Post-Feminism?

SPOILER ALERT! Sorry to be myth busting a day early, if it makes you feel better, feel free to stop reading immediately and come back and read tomorrow on Myth Busting Monday. For those of you who are okay with a little myth busting on Sunday, feel free to read on.

Many people today believe in the phenomenon of post-feminism, recognizing feminism as an important perspective but believing that its  time has passed and is now obsolete. Because women are now allowed to vote, hold political office, be doctors, be single, etc. people just accept that women are now equal to men without questioning whether or not women are truly equal. The truth of the matter is, just because women can do everything that men do, doesn’t mean that women are equal to men in the minds of the general population.

Let me provide you with an example. Women, how often have you heard someone say that women are high maintenance or that women just take wayyyyy too long to get ready? Conversely, Men, how many times have you harped on your significant other that they take wayyy too much time in the bathroom? This stereotype is rampant and often goes unidentified as sexist, people just assume that women are inherently slower or are more “high maintenance” than men. However, has anyone ever thought about why women take so long to get ready?

Women are told by society that they must adhere to a standard of beauty. This means that women must shave every inch of their body, wear make-up, do their hair (which society tells us should be long and perfect at all times), wear perfectly styled outfits with coordinated accessories, and have all of the tools necessary to touch up anything that needs touched up with us at all times.  This ladies and gentlemen is why women take so long to get ready.

Men are able to get a shower, put on clothes lying on the floor from the day before, maybe put on some cologne and deodorant, and walk out the door with wet hair – they don’t even have to shave!  It would take women far less time to get ready if they could follow the boy regiment, however, if they did they would be ostracized. People would say things along the lines of, “That girl could have at least taken a second to run a brush through her hair!” or “That girl’s clothes are a mess, didn’t she wear them yesterday?”.  Women are policed by both men and women daily because society demands that we look a certain way. However, more often than not people refuse to see this and just chalk the extra twenty minutes it takes us to get ready to our being slow and “high maintenance”…god I hate that phrase.

Now I will provide you with a JMU specific example. I am enrolled in a creative writing class at JMU. During the critique of my manuscript (a short story about a feminist who is having an internal struggle over the decision of whether or not to have an abortion) my professor explained to me that if I’m going to have this kind of plot line I need to explain who the boyfriend of this girl is and how he feels about her procedure…that isn’t exactly the point of the story… Later the same professor made a comment about a certain class offered at JMU that not many girls were enrolled in, he said that if the professor teaching the class wanted girls to take her class she should teach a class on Jane Austen…

These types of comments are indicative of the ideas towards women in society today. Women have the legal capacity to be equal, but are constantly marginalized by the closed mindedness of society. Is post-feminism a myth? Yea…I’d say so.