 | Women, to quote a marketer of cigarettes, “have come a long way, baby.” The contemporary liberated woman is no longer confined to marriage and child-rearing as her only projects. She can divorce with her reputation and fortune intact, and, thanks to modern contraception, explore her sexuality with as much imagination and pleasure as men have always enjoyed. She can have a professional career; she can head a large corporation; she can run for President of the United States. |
And yet, for all her hard-won liberation, the contemporary woman is still constrained.
In the twenty-first century, female shackles are extremely subtle, and often disguised as “choices” or “control.” Today, the war on women is fought on the battlefield of the female body. And sadly, most of the combatants are women themselves.
In the twenty-first century, female shackles are extremely subtle, and often disguised as “choices” or “control.” Today, the war on women is fought on the battlefield of the female body. And sadly, most of the combatants are women themselves.
Attacks on the female body permeate modern culture.
 Fashion, that attempt to bind, control, and alter the female body, demands that women be pathologically thin. It prescribes mutilating shoes and sexually exploitive clothing. Anorexia and bulimia are almost exclusively female diseases—can anyone be surprised that they have become epidemic in today’s society? Cosmetic surgery, the expensive, dangerous and painful elective procedure in which bodies are sliced and modified to achieve some ideal of female beauty, is falsely seen by many women as freedom and choice: an opportunity to take control of one’s life. (Image via Simon Farnworth (dollobserver) on Flickr.) Important milestones in female life and development—pregnancy, childbirth, menopause—have been reframed by a sexist society as “illnesses.” I have discussed elsewhere that these milestones have the potential for enormous growth—yet this potential is stolen by drugs and technology. |
In Wrestling with Destiny, I explore why so many women are willing to attack their own bodies with starvation diets, elective Caesarian sections, hormone replacement therapy, and face lifts.
There is power in femininity—it contains an innate reminder of infancy, that vulnerable time when a woman had all control over food and shelter, over the line between life and death.
Because it is women who preside over our infancy, we associate women with our earliest, most primitive anxieties. This anxiety drives us to diminish and control women—even if those women are ourselves.
Female flesh reminds us all, men and women, of our vulnerability and our most primitive fears; and we all, men and women, have an unconscious need to attack and control the female body. Women must be mindful of the power embodied in their femininity, and mindful of the fact that it needs protection not only from our sexist society, but also from our own self-contempt.
There is power in femininity—it contains an innate reminder of infancy, that vulnerable time when a woman had all control over food and shelter, over the line between life and death.
Because it is women who preside over our infancy, we associate women with our earliest, most primitive anxieties. This anxiety drives us to diminish and control women—even if those women are ourselves.
Female flesh reminds us all, men and women, of our vulnerability and our most primitive fears; and we all, men and women, have an unconscious need to attack and control the female body. Women must be mindful of the power embodied in their femininity, and mindful of the fact that it needs protection not only from our sexist society, but also from our own self-contempt.
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