Women's Liberation in 2009: I don't get it
I believe the freedom of woman is coming close to the best definition we all can define. The one of being ourselves and being able to express ourselves freely. At least I hope so.
For my entire life, I’ve questioned the ideals of femininity and what it really means to be a woman. Honestly, to me, what many people have come to understand is femininity I think is backwards. It seems to have caused a rift amongst women somewhere down the line. For an example, I have friends that love Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City. I hate those shows. She loves them because they’ve empowered her enough to be sexually liberated and as glamorous as possible. I think they’ve pushed her thinking into another box of thinking thanks to great marketing and “life-like” situations. I applaud her sexual liberation but disprove of how she got to that point. I believe these types of programs are a great platform for discussing issues that women may normally avoid and since their television debuts women have began to notice that they still need more work on their personal selves. My argument is not a 70s feminist argument in believing that men are continuing to hold us down but one of social and cultural awareness. It is an argument focused upon true women’s liberation and what that really means to the modern woman.
By the time Sex and the City was discussing in depth issues about feminine sexuality over a New York breakfast, other television outlets were praising Paris Hilton for being a whore. I never knew that whores were going to become trendy. As a result, other whores have been coming out of the closet about their actions. Now we have identified the rift. On one end, there’s the discussion of sex and sexuality, on the other end is the praise of sexual promiscuity. I don’t know when I agreed to sexual promiscuity being cool. As a black girl, looking back figures like Lil Kim and Foxy Brown were more harmful than actually liberating. They used their sexual prowess as exploitation of feminine sexuality and seduction. They erased the mind of a woman and replaced it with verbal tales of hot pussy and skillful dicksucking. They played into the hypersexuality of black men and women and ended up harming the nation of youth after them.
“I want a freak in the morning, a freak in the evening. Just like me. I want a roughneck brother who can satisfy me…” – Adina Howard
Whether we are black girls or white girls, our freaky tales are catching up with us in harmful ways. A national study conducted in 2008 found thata quarter of teenage women have at least one of four common sexually transmitted diseases according to a New York Times article. This is unreal to me. Sometimes, getting all the booty does not mean that you are sexually liberated. Showing off your body parts does not mean that you are sexually liberated. Really, just because you’ve kissed another girl or danced freaky with another girl or experimental fucked another girl for a boy does not make you sexually liberated. It seems as if little girl dreams have been transformed into the worst nightmare anyone could ever approach. Daddy’s little girl has turned herself into a figurative whore for the masses to fancy and dote upon. How disgusting is that? That’s not liberating, that’s failing. We failed somewhere. That’s not sexy. Sex appeal encompasses so much more than simply the physical. It is attitude, intelligence and above all character. There are many women that believe in the curves of their body, thin and thick. Many intelligent women love looking fiercely sexy in their outfits. It’s just that they’re not as interesting as our counterparts that are viciously dripping with a come-fuck-me nature in life. That’s a dangerous for your health kind of woman. A dangerous woman understands her sexuality and chooses her lovers wisely because she cherishes her mind, body and soul. She doesn’t bring intense drama to her life. She loves being a young woman and experiencing as many adventures as she can with her friends. That is a sexy woman.
When did all the negative connotations about women become such a cultural phenomenon? Women are already broken up amongst one another in different cultures; do we really have to glorify the whore of women as the modern woman? I ask because this is a paternal figure gone crazy that presents itself as an independent woman playing by a man’s sexual fantasy in order to attain financial and celebrity success.
Karrine Stephens known as Superhead is a great example for this duality. Every day we hear (un)Rap superstars boast about how well they laid the pipe down in which ever honey skinned ho, after while, you can’t help but to wonder if that’s really true. Enter Superhead. She gave the (un)Rap world a tremble in their fashion label man panties by exposing her sexual exploits with mainstream America. Story after story she gave spicy details as to whom she’s fucked, sucked, and financially loved for booze, drugs and clothes. She’s now married and has released a new book helping women love their men like porn stars in the bedroom. Ah. A link. A former music video model/porn star is telling me how I can be sexy? How to find, seduce and keep the man you want? I guess we all could take a couple of lessons from a whore on video. She does indeed do a great job of sucking dick. At least I don’t have to be known as a whore for the rest of my life. I’m not going to leave this argument by completely bashing Karrine Stephens as a woman. She did create a successful business out of her psychologically hypersexualized nature. I really don’t understand how this is cool and I challenge anyone to disagree with me wholeheartedly.
