Tag: feminism

Today I wear shorts: A poem written in anger

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Sometimes  when I experience street harassment, I confront the inappropriate words or behavior right there in the moment. But much more often, I am so taken off  guard–or uncomfortable, or even afraid–that I either find myself unable to meaningfully respond at all, or I make a calculated decision to exit the situation as soon as possible instead of reacting, for my own safety. In such instances, rage or disgust tends to start welling up inside me as soon as I walk away. These emotions are directed towards the person who violated or intimidated me, and also–unfairly, I know–at myself, for my own silence and passivity, or for not thinking quickly enough to find the words or the action that I needed in the moment.

map

In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes that “anger is a map” that “shows us where our boundaries are,” what is important to us, and “where we want to go.” When respected and “acted upon” instead of “acted out,” Cameron says, anger helps us find a way forward. So today, instead of stewing powerlessly on my anger and replaying this infuriating episode over and over again in my head, I’ve decided to write it out–what happened, and what I wish I had been able to say at the time. What I still want to say to the world.

Here it is, a poem mapping out my anger to put it to use:

Today I wear shorts

Today I wear shorts
Because the weather is warm.
Because I want to be free.
Because I have not felt the pleasure
of a temperate breeze
against my bare legs
since I bundled up last October.

And yes, because my legs are beautiful.
Because I am not ashamed of my body,
and because I have no reason
to hide my God-given limbs
from you or from anyone else.

And no, I do not owe you any explanation
for the shorts I wear today.
But it would appear that I do
need to explain the self-evident fact
that I am not wearing shorts
for you to take pictures of my ass
on your cellphone
while you wait in line for the bus
while my head is turned the other way
while another man loudly announces to me,
and to others,
what you are doing.

Perhaps, in the privacy of your addiction
you have seen so many women on the screen—
performing a false intimacy,
giving you something for nothing,
posing and moving as though they belong to you—
that you have forgotten:
we all belong to ourselves,
and you are not entitled
to my body or to anyone else’s.

Or perhaps, you have learned
to treat people like things
because this is the cycle
your own experience brings.

I’m sure that there are reasons,
but whatever they are,
none could constitute an excuse.
So stop.

Glimpses of the Kingdom

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This is the second week of Advent, the season of waiting for Christ to come to us in the midst of our darkness. Having spent the last several years getting to know people in poverty and on the margins of society, I am pretty much constantly aware of that darkness, and it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the light altogether. That’s why I want to hold onto any glimpses I catch of the kingdom slowly but surely breaking in, and I want to share a few of them here.

I recently completed a three-month volunteer training with Battered Women’s Support Services here in Vancouver, where my fellow trainees were a group of brave women with beautiful, compassionate hearts. Most of those women don’t identify as people of faith, but I felt the presence of God in the midst of the safe and loving community we built together. That strong sense of community was absolutely vital during the twelve intense weeks we spent staring injustice and violence in the face and sharing some very raw pieces of our own stories.  Exploring the ugliness of the world with a bunch of people who are committed to doing something about it helps keep my hope alive, and reminds me that there is strength in our shared vulnerability as human beings.

I’ve now begun fielding calls on the crisis line. From police to hospitals to courts, it’s been sobering to realize how often the systems that have been set up to protect the vulnerable actually let people slip through the cracks–or worse, further traumatize and isolate them. Sometimes, people struggling with mental health issues are given criminal records instead of help. Sometimes women are arrested for defending themselves against abusive partners while the men who batter them go free. I know this now, not only through statistics or reading articles or listening to experts talk about it, but from speaking to these women on the phone.  All too often, factors such as race, income level, and immigration status determine whether or not a woman will get the help she needs.

Volunteering with BWSS has been a steep learning curve, and the stories of violence and abuse that I have been hearing over the phone are heartbreaking. Yet I also feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the chance to support these brave, resilient women in resisting violence and pursuing lives of dignity and safety.  I am humbled by their tenacity in working against staggering odds to reclaim their own identities and the lives and to heal from trauma.

In other news, I’ve just landed my first paid job in Canada! Yesterday, I accepted a position working directly with refugee claimants: people who have fled their countries of origin because of violence or persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a particular social group. In contrast to privately-sponsored or government-assisted refugees, refugee claimants undertake their dangerous journey without knowing whether or not they will be granted asylum when they reach their destination. They often face detention upon arrival, and the months-long refugee claims process that follows can be a stressful and scary time while claimants struggle to navigate an unfamiliar system, gather evidence for their case, and wait for their fate to be decided by the powers that be.

