Lefty Blog Awards

Just got wind of this new thing going on in the Canadian lefty blogging community: awards! for us! the Canadian lefty bloggers! So, head on over to Lefty Blog Awards and nominate your favourite Canadian lefty blog!

(Many thanks to Red Jenny, who nominated me. 🙂 )

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need a TG fix?

ha ha, just kidding. but I do have a new post up over at Slant Truth, for your reading pleasure.

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brief hiatus

I’m in the midst of much academic work, which is my primary priority, as well as working at my job full time, which is draining my energy and preventing me from completing my primary priority. Basically, all I want to do when I get home from work is watch Canadian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. Therefore, for a brief period, I must withdraw myself from any distractions that threaten my goal of completing my academic work.

In my absence, please talk amongst yourselves. I will be around to moderate comments and respond briefly to asshattery, and I’m working on a couple of things for Slant Truth, but that’s all. If anyone wants to help me out while I’m gone by supplying a guest post, email me.

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Feminism Friday – Woman, What Are You?

I figured I should write a bit about what it is that I mean when I use the words woman/women. It seems kind of weird that I should have to do this, and I’m sure I’ll be accused of trying to redefine words again. But, as you may know, I don’t abide by definitions that the dominant oppressor class forces upon me, particularly as it relates to my identity and my politics. There is, as I have pointed out before, power in language. Recognizing that is very important in terms of resistance. Besides, our language is not a dead one – it is very much alive, and undergoing construction and change all the time.

The power structure under which we live is a white heterosexual capitalist male supremacy, and identity is socially constructed under its directives, which assigns hierarchical value to groups that are defined in opposition or binary to one another. Man/woman, white/non-white, hetero/queer, rich/poor, and so on. The purpose/result is to create a stratification of classes within society. Power goes to some more than others.

The terms we use to describe ourselves and others have undergone a homogenization process, an attempt to weed out problematic anomalies and hide them away, silence them, make them disappear. I want you to understand that this is a political move, a power play. Homogenizing people under group identity allows power structures to remain in place. And some people benefit – a lot- from those power structures. So of course those people who benefit from power structures want to maintain them. Not all do, of course, but those with the most power have the most invested in structures that give them power – and the most to lose if they dissolve or change. So when people are identified under the common identity of a group, their differences are often forgotten, silenced, hidden, and ultimately denied. Power relations also exist within groups, along the lines of other group identities, which complicates matters even further. And this, my friends, is the common denominator: what individuals within groups share is not their oppression per se (although some groups will share some commonality of experience of oppression), but that their oppression stems from the same source, the same culture of white hetero capitalist male supremacy. What is shared is a common context of struggle.

So. When I talk about “woman/women”, I’m referring to the socially constructed sex class that experiences sexism (often among other forms of oppression) under the current culture of white hetero capitalist male supremacy.

For the record, this is the approach I take to all group identity.

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PUA, continued

I am remiss to do this, but the infamous PUA thread is not loading properly anymore due to the abundance of comments. I am hereby closing comments on that thread, and opening this one to continue the discussion.

On that note, I received an email from a reader named Gary. Here’s part of what he had to say:

I read your stuff about PUA’s and how they are teaching men such horrible things […]   I am so glad and appreciative for what you wrote, I was beginning to think I was being dumb for not following these guys teachings, but I am glad I didn’t.  See how they play upon a man’s fears and desires? […] I treat women with respect and as human beings. I value their opinions, their thoughts,etc. The best part is when you meet someone and treat her well and she respects that and expects that ie-doesn’t take yuo for granted. Its not sex focused like these asshats preach. So the sexual tension builds naturally between both  people over time. It seems like it is so bad, that women are confused a bit when a guy like me approaches them to chat. It’s like I get murdered by assumptions. […] I only want one woman, but getting women here to see that is hard. I am not the typical nice guy who is scared to approach,etc. I am confident and nice and genuine, but my god, I have such a hard time. I am not bitter toward women, I am bitter toward these PUA’s who are ruining it for us and for all of you. [emphasis, of course, added; edited for privacy’s sake.]

