Blog Post 4

Olivia Lakes

Prof. Melissa Santos

EN199-003

20 February 2015

            In class this week, we talked about Ms. magazine, which was something I had never heard of before. Immediately, I thought of this as a problem that I wasn’t even aware that a magazine solely made to talk about women’s issues, both national and global, even existed. I think it’s very important for girls to have the opportunity to learn about issues that affect other women in the world, because knowledge is very important. I think the idea of even having a magazine like this is amazing because in popular culture today, the main images that girls and women see are of objectified and hypersexualized women in a male dominated media. Having a magazine for women, by women, about women and creating positive and educational dialogue is very important for the development of young girls.

            I thought it was interesting also that this magazine made sure to include all types of women, especially with the backlash that feminism gets for being exclusive. I always saw feminism as only targeting and focusing on empowering white middle class women. Of course, myself and a lot of my family members are not white, middle class women, so we didn’t feel that the movement catered to or cared about us. I imagine that had I been exposed to Ms. magazine, I would’ve had completely different opinions on what feminism is and just be more exposed to things I had to teach myself or discover on my own. Although there is definitely value in challenging your own ideas and finding out new information to further your understanding on a concept, I feel like me finding out what feminism is actually about and that not all feminists only care about white women should have been more of common knowledge than an idea I would need to challenge. Overall, I think the idea of Ms. magazine is a wonderful one and it needs to be distributed more openly and often!