By the time I graduated from college in 1992, many of the signature historical moments that presaged Third Wave feminism had already occurred: the Riot Grrrl conference in D.C. (1992), the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings (1991), the two marches on Washington to protest the Supreme Court cases that ushered in a rollback of abortion rights (1989 and 1992), and the Rodney King verdict (1992). Each bit of bad news from the front was like a cold shower on the stickiest hot day: I felt awake and hungry and clean. I moved to New York and got a job with Ms. magazine (where I could be paid to be outraged by these news events), and patriarchy loomed larger than ever. It was the ghost in our creation myth. The magazine had come into being because New York magazine’s Clay Felker liked Gloria Steinem so much, he bankrolled the first issue of Ms. The feminist answer to Time had been owned by men throughout its life, except during a brief moment in the ’80s when Australian feminists took over. Ironically, those Aussie ladies were the first and only owners to deem fashion coverage a good idea.
Ms. as a workplace in the 1990s was a cross between fast-paced New York publishing and a hairy, hummus-y separatist commune. The commune side enabled me to become bisexual and fall in love with a Ms. intern, and afforded me the opportunity to create a coven with my friend Amy Richards and cast spells while drinking red wine from a communal goblet. The fast-paced side involved producing the magazine, hiring real writers, and attending press conferences and preview screenings of movies. Combining fast-paced and separatist values, we didn’t take ads, and underlings like me loved to snap that back at unsuspecting underlings from companies calling for our ad rate sheets. “We are ad free,” we’d say, smug in our purity and contemptuous of having something as compromising as a revenue stream.
I was again reprieved of privilege; Ms. was poor and unglamorous. We helped battered women find shelters while the interns at Vogue tottered in their black Prada booties, bringing Anna Wintour coffee. Another opportunity for purity came from the fact that no men worked for us or with us, other than Jimmy, the mail room guy. However, we worked for men. We worked for The Man. In particular, we worked for our owner, Dale Lang.
Lang made his money originally from billboards throughout the Midwest, but went on to buy several feministy women’s magazines, including Working Woman, Working Mother, and Sassy. He was often cash-strapped and making deals, yet he retained a patina of power. He hosted a grand party at the Rainbow Room early in my tenure and got Bill Gates to speak at a luncheon. Even without a mustache, he looked like the patriarchy: old, shortish, with a full head of silver hair, benign smile; and rheumy, unseeing eyes.
By my third year at Ms., publishing was having a pre-Internet crisis. Paper and postage prices were skyrocketing. Editors and art directors were spending hours every week tracking down checks and fielding phone calls from panicked and pissed writers. The printer hadn’t been paid; we couldn’t use a car service if we worked late (though that was nothing new) or do expenses (ditto). The officesupplies room was down to a cardboard box with pencil stubs and a few reams of graph paper. I had to ask my best friend to get me Post-its, pens, and notebooks from her job at Citibank.
Soon, a few rooked writers began suing in small claims court. It didn’t matter if you were famous (Susan Faludi and Rita Mae Brown were stiffed), or had an agent harassing for you, or were not going to make your rent if you didn’t get that couple grand—it was an equal-opportunity shaft. By the end of 1996, thirty Ms. writers were bringing a fraud suit with the writers’ union and Lang owed over $70,000 to the writers alone.*3 At a new low, Ms. spelled “feminism” wrong on the cover of the May/June 1996 issue (“feminisim”). Demoralization had arrived.
Editors trudged along, heads bowed, occasionally calling emergency meetings to make lists of writers in order of how desperately they needed to be paid. I had gone from feeling so proud and free at Ms.—who else had a job where she was paid to think about Ani DiFranco?—to feeling a horrible shame and frustration at how powerless we were to solve our own problems. We couldn’t get anyone paid, but we also couldn’t stop assigning pieces to freelancers (with contracts stating they would be paid), because if the magazine didn’t continue, we wouldn’t be able to pay anyone. It was a miserable cycle.
