The Dangers of Allegheny College

Bentley https://www.flickr.com/photos/alleghenycollege/sets/

72157605917402204/

A discussion about disabled and differently-abled bodies immediately reminded me about the lack of accessibility of my college campus, Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. The campus is wholly inaccessible to physically disabled people and poses huge problems for getting around to students, faculty, staff, and visitors. So not only on an academic level does the school close itself off to many people but the school might find itself with higher enrollment, an additionally diverse staff, and a better sense of inclusion to visitors who may be looking to attend the school, send their kid here, teach here, or be a guest speaker here.

I get it: the school is built on a hill. Sometimes I even refer to the school as being built into the hill because of the way buildings have exposed levels down the hill but things like the basement floor or the first floor get buried as the building stretches up the hill. So the topography is hard to overcome. To get almost anywhere you have to go up or downhill, even if you’re walking laterally across the campus’ main hill. So that obstacle is, unfortunately, impossible to get rid of.

Reis http://sites.allegheny.edu/gatorblogs/2013/03/11/my-favorite-

allegheny-spots-part-3/

However, the inaccessibility of the buildings is incredibly disheartening and, in many cases, pitiful. For a school that boasts how lengthy it’s been an accredited undergraduate program, it doesn’t show 201 years of improvement and betterment in its physical adaption. Of the roughly 14 living buildings, dorm and apartment style included, only one has working elevators that are safe for regular student use. The one, of course, is in a newer building. Yet all of the other living buildings require you to be able to use the stairs to get inside the building and to your room. The sole exception I know of is one wing of the first-year only building which has a ramp to the main door and a lift inside the main lobby. But even the one residence building that is “one floor” (i.e. no floors layered on top of each other) still has stairs you need to use in order to just get down the hallway.

But truly, the residence buildings require you to be physically able in order to live in them. While the school does a decent job making sure students with disabilities or medical issues get the housing they need, the choices are severely limited. Participating in socializing or activities in other dorm buildings, though, is incredibly tricky and could be made an easier activity if the college put in the work to make residence buildings better.

Academic buildings, in which education is arguably the whole reason one goes to college in the first place, are an even bigger headache. Three of the 11 academic buildings, including the library, do have elevators and mostly accessible exterior doors. However, unlike residence buildings, it’s harder to avoid certain inaccessible buildings. Classes that meet there, professors’ offices are there, equipment you need to complete your work is scattered between buildings. All built likely decades ago, before there was widespread recognition of the importance of accessibility. Travelers have to use random quantities of stairs to get most places.

Featured in the photographs are buildings that are inaccessible to many students because of their stair-only access points. The first photograph is of Bentley, our administration building, which has two entrances where neither are easy to get to. Reis is the second building featured, with residence life and the counseling center and only one main access point. The third photograph features the campus' security building. All three of these buildings have not been adapted for the accessibility of students, faculty, guests, or the general public. Yes, architecture and historical character are important for their own reasons but making sure people can get to the buildings in the first place is more important than what they look like. 

http://sites.allegheny.edu/gatorblogs/2011/12/29/my-3rd-favorite-thing-about-al

leghenythe-campus/

The school’s inaccessibility is unacceptable. They’ve made meager attempts to provide basic functional buildings. The sprinkled mechanisms of easy use are so few and far between it seems hard pressed to assert that the administration tried to be mindful of others' physical accessibility needs. I find it incredibly disturbing too, that under the school’s guide for professors teaching students with physical limitations who are chronically late, the appropriate action is to discuss how the student can better plan getting around the campus. When the steep topography and the administration’s insufficient attempt to mediate the issue makes student’s daily travels incredibly difficult, it is not the student who is responsible for difficulty maneuvering the campus.

As a result of the campus’ structure, it’s incredibly rare to see someone with physical limitations on this campus frequently, let alone consistently. And because the college shows no signs of changing the structure anytime soon, it’s unlikely people with physical challenges will more frequently participate in this community. 

Previously in this country, there were explicit laws that forbade people with physical difficulties or physical differences from participating in certain social, cultural, economic, and political activities. Called the ‘Ugly Laws,’ they targeted individuals for their physical appearance, branding them as freaks and outcasts. The policies prevented people from get the education or job they wanted and overall not leading the life they should’ve had the freedom to live. 

