WE ARE supposed to inhabit a post-feminist age. Did you receive the memo? Gender equality has been achieved. All copies of The Female Eunuch may be archived next to tattered Women's Weekly cookbooks.
Formal gender discrimination has been legislated against. It is expected that girls will gain school and even university educations. There's even a person with XX chromosomes occupying the role of Australian Prime Minister. Why, then, does a world in which some suggest we no longer need feminism feel like so many aspects of life for girls and women remain unchanged?
Australian women are now mobilising against two time-honoured foes: judgments made about their sexuality, and physical appearance.
SlutWalk is an international protest movement generated after a Canadian police officer told a woman she should not dress "like a slut" if she did not want to be sexually assaulted.
The other is a protest opposing the impending arrival in Australia of America's child beauty pageant. There is a synergy between women's desire to protest about victim-blaming and girls being groomed as dolls.
Beauty pageants induct girls into a culture in which they will be appraised and valued for their physical appeal. Pageants teach girls, even before they might have memorised the alphabet, how to look "better" than their natural selves. They are made to understand that they look "pretty" and "cute" with rouge on their cheeks, fake teeth and even, occasionally, more shapely brows courtesy of waxing. They learn that it is normal for their appearance to be judged and ranked against other girls.
Apologists for pageants argue that ranking girls' beauty is no different from winners and losers at a sports competition.
Girls' beauty pageants are a symptom of the way we socialise girls to value themselves on their exteriors, while boys do not learn that their worth depends in a significant part on their face and body.
When girls become women, they are already aware of the value placed upon fitting the feminine physical ideal. Whether they intend to read the news or to be the prime minister, a woman's appearance will be crucial to her success or failure.
To make matters more complicated, women must negotiate shifting expectations to look slim, buxom and beautiful within rules that govern a woman's sexuality. Unless she's taking to the stage at a strip club or planning an adult film career, a woman can be the subject of critique for looking too sexually enticing. If the heels of her boots are too pointy and high, a little bit too much of her cleavage is showing, her make-up is too heavily applied, or perhaps her skirt is deemed too short, then both men and women will make unforgiving assumptions.
Girls must learn how to look attractive, but not in a way that conveys sexual availability. This leads us to comments, such as those expressed by the Toronto police officer, which suggest that women who look sexually appealing are issuing men with an invitation to assault or rape.
While such a comparison might be considered outrageous, placing girls in beauty pageants shares some elements with abuses such as female genital mutilation.
Both practices are perpetuated by older female family members, in part so that their daughters or granddaughters will be considered socially acceptable and attractive to men. Though there is no equivalent in terms of the physical damage and sexual dysfunction that mutilation imparts, preparing girls to value themselves on their physical appeal can create psychological dissatisfaction with themselves, inducing negative body image and crippling their ability to enjoy sex as women.
And let's not forget eight-year-old American Britney Campbell, who was recently injected with Botox by her mother to erase her "wrinkles" in preparation for a pageant.
People commonly recognise that practices such as genital mutilation are part of a broader culture that is seen to oppress women. Yet we ought to also understand the gender inequalities in the West that are hinted at by a growing interest in beauty pageants for girls.
What some might defend as "harmless fun" or "dressing up" shows how girls are prepared to see themselves as needing to please men with their appearance. The extreme end point of such a perception is that women who choose to dress in a particular way must only be doing so to attract male attention, and that if this should leave a man unable to control his sexual urges, then her clothing choice is to blame.
While some suggest that the time has passed for feminism and that it might only benefit women in less progressive nations, we ought to rethink our sense of gender achievement. If we harm young girls to prepare them to please men and see a scantily clad teenager at a nightclub as inviting assault, we share unwelcome similarities with those who cut girls' genitalia and who liken women in revealing clothing to "uncovered meat". That we believe this is gender equality is the most substantial barrier to actually achieving it.
The Pull the Pin on Child Beauty Pageants Rally will be held on Tuesday in all states on the steps of Parliament House at noon.
SlutWalk Melbourne will be held at 1pm on May 28 from the State Library of Victoria.
Michelle Smith is a research fellow in the school of culture and communication at the University of Melbourne. She blogs at www.girlsliterature.com
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Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion /society-and-culture/child-beauty -pageants-are-hideously-ugly-2011 0518-1et2k.html#ixzz1MkTtH2nP
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