Alex Roumbas asks what Girl Power is and was...
This afternoon, our lovely Shiny Editor-in-Chief Katie Lee was asked some questions about Girl Power for a national survey. It sparked off a debate (read: we shouted ideas and giggled at each other from either end of the office) which resulted in almost completely opposing viewpoints and yet the very same conclusion.
I thought of Girl Power as a cloying, nightmarish ladette mismash of wanting to be "as good as the boys" by actually being like a boy. I thought of the Sara Cox-style pint-swigging exponents that at the time I considered the worst possible advertisement for this bizarre sub-class of feminism.
And yet Katie had a very valid point in return.
She separated ladette culture from Spice Girls style banner-waving. To her it was all about being in a group with our friends, supporting each other and not hurling insults at each other in an almighty, Big Brother-style bitchfest. To this day she welcomes new writers to the fold by explaining that in the very female-focussed environment of Shiny Towers we have a friendly, got-your-back, Spice Girls style of interaction and not a bitchy, competitive Pussycat Dolls attitude.
I can see what she's saying, but I remember being completely turned off by the Girl Power "revolution". Now, Katie and I are very different personalities (I tend towards wry tongue-in-cheek bitching, she's more energised and uber-competent) so it was no great surprise that we saw this from different angles.
As I look back on Girl Power, I sometimes think it was anti-feminist. It certainly didn't seem to include women who had chosen to be full time housewives, in itself as valid and independent a choice as racing to top of the promotions ladder in a multinational company. And that in turn means that quantifying Girl Power is virtually impossible. We can measure some forms of equality - comparing pay scales, etc - but we can't ask every single woman if she's satisfied with her work and home life and if she feels that anything is standing in her way just because she's a woman.
The matching conclusion that Katie and I came to, however, was that this was the direction Girl Power was going in. No longer about flag-waving or pint-waving just for the sake of it, it's about accepting that every choice is a valid one, and discriminatory practices that prevent women getting to their chosen destination just because they're women must be obliterated.
Gradually, I hope to see all the "isms" melt into one. If you exclusively defend women, you can find yourself discriminating against someone else. Instead, we have to guard against any obstructive practice. This does not mean "positive" discrimination (I think that's a misnomer if ever there was one) but blind selection practices, equal pay based on equal tasks and responsibilities, and universal opportunities. We're a way off yet, but I like to think we're getting there.
Alex Roumbas is the relatively new Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny and she's still getting used to not being the only girl in the office.