Now Playing: Peacock by Katy Perry (I'm intrigued for a peek, heard it's fascinating...)
I was one of the many girls to whom the empty promise of 'your time will come' was supposed to stop the endless surge of teenage angst and hormones that floods through every teenager on earth. Don't worry about having a boyfriend, sweetie. Your time will come.
Yeah, I know. I know I'll have boyfriends. I know I'll probably fall in love and get married and have babies. I know. But that doesn't explain why nothing's happening now, and I want everything now. There's nothing wrong with that. But what happens later doesn't justify the absence of nothing happening now. I had my first kiss at sixteen and I always knew it would happen at some point - my self esteem's not that low, after all - but it's something I've wanted since I was about thirteen. Why is it that wanting it at thirteen was bad but now that I've had it at sixteen it's all sort of okay? Why is it that desire is worse than the actual deed?
The reason why this 'your time will come' cult has infected so many young girls, and the well-meaning carers of young girls, is that we still have a huge cringe against girls having desires beyond romantic desires. They assure us that one day we will get our big white wedding and our happily ever afters in the hope that we'll get that without all the sordid sexual intensity between the scabby knees of childhood and the fairytale-come-true of adulthood. We can't bear the thought of a girl wanting a kiss just for the experience, sex just for the curiosity, expressions of love before and maybe even without 'till death do we part', to the extent that if a girl does dabble in these things we assume they're either depressed, coerced or just nuts. Our society not only wonders why some girls are sixteen and have never had a boyfriend (me), but also wonders why these girls actively want a relationship (also me). Hypocritical, much?
This was one of the many thoughts that came to mind as I was reading Princesses and Pornstars by Emily Maguire, which I devoured in one sitting the day it arrived. It's hard to say what genre Princesses and Pornstars is - it's part biography, part journalistic piece, part academic feminist rant.
Princesses and Pornstars is a confronting book. It's a frank and brutally honest discussion of where we are, forty years into feminism, and the attitudes towards feminism today. It's pretty bleak, with outrageously sexist quotes from Tony Abbott and John Howard, Emily's personal experience as the high school slut - being the boy crazy girl everyone thought would end up pregnant, and some pretty confronting stories from real-life ladies - the kind of women I might be like in five, ten, twenty years time - explaining the impact and consequences of inequitable working conditions, sexism and double standards that have permeated society and the workplace, and relationships with men who are confused about current gender roles and expect real women to adhere to the only types of women that they know, through the media - princesses and pornstars.
One of the first topic brought up in Princesses and Pornstars is the huge social pressure to suck in, push up, pluck, wax, shave, paint. Femaleness is ugly, in this day and age. Even the images of 'natural beauty' we sell aren't 'natural' at all - they've all been altered from au naturel glory. Not only does failure to adhere to increasingly crazy beauty ideals - informed largely by the catwalk models and pornstars we will never be - make us undateable, undesirable, unfuckable - but also unemployable. Sure, there are attractive and unattractive men, but I'm pretty sure nobody turned down any guy on the colour of his tie or on how much skin was showing.
Another topic approached by Emily Maguire is our ongoing fascination with virginity and female purity - even though bloodstained sheets aren't museum pieces anymore, there is still an unhealthy obsession with abstinence and female purity, to the extent that there are so many examples of guys - most of them guys who have slept around a fair bit - feeling weak/intimidated/grossed out/scared of the prospect of a girl who has slept around a fair bit. As Eva said in Eva Luna, 'why should you care about my virginity when you can't give me yours?' Emily Maguire also suggests that modern women shouldn't see losing one's virginity as an event, or as something to be 'taken' - it's not so much losing your virginity as gaining life experience, and pretty much starts with your first kiss and never ends. It's a journey, not a dead end.
I used to be into the whole purity thing. It's not something I regret or deny - there was a time in my life when the prospect of 'saving myself' was empowering, and I know some girls still buy into that. But that was a time when I didn't really understand hormones or desires, that wanting something is good not bad, and that being 'responsible' doesn't necessarily mean blocking your eyes and singing lalala until you've got a ring on your finger. But that's a personal choice, and it gets a little creepy and unhealthy when a) girls who do decide to go vtm whack other 'slutty' girls on the head with it (virginity, whilst admirable, is not exactly grounds for moral high ground in my book) b) when politicians use the abstinence preach as a chance to be delightfully condescending, wonderfully sexist and profoundly anachronistic and c) when guys, who don't have this purity pressure (some could argue they have the reverse pressure of 'get laid ASAP', which I suppose has its own problems) judge girls on shit like this.
As a sex-positive feminist and something of a fan of Belle de Jour, I think that sexuality is empowering and everyone has the right to sexual expression and freedom. But the discussion of the porn industry (I don't confess to being a huge expert) shows the detrimental impact of pornography on the status of women and gender dynamics. Porn is primarily a male-oriented industry, which is not only in itself sexist (as in a girl watching porn is not socially acceptable, and so female-oriented porn is not as readily available), but fails to recognise the reality of intimacy as interaction between the genders. It also serves to propagate myths about women and sex, and instills unrealistic expectations upon women and sex and overemphasizes the importance of physical appearance. It's quite intimidating to try and be...well, a teenager...with a guy you know probably fantasizes about, well, perfection. The kind of perfect you never will be.
It's sad that girls are terrified of the label 'feminist'. I've lost count of the times someone has said 'you're a feminist, right?' or 'you shouldn't say that, you're a feminist!'. Someone even said to me 'Fuck feminism. I'm not a feminist because I believe in equality'. I am what happens to feminists - late bloomer, never been kissed, never had a boyfriend, never gets married. The sad thing is, people think I embrace that, and I don't. I hate being a late bloomer, I loved my first kiss, I'd like a boyfriend and I definitely want to get married. I think people see me as a 'feminist', then a 'female' before a 'person' - definitely way before 'writer' or 'dreamer', which is kind of how I'd like to identify - sensual, but not categorized by gender. I'm an artist, and, paraphrasing Adele, I want to be a genre, not a gender. Feminism has moved on so much from the blue stockings of the suffragettes.
So yeah, that was what was going through my head when I was reading Princesses and Pornstars.
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