The subject I will be discussing
today and in my final research project will be modern woman and her
introduction to sacred femininity in the media today. It is my belief that women
are worshiping an idea of femininity today in the same manner that women in
ancient times worshipped their female deities and how the iconography of
femininity is just as relevant today in modern media as goddess worship was to our
ancient mothers, daughters and sisters.
Let me first discuss “sacred
femininity” that which is sacred is revered among a population, showing traits
or skills which are highly valued. There are many instances of non-secular,
topics, trends and traditions that are viewed in some way as “sacred”, for some
in the past, their Monarchies where a sacred institution, the Berlin wall, a
symbol of oppression for so many decades became, at its destruction a sacred
relic of freedom, and still for others a valued family heirloom, some
jewelry or perhaps a beloved cookbook bearing the collective culinary research
of generations of women is just as sacred to the heart than anything else.
Our introduction into female
iconography begins at the same times of our lives when we are introduced to
religion. Almost from the very beginnings of our lives, when wrapped in our
pink blankets being coo'ed over by the nurses and our relatives telling us how
pretty we are, and what big blue eyes that the indoctrination into what it
means to be a girl begins.
All clothing from cradle to the
grave is depicted as either male or female. From dresses, to girl cut t-shirts,
even the quality of the fabric used in women’s clothing versus men’s clothing
is different and frankly better. According to the Smithsonian the colors blue
and pink which we think of as typifying male and female gender was originally a
marketing ploy for early marketing schemes during world war one in order to
sell more children’s clothes.
When I was young Barbie’s, Baby
dolls and My little pony where suitable toys for little girls and if you didn’t
have the latest Lisa Frank Unicorn and Dolphin trapper keeper you were probably
a tomboy outcast in disguise. While the boys got hot wheels, teenage mutant
ninja turtles, G.I Joes and anything that had to do with slime and science
kits.
We were forced into mimicking these
gender roles as cute little converts to a religion we really didn’t understand,
simply following the trail of candy to praise and recognition for toeing the
party line. However as we grow older we choose for ourselves those tropes and
archetypes that appeal to us most, both in masculinity as well as femininity.
During ancient times for example
Goddess worship depicted several different “tropes” of femininity, which
influenced or set an example for real women in society today as well as in
ancient times. From the Greek Goddess Athena with her plumed helmet and spear, the
Goddess Freyja in the north, and even Ishtar in Babylon are all strong, female
warriors. Then we have the softer counterpoint with the Goddesses of beauty,
love and sexuality with the ever present Aphrodite, Astarte and Rome’s Venus
with their long flowing hair and love stories.
Indeed over and over again we see
various different sides of how our Ancient Ancestors viewed what it meant to be
womanly. From beauty, strength, art, sexuality, wisdom, learning, magic,
domesticity and so on and so forth the role of women in the ancient world
showed a woman of many more dimensions than popular belief would care for us to
know about.
In ancient times it was just as
acceptable for our goddesses to be wives and mothers just as it were acceptable
for them to be warriors and works of art. Brighid a Goddess to the Celts was a
goddess of the hearth and home, just as the Japanese Goddess Omoikane or Shinto
is the deity for wisdom and intelligence.
Modern woman are surrounded with
several different types of female iconography which they revere, and often
times seek to mimic or include into their own life. We see various images of
popular femininity tropes in modern media today. Movies starring the girl next
door going off to college or trying to save her bookshop, the female action
hero trying desperately to save the day or the people she loves from danger, to
the ditzy blond beauty queen getting into wild I love Lucy-esq style hijinks,
we are bombarded with various different archetypes of femininity each and every
day.
What you will see is that those
tropes from Disney’s princesses, the adventurous powerhouses of Xena warrior
princess, Buffy the vampire slayer and anything by Angelina Jolie, our
surrogate mothers of Claire Huxtable, Aunt Bea, and June Cleaver, to the old
black and white days of Hollywood femme fatales like Clara Bow, Rita Heyworth,
Marilyn Monroe and so many others are really not much different from our
Goddesses of the past.
