Hi Zenith-

I'm a feminist, and while there are certainly lots of different opinions about everything among people who consider themselves feminists, my personal opinion is that as long as you're doing something because you want to, for your own reasons, you're participating in free choice and that's plenty feminist for me.

For example, I like to wear cosmetics sometimes. I usually wear them to work. If you like cosmetics you should use them. If, on the other hand, you would rather die than have anyone see you without them, like, you can't go out for a jug of milk or to pick up the mail without slathering it on, you should probably take some time to consider your self image and on what it is based. When I don't feel like wearing them, I don't.

IMO, feminism is about making choices freely, not about worrying about whether you have the right to wear the badge if you like the way shaved legs feel. The problem would be if you hated shaving and felt oppressed by it but did it anyway.

Hope that helps, love--cheers

Shelley http://shelleyrees.blogspot.com

Ah, Zenith.... don't be so hard on yourself! The only feminist in the public eye I can think of who didn't ever 'bend to conform' is Andrea Dworkin and, while she may make an excellent role model in her non-conformity, she was a one-off.

I think we all conform to different things at different times and for a variety of reasons. And make up is a fascinating example of both conformity and non-conformity in feminism. For some western feminists, wearing make up is tantamount to siding with the patriarchy in your own oppression - a mega no-no. But I remember seeing a documentary about women in Afghanistan under the taliban...

The taliban decreed that not only must women cover themselves from head to toe in public but they must never, ever wear make up. Make up was banned and to wear it was a crime punishable by execution. The documentary followed a group of Afghanistan women - I'm not sure they called themselves feminists, but feminists they were in my view. One of the things this group did every week was to meet up at one of their homes and have a make up party. It made them feel good in more ways than one. They'd all make each other up to the nines with smuggled cosmetics - nail polish, full eye make up, plucking and tweezing, the works - then they'd don their burka's and go out....into the streets.

The women said that it felt so fantastic to break a law made by men to oppress women and then to walk past armed taliban guards who, because of another oppressive law made by men, couldn't even see that they were doing it! It gave them a sense of control under a regime that denied them any control. They did this every week and probably risked their lives for the right to wear make up and not be controlled.

The thing that some western feminists object to in the make up argument is the pressure to conform to patriarchal beauty standards which are as diabolical as the taliban laws about how women should look (though the punishment is, arguably, less severe). It's about how men decree what women should aspire to look like in order to be deemed 'attractive' and all the effort that takes. It's about women being judged on what we look like rather than what we do. It's about us not being 'good enough' without all those preparations, the effort, the anxiety and, sometimes, the pain. It's about patriarchal capitalism making mega-bucks out of creating and fostering our anxieties about how we look and then brainwashing us into buying the products they've created to help us conform to their rigid and unattainable standards.

Whatever way you look at it, men are making the rules about how we 'should' look, how we 'should' present ourselves to them. That said, we all have our own reasons for what we do to our own bodies and there isn't a  feminist 'rule' about any of it - if there was, feminism would oppress women just as much as patriarchy does!

I think feminism is a journey that most women make in their lives - and within their lives. Much of it is undocumented and all of it is hit and miss. All I can offer you is this: if you care about the welfare of women, if the subordination of women - socially, economically, sexually, politically, etc. - makes you angry, if you want women and girls in the future to be less oppressed than you've been, then you're a feminist.

Awareness is what counts, Zenith - not whether you shave your legs. So please don't be disheartened. You're one woman amongst many and feminism wants to hear what you have to say.

Thank you very much Shelley and witchywoo, for your responses!

I find them very helpful indeed, and appreciate that you do not judge me.

I will re-read them quite a bit, I think. I am not very well at the moment, so it might take a while for it all to 'sink in' :)

Take good care and THANK YOU again!! :)

Zenith