With her fun, readable, and vivid writing, Polly Vernon’s treatise on modern feminism even if it encounters certain shortcomings may be considered a fresh take on contemporary gender discourse, writes Sanya Dang
Vernon keeps it light, rarely indulging in deep analysis regarding her views on how to fight sexism and other discriminatory behaviour that comes our way. On the whole her writing is fun, readable, vivid and sparky.
I assume her target audience is a niche group of cosmopolitan women who have the privilege to define their own brand of feminism, conveniently accepting the ideas that ‘suit’ them and disregarding what ‘doesn’t work’ for them.
She explains various modern subtexts under the broad purview of feminism, giving them a fashionable twist. Some of them are ‘Stiletto Feminism’, ‘Pretty Girl Privileges’, ‘Twitter Feminism’, ‘Feminist Guilt’, ‘Feminist Fatigue’, ‘Soft Sexism’ and connected to all of these the major anxiety of FOGITW (Fear of getting it wrong).
She equates making a fashion statement with feminist statement, reminding me of the ‘Slutwalk’ we had a few years ago. There, dressing up provocatively on purpose became a way of protesting against the notion that conservative dressing acts as a precaution against sexual assault.
Why she equates fashion with feminism, some readers may consider these two concepts as disparate. How is making a certain fashion statement also derivative of a particular feminist statementIJ Just like the famous quote “Clothes maketh a man”, she imbues fashion and styling with a magical power. They can be used as instruments of ‘fitting in’ and ‘belonging’ or ‘standing out’ or as tools of alienation and to have the desired effect on the opposite sex. As Vernon says: “That is when fashion stops having power over you and you get power over it” to express yourself, your position, stance etc.
She talks about her ‘wonderbra’ days when she worked at a sleazy cocktail bar called ‘Wonder Bar’. The USP of this bar was the uniform of its waitresses catsuit and wonderbra. Vernon displays a vulnerable honesty about this phase which wasn’t empowering in either sense feminist or fashionable. She describes how those days left her “depleted, diminished, disrespected” where she was constantly at the mercy of drunk men, trying to maintain the delicate balance between her dignity and gender politics.
She also talks about the ladette Culture which encouraged young women to be ‘bra-zen’ (quite literally), drunken, sweary and sexually predatory. It was empowering in the sense that it encouraged an abandonment of traditional ideas of femininity. She admits that if she had been more secure financially and professionally, then the ‘wonderbra’ (an early icon of the ladette movement) might have represented the “sexy, liberated, joyous, subversive style eruption that it was”. But she goes on to say that it was merely a compromise, a stop gap arrangement until better opportunities came her way which they did in the form of magazine stints.
Many of the issues she talks about are not relevant in the Indian context, or any context other than that of the author and her niche group. Just as the ‘Slutwalk’ tried to address real issues but only touched the tip of the iceberg, Vernon in her earnestness tries to do the same. She touches upon the issues she really cares about, namely rape, legal abortion and equal pay for both genders. These are, of course, very significant problems faced by women all over the world, even in the so called gender-sensitive developed nations. But apart from these, the superficial non-issues she talks about while playing the priestess are downright nauseating for the sensitive female reader. Things like being a certain size, waxing every part of the body, eating only salad, shopping for non-essentials are essentially problems faced by women with disposable incomes and freedom from the more problematic issues that plague the fairer sex.
Vernon is not offended by many things that any dignified woman would not be able to stand wolf whistles, catcalls (even if done with ‘profound reverence’), photoshopped and airbrushed images on magazine covers or even PAGE 3, which is a culture that objectifies and dehumanises women. It might be considered ironic and more so, nonsensical, when the writer talks like this. She pre-empts criticism on many fronts and puts in a disclaimer right at the beginning where she says that the problem with feminism today is that it is too judgmental and clings to the ‘old order’.
She says “Self judgment is a profoundly unfeminist act” and that feminism has been hijacked by judgmental people. At the same time, the narrative tends to get repetitive, stretched and even ‘shrieky’ at times. She contradicts herself several times and tries to defend herself really hard in order to seem earnest. Her writing also gravitates towards being unstructured when she is on her passionate onslaught. Her tone is shrill and augmented against the stereotypical (and older) view of feminism. She talks about the great writers feminists of the earlier centuries and their theories in order to validate her opinions (but while contradicting those of Mary Wollstonecraft and Germaine Greer).
She says “There’s enough woman destroying going on already without us pitching in.” But, obviously, she’s right and has analysed this problem perfectly. We should ask ourselves why this is a universal problem why are women the worst enemies of womenIJ This is where she questions “the myth of sisterhood” which is the real chink in a feminist’s armour. She says the notion of sisterhood in theory is wonderful but ‘unworkable in practice’, which most women readers will identify with. At this point, I am suddenly reminded of a Jacobean tragedy I studied in college “Women Beware Women’’ by Thomas Middleton. Just the title of the play is enough to bring home this point that women who should ideally be on the same side are actually on warring sides, judging, criticising and competing with each other.
She raises very pertinent issues about women who have to deal with taking on their husband’s surname after marriage. As a woman writer, she challenges this as writers establish their identity as soon as they get published. There is also the issue of their children carrying their father’s name even though it is the mother who does all the hard work and bears the labour pain.
I’d like to end with a quote by Vernon which describes her literary intentions and the main theme of this manual “It’s about how brilliant the experience of being a woman can be and should be.” Out of her many definitions of feminism, this one is the most agreeable “Feminism is about celebrating and empowering, not about negating and criticising.” If the women of the world understand these main points, then maybe we can really ‘have it all.’
The reviewer teaches English literature at a high school in New Delhi