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Thesis: North American liberal feminism in the 1920s manifested as paradox…

- - - - "Many women sought just such relief from the "confining matrix" of gender norms that confronted them in the media, at home, and even in the newly earned workplace in the decade after suffrage."
        (Meaney, 2010) pg. 269
        
        the existence of gender norms in the newly earned workplace; liberal feminism only deals with getting women into the workplace not how to overcome inequalities once they are in the workplace.
      - "Sidonie Smith observes, throughout the early twentieth century "increasing numbers of Western women participated in the cultural logic of the individualizing journey" (2001, xi), and many did so by car."
        (Meaney, 2010) pg. 269
        
        Although this does allow a sense of freedom, this is a past time that would have only been accessible to wealthy, white women who could afford a car.
      - "Traveling allowed young women to postpone their acceptance of the identities society expected them to claim through marriage and homemaking, for even those women who were intellectually curious and bent on self improvement through education were presumed to be on the career path to domesticity." (Meaney, 2010) pg. 271
        
        Shows that liberal feminism allowed a superficial form of women's liberation. Indeed women were allowed to enjoy more activities like men, but the institutions of marriage and the nuclear family were remained in tact with little dispute.
        
        Essentially, women's travel in the 1920s could be seen as a way to cope with gender norms continuing to be enforced in a patriarchal structure without having to go through the effort of trying to break down these structures. -> a much more palatable way to deal with ongoing oppression.
- - - - Although this allowed women more freedom of movement in their clothing for sure, this comes back to the liberal feminism limitation of seeking equality with men and using the dichotomy of man/woman. While we might see this way of dress as more gender fluid now, in this time it was seen as "manly."
    - - Interesting to note that popular culture merely addresses the boyish fashion choices as a way for equality with men with less mention of its role in lesbian culture of the time -> Liberal feminism notion of serving the heterosexual woman, although still shocking at the time, this way of dress became more palatable and mainstream with heterosexual flapper culture
      - "The pervasive phenomenon of masculine fashion for women with its concomitant openness and fluidity, allowed some women, particularly of the middle and upper classes to exploit the ambiguity that tolerated, even encouraged, the crossing over of fixed labels and assigned categories, such as female boy, woman of fashion in the masculine mode, lesbian boy, mannish lesbian, and female cross dresser." Doan pg. 670
      - "Women, in breaking their bonds, tended do do what all minority groups (in the sense of a group to be held inferior) have always done- they have aped the dress, manners, customs, occupations, amusements, and habits- good or bad- of the so-called superior group." West, pg 59
        
        Criticism that liberal feminism primarily serves white heterosexual women the mannish way of dress for women wasn't widespread until it was taken up by upper class western white women.
    - - "...the ideal became youthful and ultraslim, with small breasts, narrow hips, and hair bobbed, shingled, or Eton-cropped. " Doan pg. 670
        
        This isn't allowing woman freedom in their own body types, this is giving privilege to women who have more "masculine" body types.
        
        Note, this body type is more likely of white women.
- - - - Divorces became more frequent and women's sexual experimentation became more of an accepted reality, but there was speculation of whether or not women were actually happier than they had been before.
    - - This attitude of disregard toward sexual partners in itself is a patriarchal attitude, instead of attempting to change to better serve both women and men, liberal feminism is limited in the sense whereby it simply integrated women into patriarchal attitudes of not respecting sexual partners. See West pg 61
  - - - Arguably, early disposable tampons allowed women who could afford tampons to better integrate into a patriarchal consumer culture without being "hindered" by biology
    - - "More over, the differences in class are distinct in the Kotex campaign, as the thin, long bodies belong to the "modern" women, the short and round to ser vants and working-class women. The illustration style thus functions to attach a visual level of meaning to the verbal description of these women as being representatives of the "better walks of life." Mandziuk pg 49