The Canadian National Newspaper: A Sort of Fairy Tale

I was shooting a scene for my upcoming calendar in High Park a couple weeks ago. It was a Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf theme, and I was wearing a costume for the part. While yes, it was a short skirt, and yes, I had a fair amount of cleavage going on, it was not even close to obscene. However, some woman drove past me in the overcrowded parking lot, and determined that I was worth making another loop with her car so she could stop and harass me.

"Do you think that's an appropriate outfit to be wearing in a family park on a Sunday?!" She yelled out her passenger side window. The overheated Golden Retriever in the sedan's back seat shifted nervously.

"We have a permit." My photographer muttered.

"But do you have morals?" She retorted.

I stared at her a moment, stunned by both her rudeness and her complete lack of recognition as to the immorality of her own behaviour. I took a good look at her mannish, middle-aged features and waggling double chin, then I turned away. She drove off, likely disappointed that she didn't get a chance to pick more of a fight. But I'm sure she felt proud that she'd struck a blow for respectable women everywhere. She showed that skank. Didn't she?

Well, that skank was me. And I am a human being. I also consider myself a feminist. So why are two self-respecting women glaring at each other in a public park? The irony of having this stand-off while dressed as a character whose tale was a metaphor for the preservation of virginity wasn't lost on me.

The Feminist movement as a whole is wandering around the woods, looking for grandmother's house. Because car lady's idea of being a 'strong woman' and mine are such light years apart, we're not even speaking the same language. And this is a serious problem in a world where "bitch", "ho", "skank", "slut", and "lesbo" are tossed around with abandon as insults. Feminism was supposed to give women greater freedom and greater choice, but the original movement was directed at helping women as a group, not as individuals. There were reasons for this: there was so far to go, and the challenges were so huge, that we needed the strength in numbers. This approach, however, left a vacuum, in that while positions of greater status became theoretically available, there were no guidelines regarding how to achieve those positions. While more choices certainly are open to women thanks to the efforts of the Suffragettes of the Twenties and the trailblazers of the Sixties, these choices seem, to varying degrees, all completely open to savage criticism by other women, huffing and puffing and blowing each other down.

That's right: other WOMEN. While men catch the bulk of the flack for being sexist, misogynist, and chauvinist - for being the big bad wolf - I have been far more misjudged, insulted, demeaned and held back by other women. The doors to power have been opened a crack, and we're all fighting to get through that narrow opening to the "promised land" on the other side. While women as a faceless group have advanced, the individuals making up that group have been thrown into a catfight melee. The prize: a few token positions to rub elbows with the boys club. Grandmother's house is now the executive lounge.

The figures are sad. According to The Economist, "women account for 46.5% of America's workforce and for less than 8% of its top managers.. Female managers' earnings now average 72% of theiir male colleagues'." With numbers like that, it's no wonder we're fighting. Women are, contrary to popular belief, brought up to be viciously competitive - ask any girl whose best friend stole her boyfriend about that. But our way of expressing that competitiveness is indirect and subversive. Instead of petitioning the boss for a job we really want and possibly seeming like a "bitch", we just knock down the competition with covert bitchiness, massacring each other's self-esteem so we can climb up over the carnage. But when we get up there, we're so bloodied that we can't handle the new level of competition. We're wounded, and need external validation to rescue us like the woodcutter in the Red Riding Hood tale.

Add to this the male camaraderie that accompanies unofficial business talks. Wining and dining clients at a strip club is an archetype that offends most women. Girls like me who aren't intimidated by it are, therefore, traitors. Dear God, I DARE to have enough confidence in my appearance that a bunch of men staring at a stripper doesn't destroy me! I must be evil!

But sorry ladies, the feminist movement fought to give women the right to be strippers. And do what I was doing in High Park that day. Ideally, if Feminism works, an up-and-coming executive won't be threatened by an exotic dancer, because their values to society will be equal. We'd all have our baskets of goodies -- and they would all contain different things-- but each basket would be valued equally.

But the Hollywood version of beauty is currently so overvalued in our society that if you don't have it, you're nothing. Looking good is positive, but modern trends are becoming so oppressive that it's worsening Girl Power's internal strife. That being said, every conventionally beautiful woman is not the enemy. Gloria Steinem's problems with "the Playboy philosophy" had nothing to do with naked pictures. They focused on poor working conditions and low pay. She doesn't push for the elimination of sexual expression. She wants the elimination of sexual exploitation.

And as long as sexually confident women are marginalized from the mainstream, that exploitation will continue. If women are going to tear each other apart, hate each others' beauty, then the only remaining consumers for women entertainers are men. And men like seeing skin.

Is that all they like? Of course not. The failure of shows such as The Cindy Margolis Show and Birds of Prey make it clear that skimpy outfits alone don't sell. In my experience, men are just as turned on by what a woman says and does as what she looks like. It's other women who feel compelled to rip apart her hair, make-up, clothes, shoes and dress size.

In fact, shows for women are worse than shows for men for showcasing unhealthily thin, overly glamorous women. The two biggest hits among women in the last while have been Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives. I couldn't tell you who was bonier: Sarah Jessica Parker or Teri Hatcher. VIP was supposed to be about girl power. And Paris Hilton's biggest fan base in teenaged girls.

Yes, young women are to blame for Paris Hilton. We watch the crap Hollywood feeds us. We buy magazines that knock down our self-esteem. We buy in. Literally. We buy the Botox, the boob jobs, the lipo, the expensive gym memberships, the designer clothes. We buy and buy and buy and never stop and think.

And then we take pieces out of each other, because we're still miserable.

And that's exactly where the consumer machine wants us. It wants us miserable and desperate. It wants us believing that hair dye will make our lives better. It wants us sure that the latest lipstick shade will help us snare a guy - which is the key to eternal happiness as every faithful reader of Cosmo knows. We're desperately seeking out the Big Bad Wolf, then we get bitter when it eats us alive.

We spend our lives on a makeover treadmill. All it does is keep us down, weakened, and running back to the malls. We work to spend, not to achieve. We shop to avoid the difficult task of accepting ourselves. We can't really build ourselves up as a social movement until we feel good about ourselves, and we can't feel good about ourselves until we stop being defined by external sources. The power women would wield if we truly helped each other would be immense. Instead of competing for those few token jobs in the upper echelons of corporate management, we would be on par with our male counterparts. We could control the media, instead of the way it currently controls us. We could dictate that films and television shows truly cater to us, and reaffirm our senses of self.

And girls in short skirts wouldn't bother us so much, because they no longer would be somewhat different faces on the same plastic body.

But we must prepare ourselves as individuals first, a social movement second, which is what Feminism in its first incarnation failed to do. With this new form of neo-Feminism focusing on the strength of the individual woman, we can build on what the original Feminist wave accomplished, and create more lasting change.

How do we get that rolling? Well, that's a subject for another time, if I have the opportunity to discuss this again. And I don't have all the answers. But at least I have the desire to try and a place to start.

For the time being, I challenge all women reading this to stop their own habits of cattiness. Be straight with people. Own and be responsible for your anger and frustration, a little at a time. Be accountable. Be confident. Be proud women. Help other proud women get ahead. I also suggest reading Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons, and Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher.