The accumulation of wealth.

“Jacob: I think what we’ve seen in recent years is a real constriction of the imagination of mainstream feminism. Mainstream feminism means becoming Oprah, Beyoncé, or Sheryl Sandberg — the accumulation of wealth is how you demonstrate your equality.

Reni: Don’t get me wrong. It costs money just to stand still these days. I can understand why those of us who don’t have much money dream of it setting us free.

Jacob: I love Beyoncé and Oprah as much as anyone else, but they only represent one vein of feminist thought and analysis, and that type of feminism has definitely been elevated in pop culture over other, more politically challenging forms of feminism..” –Jacob Tobia and Reni Eddo-Lodge, “The 1970s Feminist Who Warned Against Leaning In,” BuzzFeed

Like Jacob, I should preface this post with my admiration for both Beyoncé and Oprah. Beyoncé is the woman I aspire to be in my next life. For me, she is the closest a woman can come in modern America to having it all: an incredible career, creative fulfillment, strong family relationships, thoughtful values, healthy levels of confidence and self-worth, both inner and outer beauty. Whatever secret to life she and Oprah have unlocked–which I imagine is some combination of talent, hard work, ambition, and luck– I’d love to be in on it someday.

And yet, it’s not something I hope to achieve in this lifetime. I can’t conceive living a lifestyle like theirs with only 24 hours in a day. I don’t have an endless drive or herculean stores of energy. I’ve always preferred a calmer, gentler pace of life, and I imagine that it would be much more difficult, even impossible, to achieve what Beyoncé and Oprah have at my own pace.

What’s more, I think it’s possible to achieve all of the things listed above without also seeking fame or wealth. As Jacob says, these women are considered successful not because they have accomplished great things, overcome adversity, or contributed to the community. Those things are icing on the cake of their primary success: the accumulation of wealth. Jacob offers wealth as proof of equality, but I think it’s more closely aligned with proof of validity in today’s culture. For men and women alike, the expectation is that you are paid in equal proportion to the amount of hard work you do. If you are contributing to society through work, then you will be paid in kind, and that income is proof of your value. Those who cannot earn their costs of living, or who choose to exchange their earning capacity for other things (like free time or pursuit of a passion) are expected to justify their deficiencies. They are looked down upon by both blue and white collar workers, and they are often stigmatized even by their fellow non-earners.

Stay-at-home parents have not escaped the pressures of these capitalist value judgments, which seems especially absurd given the personal and social benefits. Women have to justify themselves to many “feminists” if they are fortunate enough to have the chance to stay home with their children and choose that path. Stay-at-home dads have to argue their masculinity to a society that prioritizes their earning ability over their fatherhood. The freedom to be a stay-at-home parent requires, above all else, a strong partnership. One partner has to agree to bring in enough money to support the family while the other agrees to give up career advancement. Together, both partners have to agree to prioritize their children and their family unit over individual success or achievement. Our society values individualism above community, a priority that gains further traction with the emphasis on wealth. In that capitalist frame, the benefit of stay-at-home parenting doesn’t seem to outweigh the sacrifice.

For those of us who are not Beyoncé or Oprah, we are constantly in a position of having to make a choice about which aspects of our lives take priority. Realistically, unless we are blessed with their fortuitous combinations of luck and ability, there are not enough hours in the day to be a superwoman feminist. A more interesting kind of feminism, which Jacob alludes to as politically challenging, would interrogate the social expectations and stigmas that lead us to admire Beyoncé and Oprah for having it all. Rather, we would begin to focus on the importance of having enough.

Using your sexiness to make money.

“I would never point a finger at a woman for her actual sexual behavior, and I think all women have the right to express their desires. But I will look at women with influence—millionaire women who use their “sexiness” to make money—and ask some questions…Like I said, I’m not criticizing anyone’s real sex life; as George Michael tells us, “‘Sex is natural, sex is fun.’ But the poles, the pasties, the gyrating: This isn’t showing female sexuality; this is showing what it looks like when women sell sex.” ~“Rashida Jones on the Pornification of Everything,” Glamour Magazine

I almost didn’t write this post, and I’m going to be up front about why: talking about sex makes me uncomfortable. This is not because it feels unnatural or wrong, and I like to think that I’ve surpassed the middle school level of maturity where you giggle through your fear of the unknown. What makes me nervous about sex is that I don’t feel like I have a good moral barometer for it. Raised as a methodist in a lower class family with upper-middle class aspirations, I had the freedom to question, doubt, and explore the nuances at the intersection between emotion and ethics. Sex, though, lived in this murky area that I avoided the way kids avoid the neighborhood ramshackle house rumored to be haunted by ghosts. I knew it was there, and I knew it probably wasn’t what I imagined it to be, but fear of discovering the truth kept me from further investigation.

