The awful mess going down in Durham with Duke brought to the forefront of my mind the essay I wrote, Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choos. Inspired by CJR Daily
Of Duke, and Princeton, and Jocks, and Sluts by Liz Cox Barrett
“With nearly a month to go before the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape have a hearing in court on May 15 — how many cable TV talking head hours between now and then? — we’re confident that bad reporting on the case will not be in short supply.
To date, however, this piece by ABC News’ Adrienne Mand Lewin gets our vote for most regrettable. It is the sort of story that might provoke a good guffaw, were one reading The Onion (indeed, it reads like an Onion story, though perhaps with less thorough reporting).
But on ABC News? Not so funny.
Everything about this piece is iffy, starting with its raison d’être.
Lewin’s lede: “They’re on every college campus where sports teams succeed: groupies who want to date athletes — or at least have sex with them.” And? Is this news?
In paragraph nine, Lewin more or less confesses that, no, it is not news, but that she is using the Duke situation to pretend that it is. “It’s certainly nothing new that college students have sex or that athletes are popular. But in light of the rape allegations at Duke University and the cancellation of the men’s lacrosse team’s season there — while a separate issue — players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team are now at the forefront of many college students’ minds.”
But what is actually “at the forefront” of the minds of the six college students Lewin interviewed for her article (three of who would provide only their first names) is not “players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team” but rather the behavior of those sex-crazed jock groupies we met in Lewin’s lede.
Lewin writes: “At Princeton University, where the men’s lacrosse team is regularly ranked as one of the best in the nation” — and, we’d add, where Lewin apparently started and ended her reporting on what’s on “college students’ minds” — these jock groupies are known as “laxtitutes or “lacrosstitutes.” (Eat your heart out, Onion writers! Either that, or start recruiting from Princeton). Distracted by these “laxtitutes,” Lewin spends most of her article focusing on their behavior rather than on “players’ behavior and the impact it can have on a team,” as initially promised.
So how do “laxtitutes” behave? Writes Lewin: “Candi Arner, a Princeton freshman, said her friends knew three girls who between them had slept with nine players on the team.” You know, sort of like how Simone in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” knew that Ferris was sick because her “best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night.”
This, as Salon’s Rebecca Traister has noted, is “journalism hearsay.”
It’s going to be a long 27 days.”
Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s
I call the new feminism Manolo Blahnik Feminism, which is a super-sexual, super-sexy, and super-confusing form of self-empowerment. Ariel Levy calls it “raunch culture” and I believe that it is going to blow up in American women’s faces.
I believe very strongly that there are too many dangerous contradiction in the new feminism, in the new American woman.
I attended a panel on gender differences in the new feminism and my question to the panel was, “I understand how empowering strappy stilettos, butt jeans, bare bellies, and camisole tops are for the modern woman. It is all about taking back the sex, taking back the gaze, reclaiming the control of what is cute, what is hot, what is sexy, it about taking back control, reclaiming feelings of pride in the body, pride in the shape and tan earned from an active, outdoorsy life. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, we men never got the memo. I never got the memo.”
In fact, I feel sort of like a fox in a henhouse. Why? Well, all of my old-world, unenlightened, seduction techniques work now better than ever! In fact, the truth is, I am really too nice for the Manolo Blahnik k feminist.
The Manolo Blahnik feminist wants to be taken, wants to find a real man, wants to take risks and have a great time; she pursues a doctrine of devil may care.
Well, no matter what the Manolo Blahnik Feminist thinks she wants and no matter what she thinks she’s doing, she is actually walking into a very dangerous trap.
We men are not responding to this self-empowerment with amazement and respect, we’re responding to it by licking our lips, by taking advantage, by rubbing our hands together, and by trying not to jinx this out of being. We are pretty well convinced that what is happening won’t last: the Manolo Blahnik feminist fancies herself the aggressor, the buyer, the pursuer, the seducer. And we men are what she is after.
All we see is, “man that girl is fine — I’d like some of that.”
As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.
Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men.
And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape.
I have loved them, I have befriended them, and I worked through relationships with women who have survived sexual abuse and rape.
Its always an ugly story and the world is never the same. We just have not received the memo. This kind of exciting, naughty, passionate, irresponsible, reckless indulgence in “raunch culture” is going to result in one hell of a cultural hangover.
Many women will be unable to recover from this self-indulgence with any semblance of faith, trust, hope, or intactness.
And many men, too.
When it comes right down to it, who would have any of the right stuff to even have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?
Not I.
I am not sure if modern women have it very good. Not nearly as good as would be expected. I attended college at a high point for feminism an academia, when a woman would still identify with being a feminist.
Not any more.
