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Friday 11 February 2011

Good Old Gumption....

Something that has been addressed in a lot of my lectures recently, is Feminism, and though I can't quite see myself going down the radical bra-burning route, I'm finding it quite fascinating. Embarrassingly, it is not something that I have ever given a great deal of thought to, but I do now feel that it is something that I should have an opinion on. Should we be equal? Celebrate differences? Or remove gender identities all together? This is something that I need to decide upon, for it great affects the way that I not only view myself, but the whole of my sex.
Though feminism may now be labelled as rather passée, overshadowed by other equality campaigns, it is a divide of inequality that ever present. In 2010, the average wage gap across industrialized countries was 17.5%.  Therefore I have purchased Simone de Beauvior's seminal text 'The Second Sex', and Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own' and intend to inform myself. 
The wonderful Katherine Hepburn came up in a lecture this morning - one of the first women in Hollywood to wear trousers and one who often turned up to auditions wearing men's suits.  She marked a new era for the female role in Hollywood transforming the women of enigmatic passivity into women of substance and gumption. Perhaps I shall purchase some of those style defining trousers and channel Katherine for today...

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
Katherine Hepburn

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