentality that keeps heterosexism firmly in place.

The actress Jones, discussing her time working with the “ wolf boys club” notes “I kind of got to a place where I felt like I… know how to think like a guy,” which, Tarnoff suggests, entails learning “how gross they really are.” While admittedly this is a light piece joking about having to deal with “male talk” when one is the only female on the job, it nevertheless reflects a deeper issue – the still widely held belief that men and women naturally think, talk, and act differently – a belief that belies the social construction of gender and acts as if other markers of difference – race, class, sexuality, and so on, don’t matter.

This belief is echoed in the last weekly news story in my dot-to-dot puzzle – the JC Penny t-shirt that reads “Too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.”

Like four-year-old Bella who is told blue shoes are not for her, like the Quiverfull movement that claims men are meant to lead and women to breed, like the male student that suggested women are weak, like the Twilight texts and the surrounding fan culture that tends to frame males as “wolfish boys” and females as selfless romantics, this t-shirt echoes our continuing entrenchment in the gender binary.

Strung together, all these dots show one big, ugly patriarchal picture.

Thankfully, some of the dots – for example, the stories about the feminist actions that resulted in the JC Penney shirt being pulled, muddle this patriarchal image, making it less stable.

Let’s hope we can keep connecting the dots in order to show how everything from the gendering of children to the upswing in religious fundamentalism is colored by the sexism of our culture. Further, let’s not forget how important it is to forge our own dots — our own points of connection — so as to create a new, more inclusive societal picture for the benefit of us all.

 

 

I initially gulped down Kathryn’s Stockett’s The Help, the book, applauding its nascent feminist representation of women – both black and white – and their experiences in Jackson, Missippi in the Jim Crow South. Anxious to support female writers in our still male privileged publishing world, I tore through its pages after receiving the book as a Christmas gift.

In hindsight, I now more fully recognize its failings – the nostalgic framing, the failure to really grapple with structural inequalities, the privileging of the white narrator’s voice, and the reliance on stock characters. Nevertheless, it is a good read, and one that at least nods towards the structural inequalities that still shape US culture.

However, I am less torn about the film, which I did not like. I wanted to – especially as it’s an ensemble film with a powerhouse line-up of female actors. As such, it is especially disappointing that the movie falls short and will likely add more grist to the mill that such films are “special interest chick flicks” unable to draw in male viewers or generate huge earnings. It is also unsatisfactory in its Blind-Side-type take on racism, wherein inequality is framed as an individual problem best solved by nice, white ladies (whether played by Sandra Bullock or Emma Stone).

Most pervasively though, as I argue in my Ms. Blog review, the film is unsavory for its attempt to feed the audience the same type of poop-laced- pie Minnie, one of the black female heroines, feeds Hilly, the arch-villainess (who becomes even more of a one-note character in the book). Or, as the friend I saw the film put it, “the whole issue of race, gender and class relations is one big shit joke. Bathrooms and toilets and pie, oh my!”

Not only are we served up this objectionable slice of syrupy-sweet nostalgia, but it comes with extra heapings of whiteness.

As Martha Southgate writes in her review of the book, “Implicit in The Help and a number of other popular works that deal with the civil rights era is the notion that a white character is somehow crucial or even necessary to tell this particular tale of black liberation.”

More often than not, films set in the past are helmed by white male characters and frame them as the heroes (Missippi Burning, as noted here, being one example). At least The Help departs from this trend, placing females front and center. But, problematically, the white females are depicted as the prime movers and shakers, whether for good (Skeeter) or bad (Hilly), or, even just for comic relief (Celia). Such a focus denies, to use Southgate’s words, that “Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help” (emphasis mine). As similarly noted in this Colorlines piece, “precisely at the time that ‘The Help’ transpires, African Americans across Mississippi were registering to vote and agitating for political change. In other words, they were helping themselves.” Alas, in the movie, African Americans are busy sneaking poop into chocolate pie, stealing their employers jewelry, or laughing heartily (whether in church or prison)… Yes, cuz racism is so much fun!

As a feminist film and book junkie who wants to support female authors and actresses, I yearn for these types of books and movies to be better – and, I question why Hollywood keeps shoveling sugar-coated versions of the world down our throats, as if we will swallow any old sh*t.

It’s my pleasure to introduce a guest blogger today: Natalie Wilson.

Natalie Wilson is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is founder of the blogs Professor, What If…? and Seduced by Twilight. She is currently working on Seduced by Twilight, a book examining the Twilight cultural phenomenon from a feminist perspective.

The Mommy Myth That Will Not Die: Bella Swan and Global Motherhood

Living inside our media-saturated US bubble, one might view motherhood as a competitive sport (ala Kate and her eight), as a fashion statement (think Katie Holmes and her impeccably dressed little Suri), as a way to prove one’s enduring hotness (such as Heidi Klum’s post-partum walk down the runway), or even as a testament that one cares about the world (in Madonna or Angelina Jolie adoption-style).

If these media representations of motherhood are to be trusted, what Susan Douglas named “the mommy myth,” where women are supposed to be perfect, gorgeous, dedicated super-moms, still dominates the cultural imagination.

Twilight, via the character of Bella Swan, breathes immortal life into this myth. In Breaking Dawn, the fourth book of the series, Bella transforms from reluctant wife into exultant expectant mom all in the blink of one headboard-busting sexual encounter.

The celebration of maternal martyrdom and mothering as the be-all and end-all of female existence that the final book of Stephenie Meyer’s saga enacts is hard to stomach, even for me–a mother of two that loves being a mom.

The problem is that Bella is a modern June Cleaver–too perfect, too submissive, and too ready to defer to her Mr. Cleaver (embodied by uber-dad, Edward Cullen). Once she is a vampire mommy, college plans are set aside, vampire adventures delayed, and instead, she becomes that monster we all love to hate: perfect mom.

Bella could not be more privileged; she is white, heterosexual, has endless wealth, super-powers, and a bevy of around the clock vampire and werewolf babysitters at her beck and call. She will never have to worry about stretching her budget, not being able to afford healthcare for her daughter, not having access to clean water.

While Bella and her similarly perfect vampire mother-in-law Esmee convey that motherhood is nothing but a joy and women who don’t desire babies are cuckoo, the text silences non-white, non-first-world mothers. Why does Native American mother Sue Clearwater have no voice in the story? Why are South-American women represented as fierce, untrustworthy animals? And why is Leah, the one lone female werewolf, called a “genetic dead end” due to her infertility? (This strand of the narrative would have been an opportunity to explore the historical sterilization of indigenous women. No such luck, though. Instead, we only learn she is a complaining bitch, an annoyance to the male alpha wolves who hate having to deal with a female in their testosterone fueled midsts.)

Globally, for many women, getting pregnant is one of the most dangerous things you can do. It makes you more susceptible to procuring diseases, to enduring poverty, to dying. Around the world, one female dies from pregnancy or labor every minute. That’s 1,440 females a day. Most of these women are not located in the first world nor can they choose, like Bella, to become vampires.

Twilight, loved by many mothers around the world, fails to give voice to the realities of global motherhood. To do so may be asking too much of this lightweight vampire tale; but could not the billions in profit the series is generating be used in some way to curtail maternal mortality rates? Seeing as the series suggests all women’s lives are made better by motherhood, perhaps it should put its money where its mouth is, giving more women more access to prenatal care and reproductive justice.

Now, that’s a dream I could sink my teeth into.