Mormon Women Project Salon, November 5

I feel extremely privileged to be part of the Mormon Women Project, a website created to showcase individual Mormon women’s stories of faith. The MWP is much more than just a website, though. It’s a network of women. I have met and made many meaningful connections with incredible women by conducting interviews and by meeting with the other members of the staff. 

I joined the project when I desperately needed to devote myself to a Mormon cause, to experience and contribute to the power of my people. And it was exactly the sort of cause I had been seeking. Neylan McBaine, the project’s founder and editor, had begun to do something I had wanted to do for years–document the stories of Mormon women in a way that would highlight their diversity and that would show them engaging with the world in important ways, in ways that are influenced by their Mormonism. And this is what I love most about the project. These women are not pigeonholed according to how they enact an institutional feminine ideal. They are allowed to be fully themselves–daughters of God on their own paths of faith, paths that test and challenge them but that do not destroy their belief. These women are all powerful forces for good in their own spheres of influence.

The MWP is also a nonprofit organization that sponsors a yearly salon, an intellectually and spiritually edifying evening where remarkable women gather to discuss issues pertinent to women. This year’s salon ”Crafting A Deliberate Life: Making Choices That Are Purposeful, Personal and Powerful” features prominent Mormon women–Emma Lou Thayne and Kate Holbrook, to name a couple–and will be held in downtown SLC at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Please register and come support these women, and check out the website. This is worldwide women’s religious history in the making!

MWPSalonFlyer2011

Live blogging the Relief Society General broadcast

President Julie Beck: Pattern of discipleship in the ancient church.
Early LDS church–women were economic supporters of men as missionaries and early church members.

Authority to teach.

Preparation of saints for temple fulness–>RS
Red brick store–select society, choice, virtuous, and holy
I hope my granddaughters treasure the temple, make covenants there.

Patterns of discipleship that are applied globally on a local level.

Mental, physical, spiritual illness. War, hunger, natural disaster. Addiction, insufficient education.

Trials can bleach the bones of faith and discipleship. RS gives relief. Through RS, discipleship is expanded and work with Christ.

Sisterhood and protection.

a magazine for girls based on “moral truth”

So, my mom just sent me this link. It’s from a woman who plans to start a magazine for girls. Here is how she describes it.

“I’m starting a magazine for teenage girls based on standards and values. It will be less air-brushed, less fake, less celebrity drama and more real, more inclusive, more empowering. Oh, believe me–there will still be articles about what your lip-gloss color says about your personality, but there will also be articles about being (and becoming) the amazing women they are and were always meant to be.

“There will be no mixed messages about modesty and sexuality and how those ideas play into self-worth and personal esteem. We will talk about education and dating and family life and health and beauty and fashion. But we’ll talk about the hard things too–drugs and sex and suicide–as these are things today’s teens are dealing with (whether you want to admit it or not). But we’ll talk about them within the context of moral truth.”

Good on you, Krista Maurer, for trying to offer something uplifting to young women, something that teaches them to honor themselves and their bodies and helps them appreciate who they are and who they can become. Looking at the beginnings of a project like this make me realize what a challenging job LDS Young Women’s leaders have and how difficult it is to be both frank–treating the issues that you know young women will encounter–and spiritually uplifting–teaching them to try to rise above the fog of their youth and popular culture and strive for something more. Any move in that direction is good. This sort of counterculture is good. Way to enter the fray.

Size Matters: Plus Size Women and American Apparel’s New Ad Campaign

A few years ago, one of my friends posted a rant about American Apparel, a US-based clothing company that based on its window displays sells enough lycra and spandex to make several 1980s workout videos.  Before I clicked on it, I thought his rant was going to be about how ugly American Apparel’s clothing was.  Every time I walked past that store on my way to work, my thought was, “Who wears this?”  Instead, he, being a bit more knowledgeable about the chain than I was, was ranting about the company’s sexual politics.  Unbeknownst to me, the founder of the company Dov Charney was infamous for sexually harrassing his employees and coming to board meetings wearing nothing but a sock.   There had been several sexual harassment cases brought against him, and teens who worked at the store had reported a climate in which women were constantly devalued and reduced to their status as sexual objects.  As a result of these stories, feminists had lamented the existence and popularity of the chain for years.  The fact that they stocked only the smallest of sizes added to their discomfort with the store’s popularity.  My friend had read yet another article about the horrendous sexual climate of the company and had decided to advertise his anger on Facebook.  Eventually, however, the news surrounding American Apparel calmed down.

Fast forward two years and American Apparel is back in the news.  This time, they have announced their intention to expand their plus-size clothing options.  Traditionally, American Apparel clothing sizes have maxed out at 8/10.  That means that I, at 5’7” and weighing 138 pounds, am almost the heaviest girl who can shop at American Apparel.  Now, however, they are going to expand the number of styles they offer in L and XL.  To celebrate the launch of the new clothing sizes, American Apparel announced a contest for bootylicious girls who needed extra wiggle room.  It invited women to send in pictures of themselves.  Presumably, the girls whose pictures received the most votes on their website would win.

One woman sent in pictures making fun of the ad campaign.  Her pictures showed her covering herself in chocolate sauce, eating chicken wings while in a swimsuit, and generally, stuffing her face with food.  She received the most votes, but American Apparel has announced that she will not win the contest or appear in any of its advertisements.

The coverage has centered on the implications of the campaign on how women view their bodies and how American Apparel views women.  American Apparel’s ad campaign suggests that any woman over a size 8 is overweight and plus size.  The company celebrates thinness and even as it tries to expand its market to include plus size women, it subtly or perhaps not so subtly depending on whom you ask mocks the very women its trying to include.

