Feminism with a Brown Tinge

I remember a conversation I once had with a fellow housemate in my first year of undergrad at the University of Winnipeg. He had just found out that I was taking an introductory course in Women's Studies, and ranted that I was going to become another "bra-burning, punch you in the face if you hold the door open for me" type. He was so adamant that what feminism did to a lady was make her bossy, loud, fearful and a man-hater, meaning that she would lose all her "female" qualities.

Unfortunately, we are no longer friends; difference of opinion and the fact that I punched him in the face for interrupting my bra burning night made things awkward between us.

This however, made me think about the term 'Feminism' itself. Why did the word ignite such an angry

rant? How is it that a term that champions for equality, justice and rights for half the population on

earth, cause such a negative reaction?

Was my friend just thick in the head? Probably.

The common misconception with feminism is that its based on a singular idea. Take the popular tv series "Sex and the City", it plays on the three common streotypes that are usually associated with feminism:

Miranda- The hard-headed lawyer, tough, stubborn and shattering the glass ceiling. She is the women that dominates the public i.e work space. Place her in the kitchen and she will mix herself a martini and call her house help. She is the women that men fear, because her aggressive nature appears masculine. There is nothing soft about this women that demands equal pay and rights.

Samantha- The women with the insatiable desire for penis. She wants sex and is not afraid to say it. She refuses to remain with a single partner for fear of 'Monogamy', which is her idea of STD. Samantha's character plays strongly on the idea of sexual liberation and being unshackled from the chains of patriachy. She is free to express her desire without being concerned about society's judgement.

Charlotte- What I like to coin the 'New Woman', because she is moving back to the domestic space and reclaiming it. She desperately wants a family and to be a good mother and wife. Charlotte's character is invested within the domestic sphere, and whilst that is not necessarily a bad thing, the problems arises when it is the only space that she wishes to be located in.

These are the common streotypes that are usually associated with feminism, the brash, tough lady boss, the sexually free nymph and the domestic goddess. Don't believe me? Here is another movie with similar patterns among women, aptly titled "The Women":

This was a movie based on a woman's (Meg Ryan) self discovery when she finds out her husband as been having an affair with a younger woman. Two cosmopolitans if you can guess, based on the image above, who the husband has been shacking up with.

Meg finds comfort in her friends around her, the hard-working, always shouting orders on the phone editor-in chief friend, the lesbian, and the domestic, family oriented friend.

The problematics with these notions of stereotypes is that it compartmentalizes the issues. There is no mix of the matter but a selection to choose from, thus creating types. And to make it more complicated, these feminism issues, whilst legitimate, are heavily saturated within a WHITE context. So for brown women, being sexually liberal comes with a different set of difficulties, mainly culture and family.

Mainstream media, as we are all aware, is an extremely influential avenue. BBC news reports that the season finale of Sex and the City reached a whooping 4.1 million viewers, now thats almost half the population of women in Malaysia, according to the Malaysian Demographic Profile 2010. Fredric Jameson, the post-modernist theorist argued that in our current time, we are a nation that is heavily image saturated. We are influenced and coaxed based on images that are constantly droned into our minds. He goes on to argue that the postmodern world consume these images and perceive the world through them. Similarly, if we take the two examples provided above of Sex and the City and The Women, the images that are set forth are of common stereotypes of women. If these are the images that are constantly droned and regurtitated by the Hollywood industry, it is rather easy to consume these images and perceive them as truth. There is a lack of depth to the characters and most episodes are based on the surface effect, meaning the inability to delve deeper into the character and all its meaning/psyche is on the surface, laid bare and easily accessible to the viewers.

Feminism then faces the danger of being perceived within a sigular frame of theory or theme, when on the contrary, there are multiple forms of it and it lies primarily within the individual.