Pro-Female but Anti-Feminism

While this may not make sense, I guess I kind of consider myself pro-female, but not pro-feminism. I think that feminism as a movement is too demanding and unforgiving on women who may want to be mothers, who may feel more fulfilled as a stay-at-home mom than as a chief executive of some company, or who show vulnerability through emotion. I think that equal rights and equal pay should be given to women, but that women should still be allowed to act like women. It is just a matter of fact that men and women have different genetic makeup and therefore have different needs and desires during their lives.

I think that Heidi exemplifies a woman who might understand my bizarre ideology concerning this issue: she never seems to fully embrace the feminist movement itself, but she does act out strongly at the Chicago Art Institute, demanding more female artists. She allows herself to be in a relationship with a womanizing man because of the way he might make her feel, and at the end she does decide to become a mother. Yet she doesn’t believe that her child has to be “her 10” as Scoop says, referring to his work being his 10. The audience can tell that Scoop and Heidi may actually place the same level of importance on their children, as evidenced by Scoop’s discussion of what he has to show his children to prove that he is worthy of being their father.

I think that this play shows that there has historically been an unfair representation of female artists, but that we are now at a point in our social advancement that females should become included as great artists. Whether they are added via the “add and stir the pot” method Freeland describes, or simply added hereafter, does not seem as important as the fact that they simply be added. Heidi does discuss great female artists from the past who were overlooked, and how their work has a ethereal feminine quality to them which separates them from masculine works. I do not necessarily agree with Heidi on this, but in looking at the two versions of “Judith Beheading Holofernes” I think it is clear that the female artist has a better understanding of what females are truly capable of than the male artist, who depicts Judith as timid and unsure of herself. Females as drawn by men can never be as true to life as females drawn by females, who understand their true natures and complexities.