Buoyed by the hippie-commune side of Ms.— or, you might say, by its faux-utopian side—I suggested at an editorial meeting that we perform a Wiccan ritual to rid ourselves of the patriarchy. I was into Wicca. No one exactly took me up on it, but no one laughed, either. I took that as a sign that it was a good idea. That night, I took a beeswax candle, some crystals, and essential oils over to my girlfriend Anastasia’s apartment. We drew a bath and dropped in the oil, and, sitting in the clawfoot tub together, read a spell another friend had written to banish the patriarchy. We lit the candle, which was in the shape of a goddess. When the candle burned down to nothing, it meant we had extinguished the patriarchal spirit.
After about half an hour of sitting in the tub, Anastasia and I began to get pruny and waterlogged. I felt sort of faint and wished the candle would melt faster, but it seemed dangerous to go get dressed until the patriarchal essence had burned out on its own. Finally, about an hour in, the candle flickered and died, but instead of disappearing, it left a large blob of cellulite-like wax. “What are we supposed to do with the glob?” I asked Anastasia.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I think we can get out of the tub.” We dressed, but I felt anxious when she handed me the glob on my way out the door. “We’ll figure out how you dispose of the by-product,” she said reassuringly as I left her apartment with the patriarchy in my purse. The next day, she instructed me to hurl the remains into a body of water.
Although Manhattan is an island bordered by two rivers, one of which is a brackish estuary that runs into the Atlantic Ocean, I somehow couldn’t find a way to get the patriarchy out of my bag and into the water. For two weeks, I clomped along with it haunting me like an aborted embryo. Meanwhile, Ms.’s financial problems only got worse. Our sister magazine Sassy was sold, the entire staff fired without warning. The Sassy editors’ belongings were scattered throughout the office, the half-full water bottles and blinking computers evoking Pompeii. Ms. was assigning new articles while juggling several issues’ worth of unpaid bills—and behind nearly every bill was a freelance writer or photographer or illustrator, virtually all women, who called each day wondering when her money was coming. We’d explain as well as we could the terrible position we were in. No one could say we were enjoying it; our life was hell and there was nothing to be done about it.
One day, Helen, the kind and mouselike Lang receptionist, called to tell me a writer was waiting in reception for me. I’ll call the writer Wanda. Wanda had an annoying, vaguely British accent and stringy, blah hair. She had written a thousand-word arts piece for me about Marleen Gorris or Agnès Varda. I didn’t particularly like the piece, or her, and she had already been much more aggressive about following up on her check than any of my other writers.
I geared up to explain to Wanda, yet again, that there was nothing I could do to expedite her payment and that I would let her know as soon as I knew anything. I steeled myself for anger, because I’d fielded a lot of it over the months of nonpayment. But when Wanda looked into my eyes, I saw something else: She was scared. “I am a single mother,” she said, her eyes wet and her jaw tight, “and I need that money to pay for us to live. I need it right now; I’ve needed it for months. I am our only provider.”
Wanda rattled me. Part of it was her literal desperation; part of it was knowing that she counted on Ms. to be responsible—to be a business, not an “ad-free magabook,” or whatever it was I was so gleeful we’d become. The feminist ethos that made Ms. special meant I had to look Wanda in the eyes and, ideally, rectify the situation.
I don’t recall exactly what happened next. I think I took her to the accounting department and requested an emergency check, but that might just be my delusions of heroism playing tricks on my memory. I do know that when I went hom
e that night, I dug the plug of patriarchy wax out of my bag and flushed it unceremoniously down the toilet. A little after that, Lang sold Ms. to a guy who didn’t want to pay the old debts, and soon after that, I quit.
I started working for places that weren’t so pure, because I was now one of those freelance writers, unknown to the people in accounting, who needed to make a living. I pitched everywhere, and I felt naked without the label of Ms. editor to identify me. Gradually, however, I began to get offers and didn’t need to be shrouded in the white wings of feminist publishing.
I had an idea I pitched to Playboy, about how women my age grew up with both that magazine and Ms. in their households, and how this reality normalized soft-core porn and feminism for my generation. An editor there, Bruce, liked it and called me into their Fifth Avenue offices for a meeting. I was excited. I felt like a spy entering the headquarters of the patriarchy.
