feminist blogs

Happy May Day. As people around the world celebrate the struggles of laborers, and as many immigrants and supporters of immigrant rights set off on protest marches around this country, I wanted to link you to one of my favorite blog posts of the last week: Sudy’s explanation of kyriarchy, a concept coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza.

It’s a useful neologism for an idea that comes up a lot: multiple, overlapping, shifting pyramids of power. Try to focus too hard on just one, try to figure out with some kind of precision exactly which individuals are at the top, and you lose sight of the entire awful kyriarchy, that has any number of ways to crush people. It’s another trick that power structures play to distract you. I’ve heard this kind of concept discussed before — some people I know just use the word “hierarchies” to talk about this, and in some feminist writing this is what “patriarchy” means. But I like the word kyriarchy, not least because it doesn’t just focus on “fathers” as the top of the pyramid.

For me the word summons up a bizzare image of holographic, floating, disappearing and reappearing ancient step pyramids. Because that’s how complex the overlapping of power can be, and how surreal. Sometimes we talk about this stuff like patriarchy, white supremacy, or homophobia is a bunch of craggy old white guys having a meeting down the street where we can kick the doors in and turn over the table piled high with money and blood. Too bad that the history of oppressive cultural attitudes, social enforcement, the accumulation of religion and greed and control and security is never that simple. But don’t think I mean it’s all ideology either. Kyriarchy kills. Don’t let it get behind you — or under you.

Thanks to Going Gray in the comments to this post, I found her blog as well as the site Going Gray, Looking Great, a site for Diana Jewell’s book of the same name. Lots of great information about transitioning there, as well as colors to wear with gray and photos of great gray hair.

I haven’t yet done anything with the color, though I got a haircut yesterday. I was willing to chop it short, but I left the cut in the hands of the stylist with some instructions (i.e., GET THIS FUCKING HAIR OUT OF MY EYES OR I’M GOING AFTER IT WITH NAIL SCISSORS!!!!), and wound up with something much more textured but still more or less a chin-length bob. Which looks great. And given that there’s a good deal of texturizing, there’s a lot of shorter pieces which won’t take long to grow out.

I hadn’t been planning on getting a haircut yet, but I had a job interview yesterday afternoon, and since my hair was both showing roots and overgrown, I had to fix one or the other in order to look polished. And since I both still couldn’t stain my bathtub AND I suspect I’ve developed an allergy to a chemical in hair dye, I went with the cut.

I’ll be 40 this year (yipe!). And 40 is a Big Birthday. And when one is staring down the business end of a Big Birthday, one starts to ponder. One of the things I’m pondering is what it means to be a middle-aged (eep!) woman in this culture.

One thing that it means is that I’m no longer the target for handwringing articles urging me to get married and have children before it’s too late. It’s already assumed to be too late! Pressure’s off on that score.

Another thing it means is that I face somewhat of a dilemma: do I opt out of trying to look young, even if that means a certain amount of invisibility in a culture which prizes feminine youthfulness? Do I try instead to cultivate a look of authoritativeness?

The question before me now is: do I stop coloring my hair and let the gray come in?

I’ve been coloring my hair since college, which is coincidentally when I started getting my first gray hairs. Those weren’t the reason for the dye jobs, though; I was just experimenting. Indeed, one of my first experiments went very awry (I envisioned some kind of blonde highlights in my chestnut-brown hair; I wound up with brassy orange), and when the roots came in, I just picked a darker color and re-did the whole thing. Suddenly, I had auburn hair, and people started noticing it. I got stopped on the street and told how beautiful my hair was (oddly enough, people assumed the haircolor was real, but asked me if I wore colored contact lenses). I enjoyed the attention.

But after a while, more and more gray started coming in, and covering it up became more of a hassle. But still, there wasn’t enough gray yet for me to even consider laying off the dye — I’d always told myself that I’d love to have gray hair, I just didn’t want graying hair. “Gray hair” made me think of my middle-school friend Ellen’s mom — Mrs. W was prematurely gray, and in her mid-30s had lovely, striking silver hair which set off her green eyes.

So I kept dyeing my hair, and trying to keep the root growth to a minimum; as a result, I never really got a sense of just how gray my hair really was, because I couldn’t get a good look at it.

Now, though — I have not been able to color my hair for about two months because I just refinished my bathtub and put my apartment up for sale. I don’t want to do anything that might stain the finish before I have the contract signed. And I noticed the other day, what with there being two months’ worth of roots, that I might just be gray enough, finally.

Unfortunately, I’m not really sure how to proceed here. I don’t want to walk around with a giant skunk stripe of undyed gray hair in the middle of my head. If I switch to henna for the new growth, will that eventually fade out? Do I have to cut it all off and start fresh?

Help!

