My opinions on Raunch Culture took an abrupt turn about four years ago.
That’s when I had a baby daughter.
Now I haven’t experience some of the changes others have upon giving birth. I did not experience any desire to stop working or stop having sex. Except for several unfortunate incidents in the first few months, I tried hard to avoid going out in public with little bits of spit-up on my clothes or hair. Vanity, combined with obsessiveness, compelled me to get back on the elliptical the second my OB gave the OK (well, it may’ve been two weeks before that).
Attachment parenting, while I have nothing against it, wasn’t my thing. After what often was half an hour trying to coax a burp, I longed for (and sometimes sought out) adult problems, no matter how ridiculous. Problems I could solve. Even one of my partner candidates whining about how insulted he was by his $1.3 million income was a relief – with the right book of business, maybe I could find a client with a greener pasture. Often, when I returned from putting out a few phone calls about it, my husband or our nanny would have successfully burped and put the baby to bed and I could relax until I had to de-milk again.
But there were definitely a number of changes.
For one thing, I was never really big into holding babies. Sure, it was fun sometimes, but always a relief to hand them back. But this was my baby, who had come five and a half weeks early and was less than five pounds on arrival, but who skipped the ICU and came home with us the next day (we didn’t know what to do with such a little one!). Her little wrinkled fingers and legs didn’t have that protective layer of fat. She loved breastfeeding, but wasn’t very good at it – didn’t have the sucking reflex. But she couldn’t get enough, and would try, clumsily but valiantly, for an hour at a time.
She gained weight like a trooper. Thick, wavy, brown hair grew. Her dimpled elbows and the ring of fat at her wrists amazed me. She had, and has, a downy, velvety film of small hairs on her shoulders and back.
Here was this little person who was relying on me for knowledge, for guidance. And my husband, of course. But in terms of looking to someone for guidance about being a woman, being female – I am it. Or, at least, for now.
If Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pigs” had come out in, say, 2003, instead of 2005, I would’ve had a different take. After all, I’ve BEEN a “Girl Gone Wild” in essence, although I NEVER would’ve done it for free – being quite capitalistic about my Wildness.
But while the regret about adult women flaunting raunch struck me as condescending, especially from an author whose book jacket photo looked like it conformed pretty well to patriarchal standards, what struck me was the discussion of children and high-schoolers. Little girls aping Britney Spears. Girls in high school having “rainbow parties,” all about – literally – kissing up to the boys rather than focusing on their own pleasure. This wasn’t a world I wanted my daughter immersed in.
I was a GGW in my early 30s. Old enough to do it ironically (and to know the limits on my ability to do this, as well as the limits to those limits), and make it about what I wanted and how to best use men to get that. Not aiming for the amorphous reward of male affection or loyalty, but the much more tangible one (or more) of Benjamin Franklin.
So, it was the opposite of Wild. It was rehearsed, planned. Often boring, in fact. Not empowering in itself, feminist-wise. But the receipts could be traded for power.
But GGWs, or the younger ones, in Levy’s book were Wild either, and often weren’t getting any kind of power in return. They seemed to be aping adult abandonment to reap some kind of badge of honor. Wild should mean doing something spontaneously, with no calculated need to please others.
I want my daughter to do what she wants, with only her happiness and that of friends, family, or people in need, in mind. If there is some backlash in our culture, inspiring young girls to audition on a casting couch for male approval, that’s something I need to care about, to pay attention to.
And what about fairly tales?
This isn’t some kind of new problem. These things have been around for years. Sleeping Beauty, vulnerable and completely passive in sleep, with only her beauty to charm a handsome prince into saving her. Rapunzel, trapped in a tower, also saved by a handsome prince, by her hair, of all things. Snow White, Cinderella – with the only females nearby typically evil witches or stepmoms, needing handsome princes to “save” them.
We’ve tried to keep these fairly tales away. And to have alternatives, like Mulan, or Brother Bear. But they sneak in. And sometimes become favorites.
Will a girl who reads about a princess having to fit into a shoe or be unconscious or have tower-length hair to find her prince feel that she has to give him a blow job to seal the deal?