Unfortunately, the administration’s lack of significant effort to provide a campus that is safe and easy to use for all demonstrates a certain implicit kind of ‘Ugly Law.’ For those who have difficulty with the campus’ layout are shown that their needs, unlike the needs of so many other kinds of students, aren't met. That sentiment makes it difficult to feel welcome and want to pursue an undergraduate degree here.

The Business about Periods

In Chris Bobel's Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation, Courtney Dailey, one of the Bloodsisters' founders, was quoted in speaking about the link between radical menstruation and human rights. According to Courtney Dailey, with radical menstruation comes "...a wider struggle for human rights, against capitalism, racism, classism, homophobia, heterosexism, sizeism, ableism, the list goes on..." (Bobel, 100). Dailey goes on to speak about the importance of understanding how our actions and the way we choose to live affects others as well as the importance of assessing our privilege. This section of the piece really resonated with me. Before reading this piece, I never thought about how much privilege I do have when it comes to feminine hygiene/menstruation, as well as how classism and capitalism play a role in feminine hygiene/menstruation. My position in this society allows any/all products related to feminine hygiene/menstruation to always be readily available to me.

However, in further researching menstruation and it's connection with classism and capitalism, I came across a topic that really doesn't seem to generate enough conversation - being a homeless woman having to cope with periods. Perhaps the most eye opening piece I came across was a video created by Bustle in October of 2016, which featured various homeless women around New York City being interviewed to talk about their struggle with going through menstruation while homeless as well as getting access to feminine hygiene products such as pads or tampons.

In the video, the women mention the cost of pads or tampons, particularly in New York City, and how the price of these products are so high that they often have to choose between having lunch or buying a box of tampons/pads. One woman stated that "...a big box of tampons usually runs around $10, so that could be half of what we make during the day...". Another stated that tampons are "...more money that me and my boyfriend spend on a meal together...I would rather be clean than be full...".

While the average cost per package of a pad is $5.84 and the average cost of a package of tampons is $7.62, I feel that ultimately this issue isn't about who can and cannot afford these products. Rather, the issue is why women have to even pay for these products in the first place and why they aren't readily available to all women? Why are these products marketed as if they are a luxury for us when in reality they have the ability to help us maintain a natural or biological function? While I do believe that not all women must choose to use these products that companies such as Always and Tampax provide (as Bobel proves to us in writing about radical menstruationists) ultimately it comes down to giving every woman the right/access/opportunity to be able to choose what method they are most comfortable using. 

It is important that we continue to use various media platforms to give the public insight on how problematic this issue is, and maybe then we can possibly move toward dismantling a system that sees our biological function as a means of profit.

 

Zika Virus: Lack of Aid from Government Systems

Melissa Lopez

WGSS 275

Blog #5

December 12, 2016

Zika Virus: Lack of Aid from Governments Systems

“Disrupting Hormonal Signals” by Langston, Nancy reminded me of the Zika virus. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Zika is an, “infection during pregnancy that can cause a birth defect of the brain called microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects. Other problems have been detected among fetuses and infants infected with Zika virus before birth, such as defects of the eye, hearing deficits, and impaired growth.” The Zika virus has been more commonly seen in Brazil, in the past years there have been many cases that we have seen on news media. As the matter of fact, the research of Langston interested me because there are similar determining factors for this knowing of a virus causing disruption in pregnant women. The Zika virus is known to be spread among the population through mosquitos, the same mosquitos that carry yellow-fever and dengue. Recently, Colombia is the second highest with new born children with this disease.Colombia

Specifically talking about the Zika virus, I want to focus on the determining factors of Zika, and how that is impacting women who are limited to government aid. On the CNN’s channel,

Zika Virus CNN Shasta Darlington traveled to the city of Recife, Brazil were they consider ground zero of the Zika virus. There she talks to mothers who are single mothers with their newly born child and the struggles that they face when they give birth to a child with microcephaly. Unlike other pregnancies, microcephaly could not and isn’t visible to the doctors until the day the child is born. Today, there are more advances that lead to the determination of whether a mother carries this virus by testing, but unfortunately there is no cure or injection that can prevent this virus from being passed on to your child.

