power .......
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Thus women and their situation in the arts, as in other realms of endeavor, are not a 'problem' to be viewed through the eyes of the dominant male power elite. Instead, women must conceive of themselves as potentially, if not actually, equal subjects... Thus the question of women's equality -- in art as in any other realm -- devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.
Linda Nochlin - from article: "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"
ArtNews Jan. 1971: 22-39...book: Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays - by Linda Nochlin
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My only power is my ability to do something with passion and do it well. It's also something someone cannot take way from me, so it's very valuable. I don't have the fear of letting someone down... of my looks changing... that I won't be able to think of something else to write. It's what I do.
writer-producer-director-actor Bonnie Hunt
from article Sleep? Too much to do - By Lynn Smith,
LA Times, Jan 4 2003; photo by Richard Hartog / LAT.related article :...Women in Film: Identity and Power
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Real power is the power to hurl an idea out into the world that can actually leave a change. That can make somebody say, either, their heart has been moved, their mind has been moved, or there will no longer be any tolerance for some injustice that there was tolerance for the day before... Power used for purpose is the most thrilling thing in the world that's right up there with singing show tunes... Real power is also about giving yourself a break and a Saturday night.
Diane Sawyer [befearless.oxygen.com interview]
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 .. .. "I was at my parents' house one day and saw this Anne Tyler book on the shelf, which I'd pilfered from the shelves of Random House when I had been a secretary there, supporting my acting habit," Kalem recalls. "I fell in love with Evie." |
As
written by Tyler, Evie was an overweight 16-year-old, but Kalem
pictured
her a more mature character [played by Lili Taylor in the movie]
dealing
with some of the same issues she experienced as an actress.
"For me, this was about taking control of your own life. I just knew there was more to me than sitting around waiting for my agent to call with an audition. I couldn't bear that feeling of powerlessness, and that was a huge thing I responded to in the story." from article An affinity for an offbeat book heroine kept director Toni Kalem from giving up on "A Slipping Down Life" despite years of setbacks. - By Hugh Hart, LA Times May 23 2004 photo of Toni Kalem by Gary Friedman / LATimes A Slipping Down Life movie site
>
more by Toni Kalem about the film |
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Peggy Orenstein noted in her book "School Girls.." that, although they may now have more role models for high achievement, and apparently fewer barriers to equality, girls are still part of a very hierarchical society. Power is often seen as "who is higher up" and for women, that has typically been males. Orenstein wrote, "It was clear that, regardless of race and class, [girls] had still learned to see boys as ultimately more powerful. Girls' diminished sense of self means that, often unconsciously, they take on a second-class, accommodating status."
from article Women Of Talent - Power and Leadership by Douglas Eby
....Peggy Orenstein. Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
photo from her book Flux : Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World
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The way I'd grown up had encouraged me to locate power almost anywhere but within myself... I gradually began to see that many of the people I had been brought up to envy and see as powerful... actually had the other half of the same problem... Often, they were suffering, too.
Gloria Steinem [from her book: Moving Beyond Words]
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The world would be a better place if more women were running it, and so long as that is true, then ambition in women should be celebrated as a gift to all of us. Have I bought into a male definition of power? Absolutely. I would love to see more women making the decisions that affect the lives of thousands of people and the policies of nations. Even the most powerful women I know go out of their way to say they're not really interested in power. Imagine a man saying that. Why would he? Why should we?
Susan Estrich - Law professor, Fox News Commentator // book:**Susan Estrich. Sex & Power
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I was told that my going to college wouldn't be good for my career. I think that's nonsense. It's good to empower yourself by cutting yourself off from this business every once in a while.
Claire Danes .... [imdb.com bio]
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"One of the great things about being an early woman was that there was nobody there to tell you what to do. You did what you thought you wanted to do. And that was so appealing, to be able to develop freely," says Paramount's chairman, Sherry Lansing, who arrived in Hollywood in 1966 to try her hand as an actress before segueing into development work.
in Hollywood - by Rachel Abramowitzrelated article: Women on the verge - by Linda Seger
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"In contemporary America, hegemonic masculinity is defined by physical strength and bravado,
exclusive heterosexuality, suppression of 'vulnerable' emotions such as remorse and uncertainty,
economic independence, authority over women and other men, and intense interest in sexual 'conquest'.While most men do not embody all of these qualities, society supports hegemonic masculinity
within all its institutions... Against this backdrop, femininity is constructed around adaptation
to male power.Its central feature is attractiveness to men, which includes physical appearance, ego-massaging,
suppression of 'power' emotions such as anger, nurturance of children, exclusive
heterosexuality, sexual availability without sexual assertiveness, and sociability. ...One could say that masculinity and femininity are societal euphemisms for male dominance and
female subordination. However, hegemonic masculinity and subordinate femininity are not conspiracies.Rather, they are the result of widely accepted ways of thinking that define male dominance as fair,
reasonable, and in the best interests of society."from article "Masculinity-Femininity: Society's Difference Dividend" by Kathleen Trigiani
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Producer, director and actor Jodie Foster has also referred to the values of looking at emotional and psychological aspects of gaining power. .... Foster said, "The most important part of power and the most important part of control is to learn how to be honorable, and how to use that in a responsible way and a generous way, to use it to give other people freedom, to use it like a good parent...
