Trigger warnings: 2016 presidential election, sexual assault, misogyny
It seems like the patriarchy has been receiving a lot of airtime lately, not least because of this harrowing election season. It has become truly draining to hear, day in and day out, on Facebook, on Twitter, on the radio, a never-ending parade of violence against women. I was going to write about something completely different, but I’m not feeling able to ignore this, and the Northwestern student production of NSFW by Lucy Kirkwood gave me an opportunity to address it. It’s a new approach, so bear with me.
NSFW (Not Safe For Work) is a 2012 play set in London, but the setting did not make its themes of the production any less accessible to the current Northwestern student. After opening in the office of a Playboy-esque publication, Doghouse, the major conflict centers on a staff member inadvertently choosing a 14-year-old girl as the “Local Lovely of 2016.” The staff member, Sam, ends up being fired as a result, so the final act of the play is his job interview at Electra, another magazine similar to Cosmopolitan.
The audience is meant to feel a surprising mirroring between the Doghouse and Electra offices. Aidan and Miranda, the bosses at Doghouse and Electra, respectively, are both jaded and unscrupulous. They claw at any way to stay in business in a contemporary “climate” so unfavorable to print media, and they are both horrible to their staff. Aidan constantly comes onto his much younger employee, Charlotte, in a way that is deeply unsettling and threatening, while Miranda similarly harasses her male secretary. The show drives home that Doghouse and Electra are in the very same business of objectifying women. Miranda asks Sam to point out all the physical flaws in a photo of a woman, because Electra needs women to be insecure in their appearances so they will buy beauty products. After a long moral struggle, he does it, because he needs the job to keep his apartment.
I left the show feeling empty. I went to the gym to decompress and wondered to myself why I was working out: to be healthier or to look a certain way? I felt my mood getting worse and worse.
On my way home, I stopped at the Dittmar Gallery in Norris Center to see the exhibition there: Build Her a Myth by Carrie Ann Schumacher. I had read that this show also tackled issues of feminism and misogyny, and I thought that seeing it might be a good way to reflect on the play that was still plaguing me. Perhaps the dialogue between the exhibition and play would be meaningful. The gallery space was full of white, feminine silhouettes. Mannequins, large and small, showed off various styles of ethereal white dresses, all made from cut up pages of romance novels. They are beautifully, meticulously made, with hole punches, folds, and fringes adding texture to the text-covered material.
I made my way over to the didactic introduction: “Build Her a Myth examines the demands that feminine culture places upon women.” Huh. Feminine culture. “The displayed dresses are seductively beautiful, but are created from the pages of romance novels, unable to be worn. Completely without function, they represent how useless feminine myths are in real life.” So women create this culture of romance novels and dreams of white dresses and perpetuate this “useless” way of thinking amongst themselves?
Suddenly I realized why I had been feeling so terrible: I felt like women were being unfairly blamed for perpetuating the patriarchy. I felt ashamed that I want the “feminine myth” of getting married in a white dress someday, and ashamed that I often wish I were 10 pounds lighter like Miranda in NSFW, the symbol of “bad feminism.” At one point, alone in her office, she strips down to her bra and black tights, puts Spanx on her perfect body, puts on a full face of makeup, and then puts on a white Suffragette dress and sash for a costume party. Hypocrisy concentrate. I know that both artists aim to convey the message that the patriarchy lives in us all, but Sam still gets to be the tragic hero of NSFW while the evil Miranda tears him down to her level.
Hyper-awareness of gender is a sensibility of sorts that we share today, especially on college campuses. I’m deeply conflicted, because while the impulse to hold women accountable for their wrongs along with men is fundamentally feminist, at this moment in time it is exhausting to me. Both artists in this comparison are women, but I feel that their artworks ultimately lay more of a burden on women. I know I might be wrong, and I know that workplace harassment is wrong whether the victim is male or female. But I guess that at the end of the day, despite this newfound societal awareness, the world doesn’t feel that much fairer to or safer for women. Between “locker room talk” and the female self-hatred I unexpectedly saw in these works of art, I’m left frustrated, tired, and sad.
Well, this went off the rails. November 8 can’t come soon enough.
1,638 Comments
Thank you for writing this. Especially now, it is a comfort to hear my own thoughts reflected in your eloquent piece of critique. I think comparing the play to the exhibition made sense with your overarching thesis about unfair blame of women in their place in society. It’s a delicate line that women walk, particularly those who consider themselves feminists. (I won’t talk about the problems of those who dislike the term now, but that is a whole other issue.)
Today in my studio art class one of my female classmates discussed (in relation to her artwork) how she sometimes feels bad or frustrated that she likes knitting, sewing, and cooking because those are seen as domesticated and feminine. For feminists who want to diverge from stereotypes and combat the patriarchy, being genuinely interested in “feminine” things seems problematic and counterproductive to their battle for equality.