For many families, this is causing financial burdens and the Brazil government isn’t being as cooperative as they should. Each baby is being taken care in a very specific matter, due to their inability to multi-task or respond to two different things at. Their brain is under-developed, each child attends therapy 3 times a week. As the matter of fact, Angela Rocha, doctor at Oswaldo Cruz University Hospital stated that “integrating this generation into the world would be a challenge, because they know that they are facing these under-developments of their brain development.”

According to Jailson de Barros Correia, Recife Health Secretary, there has been over 200,000 soldiers that have gone through Brazil talking to families about the disease and how to protect themselves from this virus, other than that, like I mentioned they have not found a cure for this. The only way that families, especially pregnant women to protect themselves, according to CDC,Zika Virus CDC is to constantly use insect repellent, wear long sleeved shirt and pants and to take precautions inside and outside of your home. Unfortunately, recently, Colombia reported to have more children with this disease. According to Science Mag , Colombia “is the country that has been hardest hit by the mosquito-borne.” About 476 cases of microcephaly were identified over the last eleven months.

The overall message that I want to bring up in my final blog is to think about the government aid, or lack of aid for these countries. I remember during the Olympics in Brazil, many women who planned to get pregnant or that were pregnant were encouraged to not attend Brazil, or forget about the possibility of being pregnant because there was a high chance that they could also be containing the virus. There is this idea of inequality behind this problem for many women. The videos that I present focus on women who are not part of an economically stable home, or are single mothers. The struggles that they face with their children is having to focus on the 24/7 because they need their full attention, but the government isn’t doing any sort of programming that allows for these mothers to have aid throughout the process. Yes, their child’s therapy is free, but what about food and other responsibilities at home. The government is stating the women who wanted to visit Brazil to take extra precautions but isn’t putting the full effort to those women in need. It makes me realize how the system works within women with less privileges and are set aside when they are needed aid and help the most especially in this place of despair. 

Period Drama

Chris Bobel, in the “Radical Menstruation” chapter of her book New Blood, explores a punk-inspired feminist movement urging women to reclaim their bodies from corporations (among other things) that shame and harm them in direct and indirect ways. She talks about grassroots efforts to push back a capitalist agenda that inhibits women from being comfortable with and in control of their bodies.

Her mention of the exploitation of young girls through cheeky (yet extremely sanitized and trustworthy-sounding) advertising encouraging them to buy products she points out as harmful, is all too relevant and relatable. She notes that manufacturers often gear their advertising and packaging to a teenage audience, a large chunk of their market (108). Immediately, the classic happy-looking-conventionally-attractive-girl-doing-something-bold-in-all-white ad came to mind, along with an important revelation: A woman showing absolutely no outward sign of the process her body is undergoing. While this suggests happiness and perhaps comfort (thanks to the awesome product she’s using!!) on the woman’s part, the important thing here is that nobody knows she’s on her period, because it is supposed to be kept secret. The white skirt is meant to provoke fear in the viewer, maybe even awe and respect for the girl, a “She’s so bold! Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if blood showed through!??!” response, because the manufacture relies on cultural stigma to sell products; it’s in their best interest to promote period shame. This concept is insidious because it is thinly veiled in the half-heartedly portrayed “we know periods are rough but we’ve got your back so you’ll be happy, especially because we won’t let your secret (literally) show” message, while also ignoring the reality of physical discomfort that can accompany a period, that a tampon or pad most certainly will not ease, and emphasizing that there should be absolutely no noticeable cues that a woman is menstruating.

1980 Advertisement 

Now’s the annoying (but in no way shocking) part: while searching the internet for the ad that I’d seen in a magazine several years ago that immediately popped into my mind when I read Bobel’s piece, I found an almost identical image, but it had circulated as an ad in the 1980s, disappointing proof that at least in the case of the feminine care industry, messages pertaining to how women should feel about their periods and methods of dealing with them haven’t changed at all. The advertisement from the 1980s is blantant with its assertion that periods are not something to be on display, captioned “With Stayfree Mini-Pads the only thing shows is your confidence,” implying that the knowledge of a well-hidden period empowers women because they don’t have to worry about bloody evidence betraying the shameful secret of their reproductive organs. The more recent ad- nearly identical in terms of visual content- for Tampax tampons, makes a jab at u by kotex’s branding techniques, something only women who had seen kotex ads and products would understand, saying “at a moment like this, I don’t care if my tampons came in a little black box,” meant to imply consumers of Tampax care more about functionality (and the reliability of the brand, though Bobel, and many of the people she interviewed would likely scoff at the concept of cooperations that use potentially dangerous materials in their products could in anyway be reliable) than they do cutesy packaging (maybe suggesting periods are decidedly not cute..)

