I just wanted to quickly post this because it annoyed me. The facebook status that I have seen posted twice today states that...
Women are all born angels. And when someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly . . . on a broomstick. Be warned -- we are flexible like that.
Keep this post going girls :-)
This is remeniscent of the Madonna/whore dichotomy (which is usually more explicitly tied to women's sexuality, but not necessarily so)... this idea of "good" woman and "bad" woman. In this case, women are all either angels or witches... there is no in between.
We are all born angels, which to me, seems to signify this idea of innocence that is ruined by people hurting us... I'm assuming by people, the meme is referring to men. This idea of childhood purity or innocence in the notion that we are born "angels" really concerns me. It seems to assume that women's "natural state" is to be kind, gentle, caring, nurturing... traits that are not assumed of men through notions of masculinity (think "boys will be boys").
This means that women who conform to the Madonna role, the nurturing/motherly role, the role of girl you would like to bring home to meet your parents... that woman is representative of what women should be. The "bad girl" character that I'm sure we are all familiar with seeing throughout the mass media is damaged. Someone must have hurt her for her to deviate from her natural good girl role... It is all bullshit.
I'm pretty sure the message is meant to be more empowering to women in some way - that it is supposed to tell women not to be docile or to let people take advantage of you, that it is ok to be a 'witch' when somebody 'breaks your wings'. In that respect, there is an aspect to it that I do think is clever... I just think that it is draws far too much from these binary notions that can really hurt women, in the long run.
I haven't seen this on FB at all...though I can see how annoying it is.
ReplyDeleteNot only does its essentializing language point to a natural state of femininity (as you explain), but that femininity is always on patriarchal terms.
Women are exclusively described as "angels" by men (and as a side note the term is infantilizing since babies are also described in such terms; the language passively reinforces power roles by making women and babies analogous), and it is not until a man "breaks one's wings" does one become a "witch" (ie. the part that you are somewhat forgiving towards for its cleverness, I find to be quite regressive).
In contradiction to how you describe it, I think this "empowerment" is a pseudo-empowerment since it is always only possible after some sort of traumatic male-centric experience (which is what I find to be fundamentally problematic with many discourses on "empowerment").
Gina, I completely agree. And I miss you!
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