the feminisim of everyday life

a web column

melisse gelula

When, in 1993, I graduated from a pleasantly progressive Big 10 university, I had a few implicit goals. I wanted my adult life to include meaningful, socially responsible work; continued personal opportunities for emotional growth; and a cavalry of likeminded literary and artsy folks to call my friends, who already understood what being a feminist meant. In other words, I expected my life to be lived out as if in a women’s studies class.

For a while living this dream was possible: I was applying to graduate schools, where I planned to resurrect it all again---critical thinking and cultural analysis, consciousness raising and political commiseration. In the meantime I would date graduate students and work at a rape crisis center.

Three years later, in 1996, I had quit the job at the rape crisis center after attempts to unionize failed; barely completed a master’s degree, appalled with the ineffectualness of academe; and was moving in with my graduate student boyfriend and his, albeit fabulous, mother. A spiraling of disillusionment and disenchantment filled my head and left me feeling ungrounded, depleted, and uninspired---what had happened to my feminist ideals and my ability to realize them? Where was feminism outside academe or women-based non-profit agencies? Was I becoming the unactualized women I sort-of condemned?

Since that time I have moved to New York City, a place where all things are supposedly possible. From here, I’d like to pursue the illusive dream of finding a feminism for everyday life, and try to articulate what this might mean. As a feminist somewhat fallen off the wagon and a cultural observer, I think I’m in a good position to address a broad range of topics---including fashion, the shows on the WB, and the novels of Sarah Waters---which at one time, as an earnest feminist, I may have refused to discuss in any form.

I sense that many women, who, like me, found feminism at some point in their lives, and never thought they’d let it go, might secretly wonder about its continued applicability in their personal, parenting, or professional lives, and may struggle to keep it alive in a culture that’s still very counter all-things liberatory. With the explosion of women’s studies as a viable discipline in the 90s, however, more women than ever before were educated, formally, from a feminist perspective. And not only was feminism finally a credible idea, it was a place: an enriching environment that we created among ourselves and with our professors, which made us activists and sharp thinkers.

What we derived from these circumstances is still with us---it now just looks a lot different than the cover of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. Maybe our political demonstrations and perspectives aren’t exactly the dream, but nor are they the dream gone wrong.

© Melisse Gelula, 2001
All Rights Reserved

the feminisim of everyday life
Wondering what Feminism has done for you lately?Or what you've done for it? In "The Feminism of Everyday Life", Melisse Gelula discusses the practices and perspectives of third wave feminists through many cultural incarnations---from the implicitly personal (why everyone I know is in therapy or writing a book about it?) to the egregiously political (how to get through the Bush presidency?), and from academic topics (my cubicle partner doesn't know who Judith Butler is and she makes more than me, or why did I go to grad school?) to acceptable forms of popular culture (why "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" matters?) and consumerism (why good shoes are essential).

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