I was watching LA Ink last night (don't judge me...) and a girl came into the shop wanting a tattoo of Rosie the Riveter... except "Can you, like, make her face skinnier? Make her prettier?" The girl basically wanted a sexy pin-up girl with a bandana on her head, flexing a muscle. Which is fine...but the girl was talking about this tat being a symbol of the strength of females in her life.
She used the term, "Girl Power."
I remember "girl power" as being something on obnoxious pink t-shirts when I was a little girl. The words were usually surrounded by something typically female, like flowers, and other shirts hanging near it said things like, "Girls Rule, Boys Drool." What this does to establish equality between the genders, or to empower women alone, I'm not sure. But I got to thinking about it after this girl on LA Ink kept using the phrase Girl Power. I thought, do you mean Feminism?
Maybe feminism is too scary a word for some people. Probably, because most people think it means they can't love men, or they have to be butch, or a myriad of other things that we all know too well. While some women have identified as feminists through cutting their hair and not sleeping with men, feminism is in, fact defined as a quest for equality between the sexes. And isn't that what we all want? What's so scary about that?
It's the reason no one in mainstream politics calls themselves a feminist, or even uses the word. We talk in code about "women's issues" or the "female vote" ...even Hillary, who has been so supported by feminists unwilling to vote for anyone else, merely to see a fellow sister in the presidency, doesn't use the word. Because it has become loaded and scary.
I think that's an example of why we need feminism more than ever. Those who don't want equality between the genders LOVE that we're afraid of the word, afraid of the movement, afraid to take action because we don't want the label. That keeps us deradicalized, decentralized, and silent. Perfect.
So what we have today, instead, is Girl Power. What ideology exists behind this phrase? Surely not dialogue about reproductive rights, the suffrage or equal pay. It is vague and void. It doesn't tell girls what their power is, or what power they don't have that they should.
Feminist theory and thought exists so women can talk about these oppressions. It exists so we might no longer be oppressed. Girl Power just doesn't cut it.
I guess the girl on LA Ink really did mean girl power, and not feminism. Making Rosie the Riveter skinnier and prettier... seeing beauty the way a man might see beauty rather than a woman, a FEMINIST, who might look at a woman like Rosie and see the beauty in her strength, her ability to have short hair and wear something besides a dress.
But, just as Rosie the Riveter served as a temporary propaganda poster during the war, feminism seems to have served an older generation, their wants and needs, and now the heart and soul of it is gone. It has been reduced to girl power.
When I saw Judy Shepherd (Matthew Shepherd's mother) speak about her son's murder and the current state of gay rights, she asked, Where all of my hippie friends? Where all of my student protesters? Where have you gone?
Where have you gone? The new generation doesn't understand the work you did for us because, well, you're not doing it anymore. Where are you?