The Price of Freedom

Throughout this course there have been many themes explored, but one of the ones I am most interested in is the underlying theme of the price of freedom. In almost every book we read this course, freedom, and the path to the attainment of freedom, played a large role in character and plot development.

In Ms. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Clarissa is burdened by Richard. Richard is suffering from AIDS, and Clarissa is the one person keeping him alive, giving him hope. She goes to visit him almost every day, and she truly devotes herself to this man. A similar situation occurs with Laura, the reader of Ms. Dalloway, as she feels trapped within her own life. She is burdened by normalcy as she fights depression and puts up the facade that she is happy and contempt. However, as a conversation between Clarissa and Laura reveals, Laura eventually ran away from her son and husband, and felt truly free for the first time in years. Virginia Woolf herself is denied freedom as she is holed up in rural England, slowly going mad. She is kept under prisoner-like conditions and is unable to free herself, as the only escape she has from her situation comes from the joy she gets from writing. Suicide features in these women's lives, as it becomes the way for them to experience freedom. Suicide, whether directly or indirectly, gives these troubled women freedom from their lives and responsibilities. For Clarissa, even though it comes as quite a shock and is a truly sad occurrence, Richard's death, in a way, gives Clarissa life. Clarissa is freed from the burden of Richard's caretaker, and she is now able to move on with her life. Virginia Woolf chose to escape her own troubles by drowning herself, death was her freedom, and ending her own life was the price she was willing to pay.

We read another book this year entitled Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. Freedom in this book was exemplified by the main character changing her name from Jyoti to Jane, and then again to Jasmine. By changing her name, Jasmine was stepping forward into her new identity, but she was also freeing herself from the past. Jasmine wanted to escape the stereotypes or judgments that might come along with the rural Indian name of Jyoti. Freedom came at the price of changing her identity so she could truly start fresh in the United States, in her new life. Another example of the price of freedom comes from Jasmine's relationship with Bud. This relationship is similar to Clarissa's relationship with Richard in Ms. Dalloway. Jasmine functions as Bud's caretaker, and she feels obligated to stay by his side through the good and the bad. When she meets Taylor, however, she realizes that she must leave Bud in order to pursue her dreams and live her own life. At the end of the story, Jasmine leaves Bud and is pictured, "scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless from hope" (Mukherjee, 241). It is evident that Jasmine has been trapped for so long that she cannot wait to truly experience freedom, free of all burdens and solely worrying about her own needs and wants.

We also read a book by Naomi Wolf called The Beauty Myth and a book by Eve Ensler entitled The Vagina Monologues. Both of these books dealt with women's issues, freedom from judgments and stereotypes, and elevating the status of women. In The Beauty Myth, Wolf talks about how women are repressed by stereotypes and held prisoner by cultural values that place emphasis on artificial beauty. Women are unable to express themselves as society demands women look and act a specific way. The Beauty Myth promotes freedom, but this freedom comes at the cost of going against popular and mass media, and expressing one's self at the cost of being an individual. In The Vagina Monologues, Ensler talks about women freeing themselves from their own vaginas. She wants women to re-discover, or in some cases, discover for the first time, their sexuality. At the beginning she talks about how even the word vagina is somewhat taboo. She urges women to talk about their vaginas, lifting the burden placed upon women regarding the ability to connect and have a relationship with their own vaginas. The women interviewed feel liberated when talking about their vaginas, it is new to them and feels like a guilty pleasure. The freedom of talking and popularizing vaginas comes at the price of breaking invisible expectations that women's sexuality must be repressed and kept in the dark.

The first book we read this year was The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In her created society of Gilead, women were stripped of their identities and simply made into objects for the pleasure of man. The women in this book had no freedom, and were forced to do as the men said and live lives dedicated to them. Everything in this society, from social and formal events to everyday tasks such as gardening, was forced. Freedom was nonexistent in Gilead, and at the end, the main character, Offred, finally gained freedom by letting go. She stepped "into the darkness within; or else the light" (Atwood, 307). Offred's freedom came at the price of giving herself to the men who came for her.

