The Chronicle

Nathan Caldwell
Editor-in-Chief

      On Wednesday, April 14, the author of “Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crises of Overachieving Girls,” Liz Funk to helped kick off the Sociology department’s new gender and sexuality studies program that starts in the fall.

      Chair of the Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Department, Suzanne Pryga, said the program came about for a variety of reasons.  

      “There has been demand among the student population, considering the enrollment in the current courses,” Pryga said. “Many four-year universities already offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field, so we thought that this was a great way for CLC students to get a head start. CLC is one of the few community colleges to offer such a degree.”

      Pryga said courses will be offered in summer and fall. Core classes will include Introduction to Gender Studies and Theories of Feminism with a number of gender-themed electives such as Psychology of Women, Philosophy of Gender, Women and the Arts and History of Women.

      CLC Academic Operations Manager Stephanie Gray explained that the program leads to an associate’s in art degree with a concentration in gender and sexuality studies, similar to a concentration in psychology or sociology. 

      Gray explained that a background in gender and sexuality studies makes students better rounded and equipped to deal with diversity in the world. 

      Gray said the program doesn’t exclude males. To the contrary, she encourages men to enroll. 

      “We chose (the title) gender studies to make it more inclusive,” Gray said. “We don’t want to just focus on femininity and women,” Gray said. “Historically, one of the criticisms of feminism has been that it has been upper-class white women fighting for right. The current feminism is much more diverse and includes men. We can’t separate ourselves, we need to work together to change society.

      “And you can meet babes,” Funk said. 

        Funk, a self-proclaimed recovering supergirl, gave a lecture on the pressures on girls and young women to over-achieve while conforming to a new social norm based on a year’s worth of research she conducted for her book. 

        “A supergirl is a young woman who feels that she needs to be constantly improving herself to be loved,” Funk said. “She perceives that she needs to be a perfect 10 in everything in which she excels. Yet when she achieves something, it’s never good enough.” 

      “That constant striving for something more is what really marks the modern day supergirl.”

      Funk’s inspiration for the book came from her own experiences. 

      “I always observed a lot of pressure on young women in high school and college to adhere to a limiting and demanding female ideal,” she said. 

      That ideal is the sum of cultural influences that push girls to be skinny, beautiful, tan, and simultaneously, effortlessly smart.

      “I was very aware of this demanding role for girls in high school,” Funk said. “In college I noticed similar but different pressures on young women.”

      This awareness led Funk to investigate the issue. 

      Funk followed five young women between 15 and 27, spending between a couple days and a few weeks observing their daily lives. She also interviewed approximately 100 other young women who were everything from sociology to engineering majors. 

      She found a combination of internal and external pressures that drive young women to be supergirls that come from the media, peer groups, themselves, and parents to a lesser degree. 

      This pressure on women to achieve, even to a fault, has changed the landscape of higher education. 

      “It’s been statistically shown that women outnumber men at the majority of colleges today, Funk said. “To a certain extent girls are progressing beyond men in academics.”


      “I don’t think it’s a bad thing guys don’t put pressure on themselves. If girls felt that they could go home and play videogames for two hours and not feel like they were wasting time or that they should have been exercising or working on extra credit projects in that time. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

      Funk said men feel pressure but the idea of the idyllic male had changed. 

      “The male ideal has changed from being this badass guy who fixes up Mustangs to this guy who’s supposed to be a forward on the soccer team, get fives on AP exams and go to Dartmouth,” Funk said. 

      She has also found the image of idealized beauty has changed. The society has moved from Marilyn Monroe’s voluptuous figure, to Jane Fonda’s near masculine dearth of curves, to Megan Fox. 

      “Today we have the most difficult physique to achieve. In the eighties you could look like that (Fonda), you just had to be skinny. You need plastic surgery to achieve the ideal today. Today girls are playing with Bratz dolls, which have teeny, tiny waists and huge hips that give girls this idea that they need to have curves in the right places and protruding bones in the right places.”

      This perceived necessity for unachievable multi-faceted perfection can lead to what Funk called a “lack of intrinsic worth.” This can lead to increased vulnerability to pressure, media, society and community and is a major aspect in the supergirl trend. 

      Funk said to prevent this lack of intrinsic self-worth, girls should develop hobbies.

      “Many young women today don’t have any self-esteem building leisure activities,” Funk said. “That’s the biggest thing they can do, whether it’s making collages, playing instrument or taking up cooking. 

