Amendment 2005

men A end ent Amendment

Virginia Commonwealth University

2005

Introduction “I learned that the fight for human rights does not take place on some bureaucratic battleground with a bevy of lawyers running from congressional suite to congressional suite, sapping resources into laws.

The war for peace and love and other nice things like that is not waged in protests on the streets. These forms of fighting acknowledge the oppressor outside of yourself, giving that entity yet more life. The real fight for human rights is inside each and every individual on earth” — Inga Muscio Welcome to our second issue of Amendment! This is the first issue that has been produced completely on campus, with generous funding from VCU’s Student Media Commission (last year we published it ourselves, out of pocket). We are excited that interest in the journal by contributors, editors, and supporters remains high, and we are definitely pleased to be able to bring Amendment to a larger audience for free. Because our mission is to provide a voice to folks in the VCU community who are passionate about feminism, gender issues, queer perspectives, and issues that impact people of color, we are thrilled that our journal can also reach a wider audience due to its low (no) cost to the reader.

You are holding the final product of the last two years in your hand. Allow me to tell you a bit about our process. Our mission is to be nonhierarchical, so our process is often chaotic, but it is our belief that true democratic decision-making tends to be messy, creative, sometimes contentious, and always a learning experience. We began as a one-time publication of essays produced in a Feminist Literary Theory class and grew, ballooned, snowballed, etc. into a literary/critical/art journal that is published once a year and that features creative and critical work by VCU students and folks from the surrounding communities.

We have had a crazy year trying to institute this journal in the midst of an election, a war, natural disasters, an unstable economy, and an uncertain future. We joke about the fact that "the struggle" is called "the struggle" for a reason: it IS a struggle! We realize that throughout hirstory, marginalized people have struggled and have resisted oppression and domination, in successful and meaningful ways. We have worked to get voices of folks who criticize, question, and challenge the status quo to the public. We have worked to get

moving from “margin to center" and this journal is just another step in that struggle. Our goal is to bring a feminist/queer critical voice to our own neighborhood, VCU campus, and we are passionate about doing so. Thank you for reading the product of our own efforts to achieve our goals and to fulfill our mission.

One of the most amazing aspects of our project is that it is entirely student-run. This group of students has started this journal from the ground up, self-published the first issue, and worked with the University to have the University publish the second issue. This has taken an incredible amount of dedication and effort, and this small band of brave and (somewhat) stubborn folks have pulled it off! My sincere respect and thanks go out to Tia, Jennifer, Charlotte, Nadia, Robin, Fena, Callie, Stephanie, Sarah, Angelica, and Tiffany, the students who made this journal happen! This effort is proof that a small group of folks who are passionate about an issue can make a positive change in their community. We are proud to join a movement of small and independent publications that are committed to bringing the views of marginalized people to a larger cultural/political conversation.

We encourage you to get involved, either with us, with the other publications on campus (Millennium, The Commonwealth Times, The Vine, etc.), or by starting your own small publication. The more voices out there, the more true our democracy becomes.

We have so many people to thank! First, we'd like to thank Greg Weatherford, Mary Frank Miller, and the SMC for their patience and help with putting this issue out. Greg was tireless and supportive with great advice and help. Mary designed this issue, and has been fantastic working with us amateurs! The SMC agreed to fund our project, and we thank them for making it possible for us to offer our publication to people in our community for free.

Dr. Diana Scully, who is the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at VCU, has given us her time and support. Dr. Deirdre Condit has been equally inspiring to students. We’d also like to thank all of the teachers who encouraged their students to contribute to our publication, and who inspire students to write and create art. Many folks from the VCU English Department as well as Women’s Studies have been highly supportive of our publication. We’d like to thank Marcel CornisPope, chair of the English Department, for his support and positive encouragement. Michael Keller has been essential to helping us with process and technological issues. Jeff Lodge has worked with many

of us over the year to help with our editing and submissions process.

Jeff is also an indispensable member of the writing/arts community because he keeps everyone up-to-date with his regular emails. David Ross was essential to our navigating copyright laws and establishing our submission process. We are also indebted to the Mass Communications Department for their support and help during this process.

We are also indebted to the other student organizations who stood in solidarity with us, endorsed our project, and contributed to our journal: Queer Action, PRISM, PLACE, and FAN. Project OUT and Ethos CafĂŠ were also supportive organizations and we thank them too!

Thanks to Uptown Copy for putting out our first issue, and to Chop Suey Books (Ward and Pat) for supporting and distributing our journal in addition to being an important part of our literary community and our neighborhood. Our gratitude also extends to our family, friends, lovers and comrades who give us day-to-day support and encouragement.

And finally, but not least, we extend a huge, warm thanks to all who contributed to this journal. Without your talent, diligence, and creativity, we would not have this publication.

I’d also like to personally thank Dr. Janet Winston and Dr. Patricia Perry, Carolyn White, Margaret Finkner, and Gretchen Comba for constantly inspiring and engaging me. Also, to Dr. Njeri Jackson, Dr. Rose Landrum Lee, and Dr. Amina Wadud, thank you for your inspiration and encouragement, not only for students, but for colleagues and community folks as well; you help us speak out and use our voices. Finally, to Inga Muscio, for coming to VCU and speaking to us, for encouraging us to confront our own internalized racism/(hetero)sexism/classism/ ableism/sizism so that we might better fight external oppressive forces.

Finally, thanks those revolutionaries who have come before us, who have struggled, resisted, published, and fought for positive change.

We continue your work with sincerity and respect.

Acknowledgements Amendment would like to thank: Greg Weatherford, Mary Franke Miller, SMC, Mass Communications Department, English Department, Women's Studies Department, Dr. Diana Scully, Dr. Deirdre Condit, Dr. Rose Landrum Lee, Dr. Patricia H. Perry, Dr. Janet Winston, Gretchen Comba, Patty Smith, Patty Strong, Jeff Lodge, Michael Keller, David Ross, Dr. Marguerite Harkness, Dr. Sachi Shimomura, Jeremy Kidd, LeeAnne Eaton, Queer Action, PRISM, Feminist Action Network, Harrison St. Coffeeshop, Uptown Copy, Chop Suey Books, Jason Morris and other Cabell Library Research Librarians, Student Activities Center, Yolanda Jackson, SGA, Student Services, Kelly Carnes and the Presidential Round Table, Ethos CafĂŠ, and all of our friends, lovers, comrades, supporters, contributors, promoters, and readers!

Amendment Staff: Stephanie Whitehead, Robin Baidya, Nadia Eran, Ceres, Charlotte Tinnell, Callie Jean Furlong, Jennifer Berry Faculty Advisor: Liz Canfield

Mission Statement To provoke thoughtful conversation and communication concerning issues of gender/race/class/sexuality/ability through diverse approaches and genres.

To extend, expand, and equalize publishing opportunity for VCU students and additional emerging writers and artists by becoming an annual publication.

To inspire writers and artists to seek knowledge through artistic and critical expression while increasing awareness about issues of gender/race/class/sexuality/ability.

All work featured in this journal is the property of the artist/writer.

Table of Contents 1) Ode to Margaret Sanger — Jennifer Johnson 2) Old and New — Elizabeth Ellis 4) Howell’s View of Women Writers: The More Realistic Sex — Stephanie Whitehead 15) Chocolate Cake — Emily Sprouse 17) Imperfect Woman — Becca Gibson 20) Fat Attack! — Lindsey Oliver 24) On Sinking — Jennifer Johnson 25) . . . anime . . . — Jane S. Butler 28) Can Women Be Strong and Feminine When They Battle in Space? — Liz Cawrse 35) Out of Body — Catherine Ennis 36) Tele-images: ‘Barker’s Beauties’ — Julia Taylor 47) sangry — Callie Jean Furlong 48) Tis the Season — j.l. odom 52) the miseducation of dorothy — Ceres 55) Confrontation — Rachel Shaw 56) Women’s ‘Sanitary Products’ and How Menstrual Shame Affects Our Product Choice, Our Health and the Environment — Kiara Fuentes 71) Untitled — Jean Gonzales 72) We’re Meant to Fail — Nia Burks 73) All My Words — Nia Burks

Table of Contents 74) Sugar Lips — Ceres 75) The Two Mes — Christina 76) Sailing Past the Storm — Kristen Phillips 77) Self Portrait--Picasso — Nia Burks 78) Geranium — Lauren Duckworth 79) She — Anonymous 80) Untitled — tex 83) Token Black Girl — Ceres 90) Innocence — Rachel Shaw 92) Getting Back to the Sacred Feminine — Crystal Pintac 96) Everyman — Sarah Sprouse 98) Feminist Porn: An Oxymoron? — Nora Jean Cannon 110) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder — Rachel Shaw 113) Throwing Like a Girl: 1950s Women and Sports — Jennifer L. Odom 126) Foremost in numerical and alphabetical order — Jennifer Johnson 128) The Sacrifice of Eleanor — Stephanie Whitehead 144) Yellow — Rucker Sewell 145) Gnostics — Rachel Shaw 152) Inamorato — Jennifer Lane 153) Protest Photo — Ceres 154) Amendment Staff Bios

Amendment

Ode to Margaret Sanger

By Jennifer Johnson Recreate the coma on a Monday for repentance.

Spear the broken bridge, made insipid by the progress without the pretense.

Did you know this experiment is an exercise in example by possessive programs that never free themselves of the ridge between ex and why?

You should know I appreciate the tic tac toe you waged in honor of my sisters, to rid the rigid sense of a nation with no culture, no compliments and no apologies for recreation procreation emancipation anticipation with weathered pace.

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Old and New

By Elizabeth Ellis Love broken Shattered into a million pieces Love broken Rejected for the grace of another Thrice the year turned Then the heart turned Sweet scent of another fills the air The old dies with the new One, two and New lady makes three Heart abused Left to shrivel and die Innocence taken Innocence abused Training upgraded For newer version Self not known World not recognized User of love’s drug 2

Amendment In rehab, with poor prognosis Dealer enjoying high life No worries Freedom No commitment needed Survival will come Old will once again be new After the death of True love Exchanged for Hot lust

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Howell’s View of Women Writers: The More Realistic Sex

By Stephanie Whitehead “Realistic: 1. Tending to or expressing an awareness of things as they are. 2. The representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they are” (697) — From The American Heritage Dictionary In today’s modern view of the social, political, and artistic climates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many might be tempted to view the Realistic movement as the purview of men and relegate women writers to the romantic side of the arts. Yet, William Dean Howells points out in part I of his essay “Criticism and Fiction” from the book Criticism and Fiction and Other Essays, that “An interesting fact in regard to the different varieties of the short story among us is that the sketches and studies by the women seem faithfuler and more realistic than those of the men, in proportion to their number.” (64) In other words, a higher percent of female writers portray their characters and situations in a more realistic fashion. He goes on to say that “Their tendency is more distinctly in that direction, and there is a solidity, an honest observation, in the work of such women as Mrs. Cook, Miss Murfree, Miss Wilkins, and Miss Jewett, which often leaves little to be desired.” (3) But what might Howells mean by more realistic?

In “A Mistaken Charity” from Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s collection of short stories titled A New England Nun and Other Stories, the reader meets two elderly sisters, Harriét and Charlotte.

Freeman faithfully recounts the detail of their everyday life.

Through dialogue and her exquisite treatment of dialect, Freeman allows us to peek into the sisters’ character. We see this in the following dialogue: 4

Amendment “Did you git a good mess, Harriét?” asked Charlotte, in a humble tone.

“Toler’ble.”

“They’ll be proper relishin’ with that piece of pork Mis’ Mann brought in yesterday, O Lord, Harriét, it’s a chink!”

Harriet sniffed. (16) Here are two individuals comfortable with each other. But more than this we see two women living in poverty and off the charity of others. The pork, as well as doughnuts brought by another neighbor, are welcome additions to the sisters’ meager fare of greens or whatever else they are able to glean from their plot of land. Additionally, this snippet of dialogue gives the reader a glimpse into the characteristics of each sister. Harriét is practical, economical with her words and her world. She carries the responsibility of both their lives. This gives the impression that she is the elder without our being told. Charlotte’s effusive speech and imaginative manner of believing in the “chinks” that allow bits of light and color into her blind eyes, suggests a younger, more romantic character.

When Harriét makes a derisive sound at the mention of Charlotte’s “chink,” Charlotte, the usually meeker of the two sisters speaks up: “I guess,” she said, querulously, and with more pertinacity than she had shown in the matter of the doughnuts, “that if you was in the dark, as I am, Harriét, you wouldn’t make fun an’ turn up your nose at the chinks. If you had seen the light streamin’ in all a sudden through some little hole that you hadn’t known of before when you set down on the door-step this mornin’, and the wind with the smell of the apple blows in it came in your face, an’ when Mis’ Simonds brought them hot doughnuts, an’ when I thought of the pork an’ greens jest now 5

Amendment – O Lord, how it did shine in! An’ it does now. If you was me, Harriét, you would know there were chinks.” (16) Here again, the reader has an insight into character. Though Charlotte is the meeker of the two sisters, she will stand up for her beliefs even in the face of derision from someone close to her. This suggests a quiet strength of character.

Later in the story, the two sisters become the unwilling victims of Mrs. Simonds’ charity, mentioned in the excerpt above.

Mrs. Simonds, believing the sisters live a pitifully poor existence in the run-down house and meager garden, maneuvers the sisters into an “Old Ladies’ Home.” Freeman points out that “the two poor old women looked like two forlorn prisoners in the midst.

It was an impressive illustration of the truth of the saying ‘that it is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (18) This ingenious look at a Christian tenet illustrates magnificently the differing perspectives between the charitable works of others and those on the receiving end of that charity. Mrs. Simonds believes her charity is necessary because this makes Mrs. Simonds feel better, not because she bothered to get to know the sisters and their lives. As the reader learns later, the sisters do not hold the same high opinion of Mrs. Simonds’ help.

In the Home, the sisters are made to wear good cashmere dresses every day, “but they felt as if they broke a commandment when they put them on every afternoon.” (18) They were used to less refined food, too, instead of “those finely flavored nourishing soups for which the ‘Home’ took great credit to itself.” (18) Again, the charitable work brings more happiness to the “Home” than to its inhabitants and leads the reader to suspect its motives.

Charlotte laments the disappearance of her chinks in the clean, sterile atmosphere with its refined food: “‘O Lord, Harriét, when I set down to the table here there ain’t no chinks,” Charlotte used to say. “If we could hev some cabbage, or some pork n’ greens, how the light would stream in.’” (18) Charlotte wants to go home and have “merlasses for sweeting,” and her currants 6

Amendment and Porter apples.” She doesn’t want to wear white caps or die in the “Home.”

Harriét and Charlotte escape their luxurious surroundings and return to their own home. The overgrown garden and run-down house is more a palace to them than the unwelcome benevolent luxury inflicted on them by outsiders.

Throughout the work, specific details of setting, character, and actions give the reader an understanding of the personalities of each of the characters in the story. The characters react in understandable ways. The author shows the spunk and simple contentment of the characters in such a way that the reader becomes emotionally invested in the characters’ story and even their happiness. Charity that a reader would applaud only moments before absorbing the story is now frowned on. We cheer when the sisters escape their gilded prison. By focusing on a small ordinary event, the author creates believable characters that the reader connects with. The author gives us authenticity through an ordinary, common occurrence rather than a monumental awakening in a main character or life-altering episode that leads to a spiritual renewal. This focus helps sustain the reader’s belief in the plausibility of the characters and their surroundings.

Freeman continues this focus in “A Poetess” found in the same collection. This story of a spinster who makes a small living writing poetry shows an incredible understanding of the inner workings of the main character. Betsy, the poetess, has been asked by a neighbor to write a poem for the neighbor’s son who has recently died. Betsy does so, and Freeman shows us the care Betsy takes in the poem's creation. Betsy forgets to eat, forgets to put beans on to boil for her supper, and as she writes her poem “Tears stood in her pale blue eyes; occasionally they rolled down her cheeks, and she wiped them away.” (39) Betsy truly suffers for her art.

Two other detailed descriptions help us better understand Betsy’s character and her circumstances. Freeman writes: Betsy wrote her poems upon backs of old letters and odd scraps of paper. She found it difficult to procure enough paper for fair copies of her poems when composed; she was forced to be very 7

Amendment economical with the first draft.” (39) Betsy may forget to eat, but she never forgets to save a piece of paper for her writing. That is what is most important to Betsy.

In another scene, Freeman also shows us what can happen to the delicate soul when the neighbor thoughtlessly repeats someone’s bad opinion of Betsy’s poem. Betsy is devastated. The neighbor tells Betsy that the remark hurt her just as much as it did Betsy. We see shortly after this meeting that the neighbor, for all her years of knowing Betsy, hadn’t a clue of what Betsy was like at all. The neighbor has no idea the depth of Betsy’s suffering.

But Freeman shows the reader just how deep Betsy’s despair runs through the use of keen detail.

After the neighbor leaves, Betsy carefully cleans out her stove, gently places her beloved poems inside, and burns them to ash. Betsy “got out a blue china sugar-bowl from the pantry and dipped the ashes into it with one of her thin silver teaspoons; then she put on the cover and set it away in the sitting room cupboard.” (44) This is a funeral ritual. Like the ashes of a cremated loved one, Betsy keeps the ashes of her creation nearby. And it is a death for her both literally and figuratively. Betsy’s one joy in her meager life, her sole reason for living has been carelessly ripped away by common gossip. She never recovers and dies soon after. Her dying request is that the minister makes sure the sugar-bowl with the ashes is buried with her. And, finally, Betsy asks the preacher to write a poem about her. The minister has had some of his poems published in a magazine and this, in Betsy’s eyes, testifies to his worthiness as a poet and her unworthiness because she never had a poem published.

The meek character of Betsy is quite the opposite of Charlotte and Harriét from “A Mistaken Charity.” But this meeker character is no less alive and believable. We see Betsy’s meager garden filled more with flowers than vegetables. We see her portfolio “piled with a loose litter of written papers.” (39) We feel her tenderness and grief as she burns her poems. And we see, at the end, the shadow of Betsy who has lost her true love, her poetry, dying from the heart she has allowed others to break.

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Amendment With dialogue, dialect, and action, Freeman portrays a character no less valid for all its meekness.

Freeman gives the reader a third, but no less solidly established character, in her story “A New England Nun” in the collection’s title story. We read about a woman who has kept to herself for fourteen years. She has waited for fourteen years for her fiancé who is in Australia. After their engagement, the fiancé went to Australia to seek his fortune. He has finally returned and has said that he is ready to marry her. She resigns herself to the marriage. She is, after all, an honorable woman. But after she finds that he does not love her, the two mutually agree to dissolve the engagement.

Within the story’s description of Louisa, the reader finds clues to her character and the reason she does not wish to marry Joe Dagget. She has built a world of perfection around herself.

The possibility of a coarse man trampling around frightens Louisa beyond reason. Freeman writes “Louisa used china every day – something which none of her neighbors did. They whispered about it among themselves. Their daily tables were laid with common crockery, their sets of best china stayed in the parlor closet, and Louisa Ellis was no richer nor better bred than they.

Still she would use china.” (22-23) We also find that Louisa keeps her house in as close to perfect order as possible. Even to the point of terrifying her fiancé. Her obsession with perfection is seen when Joe Dagget moves two books on a table and Louisa hurries to return them to their former positions. We see more of this when Louisa cleans up the tracks left by Joe. Freeman shows us how confusing these actions seem to Joe because “he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace. He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should.” (25) Here we see two people ill at ease with each other’s worlds. Neither belongs in the world of the other.

When Louisa and Joe part, the reader is told she wept a little, but didn’t know why. But this separation is only a minor inconvenience to Louisa. The next morning “she felt like a 9

Amendment queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession.” (32) Louisa, alone and unmarried, is happy with the prospect of unbroken, perfect days that stretch before her. Each one “all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in thankfulness.” (32-33) In the end, “Louisa sat, prayerfully numbering her days, like an uncloistered nun.” (33) Her world is her own again, undisturbed by the complication of a husband or children. They will be perfectly peacefully, perfectly orderly, and utterly sterile and unchanging. By giving us the details of her thoughts, Freeman gives us an insight into a character content to stagnate to the point of living as a nun might live. But, we also see a snobbish selfishness because marriage would force Louisa to share the world she had so carefully constructed for herself. It is her need to preserve the ordinary minutia of life that gives us this insight into her character. And Freeman’s use of actions, as when Louisa must change the positions of books Joe has touched, illustrates these attributes clearly.

Freeman uses her stories to not only show how people can be set in their ways without hope of changing, but also that they may learn at any age. In the story of “Young Lucretia” in Freeman’s collection Young Lucretia and Other Stories, sisters take care of their niece with a strict unyielding hand preventing the girl’s ability to participate in normal childhood activities.

Freeman uses the delightful example of the child laboriously gathering and wrapping household items and placing them under the school Christmas tree to make it seem that she had gotten presents. The sisters had thought it utter nonsense. But as the sisters watch and understand what the symbol of the presents means to the little girl, they reconsider. Freeman uses a single moment’s conversation to impart the change that comes over the sisters. The reader sees the change and all its nuances in the following dialogue: “I s’pose you have noticed that wax doll down to White’s store, ‘ain’t you?

“That big wax one with the pink dress?” asked Maria, faintly and consciously.

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Amendment “Yes. There was a doll’s bedstead there, too. I don’t know as you noticed.”

“Yes, I think I did, now you speak of it. I noticed it the day I went in for the calico. There was a doll baby’s carriage there, too.”

The aunts looked at each other. “I s’pose it would be dreadful foolish,” said Lucretia.

“She’d be ‘most too tickled to live,” remarked Maria. (17-18) These two women have never given a thought to anything other than their own ideas of upbringing for young Lucretia. She wears old-fashioned clothes, cut down versions of the sisters’ garments. She isn’t allowed to stay after school to help with decorating the tree or to join in the festivities. But we see this isn’t from any meanness on the part of the aunts, but from a general inertia of spirit. This is the way things have always been. Why should the status quo be changed? But as we learn and the aunts do, too, change makes for a very happy little girl. And, Freeman artfully contrasts the clothes and manner of the sisters with young Lucretia and her friends. We see how desperate the child is to fit in and have fun. We feel her disgust at the outdated clothes she wears. And we can imagine her joy at finding the doll, bedstead, and carriage under her own tree on Christmas Day. Freeman maintains this attention to the ordinary even in her fantastic tale “The Persian Princess” in the same collection.

