The Female Eunuch (4 page)
because of the use of synthetic hormones in the contraceptive pill; as usual when such notions are popularized, the function of the hormones has been too simply described. In fact, the full range of activity of hormones is very imperfectly understood. In tampering with the delicate and fluctuating balance of female hormones, physicians have had to admit that they have produced alterations in non-sexual and non-reproductive functions which they did not expect. It is difficult enough to understand the simple mathematics of genes and chromosomes: when it comes to the chemistry of hor- mones, the processes are much more difficult to trace. We know that the male hormone, testosterone, induces the growth of male sexual characteristics, and that it is linked somehow with the other male hormone, androgen, which stimulates the growth of muscle, bone and guts. The secretion of androgen is under the control of the pituitary interstitial cell hormone, as is the female hormone oestrogen which is very like it. Both sexes produce both; all we know is that if we give oestrogen to men their secondary sexual characteristics be- come less evident, and if we give androgen to women the same happens. For some functions oestrogen needs the help of the other female hormone, progesterone. All of our secretions have comple- mentary and catalytic reactions: almost every investigation of these turns up new chemicals with new names. Despite the haphazard bombardment of women with large doses of hormones in order to prevent conception, the commonest attitude towards them among those who know is one of respect and wonder. The search still goes on for a pill which will inhibit only the function essential to concep- tion, and women ought not to feel confident until it is found.
The sex of a child is established at conception because each sper- matozoon contains one Y-and one X-chromosome, and the mature ovum contains one X. The specialized chromosome causes the primary difference, but the development of sexual features grows out of specialized chemical substances in the chromosomes. Up
to the seventh week the foetus shows no sexually differentiated characteristics, and when sexual development begins it follows a remarkably similar pattern in both sexes. The clitoris and the head of the penis look very alike at first, and the urethra develops as a furrow in both sexes. In boys the scrotum forms out of the genital swelling, in girls, the labia. If we examine the tissue in these analog- ous sites we see that it is in fact different, although women do have
tissues similar to the male tissues in different sites.
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Nature herself is not always unambiguous. Sometimes a girl child may have so well-developed a clitoris that it is assumed that she is a boy. Likewise, many male children may be underdeveloped, or their genitals deformed or hidden and it is assumed that they are girls. Sometimes they accept their sex as described, and regard themselves as defective members of the wrong sex, assuming the behaviour and attitudes of that sex, despite special conflicts. In other cases, some sort of genetic awareness creates a problem which leads
to investigation and the right sex of the child is established.
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Some,
like little girls born without vaginas, are wrongly considered neuter; others having the XXY construction are considered women without ovaries. Some of these difficulties can be resolved by cosmetic sur- gery, but too often surgeons perform such operations for peculiar motives, when scanning the body cell structure would reveal that no congenital abnormality is present. Most homosexuality results from the inability of the person to adapt to his given sex role, and ought not to be treated as genetic and pathological, but the preju- diced language of
abnormality
offers the homosexual no way of ex- pressing this rejection, so he must consider himself a freak. The ‘normal’ sex roles that we learn to play from our infancy are no more natural than the antics of a transvestite. In order to approximate those shapes and attitudes which are considered normal and desir- able, both sexes deform themselves, justifying the process by refer- ring to the primary, genetic difference between the sexes. But of
forty-eight chromosomes only one is different: on this difference we base a complete separation of male and female, pretending as it were that all forty-eight were different. Frenchmen may well cry ‘Vive la différence’, for it is cultivated unceasingly in all aspects of life. It is easiest and most obvious to consider that deliberately induced de- formity as it is manifested in the body and our concepts of it, for whatever else we are or may pretend to be, we are certainly our bodies.
Just how much sex in there is a skeleton? When archaeologists state categorically that half a femur comes from a twenty-year-old woman we are impressed with their certainty, not the less so because the statement, being a guess, is utterly unverifiable. Such a guess is as much based in the archaeologists’ assumptions about women as anything else. What they mean is that the bone is typically female, that is, that it
ought
to belong to a woman. Because it is impossible to escape from the stereotyped notions of womanhood as they prevail in one’s own society, curious errors in ascription have been made and continue to be made.
