Grandmother part 3: The face of feminism

This is part 3 of my 3 part series on my two grandmother interviews.

This post is about something very interesting that both my grandmothers alluded to, and which was also mentioned in The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

I asked Kevin is she considered herself a feminist. She responded with "No I wouldn't." She said that, although she believes in equality and most of the feminist agenda she did not want to be painted with that brush. She said that feminist were un-lady-like, bad people and generally awful "creatures" and that she didn't want to be that. She said that "I was beautiful, and successful, and I never wanted to be called a feminist to hurt my image". I find it incredibly interesting that a progressive, forward thinking, working woman did not want to be a feminist. Wolf points out the media turning the feminists into a bad thing. Nina said the same thing, that feminists artists were seen as "bitchy, complaining women" and that she could never consider herself a feminist. It's very interesting that the media was so successful. She also laughed when I asked her the question, "But I married a man... I'm not a lesbian". I was confused at first until I realised that she thought feminist meant lesbian.

Grandmother interview Part 2: Nina Bentley

This is part 2 of my three part series on my grandmother interviews. This one is focusing on the story of Nina Bentley.

My grandmother told me how, growing up her father was an undereducated italian stowaway. He married a younger woman who decided to work to support her carpenter husband. She describes how she used to cross streets to avoid walking by her parents, as she was ashamed of her parents non-traditional family structure. "All I wanted" she described, "was to be a part of a traditional family."

My grandmother told me how, when she met my grandfather, he was the perfect thing for her. She said that he was an army man, and a smart international relations guy.

My grandmother told me how she loved her husband, and wanted to support him in any way possible. He wanted a traditional wife, which was all she wanted to be. "We were well-fitted" she said. She became an artist and a mother, trying to raise her kids to be the best people possible. These two things dominated her life for a long time, and when she moved to Zurich she became part of the expat mothers community that dominated social life.

My grandmother told me how that both the expat community and the community in Great-neck where they had lived before required something of her, they needed her to be the perfect housewife. "I had to lay the perfect table, bake the perfect roasts, etc." She was happy to do it as well, because as she said "I wanted to be traditional".

Grandmother interview part 1: Kevin Garland

This will be a three part series about my two different grandmother interviews I conducted with my two grandmothers. This first bit is about my maternal grandmother, Kevin.

My grandmother told me about how she was named "Kevin" because her father had originally wanted a boy for a child, not a girl. She told me about how she had to work to put herself through college, because her father did not want to "waste his money on a woman's education".

My grandmother told me how she was a "Canadette", the Canadian version of a "rockette", and was, as my grandfather described it "incredibly beautiful". She was one of the chorus dancers for many years, including time into her motherhood.

My grandmother told me how, even after she was married and had my aunt, she didn't want to be a suburban mother, a typical 1960's woman. She thought, and I believe correctly so, that she was smarter than that. Even after having my mother, and my grandfather's growing success in banking, she did not want to stop working. So, she returned to graduate school, and received a master's degree in Urban Planning. She went on to work at many different establishments and become quite powerful in the business world of Toronto. My grandfather described how he was "pleasantly surprised" by her new initiative, because he "always wanted her to be [my mom], you know, darning socks, making food... a typical house-wife," but now he says that he "couldn't imagine a world without such a wonderful, driven, intelligent woman to share [his] life".

My grandmother told me about one of her most difficult decisions. When my grandfather was transfered to Zurich for work, she had to decide whether or not to go with him. A seemingly typical decision for the father at ASL to make, she said that few of her female friends had any idea what a choice like this might be like. She chose to stay in Toronto to continue her professional career, and spend every other week with her family. "It was tough" she said, "but I had to do it".

She is truly an inspirational woman who fought against great odds, and has inspired me personally. Although her struggles will be very different than mine, she will inspire me forever. She was recently put in the top 50 most powerful women in Canada, and indeed ahead of her time.

Madmen sexism part 2: Season 2

This is part of a series on the show Madmen, and its treatment of the issue of gender in the 1960's.

