Rant about African Women Part 2 - Josephine Baker

 

 

The second stereotype of an African woman is the wild and erotic “Josephine Baker”.*  Her whole being is mystical and sexual, and since sexuality is scary it must be contained.  One of the first things the colonising Europeans did in the 19^th century in many parts of this continent was to impose western, puritan dresscode on semi-naked tribeswomen.  Nowadays this seems so ridiculous.  The Himba women, for example, in their traditional outfits are beautiful, but not particularly erotic.  Most modern Europeans (the same can’t be said for Americans … the nation of the “boobgate”) can tell the difference between nudity and sexuality.

 

I began to get an idea of the power and scariness of the Josephine Baker, though, when I spent just over a month frequenting a Windhoek gym.  Again, this is not “Africa”, it is just Windhoek, but there were women from different tribes, of different ages, shapes and sizes there.  They all appeared to have one thing in common, though: they were admirably at ease with themselves.  The whole atmosphere in the changing room was just very different to what I have seen and experienced in any part of Europe.  The self-consciousness that a white woman does not seem to be able to escape was almost entirely lacking.  So I began to think that the power of Josephine Baker has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with self-confidence.

 

I wondered why that was.  We are supposed to be more emancipated and aware of our rights in the North.  Yet the bombardment of images of how we should look like – and do not look like – is so relentless that it it nearly impossible not to be self-aware, and consequently ashamed of our imperfect bodies.

 

The tabloid press is a lot less developed in the parts of Africa I’ve been to.  The images of perfect women that ARE portrayed are likely to come from Hollywood, where the pictures are either those of white women or of black women whose beauty adheres very closely to white standards (think Beyoncé or Halle Berry).  Maybe this has less of an impact on the self-confidence of a woman who just looks very different.  Recently the standards of beauty have been ever so slightly relaxing, when women like Lupita Nyong’o have entered the common consciousness.  Ms Nyong’o is strikingly beautiful.  However, her beauty is of such different kind to what I could ever be that I can just admire it, without her images on some sub-conscious level chipping away at my confidence.

 

So maybe that is partly it.  While women in many African cultures are traditionally supposed to be less assertive, and subject to male authority, once they can break away from that and enter the public sphere, they do so with confidence in themselves that is not constantly being undermined by a bombardment of insidious messages of how inadequate they are physically, and how important it is to be physically more adequate.  Hence they are less held back, less apologetic of who they are and what they are capable of.

 

I therefore have come to think, tentatively, that Josephine Baker is in fact Mama Africa.  They are the two sides of the same confident coin.  I have also come to appreciate my time at the gym changing room.  Comments about time spent looking at other people at the gym changing room can come out the wrong way, but even at the risk of that I must conclude that I hope some of the chuzpah those ladies had rubbed off on me!

 

 

*Yes, I know Ms Baker was not from any part of Africa, but French-American.  Her “brand” is fitting for this post, though.

 

Rant about a Particularly Hot Piece of Ass

My cousins A and P told me that they were watching the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest held a few months ago in Malmö, Sweden. (Hooray to great cultural traditions!)  Apparently in the Finnish broadcast one could send text messages to the production company and these would scroll along the bottom of the screen as the finalists were performing.  A and P noted that many of the comments were lewd and openly sexual, saying nothing about the songs, but focusing solely on the physical attributes of the artists.  Once they noticed this, they began following the comments and discovered that they related solely to the men – without exception.  Nobody made comments about the looks of the female artists (or at least none were published), many of whom were trying just as hard as the men (if not harder) to look sexy.

This is of course what I did at the end of my last post on football.  I made a very thinly veiled crass remark about the looks of professional male football players.  Had I been a man, and making a similar kind of a comment about, say, a female swimmer or gymnast, it would probably have come across as stupid and more than a little sexist.  But I will hazard a guess that that is not how it came across when I made it about men.

Why is that?  Is it not a double standard?  Why do women feel the need to make sexist remarks about men’s bodies, and why are these tolerated?

