Letters from a Young Radical

Suddenly it's this huge thing. Parties named after it, a film out. I haven't seen it, but I do want to complain about it. That's fair, right?

The movie feels like it came out of the blue (possibly because I've been so out of touch with mainstream culture). It feels to me like we were progressing as a culture away from stereotypes and to a more balanced view of women, and suddenly this hugely stereotypical movie comes out.

Feels like someone way up at the top suddenly decided that we women are getting breaking too much with the attitudes and desires that have been culturally shoved down our collective throats in order to:
Keep.
Us.
Buying.
So I bet some dude was like "shit we better remind them about shoe sales!"

I keep thinking about a feminist friend of mine who gets excited about women-focused services/events/products (even though she tends to have complaints about their execution, and rightfully). My tendency is to shy away completely from anything that's gender focused - rather than celebrate gender, I want to forget about it entirely (although I am trying to reexamine that as I'd like to be happy, rather than disappointed, in my womanhood). The reason I feel this way is because the only woman-focused things I ever see are covered in pink and materialism and old stereotypes. To me it feels if I want something that represents me, I go for something that's people-focused (or non gender specific) or even sometimes male-focused things. I'm not trying to say that the genre of shopping obsessed super feminine women shouldn't be represented, I just think its messed up that this is the only thing that can be called woman-focused. Perhaps the problem is that we've moved beyond gender in many ways in our culture, so trying to make something gender specific is actually guaranteed to bring back stereotypes and a bad taste in our mouths.

I'd be interested in seeing something woman-focused for the type of woman I am, and maybe then I wouldn't be trying so hard to separate myself from gender altogether.