Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

[seabeyond]

160. It started with Girl Power and has sunk into mindless hedonism. Why has sexual equality backfired?

But there is a serious problem with the mindless hedonism that grew out of Girl Power and learnt its morals from Sex and the City, a problem which Natasha Walter examines in her new book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism.


Walter, for those not up to speed on the feminist canon – and who is, these days? – wrote The New Feminism, published in 1998, which delighted in the progress that had been made towards an equal society. ''Here's feminism as phoenix, as blazing torch lighting the way to a new century,'' wrote Michele Roberts in a breathlessly enthusiastic review. Now all that optimism has turned to dust. Living Dolls analyses the increasing sexualisation of feminity and the extent to which young women are led to believe that their bodies are their only passport to success.

Far from relations between the sexes flourishing emotionally and physically, against a backdrop of mutual respect, understanding and equality, a generation of young girls is interpreting liberation as the right to behave like top-shelf models. These women, interviewed by Walter, are also committed to no-strings sex, celebrating one-night stands as notches on their designer handbags. For them, STDs are almost a badge of honour, eating disorders commonplace and men who talk of love and commitment are sneered at for "going soppy".

"In previous generations many women had to repress their physical needs and experiences in order to fall in with social conventions, and feminism was needed to release them from the cage of chastity," writes Walter. "But what I heard from some women is that they feel there is now a new cage holding them back from the liberation they sought, a cage in which repression of emotions takes the place of repression of physical needs." In short, they daren't feel because it might limit the exercise of their freedom. "It's my choice," is now an argument-clincher for any kind of louche behaviour.

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Walter's answer is that both men and women have ceased to be aware of the extent to which they are being manipulated by images in advertising and magazines because they no longer discuss those once hotly-debated topics. Writer Kate Figes, who has two daughters, aged 16 and 20, was shocked, but not surprised, by reading Walter's book . "It was really distressing, as I see how close to the edge my daughters could be. Girls have little idea of the sexual stereotyping because it goes below the radar.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/6969532/Feminism-what-went-wrong.html
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she perceives it a bit differently than you. and what she is seeing and hearing from the young women today. i was given this womans name in one of the posts last night and have been reading about her shift in position and growing insight to what is happening with our girls today.