MountainMornings

On this beautiful Fall Saturday, I found myself reading about the term “Gaslighting” and watching the documentary film Miss Representation on the OWN TV channel. Now if you don’t know what channel Ms Oprah has moved to, you can just go to the website and put in your demographic info:  http://www.oprah.com/own

Well this got my feminist hackles up, my social justice juices flowing, and made me re-think my plans to go to the gym. Let’s burn our bras ladies and take to the streets! Oh no wait, we did that. But it seems, it didn’t take us very far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gkIiV6konY

You have got to see this film! It is a documentary call to arms for all of us, women and men, written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. “While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.”  http://missrepresentation.org/the-film/

And now about “Gaslighting.” It is an old term, taken from a famous 1944 movie starring Ingrid Bergman, titled Gaslight.  The plot is simple. Her husband wants her jewels and her money, so he arranges to have the turn of the century gaslights flicker all over the house. When she complains, he tells her she’s wrong. They are NOT flickering, she must be going mad I tell you, MAD! Then he can have her committed, and you get the rest. The term has come to mean in psych circles that a person is being manipulated by another into distrusting their own reality.

This happened to me once. It was The Case of the Missing Charm Bracelet. In the wee small hours before a trip, I had asked Bob to hide my Mother, the Flapper’s, priceless charm bracelet. When we returned, he swore I never asked him and he didn’t hide it, and I ripped the house up, down and sideways looking for it. For 2 years he insisted the bracelet would show up. I insisted he was gaslighting me to anyone who would listen to my rant. And when it did reveal itself, in his desk where he actually had hidden it, he was pretty sheepish about telling me. I wasn’t sure if I should cry or smack him upside the head. 

Thank you to my niece, Jocelyn, for posting this article by Yashar Ali: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat/a-message-to-women-from-a_1_b_958859.html

The take away here is to love yourselves ladies, just the way you are, and don’t let anyone else gaslight you. Reject the sexually stereotypical media messages about women. Speak up, stand up, and share the light. Think what we could do if we had real parity in government and board rooms around the country. Oh, and I did forgive my hubby, eventually.