Well, I loved these fairy tales and never felt this kind of pressure. But then, nobody in my high school had rainbow parties, either.
I still don’t have a problem with porn made by consenting adults, strip clubs, or sex workers. But I do have a problem with the marketing of raunch culture to children and young teens. We all have to make many compromises in life, and make some calculated trades for the pots of gold we want. Childhood shouldn’t be about that. I watch my daughter dance around the kitchen to Abba, her awkward yet exuberant steps completely free of any artifice, and I hope that can last another ten years. At least.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PS: Of course, Abba comes with a warning too. But I’m on top of this one:
Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world
Similar Posts:
- Back to (Slut) School by Jill September 1, 2005
- When Do You Stop Being a “Teen Mother”? by Lauren January 18, 2006
- Stuffed animals will turn your daughter into a whore by Jill July 13, 2007
- Raising a Progressive-Minded Kid by Lauren November 8, 2009
- Gendering Infants by Cara March 16, 2009
i hear you loud and clear sister. i am daddy to a 2 and a half year old who has all the traits one would expect from a future politician, rock star or superhero. anything that would in any way dim her light would crush me. i’m trying to find what little wisdom i have that i might impart it to her. it was already an issue for me before she came along; now i’m really in it. but i have a strange feeling she’s going to be just fine, regardless of what i do.
It should be noted that “rainbow parties” are an urban legend, and accounts of them are more a product of collective parental paranoia (and the unfulfilled wishes of high school boys) than any social events that adolescents actually attend. It’s exactly the same as when I was a middle-schooler in the late-80′s/early-90′s, when schools were banning slap bracelets because of rumors that if a boy slapped certain color bracelets on a girl, she was obligated (through some master game all the kids seemed to be in on) to perform sexual favors on him.
Treating urban legend as fact is exactly the kind of sloppiness that makes me detest Female Chauvinist Pigs. Well, that an Levy’s disappointingly retrograde views on queer and trans women.
Lance, that may be (wrt rainbow parties), but I’ve been a monitor at school dances for nieces (in different parts of the country) and the environment for kids is quite different from when I was one. And I don’t recall thongs being marketed to ten year olds when I was one. Let’s not lose the forest for the trees, shall we?
I agree wrt FCP’s treatment of queer and trans women, and in fact a good part of her treatment of straight and cis women. But her chapter on kids and growing up — a lot rang true. I’m hoping we can have this discussion without too many sidetracks into other critiques of FCP.
Re: Rapunzel (and many other fairy tales in their original version)…
In the older versions of the tale, the prince rescues Rapunzel from the tower, but the witch casts him down into a thorn bush, blinding him, then magics him away. Rapunzel then goes on a quest to save her blinded, lost prince, finally finding him after ages of searching, and cures him of his blindness by her love. So at least the rescuing is mutual, and it shows some positive and active aspects of womanhood, even if it is for her man.
Older fairy tales can be hard to find though. And some of them are worse…But sometimes they’re nicer.
Oh yea, I agree with your thesis, just pointing out a weak point in the argument (and venting about Levy a bit, which I find has become a habit). I believe that it’s important to have a keen precision when approaching these kind of cultural issues.
how do you define “raunch culture”????????????????
Zardeenah is right about Rapunzel. My daughter loves that fairy tale, and she does know the older versions. Much more fun than current ones.
I do dread when my daughter reaches the point where she’ll be facing those issues. My son too. So far I have my kids much less immersed in popular culture than their peers, but I know that will just get harder through the years.
@ Zardeenah:
whoa. I never knew that about Rapunzel. thanks for sharing.
i love reading fairy tales– they were so violent and awesome!!!! my fave is the one of the stepmother who beheaded the son and didnt want anybody to find out, so she placed him in the kitchen and carefully planted the head on top of his body. and nobody noticed all day. It was one of the most grotesque, fuked up stories I’ve read and I still crack up when I think about it. Can you believe it was written a long time ago? Actually, I can.
I blame Disney and the PC patrol for changing and ruining fairy tales.
people always look shocked when I explain how original fairy tales weren’t ahem, all that “nice.”
