No More Magic Shoes

The assignment, to discuss, describe, draw out, provide alternatives to the current images of women being presented to us in mass media, is a daunting task….

Where to begin?

Maybe with all of the little girls sitting alone and actionless in the ads in Kilbourne’s article? Susan Douglas’s narcissistic paradise of Vogue and the hilarious conflicts it brings up seems a promising starting point. The Beauty Myth brandishes a cross cultural ugly stick so perhaps Naomi Wolf’s revelation is the egalitarian place to begin? But then, again, thinness, as Bordo and Wykes point out, is a serious health problem now, thanks to media, so perhaps this is the most urgent issue….

Or we can start with the nothingness. We can stare into the gaping maw of competition, suspicion and longing that defines the quality of the emotional space between women in the US. The hesitancy of social inclination and faltering kinship is a condition created, perpetuated by media. We lack, as Woolf puts it, “The solidarity of belonging to a group whose members might not be personal friends outside, but who are united in an interest, agenda or worldview.” We lack a basic empathetic understanding and assumption of shared experiences among women in our culture.

Kilbourne puts it plainly, “Girls are often encouraged by the culture to sacrifice their relationships with each other and to enter into a hostile competition for the attention of boys and men.” The pursuit of a boy/man/ husband is the quest to be found unique from and better than all other females. Attracting a husband is not a team-oriented task. The definition and pursuit of beauty is also a personal process, informed by others, but not a group activity. Dieting is intensely private struggle with a purely subjective bodily experience. In these matters, a woman is successful to whatever degree she (or a male proxy) can measure herself to be more attractive, beautiful or thin than another woman is.

Media encourages female isolation and competition in order to monopolize on the vulnerabilities of the individual. Media depends on our loneliness, separateness and suspicion to sell us arsenals of clothing, cosmetics and diet products so we can defend ourselves from one another.

Without a basic empathetic assumption of shared experience women are more psychologically vulnerable than we would be. The magazine becomes our chorus, our herd, our flock, our kinship. When our kin tell us to buy things, we vulnerable, relieved and grateful to be included, buy.

To begin to bridge the gap between women I would first do away with magic shoes. Cinderella’s, Dorothy’s and all ballerinas’. Also Barbie’s. It all started here for me. Cinderella thwarted her competitive and hateful sisters, became beautiful and desirable - thanks to A SHOE. Dorothy threw over a dictatorship, saved all of the infantile men in her life and her dog then reversed the course of nature and time - with A Pair of Shoes (and by wishing really hard). Ballerinas obviously get their dazzling ability and grace from their Very Special Shoes. Especially the Extra Special Toe Shoes. Did Barbie never owned a pair of flats?

My fairy tales would be equally lush and exciting as these are; but different. Fairy godmothers, the represented foundation of positive female relationships, could stay but they’d be more around, their support and love stable and predictable; less flaky, prone to disappearing and “out there somewhere”. Cinderella would parlay her experience as a family slave into become the head of housekeeping at the Palace where she would meet and marry the Princess after a remarkably short but intense romance. On arrival to Oz, Dorothy would get a sparkly magic I-pad from which she could call forth Temple Grandin regarding the flying monkey problem, Yemen's Tawakkol Karman for advice on negotiating the downfall of the Great Oz, Hillary Clinton on strategies for dealing with the Wicked Witch. Her traveling posse would be made up of females possessing more abilities than liabilities. From ballerinas we’d see more feet less shoe. Barbie…Barbie…what to do with Barbie? The perpetual dilemma...The idea is to have a better foundation from the start. The message is that the world is beautiful and fanstatical, women in our lives are there to work with and love us and shoes are there to help us get around.

To share Tina Fey’s prayer for her young daughter’s future career in Bossypants:

"Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes. And not have to wear high heels."

Read the entire excerpt at http://melodygodfred.com/2011/04/15/a-mothers-prayer-for-its-child-by-tina-fey/