OPINION: WHY GIRL POWER NEEDS A 21st-CENTURY REBOOT

Once she was reluctant to call herself a feminist. In her new book Clementine Ford re-examines her own feelings on body confidence, sex and why we all need female friendship

‘Of course I believe in equality… but I’m not a feminist.’ Such was the cry of my adolescence. I thought of feminism as a tired old movement, filled with irrelevant ideas and women who didn’t understand how the world had moved on. Women were allowed to shave their legs and wear make-up and that didn’t mean they were being subjugated by the patriarchy, it just meant they cared about looking nice. Feminists were shouty and overreacted to everything. They didn’t know how to relax and have a laugh. They turned everything into an issue and spoiled everyone’s fun.

Yet I also bristled when chores were handed to me and my sister while our brother was allowed to play and explore, our femaleness apparently endowing us with a greater capacity for cleaning. As sexism reared its head at home, in the outside world I began to hear warnings about ‘being safe’ and became aware of the threat that circled girls, not boys.

Don’t be loud. Don’t be sexual. Don’t be prudish. Don’t be challenging. Don’t be too fat or too thin. Don’t be too masculine or take up too much space. I feared all the irrelevant things that women are still taught to fear. Everything I observed about the world screamed for women to fight gender inequality, and yet I still believed that if I played the game, smiled at the right moments and giggled in collusion whenever men put my gender (or even just me) down, that I might one day win their attention and respect.

Realising that this was unlikely was a step towards embracing feminism. I embarked on a gender studies course and, very soon, everything I thought I knew about the world was demolished then rebuilt. A friend once told me that feminism helped her find a way of being a girl that doesn’t hurt; the hurt of feeling subjugated and alone, of knowing that whatever you say or do will be considered void unless offered in a way that men and the status quo find acceptable.

Feminism has helped me work out a way of being a girl that doesn’t hurt, too. It has given me strength, and without it I wouldn’t know how to breathe, how to laugh and, most importantly, how to fight. ➤

WE’RE TOLD: DON’T BE LOUD. DON’T BE PRUDISH OR SEXUAL. DON’T BE TOO FAT OR TOO THIN”