Salon: The crisis of “bad feminism” is worse than you think

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SALON
Monday, Sep 1, 2014 04:30 PM EDT
The crisis of “bad feminism” is worse than you think
Enough with the dangerous think pieces about whether we can like catcalls or heels or botox and still be feminists
Andi Zeisler

Look around the blogosphere, and there seems to be a serious crisis of conscience among feminists — one that even predates Roxane Gay’s trailblazing new book on the subject. One woman wonders: “I Love Wolf Whistles and Catcalls: Am I a Bad Feminist?” Another asks: “Am I a Bad Feminist Because Sometimes All I Want for My Life is to Get Married, Have Babies and a Nice House Out in the Country?” And: “Can a Beauty Editor Be a Feminist?” Everywhere you turn, there’s an overwrought unburdening by a woman wringing her virtual hands over the prospect of feminist failure — confiding her self-diagnosed Bad Feminism, unpacking its minutiae, and then ultimately concluding that, damn it, she’ll call herself a feminist if she wants to. Who says we can’t have it all?

Perhaps it’s not surprising that people find themselves so easily tied in ideological knots over feminism, given that it still occupies such a contested place in American culture. Miley Cyrus rushes to proclaim that she’s “one of the biggest feminists in the world,” while Katy Perry and Shailene Woodley blithely disavow the term; meanwhile, right-wingers like Sarah Palin valiantly attempt to co-opt the term for uses the second wave never intended, and the consumer marketplace shills Dove products and Pantene shampoo with watered-down feminist rhetoric about self-acceptance and empowerment. Is it any wonder that many of us aren’t sure where and how the term is rightly applied?

“Choice” feminism started as the belief, coined somewhat peevishly by Linda Hirshman in her 2007 manifesto “Get to Work,” that a woman’s freedom to choose trumps her right to equality. But in the years since — and thanks to “Sex and the City’s ‘ Charlotte York, who in one memorable episode chanted “I choose my choice!” like a mantra — it’s devolved into the idea that anything is a feminist choice so long as a feminist chooses it: not just relationships and kids and career but also religion, sex work, dieting, breast implants, stiletto heels, gun ownership, capitalist megalomania. The morass of choice is at the heart of these most recent self-flagellating screeds. And the specter of being a “bad feminist” tends to crop up around the issues that have most confounded choice feminism: marriage, children, beauty standards and the attendant rituals surrounding all three. Debates around changing your name in marriage, for instance, are perennial headline-grabbers, with a staunch defense of both sides erupting periodically in mainstream newspapers and online. Likewise, strenuously argued “High heels are feminist!/No, they aren’t!” back-and-forths pop up as regularly as Anthony Weiner dong shots.

But in a world where we’re all choosing our choices, there seems to be a lot of second-guessing going on. At first, I likened these confessions to a parallel trend, that of the “bad mom” memoirs and essays that regularly circulate through the blogosphere and publishing world. But they’re not the same at all. The performativity of those, at least, has something of a rationale: It’s less about actually being a bad mom than it is about showing that you fancy yourself a cool, nonconformist mom. Trumpeting your feminist infractions, on the other hand: Sure, you’re being honest. But is it an honesty that anyone needs?

MORE at http://www.salon.com/2014/09/01/the_crisis_of_bad_feminism_is_worse_than_you_think/