Bruce met me in reception. Vargas 1940s pin-ups prettified the already pretty walls, and a floating staircase bisected the grand space. Bruce was short—perhaps five-foot-six—with an unruly halo of blondish frizz. He complimented me on my outfit and my idea, and gave me the assignment to write a feature on contemporary feminism. The final piece featured interviews with Ani DiFranco, Guinevere Turner, Helen Gurley Brown, and Debbie Stoller. Bruce called me after I filed it. “I never say this,” he said, “but I think this could win a National Magazine Award!” The article provoked huge debates at the editorial meeting: Half the staff thought it was bold and surprising, and the other half (which included the editor in chief) thought it wasn’t right for Playboy. The latter half prevailed; Bruce was upset but made sure I was paid my full fee within the week of the story being killed.
I wrote pieces and tracked down my checks. I wrote a book with my former coven mate Amy Richards, then another, and then wrote two on my own. I got pregnant and had my son, Skuli.
As a single mother, I felt a newfound sympathy for the breadwinner. Not the Dale Langs of the world, whom I might still be able to write off as the devil, but the men and women who had to pay the mortgage, buy the diapers, and make sure there was food. Not paying that struggling Wanda still caused a pang of guilt, but I also felt a sense of solidarity with her. I was less and less pure, further away from the Emerald City of Feminism I thought I wanted and more focused on hunting down my checks. I requested higher fees partly out of self-esteem and partly because Skuli needed me to make more money. I hectored editors until I was paid. I had become Wanda. I no longer saw patriarchy as my nemesis or feminism’s.
Like “the communist threat,” the word “patriarchy” is at once unnecessarily shrill and too broad. The role patriarchy leaves for women—the child—is not just unappealing, it’s inaccurate, partly because of the changes achieved by the Second Wave. In 1960, women couldn’t have credit cards, make partner, fight in wars, or get pregnant at forty-five using a sperm donor. They were children in the eyes of the law, the culture, and themselves. Today, we have a male president who isn’t traditionally masculine, and a first lady who is taller and older than her husband and was once his boss. We’ve had two presidents who were raised by single mothers and married women who were their equals, intellectually and professionally. Today, feminism’s challenges are much more complex than good cop/bad cop—and that is true even while we deal with gender stereotypes that limit all of us and laws that erode women’s freedom.
I have thought a lot about my father, who wasn’t so stern, as it turns out. I once glibly characterized him as this stranger who came home at night tired and grouchy. Now, I add to that image one of him leaving for work each day before 7:00 AM in order to pay for college for his three daughters, or of the ulcers he got when we hit puberty and were sneaking boys into our rooms.
Just before I moved to New York, my father shaved off his mustache. I screamed when I saw his exposed upper lip for the first time. He seemed nude and vulnerable, like a turtle out of its shell. Was his threatening countenance no deeper than that handlebar of whiskers? It began to seem as if my father’s scariness were merely a projection.
After the birth of my second son, my parents came to help. My father—still without a mustache—carried my days-old son around the apartment for hours, patting his back, rocking him, changing his diaper, and putting him down for naps. The word “patriarch” didn’t come to mind while I watched him—but “father” did.
WOULD YOU PLEDGE YOUR VIRGINITY TO YOUR FATHER?
In a chandelier-lit ballroom overlooking the Rocky Mountains in the fall of 2006, some hundred couples feast on herb-crusted chicken and julienned vegetables. The men look dapper in tuxedos; their dates are resplendent in floor-length gowns, long white gloves, and tiaras framing twirly, ornate updos, the likes of which you often see in bridal parties. Seated at a table with four couples, I watch as the gray-haired man next to me reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a small satin box, and flips it open to check out a gold ring he’s about to place on the finger of the woman sitting to his right. Her eyes well up with tears as she is overcome by emotion.
The man’s date? His twenty-five-year-old daughter. Welcome to Colorado Springs’ Seventh Annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball, held at the five-star Broadmoor Hotel. The event’s purpose is, in part, to celebrate dad-daughter bonding, but the main agenda is for fathers to vow to protect the girls’ chastity until they marry and for the daughters to promise to stay pure. Pastor Randy Wilson, host of the event and cofounder of the ball, strides to the front of the room, takes the microphone, and asks the men, “Are you ready to war for your daughters’ purity?”
