My Femme Cup

Since WordPress has updated, my faith in scheduling posts has massively increased so hopefully you’ll be reading this at around 8pm on a Monday (while I’m up the empire state building or in central park or trying to translate my accent into an American friendly one- be ready for a Panic Monster Abroad part 2 next week). Today, however, I thought I’d reintroduce an ongoing project (blogject?) on HGHT. You may have noticed one of the tabs at the top of the screen is ‘The Femme Cup’ which, to cut a long story short, is a tag about feminism. I nominate a few people each week and I’ve received some really interesting responses so far but I realised that I myself have never taken part in my own tag. #Awks. So here we are: my femme cup.

Are you a feminist? Yes. I never used to like that label but now I want to fling mouldy sausage rolls at my 14 year old ignorance. It’s very easy in the Western world to both sugar-coat the society you live in and assume your rights are held by women elsewhere. Denying there aren’t gender inequalities does nothing except indicate your lack of world-awareness and incapability to make social progress- 2 attributes that you’d hardly be sticking on your CV. Or your Tinder profile for that matter.

Which issues do you want feminism to tackle over the next few years? I still dislike the term ‘white feminist’ (I just can’t get the image of Nicola Roberts in a snowstorm out of my head every time I hear it) but the absence of diversity is becoming increasing notable. I’m not suggesting we do that thing that the Next catalogue seems to do now where there’s one white model, one Asian model, one black model, etc just to tick boxes, I think the actual issues feminism promotes should be less centered around the west. I hate catcalling, over censorship, unnecessary sexualisation of women, but I’ve seen hundreds of social media campaigns/viral videos/hoodies with cheeky slogans against these and not any against child brides. People say ‘well we can’t fight for everything’ but, like, we can.

Should we free the nipple? Yes! I think this issue has so much more potential to remove sexualisation than people think. If we normalise boobs (I was going to say ‘breasts’ then but the word makes me megacringe) then women could breastfeed without being asked to leave shops, companies would eventually stop using boobs to sell, well, everything as they’re not particularly special and women showing cleavage wouldn’t be slags, they’d just be women showing cleavage. Realistically, if we banned everything that was considered sexual then there’d be no feet, lips, (or after Fifty Shades) duct tape.

Could feminism do more to help men? Yes- ultimately a lot of issues around men relate to issues surrounding women. For example, during divorce many fathers lose custody of their children as it’s considered normal for them to stay with the mother aka this shows the homemaking woman stereotype prevailing over parental ability. Or men don’t speak out about domestic abuse due to intense hypermasculinity which in turn comes with the idea that it’s embarrassing to be hurt by a woman. Feminism is about everyone.

Do you have any slightly misogynist guilty pleasures? Oops. I listen to way too much Fetty Wap. Regular Blurred Lines dance parties. Fifty Shades of Grey feels. Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. But I think it’s important to remember that feminism is a single belief (genders = equal) not a rulebook of cans and can’ts. How you butternut squash it into your life is up to you.

Should it be made legal for a woman to become the Pope? It’s 2016 and there are still gender specific jobs? It’s cray-z.

Apart from me, who is your favourite feminist? Can I do a top 3? (Of course I can, I invented the tag) if I were just to focus on the modern day it would be: 1. Malala Yousafzai 2. Laura Bates 3. Emily Ratajkowski

Which stereotypes of feminism would you like to see squashed? Honestly, all I want to get rid of is the little sigh people do when you come out the feminist closet and tell them. That little sigh equates to hundreds of words.

Have you ever been catcalled? I was catcalled for the first time on my way home from my school by some knob in a souped up sports car with a fake spoiler who went to the effort of winding down his window to tell me my skirt was too short. I went home and cried. However, since having a fringe cut it hasn’t happened at all- I was clearly hotter at 14 than I am now.

Should we be encouraging girls into careers involving politics, science or maths? I think representation is really important in order to inspire young girls into stereotypically male sectors. We could have a political Nina and the Neurons (Carla and the Cabinet) or engineering basics in How Balamory Was Built. They key is to make industries look as desirable as Disney make being a Princess. Gender quotas in Parliament, however, I’m still on the fence about…

Are the Victoria’s Secret Angels empowering or destructive? The ‘perfect body’ campaign ruined VS for me (actually no, it was ruined before that when I took my exchange student to London and she spent the whole day in the Bond Street store instead of actually seeing London, but the advert added to the blow) I just find it really odd that a) they only showcase one type of woman- skinny, pretty, usually white b) there aren’t any male ‘angels’? Like if men don’t need this shite to empower them then why should women feel forced to be #inspired? and c) their cosmetics are tested on animals. They have so much feminist potential!? I just wish they’d try a little harder to stop making everyone feel insecure.

If you want to have a go at answering the fabulously femmy questions please feel free- and make sure you tell me where I can find your post. I’ll be compiling all responses for a future post where we can chat about the results.

Plus, the giveaway is still running! Enter here!