"I have nothing to wear!": Contradicting A Common Misconception of Womanhood

Caitlyn Jenner has been a source of mixed celebration and resentment since her debut on the celebrity scene in June of this year, posing on the cover of Vanity Fair Magazine. While there are still those who dramatically mourn the 'disappearance' of Caitlyn's alter ego ---Olympic medalist Bruce Jenner ---she has been well received, overall, by other members of the public. 

Last month, Jenner received the Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year Award ---much to the surprise of some.

In an interview with BuzzFeed, within days of receiving her award, Jenner was asked to name some of struggles she now faces ---as a woman. To the latter, she gave the following response: "The hardest part about being a woman is figuring out what to wear."

... And so fell Caitlyn's points in popularity.

On November 16th, in response to Jenner's comment, actress Rose McGowan wrote the following message on Facebook:

"Caitlyn Jenner you do not understand what being a woman is about at all. You want to be a woman and stand with us- well learn us. We are more than deciding what to wear. We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by people like you. You're a woman now? Well f--king learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege."

As a woman in Hollywood ---more importantly, as a sex symbol in American cinema (Jawbreaker and Devil In the Flesh, to name a few of her movie projects) ---Rose McGowan would know quite intimately how women are viewed and treated by the movie and media industries. At her foundation, too, Rose McGowan has a more thorough knowledge of what it means to be a woman than Caitlyn Jenner ever will.

Where It All Began 
Caitlyn Jenner's comment not only feeds modern misconceptions of women. It also indulges at least one obnoxious stereotype that has been around since Ancient Greece. 

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts on this blog ('Got Transcendence?'), Plato, the father of Western Philosophy, frowned upon everything that pertained to the human body. By focusing on the flesh, he insisted, one compromises the discipline that one needs to transcend the world. And as he considered most women to be too occupied with physical beauty to achieve transcendence, Plato did not think much of the fairer sex.

Through use of bodily decoration, young women were meant to act as billboards for their respective family's wealth and prominence. It was their conditioned and enforced duty to be and appear delicate in the treatment of their bodies. For it is within a woman's body that her uterus is housed; and it was a woman's uterus that was once considered the most valuable part of her being. Marriage, after all, was originally a contract between two men over a womb.

Forced to spend their time learning how to appear beautiful and how to manage households, women were unable to excel in the same intellectual arenas as men. As a default, Plato's theory thrived and evolved.

Eventually, the teachings of the Greek scholars would fall into the hands of the Romans. And from the Romans, the Europeans would adopt and adapt the ancient ideologies for their own halls of learning. 

And thus began the formation and migration of patriarchy into the West.

Where It All Continues
Sadly, not much has changed in over the past two millenniums. Even today, in this age of supposed advancements in gender equality, females are groomed from a young age to believe in meeting certain physical requirements. (Note that the latter words were "physical requirements.") 

With the television acting as the main source of communication and bonding (for families), girls are consistently being bombarded with images of how they are meant to look. What is not made apparent to these impressionable girls, however, is that only a small percent of women ---approximately 5% of the population ---have the natural size and frame as 1980s English model Lesley "Twiggy" Lawson. Even the beautiful Audrey Hepburn, who remains a major fashion icon, may not have had her famous waif figure had she not suffered years of starvation and malnutrition at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. 

Today, girls continue to suffer from starvation and malnutrition; but such is typically self-imposed. Anorexia and bulimia, however, are not unique conditions of the 20th and 21st centuries. In her book Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa, author and professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg stresses that food-refusal among middle and upper class girls is a weight management strategy that has been used as early as the sixteenth century. In her follow-up book, The Body Project, Brumberg also notes that ---though we now live in a day and age where girls have more access to appropriate vitamins and nutrients ---girls are suffering from more body issues and diseases than ever. The cause for this digression, Brumberg proposes, is the increase of the use of media and the pressures exerted by it. 

Girls are taught to value numbers. Or, at least, they are taught to value the number of their clothes and scales over their test scores. In order to fit into the latest fashion of clothing, there are girls who are willing to starve themselves. And such behavior is encouraged by not only history but also a current body-shaming society.

Girls are taught to value youth and beauty. Like the Madonna paintings featured in the Louvre, they are taught (and expected) to look flawless and ageless. Some women, after a certain age, will even seek out particular products and procedures to reverse aging. Instead of celebrating their progression in life, women are encouraged to fear.

We, as girls, are taught that we are our bodies... and little else.

Who We Really Are
I am as guilty as the next female who has ever marched to the beat of the patriarchal drum at least once in her life. The pressures of the media (and society) for feminine perfection are ever-present and ever-suffocating. 

As mentioned in the previous section, we girls are taught that we are our bodies. And as much as this humble blogger may resent what she is about to say, such a belief is --- in part ---true. We are our bodies. But not in the sort of way that society and its propaganda would have us believe.

In her acceptance speech for the Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year Award, Jenner quoted the famous philosopher Simone de Beauvior: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

Not becoming female until her late 60s, Caitlyn Jenner missed out on several feminine experiences: puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, birthing, and menopause. Such, however, are only the biological experiences. 

The biological and social experiences of girls are two sides of the same coin. Each support and reinforce the other. 

Again, from a young age, we females wage war with our bodies ---whether consciously or unconsciously. It is in our ability(s) to survive and overcome each battle that helps make us women.

Actress, writer, and director Lena Dunham (Girls) serves as the best supporting example of the above statement. In an interview with People Magazine last month, Dunham opened up about her experiences with endometriosis and its effect on her body image.

"From the first time I got my period, it didn't feel right. The stomachaches began quickly and were more severe that the mild-irritant cramps seemed to be for the blonde women in pink-hued Midol commercials... If my pain had no tangible source, that just meant my mind was more powerful that I was and it didn't want me to be happy, ever... I saw myself divided like a black-and-white cookie into neat halves: one bright and ambitious, the other destines to wind up strapped to a gurney and moaning for pain meds... I am strong because of what I've dealt with. I am oddly fearless... And I am no longer scared of my body. In fact, I listen to it when it speaks. I have no choice but to respect what it tells me, to respect the strength of its voice and the truth of my own."

Alone, the biological changes that a girl goes though are character-forming. And it is a kind of character-building that Caitlyn Jenner will never have an opportunity to experience. Such experiences make up a large portion of a female's life and thus molds half of her mortal existence.

Personally, this humble blogger has a deep sense of respect for Caitlyn Jenner: She has inwardly and publicly embraced her true self, despite potential ridicule. Not many people, I imagine, can go out of this world saying that they lived genuinely ---having broken away from the hetero-normative script of society to live their own lives, by their own terms. And yet, I find myself standing with Rose McGowan.

If Jenner truly believes that picking out clothes is the hardest part about being a woman, then she knows little ---too little ---about the gender she has chosen to 'join.'

Caitlyn Jenner may, anatomically, meet the qualifications of being a female. And she may also recognize and acknowledge herself as being a female. In terms of psychology and experiences, however, Ms. Jenner will perpetually fall short. She has a long way to go in becoming a woman.