Wilson’s voice is jovial, yet his message is serious—and spreading like wildfire. Dozens of these lavish events are held every year; mainly in the South and Midwest, from Tucson to Peoria to New Orleans, sponsored by churches, nonprofit groups, and crisis pregnancy centers. The balls are all part of the evangelical Christian movement, and they embody one of its key doctrines: abstinence until marriage. Thousands of girls have taken purity vows at these events over the past nine years. While the abstinence movement itself is fairly mainstream—about 10 percent of teen boys and 16 percent of girls in the United States have signed virginity pledges at churches, rallies, or programs sponsored by groups such as True Love Waits—purity balls represent its more extreme edge. The young women who sign covenants at these parties tend to be devout, homeschooled, and sheltered from popular culture.
Randy Wilson’s nineteen-year-old, Khrystian, is typical: She works at her church, spends most weekends at home with her family, and has never danced with a male other than her father or brother. Emily Smith, an eighteen-year-old I meet, says that even kissing is out for her. “I made a promise to myself when I was younger,” she says, “to save my first kiss for my wedding day.” A tenet of the abstinence movement is that having lovers before marriage often leads to divorce. In the Wilsons’ community, young women hope to meet suitors at church, at college, or through family connections.
The majority of the girls here are, as purity ball guidelines suggest, “just old enough . . . [to] have begun menstruating.” But a couple dozen fathers have also brought girls under ten. “This evening is more about spending time with her than her purity at this point,” says one seven-year-old’s dad, a trifle sheepishly. The event is seemingly innocent—not once do I hear “sex” or “virgin” cross anyone’s lips. Still, every one of the girls here, even the seven-year-old, will sign that purity covenant.
Encouraging girls to avoid sleeping around is, without a doubt, a good thing. The same goes for dad-daughter bonding; research shows that girls who have solid relationships with their fathers are more likely to grow up to be confident, self-respecting, successful women and tend to make wise choices along the way. Question is, is putting girls’ purity on a pedestal the way to achieve these allimportant goals?
Fathers who are protective of their daughters’ virginity are nothing new. “Keep your flower safe!” a good friend’s dad used to tell her when we were in college, and we�
��d laugh—both because it was too late for her virginity and because there was something distasteful to us about his trying to control her sex life. Recently, though, protecting girls’ virginity has become a national, not just familial, concern. In 1996, after lobbying by the religious right, Congress allocated nearly half a billion dollars for public schools nationwide to adopt sex ed programs that advocate abstinence only. Today, all but a few states use government money for classes that basically warn against any sexual activity outside of marriage.
The movement’s latest mission is to make abstinence cool (it’s been called “chastity chic”). There are Christian rock concerts where attendees sign pledges, sites like Geocities.com/thevirginclub that list stars who have held off on sex until marriage (Jessica Simpson, divorce notwithstanding, is one of their patron saints), and supportive bloggers (Abstinence.net features one called The Professional Virgin). Silver Ring Thing, a national abstinence group for teens, has an active MySpace page filled with comments like this from “Brianna”: “I vowed to stay a virgin till marriage two years ago and it’s been a long tough road . . . but it gets a lil’ easier every day.”
The first purity ball, with all its queen-for-a-day allure, was thrown in 1998 by Wilson, now forty-eight, and his wife, Lisa, forty-seven; the two run Generations of Light, a popular Christian ministry in Colorado Springs. “We wanted to set a standard of dignity and honor for the way the girls should be treated by the men in their lives,” says Lisa, a warm, exuberant woman with a ready smile and seven children, ages four to twenty-two. Lisa’s own father left her family when she was two, and despite a kind stepfather, she says, she grew up not feeling valued or understood. “Looking back, it’s a miracle I remained pure,” she says. “I believe if girls feel beautiful and cherished by their fathers, they don’t go looking for love from random guys.”
F 'em! Page 8
