|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New ideas, information, creativity, communication
Send us your selections, thoughts, perspectives, favorite resources, essays
Write to "ourselves": mediademocracy [at] wifp.org
Resources:
National and International - Media Events
Essays
Male and Female Monuments
by Chelsea Cundiff, WIFP
May 2007
Living in Washington, D.C., one is accustomed to viewing monuments on a daily basis. On the National Mall there are, of course, the well-known monuments to the founding fathers and presidents of the United States: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, to name a few. Coins may not be widely acknowledged as monuments, but as the faces of the past presidents adorn them, even our common currency serves as a monumental reminder of a few of the past influential leaders of the United States.
When thinking of monuments involving women in the United States, the Statue of Liberty initially comes to mind. The statue of Liberty is a woman, no doubt, and one who stands very proudly for America, a country that is also referred to often as "she." Lady Liberty and America are not and were never real people. They are, respectively, a female personification of freedom and a country with a centuries-old history of male dominance. If the majority of monuments in the United States were built in memory of great men, why is perhaps the most famous monument associated with the United States a made-up woman, symbolic of freedom? Why are women in monuments more often symbolic of idealistic virtues while more men in monuments represent real, historic figures?
Female figures are used to personify virtues in monuments all over the United States. Male figures are also used to represent virtues, but not nearly as often as females. The National Monument to the Forefathers, conceived in 1820 and finished in 1889, is made up of several female and male personifications of virtue. Faith, the central figure, is a woman. Surrounding her are the four ancillary figures of Morality, Education, Law, and Liberty. Each virtue is supported by two other virtues on their sides. Morality and Education are women while Law and Liberty are men. The genders of the virtues seem somewhat arbitrary, and one can only speculate as to why women figures were chosen for Morality and Education and men chosen for Law and Liberty. One might assume that Law is a man because men have historically made the law, but the fact that the Statue of Liberty is a woman and Liberty in this monument is a man suggests that Liberty is gender-ambiguous. There is no doubt, however, that Liberty in this monument is very masculine. Adorned in lion skin and holding a sword, the male liberty ironically suggests warrior ideals while his two smaller companions, Peace, a woman, and Tyranny, "a king laid low," reflect the expected gender personifications. Man (Liberty) has defeated man (Tyranny) and protected woman (Peace). Despite the use of both genders in the monument, it ultimately exists in tribute to the forefathers of the new world (http://www.scripophily.net/namotofopl18.html).
Monuments to real women exist, but it is rare to find a monument to any one specific woman or women. Most monuments to women are monuments to a group of women such as women who served in a particular war, such as the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C., dedicated to and inscribed with the names of both men and women who lost their lives in the Vietnam War. One monument to women only, but still no specific women is The Women Veterans Monument in New Jersey. The monument is a statue of a woman atop a black pentagonal monolith holding a lantern in one hand, a weapon in the other and somehow managing to keep her child on her hip. In her description of the 2003 dedication of the monument, Captain Barbara A. Wilson of the United States Air Force writes: "The monument is as unique as the women it honors" (http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/monuments2.html). While no doubt moving and important as a tribute to women veterans, "unique" is hardly a word to associate with this monument or the women it represents. The monument places all women veterans automatically into the stereotypical role of childbearer and mother, and the woman depicted in the monument represents not one woman in particular, but a generic woman veteran, representative of all woman veterans in the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
It seems that within the category of monuments dedicated to women or involving women figures, most involve either imaginary women who represent virtues and ideals, or generic women standing in for a group of unnamed women, generally who served in war. While memorials to women and men who served in wars have their place, monuments and memorials to specific men largely outnumber those to specific women. One of the few existing monuments to individual women is the Suffrage Monument in the U.S. Capitol depicting the figures of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott (http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda/suffrage.cfm). Other examples of monuments to individual women or woman are difficult to find. If coins are to be considered monuments, the only coins with women's faces, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin and the Sacagawea dollar coin are either out of circulation or rarely used. However, a Presidential Coin and a First Spouse program is beginning in 2007 in the United States Mint to honor George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison on dollar coins (http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/$1coin/index.cfm). On ten-dollar coins will be the faces of Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and in the case of Thomas Jefferson who did not have a First Spouse, Lady Liberty (http://www.usmint.gov/mint%5Fprograms/firstSpouse/).
