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I enjoy being a girl but sometimes...not so much
Fri, Jan. 7th, 2005 08:11 amIt's scary times in these United States of F*cked Up. Several examples come to mind:
First is the story of the Washington state woman prohibited from divorcing because she's pregnant. The conditions of the situation—she was officially divorced from a man who physically abused her before discovering she was pregnant with her new lover's baby—became grounds for an eastern Washington state judge to declare the divorce null and void until the child was born. So this woman finds herself still shackled to the man who beat her and threatened her life, despite having been legally divorced!
Second is the story that's making the rounds on LJ and in e-mail today, about the proposed Virginia statute requiring a woman who miscarries to report the miscarriage to the police within 12 hours or be charged with a misdemeanor, carrying the same penalty as statutory rape, arson and stalking.
Third is a new commercial I've been seeing on TV lately for a "weight loss" center. A man lit as though he were a detective in a film noir setting talks about a pair of sisters who go to him to talk to him about weight loss surgery. One, he says, went through with the surgery. The other, he says, would have been so proud of her sister. The implication, pretty clear and pretty despicable, is that if you're an overweight woman and choose not to have a gastric bypass, you'll die. No discussion of food programs. No discussion of exercise. Cut open your body and get rid of your stomach or you'll die. There's no question that for some, a gastric bypass is the right choice, maybe even not a choice but a requirement, and I respect that. But the American public doesn't generally make finer disctinctions about stuff like this and the ad takes advantage of that willful ignorance. I am beyond livid about this advertising campaign. It's the politics of fear brought into the American self-image/self-packaging wars.
Welcome to being a woman in 2005.
First is the story of the Washington state woman prohibited from divorcing because she's pregnant. The conditions of the situation—she was officially divorced from a man who physically abused her before discovering she was pregnant with her new lover's baby—became grounds for an eastern Washington state judge to declare the divorce null and void until the child was born. So this woman finds herself still shackled to the man who beat her and threatened her life, despite having been legally divorced!
Second is the story that's making the rounds on LJ and in e-mail today, about the proposed Virginia statute requiring a woman who miscarries to report the miscarriage to the police within 12 hours or be charged with a misdemeanor, carrying the same penalty as statutory rape, arson and stalking.
Third is a new commercial I've been seeing on TV lately for a "weight loss" center. A man lit as though he were a detective in a film noir setting talks about a pair of sisters who go to him to talk to him about weight loss surgery. One, he says, went through with the surgery. The other, he says, would have been so proud of her sister. The implication, pretty clear and pretty despicable, is that if you're an overweight woman and choose not to have a gastric bypass, you'll die. No discussion of food programs. No discussion of exercise. Cut open your body and get rid of your stomach or you'll die. There's no question that for some, a gastric bypass is the right choice, maybe even not a choice but a requirement, and I respect that. But the American public doesn't generally make finer disctinctions about stuff like this and the ad takes advantage of that willful ignorance. I am beyond livid about this advertising campaign. It's the politics of fear brought into the American self-image/self-packaging wars.
Welcome to being a woman in 2005.
