Jezebel 
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New York, 9:55 AM
Wed Nov 11
68 posts in the last 24 hours
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04/28/09
And this is a problem, because...?
Jezebel, always focusing on what they can complain about. It seems that the brand of feminism touted here is NOT okay with women doing whatever they want, but here to supply yet another snark-tinged set of ideals by which to judge one's own and others lives.
Just because a certain aesthetic appeals to people doesn't mean they are completely ignorant of history.
04/28/09
04/28/09
'"The Modern Pinup" seems, in its postmodern obliviousness, to take what it wanted of the era and conveniently forget the rest.'
THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT!
Romanticizing the past for fun isn't a crime against feminism.
Sorry to say it, but I'm finding Jezebel content growing less and less poignant/relevant by the day. It's bordering on blather and I'm starting to get pissed. Not to mention bored.
Step it up a notch ladies. We're not brain dead and we're not lady haters. Stop talking to us like you're our pretentious freshman Womyn Studies tutor.
04/28/09
04/28/09
I spent some time on a forum for vintage clothes. But after awhile I found that forum almost at war with itself. Half the population was young feminists like me, who just liked the way the old clothes looked. The other half was women who genuinely idolized Caitlyn Flanagan, and men who said "No self-respecting man would marry a woman who made more than he did, because it would emasculate him." (I said, "Wow, you're pretty easily emasculated.") Another man said women shouldn't wear pants, because women should look like women.
It was rage-inducing. I tried to stand up for myself and the rest of us and argue with them, but it got really exhausting. Occasionally I'd get PMs from other women who were as sick of the gender profiling as I was. Finally I just stopped participating. I have library books that can tell me how to dress. I just couldn't deal anymore with the matrons and the sour old men.
04/28/09
Hell, I could have done with this tidbit of info over on the Dita Von Teese thread on Saturday! You just confirmed my suspicions.
04/27/09
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04/27/09
Just throwing that out there!
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04/27/09
They scoffed when I said I enjoyed The Cramps, The Misfits, et al. just as much as them... jerks.
04/27/09
04/27/09
To compare beauty icons, you can't fake what, say, Cindy Crawford's got. But Bettie Page, you have a shot at.
04/27/09
04/27/09
Commence rotten fruit throwing
04/27/09
04/27/09
Excuse me, but I'm a feminist and I love these things. Wasn't/Isn't the point of feminism that I am able to make a choice as a woman without it being made because I'm a woman. Basically, I can choose to be June Cleaver or Donna Reed or Blaze Starr if I want to? Aren't I as a modern educated self-aware woman supposed to embrace my femininity and not be held back by it? I'm not sacrificing anything to try to keep a clean house, cook for my household, bake, stitch, wear cute pump and fantastic lingerie, etc. I take pride in it. I revel in it. Basically, most days of the working week, I come home and relax for about 15 minutes before I spend two hours preparing dinner. In pumps and a pencil skirt. Not because I have to, but because I enjoy it. I love putting on my apron, I love going through recipes.
And to assert that we're consciously ignoring the pains of the 50s housewife, well that's just the problem with all -isms isn't it- lumping and speaking to the lowest common denominator? I'm sure we're all aware of how hard life was for the retro housewife. I'm currently jumping between images of the mothers in the movie Radioflyer and in the flashback sequences of The Salton Sea. I assure you Feminister-than-thou Womyn, I an extremely aware of the pressure and problems. My grandmother was a casualty of Happy Housewife Syndrome.
04/27/09
She doesn't address feminism or performativity in any way in this article that I can see.
04/27/09
Which is not to say that your choice isn't valid, just that the way we discuss it is really, really flawed.
04/27/09
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04/27/09
I think we can all agree that people who do something without knowing anything about what they're doing are just plain ignorant. But enough people in the culture do know a little something.
At the very least they can play on the madonna/whore idealization very very well. ;)
04/27/09
Holy alliteration, batman, but I think you get my point.
And yeah, the fifties were a sexist time period--most of history was. I'm not sure the article deals specifically with feminism here, but it's worth noting that you can do these things in a feminist way.
04/27/09
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04/28/09
The fact is that most of us, I suspect even you a bit, look to the past through a somewhat biased lens. It's not bad or good, it is the reality. Some are more informed than others.
Personally, I am tired of the "Feminism means I can do whatever I want" argument, or the "please don't take away my feminist card!" lament. You CAN do whatever you want, we all can. This is not governed by Feminism just because we happen to be female.
The trick really is the judgment, and I think it's something we all struggle with.
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