WHISTLING GIRLS, CROWING HENS
        AND NUMB CROTCHES

        You can tell at once if a woman has internalized assertiveness training; has been brought up to value herself; has cast aside the crap in her cultural programming and chosen to define herself.

        Sure, her demeanor is strong and her carriage erect, but the tip off is her conversation.  She has stopped self-obsessing about her body, her clothing, her hair etc. ad nauseum.  It is most refreshing to experience.

        One of the best ads we've seen in a long time holds a mirror up to women.  It enables them to see the way self-fixation looks.  This cereal ad features several men, each whining obsessively about a part of his body.  The final message is that men do not act this way -- why should we?

        Why, indeed!  Easy answer here.  We've been trained to all our lives.  Even if we had great parents and teachers, there is still that old devil, peer pressure.  Then there are magazines, T.V., newspapers, neighbors and relatives that unite to produce a cacophony of pressure to conform!

        Why don't more women get a wakeup call from comic strips, like CATHY, that continually disparage them?  Why don't more women realize that they are caught in a culture trap? Actually, quite a few of us do and can resist the constant reinforcement of programming by the media.

        But many women do not realize or recall how they were programed as children.  Take this little ditty we remember which warns of dire consequences:

        "Whistling girls, like crowing hens, Always come to some bad end."

        Cute, but lethal!  Whistling girls?  [Only boys whistle.]  Crowing hens?  [Hens don't crow, roosters do.]  ALWAYS A BAD END is promised when a happy, confident, growing girl tries to escape from the established female paradigm.

        Never heard that one?  Well, what did you hear that put you down or scared you, and can you remember how you felt when you heard it?  Tell us about it.  'Gappers would like to hear from you.  Fighting this programming IS difficult and many women either do not want or don't dare to.  They are content to, "... enjoy being a girl."  Or they are afraid to experience, "I am woman, hear me roar!"

        We don't knock their fears.  It IS safer to comply.  Reflecting back to society the female paradigm it has created causes no waves.  It is only when one becomes aware of, and rebels against the programming that one is really noticed.

        And generally, that notice is punitive in nature.  This is true especially if a woman disobeys the culture's construct of womanly.  For example: Suppose she becomes aware one day that hair is O.K. on some people ie males.

        So she stops shaving her underarms and legs.  Why not?  Hair grows there naturally in women just as it does in men.  Interestingly enough, it is women who will give her the most overt grief over this.  But it was, and still is, men, exerting their preference for preadolescent, hairless females, that forced this fanatic obsession in women.

        Now the practice of shaving has become so de rigor that Ann Landers insists that it is a cultural characteristic of American women.  And Oprah Winfrey, who we expected would think that each woman should decide the matter for herself, agrees.

        On one of her T.V. shows, she called underarm hair (in women), "disgusting."  Hair growing naturally is "disgusting" because it is on a woman?  THAT'S DISGUSTING!

        Oprah choses to refuse to eat beef but insists that women must adopt her hair fetishes.

        Another example of the constant media reinforcement concerns dress.  Here, T.V. continually shows women wearing clothing and footwear that restricts their movement and may be injurious to their health, yet some women follow fashion blindly.

        It does not matter to some if they ruin their health as long as they have a slender, hairless body.  One that permits them to wear clothing that makes sitting down or bending over a show-and-tell lesson in female anatomy, and natural movement impossible.

        The examples above have detrimentally defined our gender to the point that women are NOT trusted to govern, to invent, to direct or to manage as well as men can.  It has kept us over-worked, deemed untrustworthy and underpaid no matter how hard some have struggled to overcome this stigma.

        This judgment of us is made not only by men but by women!  And, again, it is women who are the enforcers of fashion and the hardest on women who do not conform.

        AFL - CIO Working WomenIn 1969, thirty years ago, women were paid 59 cents for every dollar a man made.  Today it is 74 cents and 3/5 of this gain has come from the falling of men's wages.  As Ellen Goodman notes, "We have, in short, made economic progress at roughly the rate of HALF A CENT A YEAR."

        We do not advocate that women become men.  We only suggest that ALL women become themselves -- not the products of a training that has kept them on their knees for thousands of years, and still hobbled by fashion fetishes.

        When we look back at the actions and attitudes of women like Victoria Woodhull, the FIRST woman to run for president of the United States, or Susan B. Anthony, who struggled to help win us the vote, it appears that our gender has reversed evolution, and THAT is disturbing.

        With all our newly won freedom and franchise, we should be getting better, stronger and smarter.  We certainly showed good sense when we swapped hoop skirts for slacks and stopped riding horses sidesaddle!

        On the other hand, the male gender is no great shakes either, and it has had eons more freedom to develop than we have.  For years, men of all ages have felt a numbness in their groin as they peddled along on their bicycles, but, slaves to machismo, would never admit it.

        That is until urologist, Dr. Irwin Goldstein found that PERMANENT damage may be done to arteries and nerves of the male genitalia by the bicycle seat and this damage could result in impotence.

        Mention of the big "I" caused many men to rush to their doctors.  As one man put it, "... that seat made me as soft as overcooked rigatoni."

        Lucky males.  They have the establishment with them so they don't have to choose between sex and cycling.  The bike manufactures are redesigning the seats, and, of course, Viagra is always on tap to stiffen any afflicted member.

        And if worst comes to worst, they can always ride sidesaddle.    :)

        Twanda@ConnRiver.net

        1999-013

        Copyright 1999 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@ConnRiver.net.

        G e n d e r G a p p e r s   T M