Gary, thank you for writing.

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cat herder needs help!

so, as some of you may know, I am a cat mom. My baby-girl is very pretty and sometimes quite lovable, but she is extremely ill behaved. And I am thisclose to losing my patience, opening the door, and letting her go outside, forever.

My cat is not very nice in general, doesn’t like to be handled etc. But lately, she seems to be pissed off that her mom needs to work for a living, and has been taking it to the floor, so to speak. I don’t think she’s used her litterbox once this week, perhaps week and a half.

I can’t live like this. I have taken her to the vet for bloodwork and she is perfectly healthy, so there is no physical reason for my living room, bathroom, and entryway to have become a giant (well, not so giant, rather tiny, but you know what I mean) cat urinal/poop deck. I have changed her food to one for sensitive digestion, given her lots of attention, given her an homeopathic remedy for anxiety in her water, and keep her litterbox clean as a whistle. I do not punish her, unless I catch her in the act, and then only by spraying her with water – I don’t even yell at her.  She’s getting old, it’s true, but she’s perfectly healthy, so I really can’t justify putting her down for a problem like this one.

So, peeps, what can I do about this problem? I simply cannot live with it anymore. Please help!

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Feminism Friday – beauty, gender, class, and race

So, as I confessed a while back, I work in the beauty industry. More specifically, I am an aesthetician and makeup artist. I perform beauty services such as facials, microdermabrasion, chemical peels, waxing, pedicures, manicures, makeup, and body wraps. I’ve spent most of my 12 years in this career working in a spa environment.

SO, my job is pretty much all about reinforcing patriarchal conceptions of beauty and femininity. Sure, lots of people come to have pedicures because they work on their feet and it feels great to have someone rub your feet, or because they get ingrown toenails that need fixing up, or they have painful cracks in their heels, and lots of people come to have facials and chemical peels to treat acne and sun damage and learn how to care for their skin to avoid such problems. Some people just need to relax, and all these things certainly can feel great and help you de-stress. But for the most part, it’s all about consumerism and femininity – the two seem to go hand in hand, more so than masculinity, it seems.

So, I’ve written before about how feminine beauty practices are inherently meant to be markers of inferiority and submission. I’ve also written about women and ageing, and how the beauty industry (including cosmetic surgery) seems to be causing and playing to a fear in women about ageing. Today, however, I’d like to start a discussion about another facet of the beauty industry – the intersection of gender, class, and race in regards to beauty.

I would just like to say that there was a recent study done in Canada on the gender wage gap, and one of the reasons for the gap seems to be that women are choosing careers that are traditionally female jobs, and that those careers pay poorly in comparison with jobs that are traditionally male jobs. I can certainly tell you, this is a career that it is very difficult to make a decent living doing. It’s pathetic, actually, how little the job pays considering that it is physically very hard on the body (small repetitive movements in the upper body combined with hours of uncomfortable positions and difficulty finding an ergonomic setup = torn discs, limited range of motion and constant aching in the neck/shoulders/back/pectorial muscles, carpal tunnel syndrome, and declining eyesight, to name a few), which of course makes it difficult to work a lot of hours. It is so totally not worth it. AND, I’ve really only met a handful of male aestheticians, none of whom live in my city, and all of whom were treated like a great novelty and were extremely popular for performing services with a higher potential for sales commission earnings. Something about women clients, they seem to look for male approval of their appearance (surprise!), including from their beauty therapists. They’d rather have the opinion of a male than that of a female, in many cases – even a female spa therapist who practices femininity perfectly and has achieved exactly what the client is seeking to achieve. All of the male aestheticians I have met were gay. I don’t know what that means or might indicate, but there it is. Also, the vast majority of clients are women. Male clients comprise only about 15-20% of spa clients in general.