Looks familiar... this ad from 2011 is written about on The Society For Menstrual Cycle Research's Website

The catchphrase on this ad leads me to my moment of pondering. It reads “outsmart mother nature,” a subtle argument that the natural process of menstruation is at best a nuisance, at worst some type of negative experience being forced on women by biology. This calls to mind Bobel’s juxtaposition of two understandings of periods: what she describes as the “feminist-spiritual” understanding of menstruation and the more radical view sometimes adopted by third-wave feminists that refutes the former’s tendency to attach periods to something mystical and distinctly feminine, instead viewing it only as “a bodily process” and nothing more, but being concerned with what it means in the context of larger institutions (100-103). 

This brings me to Dominque Christina’s “The Period Poem,” performed as slam poetry (video link here, transcript link here), with a message that embodies both concepts. She emphasizes her belief that women are “made of moonlight, magic, and macabre,” proclaiming that monthly encounters with blood bring insights about life (and perhaps death, too). She doesn’t see menstruation solely as a spiritual experience though, bringing in some of the concepts third-wave feminists would be more likely to find important in period discussions like a society in which some have “disdain for what a woman’s body can do,” along with touching on women’s basic human rights in her conclusion. I think the period can be understood through both lenses simultaneously, or just one way, but ultimately whatever way any menstruating person is comfortable with.  I find it hard to embrace just the radical view that Bobel documents one activist saying: “it is blood. Period. We bleed,” as it seems to minimize the body’s capabilities and also the experiences associated with the period, whether they’re bad, neutral, or good (100). Regardless of politics, I still find the body’s cyclical natural rhythm fascinating, along with this cycle’s possibility of supporting new life. I think it’s amazing on both biological and spiritual levels, and certainly not something to be disdained as Christina mentioned, or to be stigmatized and hidden. It is what it is to the individual experiencing it, and I think Bobel’s main point is just that; the period and its meaning belongs to the person, not the system.

Questions of Personhood: When Lawmakers Regulate Pregnant Bodies

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

After passing both the Ohio House and Senate, a bill restricting access to abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat is sitting upon the desk of Governor John Kasich. Dubbed the "Heartbeat Bill," it could potentially be one of the most restrictive pieces of legislation passed by the state in an effort to restrict abortion and access.


According to CNN, the provision restricting abortion comes from an amendment added to another bill in the Ohio legislature that seeks to streamline the process for medical professionals to report child abuse situations.

Senator Charleta Tavares, said "I believe everyone has a right to their body. We allowed a good bill that protects the health and safety of our children to be bastardized into a government takeover of women's wombs."

Let's break it down why this bill is a new level of disaster for those who can become pregnant in Ohio.

First, while it allows for abortions when there is a “serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman,” it allows no provisions for incest or rape, the typical caveats of most anti-abortion legislation, as reported by USA Today.

Secondly, abortions cannot be performed once a heartbeat is detectable, placing the abortion window at around 6 weeks after conception. That's right, six weeks. And this early date is quite important when we consider the timeline of pregnancies and the consequences this deadline may have.

Ovulation Calendar, WebMD

Often, the first sign of pregnancy is a missed period, even two. But even if you've missed a period, how long would you wait before you were sure you were late? One, two? As you consider how many potential weeks that may be (6-8 but who's counting?), let's consider some other some reasons many women don't know they're pregnant for multiple weeks/months.

Approximately 1 in 450 will not know they are pregnant until they are 20 weeks along. Even more, 1 in 2,500 women do not know they pregnant until they are in labor. In labor. It may be easy to blame these individuals and call they irresponsible, but there are a variety of reasons that lead to not knowing. They are often called cryptic pregnancies and are much more common than I think these legislators would care to realize.

