Authors: Marianne Schnall
It’s why I have such a problem with the word “bitch.” The reason I flinch when I hear the word bitch is because it is not usually about a woman who happened to be mean that day or said something wrong or hurt someone’s feelings. It usually implicates an entire gender, and, in my experience, it’s generally used sweepingly toward women who are successful, fierce, strong, in control, educated, who know what they want, thrive, and make no apologies for what they do well. So when someone says Oprah or Bella Abzug or Barbra Streisand or Hillary Clinton or Gloria Steinem is a bitch—what do all these women have in common? Their greatness! They’re great, and they’ve grasped their birthright to be fully all they can be. So, to me, you’re not just saying bitch when someone is mean or was nasty to you that day. You’re saying, “You have no right to be who you are meant to be—to achieve, to fulfill your destiny gloriously.”
MS
: Do you feel like things are improving, from your vantage point? Where is the entry for change? Does the media have a role in this? Is it the way that girls or women are portrayed?
KN
: I think it’s a perfect storm of sexism and misogyny. It’s girls being taught at every turn that their looks are their value. The first thing people say to a girl is a comment about her appearance—what she’s wearing and how she looks. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with compliments or looking good. I like to look nice and wear fun clothes. I compliment people on their shirt or shiny hair. I think,
Good for you!
Shiny hair and nice earrings! I’m not against women or men looking great. But it becomes a problem when the praise of girls is almost exclusively directed at their appearance, their bodies, and their makeup, when it seems to be the only value we put on them. When the first and only praise directed at my daughter (since she was a toddler!) was, “You are so pretty!” how can that help but stick as being the most valuable thing about you? I always try to add with a smile, “And smart!” We learn from birth that prettiness, thinness, and being attractive to boys are the prize, the golden ring, the purpose and value of our life. And from that comes insecurity, addictions, eating disorders, and a warped disregard for all else women and girls have to offer.
So the low self-esteem, the track to failure and settling, spans all the way from objectification to more obvious marginalization. How girls get treated in class, how they are encouraged or not encouraged, the lack of opportunities they get in school from kindergarten to college, how their parents treat them, how much sexual and physical abuse they endure, the kinds of jobs they’re groomed to be attracted to, the lack of role models and examples that they do or do not have, the kinds of employment they do or do not land—all of these things play a role.
The key to success and fulfillment is self-esteem—self-esteem, confidence, and a healthy body image. I don’t know a girl, a teenager or woman—no matter how smart, how feminist, how educated, how cool, how sequestered in the country, how raised by feminist parents—I don’t know one who doesn’t have at least three-quarters of her thought process sucked up by how fat or thin she is. So when you have a whole gender,
when you have most of the female population, concentrating on something that ultimately means nothing, it usurps the time they might be dreaming of becoming . . . perhaps . . . the president of the United States. So you have fewer women who are up for it, fewer women armed with what it takes to overcome all this smothering of spirit, and, therefore, fewer female candidates to choose from. Maybe that’s why we don’t have a woman president.
And the media? Unbelievable! Where do I start? Let’s talk about Michelle Obama in the media. If I hear one more fucking thing about a goddamn short-sleeved dress, I might crack! The constant headline in the news about this amazing woman is her sleeves? How refreshing it might be to maybe have just 1 percent of the media focus on the programs she’s dedicated to, the important change she’s trying to implement, the causes she has championed and worked hard for. How about we see as much of that put into print as we do pages and pages about who made her damn dress?
Are the media partly culpable for their portrayal of women and its effect on girls’ and women’s low self-esteem and therefore lack of success? I say yes. From salacious music videos to pornographic billboards solidifying that your value is your sex; to one-dimensional, diminishing roles for women; to body and appearance scrutiny; to lack of scope and truth in portraying women’s history; to magazines, newspapers, news shows, and TV shows that demean, insult, and exclude women; to music that promotes violence and abuse against women as hip and relevant; to the lack of adventurous, intelligent, and proud girl characters in our children’s TV programming; to oppressive stories in animated films and fairy-tale books; to the consistent message that the goal is being desired and swept away by the prince; to the notion that the golden ring (literally) is finding someone to marry and support physically and emotionally so that then your husband can thrive and therefore take care of you. What you are left with is a bunch of capable and fierce but unencouraged—or excluded, misguided, and marginalized—girls and women.