;-P
This popular culture is bad not only because it serves patriarchy per se, but also corporate consumerism and theocracy. It’s that thing Twisty calls corporatheowhatthefuckeverocracy.
Did anyone watch the (maybe late 70′s) early eighties movie version on Rapunzel? The one with the radish fetish that R’s mother had when she was pregnant and when the prince was blinded the pixel blood came out of his eyes? Ah, I loved that movie. Sorry for being ot.
Today, I went around the shops with my Precious, and for a while there was a tiny little girl walking in front of us, in a tiny little sjirt and a halterneck.
That’s totally my favorite clothing for hot summer days, and yea I’ve done porn, and I’m pretty outgoing.
But when my boyfriend nudged me and said that this stuck him as the completely wrong outfit for that age, I really couldn’t help but agree.
Getting involved in raunch culture as a consenting adult is one thing.
Pushing it on a little girl like that (who, b ythe look of it, was only emulating her mother) is an entirely different deal.
If I was planning to have kids, I’d be worried about this influence in a way I don’t think anyone ever needed to worry about me.
is there any confirmed reason to believe that rainbow parties, like snap bracelets, jelly bracelets, the choking game, so-called pregnancy pacts, aspirin and coke, and about a million other supposed teen sex related moral crises, from the contemporary world to a century ago, are anything more than deviancy amplification spirals? cause really, all you ever seem to hear about this stuff is a bunch of secondhand media hype about the unstoppable decline of the morality of our culture and our children and, quite honestly, I’ve never seen numbers that reflect the need for panic. shoot, they still haven’t found anyone to confirm those girls in Mass organized a damn thing in regard to their pregnancies, but the hype remains.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about what our sons and daughters are consuming, and what that’s teaching them. we ABSOLUTELY SHOULD. but all this fervor over buzzwords/phrases like “rainbow parties,” almost always without any hard research behind it, is just a bunch of conservative bullshit engineered to scare parents and teens alike, and create stigma around a more sexually open environment in which masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality, etc, are discussed in honest and candid ways. it’s conservative bullshit and I think, as feminists, we need to think long and hard about who we jump into bed with, ideologically speaking.
and really, what it comes down to, is actively teaching, and modeling, your values to your children. I was exposed to all kinds of misogynistic media, high risk behavior and general shittiness as a kid, as I imagine most American kids who move in mainstream society are, but I still managed to retain the values that were actively taught and modeled to me. I just really think we need to be careful about not reinforcing BS that’s coming straight from the hiveminds, or could just as easily be, of the people who keep us repressed to begin with.
Zardeenah – about Rapunzel, that is interesting. I like the older version better too! Wonder why they amended it, or actually I don’t…
Deaf Feminist Punk: I think the Publisher’s Weekly Review’s definition of Raunch Culture on Amazon’s review of the book sums up Levy’s definition: “It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women’s movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism.”
I kind of like the idea that raunch culture is about glorifying “the appearance of” over “the feeling of.”
UnFit: yeah, I agree. Someone was mentioning to me that there’s a specific reason driving accidents are dramatically higher with kids from 16-19 vs 20+ and that’s that brains are still maturing. The ability to apply the right judgment to peer pressure just isn’t there to the same degree at a younger age.
What the hell is wrong with Abba?!
*sniff*
Orodemniades — I adore Abba. She and I dance to Mamma Mia songs all the time. The words to that particular song, though, are about wanting to marry a rich man. While I have no issue with the general theme of “All the things I could do/If I had a little money,” I don’t think that’s the best way to go about it. I also think “it’s a rich man’s world” may have a core of reality to it, but it’s not a helpful message to send a little girl.
likeawoman – rainbow parties and the slap bracelet thing might be nonsense, but the choking game is actually real – we did that all the time when I was in school in the late 90s.
“corporatheowhatthefuckeverocracy”
hahahahahahhhaah
OK, 16 posts on this topic and no one has pointed out the obvious?
That’s the freakin’ cutest kid I’ve seen in a very damn long time! My ovaries just twitched.
