Ned in the Kitchen

Ned Warming Himself Beside a Fire

Princesses and Pornstars

I don’t want to say I’m a feminist because that’s… like…so uncool.

Feminists are just selfish bitches who want everything. All that equal rights stuff is sooo last century.

And who needs it? I’m a girl and here I am studying mathematics the prestigious Jim Bob University… All’s right with the world, surely?

I wish. Reading that piece of trash printed by my fellow Jim Bobians, I came to realise that just as feminism has gone out of fashion, sexism and oppressive gender roles are back in vogue.

The egalitarian in me didn’t like this, so I set out on a mission to find where feminism is at in the 21st century.

First up I went to the women’s centre to look through their book collection. To my disappointment, not one of these books was written in the last 20 years. So I went over to the Mother Library where you can usually find any book you dream of. The majority of its feminism books were also very old, but after much searching I finally found a modern book: a 2008 publication called Princesses and Pornstars by Emily Maguire.

I read the book and it depressed me. This was her diagnosis:

We are still judged first on how well we conform to gendered norms that were already looking tattered in 1955.

Back then, the value of a woman was determined by her sexual behaviour, function and fecundity. As it was, so it remains…

…Even the Saturday morning music videos, which appear to be exemplars of raunch culture, are pushing gender roles circa 1950: women compete against each other for the affections of men; physical appearance is a woman’s most valuable asset; sex is useful to get what you want…the most desirable man is one who spends lots of money on 'his girl.' (p. 2,3)

The argument she drives throughout most of the book is that people are products of their culture, and gender roles, for the most, are cultural.

Last year a friend of mine became a vegetarian and he told me this was because he believed the reasons for eating meat were mostly cultural. Whether this is true or not is debateable; the point is that he felt culture was man-made (not natural) and therefore could be safely done away with.

So can gender roles be safely done away with? Maguire talks about the oppressiveness of femininity (a social construct designed to cover up femaleness) and comes to the decision that life would probably go on without it.

If women (all women) simply stopped shaving, plucking, waxing, lipsticking and hair dyeing, my bet is that love and sex would still happen. (p. 46)

But this is unlikely to occur. For the individual, the benefits of conforming to gender roles outweigh the costs. Any woman who decides not to be a slave to femininity runs the risk of becoming an outcast.

The problem is that although what used to be called ‘feminine wiles’ may help individual women gain advantage in an unfair system, they hurt the larger cause of equality. It’s like the princesses and booty-shakers: the individual may gain power or privilege but the system that has taken away that power and privilege in the first place is reinforced. (p. 44)

Maguire also talks about the effect mainstream pornography has on society’s view of women. I won’t go into it because she pretty much covers it in this discussion on ABC Fora. I urge you to check it out if you’re interested.



I don’t treat everything Maguire says in her book as Gospel, however she does raise some important questions.

I guess the moral of this story is that feminism is not irrelevant, sexism is not a thing of the past and we should always be critical (or at least aware) of the culture which governs us.

If you still think feminism is a cult for selfish women, be aware that oppressive gender roles can be damaging to both sexes. Also check out this collection of essays regarding gender roles…written (mostly) by a bunch of awesome men.