So, what’s the reason there aren’t more women in high-achievement jobs, as well as in the political arena? Well, it’s because of everything. Has it progressed? Yes, of course. Look, Hillary Clinton was running for president. There are more women CEOs, [more women] serving in public office, as well as more women making the choice to mother. We passed Title IX. All of these things are steps forward. But it’s important to get a clear view of where we were, where we still are, and why.
I have a sixteen-year-old daughter, which makes all of this triply important for me. So important. So profound and scary. As I near midlife, thinking about Samia and her generation and her kids’ generation and you and your daughters, Marianne, I am heartened. And progress is apparent in the fact that there are more women in the House and Senate than ever in history, because of the women’s movement and millions of women all over the world. Women like Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Margaret Sanger, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Marie Wilson, Eve Ensler, you, Rosario Dawson, Sandra Fluke, Lena Dunham, Naomi Wolf, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Madeleine Albright, Nancy Pelosi—and the scores of women here and all over the world still with us and not, encouraging us to live in our rightful power. Yes, it
is
getting better. It is getting better, and at the same time, honestly, it is so glaringly obvious why there already
isn’t
a woman president that you could just stick your finger out and touch it.
MS
: How do you feel, being in the entertainment industry, in terms of the role that the entertainment industry and media play in how women and girls are portrayed, and how that affects the consciousness of not just girls, but also the boys who maybe see them that way?
KN
: I say it all the time: We aren’t all just born sexist, racist, and homophobic. It is taught, and it is taught in so many different arenas and in so many
ways—and a lot of it, especially now, is from the Internet. My daughter talks about boys’ ideas of how girls look because of the porn they see on the Internet, and so many girls are obsessed with comparing themselves and how they look. Self-harm and eating disorders are rampant. One out of every six eleven-year-old girls is on a diet or has body issues. Girls are pressured to shave and pluck and obsess and wear clothes that maybe aren’t authentic to their taste . . . because of easily accessible pornographic images in the media and on the Internet. And by porn, I don’t mean erotica meant for adults. I don’t even mean strictly
porn
porn, because porn can be a car commercial, an ice cream commercial, or a poster ad for jeans. It’s all porn. We get assaulted every single day by billboards, magazines, television shows, and films telling us there is one way to be. And usually the quest to conform takes up our time and, all too often, our lives.
It’s complicated, because I believe in sexy. I believe in freedom to love yourself and your body—to celebrate sexuality and wear makeup, hair, and clothes you choose to wear. There is freedom and fun in the creativity. What scares me is the driving force in girls’ wanting to look one unattainable, acceptable way. That’s what I’m looking at. What is the force, the fire, that’s propelling them to act or dress like that, and what is the force that is creating in boys the want for all girls to look like the fictitious “women” in porn? Turn on a video game—it’s rare to find a popular boys’ video game where there’s not a girl in a torn-up bikini being shot at. There’s one popular video game out currently where you get extra points if you kill the prostitute. You’ll likely find unapologetic rape. (Fun! Rape in video games! One hundred points!) Who’s surprised?
Nobody’s surprised that girls aren’t achieving all that they are able to achieve. Sexism is real. And when girls are thinking that their biggest value and their worth—what’s most important and most valid about them—is how they look, that’s what they spend the most time thinking about and doing. And when boys are taught their birthright is taking action
and adventure and making things happen and succeeding . . . then that’s the road they’re going to take. We aren’t born with self-doubt, low self-esteem, eating disorders, self-hatred, pleasing, rape, molestation, violence against women—nope, we’re not born with it. We’re spoon-fed it.
