Having worked in customer service more or less since I began working, I can attest to the interesting dynamics of power and privilege that are revealed during my work. The already low status of this work is exacerbated by the fact that I work in very unskilled, low-wage, fast food jobs. Therefore, I am expected to be a submissive, passive, and subservient being in dealing with customers.

These dynamics become even more interesting when sexism comes into play. As a woman, I am already expected to be pretty submissive: I’m not supposed to be loud, I’m supposed to smile and flirt and be extra nice, and I’m supposed to look pretty. These expectations matter both at work and outside of work, though at work, they are compounded by my position as a low-status worker. Unfortunately, the other women I work with are also exposed to the same expectations.

*Trigger warning: The following content may be triggering to some.*
Today at work, one of the shift leaders, Liz, was trying to unscrew a small door that acts as a clamp for the cream dispenser. She was having some difficulty turning the screw, so she lifted up her shirt to use her shirt to grip the screw more tightly. I was dealing with a customer at the counter—an older, rather unkempt man, who had his eyes glued on Liz. As soon as she lifted her shirt, the weird comments started coming out. I missed the first half of what he said, but I heard Liz apologizing and laughing a bit about having lifted up her shirt, and the man said, “Well at this age, I’ll take whatever I can get!”

Liz was very shaken up about the whole thing. She told me that he had been making sexual comments about her because she had lifted up her shirt and revealed her midriff, and then he had implied that she was not attractive because he’d take whatever he could get. “I don’t really care, because I know I’m hot,” Liz said, “but I think that was really out of line.”

And it was. What made this man think it was okay to make sexual comments to a young woman’s face in a public place—perhaps, even worse, where she works?

Of course, part of it is the privilege this man has as a presumably cisgendered, heterosexual male. He is allowed to gaze upon women however he wants; it is his “right” as a man. Just like the man who thinks it’s okay to fondle a woman on a crowded train, this man thought it was okay to sexually harass a young woman in her workplace.

The situation was exacerbated, though, by the fact that Liz was in another position of subordination: that of customer service representative. Any company that deals with customer service runs its business on the idea that “the customer is always right.” Even when the customer is truly misinformed, incredibly stupid, or otherwise just plain wrong, whoever is serving that customer must “suck it up” or risk losing her job. So perhaps for this man, it was not just that Liz is a woman and therefore it is okay to make demeaning comments about her. It may also have been that Liz was in a position that required her to submit to the customers’ wishes. And this customer wished to make gross comments about her body and about his own sexual desires.

I don’t think that the customer service environment is very conducive to creating an equal society. Customers have come into my workplace with the clear intention to express their power and dominance over me as the worker. People make ridiculous demands, create huge messes, and throw temper tantrums all in an attempt to show me that they are in the position of power. No matter how good my customer service is, some people simply want to go on some sort of a power trip. And when it comes to the sorts of places where I have worked, people also come in with a number of sweeping preconceptions about the kinds of people who work there. We are poor, unintelligent, unmotivated, possibly illiterate, probably people of color or, if not, then we are “white trash,” and we are most likely young. We become even more powerless and submissive as a result of these stereotypes.

Sometimes I wonder if customers who come in only to make our lives miserable and “dominate” us feel dominated and overpowered in their personal lives. Some of the most demanding and angriest customers happen to be women. I sometimes wonder if they come in to our store, feeling powerless in their personal lives, and try to gain some sense of power and control by making ridiculous demands and treating us poorly when we cannot meet them. I can certainly see where they are coming from—though I can’t really say it makes my job easier.

And in the case of the man making comments at Liz, I just get even more depressed about the state of our society. Why it is okay to treat women that way? Why is it okay to treat people who are just trying to work at their jobs like that? We can guess at the numerous reasons, but that still does not make this kind of treatment right—even if it is more or less socially acceptable.

I will admit it: I enjoy watching Jon and Kate Plus Eight, and as such, I’ve been hearing a lot about all the drama surrounding their and their children’s lives. Of course, most of what I hear about has to do with Kate Gosselin. She’s a mean bitch! She’s a terrible mother! All she cares about is fame and her book tour!

I get really sick of hearing about it, especially when I am trying to sit peacefully in my own living room and my family members rant on and on about how much of a “bitch” Kate is literally every time she opens her mouth.

There are a number of allegations about some “cruel” things that Kate has been doing to her children, including spanking a child, threatening her children, and denying one daugher a drink from a bottle of water upon request. Supposedly, all of these terrible and horrific crimes make Kate Gosselin more monster than mother. Supposedly, all that Kate cares about is her work: her writing and her book tours. Supposedly, Kate “uses” her children for financial gain.

