Feminism, femininity and me

A few things from this week that have me pondering femininity, feminism and me.

The first has to do with sexuality. While sitting in an intro level life development psychology class the other day, the professor asked the students what age do girls get sexy and at what age are women no longer sexy. The class overwhelmingly decided that the age range for "sexiness" was 14 to 40.

40!

Based on that, then, I have only two years and a few months before I fall off the map of human sexuality.

Hmph.

Why is it that, despite the portrayals of sexier older women in movies and television, a large number of supposedly forward-thinking university students still cling to the outmoded idea that women lose their sexiness once they hit their prime years, whereas men only get sexier?

Then today, I was reading that part of the blame may lay in the failure of feminism to change people's private opinions on the 21st century female experience. The issue is apparently with women's choices, as this excellent Alternet article on Stay-at-home feminists discusses.

The issue, they say, is that much of feminism's attacks and efforts have gone into changing public policy and business practice. Little has been done, though, to change individual opinions and the individual female's idea of what it means to be a woman in this century. Hence the fact that many successful women still give up their careers to stay at home once they have children, and most men still see this choice as a given necessity.

I ponder this these days as I attempt to discover how deeply into exploring female voices I want to go in my own social research. Am I ready to adopt a feminist agenda, when for years I've scoffed at the idea and avoided the label as if it carried the plague?

My first tentative forays into the idea were done last week when I finished a paper that explored digital practice as a safe and empowering place for teenage girls, who are otherwise excluded from public physical space and protected (smothered?) by parents concerned for their bodily safety.

Now I'm contemplating doing a small-scale dual qual/quan research project that explores how national survey data from Canada, US and the UK marginalize and trivialize female digital practice by studying it and configuring it as use, rather than practice, regardless of the ages they study.

The idea would be to use feminist research methods which propose a holistic approach merging quantitative data analysis with qualitative exploration of female meaning through oral histories of a few women at various points in the life span of women. One teenager, one young adult, one career adult and one retiree.

Is this the beginning of a way to redress the wrongs pointed out in the Alternet article? Am I willing to start working on research that will immediately be labeled feminist? Am I prepared for the results, both in the research and in me?

Has feminism truly failed? Am I willing to do something to stop it?

Good questions. Don't know yet. But have to decide soon. My undergraduate studies are rapidly coming to an close, as this semester winds down and leaves me only one more to go. One more before I have to hit the ground running as an emerging scholar.

Am I willing to take this issue on and make it a big part of my future efforts? Am I willing to wear the feminist label and do what it takes to be sure the goals of feminism don't fail?

Stay tuned.