In the past few decades, however, women have wondered what they've been fighting for. Now that they are allowed to have it all, they are finding it difficult to maintain it all with impunity. Today's "feminist" TV shows like "Lipstick Jungle" show women navigating the worlds of motherhood and corporate boardrooms. Writers like Caitlyn Flanagan who urge women to "embrace their inner housewife" are stereotyped as Jane Cleaver throwbacks, while women who work are demonized as bad mothers or lacking the maternal instinct. While few college students I know actively contemplate the Mommy Wars, Princeton women face the challenge as well.
At first glance Princeton women - as future leaders of our generation - typify the successful post-feminist vision. After all, we got here by excelling just as much in school as our male peers, leading just as many organizations and being just as ambitious. At Princeton, we continue to do all of those things. I am lucky to go to college in an age that allows men and women equally to participate in precept, lead demonstrations, and write opinion columns without anyone blinking an eye.
And yet the categories persist. "Bitch" and "slut" are just two of the phrases often used to characterize women. Sure, women can dominate precepts, but then they're "cutthroat." Women are allowed to be good at sports, but then they're "butch." Women are allowed to drink as much as guys, but then they're "sloppy," rarely a baller. Not to mention the surprise that crosses many people's faces when they find out that the thin blonde in their precept actually makes really great points. Is a university truly an equal place for men and women if both are allowed to do what they want, but only one is immediately placed into a box by their actions?
First, there's the persistence of the age-old double standard that allows men to be players but subject women to whoredom. JuicyCampus teemed with derogatory remarks toward women and gay men. But with the exception of calls for the biggest tool and most overrated, there were few comments about the general male population.
More dangerous are the seemingly positive categorizations. While Princetonians are well educated enough to scoff at any blatantly misogynistic comments, statements like "she's really smart for a pretty girl" continue to suggest that appearance is a handicap for women. We are either smart and manly or girly and ditzy. The travesty is that our impressions of men's IQs are not similarly dictated by looks. Frat brothers and male athletes are unfairly characterized as anti-intellectual, but this has less to do with their gender than with their organizations. In fact, the insults heaped on women based on the organizations they join are worse than those lobbed at men who make similar choices. We no longer discriminate against women simply because of their gender but are still quick to let looks and the organizations they join dominate our judgment of them.
What's most alarming is that women - myself included - often contribute to the stereotyping epidemic. On this page last week, Walter Griffin '10 rightly suggested that anti-feminism is not only a male problem. Besides making the occasional disparaging remark - something I myself do - college women are guilty of judging each other for choices that society says we should have. Girls who announce their intention to marry soon after college are greeted with shocked silence, are said to be "betraying" the feminist cause and are written off as wasting a Princeton degree. But even as girls encourage each others' professional ambitions, they also frown upon too much ambition. In a typical USG election, male candidates use comedy in their campaign videos, posters and speeches, while girls rarely position themselves as chill types who are fun to hang out with. Like the movie "Knocked Up" demonstrates, men are celebrated for their slackerishness, while women are seen as uptight.
The challenge of erasing millennia's worth of gender stereotypes cannot be accomplished in one generation, with the tools of one institution. Princeton students, however, are in a position to take the lead in changing the minds of this generation. Feminism is not about giving women the chance to be like men, but giving women the chance to be whatever they want.
Cindy Hong is a Wilson School major from Princeton, N.J. She can be reached at cindyh@princeton.edu.
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