We see the sad life of Dorothy though dialogue and description.

The reader learns she has been taken from an almshouse to help Dame Betsy spin linen for her daughters. Dame Betsy’s daughters are so ugly and ill mannered, they are unlikely to have husbands without a substantial dowry or, in their cases, bribe. Through one of the daughter’s actions, we see how badly Dorothy is treated.

Dame Betsy has told the daughter to mend her apron. After the Dame leaves, the daughter waves her honey cake in front of Dorothy’s face to induce her to mend the apron instead. She knows that Dorothy is not given much food and uses her hunger 11

Amendment to her advantage. This is sharply contrasted when the daughter’s actions are juxtaposed with Dorothy’s kind actions of sharing half of her cake with a neighbor boy who is as hungry as she is.

In this story, Freeman makes good use of juxtapositioning to give the reader additional insight into the characters. When a Persian cat comes that only Dorothy can see as a princess in disguise, a feeling that only Dorothy’s nature is pure and good enough to see through the disguise is inferred. This is reinforced when the princess helps Dorothy escape Dame Betsy’s household, build a fortune for herself by using the princess’ clothes to make beautiful pillows, and allowing her to save her grandmother from the almshouse. True to her unselfish nature, Dorothy also remembers the neighbor boy and his grandmother and brings them to live with her in the luxury afforded them by the luxurious pillows Dorothy makes from the princess’ clothes. Again, Dorothy’s lot in life is greatly improved and secured and the contrast with the mean life of the Dame Betsy’s daughters, supposedly of higher station, provides not only an insight into character, but a moral lesson on kindness and goodness as well.

Freeman effectively uses action, dialogue and dialect, and description to portray characters and situations of everyday life.

No national wars are fought, businesses don’t fall to ruin or rise in triumph, but the ordinary human spirit is revealed through these techniques. This attention to the common events of life in even the most common of people is what Howells might have meant by stating in his essay “that the sketches and studies by the women seem faithfuler and more realistic than those of the men.” (64) Male authors, by contrast overall, used women to support a story rather than display its entire meaning. Female characters were used to further the story of the main male character and not to carry the story itself. They were introduced and moved through settings without the detail that Freeman displays in her stories. Freeman’s female characters are an integral part of their surroundings. They interact and influence their environment.

Their environment influences them as well. While male authors treated the scope of female lives with a somewhat more cursory 12

Amendment hand, female authors like Freeman delved into the subtle meanings and symbols of even the smallest objects such as flowers, vegetables, the difference between coarse and finer fare, and a white cap for an elderly lady.

Freeman also shows us how actions may harm or help through the consequences she details. The aftermath of the neighbor who tells Betsy, the poetess, about the unfavorable opinion of one of Betsy’s poems leads, ultimately, to Betsy’s death. The loss of this sustaining endeavor in Betsy’s life allows her to sink into a morass she never leaves. This unthinking act leads to dire results.

While other stories by Freeman do not have so great a warning, the subtlety of the human condition, its complexity and variety, are showcased with methodical description. Her use of dialogue and dialect reveals character by inference rather that with concrete revelation. The reader sees and understands the tenacity and spunkiness of Harriét and Charlotte through their interactions and dialogue, not because Freeman tells us they are. We feel Betsy’s, the poetess, pain and grief brought by a single person. We see her tireless devotion to her art as so all-encompassing that she cannot even throw out the ashes of her poems once she has destroyed them. We see this through Betsy’s gentle handling and preservation of the ashes in a blue china sugar-bowl, not because Freeman says she was devoted. We as readers are moved by Dorothy’s kindness to a neighbor boy, Louisa’s need for her own ordered domain, and young Lucretia’s delight at her presents. Freeman does not spoon-feed information to the reader to show these things rather Freeman catches the reader’s hand and walks them on the journey of a character’s life no matter how small, no matter how ordinary that life may be.

In this, Howells may find women the more “realistic” sex.

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Works cited Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins. A New England Nun and Other Stories.

Penguin Books. New York. 2000.

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins. Young Lucretia and Other Stories. Books For Library Press. Freeport. 1970.

Howells, William D. Criticism and Fiction and Other Essays. New York University Press. New York. 1959.

Pickett, Joseph P., et al. The American Heritage Dictionary. Dell Publishing. New York. 2001.

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Chocolate Cake

By Emily Sprouse Return to me, that which I have lost Instill within me some kind of strength to reclaim my former state But don't leave me here depressed and alone Hanging onto nothing but skin and bones Remind me of times thick and heavy Banished with laxatives and twisted visions Of health and beauty something to be Nothing to see I did become a vision of grace too weak to walk yet purified - from within So where do I go now when I have lost all control And all that remains 15

Amendment is a thin, pencil sketch Of skin and bone looking 50 years olderthan my 20 years Gnarled by misery bones probably blackened from decay and abuse my skin swears it belongs to another because try as it might it just won't fit Bring back to me a giant, chocolate cake So I can fill myself with something forbidden to remind my body just what it's been missing tear me away, from my catalogues and mags hand me my mirror, so I can finally seea true size zero

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Imperfect Woman

By Becca Gibson Reject the formality of introductions and that stage of awkward behavior that dictates our every action Reform to what society expects of us Pointed shoes that make me six inches taller, lowering my individuality while lowering my eyes Raising my nose Controlling the place where men

stare

Adjusting the stockings that confine my femininity in a sheer cover of pseudo protection So easily torn down Like our egos We look to brassieres to support that which makes us women when all they actually do Is change our appearance To fit the definition of beautiful Though no one can match the exquisiteness of a woman plastered on billboards, pressed against the pages of a magazine, and lit up on television to make us wish that we were born With the perfect body And the perfect smile We don’t seem to realize that natural perfection is nonexistent The most astonishing beauty inside us lies in our flaws 17

Amendment Yet that birth mark on my stomach And the scar that my nose wears with absent pride Gain me no respect Merely retract from my already lacking attractiveness The men in the room turn their eyes to The blond with long legs Fake breasts (that still aren’t as big as mine—and never will be no matter how much money she spends on her definition of perfection) And the glossy white teeth that come from being the daughter of a dentist They clamor for her attention Buying her drinks and admiring her seemingly perfect self While I feel the nag of my birth mark and the tear of my scar becoming signs that proclaim: Walk away—ugliness follows your eyes so long as they continue to examine the specimen in front of you The blond flips her hair Another trick picked up on television Supposedly a stereotype but in reality it seems too true She’ll take at least one of them home tonight.

I turn to face this generation of women who feel insignificant In comparison to the stunningly beautiful people who devote their lives and money to looking as gorgeous as possible Why waste precious time and money to become someone who gets left the morning after?

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Amendment We all have the potential to share our beauty, and when we do Isn’t it better to know that I am loved for all of me than just my long legs, blond hair, and fake breasts?

My breasts are beautiful and large and completely natural My legs are not long My hair is not blond And I am proud to stand and be Just another Imperfect woman.

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Fat Attack!

some things you might not have thought about concerning sizism….

By Lindsey Oliver 1. fatties are capable of being SEXUAL beings. some of us have amazing sex that have our partner(s) begging for more, some of us can get off on a single lick and some of us do just fine by our own means. just like all you non-fatties.

2. we’re capable of being loved by friends and family but ALSO by partners, significant others, girlfriends, lovers and all the rest of those gooey love relationships that are out there. yes, we can be in relationships and not just with other fatties but by people of all shapes and sizes. and we like it that way.

3. we can’t buy clothes just anywhere. and this includes thrift stores and ebay. Our clothes have to have special “PLUS” size stores. the only PLUS that you get from, stores like this are higher prices and less selection. ever notice how a lot of fatties have great purse and shoe selections…there is a reason for this! And fer the love of sheeba ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. 4. we can’t fit into a lot of things that non-fatties don’t have to think about. like planes, automobiles, amusement park rides, restaurant booths, chairs and seating possibilities, nonwheelchair accessible bathrooms, bar stools, paddle boats, bicycles, etc etc etc.

5. we don’t like fat jokes, like um duh?

6. we don’t like the way that the media, individuals and mainstream treats us. I don’t like the fact that I am viewed as 20

Amendment lazy and a pig (what’s so bad about bein’ a pig ANYWAY?) and that I can’t even eat at a potluck without feeling like everyone is watching me and making assumptions in their heads.

7. we are treated like shit at the doctor’s office, if we go, and a lot of us don’t cause they don’t like givin fatties health insurance and fatties don’t like goin to the doctor cause they treat us like shit. ever been told that you need to lose weight in order to cure strep throat? or if you’ve thought about gastric bypass when going in for a gyno appointment? and seriously, those gowns they give you could cover my god damn right boob, not my whole body, it is humiliating to have to wear something that wasn’t made with yr body in mind, at all.

8. dr’s aren’t taught to treat us, so many things go without proper medical treatment. cause like…. umm… losing weight isn’t gonna solve everything.

9. we don’t like being stared at and hearin’ comments about us. duh, again.

10. we don’t like not having sizism included in the “ism’s”. it’s real. it exists.

Things you can do to be a fat ally…

1. BE AWARE, now you know it exists don’t let it go unnoticed 2. include fat sex and erotica in yr sex workshops and porn collection, you don’t have to like it but try it out.

3. don’t be afraid to show that yr not embarrassed by yr fat friend or lover. don’t make them be the ones to always point out fucked up shit done or said about fatties.

4. offer to go shopping with a fat friend, and don’t expect a fattie to go shopping with you if you wouldn’t go shopping with them. include lots of sizes in your band merch 21

Amendment or newest screen printing design shirts. talk to store owners and managers about the fact that the stores you may shop in don’t have plus sizes and explain to them what a travesty this is.

5. let us sit in the front seat, don’t question why we don’t fasten the seat belt, sit down at the bar or don’t want to go paddle boating at byrd park. it may not be that we don’t want to but that we cant. ask us where we want to sit when going out to eat. make sure that there is adequate seating available at any event you put on.

6. if you hear a fat joke squash it. if you hear someone saying something about fat in a negative way, let them know that you don’t appreciate it (ex: “i don’t want to eat this, i’m going to get fat.” well… whats so wrong with being fat?). remember that sizism includes people of all sizes, so don’t think that the opposite of that is ok, either (ex: “look at that girl she’s so skinny, she must be anorexic”). words hurt and they reflect our attitude about other people, be conscious of fat negative words. and please don’t ever ever ever call me obese.

7. if you have health insurance ask yr provider if they have any clauses about weight. if you go to the doctor ask them about how they treat fat patients, see how they act around you, let them know that you don’t appreciate bad treatment of fat patients and it makes you want to take yr business elsewhere. educate yrself about PCOS, thyroid problems and diabetes and realize that fat doesn’t = unhealthy.

8. look around at events, rallies, meetings, workshops, shows, picnics and etc and see if there are fat people there. according to many statistics, fat people are completely out numbering non-fat people and if that isn’t being shown at yr events, there might be something wrong. i know i for one am sick of being the only fat person in the room. include sizism 22

Amendment in yr mission statements and lists of workshops to have.

9. don’t treat food differently with fat people than you would with non-fat people. i either get people who don’t offer me food because they think i’m fat or offer me a lot of food because obviously all fat people just eat eat eat. treat it how you would for anyone else.

10. don’t assume ANYTHING. cause you don’t know until you really know. if you don’t know or feel uncomfortable with a situation, that’s ok. you don’t have to know everything or know how to deal with everything. and contrary to what we are told by society, fat people don’t all think or feel the same so this may not apply to your fattie friend, grandma, roommate or lovah.

If yr interested in fat activism email me at lindseyoliver@hotmail.com.

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On Sinking

By Jennifer Johnson ships my arousal rides surface striking tides punctuate every word unspoken. jej

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. . . anime . . .

By Jane S. Butler some thing about me female masculinity ma’am or sir you call me manly girl, quite possibly!

I am redemption’s equity… that is my divinity anima, animus, born to be …anime… some thing you can’t see like a snatch, patch, burning match, blown-off hatch and now inside, take the ride spin-off through the countryside no more to run, hide genocide …pride… universe born into born so hatred would undo all of me comes from two 25

Amendment adam-eve first sowed this rue

chromosome/molecule sperm and egg shake hands, no duel frolic in a white foam pool where gods and mortals come to school their long-awaited

budding ovule emissary for change, renewal change, change continual perpetual gradual miniscule?

Some thing whispers around me cacophony of scrutiny indoor furnishings, indeed to question me, there is no need

man and woman dwell in me, holding hands in harmony residing intersexually 26

Amendment so I embrace androgyny? that’s no peculiarity there’s a soul like yours in me flesh of God, humanity I hold the mirror, now you see a spark of ideology god-like iconography you…in me…a unity …please don’t flee… you and me are one, you see? …genetically…

Gentle breeze, infinity Anima, animus …anime…

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Can Women be both Strong and Feminine When They Battle in Space?

By Liz Cawrse In science fiction, women are generally classified into two categories: the weak self-centered princess or the over sexed male-hating vixen. Rarely does the general public think about female characters as renegade heroes. Their roles in sci-fi are viewed mainly through the “male gaze” reducing them to nothing more then sexual fantasies.

Likewise, when people typically think about the Star Wars Saga they usually picture more masculine heroes such as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, or perhaps Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi. Strong feminine roles are not as frequent, seeing that there are only three leading female characters throughout the entire saga.

Obviously, the roles for feminine heroines in the Star Wars prequel and original trilogies are few; thus, giving these characters a lot of symbolic weight they have to carry on their own. Despite the apparent lack of leading women, the public’s opinions about women in science fiction films drastically changed when Star Wars hit the silver screen.

My purpose, I believe, in writing this, shows how two of these prominent heroines: Leia and Amidala, are not your runof-the-mill female sci-fi characters, using three key episodes: The Phantom Menace, A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. In doing so, I also want to reveal how these women depict a very different attitude towards feminism.

Throughout cinematic movies, men exclusively played 28

Amendment the role of “hero” in the past. Hollywood’s belief was that women were too weak to play such roles. For example John Leo states in his article Against our Will, “a woman's hand makes a poor fighting fist…” (82). Now heroines, such as Queen Amidala and her daughter Leia, are breaking these traditional stereotypes without losing their feminine qualities and sacrificing their virtues.

Regardless of the differences in the galaxies each woman grows up in, there are still prominent themes of feminine restraint. Queen Amidala, like her daughter, is also defined by her behavior and dress. George Lucas, the creator and director of Star Wars is quoted when making episode two saying: “In Star Wars the first trilogy, Princess Leia’s costumes are very very simplistic…the Empire has taken over. Fashion has gone out the window. Every body wears grey or white in a world where evil sort of is a control of things and in the 2nd trilogy the costumes are designed to call attention to themselves. So it’s just the opposite” (P-19).

Since both of these women are young political leaders, Amidala and Leia are placed in a more formal and regal setting, having to constantly be aware of their position.

In episodes one, four and six, there are several prominent characteristics between mother and daughter. Amidala is a senator much like her daughter Leia, later on in the trilogy.

They are both used to being a symbol of authority and taking charge in battle, as well as, fighting alongside their male companions as equals. Amidala and Leia are also very capable of holding their own; thus, leading the way for their rescues.

These unique similarities are what enable these women to destroy a rising regimented and commercialized Empire.

When first introduced to The Phantom Menace. We find Amidala is the elected queen of the planet Naboo. Despite 29

Amendment being only fourteen years old, she already has a prominent political aura about her. She is both proper and confident in her role as queen. This allows the audience to see her feminine side with her elaborate costumes and hairstyles, as well as, her commanding and dominating presence as ruler of a matriarchy.

The Queen wears the ornate dresses and traditional make-up of all those who came before her symbolizing both purity and status. Megan Marshall from the New Republic reviewed the feminist book Against Our Will and remarked on it saying, “femininity lost any connotation of strength and became nothing more than the pathetic attempts of women to win over men with shows of weakness, painting their faces, shaving their legs, and binding their feet” (33). Marshall’s view stresses that a woman’s value weakened from the manipulation of feminine power.

However, I believe Amidala uses her appearance to show authority and humility rather then using it as a pathetic way to gain control. For example, the two red dots on her cheeks indicate symmetry showing balance in her character. While the lower lip is split with the “Scar of Remembrance” for the time of war on Naboo before the “Great Peace”. This is an ancient Naboo tradition paying tribute to the suffering of its people, reminding the queen to be wise in remembering the past.

In The Phantom Menace, Amidala’s journey to womanhood really begins when the greedy Trade Federation orchestrates a seemingly innocent plot to disenfranchise her. Even though the young queen is strong-minded and steadfast, Amidala is eventually captured and taken prisoner by the Neimodians and their droid armies. Paul F. McDonald author of The Prequel Feminism notes, ” Both of which could serve as prominent symbols of an aggressive, patriarchal 30

Amendment take-over” (5).

This “patriarchal take-over” also happens to Princess Leia in A New Hope when her diplomatic mission to Alderan fails and she is boarded by Imperial troops. Leia is then captured and held prisoner like her mother. Both women essentially battle the reality of male competition and strive for supremacy, the “difference [in manner] can only mean vulnerability in women and abusive power in men” (Marshall 33).

This oppressive domination is at its height when the Death Star is fully operational in A New Hope. The Empire's elite boasts about the invincibility of their rule compared to the Old Republic. McDonald also observes in his article A Prequel Feminism: Part 2 that: Many have noted the lack of women and children in the original trilogy when the Empire is in power, and it now seems deliberate. Cold, sterile technology has reduced the biological galaxy to a wasteland, and as clones and droids take on more of a dominant role, life is no longer being born, but manufactured. It is not implausible to speculate that the end goal of the Empire is to completely eradicate the natural process of procreation itself(8).

Therefore women, with their ability to have power over men, are seen as a constant threat to the Empire. If they were to birth children who could somehow defeat all that the New Order has worked so hard to build, the Empire’s complete control over the people would be lost. This is a clear example in Return of the Jedi when Emperor Palpatine instructs Lord Vader to seduce Luke Skywalker, and possibly his twin sister Leia, to the Dark Side. Palpatine knows that the children of former Anakin Skywalker would be the undoing of the galactic Imperial system.

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Amendment It is obvious that The Empire understands the potential threat both Queen Amidala and Princess Leia possess. Their strength and resourcefulness is proven when they are held captive. Relying not on themselves alone, they recognize when it is best to be subordinate to their male rescuers. Nevertheless, once they are set free, Amidala and Leia will take charge of the escape.

When commenting on Virginia Woolfe's ideals in his article The Prequel Feminism McDonald illustrates, “Amidala’s salvation does not lie in masculine-dominated hierarchy, but rather in what Woolfe called the Outsider's Society. This group is made up not of citizens but individuals, ones who are not cogs in a larger machine but rather valued for their own unique contributions and insights”(10). It is this group of exiled smugglers and misfit Jedi which help further Amidala and Leia’s quest in defeating the oppression of the Empire.

In The Phantom Menace, Queen Amidala fights for the divided Republic to become whole again, but she finds the senate to be useless in aiding her. It is not until she pleads for help from the Gungans, an amphibious race alienated from the people of Naboo, that she reveals herself as a handmaiden and her decoy Sabé posing to be the queen. Her confession that she is “Padmé” the real queen of Naboo unites her people and the estranged Gungan’s race. This brings Padmé closer to finding her true self and strength as a woman.

Padmé’s ability to reveal herself allows her humility and compassion to flourish; both are prominent feminine characteristics. The action of “unmasking” is essential in Star Wars. Padmé’s daughter Leia will do it later in Return of the Jedi when she saves Han Solo in Jabba’s palace. The act of stripping the rigidness and formality of their position as leaders, allows both of them to love and let down their emotional guards.

32

Amendment Amidala and Leia, when presented in the saga, were initially defined by their status in politics. Now we no longer view them as objects of authority, but compassionate feminine leaders. Natalie Portman, the actress who plays Amidala, is quoted in the making of episode two saying, “It’s the great way that George [Lucas] sort of portrays women. They can be powerful and they can be soft and they can wear beautiful cloths and that doesn’t contradict her strength, I think that’s great with this character”(P-19). In stating this, Portman further reveals that the balance of femininity and power is so important to the relationship in the underlying virtues of the characters.

These virtues of compassion and humility are often lost in today’s sense of feminism. Some women might argue that these qualities are not characteristic of a true feminist heroine, believing these characters to be too vulnerable for a valid feminist role model.

Anyone without the humility that Padmé displays throughout The Phantom Menace could not have defeated the Trade federation’s scheme in taking over Naboo as she has done. Likewise, Princess Leia’s compassion and love, when seen in Return of the Jedi, could not have freed Han Solo from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt if she had not disguised herself as a bounty hunter.

Bounty hunters in the Star Wars trilogy, such as Jango and Boba Fett, are typical male symbols of violence and vengeance. Leia used this façade to hide not only her true character and feminine qualities, but to also take on these male characteristics.

This is the mask I was referring to in the paragraph earlier. Leia, like her mother, does not lose her identity. Even though she uses these male attributes to her advantage, she unmasks herself taking off these male characteristics. Both 33

Amendment women realize that their strength is in their compassion and courage.

We could also see this as a representation of the feminist movement today, as women take up the roles of men to liberate those that are held captive by society’s standards. My belief in this movement is that, women do not have to lose themselves and become exactly like men to gain justice. Rather, a woman’s freedom should be her own strength as a female.

When true feminism is lost, it destroys any woman’s ability to be a hero in their own right because they are not themselves. They become more of an impersonator of a liberated woman. Leia and Padmé demonstrate that the weakness of a woman is not her femininity, but the loss of identity when feminism is made to be more masculine.

Works Cited Part 11: P-19. George Lucas Etal. Online Forum Documentary.

21Nov.2004.

11_0.html

http://www.starwars.com/exclusive/making/video_

Leo. “Against Our Will.” Time: 123: 82(1). Jan. 30 1984. Infotrac.

Virginia Commonwealth University. 3Nov.2004. http://infotrac.galegroup. com Marshall. “Femininity.” The New Republic: 190: 33(3). Feb. 13 1984.