I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and I don’t personally know a single Black aesthetician. I did a quick poll of the women I work with, and only two knew of a Black aesthetician, and one doesn’t practice anymore. I know one aesthetician who is Asian. I know one who is Lebanese, and a couple who are Greek. That’s it. I’m sure that in larger cities, there are more aestheticians who are women of colour, but for this demographic, we actually have a fairly large black population. They’re just not going into the beauty industry as a career.

Also, the vast majority of women who come to have services done are white. I’ve had a handful of black clients over the years, and a small number of women from or with ethnic roots in India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran. I’ve had maybe 2 clients who were Asian, and none who were First Nations.

Of course, spa services are expensive. (very expensive, considering how little those who are providing the service get paid, and how little the products cost to do the service. Believe me, it ain’t much.) So some women are going to be limited by their ability to afford to have spa services done. The beauty industry is very elitist.

So, what does this say? What do you think?

I read lots of blogs by women of colour, and sometimes I see a complaint that white feminist blogs are overly concerned with matters like beauty and femininity. Sorry to contibute more to that trend, but I’d like to know why that is – because it seems to me that that matches up with who is involved in  the beauty industry both in terms of clients and in terms of providers of beauty services. Is it that women of colour have more pressing concerns? Is it that beauty is defined in terms of whiteness? Is it that class and race seem to go hand in hand in this culture?

What do you think?

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attention please

head on over and read my latest at Slant Truth. I’m calling for some strategizing on dealing with maintainers of the status quo.

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Feminism Friday – domestic goddess series part 3

Hi all,

So, the final instalment of this 3-post arc has arrived, slightly late of course thanks to my crappy new work schedule at a job that I absolutely can’t wait to quit. 🙂 In any case, I want to thank Shannon immensely for allowing me to use her paper for this series!  If you need to catch up, read part one and part two to get a better sense of what’s going on in Shannon’s paper.

If anyone else would like to guest post here, I’d love to have some different voices here over the summer months. Please contact me if you’re interested!

Processed Foods

Betty’s store of goodwill was truly tested in the years after WWII when factories which had previously turned out military rations shifted their focus to civilians (Shapiro 9). Erika Endrijonas explains the dichotomous choices and conflicting messages women faced.

“Buy processed foods, but cook from scratch; be creative but follow directions precisely; accommodate all family members’ preferences but streamline the food purchase and preparation process; work part-time but be a full-time homemaker; and do it all with little or no training.” (157)

Frozen dinners in aluminum trays, orange juice, fish sticks, and fruits and vegetables proved to be winners, but many less-savory products flopped due to the low prevalence of freezer ownership and, of course, the unappealing nature of deep-fried canned hamburgers. While frozen dinners might have been acceptable on very rare occasions (when Mrs. Consumer was away, for example, but hubby still needed dinner) they were not a staple food in regular use. The popular view of processed foods was so negative that when surveys presented women with nearly identical shopping lists and asked for opinions of the women who prepared those lists, the inclusion of instant coffee resulted in vehement tirades against the character of the woman who dared to purchase a convenience item. (Shapiro 54) The frozen foods industry made good, if unintentional, use of Christine Frederick’s suggestions for selling products to women: “supply her with an instruction booklet…teach her by actual demonstration…[and] give her practical experience.” (183) Christopher Holmes Smith documents how, through enthusiastic advertising and instruction in the use of frozen foods in Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful and other national publications, experts showed women how to effectively use frozen products to reliably produce edible meals, overcoming the quality objection if not social stigma. (192)

            Cooking by hand and from scratch remained popular throughout the 1950s despite the proliferation of processed foods. Advertisers continually emphasized the convenience of new products, but women were more interested in taste than speed, as few women reported feeling pressed for time when preparing meals. (Shapiro 46) An extensive survey of homemakers between 1938 and 1961 revealed that cooking was the chore most enjoyed (or least disliked), followed by caring for children. (Shapiro 45) A much smaller survey of newspapers and women’s magazines from the 1950s showed that cooks commonly used processed foods such as instant potatoes to take shortcuts, but true enthusiasm was reserved for from-scratch recipes. (Shapiro 50) Even the continually increasing employment of women did not result in correspondingly dramatic rises in the use of pre-made foods. (Shapiro 48)

