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I'm a third-wave feminist, pseudo-intellectual neurotic.

Depending on one's particular walk in life thus far, a wide variety of images spring to mind when the term feminist is uttered. Like Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell.  She was the one I always identified with anyway; tall, opinionated, cursed with full squarish hips and a knack for taking peculiar things personally or offensively. And, as Lisa's snooty Ivy League boyfriend puts it, a pseudo-intellectual neurotic, which I can only assume is a euphemism for good-looking, confident smart girl.

Jessie was a pain in the ass, always checking her jock boyfriend on his objectification of women.  It's good to get the message out, I suppose.  But they made her so... unreasonable about it... unclear on the philosophy of feminism... and consequently it portrayed the feminist as a stubborn, unpredictable martyr who is often impossible to please.

It's unfair to have that stereotype, and the stigma attached to what should simply be an informative term about someone's personal philosophies.  My research of feminism began after I inadvertently came across a thesis on body dissatisfaction among women and the effects (anorexia, bulimia, and in some cases self-mutilation).  The cause of which is naturally a variety of things, however a significant source of discontent appears to be the constant exposure to portrayals of women in the media and throughout our culture as inhumanly-shaped sex objects, tools, things to be manipulated for the satisfaction of the patriarchal system.

Heavy topics which no one in their blissfully ignorant mind wants to think about much less learn more about. 

But I am a hugely curious creature when it comes to learning the why of things. During photo shoots with fashion models I often heard complaints of body dissatisfaction and even the most slender, fit models would ask for Photoshop work to trim their bodies, as they constantly compared themselves to the ideal appearance of fashion models.  So much pressure to be perfect, unnaturally so, and in a merciless field of work.  How could these girls not be satisfied?  Where does it end?

A woman doesn't have to be a bikini model to feel the same pressures and scrutiny.  Many seem stuck in a state of defeat when diets and starvation don't transform them into a Victoria Secret model. Even if it did occur to a girl to accept her body and all the ways it didn't conform to the contemporary 'ideal', she'd quickly realize that she has entered a rare state of consciousness with little to no support from the outside world. Our system doesn't thrive on actually fulfilling the consumer, it thrives on our blind addictions to accumulating desirable objects, such as a nice car, a big house, or a hot wife.  The more we see this portrayal, and blindly glamorize self-defeating behavior, the less we know ourselves or what real fulfillment and happiness is.  The media needs your discontent, your supposed needs; the need to diet or be a certain jean size, the need to be entertained, or more specifically, distracted.  The need to display status, the need to be envied.  The need to be attractive to men via enhancement of our sex kitten side in order to earn a husband, and later to be settled into a family and become Martha Stewart.

Times are changing and thank goodness more girls are growing up with encouragement, nay--insistence on planning to own a definitive career and appropriately value financial self-sustainability.  Not because she won't get married or have children, but because she doesn't have to do those things, and ought to have a choice not a need to marry.  Even better if she's brought up not to respect but to question the general message of the media, or fall into the trap of objectifying herself. It only leads to the emptiness that every woman who ever secretly compared herself to a "better-looking" woman knows all too well.

You don't have to conform! Body-dissatisfaction is an unnecessary poison we absorb on a daily basis.  But all one has to do is unplug from it.  Embrace your natural form, celebrate it and love it unconditionally.  Make health your priority, not attention from others.  Refuse to play along with the unconsciously self-perpetuated ideas that a woman's purpose is to lure a husband, and then to become a mother and little else. Refuse to believe that any of these things will automatically bring happiness, or that you are alone in your discontent with being discontent.  It's never too late to realize your potential, follow a passion, or perhaps contribute to the uplifting of women as people, not things.