The late 70s-into-the-80s was a time of real cultural schizophrenia: women could work, make the money, have it all, and still have the time/energy to dab perfume behind their ears while slipping, braless, into a little white satiny number before flinging open the door when their men came home. Want proof? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA4DR4vEgrs. I was brought up on this stuff. It made no sense; no one could possibly do all of those things and still look happy and have her hair brushed. Or maybe I just suspected what I now know to be true: I didn't plan to have the energy or inclination to prance subserviently around a man after a day spent running the world. No thanks.
By the time I saw my first Enjoli commercial, I knew that pretty nearly everything I had ever been told about the way I looked and other people looked was a lie. There was a lot of this:
'Your insides matter more than your outsides.'
'Beautiful is as beautiful does.'
'How a woman treats other people is more important than how she looks.'
'A mother's first priority is taking care of her family, and if she can look nice too, that's fine.'
But it didn't quite ring true. What I saw, rather than heard, was that my mother would not leave the house without lipstick on, and that she spent at least an hour getting ready to go out before we went anywhere, and we were always running slightly late because she kept re-checking her hair, her makeup, her accessories. What I felt was that I was a resounding disappointment, reading as much as I did was weird, having a scientific/writerly disposition was even more horrifying, and what my mother had really wanted was a cheerleader with long ringlets. I loved her, and accepted that this was one of her blind spots, but it hurt like hell not to be seen as me, for me.
I had understood when I was much, much younger that feminism was about being equal, even though we didn't all look like Farrah Fawcett, and were not all married to the 6 Million Dollar Man (aka Lee Majors). I thought feminism was for all of us, that, as Julie Bindel says so eloquently in her piece in the New Statesman from 8/8/11, that "feminism has an ideology and a goal. It is not about personal liberty and freedom, but the emancipation from oppression and tyranny for ALL women, whatever our race or class." (See http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/08/fun-feminism-women-feminist for the whole article, and follow her on Twitter: @bindelj).
I find, despite being enlightened, that I am also a bit disappointed that I didn't ever look even a little bit like Farrah, and never will, and now have a Dead Leg (and he is SO UNATTRACTIVE AND COOPERATIVE THAT I AM ASHAMED TO KNOW HIM.). I will admit that I have my shallow side. I am not, and will not ever be, what Bindel terms a 'fun feminist,' however, and will always be horrified by today's version of the Enjoli myth, aka the Reality TV Show, and the pornification of women that goes along with this. We were just starting to get some traction, and now all we talk about are Michelle Obama's arms. This needs to change, and it needs to change now. I suspect Farrah wanted to be more than a poster or a pair of boobs, and wish that she had been able to be as smart or driven or whatever she was, as she was.