            Why were women unwilling to buy these new, helpful products? Earlier processed goods were inconsistent in quality and their fresh or handmade counterparts tended to taste better, so mistrust of packaged foods could certainly be a factor. Additionally, women who used packaged foods tended to feel guilty or anxious about not doing their wifely duties. Women felt they had a “moral obligation to cook,” and tossing together cans just didn’t qualify as cooking. (Shapiro 52) Given the heavy influence on the power of cooking by prominent authorities of the time, this is not surprising; when women had been repeatedly told that their family’s health and social success depended on the quality of the food they consumed, some distress is fully rational in the face of pre-assembled ingredients. Furthermore, hastily slapping together a meal violated the definition of cooking; in other words, cooking had to involve work, and while cutting corners was acceptable, heavy use of processed foods was cheating. Women struggled to find “the balance between convenience and taste and duty” as the meaning of home cooking shifted. (Endrijonas 159)

            Cake mix in particular was a hard sell. If food was love, cakes and other desserts were sugar-infused, chocolate coated morsels of gooey affection. Two full chapters were devoted to cake recipes and another to frosting in Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, debuted in 1950. (Marks 139) Affectionately known as Big Red, the cookbook also suggests exhausted women make use of convenience foods, including General Mills’ Bisquick Biscuits, and cake mixes. (Marks 147) Betty Crocker cake mixes arrived on the market in 1947 in white, yellow, spice, and Devil’s Food flavors. Cake mix baking proved just a little too easy, and few homemakers wanted to “drop this scientific marvel into a bowl, ad water, mix, and bake.” (Marks 168) As one woman said, “the prospect of serving a cake that took no skill just wasn’t very alluring.” (Shapiro 74) Additionally, women were accustomed to viewing cakes as great creative accomplishments; “the cake was food as sculpture, frosted in living color.” A woman’s baking skills defined “motherly love and womanly competence.” (Endrijonas 160) Cake mixes did not rival the success of pancake mix or Bisquick until a psychologist suggested women might prefer if powdered eggs were left out of the mix so fresh eggs could be added. (Marks 168) Though sales improved, cake mix had still not gained mainstream popularity by the 1950s. Many women may have refrained from using cake mix due to fear of social stigma or harming their family’s health with substandard food. (Marks 170)

Television

By 1948, televisions resided in 1 million American homes, so it was only natural that Betty’s print and radio empire be extended to add a visual element. Adelaide Hawley, who had provided one of Betty’s radio voices, was selected to play Betty on-screen.  (Marks 219) From 1950 to 1958, Betty starred in several cooking shows and was a regular guest on others. By 1958 about 41 million homes had televisions; however, Betty Crocker’s TV personality never caught on. Where Betty’s radio presence served her listeners, Betty’s TV presence preached to them. The figure behind the desk, calmly describing how to make edible food without cooking skills, offered little in the way of entertainment or information. Unlike her radio audience in the 1930s and 1940s, viewers of the 1950s were less desperate for assistance. The prosperity of the 1950s offered emotional challenges for homemakers but questions of identity and happiness were much more difficult to address than Depression-era budgeting or fabricating a sugarless chocolate cake. When she first appeared in public life there was some debate about whether or not Betty was a real woman, but by the 1950s anyone could visit the Betty Crocker kitchens and see that Betty was not a single person; rather, she was composed of “many women who [worked there] under her name.” (Marks 181) Layer after layer of believability was stripped away; as she became “increasingly identified with packaged-food cuisine,” Betty existed solely to sell cake mix and everyone knew it. (Shapiro 195)

