Exceptional in the Eye of a Radical Feminist

By Samantha Smith

Samantha is a junior at Ball State University. Here on The Public Screen, she writes about gender issues in the media.

“If women can do anything, why are we still content with them doing nothing?” Even though there is no true definion to feminism, radical feminist, Amy Glass gives it a definition that is nothing less than opinionated. In her recent blog entry, "I Look Down on Young Women with Husbands and Kids and I’m Not Sorry," Glass makes it a point to say that stay-at-home mothers are not equal in accomplishments to women who work for a living. What's even more radical is her statement that being a mother is not a serious accomplishment or responsibility, that when compared to "landing a dream job or backpacking through Asia," it is equivalent to "doing nothing."  

What Glass doesn’t realize is that she’s describing only one type of mother and is taking that mother’s example and attaching that stigma to other mothers. We’ve all seen this before on Facebook — the young mother who does nothing but post pictures and statuses of and about her little one all day, every day. And sometimes instead of the posts coming off as “Look at my child, he or she is adorable”, it comes off as “Look what I made!” This is the type of mother that Glass describes, the mother whose life revolves around her child and nothing else. Glass completely ignores the fact that not all mothers are like this and that being a mother is real work, especially if she has other priorities on top of it.

Glass goes on to say that the only accomplishments women celebrate are giving birth and getting married; and she describes these things as average. While these are very common things that women do, it doesn’t mean they’re insignificant. When a woman has a baby shower, she’s getting ready to welcome a new person into the world — that’s a big deal. And when a woman has a wedding party, she’s celebrating the fact that she’s getting ready to sign a legal document binding her to one person for the rest of her life — that’s a big deal, too. Glass says that she would like to see more celebrating when it comes to women getting a promotion at work or accomplishing a dream they've had since they were little, but women celebrate these things too. We just don’t make it as formal. If a woman gets a promotion at work, we may not have a party because of it but rather we go out and have drinks with friends or we treat ourselves to the spa for the day. It’s not a very traditional way to express excitement, but it’s essentially the same thing.

Towards the end of her article, Glass claims that young mothers with families "will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional." Is this true? Maybe, but it all depends on a woman’s definition of exceptional. A woman could define exceptional as having a family and raising their child right, and if that’s the case, she already is exceptional.