Girl Power vs Equality

   

There is no denying that the ‘girl power’ phrases and attitude is a current trend. The Highstreet has embraced this completely, and an endless supply of t shirts, notepads and accessories adorning these ‘empowering’ phrases are being released. However, after recently looking into the trend and the feminist beliefs I started to wonder if this trend is actually helping or hindering gender equality.

The definition of feminism is ‘the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’ in other words the belief that men and woman should be equal. These trending girl power products can be seen as an empowering way for woman to confidently be part of the feminist movement. However, on the other hand pushing specifically girl power, with phrases such as ‘girl gang’ and ‘girls run the world’, can also be seen as trying to rise above men and rather than be qual, being superior, a notion that contradicts feminists’ core beliefs and purpose.

“feminism is [not] that popular…the goal of feminism is to make itself redundant”

-www.newstatesman.com

In some cases, we can see the girl power trend going even further in the opposite direction of equality and boarder on misandry. Misandry (dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men) in my opinion is the biggest threat to equality moving forward, and defiantly seems very hypocritical and sexist, the opposite of what the goal of feminism is.

It seems that a lot of the brands using these so called ‘empowering’ phrases give very little depth or meaning to them, or any support or explanation for why they are important. This confirmed for me that the trend was just seen as a trend by retailers. The issue of equality is something that is so much more than just a trend, and by treating it as a trend and promoting it with these girl dominant phrases could be slowing down the movement, by promoting doing the opposite to young consumers.

“it’s a fairly reasonable idea that you do harm to an important idea by commercialising it”

-www.newstatesman.com

I agree that the end goal of real equality is that there will be no need for feminism, that men and woman will be seen completely equal, and neither of the sexes will feel the need to rise above the other.

Of course, there was a time where woman had to make more noise. Woman had to make themselves stand out and be heard to start to make the necessary change in society. However, I feel that there is a way of doing this that doesn’t contradict the core beliefs of equality. Also I feel that in this day and age people are listening, and the shouting doesn’t need to be shouting anymore. There is defiantly still a way to go till equality is realised, however a calmer approach is now possible, and girl power that boarders on misandry is far form helpful, but rather a trend for retail profits.