Who Won Feminism? Not Women.

The response of the feminist community to Naomi Wolf's review of Bad Girls Go Everywhere, the biography of longtime Cosmo editor and author of Sex and the Single Girl Helen Gurley Brown, has not been positive. Many, including feminist blogs like Feministe and Feministing are up in arms over her simplistic representations of second wave feminists as humorless man hating polemics with hairy armpits and third wave feminists as "sexy and sassy" women willing to grab life (and men) by the balls--given it doesn't mess up their manicures. Neither group is portrayed in a particularly favorable light, but Wolf concludes that Brown's version of hip, happy "girl power" feminism has won:

"Just look at the culture around us. Ms. Magazine, the earnest publication that defined feminism in the 1970s and '80s, has been replaced on college women's dorm room shelves by sexier, sassier updates such as Bitch and Bust. The four talented, smart -- and feminist -- women of "Sex and the City," who are intent on defining their own lives but are also willing to talk about Manolos and men, look more like Brown's type of heroine than "Sisterhood Is Powerful" readers. The stereotype of feminists as asexual, hirsute Amazons in Birkenstocks that has reigned on campus for the past two decades has been replaced by a breezy vision of hip, smart young women who will take a date to the right-on, woman-friendly sex shop Babeland."

As a member of the younger generation who had a subscription to Bust in high school (I did not renew it during my first year of college because I found it to be full of fluff, inconsequential and without any serious critical merit) and who owns more than one sex toy from Babeland, I am blown away that Wolf, the author of The Beauty Myth, would attempt to convince us that the characters of Sex and the City are positive models, and therefore the future, for young feminists. The very basis of feminism is critiquing the patriarchal superstructures that control women's lives and there is absolutely nothing critical about that show or any of its characters. If anything, it continues to uphold patriarchal expectations of beauty and femininity and reduces its characters to their sexual and shopping habits. Not to mention all of these women are fabulously wealthy and white.

The fact is, we know the answers to Western women's problems: The way is mapped out, the time for theory is pretty much over. We know the laws and the policies we need to achieve full equality. What we lack is a grass-roots movement that will drive the political will. "Lipstick" or lifestyle feminism won't produce that movement alone.

While I certainly agree that Wolf's own personal brand of Diet Feminism will not achieve female equality, I am a bit confused by her statement that we know the answer to Western women's problems. Should Women's Studies departments therefore replace The Second Sex with Cosmo articles on "82 Ways to Drive Your Man Crazy in Bed?" because there is nothing left in our society or culture of which to be critical? And since when does feminism only concern itself with Western women? Are women in the rest of the world not women, do they not bleed monthly? Don't they deserve equal access to Cosmo.com's "Sex Position of the Week"?

The ideological difference between the humorless second-wavers and the apolitical third-wavers isn't generational, as Wolf suggests--its ideological. Its not old versus young, its radical versus liberal. It's feminists who believe in women and the equality and liberation of all women versus the "well, i wouldn't call myself a feminist, but I believe in equality-ists" who believe in the economic and sexual liberation of themselves--even if that economic and sexual liberation only comes through small concessions allotted them by the patriarchal and capitalist culture they've never bothered to fully question because then they'd be all, like, boring and serious. And Naomi Wolf has made it more than clear that women cannot be serious and sexy at the same time.

Addendum: Wolf begins her article praising Michelle Obama as the closest example we have to a blend between the intelligent and career-minded second-wavers and the fashionable and individualistic third-wavers. I think its important to remind everyone about Michelle Obama's Washington Post interview:

So is she a feminist? "You know, I'm not that into labels," Michelle Obama said in the interview. "So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it," she said. "I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive."