| |
Feminism and The Washroom Ad:
Rants in a deaf world...
The words loomed over my head, and although my intention in being there wasn't for deep, thought-provoking social commentaries, I read it.
DID YOU KNOW?
"Stop the oppression of bathroom ads!"
The black marker did more than accentuate the words; it was a black scar that sat on the mind of women everywhere. Such simple words, and yet so powerful in their connotation and meaning. Especially taken in the context of the Monostat-7 ad that it now occupied. How do yeast infection treatments oppress? And who was the oppressor? York University, who decided to sell bathroom stall space to advertisers; Monistat-7, who unabashedly purchased this ad space in the hopes of acquiring new customers; or was it society, for imposing these sex-based restrictions on us? None of these seemed to make sense to me, especially since I could not see how a yeast infection ad, in a women's bathroom, would serve the purpose of oppression. We are women, and we will sometimes get yeast infections. Such is the way that our bodies are built, and it is nothing more than a reflection of chromosomes.
And then I thought.
Obviously, someone out there believed that this simple bathroom ad - an invention that we have all grown used to since the age of consumption and media saturation - was oppressive. Perhaps this person, like me, went to the bathroom to do their business. They did not want to see ads about how birth control can make you a new woman, or how the new sensi-thin Trojan condom can do wonders for your sex life. They did not want to be boggled down with what the media wanted us, the other sex, to believe in.
I had always regarded myself as a feminist. I wanted to be treated equally in this world. I wanted the waiter to bring me the bill, for me to feel safe when walking home at night, for guys to stop calling me a slut or bitch when I refused to date them. But deep down I always felt guilty. I still wore make-up, I still read the fashion magazines that implored me to be a mannequin, I still watched those movies where women waited for their men to save them from whatever life trials they simply could not handle on their own.
A couple of years back, in what seemed like my tenth year of university, I took a psychology class called "The Psychology of Women." As indicated by its course title, the class dealt with the inner workings of the female psyche, and ranged from how women internalized certain stereotypes to rape to eating disorders to lesbian relationships. The female to male ratio in the class was almost 50:1. That is, there were 50 female students and one male student, and hopefully he wasn't there to get lucky. I thought of feminist love-fests where we would tell each other that we were beautiful creatures and that men were the pits of our unhappiness, or movie night with the girls where Waiting to Exhale or Thelma and Louise were at the top of the list. But alas, we all just came to class, listened to the lecture, and went our separate ways. There was nary a love-fest or a movie night to engage in.
Our professor was a smart Ph.D. recipient who taught me about feminism, and yet I found myself thinking, on the first day of class, that she should wear more make-up. I knew it was petty and shallow, and so I stopped thinking it. But it doesn't change the fact that I did, at one point.
The whole women's movement has, in a social context, been both revolutionary and detrimental. Revolutionary because it gave us more opportunities than what our mothers or grandmother had, and detrimental because now everyone is a "feminist," and like all other buzz words of the day, it has lost its meaning. Now men are the ones who feel that they are being subjugated, that the "sexist" card will be played at every possible turn. To them, women are irrational, emotional, and contrite. They may say that they are feminists, but still turn to a man for money, comfort, and the opening of a door. They will mourn the ails of society, the corporate glass ceilings, those stupid Swiffer ads that show women cleaning the floor in an ecstatic frenzy. But at the end of the day, they will come home and expect their boyfriends or husbands to give them flowers and take them out to dinner. They will wear the short skirts in the hopes that it will bring them success at the office or at the bars. They will accept these boundaries that a gender-conscious society has formed for them, and they will do it with a smile (because women always have to smile).
I resolved to never put myself in that box, simply because I had been put there so many times by other people. When I heard other women label themselves as feminists, I wanted to shake them. To me, they weren't. They were women that yearned to be called independent by the men they had come to be so dependent upon. But then again, who was I to judge? I liked to open doors for myself, but I also liked it when it was opened for me.
My resolve made me even more confused about where I stood. There were times that I felt so wronged that I thought I would cry. I loved being a woman, but my society, my world, told me it was bad. My world taught me that there was a line, and I should never cross it. It taught me that men should take care of women, when I liked being able to take care of myself. It taught me that I could not be defined as a person, but merely as someone to be looked at, to be talked to, to be dominant to. If I flirted and didn't reciprocate, I was a "cock tease." If he flirted and didn't reciprocate, he was merely playing the field. Women are the shrews, and men are our tamers.
There was nothing I could do but play the game. So I passively sat back. But then, one day, I thought I would have a heart attack from all my pent-up rage. There was nothing in this world that couldn't make me a feminist, in my own way. If I chose this path for myself, and I believed in it, then it was my choice to make, not someone who defined what a true feminist should or shouldn't think. In my day-to-day activities, there was nothing stopping me from voicing my opinions, from opening my own doors (or, if someone was inclined to, having it opened for me), or from flipping the bird to a bunch of overactive construction workers, all the while wearing mascara and high heels.
We cannot blame men for our fate, or even those women who have bookmarked The Rules. If a mouse lives in a cage made of cheese, it will think that the world is made of cheese. Although I have presented a badly phrased and awkward analogy, it all comes down to society. We are taught at a young age that men act like this, and women act like that. It could come down to blind ignorance, but it's a blindfold that can be taken off. There is absolutely no logical reason why men need to buy dinner, and yet it's been done since the dawn of time. Our mothers may tell us that we need to wear lipstick to go grocery shopping, but it's not something that we have to tell our children. It all comes down to choice, and the choice to take our lives into our own hands, to live life as truly independent.
Perhaps, years later, someone else will see this bathroom ad. And maybe it will open their eyes to something new. Or maybe it will tell them something they knew all along. C.Ho.