Our final project for Feminism and Women’s History is a multimedia online blog as well as a public Instagram account named Feminist Figures. Feminist Figures aims to acknowledge the power behind self-love through encouraging and promoting the beauty of our individuality. I learned a lot throughout this project, both about working in a group as well as about what feminism means to me.
Working in a group of eleven had its upsides and its downsides for this project. Eleven people means eleven different perspectives. This was great when we were brainstorming and it provided us with many different takes on the idea of “self love.” Having so many writers also meant a broader range of information could be shared. However, as I personally took on the role as a leader and organizer, specifically working on the Instagram account and scheduling, I found myself frustrated because it felt that not everyone was doing the same amount of work. This was not true of all of my classmates, but at times this was really disappointing.
I found that holding people accountable was especially difficult during this project because I recognized that everyone may be dealing with something at home that we can not see. However, I recognize that this is true all of the time and that it is something I had not thought much about in the past. I know now that I should enter group settings with an awareness and understanding that people may be dealing with hidden challenges all of the time, not just during the current pandemic. I do feel though that I need to get more comfortable holding people accountable instead of simply doing more work myself.
The part of the project that I am most proud of is the overall, arching message that our blog and our Instagram display. It is really amazing entering a site or an account created by peers that emphasizes the incredible power of self love in all forms. Reading people’s journeys and hearing the different ways people care for themselves was incredibly heartwarming and created a sense of community that had been missing before. Personally, I am proud that I was able to convey that sense of openness with the Instagram account and with my own personal journey essay. I am also extremely proud of the fact that we were able to pivot so quickly in the face of the pandemic. Our final project was still able to find a way to interact with the community and spread positivity and awareness.
If I could have made changes, however, I wish that we had had more time or been more effective as a group. I think that our publication could look so amazing and have an incredibly large audience, but the time restraint limited our ability to really build. As a group, we did find time to meet and communicate outside of the classroom, but I am slightly disappointed that we were not able to reach a larger audience or get the blog to the level of depth and vulnerability that I had imagined.
In terms of learning about feminism, the most specific takeaway I have from this project is that I was introduced to the term “body neutrality.” The term essentially means that we should teach people that their body does not define them at all and that it is okay to not care about how you look, good or bad. That is really hard for me to wrap my mind around as it is so ingrained in me that your appearance matters, and that learning to love your appearance is freeing and powerful. But what if everyone simply did not care about how they looked? I am not sure where I stand on that issue even today, but it has had me thinking a lot about societal conditioning and what we are taught to give value to.
My definition of feminism at the beginning of this class was “making an effort to uplift those around you, working for the equality that every individual of every gender deserves, and at the same time being true to yourself.” However, today I think it is so much more than that. It includes intentionally understanding the exclusive history of feminist movements, really recognizing the differences in our individual experiences, and confronting what society has taught us to believe versus what we actually know.
The ultimate goal of feminism is to create equality among all genders and non-binary individuals, and to do that we must dismantle multiple deeply ingrained societal systems. After this project, and also after learning more through our class discussions, my new definition of feminism is this: a movement to create equality among all genders through efforts to recognize differences, uplift all people, be true to yourself, and question the norms of the society we currently live in. This definition is more nuanced and directly demands thought about intersectionality, societal conditioning, while at the same time maintaining the core ideas of supporting everyone.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to experience this learning curve, both in terms of how to work in a group as well as understanding what feminism means to me. I have a much clearer vision of what I want the world to look like and some of the things that have stopped us from getting there in the past. As someone passionate about social justice, I am so thankful to have learned this now. I will be able to approach my work with a new lens in the future. Our differences can be a shield sometimes, but they can also offer the solution to a lot of the biggest problems our world faces.