Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro

This past week, both Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro passed away. While they seem to have nothing in common in real life, I can't help but think of them together in the context of feminist movement.

I am not a fan of the feminist movement, paradoxically because I am a proponent of the feminist ideals, which in my opinion have not been served by the radical feminist movement.

Elizabeth Taylor never claimed to have been a feminist, but she made her own ostentatious feminist statement by marrying seven husbands in eight marriages, and by essentially doing whatever she felt like doing, which often bordered on the vulgar. As she famously said, "I know that I am vulgar. But would you have me any other way?" Geraldine Ferraro was a product of the ultra-feminist movement which put more emphasis on style over substance. She admitted that she would never have been the Democratic vice president nominee had she not been a woman, but I guess she never accepted that an easy nomination due to one's gender would lead to a difficult campaign due to one's gender. Hillary Clinton had more legitimate reasons to feel bitter than Geraldine Ferraro.

Ultimately, the true lesson in life is that life is never meant to be fair. You make the best out of what you have and that is all. True - that lesson runs so counter to what we all learned in school growing up. But perhaps that is why so many people were then shocked or disillusioned at some point, with some learning the harsh lessons and moving on, and some staying in a state of denial and bitterness.

To some extent, while I am not a fan of either Elizabeth Taylor or Geraldine Ferraro, I admire Elizabeth Taylor's brutal honesty about what she was and how she got where she was. She did not pretend that it was her talent that led to her celebrity status, unlike some of the modern day actors and actresses. She assumed loss of privacy as part of the celebrity package, unlike some of the modern day celebrities.

In a way, perhaps what I dislike about the radical feminist movement is the fact that they embrace inequality when it suits their purpose, and cry out loud when it does not.

Maybe in the wake of the death of Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro, we should all remember that if we accept good things we don't deserve, we should gracefully accept bad things we don't deserve as well, and move on.