If the choice feminists will welcome my hairy legs, I will be on their team.
That sounds weird to me. You advocate for as many choices for women as possible already, don't you? (My perception is that you do.)
My point earlier was that you're never going to make everyone happy. If you shave your legs, some feminists will say you're submitting to men's expectations. If you don't, some traditional women will say you're making women look bad. I say, please yourself.
Easier said than done, I know, but it's something I'm trying to do. (With marginal success so far, to be fair.)
I got "Creation" which is too short!
More seriously, choice feminism isn't really about superficial stuff like leg hair and high heels. It's more about economics: can it be a feminist choice to stay home with children, as doing so in many cases sacrifices your financial stability (women who do not work for pay sacrifice their contributions to social security and work-related retirement accounts, and in many cases reduce their long-term career potential.) I personally struggle with this stuff a lot, as someone who considers herself a feminist but has moved 4 times for my husband's career (he's never moved for mine) and is currently facing very little in the way of professional prospects in my chosen career because I am geographically restricted. And I'm planning, for the first time, to stay home with my kids this summer. The biggest reason for the choices we've made as a couple? mr. flea is an engineer (a still male-dominated field), and makes nearly 3 times the highest salary I've ever made in a female-dominated field. But there's no denying that if he ran off with a teva-wearing field biologist and divorced me, I would be financially pretty fucked.
But there's no denying that if he ran off with a teva-wearing field biologist and divorced me, I would be financially pretty fucked.
I feel this way, too, even though S. and I have made fairly equitable pay most of the time. But that's due mostly to my lack of higher education and all of professional experience being in a field mostly centered in a city where I no longer live.
If they would advocate for it to be socially acceptable for women to have visible leg hair if they choose to do so, so much the better
Did they ever say it wasn't? I'm not sure how I ended up with such a different impression of choice feminism, but there you go.
Isn't the old-school feminist stereotype that leg hair is required? I've never heard of "choice feminism."
I think the feminist party platform stopped requiring leg hair in about 1982. Also I think you're allowed to be a Hooters Girl now, but only if you have a BA in semiotics from Brown.
Oh, sure -- I'm not trying to imply it's a real issue for the vast majority of people in the world.
I'd never heard of choice feminism either. I had to look it up.
I don't think it's feminist to be subservient if a woman is staying at home and not working with the reasoning that women should be "helpmates" to men or that women are "naturally" better at running a household and women need men to take care of them/run their lives/whatever.
