Anti- feminist or feminist?

Faith Beglane

February 20, 2015

                In the chapter I’m Not a Feminist, But…. In the book Where the Girls are, by Susan J Douglas, she talks about how there is no clear way to portray women. Women vary in shape, size, color, personality, and almost everything else that makes up who we are as an individual. Women are constantly being criticized about what they wear and how they look. Douglas argues this point in the chapter and talks about how the media reinforces this. As women, we have always been stereotyped as to what we are capable of. I don’t understand why. Women have been around just as long as men, yet we are looked at as almost two separate species. Men are supposed to be the bread winners, while women are home all day with the kids, cooking and cleaning. When feminism started becoming a more powerful movement, I think that more women wanted to see what they were capable of, and more importantly they wanted to show the men that they were a force to be reckoned with. Now the feminist movement is on its third wave, and teenagers and young women think that it’s cooler to be anti-feminist because boys will like them more. This is the complete opposite of what the movement is fighting for. I’m not one to voice my opinion all the time, and I can’t say that I am a feminist because I don’t believe that I actively am. This is easy for me to make up my mind, but for other women, they are getting so many mixed singles of what a women should believe in, that they can’t clearly make up their mind, “On one hand, few women want to take the baggage of the feminist stereotype. On the other hand, they embrace much of what feminism has made possible for them and uninterested in returning to the days of women as doormat” (Douglas 273). In my opinion, being a feminist is very demanding of a person. If a feminist was to ever look different than they had any other day, they will most likely be scrutinized. The backlash that they face is a lot for a person to handle. The movement wants more women to become active feminist, but how are we supposed to when we are being told two different things. A young girl has to find out who they truly are which can be challenging at times, and everyone is just trying to fit in, in some way. If a girl has to face all of this, how is she fit in if she believes for a stronger, more dominant gender?  Douglas talks about how she wished that the news covered more feminism based topics. I don’t see or hear a lot about feminism. I can’t call myself a feminist if I hardly know what’s happening today with the movement. The issue with news channels covering feminism is that they describe the movements as “monolithic” and that all feminists are alike. I think that this is ridiculous! How can you call any two people alike? You really can’t because were all different. Just because these women stand and believe in the same thing doesn’t make them alike or similar. The media tells women to only be concerned with what they look like, but other sources like Douglas want women to stand up for what rights we as women think we deserve. It’s hard as a women to decide this for yourself, and unless media changes how they portray women, we will continue to have to make up our own mind set of what we believe in.