essay

A Model Feminist?

I don’t recall when I first considered myself a feminist, but the philosophy was embedded in my 1970s milieu. I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, with Ms. magazine and a mother who gave me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at age eleven in an attempt to lure me from the clutches of Cosmo. I was born into “Free to Be!” “That Girl!” “Mary Tyler Moore!” “Maude!”—and I reflected those cultural messages. I wrote letters to the editor of the newspaper in support of abortion rights at age thirteen. My father taught me how to throw a punch without breaking my thumb. I was proud of being smart. ­

On the other hand, beauty loomed large in my young psyche. I wrote Brooke Shields a letter begging her to be my pen pal, and my fondest dream was to be discovered and whisked to New York City to become a model. I bought all of the fashion magazines and found Ms. dry. By the end of high school, I knew I shouldn’t care how I look, because the content of my character was much more important, but I also sensed that I was less vulnerable to being seen as a boy, lesbian or outcast if I was also pretty.

After college, I moved to New York City, the epicenter of glamour, but also a place where people like me escaped to. If you spent your childhood in a small town plotting revenge and singing show tunes, invariably you would find yourself in Manhattan as soon as you could. The city, like feminism, offered an exciting new value system—beauty was measured differently, your whole self taken into account. If you were scintillating or jolie laide or brave or raucous or all of it, Welcome to New York! I no longer felt shame about the part of me that longed to be powerful in that most basic, most perishable female way—the part of me that wanted to be beautiful. I even modeled—nothing big, but I was the “face” for a boutique cosmetics company, my picture in displays at Sephora stores, and I did a spread for an Italian fashion magazine, among other piddly but ego-boosting ventures.

For a long time, I couldn’t talk about things like being told to lose weight at the modeling agencies without coming up with a justification for why I put myself through the gauntlet in the first place. ­And the ­rationale was partly true, but not the whole truth. I’d say that before I became fully conscious, I engaged in tribal rituals of female debasement before the male gaze. “I would never do something like that now, thank god,” I’d say. What I didn’t say is this: It wasn’t competing that felt so bad. It was trying and failing. Getting chosen to do the modeling for Sephora or Moda Italia felt great. I can admit that now. After all, feminism can’t say there is no place in its philosophy for beauty or raw power. To survive, it has to be like New York—to glory in beauty, but never value a woman just by that measure.

I’m now a 38-year-old mother of a three-year-old, and I’m feeling older by the second—from my sleep deprivation– induced Russell Crowe eye bags to my Jell-O belly to my mortgage payment–anxiety forehead wrinkles. On a good day, I resemble Aimee Mann—on a bad day, an old man. Recently, my book Look Both Ways was reviewed in a fashion magazine, the kind I read as a teen. In it, the writer referred to me as “by far, the hottest of the Third Wave feminists.” I’m not ashamed to admit it, I felt a little zing of accomplishment. I had come full circle. I was beautiful—for a feminist.

Jennifer Baumgardner is the author of Look Both Ways and a frequent contributor to Glamour, The Nation, and many other magazines. She lives in Brooklyn with her son, Skuli. This essay is a partial excerpt from “Ms. World of Wheels” in the new anthology About Face: 24 Women Writers Look In The Mirror And Talk About What They See.  

~Jennifer Baumgardner