'Worse Than the 1950s': Hyper-Sexualized Pop Culture Destroying Feminism

Excellent article in Macleans last week:

Like many other teenage girls, Olivia regards the fight for female equality as over. “In the Western world, we’re pretty equal,” she says.

She has every reason to think so. Going to university is a given. So is having a career–perhaps in business or maybe medicine. She’s surrounded by smart, independent women, including her mother, who holds a Ph.D. in education and is the director of LINCWell, a student enrichment support centre at St. Clement’s girls’ school in Toronto.

Yet Leanne Foster, whose position puts her in the daily orbit of the age-old divide between teenage girls and their mothers, is not as sanguine as her daughter about female equality. She sees a unique generation gap emerging: on one side, mothers who came of age during the women’s movement of the 1970s fighting for equal opportunities, “empowerment” through financial independence and rejecting female “objectification”; on the other, their daughters, raised in a hyper-sexualized culture replete with Bratz dolls, porn-inspired American Apparel ads, and the message telegraphed by Kim Kardashian and her tabloid-cover cohorts that a leaked sex tape is the quickest route to female success.

For these girls, Snoop Dogg’s misogynist Bitches Ain’t S-t is not an affront but a ring tone, and “slut” and “bitch” are not put-downs but affectionate greetings between female friends. Snooki, the 22-year-old star of the reality show Jersey Shore, whose ambitions consist of getting drunk, vomiting on camera, and spending days in a tanning salon, is the star of the hour. “I love Snooki,” says one 20-year-old. Olivia agrees. “It’s so ridiculous, it’s funny,” she says of the show. “I don’t relate that to my life at all. I wonder, ‘Why would you do that?’ But it’s enjoyable to watch.”

Meanwhile, their mothers, who walked in Take Back the Night marches to raise awareness of violence against women, are horrified, particularly by the sight of Snooki getting punched in the face by a man–footage used by MTV to promote the show.

Some of them see a clock ticking backward. “It’s worse than the 1950s,” says the mother of a 24-year-old, referring to the ubiquity of Photoshop and cosmetic surgery creating beauty standards more unattainable than ever.

Read the full article here. Over at The Daily Caller, Caroline May recently touched on the subject, as well.

Starting next week, Big Hollywood will run a series on this very topic and further explore how popular culture, with the help of misguided feminists, has turned feminism into something perverse. Let’s face it, this idea of empowerment through female sexualization is a dream come true for every male eager to treat women like a pieces of meat.