Infotrac. Virginia Commonwealth University. 3Nov.2004. http://infotrac. galegroup.com McDonald, Paul F. “The Prequel Feminism.” Star Wars 92919 (June 2002): 16 pars. 4Nov.2004. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16739/92919 McDonald, Paul F. “The Prequel Feminism: Part 2.” Star Wars 93049 (July 2002): 14 pars. 4Nov.2004. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ star_wars/93049

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Out of Body

By Catherine Ennis She looked up, saw stars, felt that it was warm, Closed her eyes to the sky, then opened them, And he was there, his heavy hand on her arm.

His eyes swelled up like great white balloons.

She thought, “I could pop them,” and then winced: What mess that would leave on her nails’ half moons.

He brought a hand back to hit her. She didn’t flinch.

“Hey baby, can’t you see me, baby?”

Her eyes were lost like an animal in pain.

“Hey, bitch, what’s wrong with you, crazy, maybe?”

The acrid sweet stench of his crotch-she thought of rain.

She upended her mind, tumbled out of it.

From far away, she heard someone moan, Heard a rough voice, “Baby, you’ll love it,” Heard a sharp scream, realized it was her own.

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Tele-images: ‘Barker’s Beauties’ Paper presented at William and Mary Television and Gender Conference

By Julia R. Taylor “Image is, I think, all-important in television. That’s why, frankly, you should be more concerned about your makeup artist than your researcher, the one that blows your hair dry than what’s between your ears. That’s television.”

—Richard Nixon

“Johnny Smith, come on down!” Rod Roddy’s voice boomed down from the heavens of the CBS studio everyday during its hourlong daytime slot. Well, not everyone’s name was Johnny or Jane Smith, but it may as well have been. Roddy did not really have box seats in the heavens of CBS, but it certainly seemed so to a seven year old who was running a slight fever, but could well have been in school that day. However, the highlight of that sick day, along with every other one thereafter, was permission to watch The Price Is Right in its entirety.

This is a scenario that could just as well have taken place in the 1970’s, at the onset of the show, as in 1988, the year that marked my induction into the world of the game show. Contained within the walls of a multi-colored set, it is a dizzying world hosted by a glib entertainer, with a bevy of beautiful women displaying items that are, and this is the best part, FREE. Each contestant on the show wagers a guess at the price of each item up for bid. Whoever comes the closest to the actual price of the item (without going over) moves onto the next round, where he or she may win a prize after playing another game. The format of the show is painfully simple and has remained unchanged for the 30 years it has been airing. Yet it is also one of the most successful and long running game shows in television history. In a society that many deem fickle, what can 36

Amendment account for its success and, perhaps more importantly, its longevity?

To be better equipped to make an educated guess, we should look at who comprises the show.

The host, Bob Barker, is the same one who began with the show. He remains eerily unchanged in the way that Dick Clark does, calling to question whether blood or formaldehyde runs through those veins. His loud sidekick, Rod, though hidden in a sound booth for the majority of the show, still wears the same flashy ties he did when the show started. In fact, the only aspect of the show that seems to have changed is that the women who display the items and prizes are not, pardon the pun, the original models.

Over the years, Bob Barker’s hair may have whitened, his teeth capped, his skin tightened, but he remains an acceptable host.

In fact, since he has been with the show so long, he may have even crossed the line to irreplaceable.

What, then, has happened to the models that started out with Barker? After many years on the show, as the original models’ hemlines continued to go up, gravity started coming down, and they were out, replaced by vastly younger women. Perhaps even more importantly than the question of where these women have gone is what their replacement says about society. In this essay, I intend to explore the importance of appearance in the media and society. In addition, through discussion of appearance, I will look at the role it plays in sexism and where we can find it the most. I believe that the women of The Price Is Right are representative of both issues.

In today’s culture, many people shun the idea of a sexist society where women are valued based upon appearance. To these people, this image went up in smoke with the burning of the bra and the introduction of power suits. It is an apparently antiquated cultural representation that is no longer accurate in our supposed post-feminist society. However, there is an alternative side to this argument. This side proposes that although it may seem a cliché in the new millennium, a woman’s appearance still very much guides her success in our culture. It is this flip side of post-feminism that must be examined more closely. I propose that image-based sexism 37

Amendment is alive and well and nowhere is it more rampant or obvious than in the media. Specifically, the models known as “Barker’s Beauties” on the game show The Price Is Right exist as a prime example of how women are judged first and foremost based on their outward appearance.

The original “Barker Beauties” had a good run, lasting several years. However, as the show crept closer to the new millennium, the models were on their way to being replaced by younger women.

The original women were in no way unattractive by most standards.

However, attractiveness is no longer judged solely by appearance, but by age as well. A study in The Journal of Social Psychology found that, “All other things being equal, the prevailing attractiveness stereotype suggests that to be attractive is to be youthful in appearance.” The newest models to join “Barker’s Beauties” are living proof of the research. If we were to compare the new arrivals to an image of their predecessors when they first began the show, we might have difficulty distinguishing among the women. While the original models were still attractive in the way that an aging socialite might be, it was not the sort of attractiveness that was good enough for television.

The suggestion is that women are unable to grow old on television, gracefully or otherwise. Once the aging process began, replacements for the models were already in the wings.

There are those who do not want to admit to the lingering presence of sexism in society. Columnist Norman Solomon states, “People who complain loudly about media images of women are apt to be derided for ‘political correctness.’ But another sort of PC--what might be called patriarchal correctness--continues to flourish today as a media mainstay . . .” The idea of political correctness has been beaten into the ground until it has lost much of its effectiveness.

However, just because the idea has become increasingly outdated does not mean that it is any less true. In fact, if anything, taking away the authority of the idea has allowed it to grow, because many people are no longer paying attention. In the wake of feminism and the increase of opportunities for women, the refusal to admit that appearance remains an important factor for women has allowed for a resurgence of politically incorrect material. As a society, we 38

Amendment may prefer to think of ourselves as having moved past the passé gender issues that irked previous generations, but sexism cannot be as simplified as that. One need only turn the television on to see the truth in that statement.

However, in fairness, not everyone is agreement that women are being victimized in stereotypical roles. In fact, in her article, “Media Male Bashing Sport for Too Many,” Suzanne Fields ventures to the other side of the discussion, arguing that men are the victims: Politically incorrect students on our college campuses joke that nobody wants to sign up for ethnic studies about beer-guzzling, pot-bellied, loud-belching white heterosexual males. Women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies are politically correct, but the Homer Simpsons of the world are shunned. They can be depicted as coarse, crude, uncouth and dull-witted on television and in the movies there's not a peep of protest . . . Truth lurks in all of these explanations, but animated or human the men depicted in the media have settled into a limited manhood. It's narrow, even marginal, but there's nothing ambiguous about it.

Fields suggests that in becoming increasingly politically correct, society has become overly sensitive. She seems to suggest that in taking care not to victimize minorities, including women, society has overcompensated and now victimizes men instead of creating an equilibrium between the sexes.

However, were this true, we would see more equality regarding appearance in the entertainment industry. Norman Solomon claims that all we need to do to see the inequality present is to open a magazine. In a seemingly gender neutral magazine, Newsweek, we see: Newsweek's April 29 edition, looking ahead to "Companies of the Future" and the ‘Office of Tomorrow,’ featured a woman on the cover. Wielding some kind of futuristic gadget, this prototypical office worker was ultra-thin and wore several-inch spike heels as 39

Amendment she sat in a transparent chair with a subtle yet distinct resemblance to a martini glass (Solomon).

Here, the implication is that even a corporate environment, one that should be of equal opportunity, is infused with sex. The place of the woman in this setting is perched atop a chair that is reminiscent of a martini glass. The image of the woman in the advertisement is inextricable from sex and alcohol. This representation of a woman’s place does not promote one that is based on her capability, but instead on her appearance and sex appeal.

The importance of a woman’s appearance is nothing new.

From the beginning of The Price Is Right, it was obvious that the models had to be attractive in order to be employed. In his article, “Gender Roles On Prime Time Network Television: Demographics and Behaviors,” Jack Glascock examines this issue: In terms of physical appearance, female characters remain younger, more provocatively dressed . . . In sum, not much has changed in this regard since Davis (1990) concluded over 10 years ago that the appearance of the television woman was “reflective of traditional cultural definitions of beauty and femininity” (330).

Glascock and Davis’ research illustrates perfectly how the models on a game show are somehow supposed to be indicative of society’s expectations of women’s appearance. In essence, the article suggests that the idea of femininity is defined by what women look like on television. If women were to assume that this is correct, and model themselves after ‘Barker’s Beauties,’ countless women nationwide would never move past displaying their glamorous new vacuum cleaner for their families with a smile on their faces as vacuous as the Hoover.

The appearance factor, though important, merely emphasizes a greater issue: the fact that women are valued on appearance reflects an underlying theme of the subordination of women, something that should not still be present in our “PC” culture. The models on The 40

Amendment Price Is Right are never given the chance to speak. They merely pose next to items and prizes. Even Vanna White (who, incidentally, got her ‘break’ appearing as a contestant on The Price Is Right) from Wheel of Fortune threw in a word or two at the conclusion of the show.

The fact that the models never speak emphasizes that their bodies, over any other qualities they may possess, remain the focus. It is for this reason that I feel validated in including research regarding print models. In a study entitled Face-ism and Facial Expressions of Women In Magazine Photos, findings conclude that, “Photos of women are found to focus more on their bodies and photos of men on their faces, a finding consistent with previous research.” The fact that “Barker’s Beauties” are rarely given close-ups only underscores the research.

However, these women are aware of the fact that their only function is to smile and pose. Former ‘Beauty’ Janice Pennington is quoted as saying, “The work isn’t hard. It’s just trying to make a refrigerator look like your best friend” (Kennedy). The awareness of the women that they exist on the show mainly as eye candy to enhance the innate beauty of a washing machine makes their station somewhat more demeaning. By being knowledgeable of the fact and accepting it, they serve only to further the stereotype that women are seen and not heard in some areas. In essence, they lose their voice.

Not everyone is of the opinion that subordination is as present as some may believe. In his book, Cracks In The Pedestal: Ideology and Gender In Hollywood, Philip Green explores controversial ground, assenting that while there may exist some difference in gender roles, perhaps women are no longer as oppressed as they once were. He states that, “in the case of gender, at some point the actual subordination of women has gradually been displaced, by a conceptual sleight of hand, into the ideological realm of ‘the family’” (147). Though he does not entirely negate the existence of a sexist society, he seems to suggest that perhaps women are not actually the subject of sexism, but the victims of society believing them to be as such.

The importance of youth and appearance is not confined to the game show arena. With the emergence of ‘info-tainment,’ a sometimes confusing mix of information and entertainment, the news 41

Amendment media has become increasingly fixated on appearance. Turn on CNN or Fox News at any time and overwhelmingly the trend for women has been one geared toward young, attractive female anchors. A report issued by the National Organization for Women (NOW) states: On any average night in the United States, more than 100 million men, women and children settle down to watch television and what they're often treated to is an adolescent boy's fantasyland.

[They] are almost always young, thin and use their sex appeal to great advantage. [They] may be capable but must answer to male authority.

Opportunities for men remain as broad as ever; there are young men, yes, but there are also balding men (Larry King), fat men (Rush Limbaugh) and a great number of old men (Dan Rather, Mike Wallace and Dominick Dunne). Compare the variety of opportunities for male anchors to those available for women and we will certainly come up short on the latter side. Writer Murry Frymer illustrates this idea: Unfortunately, when it comes to age and experience, there is a double whammy against female reporters.

Even ‘60 Minutes’ seems to prefer to adorn its show with younger, attractive women, as if it could not possibly complement its older male reporters with older female reporters . . . Perhaps it is because we are a young country. Everything is show business, even the news.

However, this is not to say that this particular area of the media excludes older women altogether. Just as there are older male journalists, there are indeed some older female journalists.

Unfortunately, the numbers just are not on the women’s side. One need not even turn to research to support this idea; simply try to think of as many older male journalists as possible. Now do the same for older female journalists. How do the numbers compare? Speaking personally, I can think of Barbara Walters immediately; after that, I really must strain to come up with more female journalists who could qualify for senior citizenship.

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Amendment In thinking of the gap in age and importance of appearance when comparing male and female journalists, I can’t help but draw the parallel between that idea and Bob Barker and his ‘Beauties.’ While the women have come and gone, Bob Barker is the staple of the show.

What allows him to age on national television while the models have been traded in? TV critic Matt Roush offers his opinion on Barker’s longevity, “he hasn’t lost any of his enthusiasm, and I think that’s what keeps the franchise going.” Enthusiasm? Indubitably, Barker has an energetic stage presence and is a remarkable showman, but can enthusiasm alone really be the root of his durability? Barker himself admits to undergoing a facelift in 1990, but a quick nip-and-tuck job cannot turn the clock backwards. It is obvious that he has aged, but his place on the show was never questioned. He has survived several models, sexual harassment suits, surgeries, and women in the audience still propose to him during commercial breaks.

The obvious question in considering the different ways that each gender is treated is: why? Why are Larry King, Mike Wallace and Bob Barker still successful so late in their careers while women struggle to maintain a career past 40? To best understand the gender discrepancies, we must examine why it is that women seemingly play a subordinating role in the entertainment industry. One idea is that men are the major power players who control the business. If the majority of authority figures are men, then it is they who are making the decisions and forming the ideals. Glascock suggests that perhaps this contributes to the female stereotype on television: In the past, researchers have suggested that the lack of female representation in front of the camera may be due to the scarcity of females behind the scenes (Busby, 1975; Davis, 1990; Greenberg & Collette, 1997; Lauzen & Dozier, 1999). In addition, a significant relationship was discovered between shows with women executive producers and shows with major women characters. Also found were significant relationships between the gender of executive producers and writers and the degree of conversational controls exhibited by major female characters, such as interruptions and speaking frequency.

This research suggests that a show with a good number of 43

Amendment women working behind the scenes will have a higher likelihood of illustrating a more balanced view of women in front of the camera.

Unfortunately, the presence of women is not strongly felt in behind the scenes production. In fact, females make up only 22% of writers and 18% of executive producers. The highest incident of women is in the field of production; however, even the highest number in this area is only 36% (Glascock). In the case of a show such as The Price Is Right, there is presently only one woman involved in the production of the show: associate producer, Kathy Greco. Perhaps this is one of the contributing factors to the show’s skewed treatment of the models as opposed to their male counterparts.

The idea that producers play a major part in our perception of what is on television is an important one. Lynne Joyrich explores this idea in her article, “Re-viewing Reception : Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture Theories of Contemporary Culture.” Joyrich claims that: Within its own discourses, television also played out the connections and disjunctions, associations and contradictions, between itself and its gendered receivers; less a "self-reflexivity" (television's awareness of its imagery) than a "self-receptivity" (television's awareness of the imagery of viewers), television has managed conceptions of its audiences within its very texts.

In this statement, Joyrich claims that it is actually the television producers that create the gender concepts. However, it seems that the concepts are formed based on the audience, thus giving them a basis in reality instead of ideology. Perhaps, then, it is not a subordination of women as decreed by producers, but by society. In turn, television merely reflects what is self-evident in the culture.

Upon researching the importance of appearance in the media and the incredible influence it has on gender roles, I have revisited my initial perception of The Price Is Right. I look at it now with a somewhat jaded point of view instead of as a wide eyed eight year old. I have the image of watching the show with my children one day.

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Amendment By then, Bob Barker will be hosting from a wheelchair and Rod Roddy will have his own fluorescent walker in lieu of his colorful ties. The models of that generation, however, will be replaced yet again, this time by even younger women. Who knows? Perhaps one day, high school seniors will be the models. The Price Is Right does not promote equality between the sexes, but perhaps it is not the show’s place to do so anyway. Instead of relying on television and its respective programs for our perceptions, maybe we should judge based on our own criteria rather than the media’s. I once read in a book of Aesop’s fables to “beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.” So much of culture and, alternatively, the media is based on outward appearances. To believe that appearance no longer has any impact upon a woman’s success is naïve and untrue. The newly updated “Barker’s Beauties,” however hyperbolic an example, exist as an illustration of this point. However, appearances are mainly shells and do not necessarily reflect what lies beneath. To become a truly productive and equal society, we must focus more on the “substance” and less on the “shadow.”

Sources 1. Barnhart, Aaron. The 'Price' Not Right: For Some Reason, 'Barker's Beauties' Are History. Kansas City Star. January 26, 2001.

E1.

2. Bertolissi, Susan; Lind, David L.; Perlini, Arthur, H. The Effects of Women's Age and Physical Appearance On Evaluations of Attractiveness and Social Desirability. The Journal of Social Psychology. June 1999. v139 p343.

3.Fields, Suzanne. Media Male-Bashing Sport for Too Many.

News World Communications, Inc. v16 i17 p48. May 2000.

4. Glascock, Jack. Gender Roles On Prime-Time Network Television: Demographics and Behaviors. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. v45 i4 p656. Fall 2001.

45

Amendment 5. Green, Philip. Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood. University of Massachusetts Press. p147. January 1998.

6. Joyrich, Lynne. Re-viewing Reception : Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture Theories of Contemporary Culture. Bloomington, Indiana. Indiana University Press. 1996.

7. Signiorelli, Nancy. Messages Reinforce Sexual Stereotypes.

USA Today. v126 n2631 p3. December 1997.

8. Solomon, Norman. Still Not Good Enough--From Barbie to Botox. The Humanist. July-August 2002. v62 p7.

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sangry

By Callie Jean Furlong the thin- and hair Lipped some with ugly faces – more with two China-doll brows skin slick and glassy eyes Squint Miss stood-under the thin ones Ballerina bodies goose pimpled swan nekkid Bloody power shaking heands Nervous 71 the hamster-teethed ones sweaty brows the weighted ones Cupid curved pimple-armed duckling Bloody drained shaking thighs Nauseous 83 47

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‘Tis the Season by j.l.odom It’s Friday night in late January and I’m sitting in the living room of my apartment on an uncomfortable futon with a few friends. I had made the exciting trip earlier in the day to a West End ABC Store and we are currently in the process of putting my bottled purchases to good use. On the television screen in front of us is a table being occupied by six women inside a Los Angeles café called “The Planet.” Our conversation becomes focused on what we’re watching.

“I think Tina is the best-looking. She progressively becomes more attractive in each episode.”

“What are you talking about?!? Apparently your taste in women lacks sound judgment. Marina is by far the sexiest one. Hey, what would go well with this Bacardi Vanilla?

“Ginger Ale. You know Marina isn’t going to be on the show anymore. Karina Lombard didn’t get along with the cast members or something.

“Yeah, I know. I already spent a solid hour crying after finding out the bad news. Oh well, at least I still have Shane.”

“Shane is too butch for me. I like the one who used to date k.d. lang. When does Season Two start anyway?”

“Late February-the twentieth to be exact. Can you hand me that bottle of vodka?”

“We’ve got to find someone who gets Showtime.

And soon. How about you save some of that Absolut for the rest of us, lush.”

48

Amendment Yes ladies, it’s that time again. Time for the show that has received a great deal of attention since it began airing last year. Time for the discussions about possible scenarios for Season Two to begin being considered by admiring viewers.

Time to make friends with someone who orders pay-per-view cable so that the L Word can be watched on Sunday nights.

The L Word has become what the Ellen Show was for lesbians in the late nineties. Like with the now defunct Ellen Degeneres sitcom, women in 2004 tune in weekly to The L Word, using it as a means of community. Fortunately, unlike the long-gone Degeneres sitcom, it doesn’t take a series finale to have the lesbian character say “I’m gay.” From Pilot Episodes 1 and 2, the main characters of the L Word were here, queer, and lesbian viewers were gladly wanting to get used to it on a weekly basis.

The L Word’s popularity has rapidly increased over the past year. The possibility of coming across a lesbian who doesn’t own the Season One box set or hasn’t, if it isn’t in her DVD collection, at least considered buying it, is highly improbable.

Go on-line and find chat groups, fansites devoted to the show, and meet-up places/parties across the United States. Godfrey’s, located here in Richmond on East Grace Street, has “L Word Night” every Thursday evening. From Virginia to California, the L Word has gained quite the appreciative following.

Though the show’s viewers are not strictly lesbians, it’s the lesbian viewers that understandably consider the show more important than say, heterosexual males. For lesbians, there is more to the L Word than the heated sex scenes that occur roughly every ten to fifteen minutes. It is a show that focuses on the life of women that usually take a back seat to straight characters. There’s always the shows with the one lesbian character beset a group of heterosexuals, but there has yet to be a show that reverses this typical approach on 49

Amendment television. That is, until now.

The L Word unapologetically throws a cast of gay and bisexual women into the limelight and redirects the center of attention that has so long been held tightly by heterosexuals.

And only one thing can really be said in reaction to this: “It’s about damn time.”

In addition to having a cast ensemble of beautiful women, another key factor in drawing in a lesbian fanbase is the possible relatability to the characters’ lives. Aside from debates with female friends over which character has the most sex appeal, women find situations on the show similar to occurrences that have taken place in their own lives. From possessive girlfriends to older lesbian couples who have become “boring,” a viewer can watch the show and say “That’s just like so-and-so!”

For a while, lesbians have been able to relate to songs by artists such as Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls, Ani Difranco, Melissa Ferrick, and bands like the Butchies and Tribe 8. The lyrics of these performers are honest in confronting same-sex desire. And just like Difranco’s song “Both Hands” or Etheridge’s “I Wanna Come Over,” The L Word gives insight into feelings, likes, and dislikes of the majority of gay women.

Cheating, break ups, pet cats like Mr. Peepers, homophobia, playing sports, gaydar, coming out of the closet, lesbianidentified men named Lisa, a horribly out-of-tune car trip sing-a-long to “Closer to Fine”...if a lesbian said none of the above mentionings related to her, than I’d be the first to call her bluff.

Besides attractive women and art seemingly imitating life, the L Word, perhaps most importantly, is a show that brings awareness to current political issues. The character played by Jennifer Beals, Bette Porter, is an art gallery director in charge of showing sexually explicit pieces that draws heavy criticism from 50

Amendment an evangelical religious group. Erin Daniels plays professional tennis player Dana who is hesitant in publicly outing herself for fear that it will ruin her chance of endorsement deals. Bette and her life partner Tina go through the difficulty involved in finding a sperm donor and the reactions of those opposed to the idea of a same-sex couple raising a child.