We tend to think of the skeleton as rigid; it seems to abide when all else withers away, so it ought to be a sort of nitty-gritty, unmarked by superficial conditioning. In fact it is itself subject to deformation by many influences. The first of these is muscular stress. Because men are more vigorous than women their bones have more clearly marked muscular grooves. If the muscles are constrained, by binding or wasting, or by continual external pressure which is not counter- balanced, the bones can be drawn out of alignment. Men’s bodies are altered by the work that they do, and by the nutriment which sustains them in their growing period, and so are women’s, but women add to these influences others which are dictated by fashion and sex-appeal. There have been great changes in the history of feminine allure in the approved posture of the shoulders, whether sloping or straight, drawn forward or back, and these have been bolstered by dress and corsetting, so that the
delicate balance of bone on bone has been altered by the stress of muscles maintaining the artificial posture. The spine has been curved forwards in the mannequin’s lope, or backwards in the S-bend of art nouveau or the sway-back of the fifties. Footwear reinforces these unnatural stresses; the high-heeled shoe alters all the torsion of the muscles of the thighs and pelvis and throws the spine into an angle which is still in some circles considered essential to allure. I am not so young that I cannot remember my grandmother begging my mother to corset me, because she found my teenage ungainliness unattractive, and was afraid that my back was not strong enough to maintain my height by itself. If I had been corsetted at thirteen, my rib-cage might have developed differently, and the downward pressure on my pelvis would have resulted in its widening. Nowadays, corsetting is frowned upon, but many women would not dream of casting away the girdle that offers
support
and
tummy control
. Even tights are tight, and can cause strange symptoms in the wearer. Typists’ slouch and shop-girl lounge have their own effect upon the posture and therefore upon the skeleton.
Most people understand that the development of the limbs is af- fected by the exercise taken by the growing child. My mother dis- couraged us from emulating the famous girl swimmers of Australia by remarking on their massive shoulders and narrow hips, which she maintained came from their rigorous training. It is agreed that little girls should have a different physical education programme from little boys, but it is not admitted how much of the difference is counselled by the conviction that little girls should not look like little boys. The little girls look so pretty doing their eurhythmics,
and the boys so manly when they chin themselves.
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The same as-
sumptions extend into our suppositions about male and female skeletons: a small-handed skeleton
ought
to be female, small feet are feminine too, but the fact remains that either sex may exhibit the disproportion.
Medical students learn their anatomy from a male
sample, except where they are explicitly dealing with the reproduct- ive functions. They learn that
as a rule
the female skeleton is lighter and smaller, and the bone formation more childlike than the male. This last is an observation which is frequently made about the whole female body, that it is infantilized or
pedomorphic
while the male body is aged, or
gerontomorphic
. This description, far from implying any defect in female development, implies an evolutionary advantage
in greater elasticity and adaptability. We can assume nothing whatever about physical strength or mental ability from it.
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The difference between the childish type and the aged type must not be exaggerated: in fact there is a wide range of variation possible, without any hint of a functioning abnormality. Such categorization represents an effort to identify a tendency. In our search for distinc- tions to justify the inequalities in the male and female lot we have not only overstated the general difference but invented particular differences which do not exist, like the extra rib which is still widely believed to exist in women. It is assumed that the female pelvis, the seat of the most marked differentiation in the bone structure of the sexes, is quite different from the male. In fact the difference is one
of comparative dimensions and angle of tilt: the basic design is common.
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Well-bred sedentary women tend to have larger pelves
than hard-working or poorly nourished women and in them the sexual difference is exaggerated by influences not connected with
biological sex, but with the sociology of sex.