Mothers take their daughters to book signings of women like this and don’t think of the repercussions it is doing to the mind. All the whores came out of the woodworks and displayed the whores they have in training. Some will criticize this as a harsh depiction of the modern woman. No, I’m only exposing the pollutants in the smoke that’s hovering in front of the modern woman’s mirror of femininity. By all means, a women’s sexual power can only be boosted when she claims it for her own and defines it as her own. However, I become concerned only when what is depicted in the mainstream is a testimony to what our modern women appear to be. Even porn stars true to their culture have stepped their industry up by appealing to women sexually as well as mentally. Few of them have even come out of the wood works exposing sex mysteries and highlighting examples of sexually liberated women throughout history. Another famed porn star conducted an interview with Adbusters commenting on the American obsession with pornography and the Internet. The difference is the intelligence and attention of market in which these two groups of people have in common. And let me state the porn culture as an underground culture stays with the adult market and is not a part of the mainstream culture parading around as wholesome in order to gain fatter pockets. These bad examples of women in our mainstream media are causing young woman in America to become jaded to the reality that is womanhood. Everyone is playing into a visual game that is assaulting our compassion for one another.
Former supermodel Tyra Banks walks a fine line as well. Here we have a woman that is aggressively attacking women’s issues on her nationally syndicated talk show while selling dreams of modeling contracts to young girls everywhere. They’re never really guaranteed a full modeling contract with an agency. Just one year with CoverGirl and 15 minutes of fame. They’re all tall, thin with exotic features and small town values or big city attitudes. I think they’re quite cute. While her television show pushes heavy discussions about race and gender from each of the girls’ different backgrounds, the show has a hard time discussing issues about young girls with weight. We can talk about race every episode every season but the heavy issues about gender questions and body attitudes are only acknowledged but not examined. At the end of the day though she’s generated great attention to women’s issues by utilizing her self-owned talk show as platform to discuss difficult issues that affect women’s lives. It’s just that she understands that show business appreciates a pretty face at the end of the day and takes the information she learns from her young models in training and translates them into topics on her talk show. Not a bad business idea I can agree with.
With more industry example like Tyra Banks, we can continue an open discussion to make ourselves grow into a true, independent and modern woman. Since the beginning of the Women’s Liberation movement, there have been great strides to discussing women’s issues in order to gain our equality on this plane. I do believe the world has forgotten our power but I also believe that we as women have let money spoil our goals by capitalizing off the negative connotations of our group. There is nothing wrong with claiming your sexiness but there is something wrong with exploiting your sexuality for a dollar. We live in a world where everyday people do something strange for some change without thinking about the later consequences. The average American may have more health problems the ones pervious but we are also living longer than before. Time can feel like the blink of an eye or an eternity. By continuing to degrade ourselves for the bottom dollar, we’re forgetting that by claiming our identity we can become more and more powerful women as a collective. It may sound like a fairy tale but I call it true liberation. By taking responsibility for our actions as women, we can advance our society into becoming a more enriched and wealthy society by speaking up against these visual pollutants. Sarah Palin was a joke and so are the Real Housewives of Any County or City in America. They only perpetuate the continuing viciousness women have created for one another by letting sexually exploited materialistic gains represent their character and while hiding behind pseudo-intelligent statements to show how strong and independent they are. How wretchedly evil to place this image of the modern women in front of women everywhere. The public reminds me of a Pavlovan experiment. If we keep showing the same stimuli repeatedly, eventually we are going to become conditioned to the stimuli. Somewhere down the line, someone is eventually going to say enough is enough.
Moreover, I have had enough. I’ll reclaim my sexuality and explain to you how. I am a representation of the modern woman. I am not afraid of the fact that I had premarital sex nor afraid to share that I do have consensual sex with men. Many women do. How do you think Superhead got to where she was? She just opened her mouth about her freaky tales while I’ve kept mine closed to the public. I love my body. I have a small belly because I’m a little lazy but catch me on the streets and I can outrun you anywhere. I don’t own a car and I don’t have any true to definition ex-boyfriends. I have many friends of all genders. I love them all and I care about them all. I don’t want to be a “model” of any kind. I do have my favorite models and designers. I would love to be a jetsetter and have a closet filled with Sex and the City fresh clothes but the reality is that I have a bigger goal than what’s in my closet. I’m not your typical girl. I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend because the label comes with a territory that I’m not willing to participate in. I don’t being somebody’s woman because they treat me as such. I am a woman that still values chivalry as much as I value what’s on my partner’s mind. I really do prefer to communicate rather than play silly little games for attention. And I love girly things such as make up and lacey underwear, I just don’t own a lot of it. However, at the end of the day, I’m more happy with just being humorously intelligent me than to be the image of what women look like today. This is what I’ve come to understand what women’s liberation should be for the modern woman. She should be able to describe herself in as many words as she chooses rather than abide by repetitive notions of femininity that her freethinking mind can’t comprehend. A woman can be whatever she wants from the porn star to the homemaker. From the career driven executive to the intellectual artist. We have so many choices to be whatever we want but if we continue to play into our former patriarchal roles as achievements to banishing the feeble-minded female then we are quite wrong for committing self-destruction. These bitches are headed for self-destruction and I ain’t going with them. Straight up.
I got better things to do with my life. I hope you do too.
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