National Cleavage Day?

I was going through the pages of Alternet when I came across an article on something I’d never come across before: National Cleavage Day.

The blogger who was writing about this was furious. National Cleavage Day (which took place on April 3rd) was a “holiday” being promoted by Wonderbra as a form of female empowerment.

The Wonderbra website explained the campaign with the following:

WONDERBRA has won a firm victory for social upliftment. Their NCD [National Cleavage Day] Party, whose constant, non-discriminatory support policies assure that both the left and the right remain empowered and uplifted, will now be in effect immediately.It was only through this extensive campaigning for a woman´s right to be wonderful, that NATIONAL CLEAVAGE DAY, on Friday 3rd April 2009, has now been declared a PUBLIC HOLIDAY.

Now, I won’t deny that Wonderbra’s public relations and advertising teams are good with words. That’s not my issue here. They’re paid to make anything sound good.

What I don’t like about this whole campaign is how it attempts to cover up purely commercial interests with flimsy claims of female empowerment. I’m all for a woman’s right to choose what to wear (or not to wear), but the way Wonderbra is using women’s bodies to sell their products completely contradicts what their National Cleavage Day is all about. Women’s movements have long been trying to desexualize the female body in public, and all National Cleavage Day does is promote highly sexualized images of women in the public sphere.

I thought the way the author of the Alternet post presented the issue was rather telling.

I shit you not.

A quote from the sponsor’s spokesperson (Wonderbra’s Samantha Peterson): “It gives women a chance to be beautiful and glow in the furtive, yet appreciative, glances their cleavage evokes from men,” she said.

Male gaze ruled crucial! Film at eleven!

Sigh.

At its core, National Cleavage Day isn’t about female empowerment. It’s just another campaign following the not-so-ancient adage, “sex sells.”

(This article originally appeared at Crisscrossing Borders)

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Credit: Nour Merza, a 21-year-old freelance writer whose family’s globe-trotting tendencies have allowed her writing to be influenced by places as varied as Saudi Arabia, Chicago, Los Angeles and the United Arab Emirates. She also enjoys singing and improving her Arabic. Currently, she’s studying International Relations at the American University of Sharjah.

Behind the Veil: A Little Sisterly Love

A comedian like Chris Rock is not someone I generally look up to for respectable social commentary but watching his Never Scared video struck a chord with me. A few of his words kept echoing and it got to the point where I couldn’t enjoy the rest of his performance. I went back to the scene that had caused my brooding mood.

“You would think women would rule the world, but they don’t, they don’t, you know why?” he asked. “Because women hate women.”

I thought about what he said for the rest of the night. Why do women hate women? Why are women so critical of each other?

I know that this does not ring true for all women but it does for many of us. The more I talked to others about this, the more I realized that many females have either been victims of or are mean girls. The media swamps us with examples of this. Shows like Gossip Girl, America’s Next Top Model and even a movie, appropriately named Mean Girls, follow the phenomenon of the competitiveness and downright rude behavior many females exhibit towards each other.

Alia Khan, a 26-year-old student at Cal Poly Pomona, found that this behavior did not get left behind at school. In fact, it followed her even to the workplace.

“It stems from insecurity, and some women never grow out of it,” said Khan, who is currently pursuing her teaching credentials. “Whether it’s good grades, getting invited to a party or a promotion, it’s just a fact that some women can’t seem to be happy for other women.”

Technology seems to have added another tool in the arsenal of mean girls and has taken this catty behavior to a whole different level.

Another female, who wished to remain anonymous, agrees, but for all the wrong reasons.

“Sometimes you just need a release from being so nice all the time and sometimes the best way to achieve that is to make fun of people online until they cry,” she said.

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and now Twitter have given these mean girls the ability to bully from a distance by instant messaging and texting and often with complete anonymity.

“It’s so easy to make a fake account and just vent how you really feel about that person and then just deactivate it once you get it off your chest,” she continued.

Khan believes that these girls simply lack confidence.

“When you’re secure and happy with yourself, you want other people to be happy too but if you are constantly insecure and unsatisfied, you are going to take that out on other people,” she said. “It just comes full circle and I think it happens more with women because women just tend to be more jealous than men.”

Khan agree that the societal approval of this behavior stem from the media.

“On reality TV shows, specifically my guilty pleasure, America’s Next Top Model, I’ve noticed [those] that rank the highest are the ones where women fight and compete the most and there’s more drama and tension between them,” Khan said. “I think this shows that there is an underlying encouragement in society for women to behave this way, it says, ‘it’s okay to act like this and we’ll glorify the one who comes out on top’.”

She considers this to be disturbing behavior that requires more awareness among women.  “Sometimes we don’t even realize we are acting this way,” she said.

From a BTV perspective, I have often observed many girls who wear the hijab looking down at or avoiding girls who choose not to wear a veil. However, I have also seen non-hijab wearing girls shunning hijabi’s from their social circle.

Whether a woman wears a hijab or not, the fact is that this is a major female problem. Female bullying has led to many women skipping or dropping out of school, quitting their jobs and even suicide. So I’ll end with this plea for more social awareness of this issue; if you see a woman bullying a fellow female, feel free to step in and tell her to chill.

Peace and sisterly love.

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Credit: Maheen Siddiqi, a 23-year-old Southern California native and a recent Cal State University, Fullerton graduate with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Human Communication Studies. Her passions are law, politics and social commentary.