It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Feministmas
It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Feministmas- Or is it?
Christmas comes but once a year, but feminism lasts a lifetime. So how can we make sure we spend Christmas time while sticking to our figurative and festive feminist guns? Whether it’s Christmas tv, radio shows or the shopping, the patriarchy seems to prevail in more ways than you might at first think.
Buy the presents, wrap the gifts, clear up after the unwrapping. Buy the food, cook the food, clean up after the consuming. Echoes from women far and wide of “if you want something done properly, do it yourself!”. I get it.
You might be shaking your head and thinking well actually, I enjoy and want to do those things every year. Isn’t it part of my own feminism to do the things I want to? Taking control of the kitchen. Reclaiming my power? In short: yes it is.
I want to reiterate - I’m not shaming. That said, traditions that link to the patriarchy might have planted some seeds in our minds of it being a woman’s role to do all the hard work over Christmas, while the men take some much deserved time to crack open a beer and put their feet up.
‘Women belong in the kitchen’. This staple, outdated and overtly offensive line has been used for centuries by many cis-men. Whether they say it to our faces or not.
But have you ever thought about the fact there may be something more deeply rooted in the inequality between men and women at Christmas?
Let’s take it back a few hundred years. The mid-seventeenth century after the English Civil War, to be exact - that’s when good Ol’ Father Christmas first showed up to save the day. A man. Our saviour. Swooping in to create joy for all children and to become the epitome of December.
Why does it matter that he is a man? you ask. It wouldn’t I suppose, if he were a one off. However, when you look around at all the other Christmas figures, this is what we get:
The 3 Wise Kings - all male
The Angel Gabriel - a male figure
Rudolph - cute, but male
The Grinch - definitely male
Ebenezer Scrooge, plus all his crew: Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Bob Crachet - a bunch of blokes
Even among more modern portraiture of Christmas charms, we’ve got:
Buddy the Elf
Kevin McCalister
Jack Skelington
The Snowman, and not just him, there’s Frosty too.
I wouldn’t mind betting that if you really probed Raymond Briggs and his co-creators of ‘Snowdog’, we’d find out the dog is male too. Of course. ‘Tis the season for sexism after all.
So, where are the girls hiding? Or being hidden, I should say. Where are the strong women, that little children need to see so that the idea is not that Christmas is centred around boys and men?
*Tumbleweed disguised as holly slowly drifting by as we look*
Shockingly, there are barely any to name. Yes, Father Christmas has a wife... who stays at home keeping everything in order whilst Mr. C and his boyish elves are off saving Christmas. Yes, he has female reindeers too, but the star of the show is Rudolph.
Eventually, we were delivered the highly popular Christmas film: Love Actually. Finally, our screens were filled with female representation… only for it to highlight how women are seen through the male gaze. Seen as things. Property. Issue creators. And certainly not heroines.
Remember the unlucky in love Brit with scruffy blonde hair who travelled to America to meet the girl of his dreams, only to find three beautiful women in a bar? Objects! Do you recall Emma Thompson’s fate? Cheated on. The woman ‘responsible’ for being the one to break up a relationship? Evil. Or in Alan Rickman’s character’s eyes: an object to be sexualised.
The cherry on top, of course, being Keira Knightley’s character who is harassed throughout the film, even on her own doorstep as she tried to have a cosy night in with her new husband, by her husband’s best friend no less. Leave the poor girl alone!
And it’s not like Keira’s portrayal was the first instance of a woman being harassed at Christmas time being pushed into our faces by the media. We’re all familiar with the song that got banned on most radio stations “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in line with the #MeToo movement. Grim and glaring, its lyrics act as stark reminders of how women are often manipulated and controlled by male vices. Hardly the cheery Christmas song of gender equality and feminism we all want.
So to break it down, why it is that everywhere we look at Christmas time, men are still the heroes, the ones at the top doing whatever they want, and it’s us that are expected to organise everything and keep it all together in the ‘lower’ ranks?
What can we do to bring change?
I guess what it boils down to is these questions: could you cope with handing the overall planning, preparation and purchasing to the men in your life in time for Christmas? Even though you run the risk of things being forgotten?
Feminism is about gender equality. So maybe it’s time to turn this Christmas into Feministmas, even if just to show the younger generation what gender equality looks like.
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Written by Kim Marsea