Lean In, Mess Up, and Harness Your Inner Poehler Power

If you’ve been reading Happy Feminism for a while, you’re probably aware of my fascination with the Lean In movement. Most professional resources provide gender-neutral advice, as if pretending we live in a gender-blind society will make it a reality – but Lean In is different. Yes, men and women face many of the same obstacles, but how our choices intersect with our respective gender expectations is very different.

Two women who have successfully “leaned in” are Amy Poehler, awarded actress and founder of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, and J.T. O’Donnell, founder and CEO of CAREEREALISM.com. These women, realizing the role gender has played in managing their careers, have each published advice on how to tackle the many hurdles of working mothers.

Below are some of the highlights. For the complete reads, see: J.T. O’Donnell’s “Ladies, Let’s Move Past ‘Lean In’ & On To “Mess Up” and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s “Poehler Power: Amy Poehler’s Rise To The Top.”

What is the best advice you ever received regarding your career?

“You are going to make mistakes. Lots of them. So, find your way to cope with the failure or you won’t be able to create the work and life you want.” -J.T. O’Donnel

What steps do you use to “mess up and move on”?

1. Admit to the mistakes as quickly as possible.
2. Encourage others to make mistakes and support them when they do.
3. Identify Career Buddies you can talk to about the mistakes.
4. Stay clear of those who don’t appreciate what you are doing. -J.T. O’Donnel

HOW DO YOU SEE GENDER AFFECTING THE WAY YOUR WORK IS PERCEIVED?

I just did a movie junket and reporters kept asking me, “Amy, how do you balance everything?” I started saying things like, “You have to be realistic about how much you can get done in a day,” and all that stuff. But then I was like, “Why don’t you ask the guy actors sitting next to me that same question?” They have kids, too! -Amy Poehler

HOW DO YOU PRIORITIZE WHAT YOU WANT TO GET DONE IN A DAY? DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS?

My therapist gave me a good visual metaphor that I use a lot: I picture a refrigerator and on the refrigerator are six magnets. Each magnet says things like: relationship, kids, health, work, money, fun with friends — whatever. Every day you can really only put three magnets on the refrigerator. You’re not going to be able to use all of them. Like today is about my work, my children, and my health. Then the week goes by and you’re like, “I haven’t used my ‘fun with friends’ magnet in weeks!” So I try to approach it that way. -Amy Poehler

WHAT DO YOU FIND HARD AS AN ADULT?

I think the hardest thing is to know what you want, ask for it, and then to stop talking. Early on I worked hard to figure out what I wanted to do — and that I only wanted to do work that I would be proud of.

When I was in my 20s I went on an audition for a lottery commercial in Chicago. They said, “Tell us your most embarrassing moment.” I said, “What kind of commercial is this?” They were like, “We want to get to know you.” I said, “No, I don’t want to tell you my most embarrassing moment on camera.” They looked at me like, “If you want to be in this f—ing business, you’d better tell us your most embarrassing moment on camera for this lottery commercial!” Sometimes I laugh when I think about how sure of myself I was at 21, 22. -Amy Poehler

WHAT’S IT LIKE FOR YOU, BEING A SINGLE WORKING MOM?

People always want to know where your children are in relation to you. So if I’m in New York [Poehler has homes in New York City and Los Angeles] people go, “Are they here?” And it’s like, “Of course they’re with me. They’re wherever I am unless I’m working for a couple days and then they’re not with me. And no, they’re not at this party because I’m an adult. And this party is for adults.”

But age gives you a couple of things: One, you get better at not taking everything people say personally. Two, you learn those types of questions are more about the person asking them than they are about you. And three, you realize no one can make you feel bad about your choices without your permission. -Amy Poehler

Challenging Gender Stereotypes One Stock Photo At A Time

Looking through a series of my little sister’s photos, my brother noticed she and her friends had taken several posed shots that were only designed to look candid. “It used to be that stock photos were designed to imitate life. Now, you take pictures to imitate stock photos!”

Social media has had a profound impact on our lives, including the emphasis we put on photos. It’s not enough to do something anymore; you have to have pictures. Otherwise, your life seems to pale in comparison to your peers.

With that in mind, Lean In and Getty Image’s recent attention to stock photos seems like a necessary investment. If one group of people is consistently represented in more exciting or note-worthy situations, it is easy to believe that group is more exciting and note-worthy. This problem has a remarkably simple fix and Lean In and Getty Images have teamed up to provide that solution through a collection of 2,500 stereotype-challenging stock photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View the entire Lean In Collection.

