The Idea of True Womanhood

After watching the SNL skit with Tina Fey (how I heart her) and Amy Poehler as Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, which really played on the hypocrisy of how Palin is being treated versus how Hilary was treated, I started thinking about the idea of womanhood versus the reality of it. If you have not seen the skit, check out this post by Musicwench: http://musicwench.blogspot.com/2008/09/for-posterity.html

The truth of the matter, whether we like it or not, is that Palin represents what people want to believe is ideal womanhood and that, to a big part of society at least, makes her a safer choice. She is change, but she's not radical change. The right-wing, white men of America, who have a big influence in this country, feel safe with her because she represents what most of us are told our whole lives that we're supposed to be: attractive, ambitious, but also traditional at the same time. We're supposed to stand beside the man, not in front of him. We're bakers, mothers, and the force that is supposed to hold together the "American Dream" of nuclear families and strong Christian values.

If you don't fit into that mold then you are a threat to what white conservative men see as the preservation of our society (i.e. Hilary Rodman Clinton). Personally, I think this whole ideology is bullshit, but that doesn't change the fact that most fundamentalist societies/sects adhere to this idea of womanhood.

Talk about hypocrisy. Women, thanks to fundamentalist ideas, are thought to not have or deserve the same rights as men, but yet are Representative of the purity and honor of a family or a society. In extremist Muslim societies they have "kitchen accidents" or what's more widely called "honor killings" of a wife or daughter who has tainted the family's honor by no longer being a virgin (whether the sex was consensual or not) or having an affair or if your husband thinks you've had an affair.

In Christian societies it all goes back to Eve, who (if you believe the creation story) was made from man for man (at least that's how old leaders of the church would like us to interpret it). And of course what really gave Eve a bad rap (and the rest of us by extension) was her eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Of course what people like to forget is that in the Bible it does actually say, speaking of Adam, "who was with her" (Genesis 3 verse 6). It is interesting how a story can change when one little tid-bit of information is included or excluded.

Personally, I had three important female figures in my life that in one why or another shaped my view of womanhood...even if in some instances through observation it urged me to be the opposite of what I saw. My mother grew up in the ideal nuclear family and she always thought that she would be like her mother and be a housewife. Of course then she married my dad and didn't exactly get what she bargained for. So, she spent my whole life working a dead in job to make ends meet with no college education.

My dad's mother was a housewife, but she did not hold to this Christian ideology -- in fact I think I get my fascination with other religions from her. At the same time however, she stayed in a marriage with a man she couldn't stand because she saw herself as not having any other options.

My mother's mother (my mom-mom) was a housewife, but also had a college education -- rare for a woman who grew up in the atmopshere and time that she grew up in. In fact she and my grandfather met while in Pharmacy school, but she gave it up to be a housewife. Looking back, I wish I had had the foresight to ask her about how she felt about that decision before she died: whether she still would have chosen being a wife and mother over having a career.

She was a very smart person...and I mean like "Jeopardy" smart. She was always really good at math, word puzzles (crosswords, scrabble...she almost solved every puzzle on "Wheel of Fortune" before the contestants), and just had a really good memory of general knowledge. I just really would love to know if she was really satisfied with the choices she made, because she so obviously could have done so many things with her life if she had wanted to. Now, don't think I'm thumbing my nose at being a housewife -- it's not for me, God knows, but that doesn't mean I can't believe that it's what some women genuinely want.

Feminism isn't about excluding choices -- it's about having them in the first place.

In many ways women's rights and a woman's ability to rise to the same success as a man has drastically changed, but there is still an attitude (maybe not quite as loud as it used to be) that holds women to this old view and standard of what womanhood is supposed to be. Unfortunatly the rest of us who can't or refuse to fit into this get the brunt of ridicule from the right-winged, moral majority -- whatever they are calling themselves these days -- and are blamed for what they precieve as the downfall of American society.


Palin will only help support this idea and, though it will be quite a historical event to be the first female vice president if McCain is elected, she will not change anything for women. Clinton held the possibility of truly changing the idea of womanhood in soceity and that's why she was so strongly ridiculed.