Today I was sitting in The Union at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, enjoying a soup and salad meal when a gaggle of giggling girls next to me stop their laughter to have a “serious ” discussion about what they want in a boyfriend.
“Seriously, though, my boyfriend needs to have money !” one girl says.
And the others actually AGREED . This almost ruined my meal. Really.
Now I went to the type of high school that was rather political and most of my friends were feminists. Sure there were a couple girls like these ones, but I’m not used to them. And there are too many here at UWM! It makes me want to weep a little. Personally I’m at college so I can be independent. I don’t know what they’re here for…
I really tried to ignore them after that. But when they started talking about salads, I died a little on the inside.
The gold-digger says loudly, “Salads aren’t as healthy as you think. Don’t get dressing -- all the fat is in the dressing!”
First of all, who gives a shit about the fat content in salad dressing. Those girls were all skinny as a bitch. Second of all, none of them were eating anyway and this is a cafeteria . Third of all, a salad IS healthy, last time I checked. Because vegetables are healthy. Spinach is healthy. Carrots are healthy. Cabbage is healthy. Cheese is healthy. Fat is not unhealthy in the context of a nice, normal salad. A bag of flaming hots, a Pepsi, and a couple candy bars is not healthy. McDonalds is unhealthy. Not eating at all is unhealthy.
Starving gold-diggers. I thought college kids were supposed to be smart? It's election day, at any rate. Are salads and rich boyfriends really the most important thing they could discuss?
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I don't think gossiping about girls who don't ascribe to your beliefs (and you really don't know whether they do or not) is a very constructive way to spend your time either.
I agree with your point, IF it really is just gossip. But being critical of the views of others is not merely gossip and can be constructive. It is depressing to overhear some of the conversations that occur on college campuses, between groups of guys and groups of girls. Of course, you also hear some that are encouraging. But I've spent a significant amount of time on several college campuses (mostly on the west coast), and can tell you that this kind of attitude is not isolated to UWM. On the bright side, there are also a lot of girls who are independent and determined to choose their own path, so you just have to sigh, put it all in persepctive, and move on.
I think you're being very quick to judge people you sat next to for half an hour. You heard their conversation without much context. I know several people, both male and female, who joke about getting a rich boyfriend or girlfriend. And yes, there is such a thing as an unhealthy salad. I'm making excuses for them, and there's a very, very good chance they could just be just as wrong-headed as you think, but there's also a chance they're not.
Furthermore, if you're going to pick at their words, I think it's kind of hypocritical to refer to them as a "gaggle of giggling girls." You made kind of a big deal about how much they were laughing before they had the "serious" conversation. Giggling through lunch is an activity traditionally associated with women, and so the way you're using it to make them sound stupid kind of bothers me.
Look how bad YOU sound taken out of context.
So if something is "an activity traditionally associated with women" then we can't be critical of it? I've always thought that one of the goals of feminism was to bring about changes in our culture that would cause women to be taken more seriously. Sometimes that means we have to be critical of women who mindlessly take on the shallow and frivolous behaviors and attitudes that are traditionally perceived as "feminine."
There is nothing wrong with having a giggly lunch with your friends. It's what they're for. You say stupid shit and laugh like loons and you have fun and deal with stress. Not everything is serious.
There's a lot of behavior traditionally associated with women that SHOULD be criticized. Obsession with weight, mindless materialism, acting dumb to attract a boy. Having fun is not one of them. I wrote a post about this a while back, actually. Traditionally female leisure activities (chick lit, gossip mags) are often seen as frivolous and stupid while similarly useless "masculine" activities (video games, ESPN) are given a free pass. It's an example of sexism I rarely see addressed.
http://community.feministing.com/2008/08/my-way-of-wasting-time-is-bett.html
Someone else pointed out that she also used the term "gold-digger" which really is sexist.
She's got some good points, and honestly, I do think the girls in question were probably kind of dumb. I just think she needs to be aware of how sexist her writing comes across.
So there are only two choices? Women must choose between acting like giggly idiots or being dead serious all the time? Come on.
I don't believe I said that women can't have a giggly lunch, although I prefer to act like a person who deserves to be taken seriously since I do, in fact, want to be taken seriously. This doesn't mean my friends and I don't joke and laugh when we're together. But we also don't act frovolous and shallow just because that's the gender script we're expected to follow. Mindlessly following cultural scripts to the detriment of your own gender is counterproductive to the goals of feminism.
Where did I say there were only two choices? I'm not saying that everyone should be like me, or like these girls. I'm just saying that I don't like judging people for being "a gaggle of giggling girls."
Your preferences aren't everyone's preferences. I've gone for lunch with friends and been a "giggly idiot" because it was FUN and because I really didn't care what random strangers thought about me, not because I wanted to obey some gender script. We said funny things and laughed at them. There is nothing wrong with that. I don't understand how laughing with your friends is "frivolous."
At best, it's a stupid thing to judge someone for. At worst, it's very sexist, and it undermines what she's trying to say.