So after discussing the educational value of the L Word as well as including several paragraphs of praise directed toward the show, I suppose it is only fair to give criticism as well. No, I’m not going to complain about the lack of “butch” women on the show. I’m not even going to place blame on the idiots who decided to put the L Word on a channel that 10% of the population gets. My criticism is actually more like a request, or in boldness (which is usually due to the consumption of several margaritas), an order: Bring back Marina.

And have Jennifer Beals, in at least one upcoming episode, dance to “What a Feeling,” just for old time’s sake.

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the miseducation of dorothy

By Ceres history class taught me about lions, tigers, and bears so I could be scared just like Dorothy the wizard— more than a tough guise he was a man nonetheless the answer lies in a man (a man always lies in the answer) but who dies if she doesn’t comply to the wonderful wizard’s demand? dorothy Allison knows (she was real) but a nose on a woman grows like Pinocchio (he was a fake) when she tells the story, they say “women always lie about such things” bull daggers and bitches sexless, unless she’s the rich man’s slave then she is not useless then the pussy is priceless at the age of seven—

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Amendment teen-aged pregnancies on the rise the newsman proclaims when she has an abortion she knows no greater shame meanwhile the priest is ordained little boys cry red rain blood, bruised and sodomized little boys lie remember who cried wolf? remember the wolf wears sheep’s wool to pull the wool over our eyes so we do not see him lurking in the fields of cotton we pick for the master to please him dorothy done disappeared out of sight out of mind no one minds when it is the woman of color the lesbian the little boy the slave who gets 41 bullets in the chest policemen acquitted we all know they did it we got it on tape what difference does it make?

53

Amendment as long as it’s the woman of color the lesbian the little boy the slave and not the master who is blood bruised sodomized in the prison cell lies the slave who cries himself to sleep to dream of returning home just like Dorothy.

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Confrontation

By Rachel Shaw I read your last message three times. “How’s my little girl? Miss you. Love you.”

What is it that you miss? The little homemaker wife you thought I should be? Miss all the times you sat at home all day. Alone. Watching reruns of Southpark and listening to Eminem. Remember how when I didn’t share my dinner with you, even though you had your own and even though you would never ask for any of mine, because I would have, remember all the names you called me? Miss that?

And love? Is that like all the times you called me selfish?

Remember the time you locked me in a closet. With no visitors. No phone calls. Enough rations to keep me alive, but not kicking at you. I should have. Instead I sat mute. Lips pursed. Face white.

My reply?

If I ever see you again no flicker of recognition will light my face. If you speak, I will walk away silent, not one look back You will be nothing more than a stranger on the street.

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Women’s “Sanitary Products” and How Menstrual Shame Affects Our Product Choice, Our Health and the Environment

By Kiara Fuentes Women menstruate. Millions of women across the world are bleeding as you read the words that flow across this page. They will, they are, or they have blood each month for thirty to forty years of their life. For women, it is a simple fact of life that menstrual blood must be “dealt with.” Typically, women rely on tampons or disposable pads to deal with their immensely coded menstrual blood. Unfortunately, the products women commonly rely on, the mainstream products, are harmful for their bodies and their surrounding environment.

There are alternative products available which are much safer for women’s bodies and the environment however, due to menstrual shame, corporate capitalism, and the taboo nature of menstruation, women are unaware of or unable to access these products.

The Damaging Effects of Commonly Used Menstrual Products Tampons are generally the most commonly used menstrual product. There are several mainstream brands that women (and even men) would recognize and be able to identify. Several of these brands including Tampax, o.b., and Playtex are advertised on TV and magazines. They take up several shelves of your local super market or convenience store. Tampons are pretty convenient. You can purchase them for a few quarters in public bathrooms across the country.

They are easy to use, disposable, and discreet.

However, despite the advantages of tampons they are 56

Amendment also harmful to women and their surrounding environment.

In the most extreme cases they can cause death. In the least extreme cases tampons can cause minor vaginal irritation.

Several of the dangers that tampons pose are: exposure to carcinogens (such as dioxins), Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), and pollution. Many of the risks associated with tampons seem to stem from the bleaching process that tampons, like other paper products, go through before they are packaged and shipped off to be sold.

Several years ago, tampons were bleached using chlorine gas. This bleaching process created toxins, specifically organochlorines (a combination of dioxins and furans), which were then being dumped into the waterway (Ostrowska par. 4).

According to Karen Houppert, author of The Curse: Confronting the Last Unmentionable Taboo: Menstruation, dioxins are extremely dangerous, especially long-term exposure to dioxins (18-35). In 1997, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report stating that new evidence showed that, “the threshold level for dioxin damage was considerably lower than previously believed” and that while dioxin was a known carcinogen, it also adversely affected men and women’s immune and reproductive systems (Houppert 20-1). Kalina Ostrowska, author of “Stop the Whitewash: Toxins in the Women’s Hygiene Industry,” mentions a finding by the World Health Organization that concludes that “eighty to ninety percent of North American cancers are cause by human made toxins, including chlorine based toxins” (Ostrowska par.5).

Dioxin exposure has resulted in decreased fertility, inability to maintain pregnancy and ovarian dysfunction in women.

Men generally experience smaller genitals, reduced sperm count, testicular atrophy, and abnormal testis structure when exposed to dioxins (Houppert 22).

Unfortunately for us, there have been no “real” 57

Amendment regulations of tampons to prevent trace amounts of dioxins from being detected in the products we insert into a most delicate area. Dr. Philip Tierno, a microbiologist who has done various studies regarding tampons, stated in May of 1999, that the FDA reported that tampon manufacturers are now using a different bleaching process. Instead of a highly reactive chlorine gas, they are using chlorine dioxide—dioxins do not form (Finley “Museum of Menstruation”). Supposedly, this new process, which does not involve chlorine gas, is safer and only “trace” amounts of dioxin levels are found in the tampons (“Tampons and Asbestos” par. 4-9). The on-line Environmental Magazine sums up the problem with the new bleaching method succinctly, “Even the FDA acknowledges that chlorine dioxide, though elementally chlorine free, can still ‘theoretically generate dioxins at extremely low levels,’ and according to the EPA, no safe level for dioxin exposure exists. The compound is ten times more likely to cause cancer than was believed in 1994…” (par. 3). The article goes on to say that even average small traces can lead to birth defects, developmental delays, hormone disruption, and immune cell suppression (par.3). Essentially, exposure to even minimal amounts of dioxin is harmful.

The FDA feels that this ‘minimal’ exposure to dioxins is acceptable, it is okay for women’s bodies (“Tampons and Asbestos” par.4-9). Houppert points out, however, that while everyone may be exposed to dioxins, women are “hit with a double whammy” (22). Not only are we being exposed to dioxins on a daily basis, but also for a few days a month we are inserting a dioxin-laden object into our bodies. She goes on to explain that, “Seventy three million menstruating women are bolstering an industry that releases toxins into our air and waterways. And seventy three million American women may be directly accumulating toxins in their bodies via tampons. Consider five tampons a day, five days a month, 58

Amendment for thirty-eight menstruating years. That’s 11,400 tampons in a lifetime” (22). Joe Thorton from GreenPeace declares that, “even if there is a safe dioxin dose, we are already at, near, or above the threshold. Additional exposures cannot be considered “safe” (Houppert 25). What is most fascinating about the whole bleaching process and dioxin issue is that the bleaching process does not aid in making tampons sterile, it only makes them white. Pretty pointless, considering no one is going to see the tampon once inserted, and the whole purpose of a tampon is to absorb RED blood.

Another problem with tampons is the risk of developing Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). TSS first became a medical issue in 1978. The symptoms of TSS include fever, rash, hypotension, and skin peeling. TSS is not always tampon related. Anyone may experience TSS as a result of skin infections, burns, insect bites or postoperative wounds (Golub 152-3). If not treated quickly, TSS can be fatal. The informational pamphlet included in o.b. tampons states that TSS is caused by Staphylococcus bacterium. Some women, as the pamphlet goes on to state, normally have this bacterium in their vagina (par.4).

There is quite an interesting her-story regarding TSS and the mega-corporations that produce tampons. In the late 1970’s, Procter and Gamble created Rely, a specific brand of super absorbent tampons. Rely became so popular that other companies also created their own brand of super absorbent tampons to keep from losing profits. (Houppert 29). Sharon Golub, author of Periods: From Menarche to Menopause, mentions that Rely was made of synthetic materials such as polyester foam and carboxymethylcellulose, polyacrylate rayon, and polyester (“The Hidden Price” par. 5). Kate Witherspoon points out in her article, “Tampons: Cause for Concern?”, that the super absorbent products promote the growth of bacteria causing TSS (par 7). Today, tampons are 59

Amendment made of viscous rayon and/or cotton (Golub 153-4). While viscous rayon is less dangerous, according to Dr. Tierno, it also promotes toxin growth (“The Hidden Price” par.5-6).

Since TSS was not a very well known syndrome among consumers or the medical community, many women died. One such woman was Patricia Kehm, a twenty-five year old wife and mother of two (Riley x). Patricia became ill on September 5, 1980. It started off with a fever but as the day progressed she vomited, had chills, diarrhea, sore throat, dizziness, and discolored extremities and finally went into shock. The next day, her lungs filled with fluid, she drowned and her heart stopped. Procter and Gamble pulled Rely off the market sixteen days later (Riley 1-15). Kehm was not the only woman who died needlessly. Houppert points out that in 1980 thirtyeight women died from tampon related TSS (29). According to Witherspoon, there were more than 800 cases of TSS in 1980 and that seventy one percent of them “had been using a brand of highly absorbent tampons that had recently come onto the market” (par.2-3). In 1981, after the super absorbent tampons were pulled from the market, there were 470 cases of TSS, of which there were 13 deaths. (par. 3).

With the sudden outbreak of TSS, much research was done to find out the causes and effects. The Institute of Medicine formed a committee to look at the data and statistics surrounding TSS. They found that since the committee’s inception in 1981 until April 1982, over 1600 cases of TSS were reported. The committee also found that tampon users reported ninety two percent of these cases and one third of these women were between the ages of 15-19 (Golub 152-3).

The Center for Disease Control concluded that, “the risk for TSS is thirty three times greater for tampon users than for nonusers, and the risk generally increases as the absorbency of the tampon increases, regardless of the chemical makeup 60

Amendment of the tampon” (Golub 154). The Institute of Medicine and the Boston Women’s Health Collective (BWHC) came up with various guidelines concerning tampon use. Some of the guidelines that the Institute came up with were that: women who have already had TSS, are postpartum, or adolescent should minimize or restrict use of tampons. The BWHC stated that women should choose a tampon with the lowest absorbency and stay away from deodorant tampons, as they can cause vaginal irritation (Golub154-4). Interestingly enough, the BWHC also demonstrated that if you dropped a tampon into a water filled glass, particles from the tampon will break off.

They noticed that the worst tampons were the tampons made of rayon polyacrylate, which actually turned the water in the glass cloudy. As mentioned earlier, this synthetic material was then pulled as it shown to promote the bacteria that caused TSS. After the outbreaks of TSS, the FDA declared that tampon absorbencies must be standardized (Rome and Wolhandler 264-5). Otherwise, absorbencies could vary from brand to brand and women would never know which tampon absorbed the least and therefore would be least likely to promote TSS. The four categories of absorbencies are juniors, regulars, supers, and super plus. Juniors can absorb 6 grams or less of water, while super plus’s can absorb 12 to 15 grams (Golub 153-5).

While TSS seems to be a thing of the past, women continue to have brushes with TSS and there are occasional fatalities.

Jenny Kilvert, for example, created National Tampon Alert Day because her fifteen year old daughter, Alice, died from TSS in November 1991 (“Alice’s Story” par.1-3.

Health threats aside, tampons also pose problems for the environment. As mentioned earlier, pollution from bleaching has seriously harmed our waterways and the ecological systems that inhabit those waterways. Tampons also create serious 61

Amendment waste. Both Witherspoon and the Environmental Magazine point out that tampons are ending up in landfills and sewer systems, and are often times, being washed out to sea (par.1213). The online Environmental Magazine also mentions that “according to the Center for Marine Conservation, over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998-1999” (par.13). Imagine the number of applicators that will be collected in the next five to ten years.

You may want to watch where you lay your beach towel on your next trip to the beach.

The other most common mainstream menstrual product is the disposable pad. The disposable pad first came on the market in 1921 (Ostrowska par.2). Like tampons, disposable pads, are bleached and therefore contain dioxins. However, unlike tampons, disposable pads do not pose as much of a health threat because they are not worn internally. The disposable pads that women commonly use pose more of an environmental threat. Pads are generally made of plastic, individually wrapped in plastic and packaged together in plastic. This excessive use of plastic is very harmful for the environment. While tampons generally take about six months to biodegrade, pads last indefinitely (Witherspoon par. 12).

According to an excerpt from Liz Armstrong and Adrienne Scott’s book, Whitewash, the average woman, “throws away 10,000 pads or tampons in her lifetime, quite a bundle if you had to dispose of them in your own backyard” (9). They state that in 1990, the United States incinerated or land filled 11.3 billion pads (9). Why women unaware of how much of our products contribute to pollution and waste? And why don’t we seek out alternatives? The answer lies in our patriarchal society’s negative perception of menstruation and corporate capitalism’s desire to profit off of our menstrual shame.

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Menstrual Shame I am unable to count the number of times I have looked up and thought “why? Why wasn’t I prepared? What were you thinking?” It has happened on mornings when I roll out of bed only to find stains soiling my sheets. It has happened in school, at work, and the most dreaded—while on vacation. It’s my period and I have to deal with it for the next several decades.

My next thought is always predictable “what if someone finds out? What if I have stained my clothes?” I can declare myself a feminist as loudly as possible, but I too, feel the shame associated with menstruation. I don’t want anyone to know that I am bleeding, even though it is a perfectly biological function. There is something humiliating and almost painful about being caught with blood on your clothes.

So many of use have internalized the negativity associated with our blood and our bodies. We feel ashamed of a simple biological function. Would life stop if others knew we were bleeding? What are we so afraid of and why? Do we seem messy, dirty, unkempt, and unorganized if we have blood peaking out of our shorts? I am jealous of those who love their blood, who are happy to menstruate. I dislike it and I strongly believe that if we grew up in an environment where our menarche and future cycles were celebrated, most of us would love and celebrate our ability to menstruate.

Giant companies rely heavily on menstrual shame and the taboo nature of menstruation to promote their products.

These messages only serve to reinforce our negative perception of menstruation and our bodies, thereby silencing us. The authors of Blood Stories, Janet Lee and Jennifer Sasser-Coen, believe that many women feel ashamed of their menstruation.

Coupled with the shame, women also feel dirty and smelly.

As the authors so correctly conclude, women feel they must “conceal” their menstruation. These negative ideas 63

Amendment are reinforces everyday through the advertisements that major menstrual product companies put out. As women, we internalize these ideas and learn that menstruation is taboo (59-83). Lee and Sasser-Coen put it succinctly: Society maintains taboos against positive discussion of menarche and menstruation, and as a result, reinforces cultural values that see menstrual blood as dirty and smelly, polluting and contaminating. If menstruation were not so “icky”, companies would not go to such great lengths to emphasize that if you use their products no will know you are menstruating, be able to see unsightly bulges, or smell you. (59) The mere fact that we bleach tampons and pads to get them white, and therefore clean, demonstrates that we see our menstrual blood as dirty.

Companies are able to instill these beliefs in us as young girls. They often distribute informational literature and their products to young girls and to schools. The authors of Blood Stories liken this to “propaganda” (66) and Houppert claims that this is a means to attract young girls to their product so that they can develop lifetime users (41). This literature has the same menstrually negative attitude and tone as their advertisements. Lee and Sasser-Coen also point out that it’s easier to prevent young girls (or women for that matter) from controlling their own bodies if they are ignorant about them.

They also believe that these young girls who are ignorant about menarche are also more susceptible to buying into negative beliefs about menstruation. They go on to state that, “Self-discipline and policing through everyday acts of feminine bodily care and the use of menstrual products and other commodities perpetuates corporate capitalism at the same that it creates disciplined bodies”(69). Essentially, it is 64

Amendment in patriarchal corporation’s best interests for women and girls to buy into notions of beauty and shame.

Advertisements featuring glamorous, beautiful, skinny girls are everywhere. In our patriarchal society, beauty is valued and idealized. We are taught, at a very early age, to be thin and beautiful through constant social reward and praise. We do not praise women for being able to change a tire but we do praise them for dressing well. Our attempts to achieve supermodel beauty put us at odds with our selves. We internalize negative attitudes about our bodies.

Our arms are never toned enough, our thighs are never slim enough, and our stomachs are never tight enough. We are at constant war, trying to become something we cannot and in the meantime hating who we currently are. The constant reinforcement of patriarchal notions of beauty and body images also help to create and maintain negative perceptions about menstruation. Our bodies and our blood are coded. They are a text. According to Lee and Sasser-Coen, “issues concerning the body are deeply embedded into social institutions and behaviors” (16). Patriarchy sees menstrual blood as dirty, smelly, contaminating, debilitating, and inconvenient. If we are at war with our bodies, if we disassociate with our bodies, and if we do not know our own bodies’ patriarchy will continue to have control of our bodies. But what if the tables were turned – how would a patriarchal society view menstruation if men were to bleed monthly?

Gloria Steinem proposes in “If Men Could Menstruate”, that if men menstruated and women did not, menstrual shame would not be an issue. Instead, menstruation would then become an “enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: men would brag how long and how much”. She points out that sanitary products would be federally funded and people would claim that men’s ability to menstruate would make them 65

Amendment superior and able to run for office, hold religious positions and serve in the military (367). Basically, menstruation would not be taboo for men. Instead, men would be in touch with their bodies and would be able to use their menstruation to their advantage; where as women are frequently and subliminally told they cannot perform or perform as well in certain arenas due to the fact that they menstruate.

In order to overcome menstrual taboos and the shame associated with menstruation, we need to re-think and reanalyze the way we perceive and internalize menstruation.

As women, we need to re-articulate menstruation. Instead of internalizing menstruation as something negative, we need to redefine menstruation as a positive experience. Instead of passing down shame to our little girls, we need to teach them to revel in the fact that their bodies bleed every month.

The author of the brilliant book, Cunt, Inga Muscio, suggests women should be taught from an early age that menstruation is positive, that menarche is something worthy of celebration.

She points out like many others that: It was shameful to bleed, to be seen bleeding, for the blood soaking paraphernalia to be visible on or about one’s person at any time whatsoever, to speak to bleeding, or look like we were bleeding, to be excused from P.E. because of the crippling cramps which sometimes accompany bleeding, to display frailty, vulnerability or mood swings because we were going to be bleeding soon and to express any emotion other than contempt and disdain in reference to our blood. (18-9) She posits that if we were taught to view menstruation positively we would not be so ashamed of menstruating. Muscio relates a story about a neighborhood in New Jersey where menarche is celebrated with a party. The girls and women 66

Amendment wear red dresses, eat red cake and give the girl, experiencing menstruation for the first time, red presents wrapped in red gift paper (21-30). Muscio then goes on to ask why we use the term ‘feminine hygiene’ and ‘sanitary products’. By using these terms we are implying that our bodies are dirty (29). Muscio raises another extremely important question by asking why “should a woman have to pay some huge corporation over and over because the lining of her uterus naturally, biologically sheds every month?” (30).

Corporate Capitalism and the Profits They Make Off Our Blood “Why are tampons not deemed a necessity but taxed, while everything from Trojans to cherry Chapstick is exempted?

And finally, why are tampons five times the price (plus tax!) of the cotton balls they share the supermarket shelves with?

Who’s getting rich off of menstruation? And how far will they go to turn a profit?” (Houppert 29) Women’s menstrual blood is a 1.7 billion dollar industry (Houppert 41). Unfortunately for us, it’s a 1.7 billion dollar industry that sells us products that are carcinogenic and damaging to the environment. The major players in this industry are Proctor and Gamble (makers of Always and Tampax), Kimberly-Clarke (makers of Kotex), Johnson and Johnson (makers of o.b. and Stayfree) and Playtex (makers of Playtex tampons). Prior to the 1997 merger of Procter and Gamble and Tambrands (former makers of Tampax), the four major companies were P&G, J&J, Tambrands and KimberlyClarke (Houppert 43; Armstrong, Scott 9). Liz Armstrong and Adrienne Scott mention that in 1990, “annual reports of these four based corporations, we found only one woman in upper management who was well placed to influence key product and marketing decisions” (9). Houppert points out that these 67

Amendment companies are continuously looking for ways to increase their profits, from re-vamping and re-packaging products to decreasing the number of products in package without decreasing the price (28-40). I do not think it is a stretch to declare, that in 2005, these companies continue to be male dominated. While o.b. boasts that their tampon was created by a woman (par.1), their company is run primarily by men. These male dominated companies that are producing mainstream menstrual products for women are making a fortune off of our menstrual blood. Isn’t it odd that the producers of menstrual products, products exclusively for women, are run by men; men who will never, ever in their lifetime bleed from a vagina?

Using alternative products is a great way that women can take control of their bodies. Alternative products are sounder for the environment and on the average are much safer for women’s health. Women can reclaim their bodies through education. Once women learn the potential health risks and environmental dangers involved in commonly used menstrual products, they can begin to question what is being put into their bodies and question the motives of giant manufacturers.

Women can either demand for companies to make healthier products or turn to alternative products. There are various benefits that are associated with alternative products. Some of the benefits included redistributing funds from giant profit driven manufacturers to smaller companies. Other benefits include spending less money annually, preventing the degradation of the environment, and taking better care of your body. Some of the various alternative products include sea sponges, re-usable pads, the Keeper and Instead.

According to the on-line museum of menstruation, sea sponges have been used as menstrual protection and contraceptives for thousands of years (Finley “Museum of Menstruation”). Sea sponges are inserted into the vagina.

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Amendment However, prior to initial use, you should boil the sea sponge for five to six minutes. Like tampons you should remove the sponge every four hours and you should not use it overnight.

Although frequently boiling a sponge shortens its life span and makes it less soft, boiling prohibits bacterial growth (Finley, “Museum of Menstruation”).

Re-usable pads are generally made of cloth allowing you to wash them in between uses. Gladrags and Luna pads are two popular brands of re-usable pads. These pads are made in different sizes and some brands even sell underwear that have pads incorporated into them. You can hand wash the pads or throw them into your washing machine. Re-usable pads are not made with harsh chemicals and they help ease the problems of waste (“Gladrags”;”Lunapads”).