My job will bring me into contact with families at all stages of this process, but my main responsibility will be to support those whose refugee claims have recently been approved, journeying alongside them as they begin the process of integrating into the local community and helping them to find employment.

I start tomorrow, and I can’t wait. In the face of all the violence and hateful rhetoric lately, I am beyond thrilled to be able to extend the welcome of Christ to refugee claimants from around the world—Muslim and otherwise—who have come to this country seeking safety. I look forward to all of the beautiful people I will meet, and to all the ways they are sure to challenge and humble me and force me to grow, causing me to see more (and differently) than I did before.

I give thanks for every step a woman takes towards freedom and safety. I give thanks for every refugee’s safe arrival, and every successful application for asylum.  I celebrate every small victory for justice in our world, and I recognize Christ’s coming in our midst. Still, I wait impatiently in the dark, willing these pin-prick stars to turn into daylight.

God, be born in our hearts. In our fractured world, let us be the midwives of goodness and truth coming into being.

Like A Mighty Wave: the Power of People United for Justice

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There are different kinds of power. Power that liberates, power that oppresses; power hoarded, or power shared. There is the kind of power that comes from external props and circumstances, and then there is power that arises from within.

Today I’m reflecting on power, and remembering the brave women I marched with in India last year. The demonstration was a confrontation between two kinds of power, really–but soldiers and police with their guns and blockades were nothing against the strength of these women with their hearts set on justice. Read the story at SheLoves Magazine.

Naked Empowerment: Why redefining beauty doesn’t go far enough

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The Huffington Post reported Sunday morning on a photographer who is fundraising for “A Beautiful Body Project” to show real women’s bodies—nude or nearly nude—along with inspiring stories about their bodies and their lives, in order to encourage healthy self-esteem. I understand the benefits of women getting to see what other normal, un-photoshopped bodies look like so that they have realistic expectations for their own. I understand the danger of being exposed to countless images of flawless models who embody cultural ideals and who exercise/starve themselves for a living. Most of the time, we don’t see bodies that we can relate to: the bodies of other women working, studying, raising kids, or generally just living life without the supervision of a personal trainer and a nutritionist, or the “luxury” of working out during half of their waking hours. I remember a very liberating and helpful experience during university when the primitive village stay conditions during our semester abroad meant that many of my female friends and I had to live in very close quarters and take “bucket” showers in the same room together. Seeing each other naked resulted in all of us becoming a little less self-conscious and little more accepting of our own bodies as we saw a broad range of body types and physical quirks that were apparently normal, despite never being featured in mainstream media.Still, I have my doubts about this photography project. There’s a big difference between private, interpersonal interactions and public, impersonal displays.

The intentions behind it are good, but after looking through some of the photos, I thought, “This is still women putting themselves on display for the public to scrutinize and discuss. It still feels like female bodies being treated like public property.” Men don’t have to pose naked for photo projects in order to be seen as more than just sex objects, or to have their worth affirmed to them by others’ approving gaze. Maybe trying to reclaim our portrayal in media—by replicating the very kinds of images which have exploited us all along—is not an effective tactic. Maybe the problem with how women are treated in our culture goes deeper than redefining beauty—it goes right down to questioning why it is so important for women to be beautiful in the first place.

There have been photography projects depicting breast cancer survivors (naked), and mothers with their post-partum bodies (naked), but my question is why any of these women need to take off their clothes and have the public declare their bodies beautiful in order for them to feel valued, or in order to be able to accept themselves? Ironically, these campaigns seem to reinforce that the most essential part of one’s being—or of a female’s being, at any rate—is her body. Can we not recognize and honor the whole person without seeing them naked? Does seeing them naked bring us any closer to seeing the most unique and intimate parts of who they are? I’m not convinced that the fascinating complexity of a woman’s mind and heart, all of the experiences and decisions and determination and courage and vulnerability and creativity and whatever else makes her who she is, can be captured in a photo—with or without clothes. I worry that these photo shoots are not empowering enough because they do not question the socially-constructed idea that women must be physically attractive to be happy.

