Catfight!
NS June 4th, 2009
Hey, look everybody, Catfight!
Okay, so there’s not an actual fight going on in this photograph, featured in the New York Post, but the message is that these two ladies (Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie) are engaged in a war, alright — a war of how smokin’ HOT they are, or are perceived to be; of how old or young they are; and, of course, how much of a “bad girl” each is. Below the picture of them squaring off in this Battle of the Babes, we are treated to bullet-pointed analysis of their tattoos, significant others, age, best quotes, ancestry and professional accolades, searching for ways in which the two are different from and alike one another, and using those differences or sameness to create an illusion of friction, competition, judgment and controversy.
I mean, isn’t that the trash media’s job summed up, right there? The Post epitomizes it, obviously, as does the Daily Mail here in the UK. I wouldn’t line my cat’s litter tray with either, personally, not least because I once read that misogyny can be contracted through direct physical contact with it, especially when soaked in urine.
The Boston Herald, not wanting to be left out of the Catfight! stakes decided it would be fun to pit the “Octomom” (Nadya Suleman) against Kate Gosseling of “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” fame (a popular US tv show about a couple with 8 kids, for those who haen’t a clue who I’m talking about) and stir up some trouble between the two.
And so and on and so on, ad nauseum. Examples of woman versus woman Catfights! can be found every day, in multiple media outlets (not just the tabloids) across the world. I’ve asked myself why this is and while many people’s first instinct is to say (or at least think) that women are just petty and bitchy like that, I know better. I know that Catfights! are our culture’s way of keeping women otherwise occupied while the men behind the curtain pull all the strings and make all the laws that will keep us at each other’s throats for another century.
I’ve often heard a sentiment expressed that women are each other’s worst enemies, not men. When we fuss and stress out about how we look before going out on the town, our fellas roll their eyes and say we’re being silly, that no one will care what we wear or how we look. They love us for who we are, as individuals. We are told that the only reason we care is that other women care — that they will be judging our clothes, our hair and makeup, our topics of conversation, the way we laugh, what we order from the bar. In a way, they’re right. We do try to please other women and care what they think, as much as we might not like to admit it. But competition and shallow judgment among us is not some biological norm, it’s not the way we were “wired.”
The only reason we care so much what other females think is because we know that they will have read the same magazines full of ads for diet pills and stories on the latest fashions, heard the same sexist jokes, seen the same beer commercials, worked with the same chauvinists and interalized all of the ways, both large and small, that our society marginalizes, belittles and objectifies women. And we know that if we’ve been suckered into worrying about how we look and how we behave every time we leave the house, other women will have too.
Because we’ve been conditioned to base our sense of identity on our public image, what other choice do we have? It’s a rare, extremely self-assured woman who doesn’t mold herself into what others think she should be and instead into what she was destined to become. Take, for example, the “Mommy Wars.” It is a myth that they were created by, run for the benefit of or perpetuated by mothers who revel in judging other women for their differing choices, to make themselves feel better about theirs. Make no mistake — we did not create this war, oh no. Why would we strike the match that burns us? There is nothing for us to gain by wasting time and energy on tearing each other down. We’re all busy enough as it is, right? So if I don’t have a vested interest in making you feel bad about yourself and you don’t have a vested interest in making me feel bad about myself, what the hell are we doing on this faux battleground? It’s like invading a country and then finding it had no weapons of mass destruction after all.
But as we know, even when weapons are not found, one or both sides will feel they’ve come too far to quit outright. And so we press on, heaping more misguided bullshit on top of the pile threatening to break us. We can’t see the forest for the trees now and it’s easier to blame something else instead: each other, politics, religion, idealism, feminism…
We avoid talking about the ways in which our choices have empowered us as mothers or what has worked for our families fear of being accused of harboring a superiority complex or inflicting guilt upon those who made different choices or had different circumstances. We draw lines in the sand between those of us who have had children and those of us who haven’t. Even amongst feminists, we have been put into neat little boxes (or, more accurately, waves) to keep us separate, divided and anything but united. Because the powers that be know that if we were to ever break out of our boxes, tear down the walls dividing us, burn the straw man fallacies and advance as one unwavering, unmoldable mass, it would be like King Kong crashing through New York. Thousands would flee their homes, running in fear from the hairy-legged fembots seeking to destroy mankind by putting a W-O in front of it. Or, at least that’s what some people and organizations would like everyone to think.
When the claws have been retracted and the fur has stopped flying, I think we’ll all see exactly who or what was behind the Catfight! concept…and it won’t be wearing a skirt.
