“Wild Women” Representations
and The Costs of Being Untameable by Choice
This essay deals with the concept of
“loose women” or in Turkish “serbest/rahat kadınlar” through an analysis of
selected female characters’ representations created after the 1970s. Maryse
Holder’s book Give Sorrow Words, Judith Rossner’s novel Looking for Mr.Goodbar and Lars von Trier’s film Nymphomaniac provide the context in
which the main characters are compared. Normativity of single and free woman’s
sexuality is reconstructed on a variety of levels including proposals on
changes in daily language. Janis Joplin’s name and image recur as a
nymphomaniac and a wild woman both in media and in the selected works for the
essay. Despite its complexity, the notion of sisterhood remains an option in
its inclusion of “loose women” and of women who are determined to survive in a
patriarchal and heterosexual world, dealing with body-image and self-esteem issues.
==
Give
sorrow words; the grief that does not speak /
whispers
the o’er-fraught heart and bids it to break / Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III.
“I always demanded more from the sunset. That is perhaps my only sin.”
Joe, the protagonist of Nymphomaniac
Let me begin with an explanation on language: “Serbest” in Turkish
means “free” so in most cases it has a positive or neutral connotation except
that when it is used in describing a woman or a young girl. If you cannot ever
bring yourself to use swear words (bitch or whore,) or the attitudes that are
associated with these two words, you may use “serbest”. Examples: “She is
raised ‘serbest’, she comes from a ‘serbest’ family”. Although the word’s
connotations may vary from one perceiver to the other, it means the following:
She hangs out with guys without being monitored, she dresses tank tops,
mini-skirts, shorts, maybe uses lots of makeup etc. It is likely that she
doesn’t avoid drinking, flirting, or smoking and dancing in public. I suspect
that for a conservative family whose women are all covered, the same word is
used for another series of actions (which may not at all included in your bag
of “serbest”).
I celebrate essay as
a hybrid form with no strict tradition of its own, thus allowing transparency
and emotions along with cultivation of ideas and fact-based observations. To
use Adorno’s words: “It evokes intellectual freedom” which I immensely value
(3).[i]
Janis Joplin once sang: Freedom is just another word for nothing left
to lose…
One day, our primary
school teacher asked ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’, I answered “I
want to be a ‘rahat’ woman”. She did not laugh. In fact, she called my parents,
once this career plan was made public. Then my mother told me that I should
consider other future plans, and being a “rahat” woman is not a profession.
Furthermore, it is not something that a good girl should aspire. Her tone
implied that no further questions were to be asked at the time.
Now, as an adult woman, I ask myself how I
should be responding if a 6-year-old girl tells me that she wants to be a
“rahat” woman in the future because the word sounds so sympathetic. The
opposite of rahat is rahatsız (1. uncomfortable, 2. ill) in Turkish. If someone
is “rahatsız” you feel sorry for him/her regardless of gender.
Constructing
an anti-mainstream language in any culture is challenging. Even when one dares
the attempt, her audience is used to and is using the old language and thus
cannot help contrasting, and measuring the acceptibility of the new language
accordingly. As a consequence, what one may promote as novel or revolutionary
is likely to get ‘lost in translation’ (yes, in the very same language) or
understood by only a few. I realized however that whenever ‘serbest’ women’s
stories are materialized for mainstream consumption, a happy end for them is
rare. I don’t think it is a coincidence that ‘serbest’ woman is singled out,
marginalized, and punished in a heterosexual system so that
women in general and women’s sexuality in particular can be monitored. Can it
be due to a concern of not creating bad role models by any chance,
and thus better not to empathize with ‘wild women’ of any kind? Or is it
because art is imitating life?
I
like to politicize and appropriate the term ‘wild women’ and change
it into “untamed women” in a positive sense. It is my hope -utopic as it may sound-
that both words gradually turn into compliments when used for women because
these words are the opposite of imprisoned and uncomfortable as mentioned
earlier.
Most
women in the modern world are not even aware of the matriarchal
societies such as the one in Bijagos Islands of West Africa.[ii] Thus,
their gender roles range from feeling like a loser to feeling guilty about
assertiveness or leaving a relationship. We need to remember how
limited our vision of the world can be due to our socialization and the five
senses that we are bound to in experiencing the world. There are always alternatives:
One needs to be bold and have a Plan B.
[i] Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form.” Notes
to Literature. Trans. Sherry Weber Nicholsen. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
3-4.
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