A great article by Bustle walks through some of the reasons women, and others who may become pregnant, might not notice a pregnancy until months into carrying. Some do not experience regular periods and a missed one may not raise a red flag in the same one to someone on a schedule. It's also possible to experience spotting and breakthrough bleeding, which may be taken as a sign of a light period, even though it's completely normal for women to experience as a part of the pregnancy process.

Also, those who suffer from poly-cystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or endometriosis may be infertile, or believe to be infertile, and since these conditions already inhibit or influence periods, it may be harder to detect a pregnancy. Also, if you're told you're infertile, how often are you taking a pregnancy test? Let's be real, no one has the time, energy, and money for that.

Progression of Pregnancy Test Results

Speaking of which, the most common way that women come to understand that they're pregnant is through an in home pregnancy test. According to the American Pregnancy Association, pregnancy tests tend to be either blood or urine tests. Since urine tests are about as accurate as blood tests, and can be taken either in at a doctor's office or at home, they tend to be more economical and available.

Urine pregnancy tests work by testing for the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) - a hormone emitted by a fetus. A negative result on a pregnancy test may indicate that the test was taken too early to detect the pregnancy, was taken wrong, or that the fetus is not putting out a detectable amount of hCG. While blood tests can detect even the smallest doses of hCG, if a woman is not showing other signs of pregnancy (weight gain, hunger, morning sickness, etc.) coupled with negative read outs on her urine pregnancy tests she may not even think to go get tested. Or honestly wants to spend that kind of money to confirm what she thinks she already knows, that she's not pregnant as the urine test indicates.

All of this is to say, if legislators are proposing a bill to restrict abortion to the detection of a heartbeat (and doctors will be held accountable by law if they do not first perform an ultrasound, or proceed with knowledge of a detectable heartbeat), they are potentially limiting the window for a very small fraction of individuals with early detection.

If we add in the fact that clinics are closing, leading to longer trips and waiting times for appointments, coupled with 24 hour waiting periods for the procedure from initial appointments, we can see how even those with early detection will fall outside of the 6 week window.

This essentially cuts off a women's right at all to choose and punishes her if she seeks to terminate her pregnancy later. She will now be forced to carry that child to term, essentially forcing all women to carry to term there pregnancies within the state.

When we consider pregnancy and women's agency in this light, it is not hard to understand how Susan Bordo conceptualizes a woman's body as a mere "incubator to her fetus," (79).

"The essence of the pregnant woman...is her biological, purely mechanical role in preserving the life of another. In her care, this is the given value, against which her claims to subjectivity must be rigorously evaluated, and they will usually be found wanting insofar as they conflict with her life-support function. In the face of such a conflict, her valuations, choice, consciousness are expendable." (79, author's emphasis).

In many ways, the attacks against reproductive rights and the shift in ideology surrounding the personhood of a fetus have left women vulnerable to continued attacks upon their own personhood. When she is reduced to her "life-support function," made to bear children regardless of her choice (especially with restrictive abortion against cases involving rape and incest as the new "Heartbeat Bill" would mandate), women lose the essence of their own person, the value of herself. Her rights are easily sacrificed in a current state for the potential life that her body may bring to bear.

A woman embracing her child, Northwest Texas Healthcare

Sure, you're saying, I can see this with abortion maybe, but a shift in an entire ideology? Crazy.

Yet this is only the latest segment in a long stream of attacks against the ability of a woman to determine her own value, her own choices, her own consciousness. Not only does this abortion bill hope to restrict access, granting increased importance to the life (deemed in Ohio as the point where a heartbeat is detectable), it prevents women from intervening in the process of their body. It restricts their access to the work that their body is doing, relieving them of  say in their natural body processes.

However, other states have started introducing bills to require funerals for fetuses, regardless if from abortion, miscarriage, stillborn, etc. While typically disposed of as medical tissue waste, this new shift, while a large financial and emotional burden, serves to re-conceptualize how we think of this tissue. A clump of medical tissue waste or a life form deserving of the ritual reserved for beloveds (family, friends, pets, etc.).

This is at a time where it is rumored that Sofia Vergara is being sued for child neglect of her frozen, fertilized embryos with her now ex-boyfriend. This grants agency and rights to frozen embryos not yet implanted in a uterus in a larger capacity than we seem to be witnessing for living, breathing potential pregnant mothers.

