Wednesday Martin's Blog, page 5
November 30, 2017
Why Do We Send Photo Portraits of our Kids for the Holidays?
Across the country, it's holiday time. That means holiday cards. These cards often highlight family and particularly children. Usually the card itself is a family portrait, or a portrait of the kids. Ever wonder why?
November 28, 2017
Harry and Meghan: Ring in the New?
The engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is big news in the UK—and the US. Americans are often pretty indifferent to royal goings-on. We founded our country on an anti-royalist stance, after all, and the legacy endures in our deep suspicion of titles that are inherited, aristocratic and “elitist” versus earned (Donald Trump happened here not only because of retrograde nationalist fervor and a backlash against women and people of color but because he was able to pass himself off as a gold-plated, self-made billionaire who supposedly “earned it.” Even though his wealth and privilege were intergenerational, passed down from Dad).
But Meghan and Harry give us something that Diana and Charles and William and Kate have not. Many Americans are thrilling to the “modernity” of this couple—Markle is a working American actress and philanthropist. She is beautiful, accomplished, biracial, and divorced. That this American woman has been chosen by Prince Charming feels, for many of us, like a long overdue update. And payback for all the passive, lily-white, virginal princesses of yore.
Markle’s engagement ring is a mash up of the traditional and the new—a diamond from Botswana, where Markle and her prince vacationed together early in their relationship, set between two sparklers that Princess Diana once wore.
Now imagine if there were no ring. There might be outrage, in this case, that Prince Harry did not “value” his bride-to-be. But why? And is that actually what an engagement ring is “about”? Isn’t it funny that men don’t wear engagement rings? Why is it that women advertise their “taken” status during the liminal period before marriage, but men do not? As to the suggestion that such a practice is ‘just logical” or “only natural” because men used to be the breadwinners, we might ask, Why does it persist? And what does it say about us that it does?
The engagement ring, a semaphore of being claimed, may be beautiful, and a sign of a man’s commitment to a woman. Traditionally, it was also a hedge against being left high and dry. If he fled, she had the jewel, which had not just symbolic but actual value.
That the asymmetrical tradition of who wears an engagement ring persists isn’t just a matter of tradition, though. It is message, and an assertion. And proof that, even in this age of women making progress in closing the wage and education gaps, asymmetries both obvious and subtle persist. Including who advertises (and gets a status bump from) being “claimed.” Change is on the horizon. What role might traditions like the engagement ring play in countering it?
November 21, 2017
America Still Has a Problem With Women Who Write About Sex
Instead of being respected for her brilliant career, when Nancy Friday died this November, her obituaries reminded me of the perils of being female and ‘too much.’
November 20, 2017
Why Did the Remarried Couple with Kids Make Two Turkeys?
If you're a woman with stepkids, you might already know the answer. How are you and your husband or partner with kids celebrating Thanksgiving? With or without the kids? Together or apart? Your relatives, his, or both? Who's cooking?
Here's a piece I wrote for psychologytoday.com on holidays for women with stepchildren
Myth #1: Stepfamilies should look, feel and act just like first families.
Myth #2: If you're not blended, you've blown it.
Myth #3: Visiting kids should be treated like royalty when they show up. Make the holiday all about them.
October 25, 2017
#metoo
It's hard to remember an issue that has galvanized women like our recent national conversation about sexual harassment and sexual assault. Women are angry, fed up, and speaking up. Harvey Weinstein's harassment of women, his bartering for sexual favors with his influence as an image-maker who could make or break actresses' careers, went largely unchecked for years. And unsurprisingly, he had a whole army of enablers--everyone from the agents and managers who knew and kept sending actresses his way to the lawyers who made settlements, effectively silencing women and allowing Weinstein to continue harassing them. I have heard from dozens of women who tell me memories they had long buried are rising to the surface--memories of being propositioned at work, harassed, assaulted in any number of fields.
The danger is that we might fool ourselves into thinking that once Weinstein is punished--if he even is, if it sticks--Hollywood is cleaned up. Or that harassment is only a problem there. It isn't. In ecologies from Wall Street to fraternities to BigLaw to tech, male sexual privilege and male power goes unchecked. Women who fight back are marginalized. There are far too many niches where men get away with it because they are "geniuses"--and their "out of control libidios," which are really just strategies to demean and humiliate women and keep themselves on top, are tolerated, even admired, as symptoms of them being guys who live large and color outside the lines.
Let's prosecute the bystanders and accomplices as accessories to sexual assault. Only then do we send a message that we won't tolerate the Weinsteins everywhere. And that covering for them is criminal, and not worth the risk.
Don't forget that the fish stinks from the head. We elected a tolerator of white supremacists (they're his base), compulsive demeanor of women, and admitted sexual harasser to our country's highest elected office. He is setting an example for every man and boy in this country--an example of entitlement. We can't tolerate it, or we will continue to live it.
Women of color, who have long been portrayed as hyper sexual and available, are leading the way in the fight against systemic harassment, bias, and racism in workplaces and the larger world because surprise, they go together, and until we get rid of them ALL, we're not done.
Here are some readings on the topic that have inspired me:
Tessie McMillan " How We Make Black Girls Grow Up Too Fast "
@TaranaBurke on twitter, who started the #metoo hashtag
Lindy West, " Yes This Is a Witch Hunt and I'm Hunting You "
Rebecca Traister " The Conversation We Should Be Having Now "
Blurred Lines by Vanessa Grigoriadas
June 21, 2017
Gay Until Labor Day: Stretching Female Sexuality in the Hamptons
Anthropologists and primatologists tell us that environment and ecology are variables that really matter when it comes to how we lead our lives, including our sex lives. We evolved as flexible social and sexual strategists. In some contexts, for example, humans are polyandrous while in others, they're polygynous. Here's a piece on how one group of women "play" in one particular ecological niche, the Hamptons, in the summer...
June 8, 2017
Inside 'Skirt Club,' Hollywood and New York's "High Glamour" Sex Party for Women Only
It's OK to wear nipple tape in L.A., writes best-selling author and cultural critic Wednesday Martin as she checks out the all-female gratification gathering and notices distinct differences across the coasts.
