Popular Culture From the Fifties to Heroin Chic: Feminism

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

During 1990s, Woman Movement was made up of different movements whose support overlapped, each of which had a different ideological background. There was an active group of women who called themselves radical feminists and riot grrrl. These women become aware of their status as women and arer concerned with personal and artistic freedom, keeping their own identities and careers after marriage, using their possibilities to better the world in amorphous ways (such as ending war), and often proselytizing for personal identity.

Main body

Riot grrrl movement can be seen as the third wave feminism as it reflects unique perception of women of their roles and position in society. The women have become aware of their legal rights and disabilities as a consequence of the inclusion of educated women in movements to repair the legal disabilities. Here too, they began to question social and legal assumptions that they had previously taken for granted, and another cycle of feminism was born. The impetus for change and the model of how that change should take place has been the movement to ensure unique personal identify. Today, when we think of womens rights, one of the first things that may come to mind is affirmative actionthat is, a requirement, usually a government requirement, that action be taken in favor of the members of some group which is seen to be disadvantaged (Hermes 101). The hidden agenda in all affirmative action plans is the mistaken notion that, if there were no discrimination, all groups would be randomly distributed throughout every area of employment, school district, even residential neighborhood. Many of todays feminists have accepted the notion that such a random distribution of women, as well as of minority groups, in all areas of our society, is a desired goal that will be achieved only by government fiat, and this kind of equality by government fiat is what they are working for (Monem, p. 8).

The third wave feminists view the second wave as weak and fragile. The second wave feminism was marked by equal rights and liberties. For many women who tried valiantly to be creative homemakers after World War II, this life turned out not to be satisfying (Hermes, p. 102). They knew they were unhappy, but they couldnt make the imaginative leap that would allow them to see themselves changing their lives in a way that would be both meaningful and, at the same time, preserve what they valued in the situation they had. They couldnt visualize it, so they couldnt do it. In many issues, the second wave feminists did not reach their aims and goals such equal opportunities and workplace promotion. Today, only some women have reached high social position working hard all their life (Monem, p. 8).

The third wave feminism is a product of popular culture because it reflects social values, traditions, hopes and beliefs of women. Series such as Sex and the City and Ally McBeal are nowhere near as straight- forward in their definition of postfeminism (Hermes, p. 88). This example shows that sexual freedom is important for women thus it is also a product of modern culture. And personal lifestyle or sexual interest in men is not a defining factor in feminism. There are radical feminists who are married as well as those who are single; there are Marxist feminists who are married as well as those who are single; there are, in both political groups, unmarried women who are sexually active heterosexuals and women who are sexually active lesbians; there are monogamous unmarried couples of both persuasions. Of course there are still feminists who are committed to the rhetoric of oppression and even sexual separatism, but they are part of the spectrum, not the defining color of the movement. By far the most influential group of feminists have been the radical feminists, who decided that the unhappy marriage was not intellectually productive for them. When the first organizers of consciousness-raising groups influenced women who had become accustomed to activism in the New Left student movementformulated their theories, they used the concept of oppression they had learned from theoreticians and applied it to the conclusion that all women of all classes were the victims of male oppression. The radicals called for a feminist perspective that would provide a complete and consistent analysis of society, placing male domination of women and male-inspired sex roles at the root of social problems. Hermes underlines that: issues and themes are trendy; and popular psychology is often referenced between characters. Feminist concerns such as the right to work, the right to not be discriminated against (99). Some of these feminists are agitating for utopian schemes like communal housekeeping for professional women, but the economics of the times are such that household help is fairly generally available for those with even moderate means: concerns about child care for working mothers and sharing housework does not exist. Domestic service is so low paid that in many parts of the country most American mothers hire help to care for their children and households at least some of the time (Hermes 102). Modern women want to have it all, these feminists, to be sexually and professionally liberated. They marry for love; they divorce more easily than they had ever done before. Some are lesbians, and it ii acknowledged privately that lesbians existed, although they are hardly out of the closet. Instead of being women in the Woman Movement, the feminists encouraged everyone to call them girls, because they thought of themselves as eternally young. This was the conventional liberal (as opposed to classical liberal) philosophy of the timegovernment regulation of working conditions was an unmitigated good and was the only way to get powerful private business interests to modify their pursuit of profit in order to benefit the working class (Monem, p., p. 8).

Postmodern feminists discovered that they faced similar problems and were treated in similar ways. They also discovered that if society had certain false attitudes and norms about what women wanted and what abilities they had, women themselves had internalized these same attitudes. The Cinderella Complex was written by a self-professed feminist who was appalled to discover her own psychological dependency, and she spent several years interviewing women around the country, finding that many of them, too, had a deep-seated desire to have others make decisions for them. Many feminists were appalled by what they saw as an abandonment of sexual politics on the part of one of the founders of the contemporary womens movement. If discussing what each person in a marriage really wants makes them understand each other better, romance is enhanced, not killed. What a sex-role revolution can do in a marriage is to make friends and partners out of people who were almost strangers and turn what were grudgingly accepted as duties into voluntary commitments (Monem, p. 8).

Consciousness raising for women does not seem to be very big in the world today. Perhaps one reason is that as women moved into the Superwoman mode, trying to combine demanding jobs with family concerns, they didnt have as much time as they did in the seventies. Perhaps its that feminism is no longer new, and women think they have nothing to learn from each other in this way. It is in some ways an expression of success, but in others, its a loss. Consciousness raising formed a connection between many women that will never be broken. When it became the exception and not the rule for a woman with children to stay home in order to care for them, young families faced a problem: who would care for the children? There were several alternatives: some sort of day care, some sort of live-in help, or some sort of change in the nature or timing of a womans work (flexible time, job sharing, home office, entrepreneurship, alternating going to work and staying home). All of these required some sort of change in the nature of the fathers work, too. It was also becoming clear that it was more and more ridiculous for all-male clubs to have the rules they did about women on the premises, whether or not they admitted women as members (Hermes, p. 106).

Conclusion

In sum, postmodern feminist is a product of popular culture influenced by mass media and social norms. Modern women want absence of social problems, focusing on male dominance and emphasizing personal change as political, instead of calling for the usual forms of political action. The women in this particular group all eventually became high-profile women. Other groups are formed by women with less glamorous lives: office workers in particular companies or high-school and college students. Modern feminists feel that sexism and sexist oppression are more fundamental than economic exploitation in explaining social injustice. There are a lot of ways in which feminists differ, but here the issue of personal lifestyle is at issue.

Works Cited

Hermes, J. Ally McBeal, Sex and the City and the Tragic success of Feminism in Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (eds) Feminism in Popular Culture, Oxford: Berg, 2006.
Monem, Nadine. (2007). Riot Grrrl: Revolution Style Girl Now! Black Dog Publishing, London UK. P.8

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Popular Culture From the Fifties to Heroin Chic: Feminism

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