It’s rare that I take notes while listening to a podcast in my free-time, but this week I did. Jameela Jamil made a surprise appearance on the podcast “Should I Delete That” and I frantically transcribed half of the conversation she had with hosts Emily Clarkson and Alex Light (who are anti-diet-culture influencers/activists).
They talked about the portrayal of women in the media (how quickly praise turns into vilification), the scarcity mindset and other ways women have been taught to tear each other down. None of this is new, but we need to keep talking about these topics because the needle is not moving. Instead, it sometimes feels like it’s moving backwards. And my god, Jameela remains so very eloquent and unequivocal throughout the entire conversation.
She put a lot of emphasis on how not only the media, but also women in general, take great delight in tearing down a famous woman. Newest example: Adele. She used to be media’s darling, right? Well, last week, she posted a tearful video in which she cancelled her Las Vegas shows, appearing genuinely heartbroken. The headlines branded her as a diva, a primadonna, over-the-top. In the comment sections of these articles, hundreds of women chimed in, saying “she’s too much”, “too emotional”, “annoying”.
Emily Clarkson posted a great comparison of headlines covering Adele’s cancellation and those covering male artists’ cancellation:
There is so much to unpack here, in the way our society enjoys a woman’s fall. It’s not that long ago that I, too, would have rolled my eyes at Adele’s announcement, that it would have given me a weird sense of satisfaction, seeing a beautiful, successful woman fail. It’s something I am not proud of, and something that I have been forced to actively unlearn. And it’s still in progress. Why is it so hard though?
The patriarchy has instilled in us the belief that it is possible for only a handful of women to become successful, and that we have to fight other women for our spot at the top. We are pitted against each other all the time, we are made believe that one woman’s win is our loss.
At the same time, there are so many men who look the same, who sound the same, who host the same kind of podcast – and who are all equally successful. So, wait, why shouldn’t the same be true for women?
Well maybe, just maybe, if we stopped fighting each other we could be an actual threat to the patriarchy? And maybe not everyone in our society would welcome that? Think about how gleefully certain types of men will chant “cat fight!”, when two women are having an argument. They know exactly that as long as we are busy bringing each other down, we will not come for their power. As Jameela puts it:
“The opposition are just carrying on, suppressing us, taking away our reproduction rights, while we’re all busy pointing at each other, competing with each other, nit-picking each other to f*cking death.”
Being conditioned to compete with other women is one thing, but there’s another weight on our ankles, and it’s called “being good”. It’s the old trope of the nice, polite, humble woman, which, for centuries has kept women down and cleared the way for men. And it’s so annoyingly persistent that we are still wary of women who defy it. Who confidently and unapologetically go for the gold.
We’re supposed to be helping each other along, to make space for each other, but our deeply internalized misogyny keeps us from joining forces. A moral superiority stemming from these “fake responsibilities”, as Jameela calls them, combined with the scarcity-myth leads to women eating each other alive instead of lifting each other up – and the political right loves it.
I am so tired of watching feminist activists calling each other out publicly for not being woke enough, or throwing another woman under the bus for a hot pick-me-take. Yes, let’s hold each other accountable and absolutely, let’s not leave any space for TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists, looking at you, EMMA magazine 🧐), but hey, we’re all human and we’re learning, all the time.
Just imagine how much we could change, if we’d just learn to be happy for each other and support each other?
Well, I couldn’t say it better than Jameela:
“We need to zoom out, organize and join a full coalition that involves women of different races, of different abilities – and f*cking don’t cut trans women out of the fight for feminism. If anyone knows how to surpass the boundaries of gender norms, and the prison of gender prisons and stereotypes, it’s trans-women […] We’re safer in numbers. When we’re all together we can actually do something.”
pop culture pleasures
Today is the last day of January. It’s such an ambiguous month, it’s “resolution colliding with despair”, as Helena Fitzgerald puts it in her moving, comforting essay on the most challenging month of the year. I am recommending this piece for the third year in a row, and will probably recommend it again next year.
“The world is going to turn over in the dirt and uproot itself and blossom in spring, and nothing you can do can change it. January barrels toward change, toward unearned hope. Joy is coming and there is nothing you can do about, no way to adequately prepare yourself. “
How much do we love Maintenance Phase and unlearning everything that diet culture once taught us? Hosts Audrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes are debunking junk science around diet and wellness in the most entertaining way.
Tilda Swinton’s only ambition was to have a house by the sea and some dogs. Same, girlfriend.
I loved Farrah Storr’s essay on saying farewell to motherhood and on what happens after you decide to not have children.
“So my advice is to find something that gives you purpose. Do it now. Make sure it lives alongside your life, so that when things calm down and people leave, you have something that matters to your life. That, I think, is the answer to the potential loneliness that awaits us all. Not children.”
I did not know that “self-help-historian” was a job title, but that’s what Kate Bowler is. She was also diagnosed with incurable cancer at age 35, which gave her a whole new perspective on the whole “you can do anything” hustle culture rhetoric. Great interview!
I really enjoyed the Girls Gotta Eat podcast episode with guest Lane Moore, about how to be alone.
🇩🇪 À propos: Daniel Schreiber’s Essay “Allein” war wirklich so toll, wie alle vorher gesagt haben und ich kann es jeder und jedem – egal ob alleinlebend oder nicht – wirklich nur ans Herz legen.
🇩🇪 Und noch eine große Newsletter-Empfehlung: Anne-Kathrin Gerstlauer bringt euch in Text Hacks bei, wie ihr ordentliche Texte ins Internet schreibt: egal ob Tinder-Profil, Insta-Caption oder Reportage. Da kann wirklich jede*r noch was lernen. (Anne-Kathrin kennt ihr bereits aus diesem Interview).
This is all for now, thank you so much for being here.
Until next time,
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Inwards/Onwards #1
This is not where I thought I would be
I have recently switched from Android to an iPhone, and while that process was a technological nightmare, it also forced me to go through all of my notes. I stumbled upon a half-finished newsletter draft, which I wrote in October 2020 and which for reasons unknown never saw the light of day. Until now:
“This is not the year of radical adventures or sudden pivots. Not that I had budgeted for any, but I always found comfort in knowing that if I wanted to, I could just pack up and move to a different country next week. However, this might be the year of carefully considered, strategic changes. We’ve all had more than enough time to sit with our feelings”
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