The relivance of Feminism

For me personally, feminism has always been about the language and attitudes towards women more than anything else, and when you take these issues into consideration, who can argue that feminism is not still extremely relevant. While the economical and political needs are pressing, I've always felt that those particular problems stem from a deeper, more engrained cultural problem. One need only take one look at the media to be overwhelmed by negative, and often confusing images of femininity and gender roles. When flipping through the pages of a magazine, you can find an advertisement on one page with a beautiful, barley dressed women glorifying sex and a product, and on the very next page find a women modeling the picturesque domestic ideal. These images not only conflict one another, but they are both completely unrealistic, for within two pages we have not only reduced sex and sexuality to a purely physical act, we have also managed to condemned it and glorified it in the same breath. If a young girl is a sexual person, she is considered a slut, but at the same time, a girl devoid of sexuality is considered undesirable. It is these double standards, media images, and other cultural influences that are shaping the way society views women, and they ways in which women are taught to view themselves. I feel it is the language and the images more than anything else that shapes our early perceptions of femininity, and these perceptions are carried by us through our lives. So to my mind at least, it seems the biggest problem faced by women and feminist today is a cultural attitude problem, and it will be difficult for us to advance in other areas until this problem is sufficiently dealt with.