Womyn's Hystery Watch

Ruth Rosen, the San Francisco Chronicle's resident womyn's hystery professor and unreheated 1960s leftover, amuses us twice a week with her virtual bra burnings. In Monday's column, entitled American Burqa, Rosen equates the Victorian corset worn by some fetishists to the Afghan burqa

[American women's problem] is their slavish submission to constricting fashions that turn them into static Victorian adornments.

Call it the American burqa.

And even though the corset fad was in full bloom way back in the good old days of the woman-centered Clinton administration, Rosen somehow blames the corset on George W. Bush

I've wondered about the sudden popularity of this Victorian fashion... Has the Bush administration's impending war in Iraq stirred up nostalgia for the 19th century imperial ideal of a genteel lady, laced up in a corset, teetering on high-heeled shoes, in a regal gown?

I have no idea.

What I do know is this:

Fasten your seatbelts, you are about to ride on the zaniest non-sequitur of the new millenium:

Last week, even models in Milan tripped as they tottered down the runways. Eighteen months ago, one young woman, who successfully fled the World Trade Center, had to remove her high heels to run down three flights of stairs and across blocks of broken glass in order to save her life. And now, when our government is rushing into a senseless war and is attacking our civil liberties at home, is no time for women to give up their place as serious participants in public life.

Well, Ruthie, many women are serious participants in public life. But as long as the country's founding mothers of feminist "scholarship" argue that a small minority of women who voluntarily adopt certain silly fashions is morally equivalent to a compulsory dress code imposed under penalty of death, you can be certain that your ilk of feminist will not have a serious role in public life in your lifetime or mine.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 11, 2003 07:43 AM