      Young women also need to reduce the amount of technology they use. Turn off their Ipods and Iphones and focus on spending time with themselves. They really need to get in touch with their internal monologues and develop a relationship with themselves.”

      Funk enjoyed her time at CLC and was impressed by its students. 

      “I was very happy to have the opportunity to speak here and meet the great faculty and students. I was really impressed by the level of student discussion at both of these events – by how cognizant and enthusiastic everyone was. Usually having student discussions is like pulling teeth, but these kids were raising their hands and totally into. I was glad to have been a part of it.”

To hear the interview with Liz Funk in its entirety, visit drop.io/clcradio#

Nathan Caldwell
Editor-in-Chief

      The marble statue of “Venus de Milo” and the painting “The Birth of Venus” are beautiful. Picturesque depictions of the female form immortalized, feats of art instantly recognizable even to the casual observer.   
      
       Yet some of their beauty is due to the simple fact that they are enshrined in a perpetual state of arousal, forever fixed in provocative poses. Nipples erect, head tilted, face flushed – curvy, voluptuous women in their sexual prime, all practically screaming, “Come and get me.”   
        
        Conversely, consider Michelangelo’s “David,” a work of artistic brilliance. It is proportionally scaled, posed and chiseled to perfection – every bit as great, if not more so, than works previously mentioned. The major difference? David’s pose bespeaks nothing that even hints at arousal. In fact, when the scale of the sculpture is considered, David’s phallus is patently pathetic. 

      We live in a culture that caters to the pornographic imagination and not-so-latent sexuality of males, while simultaneously refusing to embrace that which it caters to.

      In an admittedly phallocentric civilization, we haven’t gone far from the luscious depictions of Venus. There are beautiful women lounging about in ads for everything from shoes to lingerie – all artfully airbrushed and insinuating anything but celibacy. After all, sex sells.

      Certainly, what some men want is to insert hard object Y into wet object X – but why reduce something as complex as sexuality to so simple an equation?

      This archaic view of male sexuality has been perpetuated since antiquity and is, at best, outdated. And why wouldn’t it be? 

      Men had no sexual revolution. There was no men’s liberation movement. There have never been hoards of angry men ripping off their undergarments in protest of inequity.

      Conversely, there is a long history of females fighting for equality and it has resulted in the acknowledgement of female sexuality as something that exists, is complex, and can be discussed in an intelligent and academic setting.

      Meanwhile, male sexuality has remains ensconced in a pre-Victorian bubble that has devolved from an over-simplification to a social stigma. 

      Aside from a high-five and a vivid description of how hard he “smashed” that, there is absolutely no forum for males to have a calm, intelligent discussion on issues of sexuality without being ostracized. 

      Society loves to accommodate the idea of simple male sexuality. It’s uncomplicated, generally accepted and marketable. And while the idea may be all of these things, it is also detrimental. 

      Why? Is that all male sexuality is – an exercise in the redirection of blood flow? 

      Males aren’t expected to have sexual needs beyond the blood flow. Indeed, those who do are seen as needy and emasculated.

      Emasculation. The word conjures its own unique blend of testosterone-fueled terror and acute homophobia. It’s been argued this is the most effeminate generation, that metrosexuals and gays are ruining what it means to be a “real” man. 

      Ironically, metrosexuals and gays are the only ones having any semblance of an open discussion on issues of sexuality and masculinity. 

      To be simultaneously male and vocalize an opinion on one’s own sexuality, one must declare one’s self a pariah. Men who discuss the issue openly are instantly branded as perverts, horndogs, gays or some combination of the three. Those who hazard such discussions without regard to the inevitable social castration, are in reality the most liberated. 

      Embracing “emasculation” is means to endure social stigmas in exchange for the ability to engage in scholarly discussions about what historically has been one of, if not the most, inviolable social issue. 

      There may not have been a male sexual revolution. There have been no violent protests, no peaceful sit-ins. Instead there is the infinitesimal movement towards the ability to discuss sexuality outside of the simplistic shadow of “bang bang bang, skeet skeet skeet.” 

      That movement happens to be through the realm of what has been branded emasculation and while it may have a negative stigma now, there is hope.

      This generation is more tolerant of homosexuality than any before. Steps have been made in the right direction on everything from gay rights to healthcare. Perhaps with time, what is now considered emasculation will be recognized as the male sexual revolution, covert though it may be.