Women's Lit as a whole also embodies the theme of the price of freedom. I have read many wonderful female authors this year, and have truly enjoyed this class (I am sad it is coming to an end!). Women's Lit has come a long way over the past few decades. Historically, literature has mostly been dominated by men, however, with the women's rights movement, female authors became inspired and women's literature took flight. The freedom of women's literature means that women are respected as authors just as much as men. I believe we are near this point, as women authors are just as credible and have just as much to say as their male counterparts. I have come to greatly respect women's literature and look forward to using the ideas I have developed over the past months in my future studies.

Allure: The Beauty Expert

While I was doing a project about images that promote and enhance the beauty myth, I found a magazine called Allure which I believe embodies the beauty myth culture itself.

This is the definition for allure from dictionary.com:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/allure

Allure [uh-loor]
noun

verb (used with object)
1. to attract or tempt by something flattering or desirable
2. to fascinate; charm

verb (used without object)
3. to be attractive or tempting


Allure magazine, even through its name, targets and tempts women. The magazine, like many others of this nature, pushes the boundaries of beauty and enhances the beauty myth. This magazine not only sells products and fashion trends to women, but it also sends lifestyle messages and beauty norms. These norms, such as being skinny, white, and sexy, urge women to experiment with their own sense of identity as they become increasingly dependent on magazines and the mass media to provide them with new cultural and gender norms.

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=643&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=WqNhGpqsUhLyBM:&imgrefurl=http://www.popcrunch.com/taylor-swift-allure-april-2009-pictures/&docid=BQ-1FFrS3GQ3rM&imgurl=http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/taylor-swift-allure-cover-april-2009.jpg&w=442&h=600&ei=SHWrT_m4M6i80QWfy7AE&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=499&vpy=268&dur=301&hovh=262&hovw=193&tx=101&ty=155&sig=100272548258877551950&page=1&tbnh=126&tbnw=93&start=0&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0,i:164

In the last chapter of Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth, she expresses her ideas for how we as a society could go about fighting the injustice of the beauty myth. In my opinion, this chapter truly stressed the importance of a noncompetitive approach to beauty. Wolf stressed the importance of the relationship with the other woman. The other woman represents women who may be seen as competitors or obstacles in the way of another woman's happiness/achievement of fulfilling the beauty myth. "The 'other woman' is represented through the myth as an unknown danger" (Wolf, 287). When speaking of the other woman and competition fostered by the beauty myth, Wolf says, "By changing our prejudgments of one another, we have the means for the beginning of a noncompetitive experience of beauty" (Wolf, 289). Women immediately see other beautiful women as competition, as the enemy. Wolf seems desperate to change this state of mind, "We have to stop reading each others' appearances as if appearance were language, political allegiance, worthiness, or aggression" (Wolf, 287). As women  work towards lessening the amount of judgments made simply from looking at a woman, real connections will be more easily made and competition in beauty will be a far more futile ordeal.

This chapter is also a call to action, exemplified in the last pages of the book when Wolf writes, "The earth can no longer afford a consumer ideology based on insatiable wastefulness of sexual and material discontent" (Wolf, 289). I think it is time to change the direction advertising is heading. There has already been much damage to the view of females in the advertising industry, highlighted by the way in which their bodies are used to sell and tempt an infinite consumer base. First, women need to stop obsessing over beauty. It may be difficult, but women need to be comfortable in their own bodies and accept themselves as they are. In an extremely opinionated paragraph on page 290, Wolf discusses how women can achieve true freedom from the beauty myth, "A woman wins by giving herself and other women permission - to eat; to be sexual; to age; to wear overalls, a paste tiara, a Balenciaga gown, a second-hand opera cloak, or combat boots; to cover up or to go practically naked; to do whatever we choose in following - or ignoring - our own aesthetic".