And feel free to share your thoughts re: gray hair, aging and the way that middle-aged (urk!) women are viewed.

That’s right, I said scrubbing. Scrubbing sweat off of underage boys in a locker room. It’s central part of a new game for the Nintendo DS called Duel Love, in which you play a female transfer student who ends up as the personal trainer for a secret “Fight Club” at her new high school. That’s right, the companies that brought you Pac-Man, Tekken, Power Rangers, Tamagotchi and many more now bring you… scrubbing down sweaty boys and giving them massages!

Romance comics for girls, often featuring delicate, beautiful boys who fall in love with the plucky or cipher-like heroine — or, just as often, fall in love with each other — are nothing new in Japan. It used to be that you could pretend this was just another Or in the United States; check the Manga section of your local Barnes & Noble. Dating games based in similar scenarios (often called otome, the Japanese word for maiden) are nothing new either, but they’re getting to be bigger and bigger-budget projects. And utilizing new technology as well… as you can see in the trailer below, you have to actually scrub back and forth with the Nintendo DS styles, and here’s a picture instructing the player to blow into the microphone to clear away the steamed-up shower stalls. Why, whatever on earth for?

(more…)

God willing.

From Feministing: Wal-Mart continues to be gross.

Thanks to Mike for the link.

Today.

Ack!

And, uh, she does some other cool stuff too.

Gloria Steinem is 73.

Fans of the writer and feminist organizer will be glad to know she’s still a fierce advocate of gender equality. She’s still outrageous. And though it shouldn’t matter, she’s still as thin, elegant and beautiful as she was at the height of the women’s movement.

Well thank God she’s still skinny! I was worried I’d have to revoke my NOW membership if she got ugly and fat in her old age.

Despite the obnoxious interviewer, Steinem is as fantastic as ever. She gives a solid nod at young women’s activism, and points out that even though marriage is an unequal institution, it offers some really valuable benefits:

Q: But you got married?

A: Yes. I was 66, he was 60 and we were in love and wanted to live together. Probably we wouldn’t have married if it hadn’t been for his visa problems. But it turned out to be very, very important that we did. He was able to be covered by my health insurance when he got sick. He had brain cancer and died at the end of ‘03. We were kindred spirits.

The obvious implication? People who are barred from the institution don’t have access to these very important benefits.

But my favorite part of the interview is this:

Q: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?

A: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.

Okay, well… hello, everyone! For some unfathomable reason I agreed to be a guest blogger here this week – it’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought and effort Jill has gone through to bring in new voices here, and being asked…it’s just, well. I don’t write. Much, anyway. And when I do, it’s often to moan and whine and complain about the fact that I am writing ;). Like…uh… I’m doing now. I dread putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys, as the case may be).

Still, here I am, so here we go. A little introduction.

My name is Nanette, I publish an international online magazine called Human Beams and I’m fairly certain we both are in the midst of a mid-life crisis, one result of which is a sometimes severe case of belly button bedazzlement. Next year, you see, is a milestone year for both of us – the magazine turns 10, I turn 50, and a few months ago it – quite suddenly – became really, really important to me that by the time we reached those milestones, things would Be Different. I am not, yet, sure how – we’ll have the same focus, of course … human rights, civil rights, social justice, so on - but I am positive that unless something changes I will have somehow failed. At what, I don’t know… maybe in being happy with what I am doing for another 10 years.

I won’t drone on about that for the next week or anything, though… I do have some topics in mind to bring up this week. But first… I imagine that most of you are not familiar with me, and those who are might remember me from the comments sections of various posts (including some here), most often speaking about racial issues, or taking someone to task about this or that thing dealing with race or what I feel is an injustice or whatever. I want to explain something about that – but not just yet. Next post, maybe.

For now, hello and please pass the hormones.

Happy birthday to me.

I’m spending it at Yearly Kos. If you’re around, I’ll be speaking on a panel at 1pm, and you should come.

1. Modest Mouse - Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset
2. Tom Waits - Hang Down Your Head
3. Death Cab for Cutie - Company Calls
4. Yo La Tengo - Deeper Into Movies
5. Lyle Lovett - My Baby Don’t Tolerate
6. Maxwell - For Lovers Only
7. John Coltrane - They Say It’s Wonderful
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Girl at the Bottom of My Glass
9. The Kinks - Starstruck
10. Bright Eyes - It’s Cool, We Can Still Be Friends

And a Friday Birthday Meme:

If you could go back and talk to your 24-year-old self, what would you tell her/him? And if you’re even more of a baby than I am, what would you want your future 24-year-old self to keep in sight and remember?

And, because I’m asking all of you for your deep life advice, I will reciprocate with the Ask Me Anything game — ask whatever you want, and I’ll answer by Sunday evening. It’ll also give me something to do at the airport.