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R E C E N T L Y

Our tchotchkes, ourselves
By James Poniewozik
Is the unexamined living room worth living in?
(06/24/98)

Hearsay rules
By David Corn
Matt Drudge's no-standards journalism invades the networks
(06/19/98)

L.A.'s battle of the books
By Dwight Garner
Is the Los Angeles Times Book Review the second coming of the New York Review -- or an elitist section that doesn't serve its readers?
(06/18/98)

Hamburger Hades
By Jon Carroll
Robin Cook's "Toxin" is a tale told by a hack, full of E. coli, signifying that the beef industry is the tool of Satan. Yum!
(06/16/98)

Content's star shortage
By Harry Jaffe
Media watchdog Steve Brill tried -- and failed -- to get big-name media talent on his masthead
(06/12/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

Is Time brain-dead?

ALLY McBEAL AND OTHER "SILLINESS" PROMPTS
THE MAGAZINE TO ASK, "IS FEMINISM DEAD?"
BUT IT'S THE QUESTION ITSELF THAT'S SILLY.

BY JANELLE BROWN

What on earth, moans Ginia Bellafante in the latest Time cover story, has happened to feminists? Instead of tomes about glass ceilings, she says, we have "Ally McBeal." Instead of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman," we have the Spice Girls and their nonsensical lyrics. Feminism, she writes, "has devolved into the silly ... What a comedown for the movement."

Needless to say, the story -- with its inflammatory "Is Feminism Dead?" cover featuring vacant Ally McBeal next to icons Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem (never mind that McBeal is a TV character, not a feminist activist) -- has caused a small uproar among women, from veterans of the '70s bra-burning days to the young urban zinesters who are fomenting a small publishing revolution. If nothing else, the rapid responses prove that feminism isn't dead -- it's just changing.

What exactly is a feminist these days, anyway? Is it Camille Paglia and her libertarian opinions? Is it placard-waving equal-rights activists? Is it the National Organization for Women, or is it the Riot Grrrl movement? In 1998, the feminist movement has become fragmented: Katie Roiphe, Paglia, Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin and other thinkers take opposite views on just about every issue. Perhaps feminism had a more cohesive image when it was a smaller group of women leading a revolution early in the century, or during the late '60s and '70s, when an identifiable feminist movement emerged; but when more than 50 percent of the 18-34 female population (according to Time's poll) say they have feminist values, who can put a finger on what exactly a feminist is?

According to Bellafante's definition, however, feminism boils down to "public purpose." She compares the demands of '70s feminist theorists and activists -- "absolute equal rights and opportunities for women, a constitutional amendment to make it so, a chance to be compensated equally and to share the task of raising a family" -- with what she sees as today's feminists and their silly spectacles: like "The Vagina Monologues" or "Show," the Vanessa Beecroft installation consisting of lounging bikini-clad models. She attacks Bust, the ironic girl zine that's become the voice of the "New Girl Order," as adolescent, and Lisa Palac's thoughts on sexual exploration in "The Edge of the Bed" as old hat.

Bellafante is right in condemning the vacuous fluff that is "Ally McBeal," "Bridget Jones's Diary," The Spice Girls and Julia Roberts. But she's wrong in condemning them as examples of what feminism has become. Sure, "Ally McBeal" is a popular show -- but so was "Three's Company" in the 1970s, and no one ever accused Suzanne Somers of being a feminist icon. The Spice Girls may be the biggest girl group in the world, but their fan base is 8-year-old girls, not grown women. And Elizabeth Wurtzel's navel-gazing musings and the boy-crazy heroine of "Bridget Jones's Diary" shouldn't be held up as representative when they share shelf space with the more richly feminist writings of Susie Bright, Toni Morrison and Jeannette Winterson. Bellafante makes the fatal mistake of confusing popular culture with feminist culture. Comparing Ally McBeal to Susan B. Anthony is simply ludicrous.

Outside of the misleading comparisons, the main tenet of Bellafonte's story is that the feminism of yore, with its focus on political activism, is the only feminism. Over the last 100 years, a lot has changed for women -- and yes, feminism today is different. But that isn't necessarily bad.