The problem is not simply competition in beauty, it is the unrealistic standard of beauty set by magazines like Allure. There are hundreds of magazines just like Allure, targeting and subconsciously influencing young women and men alike throughout the world. Our culture will never truly change, it is too late, the beauty myth is too deeply intertwined with the values of our culture. Men naturally see a woman in magazines and deem them as beautiful. They have seen these images all their lives. They are desensitized. Boobs, cleavage, bare legs, what is the difference, we have seen it all. We need to save girls while we can, for they are the most vulnerable and susceptible to the influence of the beauty myth. The beauty myth has perpetrated our mass culture. Our only chance to defeat this monster myth is artfully conveyed on the last page of the The Beauty Myth. I believe this passage is the most important idea in the entire novel; it is an inspiring message:


"A woman wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her" (Wolf, 290).

The Vagina Versus: Part II

The Vagina versus. THE HEART

In my first Vagina versus post I talked about the relationship between the vagina and the penis. However, in this post I will be comparing the vagina to the heart, which I thought was a very interesting comparison when it was brought up in the last chapter of Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. In this chapter, Ensler talks very vividly about the process of birth, beginning with a sentence and a vision not usually depicted in birthing stories, "I was there when her vagina opened" (Ensler, 121).

During this chapter, the vagina is described as a sort of life force. It moves past just a sexual organ, and transforms into a life giving, living, breathing phenomenon. Ensler very vividly, almost psychedelically, describes the pre-birthing transformation, "her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny stuck, child inside, waiting to be rescued". Ensler then goes on the describe the visual image of the birth actually taking place. The description is specific and grotesquely detailed to say the least:

READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=679&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=VZSsFCl2m3JKhM:&imgrefurl=http://fidelismedestar.blogspot.com/2012/01/social-media-proceed-with-caution.html&docid=GYfSe0cP2n9XjM&imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmXOq6UcnUc4Yv8l3bgD9BFLibJVEmmx1G4OVEATS_EA3Dje-OjxVEeFIrnVB70PRol84Alib-LMvJFEhdw53wAWmmLlIo3eJXFF3f2X6Abcu0jvn9HviI9FbQAc1d-civwcPz6aHeWxa/s1600/caution%252Bsign.jpg&w=450&h=450&ei=K8u_T970Jcmd0QXf4bndCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=345&vpy=170&dur=3016&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=108&ty=150&sig=100272548258877551950&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=133&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:142


"I saw the colors of her vagina. They changed. Saw the bruised broken blue the blistering tomato red the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder" (Ensler, 122). Wow. I felt like I was in the room even while writing that; it is so intense.

Ensler then goes on to describe the after-birth scene, and this is where she makes her comparisons between the vagina and the heart. The heart is often depicted as the true life-giving organ, a life-force in itself. However, Ensler makes the claim that the vagina is also life-force. After the birth when she is looking into the mutilated and open vagina, she observes, "her vagina suddenly became a wide pulsing red heart" (Ensler, 24). The heart is often portrayed as the source of passion and selflessness in our bodies, but Ensler argues that the vagina is similarly capable of selfless sacrifice. In one passage, Ensler describes the heart, "It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world". She goes on to reveal, "So can the vagina" (Ensler, 125). While the differences between the heart and the vagina are obvious, Ensler draws many connections mainly based on the ability to give life. Whether it is through pumping blood throughout the body or birthing a child, both the heart and the vagina are capable of creating and sustaining life. Ensler reveals even more similarities between the two as she explains, "The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change its shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina" (Ensler, 24). In this round between the vagina and the heart, the result is a tie.