Menstrual cups were first produced in the 1930’s (McNeil par. 4). There are a few popular brands of menstrual cups: the Keeper, and Instead. The Keeper and Instead are slightly different in shape but they both have the same basic function. Both are inserted into the vagina to catch the flow of blood. While Instead covers the cervix, the Keeper sits lower in the vaginal canal (McNeil par. 13). The Keeper, is made of latex rubber and is re-useable. Instead is made of soft polyethylene and is disposable (McNeil par. 6). While maxi pads and tampons take up space in landfills, the Keeper is a re-useable product that will last up to ten years, minimizing waste disposal (McNeil par. 7). To demonstrate how the Keeper can save women money, McNeil, author of “Menstrual Cups, at Age 66, Begin to Make Up for Lost Time”, does a price comparison of tampons versus the Keeper; while the Keeper is only thirty-five dollars and can last for ten years; a ten-year supply of tampons may cost about six hundred and fifty dollars. Some worry about whether these menstrual cups can cause TSS. Dr. Tierno, performed a “simple” test on the 69

Amendment Keeper (McNeil par. 26). Dr. Tierno placed the Keeper, “in a broth of Staphylococcus bacteria, incubated it in a warm, moist atmosphere and checked its surfaces” (McNeil 26). Dr. Tierno later reported that minuscule quantities of Staphylococcus clung to the Keeper but he also said “I don’t think it would be a significant problem” (McNeil par. 26-7) Many women are unaware of these alternative products.

It behooves the giant companies to keep us informed of safer, healthier products. However, there are some women aware of alternative products but believe they are too messy, dirty, or inconvenient to used. Believing these products are ‘messy’ buys into the patriarchal, corporate capitalist mode of thinking. These products may require women to touch their bodies or their blood slightly more than mainstream products.

But, if negative menstrual views had not been ingrained in us as young girls, we would not be afraid of handling our blood or touching our bodies. The secrecy of menstruation keeps women from making educated decisions about which menstrual products they use. Teaching young girls to view menstruation positively, and shattering the ignorance and shame of menstruation will help educate us to use safer and more environmentally sound products. Hopefully as we become aware of the dangers associated with commonly used menstrual products, we will stop giving our hard earned money to a huge male dominated profit driven industry that purports to care about our needs.

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Untitled — Jean Gonzales

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We’re Meant to Fail — Nia Burks

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All My Words — Nia Burks

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Sugar Lips — Ceres

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The Two Mes — Christina

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Sailing Past the Storm — Kristen Phillips

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Self Portrait--Picasso — Nia Burks

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Geranium — Lauren Duckworth

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She

By Anonymous

Her eyes burn like blue heat and it hurts, but I can’t look away. She turns and detached, I watch as I drown in a rut of sweet, painful quick sand.

Her curved sides flow into smooth hips carved by years of slow moving drops of cool water.

I suffer her stare and sigh.

Here she is; all my life, I have sought her.

But there’s a wall between us, thick and high.

I close my eyes and turn my mind to thoughts of harder lips and tongues and teeth and thighs, away from this sweet, soft, immoral love.

The Bible says that it is a sin to even think of touching girl skin.

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"untitled" By tex i can't decide whether to reclaim feminism for myself or just let go of it entirely. i talk about finding another word for it, coming up with a new identity; one that encompasses all of me. i think about all the parts of me that are at times in conflict because of the set values that have been placed on these parts, whether or not my actions and desires satisfy the needs of each part of me. as a self identified queer recovering heroin addict who has an eleven year old child seen only twice a year, i already have conflicting needs and priorities. i feel my queer identity, including that of one who feels restricted by the current two gender system, creates problems with feminism sometimes. however, in my feminism it makes sense that one would feel comfortable trying to destroy a system that sets up a patriarchal hierarchy by assigning people to sexes and genders and then teaching them their roles as such. i believe firmly that gender is a socially constructed limitation placed on folks and sometimes i feel that my desire to challenge those standards separates me from my feminist allies. i feel that i personally am comfortable with the idea that gender is fluid and limitless but where does that leave my feminist roots and how does that translate to feminist based activism. even in the current work that i am doing, i find it hard to maintain a traditional feminist perspective on things while being truthful to the rest of myself. for example, in the literature i helped create for an abortion fund i work with i eliminated the word woman from our brochure. this is difficult for many people to understand; however, one of our mission points is to create safe and positive environments for reproductive health care for 80

Amendment persons of all genders, sexes, and sexual orientations. i am not trying to make the reproductive health care crisis any less a "woman's" issue, rather i am trying to ensure that people realize that individuals who live outside the binary gender structure are not getting the services they need as well. this struggle can also be found  when i work with domestic and sexual violence groups. it is often difficult for the needs of  lgbtqi... people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and others (and i'm including intersex here relating to issues of dv/sv services not necessarily defining them as queer individuals) to be met by the current standards of practice in the domestic and sexual violence fields. i am currently working to create a curriculum to teach domestic violence/ sexual assault advocates about lgbtqi... issues in order to hopefully move towards a system that could be inclusive in assisting all who are suffering. it is in these types of "activism" that i feel most fulfilled. by addressing issues that are generally uncomfortable to talk about in areas of theory and taking action, i am making it easier for those individuals involved in the process with me to make the connections that i am making within myself. unfortunately, i am still told that i am not a feminist because i can perceive a day when socially constructed gender identities won't be a basis for evaluating and grouping living beings. i still wonder if i can be a feminist if i don't hate "man" because i don't think "man" as has historically existed will continue to do so in the future. i often laugh at myself because i feel that people are afraid of existing outside of their oppression. i laugh at myself because i wonder what i would do if everyone realized they were all queer in some way and the oppression of queers ended the world over. would i still be a queer in the same way i am a queer now? i think about that in terms of feminism sometimes. do people say i am 81

Amendment not a feminist because i am pushing for an age beyond patriarchy that just might nullify the need for feminism. i mean what would i do if all abortions were free and legal and safe and all the transpeople and differently bodied people in the world had really sensitive and caring doctors who provided for the reproductive needs as the patient saw necessary. would we fall into maintenance mode? and my final brainteaser of this twisted essay.... has my identity as a feminist been a sham because "women" were/are seen as the other to "men", but if "man" is socially constructed and possibly not really real then what am i?????

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Token Black Girl

By Ceres Searching for my own kind, in the crowded room I see lots of kind faces, but none I can call my own.

I am the only brown, disfigured figure on the backdrop of this 1970s painting— “Women’s Liberation Movement, Richmond Women’s

College” circa 1969 encrypted in the right corner, I sit at the shadowed table, uncertain, unsure that the girl from my class will notice me; searching for my own kind in the crowded room, 83

Amendment I see lots of faces, but none I can call my own.

Feminist, activist, queer, labels I can relate to, but in this world of caste privilege, stones are cast at menot for me.

So I look for the black, brown sisters of the globe, they listen to Nina Simone and Donny Hathaway, but there are none of my own.

I as comfortable though in this darkness.

I know my way around, surrounded by white guiding light, my eyes burn with rage 84

Amendment as amazons, amazed at my cornrows, who speak the “I’m down with the brown” lingo around me. These white women congregate and once again, I am reminded that I was excommunicated for the unforgivable sin: lover of women, lover of educated choices, not brainwashed voices.

Searching for my own kind in a crowded room I see lots of faces, but none I can call my own.

I can’t remember who invited me to this party, she is no where to be found, which circle of friends 85

Amendment is she in?

I peek over broad shoulders, sturdy soldiers, wounded by the war on women— from the outside I am not invisible, this I know.

I see the glances, the hurt look, when I am not quoting Audre Lorde, have mercy on me, I am not that qualified, or maybe I just want to speak my own mind.

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Amendment I have grown accustomed to being different.

It is who I am, a walking political statement— my shirt reads: It’s a girl, but they still call me sir.

My baggy sweatpants depict thug grrl, as I walk down the street, singing Ember swift, my face says I am searching for my own kind.

The little old lady who sits on the corner, says “Smile honey; it’ll be alright.”

For a second I stare, startled and ashamed, as I watch the wrinkled face of wisdom.

I 87

Amendment return her smile.

Her eyes are not lost, as I had expected.

I ask her what is her name; She says, “Bernice.”

Tonight she has found what she is looking for.

A lost little girl, who needs kindness from her own kind.

Since then, I have stopped, searching for my own kind.

The spirit of Bernice is in my heart.

“Smile honey; it’ll be alright.”

I trust this woman, for she is of my own kind; time traveling 88

Amendment martyrs, searching for a lost little girl who just needs kindness.

Though Bernice died later on that winter, she lives on within me.

I use her voice to scream, shout and to sing, to the amazons— “Smile honey; it’ll be alright.”

“Smile honey; it’ll be alright.”

“Smile honey; it’ll be alright.”

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Innocence

By Rachel Shaw On the enclosed green porch- newly painted- I sitblack skirt, black spaghetti strap shirt – staring through old glasses – watching rain hit parked cars and drenched joggers bounce past, listening to tires treading wet pavement, unnoticed I wonder when the shift occurred. At six wandering through soybean fields, bare feet black with dirt and fertilizer, clothes wet from the early morning dew. Through soybean fields I skip, bouncing a small blue ball hand to hand. Hitting it, chasing it, hand to hand, wandering back to the red brick house. Bounce catch bounce catch. Dusk slowly darkens then turns black.

I quicken, long black braids bouncing, through the field toward the brick house. Wet thickens on the soybean plants, wet thickens on my yellow shorts. I hit 90

Amendment the blue ball one last time. It passes through the soybeans, emerges from the field. I wonder where for one second, but as dusk blackens the sky, I run for the house, bouncing braids trail behind. I halt, the bouncing braids lie still at my back, wet toes grip the welcome mat. Twenty now in only black I listen to wet tires hit the damp pavement. Unnoticed, I wonder when the shift occurred. From running through soybean fields in yellow shorts to staring through old glasses as rain bounces off cars. I stand and wander toward the door. Bare toes grip the wet newly painted porch as joggers hit wet pavement as they run. Both my skirt and shirt black.

Through the door I step, wet bouncing dripping off my yellow black? clothes braids? I wander.

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Getting Back to the Sacred Feminine

By Crystal Pintac I remember when I first saw the painting “The Fall of Man” by Hendrik Goltzius sitting on the wall in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; I was enthralled. The painting almost covers its section of wall completely, making it taller than myself and was painted so startlingly real, you could not help but to notice it when you entered the room.

Painted in 1616, a time when womyn were considered second class citizens, a naked Adam and Eve are large in the foreground with Eve turned back toward Adam, the bitten apple held in her right hand. They are sitting under a tree bearing the forbidden fruit, a snake hanging near the now turned away Eve; it has the head of what looks to be a cherub.

They gaze at each other adoringly, making it seem as if Adam did not need much encouragement to take a bite.

I sat in front of it on the small, blue couches that were available throughout the museum and ruminated over the message Goltzius was trying to send to his public. I wondered if Eve was indeed the reason for the ‘fall of man.’

I focused on the serpent; the snake that is supposed to represent Satan in every interpretation I have ever read or come across. This was before I had taken my first women’s studies class, before I had been introduced Miss Lissie in From the Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd.

Because of these three womyn, I no longer think of Eve’s temptation by the snake the same way.

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Amendment Miss Lissie tells readers how serpents were the trusted companion to womyn. Kidd confirms this same thought when she stated, “To my surprise, I’d learned that in ancient times the snake was not maligned or seen as evil but rather symbolized female wisdom, power, and regeneration.” Zora Neale Hurston explains it in much the same way, though by action, not words, in her short story “Sweat.”

With this in mind, is it any wonder that Eve trusted the vision of a serpent, telling her to take a bite of the apple? Is it any wonder that this has been a well kept secret? Imagine if every womon eventually came to the realization that they were not the cause of ‘the fall.’

Man, in fact, caused it himself and womyn have been silenced ever since.

Lilith I remember a day, about a year and a half ago, my niece was asked to bring her favorite bible story to preschool.

She attends a Southern Baptist daycare that is located in the basement of a Baptist church. My sister pulled a book about Lilith from the collection my mother had, not paying attention to its subject or title. Later that evening, when they returned home, I found out that my niece had not been allowed to have it read in class because “it would have confused the other children.”

I was floored and my sister shrugged it off.

Lilith, in the Jewish tradition, was the first wife of Adam.

She would not submit nor become subservient so Adam asked for a new wife, which we now know as Eve. There are two myths surrounding Lilith: that she went mad and took children from others to raise as her own or kidnapped them and murdered them.

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Amendment I believe that a child should know about everything so they can choose their own religious destiny. If there are questions, they should be answered honestly, not to the slant of one particular close-minded institutionalized religion over another. By not reading that book, they were effectively silencing and dismissing the voice of Lilith and the possible voice of my niece.

Creation We are constantly fed the story of Adam being created out of the likeness of God. He became sad and lonely so God gave him a companion, Eve. Then we are tricked into believing that Adam gave up a rib so that Eve could join him in the Garden of Eden. Womyn suffer through jokes on this subject all too often.

What the religious institutions are not ready to tell is that both Adam and Eve were created side-by-side, out of dust, in the image of God. That is the first creation story that can be found in the Old Testament. For some reason, they needed to hide it to further oppress womyn and keep them as “other.”

Sitting around talking to my mom and dad one evening, I brought up the following idea: I had just come back from seeing Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and needed to talk about some things and my mom has taken a lot of bible study classes, EFM, DOCC and so on. My dad is an atheist and thinks all persons belonging to organized religions are hypocrites. It was my dad who posed the most interesting question out of that discussion: if Adam and Eve were created out of the likeness of God, then why is God always portrayed as He? We hear ad naseum that womyn are the lesser sex, 94

Amendment that we are ‘the other.’ But does anyone tell the truth, that womyn were once a welcome part of the liturgy or that womyn were allowed to celebrate the sacraments, or were allowed to prophesize? Or that we were not created from Adam’s rib, but made to reflect the image of Jesus as well which could very well mean that God is as much of a womon as he is a man.

Man had to come from womon yet we are reminded in almost everything that womon comes from man. It brings about the similar debate of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Without a womon, man cannot be born, so I am more inclined to believe that we came first.

It is an empowering thought when you realize that you have the actual power in society, in relationships with men.

It can be intoxicating and awakening simultaneously. Not to mention threatening to men, (or emasculating as I once heard a man protest) which could be part of the reason why womyn have been kept as second-class citizens for so long.

Much as the African slaves eventually led revolt after revolt during the years of intense slavery, until finally in 1964 they were given equal rights by law thanks to Lyndon B. Johnson, womyn must take the reins and begin a newly energized revolt to get us out of the perpetual second-place in society.

After all, if it weren’t for us, the men wouldn’t be here.

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Everyman

By Sarah Sprouse Imperfect thighs rest over porcelain, Pearlescent liquid seeping— acerbic residue cleansed away as the dazed man looks on.

The man.

No names in the Red Light District.

Madam arranges appointments, and pays away the pin money.

Just a man.

Mister’s cheeks flush of exertions surely— but of his shame, and innate fear of Lady Bird.

The drum’s steady beat thumped in his veins as he uneasily found the pace.

Deep.

Her feigned interest flustered him.

Mister’s trousers rustled as the waistband met his middle.

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Acrid reek of cheap cigarettes drift in the gaff.

Be a man.

Bossman utters— Be a man.

Not vocally, but promotion is for real men.

Pound. Push. Reach.

Breathe.

Nude stockings slip up Legs— and disappear beneath brown folds.

Navy rosettes caught dwindling daylight for a brief moment.

Lady Bird earns pin money— He’s just another man.

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Feminist Porn: An Oxymoron?

By Nora Jane Cannon American women both indulge and deny their sexualities in reaction to the simultaneous cultural acceptance and disapproval of female sexuality. Women may express their sexuality to the extent that it complies with the hegemonic notion of sex defined through the male gaze but no further. Women, thus, are free to own only a controlled sexuality—replete with imagery of themselves in heterosexist, subordinated positions in physically altered, culturally desirable bodies, often donning semen as the symbol of sexual fulfillment. This ideology then denies the sexualities of those women—and men for that matter, whose very identities are disallowed and whose sexual preferences are deemed invalid, or deviant, by such a conditional sexual framework. Mainstream pornography, as the cultural model of human sexuality, accepts and validates only what fits between these narrow social margins. Within this essay, I will create a discourse between the notion of pornography as dangerous within the anti-pornography feminist camp and the pro-sex ideology that the feminist can, and should, co-opt pornography for its own purposes of exploring and validating female sexuality in its multitude of forms. Through this conversation, I aim to underscore the danger anti-pornography censorship poses to the claiming of female sexualities.

Anti-pornography feminist leaders, namely professor of law Catherine A. MacKinnon and activist, author and theorist Andrea Dworkin, began their crusade against the legal distribution of pornographic materials in 1983 with the conception and co-authoring of the Minneapolis Ordinances.

The document outlines pornography as a legal violation of the 98

Amendment civil rights of women, both inside and out of the pornography industry. The rampant presence of pornography, defined by anti-pornography feminists as “a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, an institution of gender inequality,” in a society, fosters the ideology that women exist not as fellow human beings but as sexual objects, conceived by pornography for male pleasure. As MacKinnon discusses in her essay, “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method,” “for a woman to be sexualized means constant humiliation or the threat of it, being both invisible as human being and always center stage as sex object … a target for assault” (143). Thus, an environment in which pornographic imagery is present is an environment in which women exist solely for the male sexual imagination, vulnerable to the violent re-enactment of pornography on their bodies by the viewer’s hands. “From pornography one learns that forcible violation of women is the essence of sex.

Whatever is that and does that is sex” (144). From this stance, pornography both validates a male sexuality that is culturally grounded in violence and that perpetuates its own use by continually underlining the notion that men have the right to their sexuality in which women are intrinsically degraded.

Women, however, do not have the equivalent right to escape this situation.

The Minneapolis Ordinances of the anti-pornography feminists were met with censorship accusations by fellow feminists of the pro-sex, pro-pornography persuasion citing a long history of women silenced by dominant male culture and adamantly opposed to further censorship at the hands of women. The Ordinances, in effect, would protect women from hypothetical injuries suffered as result of pornography, including protection from coercion into the pornography industry. Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, explains in her text, Defending Pornography, that what “pro-censorship” feminists actually prevent, not 99

Amendment protect, women from is the freedom to make “free, voluntary, consensual choices” in the “realm of sexuality and sexual expression” and instead assume that “women are always coerced in this context, whether they realize it or not” (181).

Strossen contests the “pro-censorship” critique of pornography on the grounds of its “insultingly ‘matronizing’ view” of women, which infantilizes rather than empowers women, as feminism should, to act as autonomous, wholly competent individuals in terms of sexuality and otherwise (181). Instead, “feminist-style anti-pornography laws have expressly drawn analogies between women and children,” as spelled out in the proposed Minneapolis Ordinance: Children are incapable of consenting to engage in pornographic conduct, even absent physical coercion, and therefore require special protection. By the same token, the physical and psychological well-being of women ought to be afforded comparable protection. (Strossen 182) Carole S. Vance, academic coordinator of the Scholar and Feminist IX conference at Barnard College, adds to the discussion of anti-pornography feminism the issue of antiquated placement of higher value on the protection of female sexuality than on the freedom to express it.

More appealing to some feminists … is the single-minded concentration on eliminating sexual danger. An exclusive focus on danger, however, is just as perilous. It makes women’s actual experience with pleasure invisible, overstates danger until it monopolizes the entire frame, positions women solely as victims, and doesn’t empower our movement with women’s curiosity, desire, adventure, and success. The notion that women cannot explore sexuality until danger is first eliminated is a strategic dead-end. (xvii) Candida Royalle, long-time pornography actress turned 100

Amendment feminist pornographer, adds that “[t]o tell us continually that it is unsafe for us to explore our own fantasies is to keep us out of power. We have to take control of our own images and of our own power” (542). If the pornography industry is responsible for producing the images that reduce women to objects of male sexual fantasy in need of legal protection, as anti-pornography feminism has insisted, the more positive response to the issue would be to change the production and content of pornography rather than simply ban the distribution of mainstream pornography; to push the industry further underground where those involved would be, in effect, hidden from the pre-existing laws that protect them as people, not simply women, would put them at even greater risk.

While the questionably feminist goal of the Minneapolis Ordinances was to restrict distribution of sexually explicit material, which depicts women as wholly submissive to male desire, despite the amount or severity of harm incurred, and protect women, inside of the industry and out from the effects of such imagery, the goal of conservatives politically aligned with anti-pornography feminists had no such goal in mind. After the MacKinnon-Dworkin bill was ratified in Minneapolis due to strong support from “progressive and feminist communities,” it went on to become the project of “moral conservatives and fundamentalists” in every other locality (xvv). Vance cites incidents of such groups co-opting the ordinance upon failure of “tradition anti-smut groups” to “eliminate pornography through zoning and obscenity law” in Indianapolis, or being introduced, as in Suffolk County, NY, “to protect women, to ‘restore them to what ladies used to be’” (xxvi).

The Scholar and Feminist IX conference on sexuality, held at Barnard College in New York on April 24, 1982, showed the depth of the divide within feminism over the issue of 101

Amendment sexuality. While anti-pornography feminists still pointed to pornography as the primary source of their oppression and the block in the road to female sexual freedom, anti-censorship, pro-sex feminists targeted the anti-pornography feminist camp, and their willingness to exchange sexual expression for often unwanted legal protection, as the actual problem.

The conference was to be a gathering of both activists and academics to discuss the feminist politics of sexuality.

