Dang Gum 9
On Monday you can expect the thrilling conclusion to this 10-page story. Ugh. I cannot tell you how ready I am to be done looking at this thing. So much for high school nostalgia. I can’t wait to start posting new comics again. But for now, here are…
Six Great Moments in the Life of the Feminist:
• I remember sitting in 7th grade science class thinking to myself, “Okay, I can either start getting REALLY buff…or I can let my boobs grow.” It was. SUCH. A dilemma. But laziness won out.
• I have had a life-long love affair with collared shirts. By second grade, I owned a bunch of them, and I would wear them buttoned all the way to the collar. My dad said I looked like an architect. In 8th, grade, I got a hand-me-down white collared shirt from my mom. A big floppy one, with those little flaps you can button to keep the sleeves rolled halfway up. I thought it was the Best Shirt In The World and wore it allll the time. I found out later that one of my “friends” had gossiped about how ugly it was. End of friendship. Only the beginning of the Collared Shirt Love Affair.
• There were two sections of the 10th grade Advanced Placement English. I was in the first section. One day, our English teacher suggested that we would be surprised by how few students consider themselves feminists. “I’ll ask the kids in the next class, to see,” she said. In that next class was my dear friend Sarah Goldfeather. “Stand up if you consider yourself a feminist,” said the teacher. Only two students stood up: Sarah, and some boy. “I was a little embarrassed, but I stood up because I knew you’d be pissed with me if I didn’t,” Sarah told me later.
• In high school, I got so into Michelle Yeoh and Uma Thurman and Linda Hamilton. That is, ass-kicking action chicks. I began to do extensive google searches of female body builders. Like, I knew their names. And saved folders with pictures of them.
• During my junior year, my mom asked me if I was a lesbian. As I am not a lesbian, I was a little annoyed with her. In retrospect, I can’t really blame her for asking. At that point, I’d still never had a boyfriend, I talked boldly about feminist stuff, and I had just chopped off all of my hair (she didn’t know this part, but the haircut had been inspired by Alison Bechdel’s Mo).
• I went to both of my proms. And I wear make-up at least semi-frequently. And skirts and jewelry too. I think this is worth mentioning, because many people still seem to think feminism and femininity are mutually exclusive. They are not.
Okay that is all for now. Let us remember: Monday is the last day of this god-awful old comic, and on Wednesday there will be a NEW comic and also I will be on a plane headed to Hampshire! Which is awesome. Hampshire, I’m ready for you now. One last semester. Let’s do this.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I remember in particular being called a, “little feminist” when in maybe fourth grade or so my church choir (entirely female) did a rendition of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. In our choir book, there was one chorus for, “he’s got you and me sister,” and one for, “he’s got you and me brother.” For time, they chopped out the sister verse and kept the brother verse. Upon pointing out the dire irony of excluding ourselves from the our own song, the choir director (also female) had us sing the verse as “you and me brother, you and me sister, you and me brother,” which I did NOT feel was remotely adequate. I guess this was my first tip-off of inherent patriarchy in the Christian church. But I also remember not even being sure how comfortable I was with the feminist label, probably because it was used in a not-entirely-not-derisive tone in situations like this.
Happy to see you soon!
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:51 pm
HEY, that’s not what I remember about that instance…though that was the beginning of dismantling the Feminist = Feminazi myth. Good work, Sonnega…?
January 31st, 2010 at 1:08 am
Tabitha: It’s bizarre (and sad) that they didn’t naturally gravitate given toward the word “sister” rather than “brother,” given that the whole choir was female. Thanks for sharing the story.
Goldfeather: wha??? You remember it differently?? HMM, perhaps once again my memory has totally distorted truth, in some pathetic, vain way that makes me seem slightly more heroic. Oh dear. This seems to happen a lot with my comics and stories.