Yet we women buy into these various
tropes readily and gladly. We follow trends, take part in social media, belong
to a greater global community than our Grandparents or parents can truly
comprehend, and are barraged with images and ideas of what femininity is
according to the popular zeitgeist of our times.
The average American teenager
spends 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day when you take into
account TV, movies, magazines, or simply surfing the web. Yet the content they
are viewing is made up primarily by men, as women hold only 3% of upper
management positions in the mainstream media organizations like
telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising. However women
from the ages of 18 to 37 generate seven billion dollars’ worth of consumer
spending a year, almost twice as much as their male counterparts.
According the US women’s Bureau,
women account for fifty seven point seven percent of the active work force, and
yet they only earn seventy seven cents on every dollar their male counterparts
make. So little does our country value our women that America is the only first
world nation not provide mandatory family leave after a child is born, and
women only hold eighteen percent of the seats in congress which is lower even
than Rwanda at fifty one percent of political seats claimed by women.
In closing, all femininity is equal.
From movies, TV, fashion,
advertising, music, video games, toys and merchandise even our phones and all
the aps to go along with them are subtly influencing us, our self-image, our
lifestyle choices, purchasing habits, as well as our understanding of our place
as women in the world in which we live, molding us into our own choice of
tropes of femininity.
However because women are not in
charge of the female images our young girls are seeing (since the deregulation
of the FCC under the reign of President Reagan in the 1980’s) that by the time
a girl reaches thirteen years old three percent of girls are unhappy with their
bodies and that number increases to seventy eight percent by the age of
seventeen.
So important has this unrealistic
idea of physical beauty perpetrated by Photoshop and a global media run by men
become that among girls eighteen and younger, liposuctions quadrupled between
1997 and 2007 and breast implants and augmentation increased nearly six-fold in
the same 10-year period. A large enough increase that such a surge actually
changed the national average of female breast size to three cups higher that it
had been in the 1980’s.
We must protect our children, boys
and girls alike from these unrealistic portrayals of what being a woman means,
just as we should protect their rights to freedom of expression. The pursuit of
health and beauty is fine, but depiction of unhealthy beauty standards not
attainable through any means than Photoshop is a practice which is harmful to
the health and safety of all people, men and women alike.
It is important to let our young
people know that it is ok to love their princesses like Princess Peach, Zelda,
Rapunzel, Snow White, Baby from Dirty Dancing, and Mia from the princess
diaries with all their beauty, romance, and from Rags to Riches fairy tales,
just as it is that we encourage a love for the stories of Wonder Woman, Lara
Croft, and Brienne the Beauty.
However most importantly we must
also pay homage to the very real heroines of history, like the brave Queen
Boudicca, who drove back the full force of the Roman army to the sea, our first
female secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Ada Lovelace, the mother of the
invention of the computer, the daring Amelia Earhart and her quest to fly
across the globe, the brilliant and radioactive Marie Curie, the brave and
tragic Anne Frank, to the inspiring Malala Yousafzai and her continued fight
for equal education for girls in Muslim nations and so many more amazing women
throughout history.
We love and respect our mothers,
grandmothers, Aunts, Sisters and Girlfriends, we are awed and humbled by their
efforts, sacrifices and love and see them all as our Role models as we grow up.
Understanding that which we see in our domestic lives is just as vital and
important as any princess or spear wielding heroines could be.
So let’s stop the female on female
violence, stop the slander and name calling, the put downs and backstabbing,
the belittling remarks and the slut shaming. Let us stop blaming the state of
feminism today on fictional characters meant for fun and fantasy like Princess
Peach and Jasmine, stop treating celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim
Kardashian like they are the devil themselves instead of our modern examples of
Venus and Aphrodite, and let’s stop demeaning the importance of our warriors
and mothers, treating their efforts like they mean nothing when in reality they
mean everything in the scheme of things. And let’s start praising all women no
matter their choice of archetype worship from the beauty to the brain and begin
helping each other to finally break through that glass ceiling.
All women are created equal and
there is a Goddess out there for all of us.
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