Acorn

Issue date: 11/8/06 Section: Opinions

Lately, I have noticed that some women are afraid of the f-word.

They are afraid that people will classify them with it, they are afraid to use it to describe themselves.

This f-word is not the four-letter word you might be thinking of--this word is 'feminist.'

Today, feminism is a word that only applies to 'angry lesbians' who don't brush their hair and avoid Gillette like the plague.

Those women don't wear skirts and hate men, right?

What self-respecting girl would call herself a feminist unless she also wants to be referred to as the l-word, the d-word, the b-word.

The record needs to be set straight. Feminists, quite frankly, are so much more than angry women with a vendetta against men and society.

Feminists are stylish. Feminists are mothers, lawyers, comedians, writers, actresses, heterosexuals, athletes, anything and everything.

They can shave their legs, wear pink, date men, bake cookies--the point is that feminism doesn't have a prerequisite of certain tastes or styles or even sexual orientation.

Women of the feminist movement, whether it be the Alice Pauls and Gloria Steinams of yesterday or the Susan Sarandons and Tina Feys of today, believe that women should be free to be who they are and receive the same treatment as men in all aspects of life--the home, the media, the workplace, etc.

Coupled with the fear of feminism is pseudo-feminism.

The Spice Girls, 'Sex & the City' and the Pussycat Dolls have caused a rift among feminists. Are designer miniskirts and promiscuity the same as being an empowered woman?

Many feminists, who believe that women have been fighting for over 100 years--and are still fighting--for women to be appreciated for more than their looks, are appalled that the Pussycat Dolls announced collectively that they are feminists.

Pop quiz: Do you think there's more to being a woman than looking hot?

If so, the f-word could apply to you, too.

Though 'girl power' is great, it has to extend beyond the power a girl gets from checking herself out in a mirror. Or getting checked out by guys. And this is where many women get it wrong.

As part of a Women's Concerns project on campus, we cut up dozens of fashion ads that sexually objectify women (we didn't have such a hard time) and made them into small posters with critical sayings on them.

One French Vogue ad for Dolce & Gabbana featured a woman topless and asleep in a dark apartment and a man reaching over her unconscious body and fondling her. The saying on the poster read: �In some cultures, this would be considered date rape. I hung this poster next to the girls bathroom on my floor.

A few days later, someone had written on it in black marker: I'm a feminist and I don' t think there's anything wrong with this poster. Women are supposed to enjoy sex. I like it when men fondle me.

The fact that this girl, whoever she may be, believes that nonconsensual sex is still okay, and that by being fondled, women can make some sort of statement about themselves, makes me worry that the feminist movement may be seriously misunderstood by college-age girls and most women of any age.

Clearly a few girls on my floor have come to a very different understanding of what it means to be a feminist than Gloria Steinem or Alice Paul ever would have intended.

Technically, I am a Charlotte. This ironically refers to my legal name�not my archetype according to Sex & the City, HBO's now-syndicated sassy pop phenomenon.

Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha and Carrie are the four characters around whom the show revolves--their jobs, sex lives, shopping, and did I say sex lives? The four girls have come to represent modern female archetypes.

Charlotte is the conservative art gallery director who dreams and obsesses over a life of a lawyer husband, two children and a townhouse on the Upper East Side.

Miranda, a lawyer herself, is cynical, serious and has low self-esteem when it comes to men, and detests the relationship clich's.

Carrie is the flighty bohemian writer who dreams and fails at finding love and is able to reflect upon her struggle through writing and shoe shopping.

Samantha is the sexually strong female who can 'fuck like a man,' or have sex without emotional strings attached. She works in public relations, abhors motherhood and marriage, and is self-described as 'fabulous.'

In theory, these archetypes are supposed to be empowering. Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte are supposed to be the everywoman--or at least a Hollywood reality of an everywoman--in that every woman is supposed to be able to identify with one or more of the characters.

Women who watch are supposed to, and usually do, feel a sort of escapism watching these women live lavish single lives and toy around with other lavishly living single men.

The material of the show is very sexually explicit and when it debuted in 1998 was a risqu�delight.

If forced to choose an archetype, I would identify myself as a Miranda. Though I see something of strong women in each of these characters, especially Miranda, the show is flawed in its portrayal of an average working woman in the city.

Aside from the lifestyle fictionalization�as far as I know, most freelance writers don�t drop over $1,000 a month on designer stilettos�these women are still projecting that being a woman means material and vain obsession.

Ultimately, though they represent career-minded women, they are still possessed by their bags, shoes, facials and sexual worth.

As someone who has studied a fair amount of feminist theory, I can say that, while I do enjoy �Sex & the City,� I realize that it is not an accurate depiction of real women.

There is so much more to being a strong woman than having lots of heterosexual intercourse and shopping at Bergdorf�s.

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