It’s a fine line to walk. My daughter is going on six, and she looooves Disney princesses. It grates on me that she likes to play games in which I rescue her (Wendy and Peter Pan is a big fave). I tried her out on Mulan and she didn’t care for it. (There is hope, though; she got totally blown away by Tigress in “Kung Fu Panda”. She wants lessons now.) We push the positive messages: stand up for yourself, it doesn’t matter what people think of your looks, being smart is kewl. Still, the dominant culture sneaks in and sabotages us.
And that is a cute kid. (Just not as cute as mine, but I’m biased.)
Disney princesses are *not* allowed in my house. My daughter’s favorite shows are Yo Gabba Gabba and Dora/Diego (although, crappily enough, Dora’s been getting heavily “princessy” lately), and right now she’s very stuck on Wall-e and other kinds of robots. Also, Kung Fu Panda is big. She calls regular pandas Kung Fu Panda. And of course, her old friend Elmo.
I really feel, though, like I’m having to hold some sort of flaming sword of feminist righteousness at my front door and batting away the Barbies and Bratz dolls and Disney Princesses and toddler halter tops and things like the t-shirts my mom bought that said “Spoiled” and “Daddy’s wrapped around my finger” on it.
I mean, gender-wise, I think as longs as there’s a balance made available, it’s fine. My daughter plays just as intensely with her cars as she does with her toys, not to mentioned the more ungendered toys like blocks and crayons.. Really, though, my concern is the consumerism angle. One of the biggest wishes I have for my daughter is that she becomes saavy about advertising. I really don’t feel comfortable with any of the “corporate logo” character toys. It disturbs me that my daughter exhibits so much brand recognition at an early age.
Oops. In my above post
should read “with her cars as she does with her dolls.
L-K and Ignatz, thanks!
Vanessa — I know; it’s tough. We’ve kept Barbie and Bratz away (I’m a fan of Sascha dolls!) but if she gets them as presents, she seems to always figure out if I hide or lose them. I don’t want to be one of those parents writing mass emails to people dictating what they should bring or put in party bags or whatever. The only thing I do buy that’s Disney are nightgowns, which I know is breaking my own rules, but they’re so inexpensive and colorful, and she refuses to wear PJs.
My daughter seems to still be in a stage of liking stuffed animals better than dolls. And movies about animals as much or better than those about people, eg Winnie the Pooh. Even those aren’t totally kosher though. I mean — all the Pooh characters are male except Kanga, and she’s in the typical caretaking, usually housebound role. OK in itself, but it could use more balance.
I read “The Lolita Effect” a couple of months ago because it dealt with the way that beauty and sexuality is being marketed to little girls AND offered counteractive measures (mostly opening up a clear channel of communication with young girls). It depressed me so badly that I had to sit it down several times.
As for the princess stories, when I was a child (not all that long ago) I really hated the princess stories. I was a rough and tumble tomboy and it angered me that the guys in the stories got to do all the “cool” stuff like rescuing the princess, fighting off dragons, etc. And to top it off the princess often wasn’t given more personality than was minimally required by the plot.
My cousin has young daughters that are at that age where they’re trying to figure out their stance on the “rescue me” syndrome. I’m trying to slip them feminist propaganda in the form of web comics.
I’ve got a couple of memories regarding clothes. I remember wearing halter tops when I was in grade school back in the seventies. I certainly didn’t think of them as sexual, they were great in hot weather. No one that I am aware of thought of them as sexualizing me, but it is possible that I was shielded from that sort of thing.
The second one was about me wearing shorts to high school. My father SCREAMED at me about wearing them home, saying that “my fleshy thighs” might be too much for some neighborhood guy to handle. (which was INCREDIBLY racist and classist, given that my high school was in a primarily African-American and low income area of the city) My mom, however, wasn’t having any of that shit, if I wanted to wear shorts I was going to wear them, since she rightly saw his argument as full of it. However, my dad did put the thought in my head that shorts were somehow a sexual article of clothing, something I never once thought of before. That’s messed up.
No matter what the age of a person, clothes aren’t inherently sexualizing. We state that all the time when it comes to adult women, and yet too often we turn around and say that halter tops sexualize young girls, when all they do is mirror what is currently the big trend.
