Writer Allison McNelly Challenges Feminists For Their Negative Views About White Upper Class Women!
Friday 13th August 2010
by Allison McNeely
Julia, looking loved up and happy. How dare she?
So, as I’m sure you’ve heard, Eat, Pray, Love is gracing us with its presence on the big screen, starting this weekend. And the lady blogs and bloggers have been having a field day. Blogs like Jezebel and Feministing have been saying absolutely nothing new about Elizabeth Gilbert and her memoir, but are still making a big deal out of the film’s debut.
Courtney at Feministing, while she wasn’t hating on Eat, Pray, Love, felt compelled to point out that most people can’t escape to an Indian asharam when the going gets tough.
Jezebel has been crazy with the coverage – photos from the premiere, a story about attending the premiere, questioning whether or not Gilbert ruined Bali, discussing self-help culture and how tough it is to be upper middle class and white. I’m not going to link to all their posts, but here’s a link to their hashtag on the topic.
Bitch wrote an essay about priv-lit and women’s insatiable desire for enlightenment. To be honest, I didn’t get through the entire article, because I immediately felt talked down to.
The lady blog coverage of Eat, Pray, Love seems obsessed with reminding us that Gilbert is privileged, special and even a bit self-indulgent. That not all of us can afford to travel, gallivant and eat exquisitely. That not everyone can escape to Italy, India and Indonesia when their life goes down the toilet. Funny, I didn’t really need that explained to me. So why are they dragging on about it?
Many feminists seems to have a complicated relationship with Gilbert and her work (specifcally, Eat, Pray, Love and Committed.) There seems to be some almost jealousy of her good fortune, which explains the incessant reminders that her story is unique and not a reality of for most people, but also an enduring fascination with her. It’s like they want to make her problems trivial, but they can’t hate her enough to follow through. They kind of really like her.
I think this is because feminism has an uneasy relationship with women (generally, caucasian) who are relatively well-off in life. They can’t be real feminists. They don’t know real suffering and struggle, therefore, what the hell do they know about feminism? Their problems are all silly and a reflection of their twisted socialization, as opposed to legitimate issues.
(For the record, this has happened to me. I wrote about it here.)
There are actually a lot of feminist aspects to Gilbert’s story. Leaving your husband is hard, you’re purposefully and bravely dismantling your entire life. I think that takes great courage. Gilbert had the courage to not just leave her husband, but to take up with a younger boyfriend and following that relationship’s demise, to gallivant around the world for a year. I think it’s in Gilbert’s selfish and self-indulgent behaviour that we can see acts of feminism. She fought for her own happiness.
She acted like a man. She made a choice that put her happiness first, and she didn’t care what other people thought. We all know that any woman at her age who leaves her husband and travels for a year with no real plans is considered a flake, immature, selfish, foolish. I think that she was brave.
Feminism is about women, all women. The tendency to write off Gilbert’s experiences as shallow and consumerist is the very bitchiness that causes so many internal problems within feminism. She’s not feminist enough for you, so you’re going to rip apart her year of self-exploration on your blog. Cool. Would it be better for you if she was a single mother with a drug problem?
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