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Friday, February 25, 2005
The War Against Feminine Self-Glorification
Steven Milloy has a "Junk Science" column today on yet another set of studies that indicate that the anathematized silicone breast implant is just as safe as the saline implant that displaced it. Yet Milloy is not sanguine that the FDA will rescind the ban on silicone implants:
Though the scientific data will, once again, point to the safety of silicone implants, it’s not clear that the science alone will drive the panel’s decision.In October 2003, an FDA advisory panel had voted to approve silicone breast implants, but trial lawyer-backed activists succeeded in creating a circus of the process. In 2004, the FDA decided to delay approval of silicone breast implants pending the collection of more safety data. The new data are in and, to no one’s surprise, silicone implants once again appear to be safe. [...snip...]
Last week, the National Organization of Women, National Women’s Health Network, National Research Center for Women and Families, and the National Council of Women’s Organizations began circulating a letter to get senators to oppose the FDA advisory committee’s endorsement of silicone breast implants and any forthcoming FDA approval.
Plainly, something other than the health and safety of women is top priority for the above-named organzations. But what?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield on Wednesday dressed all in black. She was wearing a black skirt that hit just above the knee, and it was topped with a black coat that fell to mid-calf. The coat, with its seven gold buttons running down the front and its band collar, called to mind a Marine's dress uniform or the "save humanity" ensemble worn by Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix."As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.
Rice boldly eschewed the typical fare chosen by powerful American women on the world stage. She was not wearing a bland suit with a loose-fitting skirt and short boxy jacket with a pair of sensible pumps. She did not cloak her power in photogenic hues, a feminine brooch and a non-threatening aesthetic. Rice looked as though she was prepared to talk tough, knock heads and do a freeze-frame "Matrix" jump kick if necessary. Who wouldn't give her ensemble a double take -- all the while hoping not to rub her the wrong way?
Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.
That, Gentle Reader, was from an article that cautiously approved of Dr. Rice's attire.
For many a year we've suffered under the verbal lash of a large, loud, and unrelenting "feminist industry." That institution, which comprises such groups as the National Organization of Women, National Women’s Health Network, National Research Center for Women and Families, and the National Council of Women’s Organizations -- sound familiar? -- has succeeded in maintaining a facade of "women's empowerment," while simultaneously doing everything in its power to reduce women to individual helplessness and collective bondage to law and special-interest maneuverings. Perhaps the least widely discussed of its many crusades has been against glamor: the natural tendency of a woman who has the time, money, and energy to work on her appearance, to make it more vital, feminine, and alluring.
The feminist industry detests the glamor industry to the point of convulsions. They rail against its "male-centeredness." They shriek about women's submission to "exploitation." They exhort women to give up such frivolous obsessions and instead to "bond with your sisters." Men, at whose attentions so much pursuit of glamor is "obviously" aimed, are, after all, "the enemy."
The campaign against silicone breast implants, which are just as safe as the saline ones and are cosmetically far superior, is just one front in this campaign. The overarching aim is to bludgeon women into the mindset that to sculpt a man-pleasing appearance is to betray their sex.
Individual autonomy quite obviously begins with command over one's own body: the decision that it will do what its owner wishes and not something else. Inasmuch as the professional feminists have worked backward from women's relations with their husbands, employers, and children, browbeating women into thinking about those relations solely in ways approved by the activist viragoes, beauty and glamor might now become the main front.
Yet is it not inarguably the case that a woman's desires for her appearance are her own, no one else's? Regardless of whether she wants to look thus or thus? Regardless of whether her own satisfaction or someone else's interest is the goal? How dare these leftist harridans to harass American women about so personal a choice? Doesn't it contradict their central thesis, that women's empowerment is their one and only aim?
They dare because they must.
For women to please men with their appearance, whether by accident or design, undermines the gender-war paradigm upon which the feminist interest groups have based their whole existence. It undercuts their "men are the enemy" stance; more, it threatens to bring women and men together to discover that their interests and priorities aren't antagonistic after all, that they're really inevitable, inseparable allies. And looming behind that threat to their bastion is another: the discovery that in current American society, women can become what they want to be without the supervision of any activist or gaggle thereof.
For the feminist industry to be secure in its power, women must be reaved of individual choice. They must be shackled to the dictates of the professional harridans; they must not be permitted to act on their natural desires.
The pattern was set long ago. Simone de Beauvoir, arguably the seminal -- ovular? -- gender-war feminist, was dead set against allowing individual women to control their own destinies. She ranted that women should not have the free choice to be mothers and homemakers, because too many would do so: a perfect conformance of "feminist" sentiment to the imposed collectivism of the Left. Those who have followed in de Beauvoir's train have never departed from her stance.
Feminist opposition to genuine women's empowerment is never so clear as when the corporate feminists shunt science aside to make room for dogma, or when the Old Media, itself entirely in thrall to the Left and its feminist adjunct institutions, demotes the extraordinary strength and vision of the remarkable Dr. Rice, inarguably the best-looking Secretary of State these United States have ever enjoyed, to focus obsessively on her boots. It would be hilariously funny, if it weren't so tragically, brutally unkind.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has some comments of her own on Dr. Rice's clothing choices. She's also accumulated a nice roundup of other Blogosphere comments on the subject. Hie thee hence!
Comments
Let them focus on her boots. They’ll be looking the wrong way to see the oncoming fist. That Dr. Rice is attractive is nice on a personal level, but on the level I care about - she is our SecState and thus responsible for our relations with other countries - I’m happy with the side benefit: if people focus on irrelevancies, they are likely to underestimate her. And if they underestimate her, she is likely to win more on our behalf.
Posted by Jeff Medcalf on 02/25/2005 at 11:53 AMWhile reading your essay I realized the ‘feminists’ attitude you were describing is very familiar. This is exactly what happens among young girls as they begin to become interested in boys. Some in the tribe see that as a betrayal of close friendships between girls and the spite war begins. Considering that, now, I wonder if this is not a factor in the homosexual/lesbian agenda being pushed on children; keeping the sexes separated and in their own ‘tribes’.
As for Condi Rice, apparently she’s doing just as the NOW-gang used to profess to believe in: displaying some femininity as a compliment to her strong character and admirable accomplishments. Go boots!
Posted by on 02/25/2005 at 04:25 PMWomen have always had the freedom to pursue the making of a statement with their appearance. Rice is to be commended for her continued independence from the feminist hierarchy. They seek to destroy that which they can not control, much as institutuinal blacks seek to denigrate Clarence Thomas, arguably the most powerful black man in the world, but surely not a tool of the leftist black American establishment. It is not so much the feminists as the leftists, who seek to increase their power, or at least hold on to as much as they can, which they do by belittling those of their group who will not become one of their number.
Posted by Michael Gersh on 02/25/2005 at 04:47 PMTruly, Condi is The One.
Posted by GaijinBiker on 02/25/2005 at 10:25 PM
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