This post will focus on Peggy Olson and Roger Sterling, with some mention of Don. This may contain spoilers if you haven't seen the show.

Peggy Olson, who proudly graduated from a secretarial college is an example of two things in the 1960's. Firstly, her circumstances represent the tough situations facing women, and I believe her actions represent the very beginning of the re-birth of feminism. She begins as a secretary and is dominated by the men in the society. She has very little power in her society and is generally kept down, not only by the men who work at the office, but also by the women. When she doesn't mindlessly agree to Joan Holloway's requests, and tries to prove herself, she incurs Joan's wrath through subtle methods. Joan advises her, in a very pointedly mean statement that "This isn't China, there's no money in virginity" attacking her apparent  "purity". She becomes a copywriter at the end of season 1, and is quickly attacked by her old colleagues. For example, when a copy machine is bought by the building, the secretaries angrily store it in her office. She has to fight to get a new office that is her own, and is attacked when she does that. Furthermore, when she goes out to a bar, people expect her to go home with whatever guy asks her, because she is a woman. Yet, she has advanced in society. She has been able to gain power and raise her status in society, something which hadn't happened in since 1945 at Sterling Cooper.

Roger Sterling offers another interesting view into the 1960's. He is a misogynist generally. He is often dismissive of his wife, and has constant affairs with the young women who either work at the office or come to the office to audition. He uses women fairly constantly, to the point at which he has a heartattack. His then great heartfelt revelation to his old love affair other than is wife is "Look, I want to tell you something because your very dear to me and I hope you understand it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I ever had and I don't care who knows it. I am so glad I got to roam those hillsides." This is a fairly dramatic, and yet still sexist comment, and his great expression of love.

Don offers another interesting view into the sexism in the world. Don's affairs had, for a long time, been private and confidential, yet acceptable. When the later came to light, Betty felt betrayed and left him. It was only until she became pregnant that she accepted him back. I believe that this proves both bad and good things about the society. As a good thing, it shows that women had power in relationships and could do what was right. But, it also shows the female dependance on men, and how Betty needs Don to be able to survive.

The Beauty Myth vs. Madmen

Note: Sorry for the radio silence, I recently went away on a vacation, and didn't have access to the internet. All the following posts were typed on word documents throughout the trip. They were not uploaded until today because I had problems with Blogger.

This is part of a series on comparisons between the show Madmen and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.
I recently watched the first season of Madmen at my brothers recommendation, and for those of you who don't know, Madmen is an AMC TV series about 1960's ad executives on Madison Avenue. It paints a very interesting picture of the life for the wealthy in New York City in the 60's, and I think can open our eyes to some interesting aspects of the beauty myth.
At the beginning of the 1950's, women were supposed to be the homemaker, according to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth. Wolf writes that the ideal self was the self that "aspires to be a good wife, a good mother, and an efficient homemaker" (66).  Before Vogue's Nude Look came into power, this was what was expected of women.
This is evident in Madmen, as Betty Draper, the lead's wife, does very little other than ride horses, raise children and cook for her husband, who often doesn't even come home for dinner. This is all going on, while Don goes into the city, goes to strip clubs and cheats on his wife. Indeed, these double standards are huge, as it is not seen as strange that Don is doing this just because most people are.
Another form of the myth taking place is in Peter Campbell's marriage. In the first episode it is revealed that he is going to marry a woman who he has never met. This lack of closeness in the relationship demonstrates that men were not generally interested in women's personalities but merely wanted a wife to take care of them. To further this, he cheats on her directly before and quickly after the wedding, with Peggy Olson, another worker in the office that he knows.
A further example of the Laissez faire treatment of women comes in the form of Roger Sterling. The generally misogynistic boss, who confides in Don to "remember, whenever god closes a door, he opens a dress". This idea that women were merely faceless opportunities to take a run at is followed by most members of the cast. When Roger declares his ever-lasting love for Joan Halloway, the office manager, she, acknowledging the treatment of women says "Just wait, I hear the 61's are almost in." By referring to women as a car to be bought and exchanged for a newer model every year, I believe that Joan demonstrates the feelings of many different people in the early 1960's.