The conference format—papers, workshops, visuals, and poetry readings—covered an ambitious range of topics, including body image, childhood sexuality, nineteenth and twentieth century feminist theory and activism, disability, race, representation and subjectivity, class, teen girls, self-help books and advice manuals, sexual preference, differences between women, psychoanalysis, sex theory, abortion and fundamentalist campaigns, political organizing, correct and incorrect sexuality, eroticism and the taboo, sexual boundaries, and sex and money. (Vance xx) The conference, however, “signaled the beginning of the ‘sex wars,’ the impassioned, contentious, and, to many, disturbing debates, discussions, conferences, and arguments about sexuality that continued unabated until at least 1986” rather than meeting its intended function of “an inclusive ground for understanding difference” (Vance xxi). The conference publication, Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, was banned from distribution following phone calls made by anti-pornography feminists to Barnard College president Ellen V. Futter, who then interrogated the staff of the college women’s center, scrutinized the program and confiscated copies of the conference booklet. On the day of the conference, Vance explains that: Protesters from Women Against Pornography greeted the over eight-hundred registrants at the entrance to the sold102

Amendment out conference, distributing a 2-page leaflet which repeated the charges that the conference promoted ‘anti-feminist sexuality.’ The leaflet also contained shockingly scurrilous attacks on individual feminists by name, specifying their (real or imagined) objectionable sexual practices. (xxi) From the Women Against Pornography leaflet spawned a “phantom conference” dedicated to attacking sado-masochism, pornography, and butch-femme roles among lesbians as “antifeminist” practices. The Scholar and Feminist IX conference of 1982 had hoped to “expand the analysis of pleasure, [sic] and to draw on women’s energy to create a movement that speaks as powerfully in favor of sexual pleasure as it does against sexual danger,” and was successful in its task but not in speaking over the anti-pornography feminist centered media which represented the conference “only in terms of the sensational charges of the protesters” (Vance xxii).

To define sex by the contents of mainstream pornography, as does the anti-pornography feminist camp, is to confine sexuality to a singular definition set on the terms of dominant masculinity. It is to exclude, just as mainstream pornography has done, the input of any sexual identity or preference outside of its already relegated realm.

Pornography is not definitively the portrayal of women as submissive to male dominance, nor is it inclusive of violence or force; rather, it is simply sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal—meaning there is no set content. Pornography, then, could just as easily be produced by a woman as by a man and could be merely an expression of sexuality as physical dialogue between any number of individuals of varying ages, gender identities, sexual preferences, levels of ability, racial or ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes rather than the formulaic, masculinized sexuality depicted in mainstream 103

Amendment pornography. Many feminists look to pornography for a forum where female sexuality is tied not to reproduction, as has traditionally been its role, but to female desire and pleasure.

Pornography, too, is often instrumental in women finding fulfillment and pleasure in their bodies—notions deemed “unladylike” by much of society, but abound in pornography.

Strossen further explains that, “[a]t the most basic level, porn provides information about women’s bodies and techniques for facilitating female sexual pleasure, which is otherwise sadly lacking in our society” (166). Women need a space for sexual expression, for discovery, for re-documenting and defining sexuality outside of its mainstream framework.

Drucilla Cornell, feminist sexual theorist, concurs that “[f]eminism must struggle to clear the space for, rather than create new boundaries to, women’s exploration of their own sexuality” (554). To protest the production and distribution of pornography is to end the discussion rather than to allow the formation of a pornographic imagination in which women can freely explore both giving and receiving pleasure.

The Barnard Scholar and Feminist IX conference on sexuality was specifically attacked by anti-pornography feminists for including discussion topics on sado-masochism and butch-femme roles among lesbians on the pretense of these practices being “anti-feminist.” Sado-masochist sexual practices appear to be “anti-feminist” to the extent that they involve a compromise of control—power play between a dominant and a submissive—which often look violent to antipornography feminists who judge from beyond the borders of s/m practices. Butch-femme lesbian relationships, too, push the boundaries of acceptable feminist sexuality in that they outwardly appear to mock heterosexual couples. Pat Califia, co-founder of Samois, a pro-s/m group, contests this perspective: “It’s an act of mutual pleasuring in a context of 104

Amendment respect and consent” in which neither partner is endangered (Currie and Levine).

Lesbianism, in and of itself, is often viewed as the practice accompanying the theory of feminism; butchfemme roles fly in the face of such thinking, comprising a masculinized “butch” partner who looks the part of the oppressor and an overtly feminine “femme.” Butch-femme lesbian relationships, explains femme author Joan Nestle, are considered a “reproduction of heterosexual models.” She goes on to dispel the myth: In the past, the “butch” has been labeled too simplistically the masculine partner and the “femme” her feminine counterpart. This labeling forgets two women who have developed their styles for specific erotic, emotional, and social reasons. Butch-fem relationships, as I experienced them, were complex erotic and social statements, not phony heterosexual replicas. (232) These divergent sexualities, then, become perverse even within feminism to the same degree as they are in mainstream society. Pornography provides for s/m and butch-femme lesbian sexualities a forum to play and explore. As “queer sexual outlaw” writer Miriam Laskin explains, “[h]ere in this new territory is where we start to think about our sexual identities: beginning to know, really know, that the blind belief that defines sexuality as hetero versus homo doesn’t work anymore for every human being” (260). Feminist pornography alerts women to possible sexualities within themselves that one would be hard-pressed to find in mainstream media and then validates them by explicity venturing into these fantasies.

Laskin goes on to assert that her sexuality “would probably never have come to me without reading porn and reading and writing outlaw porn” (261).

105

Amendment Candida Royalle went from “starlet in stilettos to visionary,” Amelia Grana reports for Iris: A Journal for Women in 2002. Having worked as an actress within the pornography industry and reviewing pornographic films for men’s magazines, Royalle remarks that, Unlike the antiporn movement, I don’t think porn causes violence. But the films were very exploitive of women and of sexuality in general. I didn’t think they were offering anything constructive about our sexuality. I also realized that women were beginning to watch porn, and I knew there was nothing out there for them to watch. (540) Thus, Royalle launched Femme Productions in 1984 with three goals in mind: “to produce explicit porn with integrity, show that porn could be nonsexist, and show that porn could be life-enriching” (540). Royalle does not cast female actresses under the age of twenty-two, realizing that “we live in a culture that will condemn anyone who chooses this work” and also restricts casting to women with physicallyunaltered bodies: “no fake breasts and no tummy tucks” (Grana 50). She also has mandated the use of condoms on Femme Productions sets since its inception, adding a realistic, pro-health effect to her films and eliminating the “money shot”—the male ejaculates on the female, typically on her face or chest—so rampant in mainstream pornography. The “cum shot,” Royalle notes, “is a way of saying to a woman: ‘Here, take this.’ It’s a way of maintaining control,” which Femme Productions all but supports. Her method of filmmaking is to place the “focus on sensuality, tenderness, and mutual respect—a holistic approach, instead of a collection of body parts” (Cornell 549).

Royalle has, however, been criticized for “not crossing boundaries of race and class” and sexual preference, to which she explains that “since I’m not a lesbian I don’t feel 106

Amendment I’m the right person to do it … I know heterosexuality better” (Cornell 545). To the same end, Royalle acknowledges that only those with a certain identity can capture the sexuality of that identity: in terms of racial and ethnic minorities, sexual preference, socioeconomic class and level of ability.

Hopefully, Femme Productions will eventually be one of many companies producing pro-woman pornography through which women can explore a sexuality belonging to them rather than to dominant male culture.

Drucilla Cornell, author of The Imaginary Domain, a “call for a new feminist approach to pornography,” addresses the necessity of an outlet for the female sexual imagination in pornography. “Our sense of freedom,” she asserts, “is intimately tie [sic] to the renewal of the imagination,” renewal in terms of being involved “in the aesthetic re-creation of our own sexuality … to re-conceive of ourselves as whole and not as somebody who is just a fetishistic object in someone else’s imaginary” (hooks 2). Cornell speaks directly to the future makers of pornography whose diverse imaginations will be responsible for this re-creation: The only way to improve adult films and give them more integrity and quality is to encourage more people to go into them and to encourage better production; to encourage young people with fresh new ideas and better consciousness; to encourage people of color to create as well. (550) Another talent on the front of feminist pornography is that of Marielle Nitoslawska, whose documentary Bad Girls succeeds in “laying out a wide spectrum of the varied perspectives held by the women currently working in the production of explicit fare” (West and West). In Bad Girls, Nitoslawska draws on the expertise of both French and Englishspeaking filmmakers, porn stars, academics, anthropologists, and sexologists to explore the topic of women in the 107

Amendment pornography industry. The documentary is drawn from two lines of logic: First, female sexuality from female perspectives is vastly underrepresented on screen and, specifically, in the pornography industry; and, second, the film and video porn industry has now grown to vast dimensions—eight to ten thousand works produced annually representing several billion dollars worth of yearly business. (West and West) Together, these two premises combine to signal the necessity of a female influx into the pornography industry to represent the currently underrepresented in what is a widely popular form of cultural representation. The sex act would not be socially defined by pornography were it not the enormous economic base that it is; but, as is, women need to play a leading role in the media that is defining sexuality—and more specifically female sexuality, with or without the input of women.

Feminism is many things in the visions of the growing body of feminist women working to create pro-woman pornography: It both varies and coincides even amongst the women discussed in this text. Candida Royalle of Femme Productions actively expresses her feminist ideology through the production of pornography in which real women, rather than male-conceptualized fantasy objects, express heterosexual desire and pleasure with mutual respect between partners as a key component. Miriam Laskin came to her identity as “queer sexual outlaw” through her discovery of women performing the “perverse” in pornography, an undoubtedly feminist consciousness-raising experience. Both Drucilla Cornell and Marielle Nitoslawska speak of the need for a feminist imagination which validates the exploration of female sexuality within the male-dominated pornography industry. Pornography for these, and many other women, is 108

Amendment not “a form of forced sex, a practice or sexual politics” or “an institution of gender inequality” as MacKinnon asserts but rather a wide open space for play and pleasure, imagination and self-inquiry from which they need not be protected by anti-pornography feminist legislation. The women in this text and their feminist allies bravely seek to change the content of pornography rather than its legal status.

Works Cited Cornell, Drucilla. “Pornography’s Temptation.” Feminism and Pornography. Ed. Cornell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 551-568.

Cornell, Drucilla, and bell hooks. “The Imaginary Domain: A Discussion between Drucilla Cornell and bell hooks.” Women’s Rights Law Reporter 19 (1998): 261-65.

Currie, Kathleen, and Art Levine. “Whip Me, Beat Me and While You’re at It Cancel My N.O.W. Membership.” Washington Monthly 19 (1987): 17-21.

Grana, Amelia. “Stepping out of Stilettos; Porn for the Ladies: For Women, by Women.” Iris: A Journal for Women 2 (2002): 50-52.

Laskin, Miriam. “Contemplating Porn, the Liberator: A Personal Memoir/Outlaw Manifesto.” The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader. Ed. Pat Califia and Robin Sweeney. Los Angeles: Alyson, 1996. 258-263.

MacKinnon, Catherine A. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.

Nestle, Joan. “The Fem Question.” Pleasure and Danger. Ed. Carole S. Vance. London: Pandora, 1992. 232-241.

Royalle, Candida. “Porn in the U.S.A.” Feminism and Pornography.

Ed. Drucilla Cornell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 540-550.

Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Vance, Carole S. “More Pleasure, More Danger: A Decade after the Barnard Sexuality Conference.” Pleasure and Danger. Ed. Carole S. Vance.

London: Pandora, 1992. xvii-xx.

West, Dennis, and Joan M. West. “Women Makin’ Porno: Feminism’s Final Frontier? An Interview with Marielle Nitoslawska.” Cineaste 27 (2002): 20-27.

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – For Megan

By Rachel Shaw I remember: The rental office. Signing a lease with my friend. It was our first apartment.

The woman’s voice “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

A gunshot cut through the air. My friend hid behind her red chair.

The woman, “He shot me. Oh my god.”

A red spot growing on her baby blue t-shirt.

I don’t remember running down the hall away from the woman away from the noise.

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I remember: My friend hid again in the office down the ball between the bars that held chairs. I cradled her.

My friend gasped “Is anyone putting pressure on her wound. Is anyone helping her?”

My friend stopped shaking, struggled out of my cradle. She ran back down the hall. Back to the noise.

I don’t remember getting up too and walking back toward the office door.

I remember: The doorway. Someone screamed “Girls get back in here!”

I stopped.

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My friend pressed a cloth to the woman’s wound. She said “Look at me I was shot and I am fine.”

Someone said someday I will have my life back too. Someday I will live again.

But I don’t remember how.

The woman lived. The pressure my friend put on her wound saved her.

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“Throwing Like a Girl”: Women’s Sports Participation in the 1950s

By Jennifer L. Odom A woman involved in sport has always had more obstacles to face than her male counterpart. For not only has she had to prove that she is a good athlete, but she has had to prove that she can play a sport just as well as a man.

Collette Downing describes a concept called the “frailty myth;” a term she refers to in regard to the social domination of women’s bodies. Downing states that the “frailty myth” is about the “attempt to keep women feeling as doctors, educators, and even religious leaders have intended them to feel: physically limited…Unable to exist without the muscular heft and presumed physical assistance of the other half of the species” (6).

Women in sports have always been regarded as second best; they may be able to play, but they’ll never play as well as men. The 1950s exemplifies this belief, being a decade of both accomplishment and realization for female athletes. Only in recent decades have women finally begun to be recognized for their strong athletic performance and capabilities. A recent example is the past summer 2004 Olympics in which the United States women’s national soccer, softball, and basketball team(s) won the gold medal, much different to the disappointing losses in the men’s games (ex. the U.S. men’s basketball team). Yet things still aren’t picture perfect for female athletes in the twenty-first century, and they were far less so in the 1950s.

The 1950s was a decade in which several female sports figures and teams made a noticeable mark in athletic history.

Unfortunately though, their presence was downplayed due to 113

Amendment the ever-present male ego and unjust biases held against the female athlete. As Downing explains: For centuries women have been shackled to a perception of themselves as weak and ineffectual. This perception has been nothing less than the emotional and cognitive equivalent of having our whole bodies bound. The myth of women’s frailty has been so systematically entrenched that it could fairly be called a hoax. But a hoax is a conscious deceit, while myths are believed in as truth. What propels them is complicated and invisible. The frailty myth was driven by men’s repressed wish to preserve dominion. To make the myth viable, society constructed elaborate ways of keeping women cut off from their strength; of turning them into physical victims and teaching them that victimhood was all they could aspire to (6).

Women were expected to keep the damsel in distress persona as a way of being, of living. Housework and husbands were the priority, and women who branched away from this routine and submissive “life” were questioned, considered outcasts and/or misfits and overall looked upon unfavorably by men and women in society. Sports could be considered hobbies for women—a golf lesson here or there, figure skating in the nearby rink—and nothing more. The status of professional athlete was left in the realm of the male; it was viewed as something (a career) a male could much more easily aspire to than a woman. As Adrienne Rich explains in her essay “When the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” “These were the fifties, and in reaction to the earlier wave of feminism, women were making careers out of domestic perfection...

Life was extremely private; women were isolated from each other by the loyalties of marriage. I have a sense that women didn’t talk to each other much in the fifties—not about their secret emptiness, their frustrations” (275). Rich experienced firsthand the dissatisfaction many women felt in the 1950s 114

Amendment as she struggled to find meaning and fulfillment in her role as a mother of three children and a wife.

Betty Friedan’s views in reference to the supposed role of women in the fifties share similarities with Adrienne Rich’s and are expressed in her acclaimed and influential feminist text The Feminine Mystique. “The Feminine Mystique,” she explains, “says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity…The new image this mystique gives to American women is the old image: “Occupation: housewife.” The new mystique makes the housewife-mothers, who never had a chance to be anything else, the model for all women; it presupposes that history has reached a final and glorious end in the here and now, as far as women are concerned” (43).

Magazines in the 1950s only furthered the presumed importance of the position of housewife and mother for women during the decade, specifically addressing the importance of appearance. Because television was not a “common fixture” until the late 1950s, “magazines assumed more importance than they do today in helping to both shape and reflect the family values, habits, and aspirations of American women and their families” (Walker, 1). Magazines tended to use the imperative in titles of articles, suggesting that they were providing not just advice but orders such as “Slip into Silk” and “Make a Blouse.” Others posed questions to the female readers: “Do You Make These Beauty Blunders?” “Are You Likely to Be a Happily Married Woman?” (Walker, 9). Nancy Walker, in Women’s Magazines: Gender Roles and the Popular Press, cites that “a man typically found more specialized publications directed at business, sports, or hobbies, not at the “totality of his masculinity, nor his male role as such.” The implicit assumption is that a female sex which is presumed at best unconfident, and at worst incompetent, ‘needs’ or ‘wants’ to 115

Amendment be instructed, rehearsed, or brought up to date on the arts and skills of femininity” (5).

The women in the fifties who did devote their lives to sports rather than to housework did not have an easy time doing it. To be a female athlete was to be marked as unfeminine and “mannish” because of the traditional view in society that sports were meant for men. Also bothersome for the male athletes was the thought of having to compete with these women. As Friedan says, “Women were often driven embittered from their chosen fields when, ready and able to handle a better job, they were passed over for a man. In some jobs a woman had to be content to do the work while the man got the credit. Or if she got the better job, she had to face the bitterness and hostility of the man. Because the race to get ahead in every profession in America is so terribly competitive for men, competition from women is somehow the last straw—and much easier to fight by simply evoking that unwritten law…” (184). While Friedan is speaking more in general about jobs, it still applies to women entering into the “field” of sports who brought with them the possibility of competition. Usually athleticism and competitiveness go hand and hand, but for a female athlete in the fifties, this was not a welcome combination by any means.

Name-calling and the questioning of a female athlete’s heterosexuality were used as ways to deter women from actively participating in sports. Rather than be praised for their accomplishments like men were at the time, women were mocked, and their capabilities went by either unnoticed or unappreciated. The message females have been getting since they were young girls is: “Don’t get too muscular. Keep yourself smaller, so as to seem weaker than the boys” (Downing, 195). In the 1950s (and still today) there is a double standard in regard to female and male athletes. Men can simply play sports, look 116

Amendment however they want while participating in them, and then are praised for their ability, as it should be. For women though, there’s more to it—women are a special circumstance. When it comes to female athletes, “it’s not what you do, it’s how you look while doing it. The beauty of the surface is what’s relevant for women” (Downing, 196).

Women who posed as a challenge in the fifties, whose talent easily surpassed many male athletes, were described as masculine, often referred to as “muscle molls,” dykes, freaks, and other derogatory names. Pat Griffin offers insight on this matter in Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport: One of the most effective means of controlling women in sports is to challenge the femininity and heterosexuality of women athletes. When a woman is called “masculine,” “unfeminine,” or “dyke,” she knows she has crossed a gender boundary or challenged male privilege. In this way, homophobia serves as glue that holds traditional gender role expectations in place. Because most women are afraid to be called a lesbian or to have their femininity called into question, their sport experience can be controlled by using the lesbian label to intimidate them. The purpose of calling a woman a lesbian is to limit her sport experience and make her feel defensive about her athleticism (18).

Indeed, there was a great deal of social anxiety in regard to the female athlete in the fifties. Their presence in sports challenged gender norms during a time period when the roles women and men had were clearly cut. So when women like Babe Didrikson and Althea Gibson enter into the picture, fear and confusion set in. For here were two women who possessed 117

Amendment not an ounce of passivity and made no apologies for their outstanding athletic performances.

Didrikson was an all-around great athlete. The question wasn’t what sport did she play but what sport couldn’t she play. And the answer to that question was that she could easily play them all. From football to track, baseball to golf, she not only participated in a handful of sports, she played each of them extremely well. She began her athletic career dressed as any male athlete would dress, absent any make-up, with her hair pulled back or cut short. The more recognized of an athlete she became, the more criticism she received for how she looked. As Susan E. Cayleff explains: From the 1930s to the 1950s, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson fabulous athletic accomplishments were shredded in the journalistic mill. Tabloids were littered with comments about her “mannish” appearance, her “hawkish and hairy” face, and her “unusual amount of male dominance.” Reporters were always asking Didrikson if she ever intended to marry. “It gets my goat,” she said. “They seem to think I’m a strange, unnatural being summed up in the words Muscle Moll.” It’s no wonder she finally took a husband (who knew about her lesbianism). As a career saver, it worked.

“Babe is a Lady Now: The Most Amazing Athlete Has Learned to Wear Nylons and Cook for Her Husband,” Life magazine raved” (149).

Didrikson made the choice to marry a man and change her way of dressing in order for the harsh criticism she had faced throughout her athletic career to lighten up. In effect, she was praised after her transition(s), but for the wrong reasons.

Now the media focused entirely on her feminine appearance and marriage rather than her remarkable athleticism. When 118

Amendment Mildred died in the mid-fifties, “the press spent less time celebrating her athletic accomplishments than her achievement of “femininity”” (Downing, 201).

Althea Gibson not only had her femininity and sexual preference criticized by society, but also her position as a black female athlete. Gibson was an outstanding tennis player in the fifties, but her athletic excellence occurred in a decade in which black people were still viewed as an inferior race by many ignorant Americans. Whereas at least Didrikson was often referred to as “Babe,” Gibson was, to many, “that black (or negro) tennis player.” With such accomplishments under her belt as the first African-American athlete invited to compete at the Wimbledon and U.S. Nationals tennis tournament, winning both tournaments in 1957 and 1958 and remaining the only African-American woman to take either title until Serena and Venus Williams made their entrance into tennis, it’s fair to say that Althea Gibson is nothing less than a historical figure in women’s sports and role model for female (and male) athletes as well (Gottesman, 206). Discrimination was a problem Gibson faced throughout her career, as well as a problem black women in the 1950s continued to have to struggle with. Even in advertising in women’s magazines, black women were rarely visible. At times when they were shown, it was often in an unfavorable manner: From the editorial content to the images in advertising, there is scarcely a hint of any appeal to or recognition of the African American woman.

The reasons for this are no doubt complex, a combination of unexamined cultural racism and concern for the business bottom line—advertisers and subscribers during the period would not have reacted favorably to articles about issues of primary concern to blacks or to pictures of 119

Amendment black women using vacuum cleaners, unless, as was occasionally the case, they were obviously servants (Walker, 7).

