To be fair, it wasn't Kate so much as a perfume ad.
In 1994, I was in law school. When I passed in the hall, you'd get a whiff of C minuses and CK One. Actually it was written "ck one." The fragrance was marketed for women or men. That was unique at the time. The ads were black and white photographs of groups of waif-like humans in androgynous baggy jeans and t-shirts with Queen Street Urchin Kate Moss front and center.They were AMAZING, and the conservative church lost its flipping mind.
ck one was just another perfume, and the fashion of the 90s was just another trend...or was it? At that time, I was riding the fence between entering the conservative church and still hanging on to my safer Methodist upbringing. And let's be honest, my family was really into clothes, so I was torn. But my position means I got to hear preaching where the conservatives called these gender-neutral fashions the beginning of the end. Looking back, I like to think of it as one step towards freedom. But the church wasn't going down without a fight.
During the 90s and 2000s, they started frantically teaching about the differences between genders. Books like "Bringing up Boys," and "Wild at Heart," taught vehemently that males were different from females, needed a battle and mission in life, and should be raised and shaped toward this natural bent.
The B Side of the church's LP was books like "Captivated" and "A Woman after God's Own Heart." Women were taught that their heart's desire was to be cherished, whereas the men's highest need was respect. The gist was that God created the genders to be very different yet complementary. At its best, the goal in a marriage, or even in church leadership, was a beautiful design that works effectively to represent God's will and Jesus' own relationship with the church.
By the 2000s I'd jumped totally into the conservative boat (cue Titanic violins), and eventually became a stay-at-home mom. I participated in bible studies that were teaching us to put on lipstick and look nice when your husband came home from work because he'd had a hard day was re-entering his haven of calmness where he was respected as head of the home.
I remember my mother who was raised in the 1950s being surprised, wondering why we were all going "backwards." She also knew mothers worked their bony asses off, so she'd tell me, "Leave that vacuum out and the lipstick off or the husbands will have no idea what it is like there all day!" We didn't listen, because "Hell yeah, women who fought for feminism, we ARE going backwards! We are taking this train all the way back to Mary and Martha times, bitches."
I could tell you how I tried for years to learn and implement the teachings in my life and home. But when I look back today at those ads, I don't think of my own experience. I think of every person who never felt like they fit in the gender assigned to them from birth. I think of adolescents who never felt like they fit in their own skin but couldn't say it. I remember the day awhile back - but not nearly far enough back in time -- hearing on The Moth series the story of a woman who had transitioned finally in her 40s. This was after years of struggling with her identity and attempting suicide more than once because the world wouldn't accept her trying to live so that her external matched her internal makeup.
I think of how the polarized teaching of two genders makes it difficult for MOST people, not just a few like the conservatives like to believe. You don't have to be transgendered to feel like you are constantly falling short in fitting the prescribed box of male or female. Years ago, I sat in those bible studies (even taught some unfortunately) and saw a lot of women feeling like failures. Simultaneously, men's retreats springing up so that men could share how they felt they were not the men they were expected to be by the church and society. Unfortunately, in each group, the teaching was mostly to recommit to the mission.
No one wins when everyone has to fit. Because no one really fits.
Do I believe there are traits that possibly fall towards what we call a male or female bent? Sure. But I will support gender being a spectrum. When I see young people who feel free to dress and behave and identify however they feel, I feel joy, because they've got at least a hair more freedom than people from past generations. Many probably struggled alone and behind the scenes. I don't think it's an exaggeration to assume we lost quite a few.
Maybe ck one was just a fragrance with a creative ad campaign. Or maybe, the conservative church was correct that it represented seeds of change of the times. Maybe they were right to freak out because the landscape was changing. I certainly hope so. Thank you, Queen Kate. Now go have a cheeseburger and relax. You did a good job, Honey.