My morals are very important to me, and I tend to fall back on them when I need any kind of guidance, even when I’m not totally sure what my moral stance is. In fact, my morals tend to be in a constant state of flux based on my situation, information, and understanding. My friends say it’s because I think too much. Maybe that’s true, but usually my changes of opinion are sparked not by an intellectual problem, but an intense emotional reaction. I do think a lot, but my thoughts respond to emotional stimuli, not the other way around. Because I react to the world this way, the guiding morals that hold steadfast in my life, above all else, are love and empathy. In my experience, I can’t make a good decision without deference to these two values first.

From this point of view, the tricky thing about sex is that at its best, sex is an expression of both love and empathy. Who am I to judge anyone’s expression of these things, regardless of what seems right to me? The religious aspects of my upbringing had a straightforward answer to that question– no sex until after marriage, then it’s between you and God– which was open-minded in its own way but dissatisfying nonetheless. For their own reasons, my parents were unavailable for comment when I was starting to ask these questions, and for my own reasons, I soon decided that they weren’t the resources I needed anyway. In fact, my growing discomfort with the subject made it pretty much impossible for me to discuss sex with anyone, even my closest friends. Sex education classes were a joke, as anyone who went to my school can attest, often because the teachers were just as uncomfortable as the students. That meant that, like many other kids my age, I learned most of what I knew about sex from pop culture.

As far as Jones’s argument about the responsibility that comes with being a public figure, I wholeheartedly agree that anyone in the limelight should recognize that their actions influence the less experienced. I learned a lot of things about dating and relationships from sitcoms and pop hits that even just a couple years of semi-adulthood have proven false. However, that’s not where my confusion lies with this article. I’m more interested in the idea of selling sex as a morally reprehensible offense. I had a conversation about strip clubs the other day in which my objection to them was the commodification of sex, precisely because the line between sex as a business transaction and people as objects of gratification is so blurry. Then I was asked the following question: so if there were a person who used stripping as a form of self-expression, as a kind of artistic outlet, and they sold tickets to performances the way a traditional performer does, would I object to that?

My gut reaction was no– as long as everyone was consenting and respectful, I couldn’t see the problem. Art solely as a means of income feels wrong to me, but art as expression is a central tenant of humanity. So if you take that one step further, what if someone expresses themselves through sex, regardless of whether other factors like money, spirituality, or empowerment are involved? I automatically got tense in response to the idea, but I still can’t put my finger on why. Is it really all that different? Sure, I know that I personally wouldn’t be interested in or comfortable with that, but the more I think about it, the less I feel I can object to someone else doing it– at least not on moral grounds. If someone uses sexual activity as a form of self-expression, and everyone involved understands the situation, then why does adding money to the equation suddenly make it feel wrong to me?

As often happens in these posts, I don’t have an answer, just more questions. What is the difference between sex, sexiness, and sexuality? If an artist can sell paintings and a musician can sell records, why does our culture have such an immediate and harsh reaction to a stripper selling dances, or even the “classier” idea behind an escort selling an evening of her attentions? Whatever the reasons, I don’t feel like I have the tools to find these answers. I’m too embroiled in this culture, and I’m still figuring out these definitions for myself. I do think, though, that this is maybe the best of what feminism has to offer. Feminism has been a pretty terrifying buzz word on the internet lately, so to clarify, I mean feminism in the sense of gender equality, in the idea that sexual acceptance supersedes any ingrained ideas about traditional gender roles, new gender roles, or attempts to subvert either one of them. If the subversion is itself an expression of identity or of love, then how can I approach that expression with anything but love and empathy?