Why do we need Feminism?

Why do we need feminism?

Unfortunately, this question is still on the lips of many. While feminism certainly has improved the status of women in many parts of the world, there are still those who are in need of the ideals that feminism fights for.

We need feminism because the image of the ‘ideal woman’ is not one that we created. What a woman is, what she should look like, and how she should act have been carefully constructed by society, big business, advertisements and other media. Consequently, it promotes an unrealistic image to which women are expected to conform. This has led to a massive increase in plastic surgery. In the US, the incidence of cosmetic surgery has increased more than 5-fold in the past ten years. In one year alone, the number of young women getting plastic surgery under the age of eighteen increased by 21.8%. That figure includes girls under the age of 12. The pursuit of thinness is often a motivator for eating disorders such as such as anorexia and bulimia. These illnesses are regrettably on the rise and affect 1.5% of women aged 15 to 24. This works out to three women for every 200. The reasons for these disorders are diverse and complex.

Interview with d'bi young

“D’bi. Is a Jamaican wombanist-warrior-artist; internationally celebrated for her unapologetic explosive consciousness on the mic.  A second generation dubpoet whose mother, anita stewart, is one of the pioneers of the genre, d’bi’s lyricism emerges from the roots of dub, entwined with the rhythms of dancehall reggae, hiphop, punkrock, & dubstep.” 

Society and Body Image

While on twitter, I came across a link to vote on “Maxim’s Hot 100 Women of 2013”. I decided to look at the nominees to see if I could find anyone who I thought deserved to win based on their personality and accomplishments, since that’s what I consider “hot.” As I looked through the list of nominees I was hard pressed to find a woman whose most famous accomplishment was not either forgetting underwear, doing some kind of illicit/licit substance, or being some dude’s side kick (either in real life or a film). Not to say that these lovely women do not have other greater accomplishments but such things as, charity work, work ethic, and personality are often not recognized and celebrated as much as legal and relationship troubles are. 

We are judged by how we appear instead of who we are. Throughout our lives we are bombarded by our (yes, OUR) society with images of impossibly skinny, full busted, plump lipped pimple-free beauties that we come to believe are what we have to be in order to be perfect. 99.99% of us fail. This failure is hard on us because of the proverbs such as “try hard and you will succeed" that we are used to hearing. If we are not good in a school subject then we can study more to improve in that subject. If we are not good at a certain sport or musical instrument then we can just spend more time working on our craft. “Practice makes perfect” does not apply to physical beauty because we will never be at the “top of our game" when it comes to physical beauty because the standards are always rising. “Oh, you got rid of your love-handles… now it is time to flatten that tummy!" Our society is obsessed with being physically perfect! Weight loss commercials with the newest celebrity (who, by the way, used to love her figure, but now claims to feel much better because she can wear t-shirts meant for fourteen year olds while assuring us that she is happier because she, “can keep up with her kids") now tells us how easy it is for all of us (including her) to achieve the weight and shape that we have always wanted. This situation is all too common in today’s media. When I think of women who are celebrated and admired, yet do not fit into society’s size standards, only one woman will come to mind: the always amazing, Adele! I feel like we should put her in a panic room just to keep her safe from becoming brainwashed like every other, not bigger, but NORMAL woman who has the honour (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) to live in this society.

Austerity State Newfoundland and Labrador: Seconding the call for a Newfoundland Spring

The image of an “Austerity State” (or in this case an “Austerity Province”) is something we are not familiar with seeing here at home (though something similar was evoked during the 90’s). When one thinks of the word austerity one’s mind immediately skips to a Mediterranean country like Greece or Spain, where unemployment fluctuates between a fifth to a quarter of the population. Greece’s government, after all, took out risky loans from banks like Goldman and Sachs, and subsequently put the burden of its bad decisions upon its population. To be fair, the government of Greece was caught up in the Wild-West style thought of unlimited economic growth that has been propagated time and time again by the financial sector – a sector who coincidentally subsists off of people’s debt.

     However, with mass layoffs occurring in Newfoundland and Labrador (and we can only assume more on their way), we are now being faced with Greek style austerity measures right here at home. Our provincial government, at least as far as we know, did not accept ‘under the counter’ loans from shady banks as Greece did, but, like so many bureaucratic organizations, it fell into the myth of unlimited growth; it spent so much time touting how we were now, for the first time, ‘a have province’ that it never stopped to consolidate its new found wealth to stabilize itself. As early as 2011, careful research into the economic situation of the province was revealing a disturbing trend; research carried out as part of Occupy Corner Brook in 2011 found:

‘Our unemployment rate is currently the highest in Canada at 11.6%. Further the Department of Finance forecasts a drop from 3.0% Real GDP growth this year to 0.2% next year, as part of a declining trend in Real GDP growth since last year when it stood at 5.6%. Indeed, by 2014 this figure is predicted to go as low as -0.2%. A drop has also taken place, and is predicted to continue in the employment growth of the province, moving from 3.3% last year, to 3.0% now, and 0.7% by 2014.’ (Statistics Canada and economics.gov.nl)