In Hollywood, it’s the same thing. I think the sexism in Hollywood affects women equally, but in a different way. Women all over the world are affected—from punitive, abusive religious traditions that don’t allow work or education to someone making seventy cents to a man’s dollar to being sexually harassed by a boss. For actors and actresses, there’s ageism, public opinion, and appearance. Weight restriction and conformity is legendary for women in TV, film, and music. Most are pressured (by many means) and forced to try to attain one virtually unattainable size. And in the quest, in the trying, we breed self-hate, eating disorders, addictions, and even death.
And then there is ageism. There’s an obvious age ceiling at which certain actresses can get work, usually at around thirty-five or forty. There are a few exceptions: Helen Mirren gets a job, Susan Sarandon might get a job, and Meryl Streep might get a job. But on the whole, I’m talking about out of 100 percent of working female actors, there’s probably 10 percent of leading women who get meaningful acting work after forty. The rest don’t look right, because they don’t look young. So you’ve got all these mature male actors still working who are playing leading men—and not only leading men with great story lines of triumph and mystery and success, but they are all still sex symbols! As the roles get less and less interesting and available for women after thirty-five, the men keep going, while the women keep getting replaced.
MS
: You’ve obviously been advocating for women’s issues for such a long time. Some of this feels like a tough slog, but ultimately, where are we now? Are you feeling frustrated? Are you feeling hopeful?
KN
: It’s so funny, Marianne, because in the minutiae of it, it seems that we are over our heads in this same kind of trouble and bullshit that we always have seen—when you know the amount of girls and women being battered and molested, when you look at the statistics, when you see what’s happening politically and see reproductive rights sliding backward, it feels like we are right in the middle of the sinking, like we always have been. So I don’t want to sugarcoat it and say that on all issues I’m feeling optimistic. Some I’m feeling just dreadful about. But at the same time, in a day you go through so many phases of being grateful, worried . . . and then hopeful! I’m so grateful for the steps that we’ve made going forward. We now have V-Day and One Billion Rising. That’s great. That’s a huge, crazy, Olympic leap forward—that was amazing! We have Roe v. Wade. We have Eve Ensler and her
Vagina Monologues
, we have
Feminist.com
, we have you and this book, and we have Gloria Steinem exuding her gloriousness. We have revolutionaries and visionaries in other countries devoted to abolishing rape, female genital mutilation, and other insidious rituals. We have some brilliant films and realistic, positive woman TV shows; women show-runners, directors, and writers . . . and we have the undeniable hope of the possibilities of our strong, smart, wonderful daughters! We celebrate the scores of young girls who are speaking up and creating! The gay rights movement, marriage equality, all the pro-choice and anti–violence against women legislation that’s being passed. We have Hillary in the position she’s in right now, and we have more women in Congress and the House than ever. Yes, there’s a really great “moving forward” that I’m so happy for I could cry, and I am heartened and grateful. All of it is wonderful! And at the same time, given the more tactile, day-to-day, minute-by-minute reality that every three minutes a woman will be raped—some days I feel like I want to rip off my skin and jump. Because I know how hard it is to fight for one inch of freedom and choice. My heart breaks because of what’s still happening to women and girls all over the world . . . every three minutes.
MS
: You have always been such a bold, fearless personality—speaking out whether it’s in your art or in your activism. Was that something that you always had naturally, or did you have to cultivate it in yourself?
KN
: I think it occurred to me, finally, that the people I was trying to please and the results of being inauthentic and playing small weren’t ultimately fulfilling. . . I’m kind and fair, and I believe in justice and fairness within an inch of my being, but the nice, pleasing part is just boring to me. And it’s a waste of time. I feel like you can be kind, just, and fair without having to worry about if every single person likes you. You come to a point in life where you just go, “It’s none of my business what people think of me. It’s my business how I act, and am I acting in a way that I respect? Am I living in my skin? Am I as afraid to be as strong as I am to be liked?” Life is too short. Plus, I have a daughter. I want to mirror strength and goodness. You have to be willing to let go of some of the other things to move toward your authentic self.