Some Thoughts on International Women’s Day
… and a pseudo-related Spring Reading List
Yael Bartana, What If Women Ruled the World (2016). Photographed by Raquel Reyes in Washington, D.C.
“It’s hard to believe if we are in fact closer to equality, when not one week ago a woman was proudly running for President of the United States, and today, she is not.”
It’s International Women’s Day. Again. I realize this annual tradition has noble origins, and continuing necessary efforts, but I have to say it: is this really working? Like the umbrella of feminism, the crusade of civil rights, even the issue of national borders, International Women's Day has crossed that territory from significant day of awareness into marketing ploy seeking profit under the guise of #girlpower. Throughout the last week, before the day itself even arrived, I was suddenly — and yet unfortunately not surprisingly — besieged by advertisements set to female power ballads, selling me laptops, jewelry, athletic wear; targeted promotions and emails I never signed up for announcing dedicated sales and discounts. Nothing shouts equality like 15% off a pair of leggings. It also happens to be Women’s History Month, and searching the phrase ‘women’s history month’ on book retailer websites returns more self-help titles explaining how to be a powerful businesswoman or balance having it all with retaining one's femininity, than actual titles covering the history of women’s plight. Why are the two tied together? When did it become about this?
In a Boston Review article discussing her seminal work Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay states her discomfort with the traditional aspects of the movement: “I worried that feminism wouldn’t allow me to be the mess of a woman I knew myself to be.” The more International Women's Day becomes about that perfect moment, that arms in the air virtual cry of sisterhood and girl power, the more it feels like a pressurized demand that we take what we can get and be satisfied with it. A condescending pat on the head. Here you go little girl, have a whole day to celebrate and then get back to second place. There is that ongoing struggle of how to mark the occasion — Do I honor the women who have worked so I could make it this far? Do I shout out the women in my life today as the social media tradition now seems to be? Do I feel inadequate at my own introversion and distinct lack of women to tag as compared to all of the other women and their girl gangs online? Likewise, I worry what vocally distancing myself from the enthusiasm of a day might bring. A question comes to mind — should I even be writing this? What is the risk? Am I allowed to be angry at how far we still have to go? Am I allowed to be angry at the women who claim to fight for us all, but would still see that myself and others have less than they feel entitled to? And how draining it feels yet again to have to express it all publicly, to show up and mark ‘present!’ on the world’s ‘radical women’ attendance sheet?
As all good marketing schemes, International Women's Day has a yearly theme. This year it is Each for Equal, the idea that individually we can bring together the equality needed by all. We are being sold “collective individualism,” equality as not a gender or civil issue but a business one, claiming the reason our economic society fails is lack of inclusivity and local spending, not the crippling Capitalist structure overheld by patriarchy today. We can build a better, equal world. One day a year. It’s hard to believe if we are in fact closer to equality, when not one week ago a woman was proudly running for President of the United States, and today, she is not.
✦
Over the years I’ve struggled with the constant feeling of not being “nasty woman” enough, not persistent enough, when each step closer seems to collectively slap us in the face. Not to mention the heightened feeling of failure toward the so many who continue to live without a voice. Why don’t I see disabled women, trans women, plus-sized women, more women of color, in all of these Women’s Day promotions? Why can’t I find history books on the women of my own heritage, who have also lived through their own oppression and wars and revolutions? I forget my own identity, a combination of plural minorities, because I am told I only matter as far as what I can do for those around me, and I am letting them down. It doesn’t feel like enough anymore, to spend one day, one month, proclaiming the importance of equality and all of the other fights we still have ahead, but I don’t know where we go from here. Activist Sarah Sophie Flicker, online and at marches and in interviews, argues the goal is to “keep showing up.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, when summing up her presidential campaign and the dreadful prospect of yet another white male president in an interview with Rachel Maddow, also summed up the ongoing, exhaustive hope for equality when she said: “you know when you get into it, [the problems present, but] just gotta to keep fighting at it until you finally break the thing.” And I suppose that’s all we can do. I don’t have easy answers, as much as I wish this would all just get a little bit easier, but while we continue collectively in pursuit of the things we all need, I believe what might keep me (or us, if you need it too) going is to find some of that fight for myself.
I won’t be posting a hashtag or buying something printed with an empowering slogan, but as I’ve begun searching for illumination on what matters to me, I will be spending my Spring (and likely much longer I hope) consuming it. This isn’t a set reading list of titles to check off* but a hopeful suggestion that if you are also struggling to find a place today, you seek out whatever version of these titles might identify with you.
✦ feminism is for everybody by bell hooks, the first of many landmark titles and writers I have yet to read, in the hopes that doing so will correct the education thrust upon me that did not include these works.
✦ Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and The Caribbean, from renowned women writers of Latin American and Caribbean descent, exploring issues of identity, activism, and globalization. A primer for my own culture’s fight, in hopes of better knowing.
✦ “You’re in the Wrong Bathroom!” by Drs. Laura Erickson-Schroth and Laura A. Jacobs, collecting and debunking the most common myths and misconceptions surrounding transgender and gender-nonconforming people, in hopes of being a better ally.
✦ Illumination and Night Glare by Carson McCullers, in hopes that her own confused, harried existence and thoughts on life and writing might provide some guidance for my own current life as a writer.
✦ Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi. A memoir of growing up in Iran by the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. For the lifelong hope of exploring the world outside of my bubble.
I can’t say I’ll get to any of them today, or even all at once. I certainly have more. Today I am reading a handful of cookbooks written by women owners of small restaurants and bakeries around the States, searching recipe inspiration for the new season and more specifically what I will be cooking this coming week. I don’t say this for ‘girl power,’ or even to pick that fight somewhere with someone who might call me less of a feminist for enjoying the running of my own household kitchen. I simply want to read the stories of how they came to be who they are, as business owners who happen to be women in an industry so frequently ruled by men, as humans thriving in a world so set on tearing us down, and finally because I like to know what people cook for those they love. I want to read about revolutions, I want to be a part of them, but I would also like to embrace the real words and things that make life more beautiful, that make me feel like less of an unacceptable mess, and not be consumed by this societal pressure to scream everything out loud. I don’t know what sort of woman that makes me this International Women’s Day, if it makes any sort of difference at all. Maybe I’ll have it figured out by the next one.
*If you are in search of something like that, or even simply a good read anytime, I still stand by our own list published last year and the sentiments written there.
Raquel Reyes is Creative Director at The Attic on Eighth. She enjoys styling photo shoots, old fashioned cocktails, and reading every book published on a single topic she can find.
