Reflections on "Letters to a Young Feminist"

"Letters to a Young Feminist" by Phyllis Chesler is a short nonfiction book of feminist essays. I feel like it is less of a book to review and more of a book to reflect upon. I have been slowly reading it, only a couple of essays a day. Today, I came across this line, "It is often women, worldwide, who shame other women into obedience." This came from an essay entitled 'We Need a Feminist Continent.' This statement was focusing on extreme cases such as mothers mutilated their daughter's genitals or women who banish women that were raped. This forced me to bring this discussion closer to home. I started thinking about American beauty culture. We, as women, shame other women for any perceived physical flaw. Here is where it can be easily debated: it's shaming women into obedience to corporations making money on diets, beauty products, etc. It really hit home because I remember overhearing a girl at the dance club last year making fun of the performer's cellulite. They didn't know each other at all, but this girl shamed the performer in all of her friends' eyes.

My goal isn't to make this a political blog, which is why I won't go in depth on this book. Phyllis Chesler can be described as an extremist feminist. There are some points that different feminist sects would find to outrageous to even consider, wile some perfectly align. The idea of reading this would be to broaden your horizons. Read something that doesn't entirely fit your own view. There were many times I found myself agreeing with what I read and many times I found myself shaking my head as well. I think the most fascinating aspect was the broad amount of feminist writers Chesler referenced. Her bibliography is broken down by different years of feminism. Her bibliography was fascinating to me after she referenced Emma Goldman. Emma Goldman is a little known name that I never heard before a game-style class in college called Greenwich Village. We were all different people and Emma Goldman was my character, so it struck a nice chord for me. I found myself going back down the suffrage rabbit hole after hearing her name. Chesler's bibliography gives plenty of options for someone wanting to read on their own and help form their own opinions. I believe that is an important strong point whenever you compile a book of essays on specific topics.

As an after note/side thought: I did get a kick out of the amount of times Chesler referenced herself. After a quick Google search I realized she referenced almost every singe book she's ever published!

Just for fun I"m including "Sister Suffragette" from Mary Poppins since this book made me think of it.*

*I own zero rights to this song or video. Thank you Mr. Disney for this lovely tune.