"The constant bubble-gum pink invocations of ‘girl power’ felt more like negging: "Girls can do math! Girls can rock at science! Girls can code!" Whoever suggested we couldn't?"
This is a fascinating observation, Eliza. I think 'girl power' was a reaction to the realization by mothers that the breakthroughs of second-wave feminism weren't…
"The constant bubble-gum pink invocations of ‘girl power’ felt more like negging: "Girls can do math! Girls can rock at science! Girls can code!" Whoever suggested we couldn't?"
This is a fascinating observation, Eliza. I think 'girl power' was a reaction to the realization by mothers that the breakthroughs of second-wave feminism weren't going to somehow eliminate differences between men and women — just because your daughter could grow up to be anything didn't mean she was going to want to. And it must have been thoroughly demoralizing to see those daughters get entirely sucked into princess culture (has the book club read Peggy Orenstein's "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture" yet?); 'girl power' was perhaps in part an attempt at salvaging second-wave feminist ideals.
I'm a bit older — the feminism of my childhood was the "anything a boy can do, a girl can do better" — and while I knew that my life would be inescapably different because I was female, I never internalized any notions that talent or intelligence were distributed unequally between the sexes. I feel lucky to have grown up when I did, much freer from the market-driven influences that drove first princess culture, then girl power, and now both the hypersexualized Kardashian culture and the escape-from-female-sexuality "trans" madness.
"The constant bubble-gum pink invocations of ‘girl power’ felt more like negging: "Girls can do math! Girls can rock at science! Girls can code!" Whoever suggested we couldn't?"
This is a fascinating observation, Eliza. I think 'girl power' was a reaction to the realization by mothers that the breakthroughs of second-wave feminism weren't going to somehow eliminate differences between men and women — just because your daughter could grow up to be anything didn't mean she was going to want to. And it must have been thoroughly demoralizing to see those daughters get entirely sucked into princess culture (has the book club read Peggy Orenstein's "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture" yet?); 'girl power' was perhaps in part an attempt at salvaging second-wave feminist ideals.
I'm a bit older — the feminism of my childhood was the "anything a boy can do, a girl can do better" — and while I knew that my life would be inescapably different because I was female, I never internalized any notions that talent or intelligence were distributed unequally between the sexes. I feel lucky to have grown up when I did, much freer from the market-driven influences that drove first princess culture, then girl power, and now both the hypersexualized Kardashian culture and the escape-from-female-sexuality "trans" madness.