3rd Wave Feminism & Woman's Prison

“Feminist” is a term that I have struggled with my whole life. When people have called me this, I feel very insulted, stripped of my own independence and humanity. Stripped of the personal struggle created by being unable to relate to both the mainstream ideals of womanhood and the third wave feminist movement’s demands that I reject feminine qualities altogether.

Many third wave feminists have rejected “Woman’s Prison”, and me as well. They write me letters thanking me for my “tough’ film, but mention their disappointment about how I was not “tough” enough at the end. These so called feminists are at the center of my inner conflict. These are the women who have bullied me for being feminine, criticized me for adoring fashion or loving my Barbie Doll collection passionately, rolled their eyes at my Anna Nicole Smith pictures. These are women who said that in order for women to be successful they must become men, “think like a man”, be tough like man. In order to be successful you cannot embody any feminine characteristics. To look and act feminine is weak, is wrong, is a recipe for failure.

However, feminine is what I am. I am alone here in my skin; belonging to no one but myself. I do not want to be a poster child for any movement. I speak for myself and only myself.
Yet when faced with the reactions from the third wave feminists, I noticed the familiarity in tone. Surprisingly, their disapproval blends with the misogynist voices that raised me in South Bend, Indiana.

I grew up in an extreme environment. My father’s side of the family regarded feminine appearance with vulgarity. To be feminine, was weak. To cry or show emotion was wrong. My body was gawked at and ridiculed. It was embarrassing to be around any of them. Women were often referred to as sexual objects in front of me as a child. It was disgusting. Fashion was escape, and fashion was punch in the face to my father’s distain for femininity. Yet, my father was always convinced that fashion existed solely for women to seek male approval. How wrong he was. Fashion belonged solely to me. It was the way I owned my body, the way I expressed my love of self and color. Picture a fashion forward child, Katie Madonna Lee, presenting her new outfit to a group of rowdy men watching Notre Dame football. Not exactly my audience.

So when the mainstream labels me as a feminist filmmaker, I am insulted. If they only knew how so many women’s groups have rejected my film for not fulfilling their agenda, and me for being “soft.” One film critic who is a third wave feminist, wrote, “I had an even greater problem with the final sequence of the heroine's spirit freed in death, which completely undercuts the toughness of the film in order to give it a falsely up-lifting, audience-friendly ending. [Julie Ann Mabry] should have been buried behind the walls and should have left it to us and our individual belief or non-belief in an afterlife to supply the emotion,” The critic suggests an ending that would fulfill her political agenda. She also suggests that I am “tough”. And that tough is some how a quality that I should be proud of. Determined, dedicated and committed are better words to describe any director’s approach to a film.

At a first reading of the script, I was told by a fellow male collegue that I had a political feminist agenda. When I wrote the film, it had nothing to do with a political agenda or feminism. There is no cause in the film besides the cause of the characters. I wrote a story. I was empathic to Julie Ann Mabry’s life and I wrote about it. It was told through her point of view. And unfortunately, in her life, all men had failed her. But most women did too.

So there I am again. A ping-pong ball, being thrown back and forth in a cultural debate that I never wanted to be apart of. The status quo calls me feminist. And yet the feminist groups reject me.

Both are failing to see that I am a person, a person that has no message about politics or social issues. I write stories. I am an empathic person. I do not know how to fix the world besides being an honest person in one’s day-to-day individual relationships. Both the mainstream and third wave feminists are in cultural disagreement, yet, both the mainstream and the third wave feminists will judge my work by my gender.

Both groups forget that "Woman’s Prison” is not a political prison piece, although prison is used as a storytelling device accurately, it is a mother/daughter story. “Tommy Boy” is not a film about large corporations buying up small town, mom and pop companies, it uses that as device to execute a story of Tommy following his father footsteps. I did not make a message, I made a movie.

The critic reminds me how the third wave feminists failed me and women altogether. Once they decided that success as a woman should be measured by one abilities to think like a man, and that feminine qualities were weak, they became misogynists themselves.

I loved the feminine; I loved my dolls and my clothes more anything. And I couldn’t wait to find others who embraced this passion as well. However, something very strange happened when I turned into a teenager. Suddenly, women were copying my father’s reactions to my outfits and personality. Older women, and young feminists informed me that I had been brainwashed, most likely by Madonna. They told me that I was too smart to be wearing wigs and purple spandex. As if this thing that I loved, (fashion) degraded my intelligence.

These women talked in fancy tones and presented themselves as accomplished women. They would frown upon my sensitivity and appearance, patting me on the head for falling into my “social conditioning.”

I naturally liked beautiful things and I did cry when I watched Titanic. And Footloose, And even Short Circuit. I was being bullied by women for being completely feminine, just as my father ridiculed me. The feminist circle would look down on my friendliness as flakiness. Scoffed at me like old men at a cigar bar. Truly it was a gross reaction by “accomplished” women. They were brutes. They saw their femininity as weak and sought to scold me for being effeminate.

I was very confused by the role to play and the emotional place that I should be in. It was a difficult life in Indiana because of its extremes. If embraced fashion, I would be harassed and even beat up. There was a choice that had to be made: if you want a boyfriend then you give up yourself to please them, a choice made by both women and men. I didn’t want to do anything outside of my own motivations, I’d say. My father would shout at me, “You are never going to get a man with that mouth of yours.” I decided to hold my breath until I could move.

Experiencing such hatred towards feminine qualities has made me realize that I am not apart of any movement, only my own movement towards self-actualization. The feminists or brutes back in Indiana will neither accept my blond hair, body or fashion. They both detest the feminine and regard it was weak. However, weak was never a feminine quality, nor a masculine quality; it is just a human flaw that has potential to spout in every human being.