When Smart Girls Go...Good?

So recently I reconnected with an old friend through--you guessed it--Myspace. She had a private profile so I couldn't spy on her without adding her as a friend. We haven't seen each other in over 8 years. When she approved my request, I got to see what she'd been up to for all this time. Scrolling through her profile it all seemed like the girl I knew from way back until I noticed a disconcerting pattern:

Favorite book: the Bible
Hero: Christ

I was fairly dumbfounded. My friend, while perhaps more "spiritual" than many of my other friends, was by no means a share-the-love-and-the-light Christian. My first reaction was "Wonder what the hell happened to her?" A couple of friends from college had dabbled in Christianity. Both women were half Asian, and for some reason public universities in California have a glut of Asian Christian youth orgs (or if you're cynical like me, you might prefer "cults"). The cults, er, uh, youth groups provided a secure social network for young people, many of whom were living away from home for the first time and lacked the requisite degree of outgoingness to create a friendship community at an institution housing upwads of 20,000 undergrads. One of these women seemed to have difficulty establishing friendships and relied on her church community for help. But the other woman was very adept socially. Their commonality was rather a shared experience of sexual abuse, something which both were struggling in their own ways to come to terms with.

Which is maybe why I immediately assumed the worse for my "rediscovered" friend. Through emails, I learned she's been taking classes on healing from abuse. I remembered snippets of conversations about her father's criticism of her mother, and her and her sister's difficult struggles with eating disorders. In her emails she also shared with me her feelings on marriage and gender roles, which revealed to me the seductive power of Christian ideology. She stressed the importance to her (in so many words) of the stability of knowing what's expected of a woman and what of a man, as well as of the emphasis in Christianity on cherishing and elevating the woman (something which I believe is highly debatable). Reading her emails I remembered the friend who I'd known 8 years ago; she was a Romantic who wanted more than anything to be loved, who let herself be vulnerable, who gave herself to love, and was continuously disappointed. Cliched as it is, she looked for the self-love she lacked in the men she wanted so much to love and be loved by.

This reconnection has prompted me to think more closely about why women find themselves drawn to a religion that tends to confine men and women to stagnant, constructed roles designed to reaffirm men's power and women's subjugation. My friend does not fit the caricature I tend to ascribe to Christians: she's educated, sophisticated, funny, beautiful--shit, she's a smart girl! Which is exactly why I felt so disturbed by her conversion. I don't know for sure if my friend was abused sexually in the way we generally think about such abuse. But she certainly was in the sense that she often felt betrayed and deceived after being sexually intimate with men who insinuated interest in the long term in order to achieve a quick and casual one nighter. She felt abused and turned to God and religion for comfort and understanding, and hopefully to find that self-love where it belongs--inside her. And yet the ideology she's adopted requires that she look outside herself for that love, to a god that is beyond her, and once again, to man in her life who will cherish her.

I don't know what to make of women who have suffered abuse at the hands of men turning to a masculinist, patriarchal institution for comfort rather than to the women in their lives. Why have female bonds failed these women? Where is the community of smart girls ready to help their friends through the healing all women need in order to make it through the violence all women suffer under patriarchy?

A Smart Girl in A Material World

The mall. While I try to avoid it, there are just some things I need that I can't get elsewhere. So today I trekked to fashionista central for some ritual snubbing by the cosmetic counter clerks who think hawking overpriced "beauty" products is a stepping stone to (insert fashion designer, actress, model, kept woman, etc. here).

These women were high school mean girls who somehow managed to find a place in the world where they can get paid to pout and primp and make other women feel bad about themselves. Of course, they (usually) have to smile and make nice to the customers while selectively inserting snide comments disguised as friendly chatter ("You're, uh, look, is really, uh, natural, huh?). Since way back in junior high when Marti (my mother) first "let" me wear make up, I've felt overwheming anxiety about the mall make up counters. First, the lighting: Harsh flourescent lights are a perfect way to shame women into binging on beauty products. Then of course the helpful sales women: They wear theater makeup, which is the only way anyone could look good in that lighting. This allows them to retain their egos while demolishing mine.

Somehow the counter divas always seem to recognize that I'm not only not one of them but that I' don't particualrly feel all that comfortable with the cosmetic counter experience. So now when I make the dreaded trip to the mall for the few products I'm convinced I need, I'm all ready for battle. I wait for the carefully crafted insult-compliments designed to coerce me into purchasing more than the moisturizer and coverup so vital to my "natural look."

Today was worse than usual. I knew I wanted a specific product, but the sales girl was busy giving a make over. She mumbled the obligatory "Be right with you" so I waited, then another woman came. Apparently, there were two divas at the counter, and the other woman found the second one while I waited. So I went over to the cash register and waited there, where both divas were ringing up purchases. A new woman had joined the line, and she was helped next. The first sales girl knew I had been there the longest and didn't even make the customary "I'm sorry for the wait, we'll be right with you" overture. So I left and went to Big Department Store Number 2. At this counter there was one woman working and she was helping two customers. She did not look up once to say "I'll be right with you" or any of the other expected expressions that acknowledge another person's existence. So then a couple more women began gathering around, and eventually a second counter jockey appeared with another customer. I knew if I waited I'd be last again, not because I'm a victim of cosmetic counter cruelty but because I just can't stomach the idea of competing with other women for the pleasure of spending my money on goop I've been brainwashed into believing is vital to maintaining my grasp on the elusive feminine mystique since I got my first subscription to 17 .

So in the end, my ego won (for a change) and I bailed. Instead of spending upwards of 20 bucks on a beauty potion, I went home and found a DIY site that taught me how to make my own. Now I have one less reason to go to the mall.

To make your own goop, check out http://www.thesite.org/healthandwellbeing/appearance/skincare/diybeauty