In my video game class the other day we were discussing how the industry alienates people who aren’t straight white men through representation in game, but also because mostly straight white men create these games, with first person shooters dominating the industry. One of my male classmates asked something like “but what kinds of games do females like?” That question was so problematic that I couldn’t respond right away, and to my consolation a few other classmates were confounded as well. Finally someone mentioned how historically (and currently) gendered the creation and marketing of videogames were. When videogames were first being developed (and I mean in the early days of personal computer use), more girls played videogames than guys. But once videogames were big enough that they were being sold in toy stores, they ended up in the “boy” isle along with other “male” toys, so they fell into those hands. Thinking and insisting that women aren’t interested in the videogame market, like my classmate did, is representative of the problems we face. There is nothing inherently “male” about shooter games, but society thinks there is, and then all the women in the games end up as sex figures created by and targeted towards straight white men. And then men declare that women don’t like videogames. This is putting the blame on women while they themselves are being excluded and alienated.
I apologize for this long-winded comment, but I wanted to add to your thesis that women are blamed for their own alienation, and not only by males. We all live in a patriarchal society and therefore everyone is influenced by it whether consciously or subconsciously. It’s sometimes difficult to question the very fundamentals of societal discourse, but it’s important in order to combat these cycles that breed more inequality.
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and insightful comment! It’s truly valuable to hear your perspective and experiences that resonate with the ideas presented in the critique.
Comforting validation: Your point about finding comfort in having your thoughts reflected is heartwarming. Shared experiences can be a powerful source of connection and validation.
Effective comparison: You effectively connect the play and exhibition to the overarching theme of unfair societal blame towards women. This reinforces the central argument of the critique.
Real-world examples: Sharing your personal experiences from your art class and video game class provides concrete examples of how these issues manifest in everyday life. This strengthens the impact of the critique and shows its relevance.
Expanding on the thesis: You add valuable depth to the critique’s thesis by highlighting how women can be blamed for their own alienation, not just by men, but also by societal conditioning. This is an important point that deserves consideration.
Importance of self-reflection: You emphasize the importance of questioning societal norms and unconscious biases, even for those who strive for equality. This is a crucial step in dismantling harmful structures.
Overall, your comment is thoughtful, engaging, and contributes significantly to the conversation about gender roles and societal bias. Thank you for sharing your voice
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This is a well-argued critique with great flow, I think you did a wonderful job of weaving your own experience of the artworks into critique in addition to meeting them on their own terms. It’s hard to “read against the grain,” as you do by making the argument that these “feminist” works are actually encouraging female self-hatred. But you succeeded, by balancing evidence from the artworks and your own life. This critique was moving, to say the least.
Also, I just want to say that, at first, I was not going to comment because I didn’t feel that my voice would be necessary or wanted in this conversation (not that you said anything to make me feel that way, it’s just as a straight white man…) but I decided to write this comment because you really did make some very powerful, deeply relevant points. I wanted to share that I found this piece compelling; it was brave of you to bring your own experience into the writing like you did.
Like the others, I really enjoyed this critique. Honestly, there is not one thing I would change. Your descriptions of the works, your inner monologue throughout, your analysis. I can really see your thought process, see the journey that you went on as you experienced these works and, as a result, I am able to experience them with you.
Linnea — Really nice use of two art works to explore your thinking about the deeply fraught, exhausting (as you say), dispiriting, and most of all frustrating issue of patriarchy in US society, and the way it has erupted with a less subtle and more overt mode during the last year through the election. I feel like we need to call in the historians and theorists of gender to help us here. One thing to consider is that patriarchy is not always kept in place by men. Patriarchy is a certain structuring of social *structures* of society, certain cultural assumptions and very real economic and political forces that privilege not just men over women, but those who favor the patriarchal structure of society over another alternative structuring. Does that make sense? Patriarchy strikes me, so far as I understand it from theorists of gender, about structuring of social norms and cultural patterns more than it is about individual action (although of course the two are related). A parallel might be how we decide to understand the workings of racism: it’s institutional not personal; it’s about structures, not personal choices (although again the one informs the other). Here’s the one positive thing (really just a glimmer of hope) worth considering: perhaps its the slow but steady transformations in patriarchal domination that are bringing such brittle, overt, panicked, violent, and disturbing modes of violence and anger at women (particularly Hillary Clinton, but not just her). It’s a last gasp of those who drew their privilege from that deeper structuring of our social norms and institutions and distributions of wealth and status and security and power? In any event, this essay is heartfelt, thoughtful, and does the wonderful New Yorker critic tactic of using works of art to spark your own personal reflections, analysis, and efforts to make sense of the situation. That’s just what an essay is for! An attempt (“assay”) to make meaning out of something that is vexing you.
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