The Vagina Versus: Part I

The Vagina versus. THE PENIS

There would obviously be no mention of the male genitalia in a book called The Vagina Monologues. However, I thought the differences and similarities between these two sexual organs was worthy of a blog post at least. In Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, readers are first desensitized to the word itself. As Ensler mentions, "Let's just start with the word vagina. It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument". This is the first noticeable difference between the penis and the vagina. Vagina "never sounds like a word you want to say", while the word penis is more widely accepted (Ensler, 5). There is a lot of angst attributed to the word vagina, and as Ensler discovered, women are extremely reluctant to even mention the word much less talk about their own vaginas.

Ensler interviews many women throughout these monologues, and the discomfort associated with talking about vaginas is clearly depicted in many of the encounters, "I mean...well, never mind. No. Never mind. I can't talk to you about this. What's a smart girl like you going around talking to old ladies about their down-theres for? We didn't do this kind of a thing when I was a girl" (Ensler, 26). In this excerpt, the woman being interviewed won't even refer to her vagina by its proper name, she calls it her 'down-there'. This name further distances this woman from her vagina and outlines the lack of a relationship she has with her own vagina. It is as if she is separated from it.

Ensler then goes on to describe the clitoris, which is, "the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure" (Ensler, 51). The clitoris contains 8,000 nerve fibers, which is twice the number of nerve fibers found in the penis. The penis and vagina are both designed for pleasure, but I do not doubt for a second that if men had an organ that's sole purpose was to provide pleasure, it would be flaunted and praised nonstop. The clitoris, however, is hidden, concealed within the vagina, out of sight. There is a lot done to decrease the pleasure of women, to keep the clitoris hidden. The vagina is not treated well, exemplified when Ensler talks passionately about the things that are shoved and stuffed up there. "Like tampons - what the hell is that? A wad of dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can't they find a way to slightly lubricate the tampon". Ensler also talks about how men are constantly trying to clean up the vagina, "make it smell like bathroom spray or a garden" (Ensler, 70).

Ultimately, Ensler talks about man elevating the penis above the vagina by degrading the vagina. She says of men, "Hate to see a woman having pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure...they wouldn't be able to stand it. Seeing all those energized, not-taking-shit, hot, happy vaginas" (Ensler, 72). The vagina is oppressed by the penis dominating the sexual frontier. The penis goes along suffering from little criticism, while the vagina is constantly shaved to achieve perfection, douched to achieve cleanliness, and transformed into an object of the pleasure of a man. The vagina is on a comeback, but for now the battle of the vagina and the penis goes to the penis.

Transformers and Avengers

Last week I saw the movie The Avengers with two friends. I originally wondered why Scarlett Johansson was cast in the part of Agent Romanova. Scarlett has had a very legitimate and respectable acting career, however, she is also often portrayed as a sex symbol. This, like it or not, probably played a role in her choice as the part of Agent Romanova in the movie. There are many action scenes in the movie, and many parts in which I suspected a stunt double was being used, and I thought surely there must have been more actresses who were more suited to play the part. I then realized that Scarlett, while being an accomplished actress, played into the beauty myth. People want to see beautiful women on the screen. The girl with the best fighting capability is not always the one chosen for the acting part, beauty goes a long way in show business, and often trumps talent.

One movie where I believe that beauty played a disproportionately large role in casting is the Transformers series. Megan Fox was chosen for a starring role in Transformers in 2007 (she is also regarded as a sex symbol). Megan has had an interesting acting career, with Transformers being her first major role in a successful film. She was then propelled to stardom, and as a model, was idolized by fans and movie lovers alike. The need/want to see beautiful women on the screen goes back generations, but why is it that many actresses are beautiful? Why should this play such a large part in the film industry and in our culture as a whole? The need to see beautiful women on the screen has become a given in Hollywood and the film industry, to the point that models are making the switch to acting careers. We are a consumer based society, and our obsession with beautiful women in movies is a trend that I cannot see changing anytime soon.

