Relevance of Feminism to Contemporary Young Women - Coursework Example

Relevance of Feminism to Contemporary Young Women From the “beginning” of time, women were viewed as subordinates of men. The Bible tells us the story of Eve being made from Adam’s rib (he of course is made in the image of God), then seducing him to eat forbidden fruit; thus causing them to be thrown out of the Garden of Eden. The Renaissance era (1400 -1600) was a time of great arts and literature, and a time of greater distinctions between male and female modes of authority. Freedman (2002) suggests that in intellectual life, woman represented the antitheses and inferior of man. Men were active but women passive; as perpetrators of original sin, women were not capable of perfection. Reviving classical notions about women’s irrationality, Renaissance depictions viewed woman as the flesh, sexually uncontrollable and liable to temptation by the devil. This ideology would later lay the groundwork for the Inquisition (1500 -1800) which accused and persecuted an estimated one million women of being witches and practicing witchcraft (Freedman 2002:34). After 1800, the Industrial Revolution would take off and based on the unlimited accumulation of wealth, investment for profit, and expanding commercial markets, capitalism affected all features of European life. Freedman (2002:37) suggests that in the 1800s, the ideology of separate sexual spheres intensified. In England and the United States, the mark of middle-class status became a wife who remained in her home while her husband earned money in trade, commerce, or the professions. Thus, she had no right to her own property or her own wages. In the nineteenth century, scientific ideas bolstered earlier religious precepts in support of women’s dependence on men. Charles Darwin proclaimed, “Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than women and has a more inventive genius.” Thus, Darwin’s views came to justify male privilege and nineteenth-century scholars invoked evolutionary theory to discourage women from seeking higher education or entering male professions (Freedman 2002:39). As capitalism expanded, so did the colonial conquest of indigenous peoples. Europe and the United States set up economic and political outposts. Advanced civilisations such as the Maya, Inca, Persians and Arabs were viewed as “heathens” by Christian missionaries. Colonialism transported many ideas about gender that both reinforced existing inequalities and introduced new ones. European colonial rulers assumed the natural superiority of the separate male and female spheres idealized in their own societies (Freedman 2002:39). Today in many countries, patriarchy still dominates and sons are still valued over daughters. Freedman (2002:36) argues that where strong son preferences persist, parents may selectively abort female foetuses and neglect girls, leading to higher mortality rates for female infants in parts of the world, such as India and China. Are we here only for the sake of men? – Amalie Holst, 1802. Histories of feminism have talked about the historical appearance of strong feminist movements at different moments as a series of waves. Freedman (2001) argues that ‘first-wave’ feminism is used to refer to the late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century feminist movements that were mainly concerned with gaining equal rights for women, particularly the right of suffrage. ‘Second-wave’ feminism refers to the resurgence of feminist activity in the late 1960s and 1970s, when protest again centred on women’s inequality in areas of political rights, family, sexuality and work. In conjunction, Genz (2000) suggests that in order to pursue the ideal of equality, feminists in the early 1960s were keen to abolish markers of difference, such as femininity, which they saw as fundamental to understanding women’s oppression. A ‘third-wave’ of feminism began to emerge in the 1990s. Reger (2005) suggests that the third-wave exploded in academic and popular literature presenting multiple views of contemporary feminism. It was argued that young women had not denounced, rejected, or turned away from feminism. While new feminists wanted to remain loyal to second wave feminists who had fought hard for the personal, professional and academic freedoms that were now being enjoyed, there was no denying that the political and cultural climate had changed (Genz 2009:54). Third-wave feminists were defining their feminism by what it is not, articulating the “new” and “young” by contrasting it with the “old” feminism of the second wave, they distinguished themselves, both generationally and ideologically from second-wave feminists. Taking a generational stance against the second wave gives third wave feminists a way to enter into feminism by remaining ‘girlie’. However, by articulating this new wave primarily in generational terms, Henry (2005:82) argues has hindered the development of third wave feminism as a political movement or perspective, particularly because such a movement requires solidarity premised on more than just generational location. Seely (2007:44) suggests that third-wavers are young women that want the benefits of feminism such as fair pay, contraceptive equity, access to higher education, protection from sexual harassment – without recognizing the fight that was necessary to win these rights. However, because we live in a society that values individualism, thinking collectively can be a foreign concept. Thus, the discourse in contemporary feminism adheres to that ideology, by urging us to define feminism in one’s own terms. Editor, Marcelle Karp of New York magazine Bust wrote, “We’ve entered an era of DIY feminism – sistah, do-it-yourself...Your feminism is what you want it to be and what you make of it. Define your agenda. Claim and reclaim your F-word.” The feminism that has emerged makes it clear that positing a shared ‘sisterhood’, in the second-wave sense of the term, has not been a major priority for third wavers (Henry 2005:82). So, in contemporary society how many girls and women really care about, understand or even acknowledge feminism? Baumgardner and Richards (2000) state “For anyone born after the early 1960s, the presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice that we have it – it’s simply in the water.” While we may not be aware of what is “in the water”, feminism is still here; only it has been refurbished, repackaged and utilized for commercial