I do get the worry, though. I have a 10 year old girl, and now that she is nearing puberty I find myself looking at her clothes with a critical eye. (I’m not going to stop her from wearing her uber short skorts though, she loves them way more than shorts). But the facts remain that pedophiles don’t prey on kids because they are sexualized, they prey on kids because they are kids. Just like rapists prey on women because they are women, not because they were wearing a short skirt and a halter top.
I think that, honestly, you don’t have to worry about your daughter being too influenced. If you do your job right, she’ll grow up to be a smart, independent woman regardless of what she watched or played with as a kid.
I played with Barbies, loved Disney princesses, had a home kitchen, and baby dolls. Barbies were my favorite things to play with and I never expressed any desire to play with “boy’s” toys. Based on all this, you’d think that I would be all about domesticity. But I’m still a feminist, and I’m majoring in neuroscience at my college. I’m still not sure if I want kids or not. Ironically, one of my good friends who claims she was always a “tomboy” wants nothing more than to get married and raise her children (and frequently gets me angry with her anti-feminist moments).
Don’t worry so much about what she hears or plays with. Your job is more about giving her a critical eye to some of the trends. And there’s no telling why she might things so fascinating. Maybe she loves the Disney princesses because they sing! She loves Barbie dolls because she can make up stories with them!
I agree with Manda.
I loved to play with Barbies when I was little. But mostly, I enjoyed setting up their little worlds. If the Sims had been around when I was young, I’da been all over that shit.
My DD will be 4 in a matter of days and to date not a single Barbie nor Disney Princess has darkened our door and stayed. The few that tried to infiltrate were sent packing to the Goodwill. My daughter doesn’t seem to care about them at all. We don’t talk about them, don’t buy shit w/their pix on them (backpacks, PJs, pencil cases, notebooks, wands, dresses, curtains, bedspreads, plates, spoons, pillows….wait, you get the idea). My daughter did see Cinderella on DVD at a friend’s house, but doesn’t ask for them. I don’t have as much of a problem with princesses as with Disney princesses. She does have “dress up dresses’ and can don them at any time. If she uses her mind to become “a helpful princess” (her words), then that’s fine.
What I can’t stand about the consumerist/raunch culture is that it takes the creativity out of their lives. Want to be a princess?? Well kiddo, here’s a kit w/all the aforementioned crap in it. No thinking required. Want to be popular as a teen and young adult?? Well skank, here’s the exact sleazy dance step to execute and the exact see-through top to be wearing while executing. Anything else is, you know, not kewl. And whatevs you do girl, don’t use yer brains.
Totally OT and probably unhelpful, but I want to smoosh that baby’s face. She’s redonkulous cute.
Lauren, compliments about my little one are totally on topic! And thanks.
I don’t have kids, so I’m completely working from my own experience of having been a kid, but I think it’s really hard to shield a kid completely from that kind of influence. My parents recognized that princesses and Barbies were going to come into my life, and they were careful to talk with me about what it all meant for girls and for me and what I wanted to do with my life.
The result was things like a tea party we had where my brother and his best friend dressed in my princess costumes and my best friend and I dressed in my dad’s clothes. Or my Barbie – she was the brunette (I thought the blonde looked trashy), she had the home office instead of the Dream House, and she didn’t need a Ken doll because she had a career. And a silver Corvette that she paid for with her own money.
Yeah, I was The Weird Kid. But it served me well into adulthood, and I managed to grow up with a worldview that it didn’t matter whether I wanted to play with Transformers or with My Little Ponies. Because my parents weren’t worried about me playing with “girl toys,” just about me not being pigeonholed into them.
Oh, and cutest. Baby. Ever. I’m gonna bite that little nose. Yes, I am. Yes, I am gonna bite that little nose. Aww, snookums.
Except not, y’know, actually bite it, because that would be weird.
that’s such a cute little girl. i also agree that much of what is being pushed at girls today is very toxic, it remains that way even after you graduate high school and go into college. it’s sad that so many of the professors will actively encourage the sterotypes. it really sucks when you have classmates who refuse to take you seriously just for being a girl, especially when there are almost 5 times as many girls as there are guys in the class. i just hope that i don’t have any professors that bad this time.
Have you heard about Princess Bubble?