Cooking certainly did not fall from favor in the 1960s as evidenced by the rousing success of Julia Child in “The French Chef,” a cooking program which differed from Betty Crocker’s infomercials in every way imaginable. Like the early radio Betty, Child’s “point of view was always that of the woman in the kitchen, desperate to cook and dependent on having good information.” (Shapiro 222) Child also emphasized consistency and practicality, but unlike TV-Betty, “Child promised she could make the cook strong instead of making cooking fast, cheap, and convenient.” (Shapiro 228) She did the cooking herself, enthusiastically, dynamically, and with definite authority. Humorous and capable, Child explained why methods worked. Furthermore, she was a genuine woman representing good food rather than a collage of people representing Gold Medal Flour. Child gave cooks what they wanted rather than a corporate prescription, and the success of her long-running shows should be noted by marketers who wish to earn their customers’ affection.

CONCLUSION

The Betty Crockers of the past century, each one an attempted duplicate of a fabricated character, are beautiful examples of simulacra. The Betties could be compared to each other but certainly not to the real Betty Crocker as she was a compilation of ideas without a single origin. General Mills home economists tested her recipes, responded to her mail, and signed her name, but they did not claim to be Betty’s body. Perhaps Marjorie Child Husted could make up part of Betty’s body and mind, while the actresses who read Husted’s words to scores of listeners represent a portion of her voice.  Adelaide Hawley, the most memorable on-screen Betty Crocker, has as much right as anyone to represent Betty’s body.

Today the Betty Crocker logo is a signature across a red spoon; a woman has been replaced by a box, a splash of water, an egg or two, and a mixing spoon wielded by even the most inept hands. As the woman left the Betty Crocker image, the humanitarian aspect was removed from General Mills advertising. Historical evidence shows customers appreciate the ability to leave feedback, feeling they have some say in the operations of the modern world’s vast corporate family. Unsurprisingly, Betty Crocker first touched her public by freely sharing relevant information they requested and earned nationwide loyalty by devoting her expertise and corporate resources to making sense of cooking during the Great Depression and WWII.  However, when her readers’, listeners’, and viewers’ needs changed to more individual concerns of finding happiness in unpaid domestic labor or juggling formal employment while feeding their families, Betty spoke up with cheery verses about the ease of using her products.  Despite increasing distribution through the mass media, Betty Crocker betrayed her readers and listeners when she blatantly revealed her purpose to be selling more cake mix in the name of corporate consumerism; by ignoring her public’s concerns, Betty Crocker transformed from a venerable source of kitchen wisdom into a corporate facade, and her audience never forgave her for implying that a woman, complete with love and carefully developed skills, was no longer needed in the kitchen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Endrijonas, Erika. “Processed Foods from Scratch: Cooking for a Family in the 1950s.” Kitchen Culture in America. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 157-173.

Frederick, Christine. Selling Mrs. Consumer. New York: Business Bourse, 1929.

Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhaly. Prod. Media Education Foundation. Created by Jean Kilbourne. Viewed on GoogleVideo. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412&q=killing+us+softly&gt;

Marks, Susan. Finding Betty Crocker. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Parkin, Katherine. Food is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  Dir. Jane Anderson.  Perf. Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.  Revolution Erie Productions Ltd, 2005.

Schor, Juliet. “The New Politics of Consumption.” Boston Review Summer 1999. <http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/schor.html&gt;

Shapiro, Laura. Something from the Oven. New York: Viking, 2004.

Smith, Christopher Holmes. “Freeze Frames: Frozen Foods and Memories of the Postwar American Family.” Kitchen Culture in America. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 175-209.

Discuss!

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little quick link

I’ve had a rather busy week, so haven’t caught up on comments and/or posting and/or my feed reader. But I did get this gem in my inbox today, so wanted to pass it along in case you all missed it. And, please do take note of the asswipe in the comment section who can’t help but pull out the big guns with a “what about the menz?” commentary. I’m so sick to death of feminist arguments being purposely misread and strawmanned. Complete asshattery.

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