Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminisms

Allyson Mitchell, Lisa Bryn Rundle and Lara Karaian, eds.Toronto: Sumach Press, 2001; 364 pp.Reviewed by Michele ByersDepartment of Sociology and CriminologySaint Mary's UniversityHalifax, Nova ScotiaAs a feminist scholar of popular culture, of just about the same age as the editors of this book, I feel I am very much on home territory. I have also followed, with much interest and for quite a few years, the discussions about generation and its relationship(s) to feminism. I too have raised a skeptical eyebrow as young women have been labelled (in editor Lara Karaian's words) apathetic and apolitical (p. 14). Allyson Mitchell, another of the editors, suggests that [T]he idea of young women not being feminist is a self-fulfilling prophecy (p. 15). But this is only true in the sense that saying it will make it in the minds of those who are listening. It is clear from this anthology that young women ARE being feminist. They are being feminist even if the mainstream isn't paying attention to them. They are being feminist despite the negative labels that seem to stick to them like Yonge Street debris to the gum on your shoe. They are being feminist in all kinds of ways, some of which fall in line with earlier versions of feminism and some of which radically break from these older traditions. They are being feminist by constantly adding to and expanding what this term means. And that, I think, is at the heart of Turbo Chicks.An interesting paradox in the idea that young women reject feminism and refuse to participate in political activism is the number of books that seem aimed at exactly the kinds of girls and young women that we are continually told do not exist. I started with my own library, where I found quite a few anthologies relating to youth and feminism. But since I may not represent the average reader, I decided to probe a bit further into the mainstream via Amazon.com. On that site, I discovered an extensive array of books devoted to this subject that had been written over the past seven years. Some of these, like Turbo Chicks, are explicitly political. For example Barbara Findlen's Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (1995) (so popular a new edition was released in 2001), Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake's Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism (1997), Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards' Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (2000), and Danya Ruttenberg's Yentl's Revenge (2001). Others, like Marcelle Karp and Debbie Stoller's BUST Guide to the New Girl Order (1999) and Tristan Taormino and Karen Green's Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution (1997), take a more journalistic approach. Still others, like Cameron Tuttle's Bad Girl's series, are about fun AND emancipation. An interest in feminism can also be linked to magazines aimed at young women, like Bitch, BUST and Hue. There is definitely a theme here, and a scene. These books and magazines are available easily and everywhere; they do not seem to be rarities. As I meandered through the Amazon site, I found more and more books written for and by young feminists. I also found book lists (like the lists of feminist influences provided by the editors of this volume, see below) compiled by girls and young women, many of whom had self-identified as feminist. It seems young and feminist aren't words that are so estranged from one another after all.Maybe it is not that young women aren't feminist, maybe it is just that the writers getting the most press are those who espouse a view more in line with the Right wing discourses that carry so much weight today. These authors know and are perhaps better positioned to reap the benefits of a media-saturated society. And let's face it, if you get in front of the camera (or microphone) and speak in the voice of backlash about date rape and the desire for moral clarity you are going to attract a lot of attention (Roiphe, 1993, 1997). …

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