I gave this idea some thought, and while I don’t have any definite answers, my guess is that it is some kind of a reclaiming exercise.  “Reclaiming” is what black people have done in appropriating the previously used derogatory term “nigger” for their own use, just like women have done with “bitch”, handicapped people with “cripple” and gay men with “fruit” or “queen” – just to give a few obvious examples.  So what I think has happened with the whole objectification thing is that women have taken a practice formerly reserved for men and appropriated it for their own use.  While men are no longer permitted to do that with impunity (remember what recently happened to BBC’s John Inverdale and his blooper about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli?), women are cheekily turning the tables and giving men a taste of their own medicine.  What we are in effect saying is “I don’t give a damn whether you have talent / brains / sense of humour – I just see you as a hot piece of ass and it is my right to objectify you in this way”.  

The fad will undoubtedly die down, but for now, I may just take advantage of it a few times before it is gone.  So all overpaid famous men beware: I couldn't care less about you, your skills, opinions or personality.  What I want to know is whether I am getting some eye candy or not.  

I'm sure all Wayne Rooneys of this world are quietly crying into their beers having learnt this harsh truth about my wishes and intentions. 

Rant about FIFA Law 12

As a light summer rant, I want to talk about football.

My own interest has mostly revolved around other sports, but football is relatively hard to avoid, especially when living in England, like I was from the late 1990s onwards.  So I tried to fit in.  I went to the pub to watch Premier League games, I read up on it, I picked a team I pretended to support (Liverpool, in case anyone’s interested).

Then came the 2002 World Cup.  I remember the game very well, although I can’t even recall who England was playing, which says something about how interesting it was.  But as I was confessing to my housemate that the action looked a bit boring and I couldn’t understand why they kept insisting bringing the ball up the left side every time, the commentator mentioned casually that it was a very hot day and the left side of the field was the only one in the shade. 

That was it for me. 

You see, I could just about put up with the fact that it was all fundamentally dull and not much was ever happening.  I could also put up with the annoying filming where these supposedly tough athletes went down screaming like a bunch of babies in situations where you could see they were hardly touched.*  I could even put up with the inevitable penalty shootouts where the goalie always went in the opposite direction to the shot and the only way not to get it in was to be so incompetent as to actually miss the 7.3m x 2.4m goal.  But I couldn’t put up with the fact that in the most important tournament in the world the English players’ primary interest was to stay in the shade.  Nope, couldn’t put up with that, even if it was a REALLY HOT DAY.

So for a long time I gave up on football.  Then I moved to France, and the French know how to watch sports, so I ended up being swept away by the exciting 2006 World Cup.  I haven’t looked back since.  The sport had taken a turn for the better and the Spanish domination that has installed itself in the last few years has been nothing but good.  The game nowadays is fast, the passes short and skilled, there are goals and penalties, fast runs and hard tackles.  There is still some cry-babying, but much less so, presumably because modern TV technology will swiftly reveal you for the idiot that you are if you do that. 

So it is all for the better.

Well ... ALMOST all.

What I would like to know is this:  Who on earth got the idea to ban the players from ripping off their shirt when they scored a goal???  There are so many more goals being scored now than there were 10-15 years ago.  This would mean so many more opportunities to see all that ... toned, ... ripped, ... jubilation.  *sigh* They were SO CLOSE to creating a truly crowd-friendly sport.

Being a true believer in democracy I suggest starting a petition on change.org for reversing the 2004 amendment to FIFA Law 12.  Who’s with me?

*I dare anyone to try THAT in an ice hockey game ...

Rant about Beautiful Men

So ... As a true believer in equality between the sexes, I feel obliged to follow up my post about good-looking women with one about good-looking men. 

But enough about men, let’s talk about women.  More particularly, about what women do – and should do – when seeing good-looking men.

Stunning women complain that they don’t get approached by men, because men find them to be intimidating.  Surprisingly enough, I don’t have any personal experience of that, so can’t confirm or deny.  But I do know that even us plain-janes get our fair share of cat calls, wolf whistles etc. – all women do.  This is not good; it is harassment.  Harassment comes in many shapes and sizes, and men often don’t understand it, but it is completely, and in all circumstances, WRONG.

