CULTURETAS: FEMINISM, WHAT IT SHOULD BE

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times @ Roubaix's La Piscine Musée.

By Ariana Basciani.

A few days ago after going out of a friend bar, I started thinking about what makes women mad.  Why do we have to be feminists? Why going through all of this? Why do we have to diet? Why do some women achieve success and others just don’t? Anyway, a whole bunch of questions sparked by beer.

Doing some research for the blog, I ended up watching a few documentary about the woman's body and how the sexist theme has humiliated us; why the Italian or Venezuelan TV shows sell woman as a sex object and not as a human being with brain and thoughts; and why women have to be fighters and not allow to be treat it that way.   

After an information overdose I stopped. What should we do, and why do we have to do something in the first place? This question is addressed to a group, and precisely that's the thing: what's with this "group of women". I’m not a bunch of women, I am unique. I’m me, with my attributes, my flows, fears, scars, cellulite and a list that goes on and on. I’m me, not my best friend, my roommate, my mother, my grandma or bloddy Scarlett Johansson.

What I’m trying to say is that maybe there is no real women revolution today because we live in a world that is pretty individualistic, and maybe the faster we release ourselves from those questions, from those “should be” of feminism and start listening to ourselves a little bit more, it will be much easier to all women come together as a gender and make an adequate to us all.

It can curious, but I never felt inadequate for growing up in the “country of the most beautiful women”  (also known as Venezuela) and for having Italian roots (which means prominent curves by nature). At the same time I never felt like being part of the Venezuelan women who wear high heels and go to the hairdresser every day to look absolutely perfect. No, I never felt the pressure that supposedly fuck you up as a woman and at the same time becomes the driver to rebel against it.

I’ve always wear sneakers, ever since I found out about Converse back when I was 11 years old. Since then I haven’t changed much. Don’t get me wrong, I love high heels; love how they help the feminine silhouette look longer and thinner, yet I wear them so very little. There are even days when I would love not to be so lazy and embrace the pain caused by the killer/pretty shoes. Actually I envy (in a good way) when my friends are able to wear them during a whole night. They usually say that the important thing is to find the ones you like and then you focus on comfort (if any).  What I like the most is that these same friends wear their Converses as much as they wear her high heels. Bravo. As the great Gilles Lipovetsky would say: women love traditions, we won't get rid of them.

And probably because I didn't wear high heels everyday, as I was growing up I was also incapable of understanding why some women love going to the salon and expend hours there, telling their secrets to a hair stylist. I started enjoying dying my hair at 16 -that whole thing about “being different” always starts with the hair. Its was a tough welcome into that world. I’m not much of a people's person or at least I wasn’t one at the time. I was extremely shy and seeing all these cheerfulness covered by superfluousness used to caused me the chills, but then again, as the years go by, I now understand that… that’s what you do at hair salons! And sometimes you even go there just to complain about your life. I have never spent more than 4 hours at this place but I have learned the art of speaking very little to the stylists without being impolite. I succeeded in being me! I was able to understand and to adapt myself to that place!

With feminism it’s a whole other story. I don't know how blend in. I can’t forget the 60-70s feminist’s movement that brought us so many rights as women. However, I believe that complaining about male sexism nowadays it’s a step too far. I believe feminism has become a weapon in politics (regardless of the party in power). Feminists groups have lost their authenticity or maybe they didn’t find the way to evolve their discourses.

Complaining because women on TV, aren’t treated properly or because the porn its not feminine –even when pornstar females make a lot more money than their male counterparts, thanks to porn business being so sexist). To me it seems even more sexist than sexism itself, because I think that if it was your decision to be in a show modeling underwear or getting a $3000 salary for sucking some guy’s dick and on top of that you enjoy it, well good for you. If you don’t know yourself that well and took the job, well that’s another story and that’s your responsibility as well (of course if you where told you were going to dance and ended up trapped in a prostitution network, that’s obviously another thing and it’s totally illegal and punishable.)

Feminism gave us the possibility of deciding lots of aspects of our lives –we still have battles to win, of course, but today, the best feminism from my point of view is taking the time to really get to know yourself and from there, be authentic and wish and decide what do you want to be, without having to label yourself of sexist or feminist.   

Let's stop being falsely apologetic using phrases like "I like sex and I’m not a whore”, or “I don't want to get married and don't have the Peter Pan's syndrome”; “I have boobs, but I’m smart”, etc. The only flag that we should be waving is a massive one that says:  “I'm in charge of my decisions and I embrace full responsibility for them”.

