Sexy Feminism by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Heather Wood Rudulph

Title: Sexy Feminism: A Girl's Guide to Love, Success, and Style
Author: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Heather Wood Rudulph
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release Date: March 12, 2013
Pages: 256 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: ARC via Amazon Vine
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Not your mother’s feminism! A humor-filled action plan for an accessible, cool, and, yes, even sexy brand of 21st-century feminism

A Mariner Original Paperback

Feminism can still seem like an abstract idea that is difficult to incorporate into our hectic, media-saturated, modern lives, but Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Heather Wood Rudúlph show how the everyday things matter. In an age when “concern-trolling,” “slut-shaming,” and “body-snarking” are blogosphere bywords, when reproductive rights are back under political attack, and when women are still pressured to “have it all,” feminism is more relevant than ever.  For many young women the radicalism of the Second Wave is unappealing, and the “do me” and “lipstick” feminism of the Third Wave feels out of date. Enter Sexy Feminism. It’s an inclusive, approachable kind of feminism—miniskirts, lip gloss, and waxing permitted. Covering a range of topics from body issues and workplace gender politics to fashion, dating, and sex, Sexy Feminism is full of advice, resources, and  pop culture references that will help shape what being a feminist can look like for you.

Review:

Strike one came when it tried twice to market feminism as sexy and fun. Strike two came when it called Lady Gaga a feminist icon. Strike three was the inappropriate use of a word I despise as a feminist: slut/slutty. Beyond all that, this book is a bit boring to someone like me, a young women who has been reading feminist lit and experimenting with her feminist ideology for years.

Before I dig into its more fundamental problems, I need to get its positives out of the way. Sexy Feminism makes sure to give you the background of many practices women now consider normal, such as waxing, plastic surgery, and makeup. If one will leave this book with anything, it will be the history of some of the services and objects still relevant to women and their intent when founded (feminist-minded or not). Most chapters have very clear points they stick to while explaining the intricacies of what does/doesn't make it feminist.

Still, my answer to a lot of their chapters is this: "Yeah, and...?"

Their talk of how feminists are allowed to diet and wear miniskirts is nothing new. I felt limited in what I could wear and do when I first started to identify as feminist, but I found my own style and definition of sexy that lives in harmony with my constantly-evolving ideology. Each woman will do roughly the same thing on their own, really. It's like a pair of new shoes, really: you're uncomfortable at first, but the more time you spend with it, the more you adjust to it and the more comfortable you get until you forget you ever had trouble with it to begin with.

One chapter is rather muddled, though: the chapter on waxing. It doesn't shy away from how it originated from patriarchal pressure and the porn industry (one big point of this book is how porn has really screwed with the image of women, pun not intended), but then it says getting a Brazilian is a-okay now even though the pressure to get one still comes from the same basic places. It reads a little like choice feminism when they praise waxing, which is an approach I find more than a little problematic because it tends to not consider the pressures society, gender roles, and men have a on a woman's choices. It automatically makes something feminist because a woman can choose to do it and that's a pretty clear problem.

And Lady Gaga as a feminist icon? Please. The book tries to show her good intent in its quick profile of why she's a sexy feminist, but her actual work gets twisted around until it's unrecognizable. I also still remember her flip-flopping on whether or not she's a feminist also.

The line "sexy doesn't have to be slutty" (ARC p. 97) is also rather troubling considering there's a chapter in here titled "Be a Sexy Feminist, Not a Slut-Shaming One" in which they rail against slut-shaming. To me, there is no taking back that word at this point. It is too mired in negative connotations and too widely used in negative ways for us to win it back at this point. Events like SlutWalk are able to use it in a challenging way and it works, but the authors aren't using it in any such way here.

Most importantly, feminism isn't sexy of fun the way Armstrong and Rudulph try to market it. Feminism is necessary and simply IS. That's it. Trying to attract women to feminism by telling them it's fun and sexy is a recipe for disaster because it isn't. Feminists are stereotyped, judged, and forced to deal with crap thrown at them. At times, it can be difficult to admit it to other people because you know how they will react. We work for our cause because it's necessary and right, not because it's fun. Anyone who is in it for fun or sexiness is only going to bring us down and marginalize our cause in their attempts to help.

Though I primarily review YA, I'm no stranger to reading nonfiction. If one catches my interest based on its thesis, I jump right into it. Two of the three previous nonfiction titles I've reviewed had refined voices (the one that didn't was a memoir), but Sexy Feminism lacks that. Each chapter reads like an article from their website--which isn't bad in and of itself, but when you want to sit down and read it all at once, your eyes roll into the back of your head after a while. It starts out engaging, but it doesn't stay engaging.

Perhaps people still developing their feminist ideas will be able to get more out of this than I did--as long as it's accompanied by other books that present other ideas. Relying on this alone to form a person's ideals doesn't seem like a very good idea.