In the United States and in other countries all over the world, monuments exist not only as public art to make parks more attractive, but to remind the people who see them every day of the history behind them. While monuments to groups of people and with symbolic figures rather than of actual people are perfectly valid, individual women who have made an impact historically deserve monuments just like men. Building and dedicating more monuments to individual women will be a long, expensive, and laborious process, but the addition of monuments to individual women, just like the recognition of individual women in other ways, is instrumental in the process of gaining gender equality in the United States.
Sex and the Environment
by Chelsea Cundiff, WIFP
May 2007
In April, 2004, when I went to the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C. I was pro-choice because that was how I was brought up. I thought basic sex education was normal for most high school curricula and that abstinence-only education was something that the Bush administration was threatening, not something that actually took place in a large portion of the United States.
Last week, a Sierra Club workshop entitled "Sex and the Environment" on the detrimental impact of over-population on the environment opened my eyes to the fact that family planning is not just about making responsible personal choices, but very much about being responsible about human impact on environmental resources.
In contrast to my ignorant assumption, abstinence-only sex education is not just a threat, but is rather widely taught. An information sheet I picked up from the workshop states that: "more than 35 percent of school districts today require abstinence be taught as the only option for unmarried people and do not allow discussion of information regarding methods for birth control and preventing STIs. Because of this, students who receive abstinence-only education are less likely to use any method of birth control if they do choose to be sexually active. A report from Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) displays a long list citing misinformation from abstinence-only education including the myth from Choosing the Best, The Big Talk Book that: "14 percent of the women who use condoms scrupulously for birth control become pregnant within a year." (www.democrats.reform.house.gov/documents/20041201102153-50247.pdf) Actually, the report confirms that if couples use latex condoms correctly and consistently, they are 98% effective. The list on the website dispels a number of these types of misconceptions from several different abstinence-only textbooks and abstinence-only class curricula.
The Sierra Club workshop involved a short film documenting the very devastating loss of 90% of the forest in Madagascar to devote more farmland to feed a growing population. The villagers in Madagascar had no access to or education about birth control, and thus the average family had six to eight children. When a crew of doctors and volunteers distributed various methods of birth control to the families in Madagascar, the women interviewed in the film were relieved to finally have access to choices in family planning. The Sierra Club supports two primary organizations involved in slowing population growth: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Family Planning Program. The Bush Administration withholds U.S. funding to UNFPA and in 2001, reinstated the Mexico City Policy, otherwise known as the "Global Gag Rule" which "prohibits foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who accept US funding from using their own funds, or other non-US funds, to provide, refer, promote or even offer legal abortion as an option for women."
The messages I received in the Sierra Club workshop on Sex and the Environment contained several ideas on how to make a difference including contacting decision-makers in government and educating community members about the issues. Education, along with continued access to methods of birth control in the United States and around the world, is crucial in reducing teenage and unwanted pregnancy. Providing birth control and contraceptives to countries without it not only gives women choices in family planning, but by slowing population growth reduces the impact on environmental resources. More information on "Sex and the Environment" workshops can be found at http://www.sierraclub.org/population/students/outreach.asp.