Before you act, get to know yourself. If you already screwed something up, just don't judge, embrace it, and don’t try to blame anyone. Start being responsible for our acts and making smart choices its the best sign of freedom and the one thing that I think feminism has been pursuing all along.

P.D. Possibly many of you would love to kill me after reading this article, don't! I’m really open to dialogue, because this is just my opinion, but I'd love to hear yours! 

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This article was originally published (in Spanish) in Culturetas, culture with boobs, a great website situated at the intersection of culture and femininity. Culturetas are our new contributors and we are delighted to have them. Have a look and say hello to them!

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT: Simone de Beauvoir

Photo via Economía Hoy México.

Simone de Beauvoir explains why she is a feminist in a rare TV interview -as she didn't like to be in TV- with French journalist Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber in 1975. "De Beauvoir picks up the ideas of The Second Sex, which Servan-Schreiber calls as important an “ideological reference” for feminists as Marx’s Capital is for communists. He asks De Beauvior about one of her most quoted lines: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” Her reply shows how far in advance she was of post-modern anti-essentialism, and how much of a debt later feminist thinkers owe to her ideas" Have a look in Open Culture. E.T.P. 9'

CULTURETAS: Stop Fat-phobia

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

By Mariana Sequera.

 

Some time ago, in an article I wrote for culturetas.es, I confessed having been all my life obsessed with my body and its dimensions. The confession came into place because I can hardly admit an obsession that makes me feel conceited.

I always thought that vanity is the worst value. I remember reading Simone de Beauvoir, I think in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, saying that she met another lover of Sartre´s and, when they met for the first time, the woman was looking at herself in the mirror behind de Beauvoir for a long time. That story reinforced a value that was already part of me. The problem is that, the fear of feeling conceited was more annoying than the problem itself. So here I want to shape the subject without worrying about my shame.

According to an article in the Times, 70% of Hispanic women refer to themselves in derogatory terms. We refer to ourselves as fat cows and other insults. The problem is not being a cow, which is hardly an insult, but what we mean by the contempt with which we say so.

On Facebook there is a group, Stop gordofobia ("fat-phobia" in English), that has been sharing texts, videos and everything they find on the subject of fat phobia, and the problems that culture have with the human body, especially the female body . When I hear about feminism, I remember texts in which it´s said that the dildo is the new penis, that the vagina doesn´t exist and things that, honestly, I do not feel identified with. They are so abstract that sometimes I don´t know if they refer to something that is in space and time.

Stop gordofobia is not a feminist website. I think it's a place where women and men can share and review our notions about the body. I recently read a comment from someone that considered the page was promoting obesity. It occurs to me that we can´t expect simple people to think about complex issues. But still, I will try to explain to those people the difference between obesity / health problems and establishing a good relationship with a body that is healthy, but most people reject for not being a skeleton.

Our culture bombards us with constant messages about how women have to be thin. It's hard not to feel inappropriate when there´s no rest from those messages. As Jean Kilbourne says in Killing us softly, we think, like many people, we are special and have the magical power of ignoring advertising messages, but we don´t know or don´t want to admit that we inevitably hear these messages.

I won´t talk about this issue and devote paragraph after paragraph to talk about photoshop. I refuse to think of myself as a victim. Mainly because that´s an attitude that´s paralyzing. But I think it´s important to recognize that it´s not easy. Having a body is not easy.

I think that the initiatives we've been seeing our friends posting on their facebooks about acceptance of one's body are absolutely necessary. Dove´s campaigns are excellent. Usually beauty products companies make us feel like shit and therefore we think we need their products. They make things up, like for example, cellulite. So we look at ourselves in the mirror and feel disgusted.

It´s true that one of those campaigns seems to indicate that some features are ugly and other beautiful. But I prefer to interpret it as though women don´t know how to see themselves. It´s hard for us and the responsibility is partly of the people who want to make money at the expense of our inclination to insecurity.

The problem of the mirror is not that we are vain and want to look beautiful because we are hysterical and depend on other people´s perspective to feel good. Okay, there's something to that, I admit. But mostly the problem is that we live in a society (pardon the cliché) where the value of women is determined by their beauty or lack thereof.

Let's review our reactions to seeing women on television. We feel we're on the right to criticize them merely because they are women, well, and also because they are on T.V. Let us hear our criticisms. "She looked better with makeup", "Old age is not good on her". You're probably one of those people that doesn´t accept having these thoughts. I think it's better to admit our shit and then deal with it than to put it under the rug and spend our lives trying to ignore its presence, while our unconscious reveals them in the form of self-destruction.