What am I reading next?: Levitating Las Vegas by Jennifer Echols

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti

Title: The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
Author: Jessica Valenti
Publisher: Perseus Books Group/Seal Press
Release Date: April 1, 2009
Pages: 263 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it

The United States is obsessed with virginity — from the media to schools to government agencies. In The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti argues that the country’s intense focus on chastity is damaging to young women. Through in-depth cultural and social analysis, Valenti reveals that powerful messaging on both extremes — ranging from abstinence curriculum to “Girls Gone Wild” infomercials — place a young woman’s worth entirely on her sexuality. Morals are therefore linked purely to sexual behavior, rather than values like honesty, kindness, and altruism. Valenti sheds light on the value — and hypocrisy — around the notion that girls remain virgin until they’re married by putting into context the historical question of purity, modern abstinence-only education, pornography, and public punishments for those who dare to have sex. The Purity Myth presents a revolutionary argument that girls and women are overly valued for their sexuality, as well as solutions for a future without a damaging emphasis on virginity.

Review:

The Purity Myth has been on my to-read list for a while now due to good word about it, my own curiosity about why society slut shames, victim blames, and judges women based on the sex they are or are not having. It took me a while to read, but I finally did it! It's pretty much about how society judges us as women based on how sexual we are and regardless of what our orientation is. Whether you're a straight, gay, bi, trans, or another sexual orientation, the book applies to each and every woman because there is not one of us that hasn't been affected by the purity myth at one point or another. Heck, I'm asexual and the book still applies to me because it's also about the sexuality forced upon women against their wills by society whether or not they actually have any.

The points Valenti makes about the treatment of women in society based on their sexuality are all very true; I read about girls judging another another based on their sexuality in the books I read (YA books, which is probably one of the worst places to drop those damaging messages) and hear teens doing the exact same thing in real life. One friend of mine called another girl a slut for sleeping around with numerous boys and an attempt at intelligent discussion about why she felt that way was useless. The effect the virginity movement has had on teens and the media really shows and I hate that Valenti has to be right about the damage the movement has done.

While I agree with much of what Valenti has to say, there is one minor point where I strongly disagree. On page 28, one of her footnotes says this as she discusses beauty pageants: "Who, after all, can maintain a pearly white perma-grin through humiliating bathing suit competitions and inane questions--all for scholarships that are paltry in comparison to the money spent on gowns and coaches--other than women looking for some serious validation?"

I'm not going to try and say beauty pageants don't have deeply sexist roots; denying that fact is only a waste of time and words. However, I dispute her opinion that women only do it for validation. I was in exactly one beauty pageant (I was thirteen and we do not speak of it) and I didn't do it to be validated; I liked dressing up and I just wanted to have fun. That wasn't how it went in the end, hence the event's status as "we do not speak of it," but I do have one thing to thank it for: teaching me how to strut, which eventually became part of my natural walk.

Back on topic, have you noticed how society has a worshipful relationship with beautiful people? Just look at a tabloid or think back to how the pretty people were treated when you were in high school. Being beautiful can bring you a surprising amount of power, though it comes with its drawbacks the way any kind of power would. Perhaps some of these young women grew up seeing what power came with beauty and entered beauty pageants to use their beauty to their advantage. Maybe they simply loved the spotlight. There are any multitude of reasons a woman could enter a beauty pageant and not all of them include validation.

Chapter five, focused on abstinence-only education and what it does to children and teens, really stuck with me. I remember very little about how sex ed was taught to me, but I know it was abstinence-only education. For one thing, the speaker that came in every Wednesday showed us a horrific, brain-scarring slide show of what male and female genitals look like when afflicted with STDs or STIs. I don't remember learning about birth control, condoms, or and other method of safe sex. For another thing, the school newspaper was barred from writing about safe sex by the principal as recently as last year.

My bad memory led me to do a little research. This is a PDF I found about sex ed in Florida that was made as recently as late 2009 or early 2010. My sex ed classes happened in 2007, so I think this is close enough for use. I did a search for mentions of my county's name and it comes up in a few places: one of them spotlights the gender-stereotypical pamphlets given to students and another one talking two PowerPoints shown to children and teens (the scare tactic STD one I saw and another one that shames teens who have sex).

That PDF and the information it provides support Valenti and the sad yet true points she makes. Young adults are not being properly educated on sex and if they have sex anyways, it's because they have low self-esteem or want to be popular or they're on drugs, not because they want to. The people who abstain from sex and the good ones no matter how rotten their attitudes are and the one who have sex are the bad ones whether or not they have hearts of gold. This is not how people should be taught about sex.

All in all, The Purity Myth is a smart book. It's frustrating how women are treated even in the present time when we're supposed to be equal, and I think it's important for young women to read this novel. I think I liked my trip out of the world of YA and into nonfiction. I might have to do this more often.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel