What Women Want

It’s hard to remember now because we hear it all the time, but the term “family values,” in a political context, isn’t very old. An invention of the early ‘90s, it showed up with such force and has remained so convenient a buzz term, that it feels much, much older. The family values folk co-opted the moral high ground and anyone who didn’t fit the mold was subject to suspicion--no one more than Candice Bergen’s I-am-woman-hear-me-roar character “Murphy Brown.” When the liberated, self-actualized, newscasting feminist poster woman chose to raise a child alone, she took more heat than all the other targets combined. She was even held up to infamous ridicule by then-Vice President Dan Quayle. Yet despite that, or maybe because of it, Murphy Brown emerged as iconic rather than demonic, and smart, independent gals everywhere got a new mentor. Which was empowering for us and great for the ratings of “Murphy Brown.” Until all that success backfired a bit. The Murphy Brown character became so inextricably entwined with the worldview of career women trying to shatter the glass ceiling, that when she had a sweet moment singing “Natural Woman” to her new little baby, it created quite a stir. The feminist crowd felt betrayed by the perceived message that nothing could truly fulfill a woman but motherhood. But I had just had my first baby and I totally understood. In Susan Milord’s If I Could, a mama raccoon makes big promises to her beloved baby. Don’t we all?

http://www.amazon.com/If-I-Could-Mothers-Promise/dp/0763623482

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/30235/Susan_Milord/index.aspx

The F-Word

When I used to team-teach a Rhetorical Criticism class at Chico State, the four of us would divide the semester’s lectures up according to our interests and strengths. The course goal was to teach students a variety of techniques for examining communication artifacts and determining their type and impact on human interaction. Given that I was often the only female instructor on the team and that my thesis had been a gender-specific critique, I always opted for teaching the Feminist Criticism lecture. Which was an interesting communication exercise in itself. First, I would get the “huffers”--baseball hat-wearing guys in the back row of the lecture hall who would slam down their pencils and engage in loud, impatient expulsions of air when they heard the day’s topic. Real Renaissance men. And then I would get the bulk of the rest of the class who would vocally object to being called feminists--even though they had already agreed by raise of hands that employment, family planning, and education should be equally shared. The very definition of feminism. I always felt I’d found the real F-word. So, what’s a forward-thinking gal or guy to do? Well, if you’re Robert Munsch and pretty much one of the best children’s authors ever, you write a kick-hiney book about girl power called The Paper Bag Princess. In this story, Elizabeth has a thing for Ronald, but has to get her open-up-a-can on when he is carried off by the dragon. It’s pretty fem-tastic. You should read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Paper-Bag-Princess-Classic-Munsch/dp/0920236162

http://robertmunsch.com/