Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, p. 57 (Timothy Burke, 1996)
"White women who were FWISR members were in some ways subjected to some of the same forces and expectations that affected the lives of African women; the gradual control granted to FWISR members over institutions that shaped domesticity for Africans was largely motivated by an attempt to grant white women a specialized form of colonial power without interfering with patriarchal perogatives."
The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity, p. 165-66 (Susan Bordo, 1993)
"...through the organization and regulation of the time, space and movements of our daily lives, our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity. Such an emphasis casts a dark and disquieting shadow across the contemporary scene. For women, as study after study shows, are spending more time on the management and discipline of our bodies than we have in a long, long time. In a decade marked by a reopening of the public arena to women, the intensification of such regimens appears diversionary and subverting. Through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity--a pursuit without a terminus, requiring that women constantly attend to minute and often whimsical changes in fashion--female bodies become docile bodies--bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, 'improvement.' Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress--central organizing principles of time and space in the day of many women--we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification. Through these disciplines, we continue to memorize on our bodies the feel and conviction of lack, of insufficiency, of never being good enough. At the farthest extremes, the practices of femininity may lead us to utter demoralization, debilitation, and death."
Revolution from Within: Self-Government and Self-Esteem, p. 88 (Barbara Cruikshank, 1999)
"English assumes that 'real' politics does not occur in personal life and that genuine political resistance is aimed at the social order as a whole, not at one's self. Reading the self-esteem movement as a symptom of the political demobilization of feminism, critics charge that movement with taking the slogan 'the personal is political' a bit too literally. To the contrary, I argue in this chapter that critics should take the slogan quite literally in order to recognize the ways in which the political has been reconstituted at the level of the self. "
The image above shows only one form of distraction among girls and young women in the media: magazines. Seventeen, a popular magazine for teens girls, regularly features a female celebrity on the cover, with story headlines surrounding that are meant to entice, and thus are indicative of what the magazine expects teenage girls to be interested in. The cover featured on the left boasts 698 ways to look pretty (and exclusive discounts inside, indicating that the "ways" involve buying products), inside information on who Hilary Duff is crushing on (because even a successful starlet's most important endeavors revolve around men), and secrets about fashion, beauty, and even sexual information on how to determine what your actions define you as. The image in the middle is a screenshot from Cosmopolitan.com, cut and pasted to show the navigation bar and the six different featured articles shown on the home page. A "cosmo girl" is clearly defined by this image: interested in sex, love, style, beauty, hot guys, celebrities, gossip, themselves, fun, games, and all things related to the magazine. The six top articles reflect these interests, and navigating through the website reveals hundreds of other juicy articles to satisfy any "typical" teen.
Distraction among girls and young women with media and obsession with appearance is a big concern of 3rd wave feminism. Feminists recognize that girls and women tend to not be expected to learn about or be involved in politics or other important parts of society. This distraction is very similar to the topics discussed by Timothy Burke and Susan Bordo. Women are encouraged to focus on inconsequential and frivolous activities, which are not only damaging to women, as Bordo points out, but also keeps them out of the way of the privileged male perpetuates the "patriarchal perogatives" that Burke speaks of.
Similarly, some feminists are criticized for focusing too much on the concept of the "personal as political." Critics say that this notion is too dominant and makes women focus only on their personal experience rather than coalescing with women as a whole for a feminist movement. But perhaps the problem is instead in the interpretation of the phrase, and as Barbara Cruikshank argues, "the political has been reconstituted at the level of the self." Just take, as an example, the images above: political distraction among girls and young women involving their personal, daily lives.
http://www.3rdwwwave.com/growing-up.cgi
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