This I Believe: My Journey to Feminism

Ever since I was a young girl I remember having a unique picture of what it would be like to grow up and become an adult. While many of my friends dreamed of their future husbands and of having babies, I fantasized about a career and imagined wearing fancy designer suits and high heels at work. As this month is National Women’s History Month (Matilda Joslyn Gage, this year's honoree, is pictured here) it is fitting that I take a moment to reflect on how I came to be passionate about women's issues and the media. Motivated by the This I believe Site, "a national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives," I will devote this week's post to discussing the remarkable women and events that helped shape my core values.

It was not until I began my feminist studies at USC that I realized my concept of the ideal adult woman was based on my mother and my grandmother, both of whom during my childhood had high-power careers in the fashion industry. Since my mother was rarely home to cook us dinner at night or to do the laundry, I never inherited the belief that cooking and cleaning were a woman’s sole duties. While I have the utmost respect for mothers and housewives, I feel I was lucky enough to learn at an early age that women, just like men, could thrive in the business world. My mom and dad left for work together every morning and came home at the same time each night and as far as I knew that was just the way things were.

As I got older I started to notice that my mom was around less than the other moms. She never helped me with my homework or picked up the dry-cleaning for my dad. An aspect of my mother’s life which really stands out in my memory is the obsession with looks and appearances. Since she worked in the fashion business, she was always impeccably put together from head to toe. At the time we were living in the suburbs of New York, and I remember frequently visiting the New York City offices where my parents worked. It was a family business run by my grandparents, but my grandmother was clearly the matriarch. All of the female employees were attractive, wore black pants suits or skirt suits, stockings, and dressy shoes (the "power suit" style of dress is pictured here). This to me was the image of success. It is these enlightening experiences with professional and career driven-women that have helped to shape my understanding of the role of women in our society. I believe that it is possible to be both a great mother and a successful businesswoman. Barbara Marcus, president of Scholastic Books, on balancing a career and motherhood explains, "If you have work you love, that not only broadens you and makes you more interesting, it's also a positive for your home life." I feel blessed to have been in the presence of such powerful females, because it instilled in me the desire to help women achieve the respect, recognition, and opportunity that they deserve.

As a teenager I became aware of the expectations forced upon women in our culture, and was angered by the constant objectification of females in magazines and on television. As stereotypes about women are perpetuated through the media, women will be stripped of their self-esteem and sense of worth to a detrimental degree. Author of Odd Girl Out: Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and staffer of the Empower Program, Rachel Simmons discusses princess culture in film. She says, "The princess is the last frontier of acceptable girliness. It points to how crazy our times have become that I, as a feminist, am promoting princess culture because, hey, at least you don't have a twelve year-old wearing a thong." The devastating effects of our societies repressive attitudes toward women are reflected by the overwhelmingly male dominated business world. Growing up as a girl in image- obsessed Los Angeles I have witnessed first hand just how misleading the media can be. Yet despite my frustration with the media, I am equally fascinated by its ability to impact people and communicate on such a grand scale. Through my blog and ultimately in a professional setting I aspire to break down some of the great many fallacies about women by exposing the media's hypocrisy.

The future holds endless possibility for me; and for that I thank women like my grandmother and those before her who dared to challenge the patriarchy. Like the famous writer and women's rights activist Gloria Steinem said (pictured here), “Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is the empowerment in itself.” For the young girls who are not raised with an air of strength and self respect, it is important that those of us who are step up to the plate to show the world that their stereotypes are tired and outdated. I believe that anything less is inexcusable. What do you believe?

Tyra Banks: Top Model or Top Waddle?

Between New York fashion week, the Britney Spears meltdown, the deaths of two runway models in Latin America, and award show season, the month of February was chock full of celebrity gossip and controversy over the portrayal of women in the media. When the eighth season of former super model Tyra Banks’s America’s Next Top Model premiered last week, it became clear that this month would be equally as scandalous. The cast of America's Next Top Model (pictured on the right) was predictable; thirty gorgeous women with skeleton-like figures. But, there was a surprise twist; Miss Banks selected not just one, but two “plus size” girls to move into the Los Angeles mansion to duke it out for the coveted prize of becoming America’s Next Top Model! Viewers were probably supposed to be impressed by the show’s effort to convey a diverse spectrum of beauty, but considering Banks's recent crusade against the media for their scrutiny about her own weight gain, and her talk show which regularly encourages audience members to love their bodies at any size, Tyra Banks just ends up looking like an enormous hypocrite.

As a former Victoria's Secret model who has graced the covers of countless magazines, Tyra Banks is one of the most well known names in the fashion industry. In recent months The Tyra Banks Show host has taken heavy criticism for her recent weight gain. When tabloids published a picture of Tyra Banks in a bikini (pictured here), captioned “America’s Next Top Waddle,” she angrily spoke out. The January cover story of People Magazine, titled "Tyra Banks Fights Back: You Call This Fat?” featured the 5’10,” 160 pound former model in the same bikini she was ridiculed for. She was quoted as saying, “I get so much mail from young girls who say, ‘I look up to you, you’re not as skinny as everyone else, I think you’re beautiful'. So when they say that my body is ‘ugly’ and ‘disgusting,’ what does that make those girls feel like?" Tyra even joked in the interview that she is having too much fun eating pancakes at IHOP to worry about her cellulite. On her talk show, too, she is taking a stand against the media, even dressing up in a fat suit to show how overweight people are mistreated and harassed on a daily basis.

After almost two decades of weight watching and calorie counting, Tyra Banks has certainly earned the right to enjoy a carbohydrate or two every now and then. But, while she preaches about acceptance and inner beauty to her talk show audience, America’s Next Top Model seems to counteract any forward progress Banks might be making. How can women feel beautiful when they turn on the television and see their supposed role model manufacturing size zero Barbie Doll wannabes? In response to accusations of such hypocrisy, on The Tyra Banks Show she said, “Even though I try to have different body types on Top Model, let’s face it, a lot of the girls are skinny. So what I’ve done for season eight, which is right here, right now is I’m having two full-figured models. I have been trying so hard to have two and I finally got my way. So you’ll be seeing that this season. That’s my part.” While I congratulate her for having two “plus-size” contestants on the show, it hardly excuses the fact that she is making millions of dollars off of a television concept that degrades women. It is as if she is patting herself on the back for attempting to solve a problem that she has significantly helped to create.

As they say, actions speak louder than words, and it is only a matter of time before her talk show audience catches on to her very apparent and offensive inconsistencies. While she assures her audience that she is content in her new body and that they should be too, having a show about the glamorous life of modeling completely devalues and discredits anything she might preach to the “average woman" about loving oneself despite how the media says we should look and feel. I am not quite sure how the television host and former Victoria's Secret angel has balanced these multiple personalities for this long, but pretty soon she will realize that you can't have your cake and eat it too!