It’s back. Like the reclusive cicada that emerges every 17 years so years–only to become roadkill beneath the wheels of migratory humans–the perennial culture question is back in the headlines:
Is feminism dead . . . yet?
In its current issue, Time explores the question: How did we get from Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to, for heaven’s sake, Ally McBeal? From bra-burning to ohmigosh, I just wanna have sex!
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McBeal, for those who still read at night, is television’s hottest heroine. She’s 28, a lawyer, naturally, but she has this unfeminist way of dressing (scantily) and seems more concerned with scoring lettermen than with the letter of the law.
McBeal is, according to Time, the most popular “heroine” among young American women. Add to that disturbing news the success of a young Brit–Bridget Jones–whose best-selling diary chronicles Jones’ life as a single, thirtysomething editor whose depth of consciousness rivals any 12-year-old’s:
“Cannot face thought of going to work,” she writes. “Only thing that makes it tolerable is thought of seeing Daniel again, but even this is inadvisable since am fat, have spot on chin, and desire only to sit on cushion eating chocolate and watching Xmas specials.”
Feminism isn’t dead. She’s just bored.
She’s also confused. To read Time, you need to take notes. There’s the second-guard feminist, the duh feminist, the equity feminist, the gender feminist, the riot-grrrrrl feminist, the sex feminist, the post-Paglia feminist, the postfeminist, the self-absorbed postfeminist, the pornography feminist, the sex-abuse-survivor feminist.
Then there are the rest of us–we’ll call them “womenists”–who are, frankly, clueless when it comes to “feminist” celebrations such as the recent “Vagina Monologues” (no, I didn’t make it up), hailed by The Village Voice as “the most important and outrageous feminist event” in recent history.
I’m delighted to report I missed this performance piece about female private parts in which actresses, including Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei, offered homage to pubic hair, genitalia and orgasms. And they wonder why people don’t take feminism seriously anymore.
The fact is, except for a few Southern Baptists and a handful of Promise Keepers, most Americans these days are “feminists.”
That is, most Americans, ever champions of fairness, believe that men and women are fundamentally equal–though not the same–and that women ought to earn a dollar for every dollar men earn for doing the same job at the same level of competence.
Yet self-defined feminists, in their more recent incarnations, have lost touch with real women. As for the movement itself, feminism is merely plagued with the problem that plagues all revolutions. The front-line fighters have gotten gray hair and strained voices; the new generation wants its own deal.
Ally McBeal isn’t so much a threat to equality as she is her own little rebellion. If the old guard wanted to burn their bras to protest male bondage, the new generation wants to wear underwires to foist them in your face.
And then there’s this: men and babies. Womenists like them. And some women discovered they actually wanted to be wives and mothers just as much as they wanted a power shtick. Such was feminism’s biggest mistake. By scorning women who acknowledged their biological womanhood and the mandates of their hearts, old-guard feminists essentially lied. They told only half a woman’s truth, and the new girls are taking their text in ways sure to rub She Who Takes Herself Too Seriously. Women aren’t men, they seem to be saying, and girls–even lawyers–like to have fun. And maybe even husbands and babies.
No, feminism isn’t dead . . . yet, but it may be time for the old gals to take a lesson from the cicadas. One possible explanation for the insects’ years-long underground maturation process is to allow nature to reinvigorate itself. It’s better, after all, than being roadkill.
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