I’m still waiting to see the naked photo shoots of men who have survived prostate cancer, or dads whose bodies have changed due to stress, sleep-deprivation, and missing their morning workouts because they’re busy being parents. Actually, I have no desire to see those photos, but the point is this: I highly doubt that any of these campaigns are forthcoming, because men don’t have to be deemed physically attractive (within a narrow, cultural definition or otherwise) in order to be taken seriously in society. No one assumes that a man will have lower self-esteem because of his sagging chest or pot belly or graying hair or wrinkled jowls. Though I realize that many men do struggle with physical insecurities in the hyper-sexualized advertising wasteland we all inhabit, they do not face the same blunt message that women do of needing to be physically attractive to matter.

That is why, although I applaud the spirit behind what this photographer is doing, these bare-all campaigns to redefine beauty will ultimately fall short of garnering respect for women as whole people. They fail to bring us closer to gender equality because they play along with the unchallenged assumptions that physical beauty is a prerequisite for female self-esteem, and that it’s the most important aspect of a woman’s identity.

The Ugly Truth About The Beauty Myth

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          A few months ago, I read Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth and it felt like a missing piece sliding into place, naming that vast and vague sense of unfairness that I have instinctively felt since childhood. It’s the reason that as long as I can remember, I have been surrounded by private and public conversation that centers on the pitiless appraisal of women’s bodies. The reason I was able to so easily detach from my real appetite for several years in order to hinge my hunger instead on whether or not the reflection in the mirror deserved food or not. The reason why I have so often fallen into the catch-22 of aching to hear that I was beautiful, only to find that the judgment, having been passed, reaffirms my precarious position more than my personhood, and that I feel resentful towards the man who has power to pass such a judgment in the first place without needing mine in return.

If you’re a woman, you can probably relate to these kinds of experiences. If you’re not a woman, ask one who’s close to you about this and she can probably tell you how this same undercurrent has pulled at her throughout her life. ­But I have hope that if this thing has a name—if it is a man-made construction rather than simply “the way things are” or, worse, “the way God designed things to be”—well, then it’s a system we can climb out of to claim our freedom.

The book explains the myth that our society has constructed: that beauty is a universal, eternal, and unchanging quality, and that possessing it is the only way for women to obtain worth, love, or power in society. Any cross-cultural experience or historical research quickly reveals that standards of beauty are diverse and contradictory throughout time and across the globe. While I grew up always trying to get a tan in the summer, my Chinese friends were horrified at the idea of ruining pale skin with sunlight, and while women in the U.S. diet to stay slim, my Indian friends tell me I’m too skinny and encourage me to get “nice and fat.” Think of foot binding and corsets and all the other strange things women have done over the centuries in pursuit of “beauty”. Nonetheless, the current beauty myth has been retold with such an alloy of fervor and monotony in advertisements, literature, film, popular culture, and even scientific journals that it has convinced most women, either consciously or unconsciously, that their worth lies in their sex appeal.  With that in mind, women are essentially doomed to an endless treadmill of buying products and disciplining their bodies as they strive toward an ideal of “beauty” which, with the advent of photoshop, airbrushing, and mass media, is based less on the human form than on the humanoid creations of advertisers and pornographers.

The belief system inspired by the myth explains why, despite the fact that women are more educated, enjoy better health, and have more legal rights, professional opportunities, and influence in wider society than at any other time in history, we’re in a worse state than any previous generation of women “in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically.”  Writing in the early ‘90s (and all of these trends have surely intensified since then), Wolf points out that over the last few years, “eating disorders rose exponentially… cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical specialty… pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal.”

Wolf maintains that this unrealistic ideal and the unhealthy lengths women go to in order to achieve it have not come about accidentally. This situation has been invented—by advertisers, among others—in order to keep women more concerned with maintaining their appearance than with bringing the full power of their energy and intellect to bear on the world. Who knows what kind of upheaval might result in society from women collectively unleashing their full talents for the first time, after centuries of restrictive roles and separate spheres that have prevented them from participating fully in human history?

The beauty myth creates a caste system which offers social rewards sporadically and temporarily, but playing by its rules, even the most beautiful woman ultimately loses (it’s no coincidence that to be a model, an eating disorder is basically a prerequisite). Whatever fleeting admiration she gains through the system feels like love, but it blocks the real thing by never allowing a woman’s true self to be recognized and loved for who she is. And eventually she will grow older, the lines and marks of lived experience on her body disqualifying her for “beauty” and taking away all her power and worth in society. Wolf suggests that the way out of this mess is not to scramble towards the top of the heap, but to refuse to be locked inside of a caste system at all.

How have we bought into this lie and perpetuated its power in our own lives and the lives of others? What does it look like to break free and to help others do the same?

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