Young feminism? Girl Feminists? Girl Studies!

I was trying to find the right title and for a moment I actually thought I originally thought of girl studies to describe feminism including young girls. I think the first thing I thought of was that would girls feel included in feminism? Would the issues really involve them now or just their future? Then it also occurred to me that young feminism might still look like the Spice Girls, with pink or some glitter and I really don't know if that's ok with every feminist. In our previous readings I felt the book came off as rather elitist, that spice girls weren't good enough to be feminist because they were mostly pretty white girls. So I'm kind of stuck in the relationship of girls and feminism. I mean all women were girls, we speak about issues affecting girls so I see how feminism relates to girls but I'm not sure I see how girls relate to feminism if that makes sense. I kind of see a one way relationship going on.

So I guess the question is, how do we include girls in feminism? Again I see marketing of pink and glitter slogans. Sexual issues can't always come up because some parents don't discuss it and some girls are growing up in an abstinence only sex education world. I find it hard to get girls interested in women's rights. A place I feel has done that subtly is YWLP at UCF. We get these girls interested in topics that affects them as girls. We also teach them how to get along with other girls by losing gossip and being positive about women. I really think this is a good thing to focus on right now, girls may not be activists in the way we protest but they do it in school by telling another girl that they aren't interested in gossip, and saying girls can be just as good at sports and math then boys.

Saying that my example of girls doing feminism would have to be YWLP.
http://womensstudies.cah.ucf.edu/YWLP/Home.html
The site explains some of the curriculum and its goal to make strong female leaders.

Comments

amanda said…
I think by girls not gossiping and telling their friends not to as well would be activism for them. And when they do hear other girls gossip and they don't partake in it would be them sort of protesting.
And I agree that YWLP would definitely be a form of girls "doing" feminism. Even if they don't identify as a feminist they still are learning to look at the world differently and to treat other girls (and boys) with respect.
Emily said…
Kari! Ahh, I identify a lot with what you have to say here. I think that YWLP is an awesome way for women to help girls discover their own strength, and what they do with it after that is not in our control. I think the idea of abusing our position of influencing girls to become exactly what we are is unthinkable. There is no way to "make" a girl become involved in womens studies or feminism. The only way in which we can narrow the gap between women and girls, is to lead by example, and not b words. I am so glad that we are all talking about this and really getting the conversations going...when I talk about leading by example, that is not limited to YWLP. I think we are capable of leading in all sorts of ways, and certainly, the ways in which we initiate change are not always observable until much much later. Someday, I hope that we can see the changes we have made...People can create extraordinary change...we just don't always realize it at the time!!

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