Not only were individual athletes subjected to heavy criticism during the fifties, but team sports participants as well. A perfect example of this is the Women’s All-American Baseball League, which began in the early 1940s and lasted until the late fifties. Because of World War II, the men’s baseball league was suspended temporarily due to so many of the male athletes going off to war. This made room on the fields for women—those who for so long wanted to play professional ball, but had never been able to. The sole purpose behind this venture, though, was not to give women the opportunity to fulfill their hopes and dreams; the league was simply a means to create revenue that was being lost because of the absent men’s league. Still, it was an opportunity many women did not want to pass up, whatever the reasoning behind its development really was. Unfortunately though, yet right along with the biases women faced and were constricted by in the fifties, these women who participated in the AAGBL had a set of special rules of which they had to abide by or they risked getting kicked out of the league. They had to maintain a feminine image—no “mannish” women, no “muscle molls,” no out-of-the-closet lesbians. There was a “strict application of a “femininity principle” as well as the prohibition of black women in the AAGBL (Downing, 36). The man who administered the league, Arthur Meyerhoff, had the belief that to sell the league to the public, it was necessary to prove that the women baseball players were normal, wholesome, white, heterosexual girls. Collette Downing explains that as a result of Meyerhoff’s concept, “league officials picked players based as much on their feminine appearance as on their baseball skills. They monitored all players for their compliance with required 120

Amendment dress, hair, and makeup codes. Players competed in a skirted uniform rather than pants. All players attended classes where they learned ‘ladylike’ comportment on and off the field.

Players who violated the rules were promptly sent packing” (36-7). Susan K. Cahn in Coming on Strong, further explains the feminine image in the AAGBL and more specifically, the “femininity principle:” In accordance with the femininity principle, management instructed recruiters to weigh both ability and appearance in prospective players. In a section titled “Femininity with Skill,” the league handbook reasoned that it was “more dramatic to see the feminine-type girl throw, run, and bat than to see a man or boy or masculine-type girl do the same things. The more feminine the appearance of the performer, the more dramatic the performance.” In the long run, by promoting women’s baseball as a spectacle of feminine “nice girls” who could “play like a man,” the AAGBL did as much to heighten the cultural dissonance between “masculine” athleticism and “feminine” womanhood as it did to resolve it (149-50).

The AAGBL also sent their players to charm school and many of the players realized that this was done as a specific intention to “dispel lesbian stereotypes” as well as to maintain a feminine image overall (Cahn, 156). It is safe to say that lesbians in the fifties did not have it easy and often had to keep their true identities hidden in order to get through life without the ridicule and torment associated with being labeled a lesbian. True that many female athletes, such as Didrikson and Gibson never openly expressed their attraction(s) to the same-sex, yet they were still pointed out as homosexuals.

Why did people assume that of all (or at least the majority 121

Amendment of) female athletes? One reason is because of the rejection of the feminine self, as previously mentioned. To step away from the housework, the children, and the husband, and to run on a field, without feminine attire and without makeup was seen as wrong. Why would a woman want to sweat, to be aggressive, to compete? That’s something a man should do, and wants to do. Gender stereotypes indeed played an important role in the reasoning as to why the sexual preference of female athletes in the fifties was often questioned. As Downing accurately explains, “The taint of homosexuality is the modern-day equivalent of the mark of the tar brush. For women so marked, it changes everything” (202). Lesbians in the fifties were well-aware of the changes that could occur due to being “outed;” therefore, looking for a safe place in which to find a community in which they could together keep their secret—being open about who they were only to others like them. Where did this occur? In sports, on sports teams in particular. Griffin lets the truth be known: In the 1950s, sport provided a place where lesbians and other women who did not fit the feminine and heterosexual ideal could find other women who shared their experience and interests.

In sport, many lesbians found community and intimacy as long as they kept their sexual orientation a secret. Despite the association between lesbianism and sport in the public mind, sport competitions such as basketball and softball games were relatively safe social gathering places.

In contrast, gay bars, and even private homes, were vulnerable to recurring police raids in which those arrested routinely had their names printed in the local paper and their employers notified by the police. Lesbians in athletics were 122

Amendment insulated by small, closeted circles of lesbian friends and lovers and were fearful of upsetting this delicate balance. They developed a code of silence described as “play it, don’t say it,” that enabled lesbian athletes to survive and enjoy a circumscribed social life on athletic teams that was impossible elsewhere (39-40).

Aside from the conflicts, the name-calling, the biases, and the overall hardships female athletes had to endure in the 1950s, women involved in sports during this decade made it a memorable one through the many accomplishments they were responsible for. In 1953, the first world championship for women’s basketball was held in Santiago, Chile. The U.S. team won the tournament with a 5-1 record (Miller, 31). In 1955, the United States sent a women’s basketball team to the Pan American Games for the first time. The team won the gold medal with an 8-0 record (Miller, 32). The 50th anniversary of field hockey, a sport designated as an exclusive female sport from its beginning, was celebrated in 1951. The LPGA was founded in 1950 by twelve women golfers, included Didrikson (Greensberg, 74). In the 1950s, soccer became an intramural sport in many women’s colleges as well as high schools (Miller, 254). These are just a few of many positive changes that developed in the fifties in women’s sports. Though the hardships often outnumbered the success stories, these women did what they did so well because of one reason: the love of sport.

In closing, I find it appropriate to again quote Freidan from The Feminine Mystique in a particularly chapter in which she criticizes the housewives of the fifties: The suburban house is not a German concentration camp, nor are American housewives on their way to the gas chamber. But they are in a trap, and 123

Amendment to escape they must, like the dancer (or in this case, the athlete), and finally exercise their human freedom, and recapture their sense of self. They must refuse to be nameless, depersonalized, manipulated, and live their own lives again according to a self-chosen purpose. They must begin to grow (309).

The female athletes in the fifties faced harsh criticism day in and day out, yet they still suited up, tied their laces, and gave their best performance on the fields throughout the United States. Sports were their escape, their passion, and their means of growth. As a young female athlete, I cannot help but have the greatest respect and appreciation for these women and their contributions to sports overall. Odom, 12.

Works Cited 1.Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in TwentiethCentury Women’s Sports. Conneticut: Harvard University Press, 1995.

2.Cayleff, Susan E. Babe Didrikson: The Greatest All-Sport Athlete of All Time. New York: Redwheel/Weiser, 2000.

3.Downing, Collette. The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2000.

4.Festle, Mary Jo. Politics and Apologies: Women’s Sports in the United States, 1950-1985. Diss. University of North Carolina, 1993.

5.Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell Publishing, 1962.

6.Gottesman, Jane. Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?. New York: Random House, Inc., 2003.

7.Greenberg, Judith E. Getting into the Game: Women and Sports.

New Jersey: Scholastic Library Publishing, 1997.

124

Amendment 8.Griffin, Pat. Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport. Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1998.

9.Rich, Adrienne. “When the Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.”

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York: Norton & Company, 1979. 271-81.

10.Smith, Lissa, ed. Nike is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports. Georgia: Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 1999.

11.Walker, Nancy A., ed. Women’s Magazines 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

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Foremost in numerical and alphabetical order

By Jennifer Johnson are the vendors of my captivity.

The pure color of your memory inanimates destiny in bobbed wigs with plastic smiles, toys from Tokyo and the half-Siamese son of New York you named Macha.

We climbed through kitchen window onto balcony which was only ever a four-by-eight foot roof dressed up: Astroturf, lights shaped like push-pops, the southbound strain never a bad view Stonewall and Ashe considered.

If your Technicolor should relapse and the taste of Easter fail you it will remain lime green in your pocket with a white plastic lid and you will become more satisfied having used your hands in each offer ultimately accepted.

126

Amendment I will turn up happy to wear yellow until I stand beside you are more than a rainbow has ever dreamed to be.

The words I could barely whisper, left for star-shine and sea-bells to accompany your immaculate wind as each moment is your sail.

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The Sacrifice of Eleanor

By Stephanie Whitehead Eleanor MacFarnham walked with quick, even steps down the street on an autumn morning. The sky shone a brilliant blue and thready wisps of white cloud lazed high overhead.

White-faced cattle with red coats plodded behind men who led them past fields blanketed with the soft green fuzz of winter wheat. A few of the men closest to the road gave a quick wave before turning back to whatever task occupied them.

Everyone liked Eleanor. Tall and lithe, she moved with a calm grace. Her hair, when she left it uncovered by the modest black cap she always wore, hung past her waist in a thick curtain of auburn that flashed with golden highlights whenever the sun touched it.

She never lacked for suitors, particularly one handsome young man, but had remained unmarried. Since the death of her parents in an epidemic two winters before, Eleanor’s heart-shaped face had become pale. Her tawny eyes still held the grief she felt at their passing.

Always industrious, her sewing and lacework allowed her to save the small inheritance her parents had left her. She had recently begun a small savings account with the local bank, adding to the modest sum from her parents. Her neighbors sought out her needlework for their daughters’ weddings and for various accessories to their parlors and wardrobes.

Today, she made her way to the store to purchase enough of a pale lavender silk to make a wedding dress and cape for Mrs. Lewis’ Maggie. Mr. Durham had received the material the week before, and Maggie had gushed over it. Mrs. Lewis made the arrangement with Eleanor that same day for Maggie 128

Amendment was to be married the next month.

A tiny bell gave a bright tinkle as she walked in the door.

“Good mornin’ to ya, Eleanor, come for th’ silk, I’ll betcha.” Mr. Durham’s round face always reflected his happy nature. Red cheeks, snappy deep blue eyes, and a head full of lustrous black hair made the merchant look younger than his years. His clothes always strained a bit over his ample girth.

His wife, a pale woman with dark hair and eyes, showed the same plump outline as her husband. She looked up from her old wooden desk in the corner; half-glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She smiled at Eleanor. “Maggie’s talked of nothin’ else since we got that cloth in.” She shook her head jostling the pencil behind her ear. “Never seen a girl take to a bolt of silk like she done.”

Mr. Durham hauled the bolt onto the counter. “Do you know how much you be needin’?”

Eleanor smoothed the silk with the palm of one hand.

She thought for a moment as her skin rested against the cool fabric. “I b’lieve about eight yards, if you please, Mr. Durham.”

The bell sounded again, and a handsome youth walked in. Tom Morris saw Eleanor and grinned. Eleanor lifted the corners of her mouth ever so slightly before her cheeks tinted.

She lowered her eyes. Mr. Durham chuckled a bit. “Ho, Tom, be there in a mite. Mrs. Durham, finish up with Eleanor for me, please.” Mr. Durham always said please.

Mrs. Durham rose from her desk where she kept the accounts and stepped up to the counter. She measured off the silk and cut it with a nip and a long slide of her scissors.

Folding the fabric neatly, she leaned toward Eleanor.

129

Amendment “Now there’s a catch if ever I saw one.” Mrs. Durham hitched her head towards Tom’s handsome back. “He’s awful sweet on ya, ya know.” Mrs. Durham winked at Eleanor who flushed scarlet. “Have you not made your mind up o’er him yet?” When Mrs. Durham talked about matters of the heart, a bit of her Irish homeland slipped into her voice. Mrs. Durham had been a matchmaker and missed the job quite a bit.

Eleanor ducked her head, then gave it a small shake.

“It’s still too soon, Mrs. Durham, how would it look?”

Mrs. Durham huffed. “I don’t know why ya’d think you’ve not waited long enough. Your parents left ya nearly two year gone now.” She leaned slightly toward Eleanor.

“And, I’d wager it’d look a sight better than you lookin’ at an empty house, m’dare.”

Eleanor pretended to look shocked, but she cast a sly glance through her lowered eyelids in Tom’s direction. He had courted her every Sunday afternoon since the year after her parents died. He had made his feelings plain enough, but Eleanor had been taking care of Mrs. Lila Conrad for the past seven months. She wasn’t sure if she could devote time to a husband and an invalid. Aunt Lila not only deserved her loyalty, but was nearly as dear to Eleanor as her own parents.

Aunt Lila wasn’t really her aunt. She had been a close friend of Eleanor’s mother. Lila and her mother had been friends since their girlhood, and she helped Eleanor to tend first her mother and then her father when they fell ill. When Eleanor’s father died and her mother not five days after, Mrs. Conrad had arranged the funerals and helped Eleanor set the house and the accounts in order. She also helped Eleanor with managing her sewing so Eleanor might make enough living to leave her inheritance for her later years.

Mrs. Durham laughed softly. “Since ya aren’t noticing 130

Amendment young Tom there, I have a bit a’ cloth just come in yester’d.”

She reached beneath the counter and pulled out a small bolt of fabric. “Ain’t she a bee-yute!”

Eleanor sighed appreciatively and ran her hand slowly over the velvety material. But the softness paled compared to the exquisite color. Not a dark or royal blue, but something in between, it held a whisper of twilight in its hue. The fabric swam before Eleanor’s eyes. “I know just what to do with this.” She whispered.

Mrs. Durham eyed the girl sharply for a moment, but didn’t question her. She gave Eleanor the amount she requested plus an extra yard. Eleanor gathered her purchases, made her goodbyes, and headed towards the door. Just as she reached for the knob a hand grabbed hold of it and swung open the door.

“Here, let me help ya, Eleanor.” Tom’s melodious baritone made her shiver and blush again. She gazed up into his warm blue eyes before she realized she it. Glancing quickly away, she mentally rebuked herself. She had almost reached to push the familiar stray lock of brown hair away from his forehead. What could she be thinking?

“Thank ya very much, Tom. I hope ya mother and father are well.” She dared to look back up at him.

He grinned at her. “Quite well, Eleanor. I’ll tell ‘em you asked.”

“Please do, Tom.” “I hope Mrs. Conrad is restin’ easy.” He braved a slight step closer to her.

Her breath quickened and her heart nearly shook out of her chest at his boldness. But she sadly shook her head.

“No, I’m ‘fraid it won’t be much longer now, Tom.” And his 131

Amendment form wavered as she spoke. “The doctor was in yesterday with some medicine to ease her sleepin’ at least. She coughs so terrible much she barely sleeps at all.”

“Oh, Eleanor, I’m so sorry.” He touched her forearm with his free hand for a brief instant, then dropped it to his side. “Please tell me if I can do – “ “No, no, Tom, but I thank ya.” Eleanor bade him goodbye and hastened out the door before her grief won out. She couldn’t bear to think of losing the woman who seemed more family than friend. A small sob choked her before took a deep breath. The morning had turned warm without the humidity of summer and Eleanor let the warm sun dry her face.

“Aunt Lila, I’m back.” Eleanor called out as she entered her modest home where she had brought Aunt Lila to care for her. She walked across the rag rug her mother had woven just before Father had brought her mother to live here. That was nearly 22 years ago. Eleanor let the colors comfort her.

She heard Aunt Lila coughing in the side parlor, and she hurried in. Dropping her packages on the small tan sofa, she picked up a bottle on the table by Aunt Lila’s bed. She had moved Aunt Lila into this room because it let in the light from a window on the side of the house. Now the tiny, frail woman with black hair only just beginning to gray could warm herself in the sun without anyone gawking at her. Eleanor saw Lila had thrashed the cream coverlet into a heap on one side of the bed.

“Here, take a bit ah this. The doctor sed ya could take some durin’ the day.” Eleanor filled a large silver spoon with a thick brown liquid. She held the spoon while she slid an arm behind Lila’s shoulders to lift her up a little.

Aunt Lila screwed up her face, puffed her cheeks up, and then blew out her breath in a big whoosh. “Stuff’s foul as 132

Amendment swamp mud and twice as thick. Another cough racked her, and Eleanor almost dropped some of the medicine on her. As soon as the spasm subsided, Eleanor offered the spoon. Lila took it without protest.

Eleanor laid Lila back down. She poured a glass of water and handed it to the woman still making faces. “Here ya go. Don’t fret too much. I have a glorious surprise for you.” She went to the packages on the sofa and pulled out the blue cloth.

“Oh, chile, that’s ‘bout perfect a color as ya could git.”

Aunt Lila’s eyes half-closed, and a little smile played across her lips. Eleanor held it while Aunt Lila felt it and remarked about it for some minutes.

After a while, she asked Eleanor to leave it on the bed while she rested, and Eleanor could see the medicine’s hold begin in her Aunt’s dreamy, heavy-lidded countenance. She left the fabric and went to fix lunch. Before she left that morning, she had put on a nice soup with a good, thick soup bone to fortify her Aunt’s blood.

She stirred the soup and added a bit of late season greens. Eleanor added a few potatoes and replaced the lid.

She went back to the parlor. Letting her hands drift across the fine material at Lila’s side, she couldn’t help but remember what Aunt Lila had said the week before.

“I wish I could take th’ sunset with me, Ellie.” Her Aunt hadn’t called her Ellie since Eleanor had been a child. “Wish I could bottle it up and take it with me when I go.”

The doctor had been by the day before. After his examination, he sat down at Aunt Lila’s bed and took her hand. Eleanor was stunned by the familiarity until he passed his other hand through his hair and started to speak. He told them there wasn’t another thing could be done, and the time 133

Amendment was growing short. He didn’t think Aunt Lila would last the winter.

Eleanor could see deep furrows when his brow knitted together. He had heaved a mighty sigh and said how sorry he was. Aunt Lila just patted his hand and told him it was fine.

Eleanor suspected that Aunt Lila had known. She had grown thoughtful of late, talking about Eleanor’s parents, little things her mother had done as a girl. How Aunt Lila and her mother had once been sweet on the same boy.

Eleanor decided to take Aunt Lila outside to see the sunset. The doctor had left an invalid’s wheeled chair the day before, and she decided to take Aunt Lila out the next day.

They had spent many happy times in her youth watching the sun set. Aunt Lila would tell her stories while they watched the sky deepen as the sun glided below the horizon. They always started to whisper, like a great king passed nearby and might hear them. The sky shifted to a deeper blue and bands of subtle color glowed one on top of the other. Aunt Lila had told her her wish then.

“If I could take th’ sunset with me, I don’t think I’d mind so awful much.” She looked past Eleanor into the distance.

“If I could maybe lay m’head on a bit ah sunshine, I wouldn’t mind a’tall.”

Eleanor decided then to make Aunt Lila a pillow and embroider a sunset on it. She scoured her sewing basket for the right color thread and even had Mr. Durham get some from Johnson’s Ordinary, the next town nearly twenty miles away. She still hadn’t found the right color red and gold, but the blue fabric had solved the matter of what color would be right for the sky. Mr. Durham would be going back to town tomorrow, and he promised Eleanor he buy every lick of red and gold thread they had.

134

Amendment Aunt Lila coughed and Eleanor rose quickly, but the cough wasn’t repeated. At that moment, a sharp rap on front the door and a “Hallooo” sounded.

Mrs. Lewis blustered in with Maggie in tow. Mrs. Lewis was a hearty woman with brown hair and eyes. She carried a plate wrapped with a cloth. The delicious smell of warm peaches caressed Eleanor’s nose. But what drew Eleanor’s attention was the remarkable bonnet Mrs. Lewis wore.

Dark green with small burgundy roses embroidered around the edges, the bonnet had lace framing the front and long ribbons of a lighter green. The ribbons themselves were embroidered with delicate blue forget-me-nots. Eleanor could not help but comment.

“Why, Mrs. Lewis, that is purely the most elegant bonnet I have ever seen!”

Mrs. Lewis handed the plate to Maggie, then undid the bow lying delicately on her throat. “Yes, it’s quite a handsome thing, isn’t it?” Mrs. Lewis gave the bonnet to Eleanor for her inspection. “It come all the way from Paris.” Mrs. Lewis loved to be the one with the latest fashions from Paris.

Eleanor turned the gem over and over, studying each stitch. “Amazin’, Mrs. Lewis. I’ve never seen anythin’ so purty in my life!” She admired good handiwork and that embroidery had been the best she’d ever seen. The roses had been so finely wrought she would have sworn they were real. Eleanor half-expected to be able to smell them. She reluctantly handed back the bonnet.

Mrs. Lewis fastened it back in place. “Yes, well, I was over to Durham’s a little while ago, and he said you’d bought the silk.” Maggie’s watery blue eyes lit up when her mother said this.

“Yes’m, I got it in the parlor now. Do ya want me tah 135

Amendment git it?”

“If you please.” Mrs. Lewis always spoke quite proper.

Her husband was the mayor, and she had an example to maintain.

Eleanor went and retrieved the fabric. She took Mrs. Lewis and Maggie into the main parlor and laid it out for them.

Maggie had a bland faced frame in blond curls. She showed only a little of the fleshiness of her mother. She reached one small, delicate hand out and let it hover over the silk.

“Maggie!” Mrs. Lewis grabbed Maggie’s wrist. “You got peach pie on ya hands, girl! You best not ruin your wedding dress cloth.” Maggie’s eyes widened. She took a step back when her mother released her.

“Now give the pie to Eleanor. We have to be gittin’ home.” Maggie handed over the pie as Mrs. Lewis turned to Eleanor. “And, speaking of bonnets, do you ever take off that cap of yours?”

Eleanor colored a little. “Yes’m, when I go to bed.”

Mrs. Lewis made a sound. “Well, if I was you, I would certainly love to show off that hair.” She motioned to Maggie.

“Well, let’s go. You know how your father is when dinner is late. Eleanor, tell Lila we asked after her.” And mother and daughter left as abruptly as they came.

Eleanor took the pie to the kitchen and uncovered it.

It smelled wonderful and she wondered if she might tempt Aunt Lila with a small piece after supper. She put the pie in the pantry and checked on the soup. Satisfied, she sat down for a moment, thoughts beginning to interrupt her.

“That har of yor’n is a pure comfit, Ellie, m’girl.”

Eleanor’s father always told her that. “The color of m’own mother’s, bless me.” Her father loved her hair. Her mother 136

Amendment did, too. She spent many an afternoon, plaiting and arranging Eleanor’s hair.

“That har, m’girl, always a pure comfit.” Those had been her father’s last words to her. At his funeral, she put on the cap and never went in public without it again. Only twice had she taken it off in front of any one.

“Oh, Eleanor, please. We’re in the parlor and Lila’s in the next room. Just take it off while we sit here.” Eleanor had been pleased to take it off for Tom. But she warned him after the second time she mustn’t be so wicked. She promised Tom she would take it off for their wedding night. Tom had blushed. Eleanor couldn’t believe she had been so bold. The matter of the cap was dropped.

She stood up. Her wedding day would have to wait. She had Maggie’s wedding gown to make, and Eleanor wanted to make the pillow first, before…She couldn’t think further. *** Eleanor sighed in defeat and took out another attempt with the red and gold. None of the threads Mr. Durham had brought back. She tried several combinations, wound some of the colors together to make a new shade when the light hit it just right. But each try failed as the next. Eleanor had almost given up.

Aunt Lila coughed more and more now. There was a wet sound and, every so often, a pink froth would escape her increasingly bluer lips. Eleanor prayed fervently that the next batch Mr. Durham planned to bring back tomorrow would have something useful in it.

