When I was a little girl I spent a significant amount of
time with my grandparents in Warner Robins, Georgia—a flat, uninteresting place
populated by Air Force employees at the local base, fire ants the size of your
pinky toe, and waves of tiny black gnats. I love my grandfather, and he loved
me. Sometimes, when left alone in the yard or the basement for hours while the
grown-ups napped in the stifling midday heat, I tended to work myself into some
daydream that resulted in rather a mess of red clay and rivulets of water
through the yard or pulled out scraps of old clothes and pictures from the
trunks molding in the basement. My grandfather would take out his cigar to
confront me, and when I tried to account for my behavior (often truly mystified,
not remembering exactly how all of that mess came to be while I was wrapped up
in the story in my head), he would snap at me: “Quit acting smart, girl.” It is
not something he ever said to my brother.
As an adult, and years after his death, I remember thinking
this was an odd phrase even as a six-year-old. What does that mean, to act smart? And why should one stop? Does
it mean that you aren’t smart, if
someone says you are acting smart? Do
you only have the ability to act, but not the real intelligence? And if you are
acting smart, how do you come to be smart?
This memory resurfaces for me
in light of our recent (sometimes intense, thank you 3:30!) discussions about
women’s history and treatment in the media. When we declare March Women’s
History Month and spend a few hours thinking and talking about how, as Margaret
Cho put it, “the media treats women like shit,” are we acting smart?
Some of you seem to think so. Some of you seem to think that
by addressing the issue, we are creating the issue. This is the ‘speak no evil’
approach to history that declares there is only a problem if we call it a
problem. But it is a problem, and
part of the problem stems from not only how the media treats women, but how we
allow ourselves to be treated. One of the clips read at the event in the
library comes from A
Vindication on the Rights of Women, by Mary
Wollstonecraft, in 1792, where she rather sarcastically writes, “My own sex, I
hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of
flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a
state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
When women act scatterbrained or ditzy
or bored with education or claim we are too small-minded to “get it,” whatever “it”
is, we are playing directly into that pervasive, obviously age-old stereotype
that gives everyone, male and female, permission to treat women as “perpetual
children.” This leads directly to laws, statues, and policies that result in a
further eroding of our own power to make our own decisions about our own bodies,
our lives, our families, our futures, our roles, our identities. We are too
weak and feeble-minded to figure this out for ourselves, we say to the (mostly
male) politicians. You guys do it for us.
And in this way, I agree with my grandfather. Quit acting smart. You are smart. Be it.
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