Credit to Melody Liu
The 1920s are known for the Jazz Age, flapper dresses, prosperity and the success of the women’s suffrage movement. With one of their greatest goals achieved, supporters of feminism celebrated, but their fight persists even a century later.
First popularized in the 19th and 20th centuries, feminism continues to be a prominent, yet sometimes misperceived, movement in today’s society.
“Feminism [is] the fight for equality between women and men,” said senior Charis Hsieh. “A lot of people have the misconception that women want to have more power, more rights over men, but it’s really the fight for equality.”
Rather than issues of women’s suffrage, which has been achieved by the addition of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, feminists today have different gender inequalities to face.
“What feminists are fighting for has changed over time, but some of them are still the same in terms of ‘we want equal treatment, we want to have rights over our own bodies,” Hsieh said.
Feminists today focus on topics such as sexual assault and identities.
“Now, we see the Me Too movement, where women come together to talk about sexual assault, and it’s a lot more about gender identity versus just specifically women,” said junior Emerson Makuta. “I’m definitely excited to see how society has united to not only focus on the issue of women’s rights but identity rights as well.”
However, another notable issue in the feminist community is the recent election, where Vice President Kamala Harris lost to former President Donald Trump. Some believe this result to be because Harris is a woman.
“A lot of the red states that voted for Trump in this election did so under the guise that they didn’t want to vote for a woman,” Makuta said. “That is definitely portrayed through a lot of surveys detailing the education level of certain states. The fact that we see a horrible person being elected over a less horrible person and the defining factor is their gender is very detrimental to our country.”
In addition to improving societal norms and fighting for equal rights, feminism has also positively impacted portrayals of women in media.
For example, Disney has been exploring stories that center women characters outside of traditional princess roles.
“The fact that [Disney] has moved on from just princesses looking for their true love [to having] characters
like Elsa and Anna who have sisterly love or Mirabel, who wants to save her family or Rapunzel, who wants freedom, is great,” said sophomore Annie Donnellan.
Another new aspect of feminism is the “boy sober” concept–recently popularized across social media platforms. It refers to the idea of women abstaining from dating altogether and instead focusing on personal independence and success.
Many agree with this movement, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing personal happiness over the opinions or influence of others.
“Don’t let people you love take away from your independence,” Donnellan said. “Make sure you have people you love in your life, but also make sure you’re in a good place with your job. [Also make sure] you have independence where [others] don’t control your life.”
At the end of the day, a big goal of present-day feminism is the search for individuality and self-love.
“If women want to focus on themselves and not on love, then that’s up to them,” Hsieh said. “But if women do want to place love somewhere in their life, then that’s also up to them. Ultimately, women should place self-love over finding love [from] other people, and if finding independence is their way of showing self-love, then I think that’s a good thing.”