Today's "pseudo feminists," Bellafante writes, "would be nowhere without the upper-middle-class intellectual elite." But the group of young 20- and 30-something feminists (often loosely termed Third Wave Feminists), while happy to acknowledge their debt to their mothers' marches for equal rights, want the opportunity to simply move on to issues of their own. It's not that the Third Wave doesn't care about equal pay, day care, birth control or the political ramifications of gender power dynamics -- but how many new ideas can really be contributed to these much-belabored dialogues?

The glass ceiling still exists, as Bellafante rightly points out, but for today's young women equality is a lot closer than it used to be. The vast majority of the young female population is versed in equal rights, and has grown up taking gender equality for granted. The war isn't over, necessarily, but 20 years on, the fights have become less fresh for the new generations. Will yet more theory, marches and writings really help the situation -- or are we just in the midst of the gradual process that will eventually bring equality, as the young women now entering the work force in droves eventually come into their own?

Instead, the new generations of feminists have found their own issues: sexuality, media representations of women, what it means to be female in a world that feels that women must be either lipstick fashion babes or bitchy feminists, with no room for anything in between. And though Bellafante breezily ignores them, there are plenty of women who are writing about glass ceilings and international politics -- it's just not the only issue they're focusing on anymore.

Ironically, the voices of young feminism -- such as Bust and other magazines represented in EstroNet, which my own zine, Maxi, is a part of -- are particularly focused on the gender influences from pop culture and the media. Ally, whom Bellafante claims is one of the new feminist icons, is regularly torn to shreds in these publications as a misrepresentation of real women and a negative stereotype.

According to the Time/CNN poll, only 32 percent of the population have a favorable image of feminism, as compared to 44 percent in 1989. Overall, 37 percent of all women perceive feminists as man-haters, 44 percent believe feminists don't respect stay-at-home moms and only 39 percent of all woman feel feminists share their values.

Having inherited feminism and all of that term's baggage, young women are trying to reinvent "woman" and the feminist as something that is accessible to all women -- not just the intellectual elite, not just the activists, not just the stereotypical man-haters. Regardless of theory, there are certain things that all women experience -- pop culture, body hatred, sexual experience and feminine stereotyping -- that are certainly worthy feminist issues, even if they aren't tomes about the glass ceiling. As young women, new feminists and Third Wavers are tackling the issues that they experience every day -- the things that they feel and think and experience -- and just because it isn't all about "public progress" doesn't mean that they're a bunch of self-obsessed pansies. And if those manifestations are at times, as Bellafante complains, "silly," they can hardly be sillier than the consciousness-raising groups she extols as examples of '70s feminism.

As Debbie Stoller, co-editor of Bust, defended herself on the woman's mailing list EstroList: "We Third Wave feminists should stop having so much fun. We should stop writing books and publishing magazines that people enjoy and that make people laugh out loud, and we should go back to being hardcore and hairy, so that the media (like Time magazine) can make us out to be a bunch of man-hating harpies. We'll just go back to wearing mumus and birkenstocks, producing irrelevant artists like Helen Reddy and 'positive role models' like Mary Tyler Moore. We'll all dress like men, won't talk about sex and will ignore the actual reality of our everyday lives. The strategy of producing an embraceable girl culture that allows us both to point out what's wrong with our culture and at the same time celebrate an alternative, is clearly just too subtle and complex for the simple-minded grasp of Ms. Bellafante."

What do the everyday trappings of being a "woman" mean to young women, and how can we claim it all: the theory and the fashion; the sex and the equality? That's what young feminists today are working for. Feminism isn't dead -- it's just too diverse to capture in one poorly thought-out Time article.
SALON | June 25, 1998

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T A B L E_.T A L K

Is feminism dead, or is Time magazine brain-dead? Come to Table Talk's Social Issues discussion area and present your views.

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R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S

Where the gals are Forget grrrl power: The new feminine mystique is neurotic, self-absorbed and still boy-crazy, according to a current crop of pop-cultural heroines.
By Laura Miller
May 18, 1998