Has the Beyoncification of feminism really helped the movement — or did all this hype ultimately dilute the message? And what message is that, in 2016? When it’s become such a buzzword that Malcolm Turnbull can call himself a feminist while continuing to sanction violence against female refugees, does it actually mean anything, or is it being lazily used as a badge of honour?
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I grew up in a very conservative Vietnamese family. No sex, living together, holidays or sleepovers with partners before marriage. On the rare occasions when overnight stays were permitted, the boys slept on the couch. Growing up, my sisters and I expected that we’d live with our parents in Sydney’s sleepy northwest until we were married. There was a lot of sneaking around.
I unexpectedly moved cities at 23 for work. I had a long-term boyfriend, and when he came to visit every month or so, my mother asked if we slept in the same bed. In those early days, I could picture her wringing her hands as her voice gently shook. Sometimes she cried.
Eventually, she didn’t protest when we said we were going overseas together. She let me go to his family Christmas interstate – something I had been forbidden to do for the first three years of our relationship. Slowly, things were changing.
“KEEP yer PAYNTS AWN.”
So went the battle cry of Pam Stenzel, or “Pants-On Pam” as we called her at my all-girls Anglican high school. Every week in Christian Studies, we were forced to watch her abstinence-only, pro-life diatribes. With her twangy American accent, she was a real-life version of the sex ed teacher in Mean Girls (“Don’t have sex! You WILL get chlamydia… and die”).
We never learned about contraception. We never learned that sex could and should be fun. We never learned about any kind of sex that wasn’t heterosexual. We never learned about the importance and nuances of consent, or how to talk about sex with partners.
All we learned was that we shouldn’t be having premarital sex, and if we did, the consequences were all our fault. We were shamed into fearing sex and, coming from a conservative Vietnamese family, I wasn’t hearing anything different at home.
“I sincerely hope you get raped to death by a rusty knife.”
A lovely thing to see in your Twitter mentions, and one that, as an outspoken feminist online, isn’t all that uncommon if you’ve spoken out about something recently. But racking my brains, I couldn’t think of what comments of mine had drawn MRA ire lately.
I started playing the cello when I was three years old. Its large wooden body dwarfed my tiny one, and every week my father would drive past gardens, me peering out the window to watch dogs running leashless and looking for magnolias, shouting “Another one!” every time I spotted the pink blooms. This was the route to my cello teacher’s home – a Russian woman with wild hair who taught me how to make the instrument sing.
My childhood was a blur of eisteddfods, radio performances, at-home concerts and orchestra rehearsals. My hands ran up and down the instrument’s slender neck, and adults cried when I played, but all it was to me was A grades and practices with my mother accompanying on piano, telling me what the music should feel and sound like. I liked pop punk bands and dead white guys singing about weird things – it didn’t mean much to me.
In the last week, Factory X has come under fire after receiving the lowest possible rating on a report on Australian fashion ethics from Baptist World Aid Australia, covering policies, suppliers, auditing and worker conditions – placing them below companies like Kmart.
This stands in stark contrast to the fairly ambiguous social and ethical compliance policy on the Gorman website, boasting “safe working conditions”, “sustainable living wages” and “fair and equitable treatment”.
Though Gorman was not included in Factory X’s assessment as they have separate supply chains, the parent company received the F grade for choosing not to participate in the survey – which begs the question, why stay tight-lipped if you’ve got nothing to hide?
Recently, I met a girl who I immediately recognised as the current girlfriend of one of my short-lived exes. She was wearing a cute dress and was bright, friendly and funny.
Against the advice of my friends, I told her about our “sausage sister” connection. Amazingly enough, she did not lunge at me and maul my face off. Instead, she broke into a smile and said, “No way, I’m so glad you told me!”
I initially bonded with one of my closest friends under similar circumstances. We’d been acquaintances for years but were never close – until she dated my first boyfriend after me, and asked me to dinner following their breakup. The meal started with awkward small talk, but when we addressed the elephant in the room, the walls between us melted as I offered her advice based on how I’d gotten over the same guy years earlier. Two years on, we catch up whenever we’re in the same city, and chat frequently on Facebook. We barely ever talk about him now.
Feminism is no longer a dirty word for teenagers. From Beyoncé to Tavi Gevinson, young women have a wealth of fearless feminist celebrities to look up to. It’s cool to be a feminist. It wasn’t when I was growing up.
Attending a stuffy suburban private school in the early 2000s, I didn’t know a single feminist. I called girls sluts, and regularly made homophobic, racist and ableist jokes. No one pulled me up on it; and even if they did, I’d have probably ignored them. That all changed when I discovered LiveJournal.
My 10-year high school reunion was on the weekend. I didn’t go – I’ve lived in a different city to the one I grew up in for the last four years, I know what everyone’s up to these days because I’m an expert Facebook stalker (please, someone endorse me for this skill on LinkedIn) and, most importantly, there probably wasn’t a Romy and Michele-style three-way dance routine featuring a teenage dweeb admirer turned dreamy millionaire, so really, what’s the point?
Last week, I saw photos of my high school crush, who I spent two tragic years trying to impress over MSN with pretentious conversations about Radiohead and poetry, getting married.
At 17, I thought that by 27 I’d have it pretty figured out. Long-term relationship, if not married. With kids. And a house. That I owned. Stable job (to afford the mortgage for the house that I owned). Maybe a book or two under my belt. Definitely a dog.
The reality? I often say jokingly (but not really) that I’m going through my quarter-life crisis. My life is pretty much the Friends theme song, if Friends was about a girl whose love life is less stable than the imaginary child of Bridget Jones and Taylor Swift. I don’t have kids or own property. I’ve only recently started working in a job I love after years of career uncertainty, and make a little extra on the side doing the freelance writing hustle. I’ve got 99 problems and mental health is definitely one. No dog, just a demonic cat I adopted on a whim after being unceremoniously dumped last year.
And honestly, I’ve never been happier.
I first started taking antidepressants when I was seven. I couldn’t stop thinking about terrible things, and pressing my eyeballs until they hurt, and touching the floor three times before I could sleep, convinced something horrible would happen if I didn’t. A strange man asked me to tell him all about it, and he showed me a picture book about an octopus with something called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and I swallowed little pills daily to make the bad thoughts go away.
At 14, moody and withdrawn, I was once again carted off to the psychiatrist, who said I was depressed, like I didn’t already know. I kept swallowing the pills.
One day I was taking the pills, and the next day I wasn’t, though I don’t remember when I stopped. For over 10 years, they were not in my life, and I thought I was okay.
Two months ago, I started taking them again. Looking back, I should have done it years ago.