Apart from harassment, though, women more often get positive comments about their looks.  This is something that women, as well as men, engage in on an almost daily basis.  We all comment if an overweight friend has slimmed down and is looking better for it, or if a colleague has a smashing new haircut.  In the age old sport of flirtation and pair-formation (or “pulling”, as it is known in England,) often exercised in bars and night clubs, complementing women is a tried and tested strategy.

Not so with men.

It is not common – or perhaps even appropriate – to complement men’s looks.  We are primed still to expect (in the heterosexual context) men to be more active in pursuing women, and women simply have the job of accepting or rejecting wooing candidates.  Some of this is cultural, some biological.  Females are pickier than males when it comes to pair-formation (and not just in humans) since they invest more in child making and rearing.  It is also still the way things are just done among this particular species, and hardly questioned.

If you suggest to a woman that she should complement good-looking men around her, she will in all likelihood resist the idea.  Women often think that pretty men know that they are pretty, and are narcissistic and proud of their looks.  In my experience, this is not necessarily the case.  Encouraged by the example of a friend, I have a few times in my life just walked up to a particularly fine specimen and told him that I thought he was good-looking.  I then proceeded to wish him a nice evening and walked away.  The reactions I got?  Blushing and shy, surprised and pleased “thank you”s.

I used to therefore think that this was a practice to be encouraged.  However, understanding more about harassment, the many forms it can take, and how the harasser often does not understand he is in fact harassing his victim, has made me pause and think twice.  Did I in fact harass the pretty boys?

Rant about Handsome Women

There is a teenage lady in my family.  Teenage ladies are a mysterious species of their own, but not that long ago this particular specimen had a habit of standing in front of the mirror combing her hair and quite unabashedly admiring her reflection.  Her grandma didn’t like it, telling her to stop staring.  I, for my part, didn’t like what the grandma did and told HER to stop it, even though I understood her distaste for vanity.  There are more important forces at play here. 

We are all more or less aware of the pressures on women as regards their looks.  My guess is that it is much worse for teenagers now than it was a million years ago when I was one, and it was bad enough then.  The young lady stopped admiring her reflection soon enough, and will undoubtedly go through a significant amount of self-doubt in the future.  It will be some time, probably decades, before she is again as pleased with what she sees in the mirror as she was a few years back.  Or maybe she never will be that happy with her looks again.

So I say go for it.  Admire yourself, young lady!  It doesn’t matter who else sees it, you be proud, stare in that mirror and tell it, and everyone else, that you look beautiful.

Because there is nothing to be ashamed about in liking your looks. 

And yet somehow we’re made to believe that there is.  A year ago British journalist Samantha Brick wrote an article for Daily Mail in which she analysed the pros and cons of being a beautiful woman.  I started reading the comments to the article – there are a total of 5725 – but had to give up because they were so horrible.  It looks like by declaring herself good-looking Ms Brick had opened some kind of pandora’s box of spiteful comments. 

What Ms Brick said was problematic and in my opinion quite anti-women.  According to her, women are total bitches to those prettier than them – going to such lengths as torpedoing their careers.  While you may expect this to elicit comments, I would have thought the comments to focus on the problematic proposition.  Yet they often did not.  What people appeared to be most upset about was the fact that Ms Brick dared to call herself beautiful when she was (in the opinion of the commenters) not. 

Ms Brick detailed the backlash, including over 1000 hate-filled personal e-mails she’d received, in a follow-up article, calling – understandably – the experience “soul-destroying”.

Who cares what you or I think about the looks of one Samantha Brick?  And what or who would give us the right to voice that opinion anyway?  Where are the manners of all the people who think it ok to publicly declare someone “rather plain with crooked teeth”?  Didn’t their mums teach them anything?

Samantha Brick feels beautiful, and I say good on her.  I hope she has recovered from the upset caused by all the vitriol, and continues to look in the mirror, like my niece used to, and admire what she sees.