These problems with the ideals are not at all unique to women. Men also deal with enforcement. In some cultures they have to have many women, in others it´s unacceptable for them to drink small glasses of beer. 

This makes me think about a related topic, which is what is feminine and what masculine. I wouldn´t say that these categories don´t exist just because I don´t want them to exist. I would say, however, that there´s no recipe that dictates which quantities of femininity or masculinity a person must have. I think the difficulty of having a body is closely linked to the difficulty, at least in my case, to understand the ideals of a gender, to admit myself a woman. To admit oneself a woman means entering that game culture forces on us from the moment we begin to grow tits. A game that is also introduced by nature, a game too cruel for a little girl: the game of desire.

The article Ariana Basciani wrote a few months ago on this page spoke about these issues too. In it, Ariana invites us to reconsider our prejudices, to stop rejecting what we don´t know. I think that´s what I want to say. Our brain makes us tend to simplifications, but this inevitably leads to intolerance. It´s true that it´s not easy to challenge our nature, but we should use our heads for more than just bullshit.

This is written by the part of me that still has hope in humanity, a 0.1% of me.

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This article was originally published (in Spanish) in Culturetas, culture with boobs, a great website situated at the intersection of culture and feminity. Culturetas are our new contributors and we are delighted to have them. Have a look and say hello to them!

OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

« Pour moi, mes sculptures représentent le monde de la femme amplifié, la folie des grandeurs des femmes, la femme dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, la femme au pouvoir.  »

The life of the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle is as fascinating as her wonderful colorful pieces that you might have seen in various open spaces around the world. Probably you only know her most famous installation: the Stravinsky Fountain right next to the Pompidou Center that she created with Jean Tinguely, but her work was definitely as prolific as it was provocative, experimental and diverse.

Niki was a model who appeared on the cover of Vogue and Elle, a self-taught outsider, a passionate feminist, and a political activist, and in this beautifully curated exhibition at the Grand Palais you have a chance to get to know her in different stages of her life through large vibrant sculptures, photos, videos, interviews, installations, paintings and a lot of color, love, bullets, large powerful nanas and strong messages. I didn't know much about her and

If you are in Paris, hurry up, as the exhibition finishes the 2nd of February. Booking is extremely recommended. I had to queue for approximately an hour in the cold (the fountain was frozen, as you can see), but it was absolutely worth it. If you can't make it this next week, the expo will be traveling to the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. Absolutely great spring procrastination.

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

Grand Palais
17 September - 02 February
Every day except Tuesdays from 10am to 10pm

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mond - See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Monday
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

17 September 2014 to 02 February 2015

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays.
- See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

Every day except Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closes at 8 p.m. on Sundays and Mond - See more at: http://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/niki-de-saint-phalle#sthash.aSjEEs2s.dpuf

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Illustration via Brain Pickings (fragment).

Brain Pickings' Maria Popova researched all sorts of documents, biographies and interviews of some of our favorite writers to find out their sleep/work patterns, and then correlated that data with the number of books published and major awards received. The results are inconclusive, of course, there is not ONE way to write. There are some Murakami-style early bird writers, but there is also Bukowski who woke up at noon and was equally a genius. The infographic and the illustrations are really nice though. Have a look here. E.T.P. 5' (Via Short List).

Photo via The Guardian.

And speaking of writers, I just recently read in Paris Review an interview that Susannah Hunnewell made to Michel Houellebecq. Wow, he really is a controversial man and anything I can say about the interview or him will be definitely an understatement or an insufficiently articulated personal opinion. So if like me, you read The Elemmentary Particles and didn't know much about Houellebecq, and you're interested in getting to know better (or worst) one really interesting character, please go ahead and read this interview in Paris Review. E.T.P. 18'

Image via Dazed Digital.

Finally, Dazed Magazine couldn't have said it better, so I will just quote here: "Is there a way to be a bad feminist? How do you survive in the male art world? What does it mean to be a female writer? In conjunction with our Girls Rule issue, some of our favourite writers, activists and artists will be musing on these questions for Girl Guides, a series of how-tos and thinkpieces on the state of modern womanhood. Here, Dazed writer Steph Kretowicz unpicks the neverending toxic cycle of advertising, body issues and inequality." Full article in Dazed Digital. E.T.P. 10'