4
The prejudice that
narrow pelves are inefficient in childbirth is unfounded; deformation in either direction will affect the efficiency of the mechanisms of the pelvis. Most people do not judge sex like archaeologists; when the actual sexual organs are hidden, the sex type is revealed by superfi- cial characteristics, but even curves take their toll of the patient un- seen bones, bearing them up, thrusting them out, wobbling and waggling them. Shall these bones live?
When the life of the party wants to express the idea of a pretty wo- man in mime, he undulates his two hands in the air and leers express- ively. The notion of a curve is so closely connected to sexual se- mantics that some people cannot resist sniggering at road signs. The most popular image of the female despite the exigencies of the clothing trade is all boobs and buttocks, a hallucinating sequence of parabolae and bulges.
The female body is commonly believed to be enveloped in insu- lating fat, just so that she is more cuddly, Nature and Hugh Hefner being alike bawds in this traffic. It is true that women wear much fewer and lighter clothes than men do, but it is not so easy to determ- ine whether the layer of fat results from the necessity to insulate such exposed portions or predates it. Men’s habit of wrapping their nether quarters in long garments has resulted in a wastage of the tissues which can be seen in the chicken legs which they expose on
any British resort beach.
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Men have subcutaneous fat as well as
women, but women build up larger deposits in specific sites. In fat people most of the fat is accumulated in the subcutaneous layer: what the pseudo-fact that women have subcutaneous fat really means is that women ought to be fatter than men. Historically we may see that all repressed, indolent people have been fat, that eu- nuchs tend to fatten like bullocks, and so we need not be surprised
to find that the male preference for cuddlesome women persists.
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The most highly prized curve of all is that of the bosom. The actual gland that forms the base of the
The finest bosom in nature is not so fine as what imagination forms.
Gregory, ‘A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters’,
1809, p. 64
breast is a convex structure extending from the second rib to the sixth beneath: the fat which gathers around it and forms the canyon of cleavage is not itself a sexual characteristic; in cases where the owner of huge breasts is not fat elsewhere the phenomenon is usually caused by endocrine derangement. The degree of attention which breasts receive, combined with the confusion about what the breast fetishists actually want, makes women unduly anxious about them. They can never be just right; they must always be too small, too big, the wrong shape, too flabby. The characteristics of the mammary stereotype are impossible to emulate because they are falsely simu- lated, but they must be faked somehow or another. Reality is either gross or scrawny.
A full bosom is actually a millstone around a woman’s neck: it endears her to the men who want to make their mammet of her, but she is never allowed to think that their popping eyes actually see her. Her breasts are only to be admired for as long as they show no signs of their function: once darkened, stretched or withered they are objects of revulsion. They are not parts of a person but lures slung around her neck, to be kneaded and twisted like magic putty, or mumbled and mouthed like lolly ices. The only way that women can opt out of such gross handling is to refuse to wear undergar- ments which perpetuate the fantasy of pneumatic boobs, so that men must come to terms with the varieties of the real thing. Recent emphasis on the nipple, which was absent from the breast of popular pornography, is in women’s favour, for the nipple is expressive and responsive. The vegetable creep of women’s liberation has freed some breasts from the domination of foam and wire. One way
40
to continue progress in the same direction might be to remind men that they have sensitive nipples too.
The next curve in the joker’s hourglass is the indentation of the waist. The waist is exaggerated in order to emphasize the outward curve of breast and buttock: it is hardly a natural phenomenon at all. In all those eras when it was
de rigueur
women have had to wear special apparatus to enforce it, and, in much the same way that a heap of brass rings really does elongate Bantu ladies’ necks, the waist came to exist. Nineteenth-century belles even went to the ex- tremity of having their lowest ribs removed so that they could lace their corsets tighter. One native tribe of New Guinea uses tight girdles for both men and women, and the flesh tends to swell above and below the ligature, so that men have hourglass curves too. If we may take the imposition of tight corsets on ‘O’ as any guide, we might assume that the tiny waist is chiefly valued as a point of