She says that we mustn't "facepalm" (I can promise you I have never facepalmed in my life) when Angela Epstein says that her blow-dried hair is evidence that she's not a feminist. Mrs Epstein's position is one shared by many women. Many women think that they can't be feminists if they want to look nice, wear make-up, be a princess, pole dance for their boyfriend, knit or have children.
I am a domestic feminist. I knit, make cakes, stayed at home to raise my children but I still advocate women's rights on the basis that there is (or should be) equality between the sexes. I raised a feminist daughter, who loved pink, would still like to be a Disney Princess and spends her free time thinking about make-up; a feminist son, who loves science, food, geography, maths and cooking and am married to a feminist man, who likes shopping, moaning, drumming out of time and films. Everyone in my family would want women to be treated fairly and equally because they believe that there should be equality between the sexes and that's what makes us feminists. That is the definition of feminism.
Maybe, Angela Epstein and others who agree with her are saying that men and women are not equal. If so, I think they are confusing equality with being the same. Of course, men and women are different. Women don't cry for three days if someone throws a ball in their crotch and men don't have babies or have breasts that require support. No two humans are the same but that doesn't make them less equal, or it shouldn't. Because women have been suppressed for so long (I would love to be a fly on a wall to go back in history and find out how that happened) we have become used to gender stereotypes and associating male roles as good things to want and female roles as bad. This is where feminism may have made it's big mistake. Instead of agreeing and denying the female roles they should have said how great these things are and allowed men to do them too. There are men who want to wear make up, smell nice, have shiny hair, shop, cook, knit, sew, remove all the hair from their bodies, have tidy houses with nice curtains, stay at home to raise their children. There are men who would be better at these things than their wives or partners. There are also women who want to build things, be strong, run enormous companies, dig allotments, do maths or science who would be better at those things than men. We need to stop assuming that there are things that only women do. My daughter and I were having a discussion about feminism yesterday and she was telling me how she had analysed a 'style' magazine, as part of her course, looking at roles of men and women. She said that they had found all the top jobs, editors etc, were taken by men but all the writers were women. She qualified her statement with, "of course all the writers were women because of the content of the magazine." This is what we need to change. We need to teach our boys that feminine qualities are great and we need to be less frightened that they will steal these great things from us.
Denying female activities was what defined feminists in the 1970s when I was growing up. They railed against some things that many women wouldn't want to give up. If a couple wants a baby, it is the woman that has to have it and if a woman has breasts over a certain size they will need support. I grew up with the images of women burning bras and would have probably been put off feminism if my mother hadn't shown that you can wear a bra and be a feminist and that you can even wear those big 'suck everything in knickers' and believe in women's rights. As a teenager, I was desperate for a bra, despite having nothing to put in it and so my mum took me to be measured. It was a humiliating experience for someone who really should have been wearing a tight vest and so I refused to be measured again until I had my first child and really needed proper support. Since then, when I was a 34H I have been measured about 5 times and each time the answer is amazingly different. I have been everything from 32AA to 38D, which is a surprise to me and probably would be to anyone who has known me because I have remained a constant size 10-12 dress size. Each time I have been measured I have then bought a bra that the shop assistant insists is the right size but I am unable to wear for more than 4 hours without permanent injury.