You said that there's nothing wrong with having a giggly lunch since not everything is serious. Maybe this was based on my comment about taking women seriously. But I don't think that you have to be serious all the time in order to be taken seriously. There are a number of comedians (Stewart, Behar, Maher...) who engage in deep cultural and political critiques without being all that serious, but they are taken quite seriously. So I think that's an important distinction. There's also a difference between having a giggly lunch in which there is absolutely no substance to your conversation (frivolous) and having a meaningful conversation that's interlaced with jokes and laughter.
And I think that friends are for much more than just having giggly lunches with. I agree that it's not necessarily appropriate to judge them as being "a gaggle of giggling girls" based on a brief observation. But if everytime you see them, that's all they're doing, then it's not an inaccurate description.
So now I can't have a frivolous conversation? I can't giggle over stupid stuff without being stupid? It's important to have friends you can discuss serious issues with, but it's just as important to have friends you can be silly with.
Giggly lunch is the sort of female bonding activity that has always been undermined. Anyone can point to a "gaggle of giggling girls" and yell "STUPID DUMMIES OMG!!" but that doesn't make it okay, and it doesn't make it not sexist.
I guess I don't see how it's sexist to say that people who characteristically act in a shallow and frivolous way ought not to expect to be taken seriously. I would say that about anybody, not just women. And in case you haven't noticed, that's the way it works in our world. And I already made it clear that I wasn't talking about occasional silly behavior, or joking and laughing in the course of a conversation that has some substance to it. But the OP was mostly critical of these girls' behavior, and not of them personally. I agree that it's not productive to use some of the terminology that was used here, but I don't agree that anytime you criticize a woman's behavior you're being sexist. That's just straight-up irrational.
She was criticizing them for talking about how they wanted rich boyfriends and how salad was fattening. That's valid.
Criticizing them for having fun -- and she doesn't know these girls, so she really doesn't know if they're like this all the time -- isn't. I don't like her sexist language.
You're not even going to touch gold-digger, are you?
It seems kind of pointless, but here goes. My earlier statement: "I agree that it's not productive to use some of the terminology that was used here" referred to "gaggle of giggling girls" and "gold-diggers."
However, I think that a woman who is a self-professed gold-digger, and who claims that all women are gold-diggers, deserves some fairly harsh criticism. I'm not a gold-digger, and I resent the notion that all women are, and I think that acting like one and claiming that all women are is bad for women. I don't think that words like this are inherently sexist, althout I agree that their usage generally is. And I don't think the OP was criticizing them for having fun. She made it pretty clear that the content of their conversation bothered her.
Fats aren't unhealthy. Eating more calories than your body needs can lead to weight gain. Plus, they taste good.
But I agree with you, kesh. It is disturbing that some people are still apparently going to college to earn their MRS. I guess that's their "feminist choice" or whatever.
But maybe they were being deadpan sarcastic. Or maybe they were saying that they want their boyfriends to have money, because they themselves plan on having lots of money and don't want to pay their boyfriends' rent. (fair enough, people who can work should pay their own rent)
But then, maybe they just really like money and having a big strong man to buy them things. If their primary aspiration in the field of human interaction is one of one-way dependence and consumerism, I feel sorry for them. From all the women I know who lead that life of affluenza in the suburbs or the city, it's an empty existence. I've been there. I know people who have been through that and have left. I know people, including all my immediate relatives, who are still caught up in the consumer trap. They are not happy. They are all depressed and take prescription meds to make them feel better. I think mass consumerism does bad things to people.
So I guess this is a balance between your right to judge certain actions as feminist or not feminist vs. the ideology that criticizing anyone for any choice they make is inherently wrong.
I happen to belong to the band of feminism that thinks we're fighting a culture war against the inequality and hatred of women as a class - and that judging certain beliefs to be contrary to our end goals is inevitable.
Are abolitionists are just as bad as oppressors if they tell the people they're trying to free to follow them to freedom?
The fact that some people will inevitably try to please their oppressors doesn't change the fact that they're oppressed.
For real.
Are you kidding?!?!?!
MY boyfriend totally needs to have money, too! You think I want to pay for his upkeep? He can bloody well pay for himself, and for that he'll need money.
Way to miss the point, Jemima.
I take your points about misplaced values, but I'm extremely wary of depersonalizing people with terms like "gold-digger" (which has its own fun sexist history), particularly in the case of a brief eavesdrop. It kind of obscures what I think was your main argument.
I neglected to mention the gold-digger chick actually said 'I think all girls have gold-digger tendencies.'
Which is why I referred to her as a gold-digger in the first place.
"Those girls were all skinny as a bitch."
Up until that point I could relate to what TheKeshKesh7 (the o.p.), but that description is way too offensive to not bring up. Since when is describing someone's weight as a "bitch" ever appropriate? Is that how all women should describe their weight because it seems incredibly condescending and offensive in my opinion.
Does that also implicitly state that women who are thin are automatically bad people? There are feminists of all body shapes, oddly like women and you should reconsider your wording when talking about weight regardless of you are just describing a "group of giggling girls."
All human beings deserve respect and although these WOMEN were talking in a way that is commonly depicted within our society as being the most important thing in the world, but that does not mean that critical discussion=cattiness.