BENEATH THE SKYLINE

YES, WOMEN HAVE BODIES
Gender Matters, Part 1

Deborah Good

"Hey, pretty baby. Can I get a kiss?" I barely turned my head toward the man calling at me from his pickup, but inside, I flipped him off and called him a few names I won’t repeat here.

It was just another day in Philadelphia, another daily walk from the office to the train station, another "cat call" from an onlooker. The comment itself was not particularly degrading and hopefully caused me no personal damage. Nevertheless, it was yet another reminder that I am a woman in a society that too often treats my body and sexuality as commodities in a male-dominated marketplace.

Throughout my life, I have had relationships with many different men—some romantic, most not. Brothers, cousins, and close friends who happen to be male treat me with respect, and I never doubt that I am their equal. Sometimes I even pretend that, at least in the space of those relationships, gender does not matter. But more often than not, I am probably wrong.

Gender matters. And it affects almost every aspect of my womanly life.

The many messages I receive regarding my gender and sexuality are deeply confusing to me. While social norms and stereotypes are changing in the home and workplace, I still find the definitions of an acceptable and alluring woman to be limiting.

In her song, "When I Was a Boy," Dar Williams reflects on how expectations of her have changed since the days when she "was a boy" with her sense of adventure and her grass-stained knees. "And now I’m in a clothing store," she sings, "and a sign says less is more. More that’s tight means more to see—more for them not more for me."

Daily, both men and women are fed images that simplify women’s bodies into objects for sexual pleasure. While men can access power with intelligence and career success, I sometimes feel the power most accessible to women in North American society is sexual power—a power whose principal control lies outside us, in the hands of those who find us attractive, or not.

There is a stream of feminism that says women’s liberation is about wearing—and not wearing—whatever we want; sleeping with whomever we want, whenever we want; and reclaiming our right to sexual expression after centuries of being ashamed of our sexuality. Another stream says that women’s liberation is about ignoring fashion trends and dressing comfortably; giving ourselves to men only very slowly; and reclaiming our right to decide who touches us, where, and when, after many centuries of rape and exploitation.

In our multicultural, multi-religious society, "virginity" (defined broadly) is both upheld as holy and ridiculed as tight. And in the pages of Scripture, we read of two Marys; church tradition has made one a virgin, the other a whore. It sometimes seems that society still labels all women as one extreme or the other, while we let men fall comfortably somewhere in the middle. In the end, while the church has deified Mary as the virgin mother of Jesus and judged Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, we find redemption in Jesus’ radical love for them both.

Among Mennonites, expectations in relation to women’s dress and sexuality are considerably more ambiguous than when my mom was a young adult. I know couples in my parents’ generation who did not even kiss each other until they were engaged. My grandmother has always disguised the shape of her body with a Mennonite cape dress. Meanwhile my peers—and many younger women—are making a wide spectrum of decisions concerning how they dress and when they make love: freely, with committed partners, not at all.

At a recent Mennonite convention, a workshop on "modest dress" was packed out. Discussion was long and heated. Growing up, I was told that I should be careful how I dressed because of an important gender difference: While women are sexually stimulated by words and touch, men are turned on by visual stimulation.

I find this argument for modest dress inadequate and disempowering to women (my choice of dress should not be decided by the needs of men but by my own). Yet my own experience—and the fact that pornography sells to men at rates far higher than to women—affirms that this male-female difference is often true.

The media caters to this reality. I recently read a newspaper article about the U.S. women’s softball team. Instead of focusing soley on the team’s outstanding talent and record, the writer also noted that these women, unlike many of their sister athletes, were not posing nude for Playboy and various other publications and Internet sites. "It’s clear that America’s preference seems to be to see female athletes on the cover of the latest edition of For Him Magazine than in sweats and cleats on the field of play," read the article.

I have read that 80 percent of women feel badly about their bodies (compared with only 45 percent of men). I’ve watched high school and college classmates compare themselves to one another and to the likes of Kate Moss, and always come up short. The U.S. dieting industry brings in more than $40 billion each year and disordered eating is frighteningly commonplace. (Please note: Eating disorders have many causes, often unrelated to body image, but less severe disordered eating patterns commonly result from an unhealthy desire to be thin.)

The other day, I was walking with a good friend. We’re very comfortable with each other, and when an attractive woman passed us, he commented on her nice "rack" (and he wasn’t talking about a bike rack for her car). In the conversation that followed, I gave a shabby and inarticulate explanation of why the comment made me cringe.

Yes, women have bodies. Obviously all of us—whether male, female, short, tall, dark, pale, strong, disabled—are physical beings. And to ignore physical beauty in one another would be to deny one of life’s most precious and human gifts.

But North American society and media have so distorted our perceptions of body and beauty that today, when men call at me from the street, or when guys sit around the TV remarking on who’s hot and who’s not, I feel vulnerable in a way that disempowers and even frightens me. (I have certainly been with groups of women who similarly objectify men—if arguably to a much lesser extent.)

I don’t ask that we ignore physical beauty in one another. I do ask that we see one another more wholistically—as having body and personality, pointy hips and a charming wit, full lips and an inventive spirit.

I ask that we acknowledge that our definition of "beauty" has been largely distorted by everything from Barbie dolls to Hollywood.

I am not naïve. I know that image does matter. I know that looks usually give our first impressions, that make-up and fad diets and fashionable clothing will continue to sell and sell and sell. I know that whoever said, "Beauty is on the inside," was mostly a liar. Still I have chosen to live my life as though this were true.

—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, turns 24 in October. She is an editor at The Other Side magazine (www.theotherside.org) and would love to hear your thoughts on gender matters. Contact her at deborahagood@hotmail.com.