Ahoy, Feministes! I’m honored to be a part of this summer’s guest blogger crop. For the next couple of weeks I’ll be your houseguest, and I promise to make the bed and ask before I take a long shower, and hopefully during my stay I’ll be able to provide y’all with a hostess gift or two.
I write at The Beheld, a blog that examines beauty and personal appearance from a critical, questioning, and, yes, feminist perspective. When I first started The Beheld, I was coming at it from a pretty strictly beauty-myth-based perspective, which remains my roots. But over months of meditating on my own history; learning more about the intersection of beauty and sociology, economics, and science; and interviewing women with wildly differing perspectives on beauty, my take on personal appearance has become more nuanced. (When you interview a professional bodybuilder about her take on beauty alongside a beauty editor and a boi comic, your understanding of beauty can’t help but get a little complex.) I came to Feministe’s attention when I abstained from mirrors for a month, which I intended to be an exercise in ridding myself of the male gaze, but turned out to expose the ways in which I use the mirror as tool for control.
The Beheld is, in many ways, a synthesis of my professional background. I began my career as an intern at Ms. magazine, then moved on to teen and women’s magazines, which I’ve dipped in and out of for the past 12 years. Much of my experience in that world has been as a copy editor, which has prompted my “Thoughts on a Word” series that explores the history and etymology behind words we use to describe women. (Most recently: cankles, though most of my writing is more along the lines of bombshell, sexy, and lovely.) I also write for some of these magazines, most notably Marie Claire, Glamour, and CosmoGirl, which led to the vindication of my 12-year-old Seventeen-lovin’ quiz-takin’ self with my “What Kind of Feminist Are You?” quiz (which some feminists hated because of its CMS-dictated oversimplification, but my thought was that if girls know that feminism is not a monolith, we’re all going to be better off. Plus, I got to posit slumber parties as a radical feminist act, so!).
In more biographical news: I live in New York City, after growing up mostly in South Dakota and attending high school and college in Oregon. I’m 35, sans bebes, and unmarried but happily partnered with a fellow who proves to me every day that men are fully capable of being feminists without renouncing any of their masculinity. (He gave me his spare copy of The Beauty Myth, for starters. What a gentleman!) I’m white and Caddo but appear white (or, occasionally, “exotic,” whatever that means) and though I’m pleased to include Indian Country Today on my writing resume, my indigenous heritage hasn’t been a particularly large part of my identity. I’m a Gemini, NOT THAT I BELIEVE IN THAT JAZZ but I wouldn’t want to withhold crucial information from Feministe believers (we Geminis are both generous and duplicitous that way).
Housekeeping stuff: On The Beheld I have a policy of deleting only spam, but that’s also a luxury I have by not being as widely-read as Feministe is. (You, yes you, can help me attract more trolls by raising The Beheld’s general profile! If you like what you see there, please consider adding me to your RSS feed or following The Beheld on Twitter or Facebook. I’d be honored.) So during my stay at Feministe, unless there’s a deluge of comments that appear to be left by goats, my light moderation will apply over here as well. Note that as my independent wealth has been drained through a series of yachting mishaps on the Riviera and an unexpected drop in the value of my Cartier collection, I’ll also be working a regular workweek like many of you, but I’ll moderate as quickly as I’m able.
Looking forward to being a guest here at Feministe, and to learning more about all of you!