Ellen Page’s Coming Out Speech

During her heartfelt speech about authenticity and accepting yourself despite unforgiving societal standards, Ellen Page came out. Congratulations, Ellen!

Female Olympic Athletes Show Off Their Bodies

There’s this idea that female athletes need to prove their femininity. They’re too strong, too athletic, and it is becoming too difficult to tell them apart from men.  Well, I have two responses to this.

First, if female athletes really are blurring the gender lines, maybe it’s time the competitions did the same. I know there are definitely sports that cater much more to a male physique than that of a woman and vice versa, but the constant separation of the sexes seems to be fueling the idea that men are necessarily more athletic than women.

Second, they are not there to look pretty! Those women earned their spots in the Olympics because of how talented they are. It doesn’t matter what they look like in a bikini. If you actually want to know how amazing their bodies are, watch them perform. It’ll tell you so much more than a naked print ad ever could.

Below are a few photos from this week’s games showing the true splendor of their bodies.

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Women: The Oppressed Majority

As a teenager, being catcalled, groped, or hit on in a blatantly sexual manner was an accomplishment. It seemed like just another part of a quality life, because being catcalled meant you were pretty.

Now that I am older, I know that the catcalling has very little to do with me or how I look. Instead, it is only about him. I have been catcalled on my way to work at 8 in the morning and while cloaked in winter attire that all but hides my face. In either situation, I can guarantee my appearance would only be noteworthy to someone who has never seen a woman before.

I know it seems harmless. It’s just a compliment. But there’s something ominous about being catcalled. It’s almost always reserved for when a woman’s walking alone, and if she’s not alone, she’s only with another woman. If it were just a compliment, it wouldn’t matter who she was with.

Such behaviors are a hyper-conformance to gender roles, with men as the sexual beings and women as the sexual objects.  As a woman, when someone tries to force you into this role, it can be a little frightening. There’s no way for you to know where their conformance ends.

Many men have a hard time understanding why this is so problematic. Fortunately, the video above can help give them a new perspective on the situation.

If you thought you couldn’t make a difference, think again.

Social media gets a lot of flack for destroying productivity and damaging interpersonal interaction. However, as many flaws as it may have, I am so thankful for the possibility it gives its users to shape the growth and development of our society. One of the ways this power has manifested itself is through Miss Representation’s #NotBuyingIt campaign. Since 2011, this hashtag has allowed twitter users to unite against sexist advertisements and let companies know that, without change, we’re #notbuyingit.

Here are some of the ways people made a difference simply by tweeting:

 

1. Disney pulled shirts that assumed girls can’t be heroes

After 1000 #NotBuyingIt tweets, Disney pulled the girls version of its hero tee, reading “I need a hero”….Maybe one day it’ll be so bold as to sell a girls version of its tee, reading “I am a hero.”

 

2. Harrods pulled books telling boys to be “clever” and girls to be “gorgeous”

“Good Morning! Please be advised that the children’s books that many of you have tweeted us about have been removed from our shelves…
We would like to apologise for any offence caused and assure you all that these books will no longer be sold at #Harrods.”

 

3. Amazon pulled t-shirts promoting violence against women

I can’t even believe these existed in the first place. SMH

 

4. go daddy stopped using absurdly sexist advertising

Ranking as the campaign’s all-time worst offender with 8,237 #notbuyingit tweets, Go Daddy finally decided it was time for change. To see its new advertisements that actually include some information about the product, check out the Go Daddy – Body Builder Commercial and the Go Daddy – Puppet Master Commercial.

 

5. Super bowl ads have become Generally less offensive

After the 2013 Super Bowl, in which over 10,000 #notbuyingit tweets reached over 8 million people, companies have started taking the hint that sexism doesn’t sell. Although not directly related to the Miss Representation campaign, this year’s Super Bowl was actually even progressive in some ways, including the airing of its first feminist advertisement. Check it out: GoldieBlox Commercial.