Now, it’s hard to say what really goes on in these people’s lives. Their lives are so public, yes, but there are still a lot of private elements that have not yet been revealed. But I get very tired of the constant accusations against not just Kate, but against all mothers in this country. Because the way that people talk about Kate, calling her a terrible mother and a bitchy wife, is the same way that people throughout the US talk about every other woman who is a mother and a wife.

What Kate does on-screen is probably not much different from what plenty of other mothers do with their children in private. And especially considering the fact that this woman has eight children of young ages to worry about, I’m not surprised that she does get pissy once in awhile. I know I’d probably just throw myself out a window if I had to deal with that every day, on top of all the paparazzi and comments and constant judgment that occurs as a result of her being in the public eye.

I don’t really know the extent of Kate’s treatment of her children, but I’m sure that if it were anything truly damaging, her children would have been taken away a very long time ago. I personally am not an advocate of spanking or hitting, but plenty of parents (particularly those belonging to certain Christian religions, such as the Gosselins) do believe that spanking is an effective and acceptable means of punishment. I am positive that if Kate were brutally spanking or otherwise abusing her daughters, the entire world would know about it and the department of children and families would have swooped down to claim and protect the children the very second it had happened. I don’t think that minor spanking immediately constitutes child abuse. I found this article regarding Kate hitting her daughter and I have to say: plenty of mothers get stressed out and angry at their children and hit them.

Regarding Kate threatening her children: I think all mothers spew out threats. I think many mothers threaten their children in various ways on a daily basis. Why? Because children are children, and they do not listen, and when you have eight of them running around screaming, you need some way to bring some damn order to the household. Threatening your children is not some completely new and outrageous idea. I didn’t grow up in the greatest of environments, but there were plenty of times where my mother threatened to lock in my room, to leave me somewhere alone, to not let me eat dinner, and all sorts of other scary things. But it made me do what I had to do when others means would not have worked. I don’t think this is anything particularly disturbing.

Finally, Kate and the bottle of water issue. Supposedly Kate denies her thirsty daughter a sip of water. Sure, it’s not very nice, but guess what? Kids whine. A lot. Kids act like everything is a big deal, including thirst and hunger. I’m sure all mothers can agree that when it comes to dinner time and they are dealing with hungry kids, all they hear out of the kids’ mouths are “MOMMY I’M HUNGRRYYYYYY!!!!!!” over and over and over again. It’s not that they are literally starving. They’re just whiny kids. Kate’s situation here seems more a case of “whiny kid syndrome” than “bitchy, evil mother syndrome.”

Plus, the commentary really gets to me. According to one genius,
Reformed and recycled ugly fat chicks, like Kate, are the reason wife beaters has proliferated over the ages. We’ve all seen the real, non-TV Kate (well, at least the phucking losers who watch this show and somehow elevated her to be a constant subject on this board) and we all know it’s only a matter of time til she’s once again, a pig.

Oh, how nice! Because women have kids and become ugly, it’s somehow okay to abuse them! Fortunately, because they are fat, ugly pigs, they are dispensible, and no one really cares.

This is precisely what bothers me about the concerns over Kate. Sure, I don’t really know. Maybe she is an abusive mother and a terrible wife. But what irritates me is the way people talk about her–because it’s not just about her, it’s about every other woman who is married with children. Women are supposed to get married and have kids, but if they “let themselves go” while trying to balance children, a husband, a job, and whatever else, then automatically they are fat, ugly, stupid, and essentially worthless. I only stick up for Kate here as a way to stick up for every other mother who has had to put up with this constant judgment and second-guessing.

Another good example is my very, very good friend Samantha. Samantha got pregnant when she was nineteen and got married out of wedlock. Her husband at the time was a bum and would go out and cheat on her, come home drunk, and was constantly out of work due to his own laziness. Samantha spent her time caring the best she could for her two beloved daughters, walking back and forth to the grocery store because she didn’t have a car so that she could get her daughters their necessities. Sam gained some weight from having children and being stressed, and her husband hated her more and more for it. Sam, who is low-income and not particularly well-educated, found herself and her role as mother being judged by her neighbors, who falsely accused her of neglecting her children and called the police on her constantly. The department of children and families got involved, though after awhile, things were starting to look up.

One day, Sam made her usual trip to get milk and cereal for her daughters. “Dave,” she said to her husband, who was, as usual, hungover and half-asleep on the couch, “keep an eye on the girls for me.” He agreed, and Sam went to get cereal and milk. Half an hour later, she returned, only to find DCF at her house, accusing her of neglecting her children yet again. The social worker had shown up while Sam was out and Dave had fallen back asleep.

