Content warning: The following article
contains discussion of sexual assault.
T
he old adage goes as fol-
lows: One of the most
sacred places for a young
woman is in the bathroom at a bar. In
pre-COVID times, these sanctuaries
were not only places for breaking the
seal (or on a worse night, throwing
up), but they were also a place of
community — of drunk compliments
on outfits, of shared insults over shit-
ty men, of exchanged hair-ties and
tampons. In the women’s bathroom,
with the faint waft of puke and the
floors sticky with beer, we find our-
selves free to be vulnerable and
anonymous. We don’t know who is
washing their hands in the sink next
to us, but for some reason, we feel we
can confide in them. We don’t care if
they are in a sorority or not, if they
are prettier than us or if they gave us
a dirty look on the dance floor just
minutes before — in that moment,
we have shared solidarity.
It’s a common anecdote, and one
that LSA junior Naya Alkhaldi and
I were discussing over Zoom last
Thursday afternoon. Naya, who is
studying Political Science and Inter-
national Studies, was describing how
she has felt that support between
women fade when moving around in
a world defined by the male gaze. And
while we both recognized the analo-
gy of the bathroom as a safe space as
too simplistic and situational to en-
compass the entirety of the female
experience, we agreed that there is a
truth to it.
“That male narrative is brought
back in the picture as soon as you
leave the bathroom,” Naya said. “And
we kind of start judging girls, and
the way we judge girls is always very
male-centric, like, ‘Oh, she’s pretty,’
which is like … why does it matter, be-
ing pretty? It’s because men will want
you more … like ‘Oh, she has a big butt,
I want a big butt,’ but if men didn’t like
big butts, no one would have f---ing
cared about big butts.”
Indeed, many of our preconcep-
tions on how we should look and act
as women are defined by what men
want. In the modern feminist can-
on “The Second Sex” by Simone de
Beauvoir, she describes the paradox
and prison women are forced into
through standards of physical beauty.
“The ideal of feminine beauty is
variable; but some requirements re-
main constant; one of them is that
since a woman is destined to be pos-
sessed, her body has to provide the in-
ert and passive qualities of an object,”
de Beauvoir writes. “The most naive
form of this requirement is the Hot-
tentot ideal … as the buttocks are the
part of the body with the fewest nerve
endings, where the flesh appears as a
given without purpose … weighed
down by fat or on the contrary so
diaphanous that any effort is forbid-
den to it, paralyzed by uncomfortable
clothes and rites of propriety, the body
thus appeared to man as his thing.”
It’s an impossible state to be in, one
that many young women are familiar
with — the pressure to be, all at once,
beautiful, well-dressed, thin but with
curves, sophisticated and youthful.
This is especially present in the col-
lege setting when compounded with
academics and professional life (you
should be the smartest and most suc-
cessful woman, too). More so, many
women experience relationships for
the first time in college, meaning it
is on campus that we begin learning
what is expected in love and sex.
I wondered how other cis women,
specifically those who are attracted
to men, experience love and sex at
University of Michigan and if those
interactions have lingering impacts
on their self-esteem, aspirations and
worldview. Do the bounds that de
Beauvoir described actually exist, and
are they as deeply rooted in women’s
struggles for equality as we claim?
Is college really a place where these
behaviors are formed and reinforced
— especially since the University is a
largely liberal campus?
To find out, I spoke with six wom-
en from varying backgrounds, all of
whom are either straight or bisexual.
Lesbian women are also under the
scrutiny and rules of the male gaze,
and this narrative is important and
necessary to explore, but since this ar-
ticle focuses on the romantic and sex-
ual relationships between men and
women, the lesbian experience will
not be fully realized here. Any refer-
ence to “women” will imply straight
or bisexual cis-gendered women.
Times have changed since de
Beauvoir wrote “The Second Sex”
in 1949, but the problems that wom-
en face still endure, even in our pre-
sumed Ann Arbor liberal bubble. The
heavy questions de Beauvoir asked in
her landmark book are still echoed
today, and I felt that weight of won-
dering in my conversations with Naya
and the five other women:
“How, in the feminine condition,
can a human being accomplish her-
self? What paths are open to her?
Which ones lead to dead ends?” de
Beauvoir asked. “How can she find
independence within dependence?”
***
It’s 2021. Women make up close to
half of the labor force. We earn more
college degrees than men. We have
a woman of color, Kamala Harris, as
vice president. As de Beauvoir puts
it, “many of us have never felt our fe-
maleness to be a difficulty or an obsta-
cle; many other problems seem more
essential than those that concern us
uniquely.”
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
2A — Wednesday, February 10th, 2021
statement
Sex and love: Women at U-M
reflect on lessons learned
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE