I read lots of magazines, because I love fashion and pop culture. Both fashion magazines and pop culture outlets are not feminist (unless you actively seek them out like magazines like Bust and Bitch etc.) Glamour magazine sometimes tries to be feminist and does stories on third world countries and the activist in them and they have the pictures of the villages and the poverty etc. I usually find them to be puff pieces that rarely truly have any substance to them.
I was reading the September Issue of Glamour and I came across a paragraph with a picture of a thong underneath and it read:
Newly Cool: The Va-Jay-Jay!
"Don't let the door hit you in the vagina on the way out." How hard did you laugh at that line in Knocked Up? Yes indeed, when it comes to humor, vaginas are in vogue. Thanks Oprah, whose "va-jay-jay" talk seems to have inspired joking on Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs. Then there was Alec Baldwin's pickup line in a Saturday Night Live sketch: "You know what part of a woman I like best, and I'm not kidding? The vagina." Seems we've all gotten so comfortable saying the V word we can't stop.
There are so many things that are wrong with this paragraph I am not sure where to begin. First, let's think about how hard people like Eve Ensler worked to get the word vagina to be able to muttered in mainstream America. (Ensler is also featured in this issue of Glamour but that is another post all together.) And that feminists have tried to empower themselves and gain ownership over their bodies only to have a magazine highlight the comedic value of a body part?
I think that the mainstream use of the word vagina is another subversive way that media (which is primarily patriarchal) is selling women a version of what they are supposed to be. It is not an empowering message like, "Own your body and sexuality!" , it is the message that your body (again) is going to be cut into pieces and used by men for what they would like.
The comfort level that comes with women like Oprah using child-like slang for her grown up woman parts shows that there is still that Madonna/Whore syndrome going on. It is fine for women to have sexual parts and to use them as long as they are deemed funny and nonthreatening, or child like so that the masculine sexual power can prevail.
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6 comments:
I'm waiting for Oprah to call the penis the penaynay. Eesh, how childish. Vagina is a clinical term. I wish grown women could use it without blushing like schoolgirls, especially if they're focusing on women's health.
I M subscribin' 2 UR blog. I just hope it doesn't go over my head.
I agree. "Va-jay-jay" needs to disappear, like, yesterday.
I don't know that I agree. I feel like the fastest way to make a change in the language and power structure is through entertainment and humor. Coming from the perspective of someone who uses humor as a way of understanding tragedy, grieving, and viewing the world, I see an incredible power in it.
I, for one, LOVE the word "vagina" and will use it as often as possible. Granted, it's a bit absurd for a gay man to love the word "vagina", but there's something about the way it rolls off the tongue.
Once, in college, a student I knew decided to give up her "vagina" and reclaim the organ as her "cunt". Since she was no longer using her vagina, I requested that she give it to me as a gift and she acquiesced to my request. The next semester, she started talking about her vagina again and I had to remind her that she was actually talking about my vagina.
Someone once also told me that the postmodern gap is my metaphysical twat. I take that to heart.
Language is more powerful than knowledge in my opinion. I'm sure we've all seen the piece on the versatility of the term "fuck". I'm sure that given months to read through the works of Satre, I could come up with more useful examples to cite.
I agree that commercializing the term "vagina" for its comedic value is a bit underhanded, but I think that it is a triumph that I can walk into the middle of Times Square, scream "Vagina" at the top of my lungs, and know that no one would scold me.
In response to xaniath's comment I think that there is a difference reclaiming a word and an oppressor using a word to further subjugate a particular group.
Like I understand how you can embrace the word vagina. I agree with you on how it rolls off the tongue. But do you take offense (and this to any gay readers of this writings) when people use the word "gay" to put something down or make fun of it? Or how there is a archetype of homosexuality is and how that archetype is usually used to make fun of the gay community (I am thinking like Big Gay Al)? These are all questions because I think the same concerns that apply to language that can be hurtful or harmful to women and possible offend feminists could also apply to the use of the word gay in the vernacular.
Thoughts?
In response to your question, I think that language can only harm if you believe that it is, in some way, true. I feel like within each of us lie insecurities about our identities. If we truly believe that the labels we ascribe to ourselves have some deeper meaning to who we are as individuals, then yes, those words can hurt.
Personally, I take no mind in people referring to objects or situations as "gay". I do, however, often make them clarify what they intend to mean by "gay". I have a problem with the popular media using the gay archetype to represent all homosexuals (to this day I refuse to watch Queer as Folk because I disagree with the image of gays in the series).
Point well taken. I'm not suggesting that people who get offended are somehow weaker, don't get me wrong, but I do often refer to the childhood verse "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me."
Of course, I would never tell someone how to feel, as that would be insensitive, but I can say that in my personal life, I am not offended by these things.
The popular media does, however, have a responsibility to educate as well as entertain.
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