WOMEN IN REVOLT

Like all new movements, women's lib spawned a spectrum of philosophies from the bleak nihilism of "all men are rapists", to the shop floor battles for equal recognition for work of equal value. As the most cursory of glances at the latest pay and promotion statistics will confirm, the gender playing field is far from level even now. But, somewhere along the way, came a generation that believed feminism was just so yesterday.The freedom the new girls craved was the chance to behave just as badly as boys; not the battle for the political high ground so much as one for the lowest common denominator. At the tacky end was drinking the lads under the table and on to the bed. At the other, Spice Girls power - the wherewithal to spend the cost of two flights to New York on the kind of handbag that screams loadsamoney, little taste. Then came wholesale raunchification - not this time among ladettes who were generally strangers to joined-up thinking, but American college girls who made the personal graphically pornographic. This might be entirely their business but for the fact that they, and sites like Jezebel, chose to employ a feminist label for their wholly hedonistic lifestyles.

The Herald
May 30 2009