The Glass Crack: Painfully Palin

(originally posted 10/08 at wordpress)


by Gwen Davis

The Glass Crack is a new weekly column from PSU Grad Student Gwen Davis that revisits the previous week’s news stories and looks at them through a feminist eye. Granted, personal opinions, bias, rhetorical questions, and perhaps even a few logical fallacies will appear. At times it may seem like the author is confused, and that assumption is totally correct because many ways of the world—especially people—do not make sense. Comments, suggestions and guest columns are welcome and encouraged. Let this be an honest place to discuss the unfair, the beautiful, the perplexing, the wrong, and the right.

The title of the column is a reference to those 18 million cracks in the ceiling Hillary Clinton spoke of in her concession speech:

Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the history of progress in America.

- Hillary Clinton

With the presidential election mere weeks away, I have become increasingly interested in the Sarah Palin debacle. One news organization postulated that the initial excitement that surrounded the Republican Vice Presidential nominee was a result of voters considering her to be an answer to a non-existent Hillary Clinton Democratic ticket. Unfortunately for Republicans, hopeful women, and many swing voters Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton — to the relief of Democrats.

I recently received an email from a very good, liberal friend of mine from Colorado. The email contained an article written by Eve Ensler, playwright best known for The Vagina Monologues. The article expressed Ensler’s disgust over the McCain/Palin ticket. “I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them,” she writes. “It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical.”

Women Our Age: Not Dying or “Dye-ing”

(originally posted 08/08 at wordpress)


by Emily Calkins

Mainstream culture has never been particularly kind to women, but once we hit that magic “middle age” number it gets even worse. We lose our value as an advertising commodity and that, in this society, is a real bummer (or do we still say that?).

I swore off the henna a little over a year ago. Being an organically oriented sort of person I never used chemical hair color, but I was looking for a new job at the time and figured my graying locks would reduce my odds. Falling for this is something I am not especially proud of, thinking about it in retrospect. Who was I kidding? I grew up in the 60s and 70s; “Hair” was often on my turntable; Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan were in their heydays. I read “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in high school. There is no way I am going to hide that anymore.

Women do not have to conform to the prescribed role of middle-aged frump, any more than we should conform to any other kind of obedience. It’s almost like another type of rebellion, in a way. Our society revolves around fast everything, processed food, overwork, and materialism. All these things age us faster than just about anything else I can imagine. I take good care of myself because I want to be around when my grandchildren come along. Getting older is not about surrender; it is about staying vital, strong, healthy, and beautiful in whatever way fits us. It is about reading, writing, dancing, yoga, lifting weights, marching downtown for peace, and forgiving. Most of all, it is creating ourselves in this new “format,” whatever that happens to be.