Tom came by that afternoon. “Eleanor, I want ya tah know that when, I mean I know that, well, when it comes to Lila’s time, I want tah help.” Tom had taken her hands in his, clasping them to his chest.

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Amendment Eleanor was touched. “It wouldn’t be seemly, Tom. Mrs. Durham’ll help me, I’m sure.”

“Would it be seemly if, ahhhh, Eleanor, I could help ya if, if we was to be engaged.” Tom let the last out in a rush.

“Couldn’t I?” Eleanor blushed and dropped her head. “Tom, ya know I can’t marry whilst I’m takin’ kir ah Aunt Lila.”

He hadn’t let go of her hands. “Not married, ‘zackly, Eleanor, just engaged. Just promise me that.”

Eleanor looked into his eyes. “All right, Tom. If that’s what ya want. But are you sure ya want tah wait that long?”

“I’ll wait, Eleanor. I’ll wait for ya.

Three days later Eleanor sat pulling more embroidery from the blue fabric. She was glad of the extra Mrs. Durham had given her. She would have ruined the part for the pillow if she hadn’t had it. Rubbing her eyes, she reached up and undid her cap. Slipping it off her head, she let her auburn glory free of its fetters. She ran her fingers through the braids to undo them so she could brush it before bed and replait it.

She looked at the shining hair between her fingers. If only she could find thread that color. Eleanor wasn’t immodest about her hair, but the color was just what she needed.

Suddenly, Eleanor sat perfectly still. She looked over at her sewing basket at all the bits of scattered thread. She picked a few up and held them up to her hair. She intertwined a few threads now and again and compared it to the color of her tresses. Looking back at the basket she smiled.

And a plan rose in her mind.

She bit her bottom lip a little and wondered if it would work. She emptied the contents of the sewing basket on the floor. Dozens of shades of red and gold fell to the floor. She 138

Amendment never knew there could be so many. Smiling to herself she set to her task with renewed vigor. *** “Oh, Ellie, Ellie!” Aunt Lila had cried when she unwrapped the pillow carefully swaddled in white tissue paper and tied with a pink satin bow. “My sunset. My perfect sunset.” Aunt Lila kissed Eleanor’s cheek.

Eleanor had taken Aunt Lila out on the back porch. She sat beside her on a stool from the kitchen. She held Aunt Lila’s hands in hers. “Oh, Dearest, I heard ya when ya sed ya wanted tah take the sunset with ya. I couldn’t bear tah think of ya not havin’ it.” Tears sprang into her eyes, bowed her head over her Aunt’s hands until they touched her forehead.

“No, Dear, no, it’s all right. I don’t really hurt so much any more. The medicine the doctor brung me las’ night makes me feel right peaceable. Right peaceable indeed.” Aunt Lila turned to watch the sunset and held another in her arms.

Eleanor buried her beloved Aunt Lila with her head resting on a splendid sunset three days later. She had gone the night she got her pillow. It was under her head when she died.

After the funeral, most of town gathered outside Eleanor’s house. Tom stayed by her side as he promised as their bans had been read the Sunday after he asked for her hand.

Many remarked about the unusual pillow and how marvelous the color and detail had been. Mrs. Lewis particularly commented about how wonderful it was. At the house, after a proper greeting of her neighbors and expressing her sympathies to Eleanor and Tom, Mrs. Lewis called Eleanor aside.

139

Amendment “That pillow is about the best thing I’ve ever seen.” Her eyes glittered as she spoke.

“Thank ya, Mrs. Lewis. Aunt Lila took great comfit in it.” Eleanor dabbed at her eyes now and again at the mention of her aunt.

“Well, I want my Maggie to have one just like it. I’ll be glad to pay whatever you think it’s worth. Might even get you to make one for me, too.” Mrs. Lewis smiled and gave a quick nod as if to say “and how about that!”

Eleanor straightened and looked at Mrs. Lewis clear-eyed for a long moment. She closed her eyes a moment, then spoke in voice full of quiet dignity and grief. “I shall never make another.” Before Mrs. Lewis could sputter a reply, Eleanor returned to Tom’s side.

Later, Mrs. Lewis walked home with a few of her friends, their children, and Maggie. “I just cannot believe the insolence of that girl. Can you imagine?” The women talked for quite a ways after Mrs. Lewis relayed her conversation with Eleanor.

She was furious her desires had been thwarted, not only for her, but for her Maggie, too. The more the women talked, the more agitated Mrs. Lewis became. “I mean, standing there in that horrid little cap of hers. She can’t possibly be ashamed of that hair. It’s her crowing glory, just like the good book says.” Mrs. Lewis face was fairly beet red. “I don’t suppose she’ll ever take off the awful thing now. She must think she’s so pious with it on.”

Meek, quiet Maggie was seen to have a tear roll gently down the side of her nose. She sniffed loudly.

Her mother grew annoyed after the third sniff. “And just what is wrong with you. You’ve got nothing to cry over.

You’re to married Sunday next.” She gave an exasperated “humpf!” when Maggie began to cry in earnest.

140

Amendment “She ain’t got none,” Maggie wailed through gulping sobs.

“What?” Her mother frowned. “Ain’t got what? Who ain’t got what?”

“Hair.”

“What? Maggie what are you talking about.”

A light flamed in Maggie’s eyes. She lifted her chin against her mother’s pique.

Her mother glared back. “Well?”

Maggie sniffed loudly one last time. She dabbed at her face with her fine lace handkerchief. “She ain’t got no hair.

Eleanor. It’s all gone!”

Mrs. Lewis blinked several times, unsure she heard the girl right. “Have you taken leave of your senses, girl? What do you mean Eleanor’s hair is gone?”

And so Maggie told her mother the story. She had gone by yesterday with the food her mother had made. She had found Eleanor in the kitchen, weeping. She had crushed the black cap to her face to muffle her sobs, her head shaking back and forth with her grief.

And every inch of her beautiful hair from past her waist to just below her ears had gone.

Eleanor’s head had snapped up when the dishes clattered to the floor from Maggie’s hand. Maggie, never a girl for quick action, had stood for a moment before creeping up to Eleanor’s side. After soothing her, Maggie promised not to tell about her hair. Eleanor had told her what happened.

“I just couldn’t find the right color is all. I couldn’t let her go to her grave without a sunset. I just couldn’t!” Eleanor head sunk into her cap again as she wailed out her grief.

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Amendment Maggie got from her that Eleanor had used her own hair to create the masterpiece of the sunset.

“That was why she’d never make another,” Maggie cried at her mother. “It’ll be years and years before her hair grows back!”

Mrs. Lewis stood dumbstruck for no few moments.

When she recovered herself, she went back to Eleanor’s grieving house. Most of the mourners had gone and only Tom and two others remained. Eleanor glanced up from clearing the dishes and saw Mrs. Lewis, cheeks blazing and wide-eyed, standing in the front doorway.

“May I come in, Miss Eleanor,” Mrs. Walker’s voice was subdued.

Eleanor invited her in, puzzled by her tone. “Please.”

“I wish tah speak with ya alone, if you’ve a mind.” Mrs. Lewis’ pretenses had dropped, and she spoke humbly.

Eleanor led her to the kitchen and out the back door.

Mrs. Lewis could not speak at first. But after a bit, undid the ribbons of her bonnet and took it off. Eleanor’s figure swam before her as she stepped closer to the girl. “You’ll be needin’ a new bonnet fer ya wedding, Miss Eleanor. I’d be right honor’d if ya’d accept mine.

Eleanor protested, and it took a while for Mrs. Lewis to convince her. But, in the end, Mrs. Lewis got her way. She usually did. And the bonnet began Eleanor’s wedding clothes. *** Tom and Eleanor were married a week before Christmas.

The crisp air smelled of snow, and birds warbled their goodbyes as they headed for warmer climes. Tom had a new suit of gray wool, a white shirt, and new striped cravat. The strand of hair, ever rebellious lay casually across his forehead.

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Amendment Eleanor wore a hunter green silk embroidered along the hem with roses to match the bonnet. Her black cape lay about her shoulders, content. Mrs. Lewis herself stood up with the couple. From the bottom of the bonnet peeked a fringe of newly grown hair. Eleanor had worried Tom wouldn’t marry a woman without her hair, but he wouldn’t hear a word of her attempts to release him from his promise.

The church had evergreen, holly, and candles laid about the altar. The humble church was filled near to bursting, so many had come to the ceremony. Quiet murmurs punctuated the couple’s vows and the admonitions of the Revered.

And on the altar covered with a gold mantle lay a bundle wrapped in the blue fabric the color of Aunt Lila’s sunset pillow. Inside rested a lock of hair from every woman in attendance, and even some who couldn’t come, to honor the sacrifice of Eleanor.

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Yellow

By Rucker Sewell I’m sure by now You all know the bird So horribly dubbed The booby Now I have shoes Bright as the sun The one noticed thing That’s on me.

I’m treated as if I’ve breast on my feet.

But are they as big As they could be?

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Gnostics

By Rachel Shaw Christianity today is largely centered around the concept of a patriarchal god. There are many controversial issues surrounding this idea, such as women as priests. The belief in a patriarchal god dates back to the beginnings of Christianity and was already widely accepted when Christianity took a more definitive shape around 200 AD. However, there were other groups of Christians that did not believe in a patriarchal god.

Their interpretations of Jesus’ teachings and the Old Testament were also radically different. In these groups, women were more widely accepted as equals. So why did these groups die out? The patriarchal god in the Orthodox theology of the time perpetuated social constructs already in place and resultantly became prevalent and eventually pushed the “unorthodox” groups into extinction. One of these groups was known as the Gnostics.

The Gnostics Gnostic comes from gnosis meaning knowledge and is derived from the Greek verb gignoskein, to know (Layton 9). Gnostic factions were deeply involved in mysticism and many of their texts were metaphorical. Much of the Gnostic teachings were drawn from Greek legends and incorporated into the already prominent Jewish beliefs. In Greek mythology, there had always been female gods as counterparts, even equals, for the male gods. Like the Greek myths, the Gnostics believed in a female counterpart as opposed to the one, male god in the Orthodox faith. There are several texts, including some of the Nag Hammadi scrolls that support the idea of a male and female god.

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“On The Origins of the World” The text “On the Origins of the World,” was written by a faction of Gnostics and is one interpretation of the Old Testament. It is a reinterpretation and rewriting of the Old Testament (Layton 23-24). In “On the Origins of the World” there is an androgynous god, a supreme creator with both masculine and feminine traits. This androgynous god produces many other gods, one is Wisdom, or Sophia in Greek. Sophia is described as having feminine traits and was therefore probably female. Sophia wishes to conceive without her masculine counterpart, which is against the rule of the androgynous god.

The end result is described as being ugly and deformed, Earth.

In order to manage her creation, Sophia creates a demiurge, a half god. The name of the demiurge is Ialdaboath, and according to Gnostic texts, Ialdaboath is the god of the Old Testament (“Origin” 1-7). The importance of this passage is that the idea of the patriarchal god completely disappears.

The god of all is androgynous, which created both male and female parts. A feminine aspect created Ialdaboath, the god of the Old Testament as well as Earth. Therefore, the god of the Old Testament, according to “Origin,” was not the ruling god, and was in fact only a demiurge.

“On the Origins of the World” begins to describe the same events that take place in the Old Testament. At one point, the god of the Old Testament exclaims that he is a jealous god.

This statement has been questioned by theologians because if there are no other gods, why would he be jealous? The Gnostics come to a conclusion that is described in “On the Origins of the World.” Ialdaboath is ignorant of his mother and exclaims that he is the only god. He is rebuked by Sophia who says “‘ You are mistaken Samael’ (that is blind god)” (“Origins” 5). After he hears his mother’s voice, he becomes jealous of the other gods. A passage in Exodus from the ten 146

Amendment commandments reads, “… I , the Lord, your God, am a jealous God …”(New American Bible, Ex. 20:6-7) In accordance with that passage in Exodus a part of “On the Origin of the World” states that once Ialdaboath realizes there are other gods, he becomes he jealous of their power.

“Origins” goes on to retell the Adam and Eve story in which Eve was not created from the form of man and that she is not at fault for the fall of man. After Sophia realizes the faults of her demiurge, she and her creator conceive of Adam to take Ialdaboath’s power. Sophia creates a paradise for Adam, the Garden of Eden from Genesis of the Old Testament. She sends him her daughter Life, who is the spirit of knowledge.

Life was to be a part of Adam and dwell within him. In order to foil Sophia’s plan, Ialdaboath puts Adam into a state of ignorance, the deep sleep in Genesis, and takes Life out of him. Since Life is feminine, her form was that of a woman.

He then tells Adam that the spirit Life was formed out of Adam’s rib so that in this way Life, Sophia’s daughter, would be subservient to Adam who was subservient to Ialdaboath.

However, Life is able to save herself and leave an image of herself a form in her likeness, Eve. (“Origin” 8-12).

In other words, in “On the Origin of the World,” woman was not created out of man. Eve was not made from a part of Adam, but instead was a likeness of Sophia’s daughter, Life.

From this it can be assumed that women were made in the likeness of a god, namely Sophia. Both Adam and Eve were created by the same god, equal in that sense and therefore, neither is subservient to the other.

Ialdaboath then tries to keep Adam and Eve ignorant by telling them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge because if they did he would no longer have the power of ignorance over them. The other gods, including Sophia, instruct Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, which she does and then gives 147

Amendment Adam some of the fruit. When Ialdaboath finds they are no longer ignorant, he casts them out of paradise (“Origin” 12-14).

In this reinterpretation of the Old Testament, the downfall of man was not as a result of Eve but of the jealous Ialdaboath.

Eve was told by the other gods to eat of the Tree of Knowledge so that the ignorance cast on them by Ialdaboath would be lifted (Logan 195).

In contradiction to the idea of woman not being at fault for the fall of humankind, an argument could be made that Sophia herself caused the fall. Because Sophia tried to create something outside the laws of nature set up by the all-powerful androgynous god, it could be said that in the end it is her fault for the suffering of humankind. Since she is a feminine god, women could have still been blamed for the loss of innocence. However, according to the Gnostics, she was immediately repentant and was received again by her creator (Logan 194). Sophia is portrayed in repentant actions. She conceived of Adam to rid Earth of Ialdaboath, she created Paradise for Adam, and sent her daughter to dwell in him. Therefore, because of her repentance, the Gnostics concluded she could not be blamed for Ialdaboath’s actions (Logan 194). Instead, they believed it was Ialdaboath that tried, out of jealousy and fear to condemn humanity.

Mary Magdalene Another Gnostic text that portrays the idea of equality for men and women is the “Gospel According to Mary Magdalene.”

A Gnostic gospel, it portrays Jesus treating women as equals.

Within the text, the disciples ask Mary Magdalene to enlighten them on the special wisdom that Jesus imparted to her. Peter comments to Mary, “Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of us” (“Mary Magdalene” 4). Since it states that Jesus had loved Mary, a woman, more than the 148

Amendment other disciples,men, then it would follow that women were equal to men and in fact, were not inferior.

Even in Orthodox gospels traces of text that support the idea that Jesus favored Mary Magdalene. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is described as praising Mary Magdalene. She is one of the three disciples that Jesus imparts his final lessons of wisdom. It would seem that if Jesus saw women as equal that Christianity, based on Jesus’ teaching, would do the same.

Theology and Social Structure The Gnostics’ beliefs reflected the idea that men and women were equal. The formation of their church exemplifies this. According to Gnostic scripture, women and men were both created in the image of the gods and the highest god was androgynous, women were considered equal within the Gnostic faith. Women were allowed to prophesy and become priests alongside men.

However, in the Orthodox faith, women were barred from even speaking in church. The reason for such a great difference was the religious theology or theory of the two radically different groups. Each of the factions’ everyday lives and beliefs were modeled after the theology they supported.

Since the Orthodox Church believed in a patriarchal god, their families and political systems were also patriarchal. Only men could be priests. The Orthodox Church also blamed women for humankind’s expulsion from Paradise or the Garden of Eden, so women were seen as being ignorant and therefore less able to understand and take part in the church and therefore society. Even the passage from the Gospel of Luke was interpreted so that women were still considered inferior to men. Orthodox authorities stated that though Christ may have been tolerant toward women, their god was patriarchal and had precedence over Christ (Pagels 66).

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Amendment The Orthodox Church rose above the Gnostic faith because the Orthodox theology and teachings supported the already prevalent patriarchal society. “Professor Morton suggests that … Christianity move[d] up the social scale from lower to middle class” (Pagels 63). Christianity was also probably prevalent in the upper classes as well. The upper class would have had the most power, because they had the most money. They were less open to the idea of women being equal to men. As a result of the patriarchal society, men were the most powerful of the upper classes. They were the ones that ran the government and had the most money.

Contrary to the upper classes, in the lower classes where Gnosticism was the most prevalent, women were more likely to take a part in society. They worked alongside men. In this situation, women would have been more easily accepted as equals (Pagels 64). Also, the Gnostic faith was comprised largely of women because of its tolerance of them. However, since women were also considered a lower class their support was not as monumental as that of the upper classes.

Because the upper class, comprised mostly of men, wanted to keep their power, they supported the Orthodox Church. If women had been given equality in theology, as was the case in Gnostic factions, then a religiously driven community would have had to have changed its social structure.

Women would have been able to be a part of the government and would have control over their money. This would mean that upper class men would have lost some of their power in society. So, in order to protect their power, these men supported the religion that would ensure their high position in society. With the monetary and possibly even governmental support of the upper classes, the Orthodox Church was able to survive, while the “heretical” Gnostics died out (Pagels 66).

Because the Orthodox Church perpetuated the social structure 150

Amendment of the time, it was able to thrive.

Conclusion This is not to argue that one interpretation of Christ’s teachings is more accurate than another. Both Gnostic and Orthodox texts are polar opposites in the interpretations of Jesus’ teachings. Instead, it is to shed light on the fact that the Orthodox faith was not the only option. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the beliefs which perpetuated the societal values already in place survived, while the beliefs that would radically change the social order went extinct.

Works Cited Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures. New York: Double Day and Company, 1987.

Logan, Alastair. Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy; A Study in the History of Gnosticism. Scotland: T&T Clark Ltd., 1996.

New American Bible. New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1970.

“On the Origin of the World.” The Nag Hammadi Library. Trans.

Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Bentley Layton. The Gnostic Society Library. April 28,2004. <http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/origin.html>.

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

“The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene.” The Gnostic Society Library. April 28,2004. <http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/origin.html>.

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Inamorato

By Jennifer Lane salutation welcome hail accost receive admit entertain enjoy relish fancy resemblance likeness similitude semblance affinity parallelism uniformity duplicate facsimile copy equal analogue congener match pair double fondness predilection inclination appetite gratification enjoyment delight glee elation jubilation sunshine delectation relish gusto thrill stimulus exhilaration satisfaction complacency solace felicity bliss beatitude exaltation enchantment transport rapture elysium intact pentitude abundance copious full saturation totality solidarity perfection ripeness universal solid undivided consummate unmitigated free adscititious supplemental bare exposed perforate permeate pulchritude symmetry splendor radiance sublimate exquisite duplicity wiliness insidious subtlety imposition prestidigitation trap bait cobweb toils vacate abandon withdraw retire remove depart dark dull sober pensive solitary apart lone omit obliterate decay buried 152

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Protest photo?

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Amendment Staff Bios Jennifer Berry graduates in May of 2005 with a BS. in Psychology with secondary concentration in Women's Studies. She is one of the co-founders of the gblt organization, Project OUT. Her goal is to someday work in the field of women's mental health practicing counseling psychology.

The name is Ceres, known only in intimate circles as Tia. I am a poet, zinester, dancer, womanist, and most importantly deviant…among other things. I heart the color blue. I am a junior at VCU majoring in Sociology. I am also attempting to minor in AfricanAmerican Studies and Women’s Studies. I am a full-time gender performance artist along with dabbling in alternative fashions. I occasionally glamifying myself as a*camp* counselor, aka drag king and queen. I had the pleasure of visiting London’s red light district during Spring Break. I am proud to be apart of Amendment for the second edition. I admire my cohorts for their hard work, chain smoking, coffee overdoses, and midnight editing madness. ♥ you all.

Nadia Eran is an undergraduate student working on a double major in English and Psychology. She wastes her time on hoping to read every book ever written, but seems to only get half-way through before being tempted away by another. She is interested in gender variancy in sexual response and deviancy, as well as in changing the world for worse or better.

Liz Canfield is the faculty advisor for this fearless group of artists, poets, editors, storytellers, activists, and feminists. She is an Instructor in the English Department, and feels honored to teach writing and a gender/literature course. She is involved in various community activist groups and adores zine making and collecting, and practicing piano. She writes poems and essays and lives in an old, rickety Oregon Hill house with her partner and her cat.

Callie Jean Furlong is a first-year English and Spanish major. She began to serve as a general staff member of Amendment after taking Liz Canfield's Women in Literature class.

Robin Baidya, born into a Nepalese patriarchy, was reared in a wealthy suburb of Columbus, Ohio. As a boy meant to espouse his medical pedigree, Robin endured a vigorous survey 154

Amendment of grammar and algebra, his father’s first attempt to prime him for science. In defiance of this sexual division of labor, Robin is pursuing instead a double major in pure mathematics and applied mathematics with a minor in writing. Robin had eluded politics, however, until he joined Liz Canfield’s honors course on women in literature, where feminism first flirted with him. Since then, he has courted the effects of minimalism on multicultural methodologies, seducing such paragons as music theorist Fred Everett Maus and art historian Lynn Zelevansky. Currently a junior, Robin pines to work at a university someday, whence feminist pedagogy will penetrate all of his courses.

Amendment's President, Stephanie Whitehead, is a senior at VCU. She is an English major with a minor in Spanish and a minor in Writing. Stephanie won the 2004-2005 Undergraduate Nonfiction Essay Award and won honorable mentions in 2003 for the Nonfiction Essay, Poetry, and Fiction. She has published one novel, three short stories, and four poems. Her novel, First and Begotten Sin, can be viewed at www.iuniverse.com.

Charlotte Tinnell is a Junior in the Painting and Printmaking/ Women's Studies departments at VCU. She is a feminist, interested in women's issues and the overall quality of their lives.

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