I was stunned when I first read the August 26, 2009 article, “Caster Semenya: Is There a Science to Beauty?” posted on The Root. Not only were people questioning Ms. Semenya’s gender to her face, but also to the entire world. Ms. Semenya was forced to take a test to determine whether she was “female” or “male” which was,truthfully,disgusting and totally offensive. No one should be subjected to such scrutiny and blatant rudeness. Everyone looking at her seemed to think themselves an expert on gender studies, because many of the other athletes (who lost I might add) constantly stated that they saw her as a man.
Now Ms. Semenya has gone through a makeover. She accepted the constant cry to makeover herself in order to silence her critics. In her photo, she has makeup, her hair is out, she has a dress and jewelry on, and her nails have been done. But, is that what constitutes a female? I found it particularly interesting that a beauty and life expert, Tai Beauchamp, who saw Ms. Semenya’s face prior to her makeover, stated that she has ”a beautiful and very interesting face.” What really constitutes beauty? What about all those women who don’t wear makeup and have short hair and wear pants and have their nails basically bitten to the quick? Are they not considered “women” according to the “Westernized” ideal of women? What truly constitutes a “female”? Let me know….
Related Link:
“Embattled track star Caster Semenya gets new coach, new look“
Posted in Feminism in the wider world | 2 Comments »
When I first read The Fword I was not sure what the magazine meant by the “feminist void” on Penn’s campus.
But this week, when I was representing the Fword table during the NSO Student Activities Fair and the Kelly Writers’ Open House, a student came up to us and challenged us with the idea of a male advancement group, under the assumption that feminism inherently implies a desire to advance female interests over male interests. Other passersby also seemed to have similar reactions to The Fword without having read the magazine first or asked what, if any, position the members of Fword had on feminism.
I realized that the adverse reaction of some members of the Penn community towards Fword’s existence is proof itself that there is a feminist void– that people challenge the beliefs of feminists without finding out what those beliefs even are. There is an assumption that all feminist thinking falls within a more constrained and narrow-minded framework than it actually does, when in fact Fword defines its objective as the opposite of that. And I realized that this is in fact the feminist void: the discrepancy between what others assume The Fword to be and what it actually is. The goal of The Fword board in the past has been to attempt to unpack and remedy the misconceptions out there about feminism.
It made me think of an article I read in Psychology Today, which seemed to summarize the ideas held by some Fword board members in the past.
More importantly, however, The Fword serves a function beyond feminism, per se. It’s also about learning more about the role that gender plays in our lives, sometimes in ways that we may even take for granted– and I think unpacking those questions does turn out to be a worthy investigation, regardless of whether you call yourself a ‘feminist’ or what your ideological position is. Sex and gender continue to be relevant issues in the news, as we these recent test results suggest.
Just because there are now women serving in high political offices and attending Ivy League institutions doesn’t mean these other issues don’t matter. It doesn’t mean that feminism is past its period of relevance. We continue to publish pieces ranging from creative prose exploring a physically abusive relationship to an academic essay about depression in incarcerated women. So that is my answer to students who turn away from the Fword table just because they think they’re not feminists.
Posted in Feminism @ Penn | No Comments »