Identity in Jasmine/TED talks

I recently watched a TED talk entitled: "The Universe is queerer than we suppose" given by Richard Dawkins in February 2003. At one point in the video Dawkins said that every molecule in your body was not there five years ago. We also know from copious amounts of studies that prove that memories are faulty, and that people re-remember experiences in the past. Then, the question remains. If you look at a photograph of yourself five years ago, is that really you? No physical part of yourself from the photo remains now, and chances are good, your memories of that time is faulty and inaccurate. Furthermore, the personality that you have is dissimilar to the one you had in the photo. What part of the you from the photograph remains in the you looking at it. Perhaps then, the person that is staring out at you from the photo is not indeed you, but somebody completely different, a shadow in your past.

This question of identity is a very important one in Jasmine. Her name has changed to represent her changing identity. She has had happiness and sadness in all of her lives, and changed drastically throughout. She often talks about how the version of herself now is not the same person as the she is now. She says that "Jyoti of Hasnapur was not Jasemine, Duff's day mummy and Taylor and Wylie's au-pair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't this Jane Ripplemayer," (127). She goes on to question "Which one of us is the undeteteced murder of a half-faced monster, which of us held a dying husband, which of us was raped and raped ad raped in boats and cars and motel rooms?" (127). Jasmine is struggling to differentiate herself, and find out when she became who she is now.

Jasmine believes that these things can happen that cause the "long playing record" of life to jump, and thrust new life into a "groove that was not prepared to receive it," yet this can only be caused by an extraordinary event taking place (127).  Dawkins seems to disagree, that change is a natural occurrence, and that in five years you are guaranteed to become a new, different person. One does not need a life changing event to become different. It is a law of nature. He also believes that "matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you," (TED Talk). This is similar to Jasmine's concept of life being pushed around, albeit more scientific. The idea of this constant change, guaranteed by the universe makes Jasmine's plight less dramatic in many ways. Perhaps, we all spend our entire lives changing, thus we are all trying to search for our identity. Perhaps Jasmine’s search through India to New York and later Iowa is a natural event that must occur in all of our lives, just, perhaps ours may be less dramatic than hers.  Perhaps our names also change over the years, and that Jasmine's is more a struggle of assimilation than of self-discovery.

Dawkins TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html

Jane as a mother

These will be a series of posts about Jane/Jyoti/Jasmine's roles in the novel, and what that tells us about her.
This will be a fairly short post about Jane's role as Du's mother in Jasmine  by Baharati Mukherjee.

She says that she is "A mother ... no older than a sister" (28) which creates an odd relationship between the two. In one way they are equals, and should be on the same level. They are both expats who have been absorbed into this family. They have both witnessed some kind of devastation, and they both lost someone close to them. We know for the opening chapter that Jane is a widow, and we know that Du made it out of a refugee camp but "his brother didn't". For all intents and purposes, these two are in a similar situation, and have dealt with similar problems in their lives. The dynamic between them, as a result, is not that of a typical parent child relationship. She is not quick to scold him about tobacco in his room, and is out quizzed by him.

Further more, they have both given up their identity. Jane says that "once we start letting go – let go just one thing ... the rest goes on its own down a sinkhole," (29). In this she notes that Du has tried to adjust and become the all American kid, and as a result has lost everything. The example she gives for this is the shrine, and the fact that he "gave it up" (29). This loss of identity is something that both Jane and Du share, and perhaps gives them a special connection. A connection that is not shared by the father.

The TV scene is another good example of the special connection, where Jane and Du watch the American troops arrest Mexican workers. They have both seen terrible situations and empathize with the Mexican immigrants, and as a result, Du swears. We see, though, a break in the connection, as Jane "doesn't know who the were the assholes, the cowboys or the Indians," (27). We see that she is more Americanized than Du is, and could be perhaps a bone of contention between the two.