They took Sam’s daughters away, and they used “photographic evidence” of pictures of her daughters in the bathtub to accuse Sam of not only neglect, but sexual abuse as well. They placed the girls in foster care and separated them despite Sam’s wishes. Sam has not seen her daughters in nearly ten years, and will probably never see them again.

It’s a prime example of the judgments and expectations we place on mothers. We judge and question famous or privileged mothers, such as Kate, and low-income, disadvantaged mothers, such as Sam. Motherhood can never win, and yet is the role we must fulfill. No woman, from Kate to Sam, can ever be a perfect mother. Mothers will always make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes will be grave (the woman who, when her babysitter did not show up, was forced to go to work or lose her job; her children died in a fire while she went to work so they could at least have food), but grave mistakes happen all the time. Don’t we sometimes say it is a “grave mistake” when a man rapes or kills a woman, dubbing it a “crime of passion” instead of calling it what it is? Sure, some women are truly unfit to have children… just as some men are truly unfit to have children. But women who make everyday mistakes, such as stressed-out Kate Gosselin striking one of her children, or Sam leaving her children alone with an unreliable husband, do not deserve to be labelled as bitches, or evil mothers, or neglectful, or cruel. They are doing the best they can in a world that despises and yet needs them, and I think that Kate, Sam, and every woman beyond and in between needs to be respected for the enormous job they work hard to fulfill.

This article in the Guardian writes about a new documentary, made by model Sarah Ziff and Ole Schell, about life as a model in the world of high fashion. In it, they detail the realities many models face. The modeling industry, as they note, is one of the least regulated industries in the world; models have virtually no voice or power to make their own decisions, and remain unprotected by laws. Ziff tells us that twenty-hour workdays are commonplace; days off are virtually nonexistent. One girl compares modeling to “becoming living dolls,” with no control over their lives and insanely thin often

“not because [they've] been starving [themselves] but because there’s literally no time to eat.”

However, far too often we focus only on a model’s weight, and the potential influence this may have on their audience. When we ignore the actual experience of the model herself – and this is easy to do, as she rarely has a voice – do we not also treat her as an object by refusing to see that she, too has a life outside of the picture we see in magazines?

Sexual abuse in the workplace is common, and usually ignored or even taken for granted. Some elite, well-protected photographers regularly harass the models, and expect to be serviced sexually by them. In doing so, they objectify their models in every sense; they make them objects by putting them on paper, but also treat them as such, using and consuming them. Far too often, the models remain unprotected by the agencies that should have prevented abuse; in an example, Sarah Ziff cites

“a 16-year-old model who complained when a 45-year-old photographer made a pass at her. Her agency said she should have slept with him.”

Many models are as young as twelve or thirteen, and are frequently expected to strike sexy poses or be photographed in the nude, in work that in my opinion sometimes borders on child pornography. But because it is under the guise of fashion or advertisements, it is considered ‘artistic’ and thus legitimized. Who protects the children here? The answer is no one. There are few laws to regulate the fashion industry, and the fact that top models work internationally complicates this – shooting in remote places, many laws simply would not apply. Even if they did – who would enforce them? And many models travel alone to photo shoots, so who would or could protect them? When they are so young, it is also unlikely that they know their rights.

To me, this entire issue also puts shows such as ‘America’s Next Top Model’ in yet another, unfavorable light. How do former models such as Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks promote modeling to the young, ambitious wannabe models they purport to be training? The show is, after all, based on the premise that girls want to be in this glamorous industry, and it is clear that few are truly aware of the realities that await them there. It is also built on the idea that the host will prepare the candidates for the modeling world, and yet there is no sign of preparing them for the abusiveness that likely awaits them. Yes, they hint at the unforgiving features of the modeling industry: like the long, stressful days the candidates must go through in hopes of becoming a top model, or the reproving looks and comments one candidate received when she refused to do a photo shoot in the nude. However, the hosts of these shows always, whether implicitly or explicitly, tell the candidates that to be truly successful in the business, the only thing that matters is pleasing the photographer, at almost any cost. You have to be an obedient doll to be a top model, to enter this seemingly glamorous world in which you are, at best, disposable. If you don’t comply, you don’t get work; and as a model, you are a clothes hanger, no more, no less. You have no voice; you depend on the agency, the photographer, the designer. Speak up and you will be thrown away.

This is why some models have begun to form unions. As of now, they are not very large, and not very powerful. But one can only hope that unions for models will become commonplace, so that they can negotiate better protection for themselves.

When I was about twelve years old, I discovered the meaning of abortion. Ever since that moment, I have been adamantly pro-choice. Fortunately, going to college has made me question my old perspectives, and I’ve learned to respect and appreciate an argument sometimes found on the pro-life side: women shouldn’t need to get abortions. There should be better options for women.