The feminist blog Jezebel has done an excellent job covering the story and mocking American Apparel so I point you to their website.  The links below are some of their best articles on the debacle.  I should warn you, however, that Jezebel and its readers tend not to mind their language, so if you mind that sorta thing, be forewarned:

To see some women try on American Apparel clothing and the horrible things it does to their bodies: http://jezebel.com/341625/american-apparel-will-make-you-look-like-a-fat-hooker

Announcement of American Apparel Contest: http://jezebel.com/5834270/american-apparel-introduces-size-xl-holds-search-for-booty+ful-models

American Apparel’s letter refusing to name contestant who mocked them as the winner: http://jezebel.com/5840312/american-apparel-refuses-to-recognize-rightful-plus+size-contest-winner?popular=true

 

 

Hot Mormon Men in History: Frank Grouard

This one has been awhile in coming.  As my friend pointed out recently while looking for people who might count for this blog post, there just aren’t a lot of men out there from the 19th C who fit today’s standards as hot.  Too much beard and not enough muscles.  But, Frank Grouard is half-Polynesian and was adopted by Sitting Bull as his brother so that’s kinda cool and he has nice eyes.  So without further ado: Frank Grouard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Facts about Grouard:

• Frank Grouard was born in the Society Islands to Benjamin F. Grouard, a Mormon missionary, and his Tuamotuan wife Nahina.  Addison and Louisa Barnes Pratt would adopt Grouard as their son, raising him when they returned to the United States in the 1850s.
• Grouard was quite a restless child.  Louisa’s diary describes her constant anxiety that he was going to just run away and not return.
• Grouard worked as a mail carrier.
• In 1869, Crow Indians captured him in Montana.  He was later released and found by Sioux Indians who brought him to their camp where Sitting Bull would eventually adopt him.  Grouard married a Sioux woman.
• Seven years later, Grouard acted as a guide for General Crook and helped him to find Crazy Horse’s camp.  Grouard described Crazy Horse as having “somewhat peculiar features” – “sandy hair,” “a very light complexion,” and “a few powder marks on one side of his face.”  According to Grouard, he looked much younger than he was and lacked the high cheekbones associated with Indian features.
• Grouard has recounted his adventures in his autobiography “The Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard,” in which he describes his reunion with an elderly father who had since forsaken Mormonism and had believed his son dead after false newspaper reports.
• Frank Grouard also has his own Facebook page.  It’s largely based on the wikipedia article about him, but you can like it.  Right now, it has three likes.

Next week, back to the Smith Family.

The Duchess, Homosocial Relationships, and Patriarchy

Last week, the BBC showed The Duchess, which stars Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.  The film focuses on the life of Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, who was famed in the eighteenth century for her beauty, sense of fashion, and political liberalism.  She was also involved in a loveless marriage in which her husband took Bess, one of her best friends, as a long-term mistress and then forced her to live with the woman and raise the daughter of another mistress as her own.  The film is based on Amanda Foreman’s bestselling biography and winner of the Whitebread prize.

In one of the film’s scenes, Bess who has yet to marry her friend’s husband is trying to convince Georgiana that their mutual friend Charles Grey has feelings for the young Duchess.  Georgiana rejects the idea that the young politician is anything but her friend.  Bess, not deterred, informs Georgiana that sex doesn’t have to be boring.  To convince her friend, she has her close her eyes and imagine Grey kissing her neck and unbuttoning her shirt.  In an effort to add realism, she kisses Georgiana’s skin softly as she does so.  The scenes ends there – appropriate heterosexual barriers intact – but the movie leads us to believe that it was partially Bess’ touch that awakens Georgiana’s sexuality and leads her to eventually have an affair with Grey.  Indeed, it is ultimately Bess, in an effort to apologize for her affair with her friend’s husband, who arranges for the first clandestine encounter between the two.

Watching the scene reminded me of a book I read for prelims and may have already mentioned on this blog, though I couldn’t find the post: Sharon Marcus’s Between Women.  In this book, Marcus argues that the Victorians believed that relationships between women helped to prepare for more mature relationships with men.  In playing with other girls, caressing their hair, tending their wounds, and declaring their affections, women learned how to love and be in a relationship – skills that would do them well in their later marriages.  The scene in The Duchess illustrates Marcus’s argument quite vividly.  Without Bess, without their emotional closeness, physical contact, and shared gossip, it is unlikely that Bess ever would have had the emotional ability to be a relationship with Grey or ironically would come to terms with her husband later.

Although it is far removed from the drawing rooms in which Marcus sets her book and the palaces in which the Duchess lived, it might be useful to use her thesis to think about the relationships between Mormon men and women.  When Emily Faithfull visited Utah in the late nineteenth century, she focused on the ways in which women supported and reinforced patriarchy.  In her work, Eliza R. Snow is not the feminist that she claimed to be but an angry woman who used her influence to force women to stay in unhappy marriages and accept polygamy.  We might also ask whether bonds between sister wives could sometimes strengthen the marriage between husband and wife.  Such questions are important because they challenge the ways in which feminists have approached history.  As Marcus points out, there has been an assumption that relationships between women are necessarily transgressive when it is just as likely that they at times worked to reinforce existing power structures.  We might also think about the ways in which the current Relief Society might be examined through these lenses.  Posts on women’s blogs suggest that while such places can be important for building relationships between women that allow them to create alternative spaces of belonging.  They also, however, suggest that going to the Relief Society can be painful and work to limit what is acceptable rather than expand it.