Not the same “Mystique” Betty Freidan wrote about in her cultural tome on women’s unfulfillment, but the ethereal aura surrounding being a woman. Flattened!, dissected by another privacy-invading tool at FaceBook. Women are multidimensional goddesses and…human! — BadWitch
Readers Are Spellbound & Perplexed…
Dear GWBW — So ok, this one’s for the ladies but, I just took one of those crazy quizzes at FaceBook that are so popular…Can’t we be a balance of both good girl plain jane and hot vixen? Just a question!!!!! I will not the the outcome define me…..lol. Thanks chicas…girl power! — Hot & Smart Mama
==
Dear Hot & Smart Mama,
It’s a time-honored tradition to stereotype women as if that helps people get a handle on them. As if to prove it, there are as many versions of “female archetypes” lists as there are types cited out there. Here’s the one that didn’t completely turn me off, and encompassed real life, careers, myth and pop culture in a way that appealed to a less-harsh-than-Miranda/less-exhibitionist-than-Samantha gal like me. See?, I don’t think any of us can be categorized as one pure type, period – no pun intended.
One of my favorite TV shows of all time is “Mad Men” and there is a female character that, now in its third season, is starting to explore the issues you bring up today way back in the ‘60s! Oh yes she is.
Peggy, Peggy, Peggy is my heroine — back a mere season ago, I couldn’t even imagine those words of this Plain Jane, much less flying out of my fingertips. This non-typing pool girl-woman is not the squealy, frivolous sex kitten the “men want and the women want to be.” Going tom-catting the exact same way the boys at her ad agency Sterling Cooper doesn’t fit her in totality, either. Peggy understands she is uniquely She (thank you, Ursula Andress, She who must be obeyed! She who must be loved! She who must be possessed!, a real role model) . Unique eyes (a riff on Mad Men dialogue) and all. I can’t wait to see how Ms. Peggy hits it this season! And I mean her stride among other things. I have been watching media and TV since since in utero. Never in all my decades have I ever felt represented by a female character so completely as the complex and nuanced Peggy (Ms. Olson if ya nasty). And it’s only episode 2! Could it be that somebody finally, gulp!, understands?
So yes, you certainly can take it outside in the big Real World and be both Crystal and Alexis at once, without needing Sybil meds. If it took TV this long to get it right, so full of gradation, so reality TV the way reality TV will never be…then give some of those semi-illiterate, one-note folks who write the most superficial of those FaceBook quizzes (there are some dead-on ones, too) a wait and see for just another couple months (approximately a TV season in FB time).
The moon has many phases,
BW
==
Dear Hot & Smart Mama,
OK, I’d just like to be on record saying good girls are not necessarily Plain Janes and, yes, hot mama, naughty and nice often come together in the same fabulous package.
I have loved my Facebook quizzes. Don’t we all need to know which “Facts of Life” character we might be? Heck, Facebook finally put to rest my long-held suspicion that I was meant for Johnny Depp and, well, visa versa. But recently, there’s been some growing concern over how much of your privacy info Facebook is giving away when we allow the quizzes to access our information.
I received this in email from ACLU:
“Thousands of people have taken the quiz and seen firsthand how Facebook allows quiz creators to have access to their personal information – including religious and political views, sexual orientation, pictures, groups, and posts. When you take a Facebook quiz, you can’t tell whether your personal information has been collected. In fact, most of your personal information can be exposed even if it’s your friend, and not you, who takes one of these quizzes!”
ACLU has created the What Do Quizzes Really Know About You Facebook quiz (log-in required). The quiz allows you to see what developers can see on your profile, your friends’ profiles, etc. It’s disturbing. But, as ACLU noted, we know Facebook responds to protest. At the end of the quiz you can sign an online petition and are taken to privacy page to change setting.
So, I know that was off the beaten path of your question, but it seemed relevant, so I gave it to you. But, we all know, it just takes the right mate at the right time in the right environment to “Make a Good Girl Go Bad.” And, guys, you are a really happy and lucky if you’re there when it happens.
Keep it hot!
GoodWitch
==
Hear the coaches – Podcasts coming. Talk to the coaches! - Personal and group coaching available.
Mondays money, work, purpose dilemmas. Thursdays family, relationships, love dramedy. Send your FREE brewing questions on how to thrive—not just survive— modern life to: coaching@stillsitting.net.
© 2009 ManifestGroup. No materials may be used without expressed written permission.
Words hurt — but only if you let them. I’m a staunch believer of the playground wisdom, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” to this day. Yet it is undeniable that words are powerful. One of my favorite pieces I wrote ‘Don’t Be A Pussy’ was about the harmful effects of the ubiquity of misogynistic, negative slang phrases. My rant is easily extendable to abating words like Slut, Whore and ‘Ho from our vocab because, while used obviously derogatorily, they are more dangerously ubiquitous. When we are so familiar with a thing that we no longer see it, hear it, or are aware of its true meaning anymore, is when it has an insidious power to do its deepest damage to our individual psyches, our collective culture — because this negative slam-slang is just accepted as a fact or a truism. But I am a Big Picture seer: when female power and the word “vagina” are cute-isized and made non-threatening as hoochie, vajayjay, and other dumbed down terms, it’s hard to avoid recognizing a pattern of misogyny and the fear of female power still runs deeply in our society, culture, and most of the world at large even in the 21st century. Hillary Clinton at this year’s TED Women’s Conference on The Empowerment of Women & Girls: “We need to reach out to faith leaders and community leaders to change the perception and treatment of girls, and to persuade men and boys to value their sisters and their daughters, their talents and their intrinsic worth.”Words are powerful. As I say at my zen pop culture blog, “Use your power for good” by: 1) Knowing who you are; 2) don’t give fear of other’s opinions (just words) of you the power to paralyze or stunt you; and 3) shed a light on or speak out against ignorance whenever you hear it as a “that’s how everyone talks”-ism. No it isn’t.
