Quotable: Maria Hampton on the need for a new feminist movement

“We stopped working together for reform and are now being forced to conform, dying deaths of a thousand choices. […] Right now the consumer trance that ensnared [Betty] Friedan’s classmates is stronger than ever: eight-year-olds wear knickers with “Babe” emblazoned on the crotch, post-feminists get empowering bikini waxes, Paris Hilton is an ironic role model, and we have earned the right to watch TV shows where strippers in nipple tassels tell us how to lap-dance our men to orgasm. We have been distracted by personal rather than political empowerment and dragged low by the constant blandishments of a culture that tells us the only path to empowerment is through shopping, plastic surgery and pandering to the so-called ironic fantasies of chortling men.”

–Maria Hampton, “Betty Friedan: A Life and Death in Feminism”, Adbusters, May/June 2006