Feminism

Feminism is a word that has done a complete about-face in it’s history as a word, which has not been long. Originated in the era of the sixties when there was a general explosion culturally in music, drug-taking, awareness of ecology, questioning of authority, and rebelling against anything that was middle-class, capitalistic, white-male dominated and anything considered to hinder personal expressions of freedom. Women at this time fought not for very long, for the right to not be portrayed in media as sexual objects, and not to be seen only as semen receptacles for men. They wanted to be taken seriously and not judged by what they looked like, but wanted culture to embrace women of all ages as they were, not what men wanted them to be, i.e. Barbie doll obedient blonde brainless bodies. Unfortunately, the male-dominated media quickly established the potential for this trend to cut in to market forces which used female bodies/images to sell things. So, the media really dug it’s heels in, playing on women’s most vulnerable insecurities, perpetuating myths about feminists being sad bra-burning butt-ugly, dykes, and after a time women, rather than carry on fighting and being seen as the media-defined feminist, just decided it’s easier to give in. In the early seventies, one TV program which started the ball rolling down this brainwashing exercise was “Charlies Angels” – oh girls yes, you can fight off murderers and survive extraordinary car-chases with not one hair out of place or any makeup smudged…AND have a flat stomach 24/7/365!! Hooray! The way women gave in though to media’s pressure on feminists, in the way women are very good at, is to go into denial about the whole issue, and accept the media hype that true feminism is really about validating yourself through what you look like and what men (and other women) think of your appearance. Whole industries thrive on this factor, cosmetic surgery, fashion, diet foods, psychotherapy, make-up, blah blah. Women today are not only accepting this new definition, they are embracing it one hundred percent, emulating the likes of the original Barbie wannabe, Pammy A, Victoria Silvstedt etc (there are now just too fuckin many to mention). They are also bandying about the psychobabble term “body-image issues” accusing each other of bowing to media pressure, when in fact it’s no wonder that most women DO have issues around body-image. This is just another way of getting women to compete with each other and “keep them down”. Vast amounts of energy and money are spent on “shopping til you drop”, enhancing or re-defining bits of their bodies that don’t quite measure up to whoever or whatever the media is defining as “perfection”, learning how to lap-dance for their man, and this is all called “empowerment”, freedom and oh such fun! Really, it’s just another form of sexual slavery. Side-note: it is proven than women still earn less than men so where do they get the money? One interesting spin-off of this is that the BigBrother contestant Nadia (UK), who is a trans-sexual, paid for her boob job by being a prostitute. No one batted an eye-lid here about this. Perhaps it’s because she did it as a man, not a woman. Hmmm. So to summarise, feminism originally meant freedom from being bound by male-dominated rules of sexual objectification, but today means just the opposite. To get anywhere as a woman, all along it’s been the same old story, it’s just been re-packaged and sold back to women where they are now not only the product, but the consumer. Wake up ladies.