Three Waves of Feminism

As I was reading the article about the Three Waves of Feminism, a few things stood out to me about each wave:

First Wave: This wave is categorized as diverse forms of intervention that have continued to inspire later feminist movements. I thought it was really interesting how the lower middle-class women represented themselves as they protested near the White House. The text says that these well-educated women " Dressed in their Sunday best, they offered no resistance to the police and thus both appalled and appealed to the public. They personified White, middle-class femininity, while engaging in very unfeminine and less-than-bourgeois practices." This tactic was described as confrontational but clever. What I also thought was very interesting is that one (of the many) things that sparked this was that during World War 1, Germany had already granted Women Suffrage. 

Second Wave: This wave of feminism focuses more on women's oppression. I find the things that these women were protesting at the time, to still be so prevalent today. This portion of the article starts with the protests associated with the Miss America beauty pageants, and how "highlighting the underlying assumption that the way women look is more important than what they do, what they think, or even whether they think at all (Freeman, 1975)." So many times do I often catch people judging another girl off of the way she looks, and keeping that opinion to her until she proves otherwise, if she would even get the chance to. Eventually in this portion of the article, it is not just narrowed down to women's oppression, but to the oppression of all sorts of people, including but not limited to: African Americans, gay, trans, etc. 

Third Wave: Third Wave are the girls who were born with some privilege who seek to finish off the job. "The movement has simultaneously criticized sexist language, appropriated derogatory terms for girls and women, and invented new self-celebrating words and forms of communication."I find this wave very important, because this is where women target the little details, that if not stopped, turn into huge problems and issues. Not only do they do this, but the also confront how people handle the different, complex intersections gender, sexuality, race, class, and age-related concerns.

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