Elizabeth Wurtzel
First Person
In late June, Time magazine ran a story illustrated with the faces of Susan B Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, pictured in grave black and white. Next to the likeness of this righteous triumvirate was a colour photograph of Calista Flockhart aka Ally McBeal, above the red-lettered, alarmist question: is feminism dead? The article went on to decry almost all feminists under 50, complaining that none of us is serious enough and all of us dwell on our personal problems too much.
What the Time story failed to note was the simple tedium of so much that engages feminism, with its echo chamber of conversation and its Mbius strip of writings that leave civilian women running for The Rules, craving anything that actually reflects The Way We Live Now.
Can we really continue to discuss the usual date rape and sexual harassment matters that have vexed us all for so long? What feminism must do is to encourage and engender fanaticism in us all. It must teach women how to be bonkers about something other than men.
If you think this sounds patronising, turn your attention to women’s magazines. Of course, they should rightly be called men’s magazines, as they are devoted wholly to the acquiring, nurturing and pleasing of Mr Dreamboat.
But before I elaborate on this point, let’s consider the arguments that the feminist agenda ought to deal with more serious injustices and whatnot, which of course it should. Well, sort of.
For starters, consider this grim fact, sad but true: in the United States, women earn 76 cents for every man’s dollar. For all the outrage this figure should summon, it is still just a number. Most people don’t know what it means. How is it measured? Is the disparity a result of women preferring to teach and nurse, while men like to engineer and lift large objects?
See there: there’s the mire one gets quagged into by examining the inequities upon which feminism’s fight was predicated long ago. We are left with this feeling that something is wrong, but after all these years of picketing and placards, we don’t quite know what to make of this 76 cents business, we don’t know what we can do except continue to agitate and get uppity. And it starts to seem like a better idea to talk about … dating etiquette. Or the politics of fashion. Or mascara: friend or foe?
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. These are often the things I like talking about and the important part is that we are talking. That’s precisely right: after a prolonged latency period, women’s rights are a hot topic again.
But where women’s agenda is concerned, it ought to be clear by now that we cannot live on bread alone – that, in fact, the focus on legislation and logistics, at the expense of leisure, has cost us in the long run. The point of this sexual revolution was to give women fuller lives: it was not so they could grimly labour to earn only three-quarters what men do, then come home to nothing but housework and screaming children.
If women had the kinds of consuming passions men seem to, that they will not allow a single fucking thing to get in the way of – be it watching sports or drinking with the boys – women would do more to assert their own rights. By, for instance, filing a complaint when the boss says: “Hey, baby, nice butt.” Because, worthy as it is to call the sleaze on his sexually harassing behaviour, it is not fun. In fact, it is probably a tedious, tiresome procedure, which is why so many women don’t bother.
But insisting upon doing something you love – well, that makes a woman a creature of enjoyment and, frankly, a certain kind of liberating self- sufficiency. It is empowering to say no, but it is a great deal more pleasurable to say yes – and to have things to say yes to besides some man.
That aside, I would argue that a woman is more likely to put the kibosh on her manhandling boss if she has lots of things she likes to do as there is something about loving life and yourself and your enthusiasms too much that makes it hard to put up with any idiot’s crap.
“Be drunken, always. That is the point, nothing else matters,” wrote Charles Baudelaire. “Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.” And women must learn what is meant by these lines, what it means to be besotted with something other than some useless bloke.
I’ve a feeling this point has been made many times before. Even in the much- maligned The Rules, the authoresses suggest their readers take up hobbies, study French, play bridge, all to seem busy to the men they meet and date, all to seem not-desperate. That’s fine: if men are the only incentive women can come up with to develop passionate lives, so be it. But I’m suggesting women follow this course because it is fun and it will make us all happy. I’m saying we should do these things for their own sakes.
While so many feminists object to Ally McBeal because she thinks too much about boys, that doesn’t bother me as all of us single people are preoccupied with mating and dating.
No, the trouble with McBeal is that she is an alleged Harvard law grad working at an enlightened firm of young smarties and yet, frankly, she does not seem so smart. McBeal and her colleagues simply lack intellectual engagement. They talk about boys, personal gripes, contraception, introspection, but never do they express passions for anything else.
Besides useless attempts at adult education, is there anything outside the courtroom or the bedroom? Is there nothing besides men and the trouble she gets into because of men?
Now, it is true that men spend much time and effort building bodies and salaries just to please us. But men also do plenty that rather annoys us as we find ourselves left behind. Sports spectatorship is surely the most alienating thing, but men don’t mind.
I have no doubt my delight in spending three hours roaming a cosmetic department is far more beautiful. I mention this last personal passion as I believe make-up is hardly a harmful fascination. And I do think one can enjoy indulging in beauty for its own sake.
In excess, however, such concern is not merely vain but dangerously narcissistic – which is the same problem as obsessing over some man. You may think you are thinking about him, but really you are thinking about yourself via him, which is not only ugly and unhealthy, but also a hellish path to an ugly and unhealthy relationship. This is how women get themselves into trouble. Women who have better things to do than be obsessive stay out of trouble.