Some Feminist Critique

I've been thinking lately about the pervasiveness of fashion and how we use clothes to express ourselves, and the idea that, being a feminist, we need to critique the fact that women are encouraged to keep track of fashion and new 'beauty' products and so on.

Anyone who knows me well in real life will be quick to notice that I love clothes and make-up and so called 'beauty' products. In the past three years I have only just developed a style that I feel comfortable with, that makes me feel both comfortable with what I'm wearing and at the same time, allows me to express myself. I love purple: I have lots of purple clothes, and I also have a lot of teal/sea green clothes. I also like black because it goes with anything!

I like baggy skate style trousers but at the same time I have a fondness for mid-length skirts (I think some short skirts look funky, my sis has lots of denim short skirts but don't feel particularly comfortable with the idea of wearing them myself). I like to create different moods with my clothes - if I feel like slobbing out I'll wear comfy clothes, if I feel like dressing up then I will. For me, it's not about 'looking good' for anyone, because I have always chosen my clothes on the basis of whether I actually LIKE them. I think I have a love affair with clothes and jewellery: one of my favourite shops is 'accessorize' and I love beads and earrings, especially purple and sea green jewellery.

I think part of feminism is about analysing your own habits and working out if you can reconcile them with your ideals. There are many things I realise are misogynistic about the fashion and beauty industry: when doing my Gender and Society module, I read Sheila Jeffrey's 'Beauty and Misogyny' which made me understand that the fashion and beauty industry has a particularly misogynistic heart. For a start, fashion designers rarely design with the shape of a 'real' woman in mind, they use models that allow them to use the least amount of fabric as it is more 'economical'.

The problem with the fashion industry is that although the trends are interpreted from the catwalk onto the high street, the ideal is that a certain body shape suits a certain type of fashion; and this in turn breeds insecurity among women that feel they don't have a certain type of body shape. I know that I've felt both envious and disheartened by some types of fashion, especially when I was a teenager. I'm not small and skinny, I'm large and curvy, and naturally, skinny jeans won't fit me, and neither will hip and thigh hugging pencil skirts (not that I want to wear either as they both look profoundly uncomfortable!).

Young women in particular, on their voyage of discovery, may want to experiment with fashion and clothes and express themselves - and when fashion makes them feel bad about their bodies, their self esteem and confidence will be shredded (as if the beauty industry and diet industry and music industry and so on weren't bad enough...). Because the problem is that all of the industries mentioned, along with the sex industry, film industry and other types of media, tell lies about women's sexuality and bodies.

That to be 'attractive' they must wear this, pose like this, use this product, and that they must do this to experience their sexuality. Most of the adverts on TV have me growling and shouting and getting pissed off: the 'because you're worth it', 'a totally organic experience', 'maybe she's born with it, maybe it's maybelline' type of adverts.

It pushes the whole idea that woman's sexuality is experienced through the way she looks, through having the male gaze focused on her. That in being looked at, a woman is worth something, she will admired and 'noticed'. Men and women both do not seem to realise that they are objectifying women's bodies, pushing women down to the status of 'object' and therefore nothing but. The evidence is everywhere: in 'lads magazines', pornography, advertising, films, television programmes, in the street.

Only the other day, I was walking down to the post office to collect a parcel, wearing my baggy black jeans, my coat and my scarf. And yet a man I had never seen, met or even noticed before thought it would be 'great' if he looked me up and down and chatted me up. I felt like an object. I felt afraid because although it was only 4pm and there were other people around, I felt harrassed and vulnerable. Luckily, I walked past giving him what was hopefully a venomous stare and he didn't follow.

Since when is it okay for a man to treat a woman like a piece of meat? Like something they can 'conquer' or 'own'? Or to come up to someone in the street and give them an objectifying stare up and down? It's an aggressive thing to do. Someone once explained to me why men's stares and harassment are so threatening: because women live in fear every day that something worse will happen: men harrassing women in the street makes women afraid and vulnerable. Why can't women go around minding their own business without the fear of being shouted at or stared at in the street?

The same person said that the difference between women looking at men and men looking at women is that women don't feel the need to shout at a guy in the street or go up and grope them or stare at them agressively. Women are more likely to be discreet and repect a man's space, glancing at them rather than 'staring' at them. The difference is respect - many men see women's bodies as something for them to look at and obtain, to conquer and objectify. By shouting at a women in the street, you are degrading her to object status.

The object of fashion and beauty, in many ways, is the assumption that a woman's body is meant to be 'adorned' and 'shown off' - which is just another way to say 'object'. I think that as feminists, it is important to find a way for women to reclaim their bodies and sexuality from the media and raunch culture. Empowerment is not spinning around a pole, it is not posing nude for FHM and it is not 'acting like one of the guys' (ie. being a female chauvinist pig like Ariel Levy discusses in 'Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture').

Empowerment may mean different things for different people, but for me it means to be able to walk down the road without being eyed as a piece of meat, it means being treated with respect and it means that I am appreciated as a person that has something to offer the world that does not include anything to do with my body. It also means that I will be able to own my own body, that my sexuality will be my own and not defined by the way I look or what I wear.

It means being unafraid of what other people will think of me if I have messy hair one day and haven't bothered putting any make-up on (I normally have messy hair anyway!). That I will not be seen as just my sex in the eyes of the world, that I will be me, with all my good points and bad points and ideas.