![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Women in the Media & Eros on Campus
May. 29th, 2008 06:29 pmRebecca Traister @ Salon on women in the media:
What provokes such fury, over Carrie Bradshaw, and -- for a flash -- over Gould... is that in a media landscape in which there are a severely limited number of spaces for women's writing voices, the ones that get tapped become necessarily, and deeply inaccurately, emblematic -- of their gender, their generation, their profession. More annoying -- and twisted -- is that those meager spots for women are consistently filled by those willing to expose themselves, visually and emotionally.... So rather than being troubled by the fact that Gould -- or Bushnell, or Bradshaw, or whoever -- has the spotlight, why not question why so few other versions of femininity are allowed to share it?
Also: Eros on Campus by William Deresiewicz in American Scholar. He also brings up the issue of woman-as-intellectual, but in a less direct manner. This meandering essay deals with the professorial stereotype and the erotic intensity of learning. Note that there are not very many examples of female scholars/professors in this essay, even if he does bring up the inevitable and unenviable spectre of devoted females and maimed men [essay on that one of these days] in 19C literature. What do you expect from someone who keeps going on about the Platonic and platonic ideals. (Though I'm not entirely sure he is accurate about Plato---or platonic anything---if there's anything I'm certain of about those Greeks it is their deep and abiding affection for the variations of love...between men.)
Both essays made me want to read Elizabeth Hardwick's The Genius of Margaret Fuller all over again. Somehow she nailed the ugly-duck awkwardness of being a thinking woman. One, I fear, that has not entirely abandoned the ladies of the profession, or even those 'damned scribblers' outside of it.
What provokes such fury, over Carrie Bradshaw, and -- for a flash -- over Gould... is that in a media landscape in which there are a severely limited number of spaces for women's writing voices, the ones that get tapped become necessarily, and deeply inaccurately, emblematic -- of their gender, their generation, their profession. More annoying -- and twisted -- is that those meager spots for women are consistently filled by those willing to expose themselves, visually and emotionally.... So rather than being troubled by the fact that Gould -- or Bushnell, or Bradshaw, or whoever -- has the spotlight, why not question why so few other versions of femininity are allowed to share it?
Also: Eros on Campus by William Deresiewicz in American Scholar. He also brings up the issue of woman-as-intellectual, but in a less direct manner. This meandering essay deals with the professorial stereotype and the erotic intensity of learning. Note that there are not very many examples of female scholars/professors in this essay, even if he does bring up the inevitable and unenviable spectre of devoted females and maimed men [essay on that one of these days] in 19C literature. What do you expect from someone who keeps going on about the Platonic and platonic ideals. (Though I'm not entirely sure he is accurate about Plato---or platonic anything---if there's anything I'm certain of about those Greeks it is their deep and abiding affection for the variations of love...between men.)
Both essays made me want to read Elizabeth Hardwick's The Genius of Margaret Fuller all over again. Somehow she nailed the ugly-duck awkwardness of being a thinking woman. One, I fear, that has not entirely abandoned the ladies of the profession, or even those 'damned scribblers' outside of it.