gain. Feminism has in essence been hijacked. It has been constructed, commoditised and manufactured to sell consumer goods. Whereby second wavers’ notions were of collective, activist struggle those ideals are now replaced with more individualistic assertions of consumer choice and self-rule. “Girl-power” busted (no pun intended) onto the scene in the mid 1990s, this was the beginning of a new hyped up commercialized form of feminism. Girl power promoted the possibilities for an altered understanding and reformulation of femininity that takes into account its relation to, rather than disconnection from, feminism and discourses of female empowerment and assertiveness. Girl Power has become naturalized in popular culture, where it usually refers to a media-friendly way of articulating a playful, sexualized subjectivity and agency that resist more passive, compliant versions of femininity. It was packaged most infamously in the form of the Spice Girls, who used it as their individual slogan which was directed at their teenage fans. In this rapidly changing cultural landscape, feminism’s role and situation in a media/consumer society have been the subject of many discussions; doubts have emerged whether it can still exist as a discrete politics once it has been incorporated into popular culture, and its fight for female emancipation and equal opportunities has been normalized (Genz 2009:86). Whereas it could be argued that, the Spice Girls were using their feminist principles as a strategic marketing device, the success of ‘Girl Power’ underpins the argument that feminism is an opportunity of cashing in for market gain. However, can feminism be political and popular at the same time? Once feminism has become a commodity, does it still have the power to enforce social change? What happens to female agency once it has undergone a process of individualization and commoditization? (Genz 2009:87). Possibly due to their attractive, agreeable promise of pleasurable female empowerment, girl power and power feminism has gained commercial success (Buszek 2006). Girl power has introduced all kinds of products and services in the marketplace, everything from makeup stuffs branded, “Girl power!” to licensed products picturing popular girl characters such as the Powerpuff Girls, and power feminism has sold a large number of Naomi Wolf’s books (Buszek 2006). Yet, in the current cultural context, girl power resembles little of the anti-commercialist version of Riot Grrrls, a rebellious feminist punk movement (McRobbie 2008). Rather, girl power has been effectively transformed to a commercial jingle, and girl power’s capability of inspiring or initiating change is hampered by its commercialism. Its themes of empowerment are very much weakened, its idea that ‘girls rule’ very much pumped up, that girl power has no ability to endanger the status quo (Buszek 2006). As an idea with unbelievable commercial appeal, girl power has attracted the attention and wallet of daughters and their parents. Amid the commercial success of girl power, the feminist intellectual response to the commodification of girl power usually has been critical (Wolf 1994). Scholars disparage contemporary girl power for being commodified and inauthentic, and for being a pleasure-centric and media-constructed rendition of Riot Grrrls (McRobbie 2008). Wolf (1994) would probably view these transformations as typical victim-feminist evaluation of active power feminism. As Wolf advised in her book Fire with Fire, “Feminist discourse is studded with warnings about the dangers of behaving impurely. Money, fame, and nasty opinions are the usual culprits. Women risk being ‘co-opted,’ ‘assimilated,’ and ‘tokenised.’ They have ‘sold out’ or ‘crossed the line’” (Wolf 1994: 111). Obviously, in the context of girl power, the detractors are not distinguishing individual females; they are asserting a sensible argument about circumstances in the marketplace that influence the lives of the multitudes. Once feminism has been assimilated and exercised not to empower individuals, but instead to put anything up for sale, it is blown up rhetoric—hollow, futile, meaningless, and ineffective in inspiring or initiating social change (Buszek 2006). Empowerment is a human domain that cannot be packaged or sold (Wolf 1994). Girl power, at its best, would be tantamount to feminism, or to power feminism, at least. Taking a look at the diverse products branded ‘girl power’ nowadays, on the other hand, the expression is a hollow signifier, empty of intrinsic meaning (McRobbie 2008). The expression ‘girl power’ is also printed on pornography and underwear, which are obviously deviation from feminist empowerment (McRobbie 2008). The exclusive meaning of girl power today appears to be, “Buy this!” The commercial success of girl power has made it unable to satisfy one of Wolf’s major criteria for power feminism: It “does not demand structural change” (Wolf 1994: xvii). Power feminism adopts and reveres commercialism, the route from feminist scholarship to hollow signifier had been a dangerous path (Buszek 2006). This should not overwhelm radical feminists, who have traditionally believed that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 1984: 110). Nowadays, girl power is a meaningless expression, able to embrace anything, even themes and ideas against power feminism, with which popular girl power initially held in common. On the other hand, employing the concept ‘female individualisation’ is clearly adopting the notion of individualisation which is discussed by well-known sociologists such as Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, and Ulrich Beck (McRobbie 2008). Bauman, in particular, laments the absolute incapability of pure individualisation as the foundations of welfare and sociality are eliminated, encouraging the person to self-blame when success dodges him/her (McRobbie 2008). The focus at this point is on the assumptions of Beck and Giddens, because it seems to refer directly to the post-feminist movement. In their work, there are merely isolated discussions of the feminist struggles that were needed to generate the newly gained freedoms of Western women (McRobbie 2008). There is negligible discussion of the struggles, of the power conflicts undertaken, or of the continuing inequalities which still define the relations between the sexes. All of this is stripped from existence based on the assumption that, as they assert, “emancipatory politics” (p. 61) has