The "Heartbeat Bill" has many material ramifications for women, and other individuals, who have the potential of becoming pregnant in Ohio. But taken within a wider shift of ideology surrounding the identity of potential growing life we can begin to see the shifting legal structures that are working to disrupt women's relationship to her own personhood. Crazy indeed.

Blood Art and Activism

Reading Chris Bobel’s chapter “Radical Menstruation” of her book New Blood, I found myself wondering about the scope of the movement, both in time-span (as in, in the year 2016, is this still a movement with momentum), and how it has potentially spread to various forms of activism and activist action. As an art major, my main direction in seeking specific answers to these questions is, of course, art oriented. Specifically, my question became: how has the radical menstruation movement, and third-wave feminist action influenced performance art?

Performance art, and particularly American performance art, has strong ties to the second-wave feminist movement of the 60’s and 70’s. Coming out of a period of American art where the “in” style of artwork was minimalism (straight lines, machine made perfection, art about art and for art’s sake, and all around white and male), performance art offered a space in which female artists could use artistic action as a vehicle to engage directly with issues of immediate concern. Their art was not art for art’s sake, but art deeply tied to feminist ideology and their identities and sexualities as women.

In fact, I found myself a little surprised (although not majorly, given that the direct focus of the chapter was directed at specifically menstrual product activism) that the history of feminist artwork centered around menstruation wasn’t mentioned. (For a decent overview starting back in 1971 with Judy Chicago’s Red Flag, check out this link.) In fact, the radical cheerleading and other performative actions mentioned by Bobel in her text, such as the tampon applicator hat and “zap action” protests all have direct connections with performance art and collaborative art action.

Interior Scroll (1975), Carol Schneemann x

Compounding on this connection is the fact that one of the most important works to the history of performance art is considered to be Carol Schneemann’s Interior Scroll, in which the artist read text from a scroll pulled from her vagina. Knowing this, I really couldn’t resist exploring the contemporary connection between menstrual art and menstrual activism.

x

Both art and activism have agendas, so where do they align, and where do they differ? Performance art is often thought of as radical and shocking, but is contemporary feminist performance art (and specifically menstrual performance), as radical in theme and message as those in the radical menstruation movement? A movement that is anti-capitalist, pro DIY, environmentalist, and health oriented seems to something artists can get on board with, but have they? Big questions, I know! And actually, not really questions that I can answer authoritatively at all, but I can look at some individual artists that are performing and making a name for themselves right now.

Performance art is a medium deeply connected to the body of the artist, and therefor I had thought that it would be fairly easy to find a feminist performance artist that uses their own body to deal with themes surrounding menstruation. It actually turned out to be fairly difficult. Most artists the appear after a search are either visual artists, or historical artists and works from the 70’s. I did find one artist, however, that appears to fall in line with the methods of performance art, with a heavy dose of humor.

Clown Car (2008), Jess Dobkin

Her name is Jess Dobkin, and she’s Toronto based with a style that incorporates humor and lightness into performances involving all sorts of bodily functions. Her works include putting faces on her breasts to perform a puppet show with them, lipsynching to Streisand and Diamond’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” as a duet between herself and her vagina (also sporting goofy stick-on eyes), a vaginal clown car, and her most known work, a bar at which pasteurized breast milk was served (for an article that has both a write-up of her Lactation Bar, and her artist's statement about both the specific work and her practice, click here). Her works that have to do directly with menstruation are Clown Car and Bleeding at the Ball. Neither of these works appears to be confronting the same targets of radical menstruators. Instead of aiming for DIY, low impact, low capitalist consumption and awareness of the ways in which menstrual products are harmful, Dobkin’s menstruation performances (at least from the documentation available) still seem focused on simply placing her menstruating body in a way that makes the audience confront the realities of menstruation. However, her work also fits squarely in line with the humor used by feminist activists described by Bobel -- “In-your-face humor that incorporates an element of shock to awaken consciousness”.

