Maureen Dowd on Feminism

Dowd provides insightful commentary on why feminism has turned into “skank”ism.

It was naive and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping, applying makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and were equal in every way. But it is equally naive and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation. What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity. What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.

What are we to make of this? Feminists just can’t seem to figure out what they want to be. Certainly there is power in “sex,” but have they considered the power found in seeking, not conformity, but true femininity? Nothing like a godly woman to drive a man wild. [See Book of Ruth.] (via Lileks)