An Anthology Is Looking for Writing About Girls and Revolution

A woman named Sabine Magnet with a Munich-based press just sent ’90s Woman a call for submissions (in German or English!) for something called THE GRAND GIRLS ANTHOLOGY. The topic is “Revolution.” There’s no money involved, but any profits go to a girls’ charity. If you’re interested, you can send something to submissions@thegrandgirlsanthology. Click here for all the details.

“Postfeminism” Backlash Flashback, 1998

Carrie Brownstein. This to me seemed very different in the '90s than...

A Facebook friend of mine just posted a June 1998 Time magazine article called “Feminism, It’s All About Me!,” which declared feminism all but over because of the rise of the “quintessentially self-absorbed postfeminist.”

It turned out this was the very article that went with the oft-cited “Is Feminism Dead?” cover! I had forgotten all about that article, and I don’t think in my radical Mary-Dalyfied state I had ever read it very closely, so it was super interesting to do so this morning (instead of working on my book).

It’s such an epic article! Evidence presented for the death of feminism includes: Courtney Love’s makeover, The Vagina Monologues, Bust magazine, the Spice Girls, Gloria Steinem forgiving Bill Clinton for his affair, Bridget Jones, Katie Roiphe, Rebecca Walker, Naomi Wolf, Alanis Morissette, Elizabeth Wurtzel, “sex-abuse-survivor syndrome,” and especially Ally McBeal.

...this.

The author, Ginia Bellafante, suggests that a societal critique is far more important for a feminist movement than focusing on the personal or talking about vibrators. She concludes by favorably quoting “Old Guard feminists” Betty Friedan and Susan Brownmiller describing younger feminists’ focus on sex as “stupid.”

The article’s conclusion: “Is Ally McBeal really progress? Maybe if she lost her job and wound up a single mom, we could begin a movement again.”

Whoa. So much in here.

King Missile, “Detachable Penis”

This was not my favorite song off the 1992 King Missile album Happy Hour (that would be “Anywhere”), but it is the video that most evokes my neighborhood in the ’90s. The peddlers’ market is gone, and so is Love Saves the Day, but the desire for removable appendages is eternal.

The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit

Who knew Sloan Wilson’s 1955 bestseller was kind of like Catcher in the Rye, but for middle-aged professional people with kids? I just read the edition with Jonathan Franzen’s smart introduction (although I didn’t have a problem with the second half of the book like he did).

The WWII-veteran exec struggles with his own and society’s phoniness and in the process gets kind of pro-feminist and progressive about sex and power and work-home balance.

If Barbara Ehrenreich is right in The Hearts of Men, and it was in fact men’s dissatisfaction with being breadwinners that helped set feminism’s Second Wave in motion, maybe The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit is one of ’90s feminism’s ur-texts?

A Brief History of ’90s Makeup (Guest Post)

Uma Thurman rocking Chanel Vamp nail polish in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. Image from movietretriever.com

In the past week, the comments section has teemed with references to ’90s-specific products like Manic Panic hair dye, Revlon Blackberry lipstick and Vamp nail polish, so here is a timely submission from ’90s Woman Hillary Belzer, who wrote her thesis about Riot Grrrl. Her latest project is the Makeup Museum, which is devoted to examining cosmetics design and history. And here is what she says about ’90s makeup… 

Fashion trends, and by extension, beauty trends, are cyclical – usually about 20 years after the initial phenomenon began, it comes back in vogue and is slightly updated.  So it’s not surprising that the ’90s are making a comeback now.

Here I will look at the transformation the beauty industry underwent in the ’90s as a direct response to new notions women had about makeup.

In 1995, the L.A. Times quoted a beauty newsletter editor as saying, “The creativity the department stores had 10 years ago doesn’t exist today…the top five brands control 75% of the makeup business.”  Something had to give to meet the beauty needs of the ’90s woman, and it did.

“So, There We Were in the Burger King Parking Lot”

Bridget Everett performing at Mike Jackson's house. May 24, 2011.

Twice in one week, I saw Bridget onstage doing the same number: telling a story about being “finger banged” behind a Burger King; then playing the saxophone while her dress fell off.

Two times was not enough! If I could watch her perform every day, I would be a happier person.

Side note: I used to really hate audience participation in any guise, but Bridget is one of the performers who has converted me. When she attacks young men in the audience, it is with such joy and sweetness that it doesn’t feel mean or aggressive. It feels like a generous, cheerful greeting. And I have never seen anyone (including the gentleman in this photo, at right, whose clothes quickly vanished after he was pulled onstage) complain.

A Sexual Harassment Primer from Time magazine, 1994

I just came around this sexual harassment timeline from a 1994 Time article. Check out how, in 1964, banning job discrimination on the basis of sex was “provocatively novel.”

1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 is enacted. It contains a provocatively novel amendment banning job discrimination on the basis of sex, which foes of the law had hoped would derail it.

1975 In the first reported sexual-harassment decision under the new law, involving two women who claimed they suffered repeated verbal and physical advances from a supervisor, Arizona federal district court rules the act does not cover such a claim.

1977 Washington, federal appeals court rules that sexual harassment is discrimination under the act, in a case in which a woman alleged her job was abolished in retaliation for refusing a supervisor’s sexual advances.

“You Don’t Finish a Book Without Closing a Door”

That’s a line from a book’s acknowledgements that I read a long time ago and have never been able to get out of my head. I have never closed a door in the course of doing three books, and yet part of me still believes that in order to be a Real Writer I should be off in an office somewhere, smoking a pipe and yelling at everyone to be quiet.

I asked some friends and they say they haven’t ever closed a door either, and that they just work around the rest of their lives. One said, “I yell at my kids a lot, and I have my laptop out all the time, but we’re still sitting together in the living room.”

How ’90s Feminism Manifested Itself in High School English

So Out It’s In: The Brushpopper Shirt

Neal Medlyn in a '90s Wrangler Brushpopper, 2011.

I spend a lot of time reading fashion history books and looking around vintage clothing stores, so I see a lot of crazy, super-dated clothes. But when Neal Medlyn told me that for his birthday he wanted a Wrangler Brushpopper shirt, I thought it was probably as reclaimable as the Spanish farthingale.

The Brushpopper shirt (a discontinued line) is made of cotton, but coated so that it repels water and wind. This makes it feel rather like a canvas tarp, and gives it a slight sheen. They come in really strange, bright colors.