Women Holding Women Back

            We were first introduced to the concept of women holding women back in The Handmaid’s Tale when we were introduced to the Aunts that taught the Handmaids how they should act as well as what their lives will become.

            Women, just like men are connected to one another, whether it be through common goals, the formation of communities, protest, or even something as minor as group trips to the bathroom, but Naomi Wolf thinks that the public behavior of women is one of the factors that is holding them down.

            Granted, Naomi Wolf mostly talks about how men and industries are keeping women down but she also discusses how women are doing it to themselves. She says that, “beauty thinking urges women to approach each other as possible adversaries until they know they are friends” which to me seems like a completely unhealthy outlook on one another (75).

            You can see the downside of such views in communities just like ASL. The girls that attend school here are a lot more clique oriented then the boys are. I’m a guy, and I can safely say that it is very rare to find another guy that attends this school that I would find it awkward to talk to, get along with, or even work with. However I can’t say the same for the girls. A female friend was complaining to me about her work partner for a certain class, when I asked what was wrong with her partner she said, ”nothing, I just don’t know her at all”. I told her she should just get to know her and she just told me that I “didn’t understand”.

            This negative effect of the beauty myth is one of the most common that I come into contact with as I do it on a daily basis, but Wolf claims that there’s a simple solution. “Though women have networks of intimate friends, the myth, and women’s conditions until recently, have kept women from learning how to do something that makes all male social change possible: How to identify with unknown other women in a way that ins not personal.” (75)

            If you ask me that’s the best solution, but the only way we can reach that is to get rid of the beauty myth and I honestly have no idea how we would go about doing that, which is why I’m really looking forward to the last chapter of our book.