Do the girlie thing

By Andrea L.A. -
I love being girlie. I also love being a Feminist. But what I love the most, is that I can be both. I truly enjoyed Jennifer and Amy's essay in All About The Girl, because it really does go into how we as the Third Wave should not feel inadequate for liking pink, high heels, makeup, and Barbie. We can fully enjoy all of these things that are "girlie" and still be the powerful women that we are. That is what the First and Second Wave paved for us, choice. The choice to wear and do whatever we want. If we want to play sports than we can, if we want to sit around and knit, than we can. I love how Third Wave embraces this thought whole heartedly. I definitely feel like we as the Third Wave have it SO much easier than the previous women before us, because they had to fit a certain persona, and had to reject the girlie in order to be a good Feminist and to fight patriarchy. Now we understand and see how the media influences us, but if we enjoy wearing makeup, then we do it for ourselves. We get to do what makes us feel good whether it is rejecting the norm or accepting it. 
The Spice Girls were also brought up several times like they always are whenever Girl Power is discussed, and my thing is this, I feel like The Spice Girls are always highly dissed, and I don't feel like they should be as much as they are. Yes, I do agree with the fact that they do not fully represent women and definitely do not portray the Girl Power that should be, but shouldn't they get a little respect? I mean at least there was a girl group that was pop instead of punk-rock, because maybe punk-rock isn't everyone's "cup of tea," maybe others prefer the light beats of "Wannabe," but they don't want to listen to Britney Spears. I remember growing up and really enjoying The Spice Girls, because I thought they were so cool, and I loved how they had Girl Power. Not going to lie, I felt a little empowered in third grade when listening to them. But yes I fully agree and understand with the consumerism concept of Girl Power, as well as the misrepresentation of what Girl Power actually is. Because even though there were five women in the spotlight always shouting "Girl Power!" they never tried to encourage girls to get involved politically, or sang about how beautiful you are as a girl no matter what you looked like or what you had. 
My example of girls doing Feminism is on engineergirl.com, and it is this website for girl that would like to become an engineer one day with fun facts, why to become an engineer and 
profiles of women that are already engineers. Why I choose this website, is because engineering has always been a "man's" job. Men are good at math. Men are good at science. Men are smart. 
But so are women. Women are all of these things and more, and engineering is not just for men. This website opens the door to young girls that are interested in engineering, but have always 
heard these negative statements against them about becoming an engineer. We (girls/women) should not want to be like men, but instead celebrate the differences between men and women, 
and like what Stoller said, "In fact, we should bring feminine things into masculine spaces" (Baumgardner and Richards 63).

Of course our reading relates to Women's Studies and Girls Studies, because the struggles and insecurities that we face as young girls carries on with us as we grow into women. If we as young girls knew everything that we do know, then obviously we would know how to counteract the pressure from society, the media, and friends and family. By studying young girls and understanding what we as older Feminists can do to help will definitely help these girls be able to develop into powerful women. 

Comments

amanda said…
I don't think that the Spice Girls are "feminism" but I also think that it's going to be hard to get little girls involved with feminism. And what the Spice Girls did was give girls power. You said while listening to them in third grade you felt impowered and I think that's not something easy to do. So while yes they weren't feminism, we should still give them props for what they did do. I would much rather my daughter listen to the Spice Girls than Britney Spears. We should take what the Spice Girls did and build off of that in order to achieve feminism in young girls.
September 22, 2008 at 3:37 PM
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