Two self-identified “women’s studies feminists,” Melinda Gallagher and Emily Kramer, start a group that “hosts parties where women disrobe and bump and grind in order to ‘explore, express, and define sexuality for themselves.’” Other young feminists “have equated ‘dancing at a strip club’ with ‘volunteering at a women’s shelter’ in its potential to ‘radicalize’ women in a positive way.”
Meanwhile, the head of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, refuses to take a decisive stand on the popular Girls Gone Wild videos when asked, snapping, “I think they should [take their clothes off on camera] if they want to! What does that have to do with feminism?”
Forty-one percent of teenage girls responding to a survey published in the June 2006 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine say they have had “unwanted sex.” In most cases, it was “‘because they feared the partner would get angry if denied sex.’”
This twisted state of affairs is explored in Wendy Shalit’s new book, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good.
One of the things Shalit does best—both here and in her previous bestseller,
A Return to Modesty
With rare and refreshing insight, she repeatedly points out the irony of a world in which budding feminists are urged to suppress their emotions and desires, make sure their bodies are in shape, and make those bodies available to all and sundry—in short, to behave exactly like the women feminists claimed they were reacting against.
“The plain fact,” Shalit writes, as she observes the hypersexualized cultural and educational messages that face girls at every turn, “is that girls today have to be ‘bad’ to fit in, just as the baby boomers needed to be good. And we are finding that this new script may be more oppressive than the old one ever was. . . . Consider how girls today need to be thin, available, and always sexy. At the same time they are supposed to have no hopes, no messy feelings, no vulnerability. They must be aggressive, yet somehow inviting.”
How did we get to this point? Shalit traces “the idea of sleeping around as a power thing” back to the late ’60s and early ’70s. With the introduction of the birth-control pill and the accompanying sexual revolution, many women saw a chance to eliminate the sexual double standard that tacitly permitted promiscuity for males only.
But, Shalit argues, women did themselves no favors by trying to adapt themselves to what they saw as the male standard—which often meant the lowest common denominator. Unwittingly, they helped to create a society where their daughters and granddaughters feel pressured to lose their innocence at younger and younger ages, to prove themselves strong and mature. They are encouraged to suppress their emotions to the point where, Shalit says, “they are ready to embark on a lifetime of meaningless encounters.”
Ironically but predictably, as chronicled by several other authors besides Shalit—including Laura Sessions Stepp and Miriam Grossman—“sleeping around as a power thing” has left young women feeling powerless, used, and “in abject terror of asserting themselves in relationships.” It has created a culture of “girl-bashing” where “boys’ right to hurt the young women” is rarely questioned.
To say that feminists have done their utmost to promote the sexual exploitation of women seems so contrary to all our ideas about feminism, that some people, despite the evidence all around them, refuse to see it.
Thus, in the Washington Post’s Book World, reviewer Jennifer Howard scoffs, “Last time I checked my Feminist Manual, letting it all hang out in public didn’t appear on the must-do list.”
Many of the younger women profiled in Shalit’s book, including some who have been mercilessly mocked for dressing modestly or protesting the reading of sexually explicit books aloud in class, might point out that Howard needs to dust off that manual, because she clearly hasn’t checked it in a while.
Howard also pokes fun at Shalit for being “surprised when a Wesleyan undergraduate ‘rejects sexual exhibitionism even though she identifies as a feminist.’” Conveniently, Howard forgets to mention that the undergraduate in question, Sophie Pollitt-Cohen, is the daughter of Katha Pollitt, one of the best-known contemporary feminist advocates of sexual exhibitionism.
Had Howard paid a little more attention to this point, she might have understood the significance of Sophie’s rejection of her mother’s values. Because Sophie is representative of a generation that Shalit refers to as “fourth-wave feminists,” who are shaking off the influence of what are commonly called the “second-wave” (Pollitt’s generation) and “third-wave” (Gallagher and Kramer’s generation) feminists.
These girls—often less conservative in their beliefs than one might expect—have returned to the roots of feminism as they put on “Pure Fashion” shows, hold “Girlcotts” against suggestive T-shirts, and generally fight to defend women’s right to dignity and self-respect. Fortunately for her readers’ spirits, which might otherwise be weighed down by some of the heartbreaking stories and studies she shares, another thing Shalit does well is remain optimistic and focus on these positive forces working against the seaminess of the broader culture.
For at bottom, this book is about much more than sexy T-shirts and stripping parties and the problems they represent. It’s about one of our most fundamental needs. Beneath all our society’s obsessions with sex and superficiality and outward appearances, Shalit believes, women—and men as well—are really looking for “the love that brings out the best in us and in others . . . the ennobling love that persists.”
Though we may have lost our way, Shalit can see signs of an emerging generation that refuses to accept the counterfeit their elders have sold them, and is holding out for something better. This is what gives her hope, and this is why, in the pages of what might have been a depressing read, she is able to communicate some of that hope to her readers as well.
Gina R. Dalfonzo is editor of The Point at BreakPoint Online.
Also read Gina's interview with Wendy Shalit.