 

Let the Media Know: Sexism Doesn’t Sell

If You Asked A Cisgender Person About Their Genitalia, It Would Be Sexual Harassment

With the rising fame of Orange Is The New Black‘s star, Laverne Cox, there has been a much needed uptick in conversations around transgender issues. However, the issues that need and deserve more of our attention, such as the increased threat of violence and the abysmally high rate of unemployment faced by transgender people, are often overlooked due to a dehumanizing fascination with their genitalia. Janet Mock debunks this fascination, weaving in insight from Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera, in her article for Elle Magazine, entitled “I’m A Trans Woman, But Please Stop Asking Me About My Genitalia.”

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I’M A TRANS WOMAN, BUT PLEASE STOP ASKING ME ABOUT MY GENITALIA

Author and advocate Janet Mock breaks down Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera’s appearance on Katie Couric’s talk show

I don’t talk about my kitty cat with my friends. It never seems to come up when we’re gabbing about The Real Housewives or gagging over Beyonce’s “Partition” music video. But I—an unapologetic trans woman and writer—have been asked about my vagina (by people I do not know, mind you) more times than I can even recall.

Outrageously, trans people’s bodies have been open for public dissection since 1952 when Christine Jorgensen became the media’s first sex change darling, and in the 60 years since Jorgensen’s headline-making path to womanhood, journalists from Barbara Walters to Katie Couric are still asking the same tired questions about our bodies.

It’s stunning that legendary women have found themselves asking other women about their genitalia—in public. As I write in my upcoming memoir, Redefining Realness: “Undergoing hormone therapy and genital reconstruction surgery are the titillating details that cisgender people love to hear.” (For the uninitiated, cisgender is nomenclature for those who are not trans, and therefore less likely to experience the misalignment of their gender identity and assigned sex at birth.) But these are “deeply personal steps I took to become closer to me, and I choose to share them.”

It’s about choice. We, as women, have the choice to invite people into our lives, into our struggles, and into our bodies. Consent is key here, and on Monday, model Carmen Carrera and Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox wielded their agency during a joint appearance on Katie, the ABC daytime TV talk show hosted by Katie Couric, who posed the genitalia question–twice.
When Carrera was asked, “Your private parts are different now, aren’t they?” her response was simple: she shushed Couric on her own show. Like a bawse.

“I don’t want to talk about it; it’s really personal,” Carrera said, visibly and rightly uncomfortable by Couric’s gaze. “I’d rather talk about my modeling…There’s more to trans people than just [genitalia].”

What was interesting to me in this moment was that Carrera laid claim to her body. She’s danced in pasties in clubs across the country, on our TV screens in RuPaul’s Drag Race, and in two W magazine shoots with photographer Steven Meisel—but don’t get it twisted: Her body is not ours to dissect.

Couric backpedaled, stating that her question was not in vain, that it was more than just “peering interest,” yet she posed the same question to Cox when she took her seat beside Carrera in a glowing BCBG Max Azria sheath. Couric told Cox that Carrera “recoiled a little bit” at the “genitalia question” and that she wondered if she had “the same feeling about that as Carmen does.”

“I do,” Cox said, backing Carrera up. “I was so proud of Carmen for saying that…the preoccupation with transition and surgery objectifies trans people and then we don’t get to really deal with the lived experiences, the reality of trans people’s lives.”

Cox then broke it down for the journalist, serving Couric facts for days: Trans people face discrimination everywhere, from employment to the streets, where trans women, specifically those of color, disproportionately face brutal violence (Cox mentions the murder of Islan Nettles in New York City, giving the tragedy its highest media profile to date). The actress concludes by saying that our culture’s focus on bodies doesn’t allow us to zero in on trans people’s “lived realities of that oppression and that discrimination.”

And that was the moment in which, Couric, a TV veteran, had to bow down to the magnificence of Cox, leaving her with this throwaway statement: “You’re so well spoken about it.”

Let’s be clear though: This story is larger than Couric; it’s about our culture and its dehumanization of trans people’s bodies and identities. Because trans people are marked as artificial, unnatural, and illegitimate, our bodies and identities are often open to public dissection. Plainly, cisgender folks often take it as their duty to investigate our lives to see if we’re real.

Curiosity is vital to the growth of our society. It allows us to stretch our minds and learn more, which I truly believe was Couric’s intention: to educate her viewers. But curiosity and mere mystery objectifies and others those that are being gazed upon, pushing our most marginalized peers to defend their right to exist without the pervasive violation of the dehumanizing gaze of curiosity.

The real takeaway from this Katie appearance is the transformative power of solidarity and sisterhood, as exhibited by two successful women—two trans women, two women of color—at the top of their games. As Cornel West, someone Cox often quotes, said, “Justice is what love looks like in public,” and these two women loved one another in public.

