COLUMN: It Starts With Us

From Charlotte Druckman's "Putting It Bluntly," Fall '95 From Charlotte Druckman's "Putting It Bluntly," Fall '95Two weeks ago, Playboy magazine came to our campus looking for women who wanted to pose for the publication. While many women may find this periodical offensive, we cannot condemn someone who wishes to display herself in such a fashion -- it is a person's prerogative to decide how he or she wishes to exploit herself or himself. Some laugh when we say that people should find our minds sexy before our figures. Maybe this is too much to ask. But when Playboy comes parading through any academic environment in search of centerfolds who are valued only for their chest size and lack of cellulite, any hopes we may have had of being recognized for our intellects, and any strides we may have made towards gender equality, are completely shot down. Even at an Ivy League institution, we are being sought after for our bodies. On the one hand, we could easily blame men for objectifying us. From Reubens to the Dadaists, who reduced our sexuality to mechanical parts, men have been presenting us as things to behold for centuries. But who says we have to allow ourselves to be portrayed or categorized in this way? We could fight back. Instead of accusing an exceptionally thin model in Vogue with causing our insecurity and encouraging us to become bulimic and doubt our self-worth, we could choose to ignore the images shoved in our face and demand that they be removed or altered to represent a more realistic woman. But what do we do? We decide that the norm is not okay, that the emaciated fashion plate in our magazines is what the norm should be. Then we proceed to let someone else's ridiculous notion of what's perfect to control our lives. When, as is sometimes the case on this campus, obsession with weight becomes a fad, we have only ourselves to blame. And when men get caught up in the way we look, when they worry about how their girlfriends measures up in a skirt or a tight dress, although it might be easy for us to accuse them of sexism, it is just as easy to point our fingers at ourselves. If we weren't so focused on having "perfect" bodies, if salads and scales weren't such a major part of our discussion and thoughts, maybe we could de-emphasize superficial qualities enough that everyone could concentrate on more important things, like our minds. Some may say I am a victimized, passive woman turning the blame on herself and putting herself down. On the contrary, I'm saying that women themselves have the ability to stop complaining, whining and freakishly dieting. We can defy the age old stereotype that metaphorically speaking bound our feet and pasted us on a page of Playboy. It's a bit like the whole rape hype argument which proclaims that the more frequently and quickly women are ready to cry "rape," the more we put ourselves in the role of victim. While this may be difficult to accept, it is a viable idea that the more we complain about the pressure put on us to look a certain way, the more we render ourselves immobile. It is a common opinion that women are always attempting to do the impossible: To change men. Whether or not this is true is questionable, but assuming it is true, let's look at it another way and find a more realistic goal: Maybe we cannot change how men see, but we can change what they see. Unfortunately, women's liberation has taken a more radical direction since its commencement. Today, men and women alike tend to associate the word "feminist" with a man-hating woman with unshaven legs and armpits who likes to cross-dress and declare the female sex superior to the male sex. But if we could remind ourselves of what feminism originally stood for, equality and an end to sexism, and if we could project that concept to our male counterparts we would be doing everyone a great service. This primary definition is best summed up by the comic Cynthia Heimel as she remembers "a time when feminism meant that a woman, although she liked and lusted after men, wanted to be in charge of her own life, her own job and her own carburetor." In this day and age, everyone can and should understand, or at least appreciate, this concept. This form of feminism is not an unattainable ideal. If people were reminded of this, women would feel more encouraged and less trapped, while men could admit to a few more things without intimidation. I am writing this because I have heard intelligent, well-educated males on this campus ask women if they came to Penn to receive their MRS. degrees one time too many, and I have watched women squirm and giggle without knowing how to respond to this offensive question. For your information, most of us, while we hope to find spouses, did not come to college for four years of hard work to find husbands. Don't you think $100,000 is a pretty large dowry? And besides, dowries are as outdated as inane sexist jokes ought to be. As women, it is our job to get this point across and to tell Playboy magazine representatives to get off our campus.