"I've made a lot less money than anybody else I know in the same position, and it's really been because I've felt it was a fair trade; I only wanted to make the movies I wanted to make, I only wanted to be in love with the films I made, to be moved by them - even if I made huge errors, big mistakes, or maybe the film didn't work.
"But I just wanted to go in believing somehow in this silly, optimistic, Capraesque way that I was going to make a difference, and that to me is the old voice in my head, a silly, foolish voice, that says maybe you'll change something. And to me, that's worth all the compromise."
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..from article Women Of Talent - Power and Leadership
by Douglas Eby
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My career is necessary for me psychologically. I've spent my whole life not being listened to, or taken seriously, or respected for my opinions. That makes me need to say what I feel and have complete control over the way that it's done. And to make hundreds of people sit down and listen.
Fiona Apple
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Swallowing the Wolf - by Julia Mossbridge -
excerpt from Institute of Noetic Sciences articleJulia Mossbridge is a mother, cognitive neuroscientist, and author of the book:
For some, claiming one's personal power comes naturally. For me, it took work even before I knew what I was working on. When I was a PhD student in neuroscience at UC San Francisco, I was among six other female graduate students invited to a professor's house for a "women in science" tea.
Our professor asked us each to explain what brought us to the academically rigorous program we had entered. As the other women spoke, I remembered mentally dividing them into two groups: the real scientists and the schoolgirls. The real scientists knew exactly what they were after, including the experiments they wanted to do.
Self-motivated and ready to go about the work of discovery, these were inspiring women. The schoolgirls, on the other hand, appeared nervous, and although they were smart, creative, and enthusiastic, they hadn't developed the confidence to believe they could make a profound scientific contribution.
I was last to speak. Sitting around that coffee table, watching and listening to the others, I was ready to include myself among the real scientists. But when it was my turn, I fingered the staple on my teabag, ripping the little end paper to shreds.
I blurted out something smart, creative, enthusiastic. Probably some of it was even true. I looked at the professor to see if she had caught me being a schoolgirl. Dr LaVail smiled kindly and said, "You have yet to swallow the wolf."
Rules of the Wolf
1.) Swallowing the wolf means claiming your personal power by following your own guidance and standards,
not those of the external world.2. Two fears keep us from claiming this power: fear that we have no internal guidance or standards, and fear that we have them but they will mislead us.
3.) Noticing the impact of acting authentically can help lessen these fears.
4.) At the point you realize that you use your internal guides more often than external ones, you have swallowed your wolf.
5.) Ignore these rules and discover your own.
Ten years later I am only beginning to understand what "swallowing the wolf" really means. To me it means claiming your personal power by replacing the standards and guidance of the external world with your own internal standards and guidance.
When you've swallowed the wolf, you listen to yourself and stay true to that internal voice as you choose the steps on your path.
Of course we need to live by meeting our own standards, to follow our own guidance, to act authentically. This is old, possibly passé, news. At the same time, in our daily lives we see very few people who are bursting with the personal power that comes from using authentic experience to guide everyday actions.
I believe what is needed is not just to understand what "swallowing the wolf" means, but to understand how we might do it.
I now work as a cognitive neuroscientist, but it took me a long time to discover how to become a "real" authentically driven scientist. This is the story of how I swallowed my wolf.
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A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. Yet separation from the wildish nature causes a woman's personality to become meager, thin, ghosty, spectral.
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..We are not meant to be puny with frail hair and inability to leap up, inability to give chase, to birth, to create a life. When women's lives are in stasis, ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge; it is time for the creating function of the psyche to flood the delta... It means to establish territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as we can.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
~ ~ ~ ~I've never done anything for the sake of ambition that I regret. I'm glad for every ambitious thing I've done.
Anyone can go too far, be too ambitious. It's not a gender thing. I'll bet if someone is threatened by an
ambitious woman, they're also threatened by an ambitious man.Joni Evans- Literary agent and senior Vice President, William Morris Agency [O, The Oprah Magazine, September 2001]
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Girls start out ambitious. Girls want to be president of their own lives. They want to speak, to be heard,
to be effective, and to express themselves freely. They feel powerful. Their power leads to a desire to pursue
their dreams. Yet while girls celebrate their desire, the world does not.Marie C. Wilson - President of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the White House Project
[O, The Oprah Magazine, September 2001]
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Dealing With Them in the Workplace or Anyplace
by David L. Weiner, Robert E. Lefton
Actresses' images were confined to one-dimensional roles straight out of the nineteenth century. A woman of sexual power was evil, if she chose to exercise and enjoy her power. And a nice woman stayed virtuous, even if she did, like Clara Bow, put on a short skirt and go dancing every night. Those were the choices, vamp or ingenue. Take one or the other. Everything else was just a variation on a theme.
Garbo, by nature aloof and mysterious, was forced to play the vamp, a role she hated. Shearer, who radiated integrity, was forced to play the innocent ingenue, which frustrated her.
So they rebelled. Over time, and with some struggle, they persuaded Hollywood to drop the stereotypes and greet a new day. They made the movies safe for real women, and a flood of actresses followed them.
- by Mick Lasalle // cover photo: Norma Shearer~ ~ ~ ~
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It's
something to be celebrated. It's about power. Not economic or political
power - it is about a deeper power.