created instead life politics. These two authors present a sociological explanation of the processes of social change viewed as ‘reflexive modernisation’ (Hollows 2000). The previous era of modernisation, or ‘first modernity,’ generated a set of institutions, such as education, and a welfare state which enabled individuals in the ‘second modernity’ to become more self-sufficient and capable, for instance, of subsisting on their own or earning their own living (Hollows 2000). Consequently, young women are at present ‘dis-embedded’ from societies embracing fixed gender roles. Also, as the old foundations of social class disappear, and weaken in the ‘second modernity,’ people are increasingly encouraged to construct their own foundations (McRobbie 2008). They should carry this out individualistically and internally, for self-monitoring processes, such as the career pathway or the life plan, replace dependence on fixed means and prearranged pathways. Lifestyle advisers and coaches, personal gurus, self-help guides, and all types of self-improvement programmes furnish the cultural pathways by which individualisation functions as a social mechanism (McRobbie 2008). As the great power of structure weakens so also does the capability for agency grows (Hollows 2000). People should now decide the kind of life they desire to live. Women should create a life plan. They should become more spontaneous in relation to all facets of their lives, from making the decision in marriage, to assuming responsibility for their own careers, and not being reliant on an occupation for life or on the dependable and stable processes of a major bureaucracy which at one time would have given its employees exact, and perhaps fixed roles (Wolf 1994). Beck and Giddens put a distinct variety on their explanations of reflexive modernisation, and these assumptions seem to match very strongly with the types of circumstances and problems confronting female characters in the stories of current popular culture (McRobbie 2008). There is also an actual avoidance in this writing of the continuing presence of profound and sinister gender inequalities, but so also are Giddens and Beck unmindful of the normalising aspects of the popular discourses of self-improvement and individual preference (McRobbie 2008). Choice is certainly, within the culture of lifestyle, a method of restriction. The person is forced to be the type of subject who can make the proper or right decisions. In this way new divisions and lines are drawn between those individuals who are deemed open to the rule of personal obligation, and those who dejectedly fail. Neither Beck nor Giddens develop a significant evaluation of these power relations which operate successfully at the level of representation (Hollows 2000). They have no understanding that these are dynamics of new domains of impairment and discrimination. Conclusions Subjected under the authority of power feminism, whose assumption on purchasing power’s gratification adapts to the goals of the marketplace, girl power has turned out to be the final commodification of the language of power feminism. The expression ‘girl power’ transforms any object into fetishism. Girl power effectively packages and sells products and services, partly due to the fact that, similar to power feminism, it informs people of the things they would like to know about or hear: that females are dominant, not weaklings; that being a female is enjoyable; and that because equality or fairness is approaching, there is little needed feminist effort to exert. It is simpler and, for commerce, much more lucrative, to encourage people to purchase products than it is to mobilise a radical movement. Hence, the obsessive commercial role of girl power weakens genuine effort towards equality, satisfying corporate goals at the detriment of the personal goals of women and girls. In reality, it may be interpreted as a modernised account of ‘commodity feminism’ (Hollows 2000: 26): women’s magazines, in the advent of Second Wave feminism, reconceptualised feminism as an entity achievable through commodities. This persistent marketing tradition depoliticised feminism so as to sustain the selling prowess of femininity, since femininity is basically contrary to feminist judgment. We are presently seeing a similar progression as these profit-making politics replicate themselves; in the advent of 1990s cultural interests for young females, marketers have been recreating feministic girl power as venerating the ‘pleasurable’ success of femininity through a variety of commodities (Hollows 2000). Products that picture particular girl power personas seen on television may function to weaken the encouraging features of girl hero presentation; for instance, the cartoon Powerpuff Girls’ developing messages are damaged by the products for sale. Commodified girl power is hence a remarkable case of active domination. It suggests a limitation innate in power feminism, ingrained in its eagerness to compromise, operate within the regime, and employ the master’s tools. Feministic girl power can be deprived of its value, recreated and redefined as an instrument to strengthen prevailing beliefs, as an instrument of the patriarchy that breaks up feminists in its aspiration to defeat the movement. In other words, the commercial environments where in girl power and power feminism are positioned invalidate their so-called power to achieve major change. Profit-making politics, aiming to protect the materialistic status quo are in opposition to feminist movement towards large-scale social change. By declining to assume a purported ‘victim’ framework, by declining to take into account the legitimacy of evaluations of the capitalist regime, girl power and power feminism disregard creating instruments to fight domination, placing undue confidence in the eagerness of the marketplace to sustain change. References Buszek, M. E. (2006) Pin-up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture, New York: Duke University Press. Hollows, J. (2000) Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture, England: Manchester University Press. Lorde, A. (1984) "The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House," Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. McRobbie, A. (2008) The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, London: Sage Publications Ltd. Wolf, N. (1994) Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It, New York: Fawcett Columbine. Read More