ugly bag of mostly water

don’t keep sweatin’ what I do 'cause I’m gonna be just fine

  • 5 Posts
  • 911 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: December 19th, 2023
  • klemptor@startrek.websitetoWomensStuff@piefed.blahaj.zone•Women's Stuff Book and Movie Club - October 2025 - Month 2 🎉
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    1 day ago

    For books: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

    I’ve never read it but it sounds interesting. Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:

    The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity.

    In today’s world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women’s movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It’s the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of “the flawless beauty.”

  • klemptor@startrek.websitetoWomensStuff@piefed.blahaj.zone•Women's Stuff Book and Movie Club - October 2025 - Month 2 🎉
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    1 day ago
    For Herland:

    Do you think this work is told from a feminist perspective? Why?

    The author is clearly coming from a feminist perspective, and the narrator alludes to having developed a more feminist perspective many years down the road, but most of the book is told through the narrator’s original, decidedly misogynistic point of view.

    Do you think the authors gender or gender identity affected their choice of subject, writing style, or perspective character?

    Absolutely. She chose to write about a feminist utopia through the point of view of a self-assured young man who believes women are naturally lesser than men. I think the character of Van was useful for setting up prejudiced assumptions that the Herland citizens could easily thwart. In a way it’s more effective than a female main character would’ve been.

    Does the narrators gender or gender identity affect the work? If so, how?

    Yes. It’s obvious she thinks women are capable of much more than western society permitted at the time this was written. I do think she overestimates women’s ability to cooperate uniformly in working toward the common good. It’s a nice thought but it ignores human nature, so the culture she’s created seems very alien.

    Did this work change your opinion on anything? If so, what and why?

    Not really, but it was interesting to see how a society without men might function. The author clearly put a lot of thought into some of the logistics. Other parts had too much hand-waving - particularly, parthenogenic reproduction, but only when you really want to have a baby. I know the author needed a way for such a society to perpetuate itself but I thought that bit was pretty ridiculous.

    Overall this was an interesting read, and I’ve started reading the follow-up, called With Her In Ourland. I do think it’s unrealistic that any large group of people could be so harmonious as Herland, and the emphasis on the supremacy of motherhood didn’t sit well with me. Not everyone wants children or thinks that a society geared toward raising children as well as possible would be a utopia.