pagesofjulia

My word, I don’t know where to begin. It’s been an eventful day.

First the announcement that I am a GEEK. I had the most FABULOUS time today at my first meeting of my Database Searching class today.

This is a grad school class I’m taking through my MLS (Master’s of Library Science) alma mater, just for continuing education’s sake. I admit I had some stress about it (and its future impact on my life and free time) this week, but it was a really great way to spend a Saturday morning! I’m excited about the implications of database searching: its logic, the binary nature (of the computerized databases) and creative nature (of the human side: at indexing, and at searching), and our impact, as information professionals, on What The People In General Know. The two instructors in this course (who are both colleagues of mine, lucky me) are remarkable as a teaching team, which is a large part of what makes this course special. They have a really fun rapport: teasing, informal, bantering, intelligent, and expert in the fields of searching and librarianship as well as education. I don’t think I’ve ever seen team teaching done so effectively.

Then I spent several hours with my mother, who hemmed some pants for me (thanks mom, no I still don’t want my own sewing machine, you do a great job). We can never get enough time to catch up. I love you.

Then I came home and the Husband fried some chicken and I read a good bit in Mr. Playboy. (I’m sorry if you’ve been following this blog and waiting for me to move on to a new book. It’s almost 500 pages and I’m now halfway through.)

I still find Hugh Hefner a fascinating and contradictory figure. He’s obviously conflicted within himself; he rebelled against the norms of his youth, and thought he was doing everyone (including women) a great service in liberation. He really DID (I think) do some great services to a number of causes, including (fairly decisively) civil rights, as well as consumerism/materialism (questionable, but the US seems to have accepted this as a Good so who am I to argue), and abortion, divorce, and birth control – perhaps in service of Men Having Sex Freely, but I think he has a point that he’s liberated women somewhat as well. His assistance of women’s lib or women’s rights is a complicated question, though.

I might get a little personal here. Warning.

I was raised by two ardent feminists and children of the 70’s, and COMMUNISTS (omg) among other things. I’m proud of my father for being, still, the greatest male feminist I’ve ever known. My mother, though married (legally, not in a church) still carries her maiden name, as does my secular “god”-mother and two of my three aunts. I support them. When I married, I took the Husband’s name, not because I’m *not* a feminist, but because my path was paved by Karen, Susan, Janet, Laura, and countless of their contemporaries. Through their rebellion, they’ve freed my path to change my last name without feeling that I’ve given up my identity to this Man. (Who was, by the way, surprised that I wanted his name at all.) If I were married in the 1970’s I would have kept my name, I think. My mother and so many other role models have allowed me to complacently take my husband’s name and retain my Self.

So, I read about Gloria Steinem’s exposé in Show magazine of the Playboy clubs. I knew of this in a pop-culture sense: the famous feminist took an undercover position as a Bunny at the NYC club with the purpose of observing and reporting on the objectification of women there. Beware of coming in with a preconceived conclusion: as my Brother Gerber warns me about Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the conclusions are tarnished by the author’s preconceptions. (I LOVED this book and agree with its conclusions, but I share Gerber’s concerns about its mass appeal.) Steinem is an admirable figure. But (says Mr. Playboy by Steven Watts, page 238 and thereabouts) her fellow Bunnies argued that they were liberated, and empowered, by their employment. If sex is power, they were paid to exercise their power, in their own ways. They made money and felt that they chose their own destinies.

I once worked at a local beer bar – which will remain nameless, but my local friends will recognize it. I’m a serious beer enthusiast and have held several beer-expert jobs, and once wrote a local column on the subject. When I served beer at this bar, I wore a plaid miniskirt, knee-high socks, and Mary Janes (later Doc Martens which were also appreciated), and I was told by a manager that “We Sell Sex” which I found very offensive (I am not a prostitute!) but was true in a way. As a tomboy, this was an interesting experience.

I think I can understand a little bit what the Bunnies meant. In a way, I felt empowered, and excited, by dressing up this way and playing a role. I made some damn good money. I got to talk about beer, over the heads of the men I served. They were impressed. It was fun and profitable and empowering. I also moved on, putting on more clothes by the time I was 24 and finding a professional career well before 30. And, I did this in the 20-oughts (what are we calling those years? 2000-2010), with all the benefits earned by my mother and her contemporaries. We still experienced, and experience, sexual harassment and objectification, but our lives today are easier than my mother’s was in ways I know I can’t imagine.

I think gender politics are extraordinarily complicated. I consider myself one of the easier women I know to understand. I will tell you what I think if you ask. I don’t play any games like saying “nothing” if you ask what’s wrong, when I’m really angry; I don’t encourage the Husband to compliment women I’m jealous of and then punish him for it; I don’t make him guess. (You poor heterosexual men; I think hetero women can be cruelly complicated.) But I’m still complicated: I want to be one of the guys (and I AM a tomboy) and I mostly keep up when we play, but don’t leave me behind and defenseless either, and I want to be a Princess sometimes, too… what’s a poor guy to do? I think that I still sympathize with Hefner. I think he did a lot of good for a number of causes. I think he objectified women, and especially in his private/personal life was rather deplorable in his relationships with women. But a lot of our admirable *public* figures were not admirable private figures; he’s one of these, but not spectacularly so. (I’m a huge admirer of Hemingway. Need I say more?) His impact on Women In Society is very complicated, and that’s all I’m willing to commit to at this time.

I award you a prize if you’ve made it through this post. Sorry for being long-winded! But I found I had a lot to say today.

I’m off to work on our local trails tomorrow. I’ll be putting on gloves and lifting chunks of sidewalk and I still want to be sexy, and the Husband loves me and will be working alongside. Chew on that. 🙂 Enjoy your Sunday.

Filed under: book reviews, musings | Tagged: biography, gender, nonfiction, personal | 6 Comments »