''The Bible'' of stereotypes about women

If a feminist workshop of a more down-to-earth, boringly elementary inclination (one of those that gives lectures on how to recognize stereotypes, but doesn't go any deeper or further than that) asked its participants to recount some of the pervading stereotypes about women, nothing that would require a critical analysis or a certain preliminary knowledge, only an ability to point out the evident (which merely requires an average IQ and a touch of uneasiness in social contexts involving the opposite sex), their collective contribution would fall short compared to the above-mentioned portal.

That goes to say that they wouldn't nearly be able to call to mind all that falls into the category of stereotypes, which, on the other hand, žena.hr portal listed with a sovereignty of someone who trully KNOWS. Precisely, someone who is so immersed in stereotypes to the point of being utterly unable to grasp an alternative, or somewhat different option of their own existence outside this meticulously shaped, firmly closed and unquestionable system.

The front page says it all.  Announcements on the top mention "Beauty and style", "Fitness and dieting", "Pregnancy and motherhood", ''Health", "Entertainment"; also "Love and sex", "Business corner" and "Household and food". Topics on the main menu are as follows: boutiques, florists and decoration, fitness centres, hairdressers, beauty parlours, tailor service, drugstores, medical services, travel agencies, restaurants, solariums, kindergardens and nursery schools. Then goes a list of top articles: the United Nations diet, How to lose excessive weight?, Secrets of lovemaking: find your inner sex-goddess, Boost your metabolism, All about female body hair, Season's fashion must-have: tights, Fatburning exercises, Christmas gifts for men, Beauty tips: make-up and cosmetics, How to get your ex back. All serious and precise. There are some easier topics, frolics and jokes (or maybe not?), such as: Brief make-up tips – the natural look, First date survival tactics (!?), and then for some ''Man de Jour'' voting, followed by the Period Calendar. And so on and so forth, the style remains the same.

The Croatian media have so far been blessed by the gift of blab on these matters, on stereotypes about women within a society (ours, theirs, and others'), so one might say that the subject is trite and that nothing new can be added. However, what we had and what we predominantly still have is more or less a mere moralistic loathing. Unfortunately, labeling it as 'feminist' is a frequent and damaging practice which makes a bad situation even worse. The cases have so far been numerous, initiated by the so-called feminists and the even more so-called feminist organizations. They imply an existence of an alternative system of values, gladly self-proclaimed as 'genuine' in the same unquestionable manner, which would value women on the basis of different parameters and equate their rights and possibilities with those of the opposite sex, without laying down the evidence to prove its true superiority. To say the truth, an alternative system would obviously be better if based on equality, but the central point is not for it 'to be better', but 'to be realistic'.  In other words, it isn't wrong to deem the alternative value-system better, but to pit a more realistic one - and by 'realistic' I mean the one that is obviously widely accepted, conventional, and so implied in practical relations that it needn't be explicitly represented by anyone – against something that is not constructed and elaborated as a critique, but is simply another value-system, a kind of mere wishful thinking.

Histerization of woman's body

But, let us put Croatian media scene aside and find out what message are the titles and headings, the content of žena.hr portal actually trying to deliver. The key, if not all terms gravitate towards sexuality, gender-conditioned (within a dominant tradition) social roles or, on a wider scale, physicality; others are non-existent. Motherhood, kindergardens and nursery schools, sex, how to make love, pregnancy, body hair, body 'management' in general (make-up, cosmetics, dieting, hairdressers, tailors...). Michel Foucault has a name for it – the histerization of woman's body. He once described a woman's body as body saturated by sexuality. In The History of Sexuality he writes: "by histerization the body is reinstated, as a consequence of an apparently quintessential pathology, with a field of applied medicine; histerization finally restores an organic connection between a woman's body and that of a society (for which it must secure regular fertility), familial space (within which it is required as a substanital and functional element) and the life of her children (which the body creates and must ensure on the basis of a bioethical resposibility which lasts as long as nurture)".

''A woman's world'' in the form presented by žena.hr, as well as Cosmopolitan, Gloria, and countless other magazines, is a world strictly defined by female sexuality, which has historically been well camouflaged and even more suppressed for the benefit of (limited but important) social mission. Of course, the reproductive one. As the painful female history shows, women did not exactly have a choice, so one shouldn't be surprised by their acceptance of limitations imposed by societies and value-systems ruled and regulated by men. And if one agrees to live inside a cage, it better be a gilded one.

Or perhaps not? In Muslim societies, majority of women wear a hijab to cover their heads and face, or a burqa for complete face and body covering. No matter what the theologists, or even the women who wear them say, hijab and/or burqa are nonetheless an entirely unambiguous, unquestionable, and unmasked sign of male domination. In the Western culture on the other side, women (luckily, not all of them) selfwillingly lock themselves inside a gilded cage composed of exactly those elements offered to us by the portal žena.hr, thus limiting their own human potential to a well-preserved and, in accordance with the ruling criteria as much as it is possible, attractive body designed to perform a few functions: pleasing a man, giving birth, and raising children. I say 'selfwillingly' because there has already been a number of contemporary feminist variants which transform this misfortune into a virtue, and so discard the pressure of mass-culture as a main cause. If one should decide between two forms of slavery, the choice would be a tough one. Basically, it would boil down to a burqa ON the head, or IN the head.

Translation: Bilanda Ban

Original text on Croatian: Burka na glavi ili burka u glavi
7 December 2006, ZamirZine