The Beauty Phenomenon

The beauty myth is in everything we do. We, as a culture, are so invested in the qualities and beliefs of this myth it controls our lives. The beauty myth has manifested itself deep within our culture and dictates the way men and women live their lives. The beauty myth can affect us both consciously and subconsciously. For instance, when a girl goes on a diet or buys all the clothes she sees a model wearing in a magazine because she desires to look like her, the influence of the beauty myth is a conscious phenomenon. We want to look good for others and also for ourselves. However, where is this sense of 'looking good for one's self' coming from? I think this attitude comes from years of exposure to beautiful women and this is what we as a culture define as beauty. Why do girls not go out and buy comfortable non-stylish clothes? Why do girls put on mascara to make themselves look pretty? How is this pretty?

The beauty myth is also evident in almost every form of media imaginable, as women strive to look younger, thinner, and less like themselves. When speaking of the nature of fashion magazines, Bob Ciano, former art director of Life magazine, says, "no picture of a woman goes unretouched...even a well known [older] woman who doesn't want to be retouched...we still persist in trying to make her look like she's in her fifties" (Wolf, 82-83). This re-imaging gives grounding to the fact that many women desire to look younger than before in order to appear more desirable to men, but has it always been this way? Did women in colonial times struggle to maintain their youth? The beauty myth cannot even be called that since it is simply part of our nature, it is not a clear component, but rather a way of life.

Pornogrpahy vs. Magazines

The porn industry is fast becoming one of the most popular and profitable fields in film and entertainment. Naomi Wolf's Beauty Myth explores this field in a chapter entitled 'Culture'. In this section, I was shocked to find new information about the rapidly increasing popularity of pornography. The amount of money the porn business is bringing into the industry is astounding, and according to Wolf, "pornographic films outnumber other films three to one, grossing $365 million dollars a year in the United States alone, or a million dollars a day". This makes porn "the biggest media category". Pornography is also dominating magazine sales, as "eighteen million men a month in the United States buy a total of 165 different pornographic magazines...one man in ten reads Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler each month" (Wolf, 79). As a giant in the film and magazine industry, the popularity of pornography worldwide has lead to a competition with other (traditional) magazines and other forms of entertainment. Magazines these days are becoming sexier than ever, as evidenced by the two ads on the left. I believe magazines are feeling the pressure of entertainment industries such as pornography, and this pressure is pushing them to be bolder than ever before concerning the content they deem as appropriate to publish. Some images in magazines, such as naked women barely covering themselves up with their arms, are borderline porn, and this line between porn and viewer friendly is growing ever thinner and the area between acceptable and offensive is increasingly grey.

The beauty myth was always used to sell magazines, but magazines are more than just pages to browse through, their true power is much deeper than that. Magazines are used as a way to connect, "They bring out of the closet women's lust for chat across barriers of potential jealousy and prejudgment" (Wolf, 76). Women can share common experiences through the carefully crafted issues of magazines; they are a representation of women's mass culture. Each reader feels connected to others because they know information or are aware of events that they can then share with others. Magazines, however, also function as the killer of self-esteem. The women in these issues are so beautiful and so stylish that it is impossible to copy or look like any of them. How did this cycle begin? Women aspire to look like a celebrity in a magazine or who marvel at a photo-shoot in the latest issue of Vogue. Magazines have transformed as women (and sex) are now used to sell almost every product imaginable. How can women still read copies of these brainwashing creations after seeing women degraded and put on a pedestal that is unrealistic and just fake?

Here is a copy of the May 1917 issue of Vogue (left) and a 1991 issue of Vogue (right):

  

 

The difference between these two covers is astounding, and it is evident that we have become desensitized to images like the one on the cover of the 1991 issue of Vogue. So what has caused this change in what is morally right? What happened that made it okay to put a picture of a 99% naked woman on the cover of a major publication?  This dramatic change in cover material could be the effect of pornography, an industry that has always been pushing the boundaries of exposure. With pornography putting the heat on all other forms of entertainment, it will be interesting to see if magazines get sexier as the line between what is and isn't appropriate fades away.