Casting Off My Womb (2013), Casey Jenkins
More info can be found here

This humorous approach to bodily performance is something that is fairly unique to Dobkin -- much of the feminist performance that has preceded her has been heavily influenced by ritual action and work-like action. Dobkin however, seems to take inspiration from vaudeville acts, general clowning buffoonery, and queer theater. This type of humorous approach allows both Dobkin and menstrual activists to create work that is at once accessible and confrontational, but not trivializing. I think this is where the common ground currently is. It doesn’t quite appear that Dobkin and other contemporary feminist performance artist’s goals are currently aligned. From my viewpoint, Dobkin’s work, and the work of other performance and visual artists (like the “vaginal knitter” Casey Jenkins) is still mostly focused on confrontation of public attitudes about menstruation (which is still very important, judging by the disgusted titles of news articles and “think pieces” about such work), and not the combination of both acceptance and personal health/justice focus of radical menstruators.

Obviously, there is more artwork and performance in the world than gets noticed by news outlets and online journals -- this blog post is not about saying there isn’t. But apparently there is a bit of a divide between the focus radical menstruation movement and contemporary feminist performance art. As two areas in which the body becomes an essential part of (often) individual and group political action, there is potential for a mutually beneficial relationship, one that I hope forms, or is already in formation!

Femininity & Beauty Standards in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

The difference in gender performance between men and women begins in middle school when young boys and girls start to go through puberty. For many girls, this change means sports become secondary to becoming a “proper lady” in every facet of life—education, dress, behavior, movement, talking. Girls are told that women are passive and fragile, and as they grow up, women become stuck in a spot of being a subject that cannot move above the patriarchal society and standards that have been placed on them because of their gender. Women who continue in sports do not use their bodies in the same way as men, often constricting themselves, not extending their reach as much as they physically are able to, and underestimating themselves more frequently. Erica Rand talks about athletes Kye Allums and Johnny Weir in relation to gender performance in their sports and what that means for masculinity and femininity. The performance of gender is a self-identified action that is ties less to social constructions and more on the individual’s agency. The Victoria’s Secret models and the Buzzfeed models that came out following the 2016 Fashion Show are performing femininity in particular ways that reinforce the construction of it.

Every November the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show draws in viewers to watch specially chosen models and Victoria’s Secret Angels model lingerie in angel wings and high heels. The Victoria’s Secret models are known for the high beauty standards required to be in show, including being in extremely great shape, very thin and that they must be taller than 5’10”. Some women tune in to see the products that are being modeled, but more tune in to see the models—how they walk, what they are wearing, how their make-up is done, how their hair is styled, how their stomach and thighs look in the limited clothing they are wearing. This year, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was aired on CBS on Monday, December 5, and featured a total fifty-four models, eleven of which are Angels.

            On Thursday, December 8, Buzzfeed released a video of “everyday women” being glammed up like the Victoria’s Secret models and walking a runway in their underwear. They chose women of different heights and sizes to put on lingerie and walk in front of a crowd of Buzzfeed employees. Every woman involved has her hair and makeup done by a professional and their outfits planned out. Though many of the women adhere to parts of the ideal image of femininity with flawless hair and makeup and freshly shaved bodies, several of them stand out for moments of opposition to the standard when they tell viewers that they are walking without having shaved armpits and legs or by showing tattoos. At the beginning, all of the women share their concerns of not looking like the models and not being confident in being so public in their underwear. However, by the end, all of the women feel good about themselves, are happy that they did it and want to get every woman to feel confident in herself regardless of size. Buzzfeed uses their space as a large media platform to share a message about positive body image through this video.

 

While Buzzfeed is sharing a message on body positivity at all sizes, Cosmopolitan magazine is sharing a message that the models embody what every woman should strive for. On Saturday, December 10, Cosmo released on Snapchat a list of fifteen of the Victoria’s Secret models with no makeup on. The list is not prefaced at all, nor does it have a description of when or where each picture was taken; however, each model featured is dressed well, and though the photos are not professional and the women are not wearing makeup, the photos are in good lighting and angled well to show the best features of each woman. This list is meant to show “everyday women” that the models are just like them, even if they are still ‘prettier’ by stereotypical beauty standards with big eyes, bright smiles, cleanly-shaped eyebrows, high cheekbones and full lips.

        In a time when beauty standards are being critiqued in more places than ever with social media making it more accessible to share, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was talked about more for both the good and the bad. The show features confident women showing off their perfect bodies, and it is good for other women to see that confidence. However, many comments about the show are about how there should be more diversity in the models and that the image being shown to the world should be more accessible like Buzzfeed worked to achieve on a smaller scale.