Why is President Ruth Simmons consistently referred to as the University's first female president by non-campus media, or its first African-American president, when up until her ascent, it had sufficed to simply write "President" without the addition of "white" or "male"? The answer is, of course, that both women and people of color have been grossly underrepresented in positions of visibility and power. The question is whether this emphasis on difference from the norm is productive. In the short run, it might be useful, whereas the ultimate goal is a society in which gender or race does not correlate with visibility or power.
It is not that the media emphasizes the president's gender or race in a negative way — the fact that it is considered so noteworthy that it is automatically included in virtually all reports is enough to see that it is an exception to the normative structures. "Miss Representation," the documentary by Jennifer Siebel Newsom that was screened on campus Oct. 20 by the Ivy Film Festival as part of its "Films For Social Change" series, points to the positive effects of these categorizations in that "you can't be what you can't see." Placing emphasis on women in positions of power can both encourage emulation and make it possible to begin with.
In the film, Geena Davis shared an anecdote that can be seen as a metaphor for the current state of affairs. Waiting for a traffic light, right after the exquisite "Thelma and Louise" was released, a car pulled up next to her. A gaggle of young women opened the sunroof, waved at her in recognition and simply yelled, "Woohoo!" This deceptively simple seal of approval signals the acknowledgement of Davis as a role model and a visible presence, but that Davis' Thelma is hailed as such a liberation points to the fact that the portrayal of empowered women is an anomaly. The passion of the exclamation is the result of an absence of other things to be passionate about. It is at once a symptom of the problem itself and a way of working through it, as the identification of the women with Davis leaves them feeling empowered, euphoric almost.
This is an important antidote to the national epidemic of self-objectification, in which girls have internalized the expectations fostered by the media and therefore cannot envision themselves in roles of power. In political positions, women will not achieve parity for another 500 years at the rate things are progressing now. The documentary is important in that it calls for a reeducation of both boys and girls, as boys too are conditioned to adopt thinking patterns that are not of their own making. The fact that only a handful of male students attended the screening is exemplary of the current mindset. Cultural productions that center on women are only of interest for women, whereas the majority of productions revolve around men, yet are expected to be of interest to everyone.
The absence of real life examples only contributes to this experiential gap. "Miss Representation" closely echoed the sentiment of former Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P'07, as noted in The Herald this February ("Faculty Remains Mostly Male, White," Feb. 10), that "the introduction of female professors into historically male departments such as economics, physics and applied mathematics will pave the way for future female hires." While the student body gets an A+ for diversity from CollegeProwler.com, and both the Undergraduate Council of Students and the Graduate Student Council have an almost equal number of male and female students as officers, white men still dominate the ranks of full professors. The University has made great progress already by encouraging applications from female scholars, but is still a long way from achieving parity.
But in order to completely overcome differences in power, in the end, the binary logic "Miss Representation" adheres to will have to be imploded. It is not the physicality as such that divides us. It is about how our brain conceives and is conditioned to conceive of our own bodies and those of others, and it is this interior process that translates itself into differential and unequal power structures in a variety of categories. Women can look to other women for inspiration and support, but true success will only be achieved when there is complete equity in which women can look up to both women and men based on their professional or personal merit, rather than having to strategically align themselves exclusively with other women to combat the power structures that disadvantage them. Only then can the ideal of a high school girl featured in the documentary be realized — a climate in which "it's all about the brain, not about the body."
Suzanne Enzerink GS is a graduate student in American studies and can be reached at suzanne_enzerink@brown.edu.