High Heel Shoes
By Chelsea Cundiff, WIFP
May 2007
A few weekends ago I went out with two of my roommates to go dancing. We got dressed up and all wore high heel shoes. For my roommates, who are average height, high heels are a fact of life. They have multiple pairs in multiple styles. Some, they claim, can actually be comfortable. I have yet to experience this supposed "comfort." Before going out in my new two or three inch high heel shoes, bought specifically for going out and enjoying that particular night, I had only worn high heels for maybe thirty minutes at a time. The last time I had worn high heels was to add height to my already six-foot-one-inch figure simply for comedic value in a scene from William Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. The scene, from Act 2, Scene 2 begins in dialogue between the Countess and the Clown. The young man playing the Clown opposite my Countess was already quite a bit smaller in height and stature than me, so adding heels and attempting to make myself as tall as possible added status to my character.
Having spent the majority of my life absolutely hating my height for no other reason other than the idea expressed daily to me that women are expected to be shorter than men, I am currently attempting to accept my height, make no apologies, and answer confidently and honestly to questions regarding my height, which I get practically on a daily basis. One such question addresses how I find men to date, because many of the men I meet are shorter than me. I answer simply that if they don't mind that I am taller than them, I don't mind. But, in my experience, most men do mind. As a male friend confessed to me: "taller women are unfamiliar territory." Territory? Women are territory? There is obviously something wrong with that sentiment, but aside from that terminology, why are men, in general, more comfortable with shorter women? One possibility is that height adds status, which is precisely why I wore high heels and made myself as tall as I could while my scene partner cowered under me in our scene from Shakespeare. Women wear high heels to gain height and thus to gain status, ignoring the fact that our feet are not meant to be confined to that position for long periods of time, and it is simply not comfortable, and often quite taxing to wear them. I only wore high heel shoes because there were simply inadequate options for nice dress shoes that were not high heels. Scanning the racks of women's dress shoes in the shoe store where I made my reluctant three-inch-heel purchase, there were maybe one or two pairs of dress shoes with heels that were less than an inch high, and the only pair that I liked was not available in my size. The heels that I bought had my feet in torturous pain the whole night and every man who spoke to me at the dance club had some comment about my height. Not, "Hi, would you like to dance?" but rather, "I bet you don't meet many guys as tall as you." High heel shoes not only made me into a freak show for men to gawk at, but also apparently gave them license to point out my height in not so flattering ways, as if I weren't already conscious of it.
Most men, it seems, are comfortable with women who are shorter than them in social as well as professional situations because height gives them visual status, which translates somewhat into real status. Men are confronted with "unfamiliar territory" when presented with a woman of equal or greater height because their status is threatened. Women are, on average, shorter than men, and wear high heels in an attempt to gain status, and it seems to work, as studies show that taller people – men and women alike – are taken more seriously than shorter people, in the professional realm and otherwise.
But problems arise within society for women who are too tall – that is to say, taller than men. As I've mentioned above, people ask me how I find men to date, seeing as so many men are shorter than me. As an actress, I am often faced with the fact that I am simply "too tall to play a girl." When I was sixteen, desperate to be onstage, I offered to play a guy in Grease in community theatre as they told me I couldn't play a girl because I was taller than almost all of the men in the cast, of which there were very few. Recently, the arts of theatre and dance have made attempts to stray away from the kind of "normalizing" which restricts gender roles and reflects societal norms and instead have embraced all body types. Albeit, in some cases this is simply to make a point, such as choosing all of the women in a cast to be taller than average and all of the men to be shorter than average, but it is still a step in the right direction.
Women ought to be free to wear high heel shoes if they choose, but making at least as many flat women's dress shoes as foot-binding high heel shoes available is another step in the right direction. Without such options, it is next to impossible for women to stray away from this idea that we must have the extra height that high heel shoes provide, while simply accepting the fact that they are going to hurt. Fashion is about more than style and seasonal trends, it is a very prominent and influential force that has both oppressed and liberated women for centuries. Recognizing and bringing to light high heel shoes as an oppressive and unhealthy force of the fashion industry should bring the need for more acceptable dress footwear. Afterall, the thought of men wearing shoes or other clothes anywhere near as restricting as certain women's clothes is laughable.
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
Washington, DC
www.wifp.org