Women should, of course, have a lot of better options in many other areas of life. The fact is that a woman’s life–or what is traditionally expected of it–is often in a lose-lose situation.

For example, we are supposed to have children. This is the womanly role; it is our ultimate expression of femininity and all of its “best” attributes: selflessness, maternity, love. At the same time, however, mothers are looked down upon, no matter how they mother their children. If they go to work and put their children in daycare, they are selfish. If they quit their jobs to stay at home with the children, they are domestic and lazy. And if a woman chooses not to have children at all, there is something very wrong with her.

It’s the same with abortion. It’s true: women shouldn’t need to get abortions. But in reality, we do–because of the systematic oppression against us throughout the world. We are supposed to be mothers and selflessly love all children that come to grow in our wombs, even when we cannot afford to mother them “properly,” even when our own lives are threatened, even when the fetus is guaranteed to be born dead. When we have abortions to spare our lives, or to spare unborn children a life of disease, pain and/or poverty, we are suddenly vile baby-killers and outright murderers.

Of course, when it comes to abortion, no one truly wins. Many women feel great relief after terminating unwanted pregnancies, but at the same time, no one wants to have to experience that dilemma in the first place. No one (who is at least sane and rational) wants to have to end a life, for any reason. The options, though, are pretty terrible. Birth control, especially hormonal contraceptives, can be unreliable (maybe you forgot to take your pill; maybe the pharmacy is half an hour away and you don’t have a car) and expensive (even with health insurance; though many, many women go without it). The foster care and adoption system in this country is in shambles. Rape and incest are not going to be eliminated altogether anytime soon. Abstinence-only sex ed still reigns, and so young women still have unprotected sex thinking that they can’t get pregnant “the first time.” The issue isn’t to outlaw abortion, because abortion is not the problem. It is all these deeper lose-lose situations, these often useless options, that make abortions necessary in the first place.

…Privilege: A Reader, and already the very first essay was on the spot for me in so many ways. ‘Oppression’, a piece written by Marilyn Frye, attempts to define what oppression really is and isn’t, and how small acts that we usually don’t acknowledge as oppression contribute to it in the larger picture.

Now, one of the examples she uses is that of men opening doors for women. This has always been something that has bothered me; I never understood why this was supposed to be a sign of respect. Frye shows in her example that men opening doors for women is often false helpfulness; especially when, as she says,

Infirm men and men burdened with packages will open doors for able bodied women who are free of physical burdens. Men will impose themselves awkwardly and jostle everyone in order to get to the door first. The act is not determined by convenience or grace.

In fact, she makes an excellent point when she states that although men who do this claim to be showing respect and being helpful, when really, this occurs as a ” counterpoint to a pattern of men not being helpful in many practical ways in which women might welcome help.” Indeed, the small things such as opening doors and the concept of “ladies first” provides a way for men to claim that they are being helpful and respectful, when really there was no need; and then resting on these ‘laurels’ whenever women really could use their help, and men refuse to provide it. Finally, there is the commonly argued point that

the door-opening and similar services provided are services which really are needed by people who are for one reason or another incapacitated – unwell, burdened with parcels, etc. So the message is that women are incapable. The detachment of the acts from the concrete realities of what women need and do not need is a vehicle for the message that women’s actual needs and interests are unimportant or irrelevant.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that opening doors for others in itself is disrespectful or oppressive. But if you’re saying that opening doors for women is showing respect, then why are you showing respect only for women? Doesn’t this imply that you feel the need to show special respect for women because you think they are inferior/ oppressed/ weaker? Do you just want to get in their pants? Or do you have less respect for other people? (yeah right)

You want to open doors? Fine. But do it for everyone, or only for those who actually need it. If you want to show that you respect me, respect my ability to handle my own life and open my own doors. Or do it to be nice, not because I’m a woman and you think you’re being a gentleman.

I open doors for people all the time, and I can’t even count the number of times that men have given me odd looks or surprised comments about my opening the door for them, rather than vice versa. I open doors indiscriminately, because I do it as a kind gesture for everyone. Of course, I will be more eager to do so if it is for a person who is, for one reason or another, incapable of doing it him/herself, but the point is: ‘help’ directed specifically at one oppressed class in something that they can do perfectly well themselves, especially when it coincides with lack of help in things they do need, always has the underlying message that they are, in fact, not respected. Indeed, it is almost a form of mockery: ‘look, honey, I’m so respectful I’ll open the door for you, but I won’t help you do the dishes, fight for equal pay, stop slut-shaming or cat-calling, and if you’d take care of the kids too that’d be just swell.’

I know we say the devil is in the details, but sometimes, it’s really the larger picture that counts.