God and dieting, knitting and feminism.

Uni holidays have just begun, which means I now have time to tackle that list of "stuff to do." Yesterday I started (arbitrarily) with items 3 and 8:

"Take up knitting."

and

"Learn about feminism."

(Remind me to write a blog one day about my thoughts on self-consistency...)

Having been born only recently (21 years ago), and living in Australia, I've never thought much about sex discrimination. Schools and universities have judged me by academic ability, and the various menial jobs I've had have all been pretty indifferent to my gender, so long as I could count change. To be honest, feminism has seemed like a distant, dead issue. Sure, there are feminists on campus, but they tend to be the ones with shaved heads and Che Guevara T-shirts smelling vaguely of pot. They're just too stereotypical to take seriously. But I'm reminded every now and then that the worlds my mother and grandmother were born into were unimaginably different from the one I take for granted now. For example, just fifty years ago airline stewardesses were compulsorily fired when they reached the age of 32, or got married, or gained too much weight, or appeared "frumpy"...

So I thought it was about time that I introduced myself to proper feminist theory. I have the Female Eunuch waiting on my bookshelf, but I decided to ease my way in with the Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

Written in 1991, the thesis of the book is that while the political and economic oppression of women has mostly ended, there is a new, subtler, psychological oppression. Namely, the myth that a woman's worth is dependent on how closely she conforms to this culture's idea of beauty. It's a persuasive argument, because the media do seem bent on encouraging an almost insane obsession with appearance, and it seems to be working, too. By being so neurotic about beauty, Wolf's argument goes, women harmlessly fritter away energy that would otherwise be spent challenging the male power structure.

She also addresses my usual unease with feminism - that I don't find it possible to believe that men are "bad", or are deliberately conspiring against women. No, she says, they don't have to be. Just as an individual or a family can prefer illusions to facing truths which threaten their way of life, so too can a society. True equality, Wolf thinks, would destablise the whole structure of society. The beauty myth is the result of "a collective panic reaction on the part of both sexes."

I particularly like her chapter on how the dieting and beauty industries have appropriated Christian notions of guilt, self-punishment, purity, sin and so on. One of the things which motivated me to study religion was a sign in a Subway outlet advertising some new sandwich as having "half the fat, none of the guilt." Perhaps if you slipped up on your diet you might feel annoyed or frustrated, but guilty? Guilt seemed like a peculiarly religious response - as though you were letting down not only yourself, but God as well. Or, as I suppose Wolf would suggest, sinning against the rules that women must be concerned at all times with their appearance.

I'm not sure I agree with everything in the book (and I don't like how it's written, but I'll let that one slide...), but it's showing me interesting new perspectives. I can look back on gender roles 100 years ago and see them as wrong and ridiculous, but the women of the time, mostly, accepted and agreed with them. What makes me think that imbalances nowadays would be obvious? Just as a person should never stop analysing themself, neither should a society.