When Her Personal Is My Political

Thanks to Justin who searched high and low (according to him) in the US states he visited and finally stumbled upon the only copy in a Barnes and Noble bookstore, I hold in my naturally fair and ungloved hands a book that’s not sold (or found in any libraries, for that matter) in Singapore - Rebels in White Gloves: Coming of Age with Hillary's Class--Wellesley '69.

This is, despite its modest claim of being otherwise (merely document-ary in nature) and an even more unassuming title, an intelligent and compelling text that puts into perspective the feminist movement from its precarious cusp to its most precious and current developments through tracing the lives of Hillary’s class. Well-written and researched, it re-ignited my interest in an area I have long abandoned, for I too, was once caught up in the flaming romance of feminism in younger days and become conspicuously (as opposed to contemplatively) contemptuous after getting a B- in academic feminist theory.

Obviously, the sample the book uses is elitist to begin with and deliberately so for good reasons. Through tracking the women in Hillary’s class, who also happened to be the first generation of women straddling between the traditional and modern image/concept of what it means to be female, the conflict seething within a woman in contemporary times is made all the more poignant through its overachievers (with their fair share of grievances), who have also amongst them, more “ordinary” personalities who feel they have somehow failed to live up to The Expectations (usually their own and stemming from choosing family over career). All whom just happened to be in a larger-than-life class because the valedictorian is Hillary and all of them were comparing themselves to her. And ironically, the reader ie yours truly, is comparing myself to all these women I have never met wondering (rather unhappily because I’m competitive too) what have I done so far that showed my predecessors (even if they’re white) I have made use of their fight then to my advantage now and how should I continue the crusade in my own way as a woman, and especially as a woman in Singapore, who automatically relinquishes all rights (according to the law here) to grant sexual favours once married since married women cannot be raped by husbands. But I digress.

Reading the text made me feel more “normal” in a brainy sorta way which differs from how I usually purchase normalcy via materialism ever since I graduated, and that can be rather pricey. This is one of the very rare occasions I picked a non-fiction over the thick classics (remember Vanity Fair and Middlemarch and Anna Karenina in my vow to read all unread classics) that have come to rule.

I think I’m more a theory snob than a literary one :)