Comme ci, comme ca

[la_marquise]

So, in the Good column:
I am up-to-date with the laundry.
Lovely afternoon yesterday with tamaranth
New dress! (Black and white and short.)
Cats are happy
The marquis, who was feeling unwell yesterday, is much better today.
I'm in the middle of reading a series of fascinating recent feminist books.

In the Bad column:
I am not up-to-date with the ironing,
Or with my writing,
Because my shoulders are cr*p plus I seem to have some kind of sleeping virus
Fascinating feminist books are fascinating, but they also make me sad, at how much ground we have still to go and how much the gains of the 70s and early 80s have already been eroded


Skirt of the day: cream patchwork.

Comments

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

interesting to learn i'm not unique in thinking that sexual politics are regressing (and not just in the boys club cabinet). In many, many class discussions, I hear my female students tell me that women are completely liberated, that women can do anything men can do, that feminism has 'gone to far' and nowadays it's men who are the disadvantaged sex. These are the 'truths' they hear and read ubiquitously.

They tell me these things whilst looking at me with perfect maquillage, of a kind that the middle class/well educated section of my generation only wore for 'going out'. They believe these things whilst shuddering at the horror of even the tinest flicker of female body hair (takes them a while to get the joke about Alison's 'beard' in the Miller's Tale!). They believe they are the dominant sex whilst happily assigning their female acquaintances into 'bitch' 'slag' 'butch' 'minger' etc categories. And laughing supportively when the boys do the same.

Not all of them, thankfully. But still - depressing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's insidious: society is telling these young women that they are liberated while simultaneously commodifying them and convincing them that their participation in the latter is freedom. While at the same time, they have to occupy less and less physical space and package themselves more and more. And when they enter the world of work, they'll earn less than men, do more of the household work and reach lower levels in the hierarchy...
I would recommend getting some of the newer books for the school library, if possible and suggesting they read them. The Walter book (Natasha Walter, Living Dolls and

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It's insidious: society is telling these young women that they are liberated while simultaneously commodifying them and convincing them that their participation in the latter is freedom. While at the same time, they have to occupy less and less physical space and package themselves more and more. And when they enter the world of work, they'll earn less than men, do more of the household work and reach lower levels in the hierarchy...
I would recommend getting some of the newer books for the school library, if possible and suggesting they read them. The Walter book (Natasha Walter, <i>Living Dolls</i> and <Female Chauvinist Pigs</i>, Ariel Levy, are most likely to appeal, I think, as they're about young women in the contemporary world.)

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

Share your analysis, sadly (very sadly). But thanks for the recommendations for library (we may already have some - I must check). Natasha Walker not 'young' from the students viewpoint, of course! :D But they sound like good choices - assuming there's such a thing as a book budget in the current climate...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Walter isn't that young, but the book is mainly about young -- teens and 20s -- women.