By Susan J. Waldman After contributing to Morris County NOW's Feminist News And Views for many years, I became editor beginning with the November/December 2010 edition.¹It has been a fulfilling and rewarding job all these years but the time has come to step down and find someone to take my place.This will be my last edition as editor. Therefore, I ...
The attack on women’s rights, rights long believed settled, has been on a steady increase over the past four decades. A return to near medieval religious orthodoxies has forged an alliance with conservatives determined to march backwards to a day when workers and women had few rights. Through most of this time the Giant, women’s organizations and supporters, slowly diminished and fell asleep. Granted, activism and feminism are clearly not dead, but their gigantic voice of the 60’s and 70’s is very difficult to hear.
This month’s contributor: Mitsu Rajda.
A book recommendation:
Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein.
Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source — the source — of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever younger ages .
But, realistically, how many times can you say no when your daughter begs for a pint-size wedding gown or the latest Hannah Montana CD? And how dangerous is pink and pretty anyway—especially given girls' successes in the classroom and on the playing field? Being a princess is just make-believe, after all; eventually they grow out of it. Or do they? Does playing Cinderella shield girls from early sexualization—or prime them for it? Could today's little princess become tomorrow's sexting teen? And what if she does? Would that make her in charge of her sexuality— or an unwitting captive to it? Those questions hit home with Peggy Orenstein, so she went sleuthing.
She visited Disneyland and the international toy fair, trolled American Girl Place and Pottery Barn Kids, and met beauty pageant parents with preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. She dissected the science, created an online avatar, and parsed the original fairy tales. The
stakes turn out to be higher than she—or we—ever imagined: nothing less than the health, development, and futures of our girls. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable— yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter is a must-read for anyone who cares about girls, and for parents helping their daughters navigate the rocky road to adulthood.
The attack on women’s rights, rights long believed settled, has been on a steady increase over the past four decades. A return to near medieval religious orthodoxies has forged an alliance with conservatives determined to march backwards to a day when workers and women had few rights. Through most of this time the Giant, women’s organizations and supporters, slowly diminished and fell asleep. Granted, activism and feminism are clearly not dead, but their gigantic voice of the 60’s and 70’s is very difficult to hear.
The President is into the third year of his term in office. The nation has weathered through a stock market crash and crushing bank failures that began in the previous administration. Public spending programs, while softening the worst part of the economic calamity, have not had the ‘miracle’ effect of bouncing the nation back to prosperity. Political opponents claim that this spending is not doing any good and must be stopped. The real answer, in the belief of the President’s opponents, is to reduce borrowing, increase the reserve requirements for the banks and balance the budget. The result of the tight money and reduction of government spending was to create a recession within a depression.
Gabrielle Giffords was nearly killed when a would-be assassin shot her in the head during a meeting with constituents in Tucson, Arizona. The Press and political pundits were unanimous in their predictions that this would finally lead to some level of gun control. It was argued that, at a minimum, a ban on the 31 round clips was a fait accompli. The statistics are stunning. From Women Against Gun Violence, “American women who are killed by their intimate partners are more likely to be killed with guns than by all other methods combined.”
So, bright and early this morning as I was sitting with my lap-top on my sofa researching ideas for upcoming educational programs I was hit with the thought that human trafficking was the direction I wanted to be focusing in on. Not only for one quick passing program, but for the long haul of my time-consuming, energy-taking, barely-rewarding awareness and activist lifestyle.
We are witnessing an almost daily unprecedented onslaught on many of the rights and freedoms that women have fought for in this country for over one hundred years. Women only received the right to vote in 1920 (a battle that began in 1848), the right to have an abortion in 1973, to have a credit card in her own name, if married, in 1977. Have no illusions, these rights are not guaranteed. The effort in Wisconsin to curtail the collective bargaining rights of teachers, nurses and civil employees is disproportionately targeted at women. That state’s Governor and Legislature carefully omitted public safety positions (police and fire) which are typically male dominated professions. This may have not been their plan but it is the effect.
