IS IT TIME FOR MEN TO CARRY THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT?

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. For more decades than not in this century, women have been looking for a few good feminist leaders to carry them from the kitchen to the promised land. Women have made it out of the kitchen, but the feminist leaders they have chosen have hardly led them anywhere but in circles. I say it's time for men to take over this movement, so women can finally get somewhere.

Lately, Mulan, the cartoon character has been held in high esteem as a role model for women. Are we scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl or what? Hardly a newspaper in the country has passed up the opportunity to explore the Disney phenomenon of "new strong women," aka. Pocohontas, Little Mermaid, Belle and the afore- mentioned Mulan. Quaint indeed that the horizon is so barren of strong women, that we have to look to those that are hand drawn--and by men most of the time. And their lines? thoughts? actions? Produced by men, mostly.

The real women of late haven't been much to lay a feminist movement on. The modern struggle's patron saint of limp hair, Gloria Steinem defaulted her weakening position when she took Bill Clinton's side in the Monica Lewinski brouhaha. The modern woman picked Madonna, but she wouldn't come out of the gutter or bedroom long enough to learn how to spell suffragette. Half the politicians handed us Hillary, but she has been mired in rumors of crime, power-mongering, and bad hairdos for a near-decade. Men, at least, know enough to put Hillary, beneath a pedestal.

Feminism is surely to take the forefront even more, now that the Southern Baptist convention has made the mistake of actually quoting the Bible when it comes to their belief system. Most liberal women are saying, "We handed you over Ellen Degeneres, what more do you want?" If men ran the movement--bare minimum--we would send some guy from our side to beat up some guy from their side.

The cohesion of the feminist movement was supposed to come through women's magazines. Publications like "Cosmopolitan" and "New Woman" were to bring all women together in this fight for individuality and freedom. There can be no worse failure than this idea. Through these-type publications, and there are a million of them, women have only united in their dissatisfaction of body or facial features and their ability to take pop quizzes on sex. Kate Moss and Cindy Crawford are rich though. A man would never take out a subscription on anything that would make him read through 200 pages of advertisements or cause him to have an eating disorder.

This recent Time magazine touts Ally McBeal as the "new feminism." Great; just what women need, another leader who can get into a mini-skirt that I could wear for a wrist band. To me, the one irritating and illogical fact of the feminism movement has always been that it blames men. Yet, leaders always come from the masses and men can't be blamed for the choices women have always made for themselves. Ally McBeal? Come on girls, this is just one notch short of picking a cheerleader with pigtails and a lollipop.

Let's make it easy. Women, go to an all male marketing firm, hand them over 1/10th the salary of Demi Moore (or 500 times that of a school teacher), and let them build you a feminist leader who will take you places. She will be able to outwit Newt Gingrich and beat Rush Limbaugh at arm wrestling. She will slap Bill Clinton's face on the White House Lawn and still be home in time to eat the dinner her man cooked for her. She will emote, cry and build bonfires out of Barbie Dolls. She will be funny, cute and when she wears flannel she'll be equally attractive to men and women.

She'll be so good, she'll break free of the male marketing firm that created her and broker them into bankruptcy. And when she's done, she'll take her daughter to Mulan and tell her it's just a cartoon, but a darn good one at that.

Billy Murphy -- 6/24/98