Carrera and Cox applauded one another, gushing about how proud they are of the others’ success and how their various achievements help elevate the public’s perception of what’s possible for trans women. And it was this public showing of solidarity that actually flipped the media’s tired genitalia script when it comes to women and girls like us.

When Couric re-posed the question to Cox, even after being shut down by Carrera, it seemed like the TV host was trying to pit the women against one another; instead, Cox said, she was “proud” of Carrera for not answering the question. It was like glorious choreography—again, I’m referencing Beyonce’s “Partition,” in which two women dance in unison against the ropes, moving together as a leopard-print spotlight silhouettes their bodies. Carrera and Cox are equals, partners, a team, and they produced something revolutionary: a new possibility for trans women.

And it’s a possibility model for us all.
Janet Mock is a writer and advocate, whose book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More will be released February 4 by Atria Books. For more info visit JanetMock.com.

Read more: Janet Mock ‘Redefining Realness’ – Empowerment for Transgender Women – ELLE
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The Sexy Lie of Sexuality and Gender

We’re not so different, You and i. 

I’ve often heard the idea that boys are just more visual than women as an excuse for why we normalize activities that tend to objectify women – the way women are presented in the media, the ritualistic ways in which some men attend strip clubs, and the almost universal use of porn. All of these behaviors are supposed to be a natural expression of sexuality. However, when the roles are reversed and a woman engages in these same activities she is seen as abnormal and crass, no matter how visually-oriented she may be. This, to me, is a sign that this herd behavior toward a visual male sexuality is about more than just an appreciation for the visual realm.

One of the first indicators of this is the inconsistency within our gender stereotypes. When we talk about men from a sexual standpoint, it’s fine to call them visual beings; but when we talk about them from a general standpoint, we are asked to believe that they are analytical, unlike the “silly women” who dwell on the visual components of life like fashion, art, and interior design. As a result, the idea of a “man” is appropriated, such that, in each situation, he is dominant.

Dr. Caroline Heldman further develops this argument  through her apt observation that, contrary to popular belief, sex doesn’t sell. Both men and women are sexual beings, and yet the majority of advertisements objectify women without regard to their audience. “If sex sold, most women are heterosexual, and we are sexual beings, so why wouldn’t we see half-naked men everywhere in advertising?” Heldman suggests that what these advertisements are really selling is the idea of the dominant male and the female sexual object. In other words, they are selling success within a male-dominant society.

I don’t claim to know what emphasis on a person’s appearance is acceptable. I only mean to challenge the idea that men need objectifying situations to be aroused and that women can only be the object of another’s desires. There isn’t one way for men to express their sexuality and one other way for women to express theirs. We are all just people, each with our own way of existing, regardless of any way we can be categorized.

The Relationship between Feminism and the Drive for Perfection

Feminism is largely about broadening our opportunities. It broadens our idea of what beauty is, the ways we value ourselves, the professions available to each gender, the acceptable methods of expressing our sexuality, and our concept of what is natural. It is, in so many ways, freeing. However, for many, being a feminist in a world with so many “can’s,” creates what feels like a never-ending strain of “must’s.”

The feminists of previous generations fought hard to create these opportunities, and many women feel guilty if they don’t utilize them. They feel as if they are letting down the cause if they cannot be an amazing mother and a successful professional. This is, obviously, a very unintended and damaging philosophy.

By turning our opportunities into obligations, we are forgetting the real gift of feminism: the right to choose. When we buy into the myth of a Wonder Woman who can do it all, we are forfeiting our ability to accept ourselves.

As illustrated in the image above, just being a woman, just being a person is enough of a reason to exclaim. Knowing who you are and what you contribute is enough of a wonder in itself – and you don’t need a cape to do that!

As Debora Spar, Barnard College President and author of Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, urges, “Give up on the perfection. Nobody’s perfect. It’s a myth. Find what you love; find what you’re good at; find what makes you happy; be good at that; and let some of the other stuff slide.”

In an effort to continue this conversation regarding the relationship between feminism and the drive for perfection, I invite you to listen to Barnard College’s podcast, Dare to Use the F-Word, featuring Debora Spar.

What do you think: Is there a relationship between feminism and the struggle for perfection? Can it even be called feminism while the idea of perfection still persists?

I Didn’t Come Out The Way They Expected