Powerful breasts

According to a couple of articles I read this week, bare breasts are the new symbol of feminist power. A twenty-something woman debated an older feminist in a piece in Glamour, the young woman claiming pride in her cleavage so great that she flaunts it at the office (with the older woman responding with a touch of horror), while a young woman walking the gauntlet at a recent Jets' half-time in Giants stadium answered affirmatively to the request to expose herself, telling a journalist afterward that why not?, since she's proud of her body. Read more. Both statements seemed to note an achievement, an accomplishment, that gave them both power and pride.

But since when is it an accomplishment to get a man to look at your breasts? I thought feminism and "girl power" were all about getting men to see us women in a way they hadn't considered us before -- smart, ambitious, capable -- in a way that equals them. By exposing our breasts to anyone who wants to look, we're giving men an image they love to see but are gaining no credibility in their sight.

Sadly I understand the logic. When the bared bodies of Britney Spears and every woman on Dancing with the Stars are front and center in our daily popular entertainment, when news anchors bulging breasts adorn every cable channel morning program, when Hillary Clinton is seen as choosing her blouses for their deep cut, minimizing one's coverage might seem like a great platform for power.

But what power are we gaining? To make money and get attention, or make decisions and get to run the operation? I know which goal I prefer, the same one that women are still a long way from achieving.

A feminist perspective

For a bunch of years now, I've had a rather simplistic view of what it means to be a feminist. Ooh, there's that ugly scary word -- better, in any case, than what some of my loved ones refer to me as -- a Femi-Nazi. (I think they're, sort of, kidding, well maybe.)

Anyhow I suggest -- let's just put aside, for a minute or two at least, all those things women used to march about and sometimes, miraculously, still do, like legislation to guarantee access to abortion or time off after giving birth or equal pay for the same work. Let's put aside the demands women have made of employers like sexual harassment policies or a chance to be included on the golf course when the deal gets made. Let's put aside even the requests we women have made of our husbands or significant others to clean up the kitchen and take care of the kids with the sobriquet "dad," not baby-sitter.

That's all gotten too complicated for me. I decided back a few years that I just want to be treated like a person, a human being, fully realized as an individual in my own right, with all the rights and responsibilities and strengths and flaws and access and deference that anyone else gets, including any man. It's true, of course, that if all those demands and requests were granted -- if policy-makers and employers and spouses listened to feminists and gave us what we requested or, after we got mad at being ignored, demanded -- my quest to be seen as just another person would become significantly simpler. So I enthusiastically support all that stuff.

But when I think and talk and write about this quest for feminism's goal, it comes simply down to being seen on the same par as the dominant category of people in our society, the white men, being given the same credits and allowances for my capabilities and failures, a courtesy, an understanding, that should be extended to all women.

So that's what I'll write about here, on the 100% Human blog. Unless of course I digress to any of the other topics that interest me like politics, books, movies, parenting, skiing, friendship, family, finding relationships, keeping relationships, or any of the other zillion things that pop into my head. But it will all be about being human.

Start-up

The blog's created, tomorrow to write in it, my back's too tired right now. I'm just human, after all.