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Katy Campbell

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Reclaiming the C**t

Posted: 22/01/2013 23:00

That has to be my favourite phrase, taken from The Vagina Monologues, it not only makes me laugh, but also rings true. 2013 is the year to reclaim the cunt. Hi, my name is Katy, and I'm a feminist. Before I go on I'd like to clear up a few things:

  • I shave.
  • I don't hate men
  • I don't whine about everything (I do whine about most things, but usually lack of chocolate and gin).


Caitlin Moran, in her hilarious book 'How to Be a Woman', explains the best way of finding out if you are a feminist (this is clearly angled at women, though men feel free to try it):

"So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.a) Do you have a vagina? and b) Do you want to be in charge of it?If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist." 

So, I'm a feminist because I answered yes to both those questions, and if you're a woman reading this you most likely answered yes too. Great, so we've got the label, now what the fuck do we do with it? Don't worry we don't have to burn any bras, after spending £30 on a lacy number the last thing I plan to do is douse it in petrol fluid then set it alight whilst screaming 'Death to men'. No, that's a bit too militant. Nor does it mean that every time you see a man do you need to shout 'BASTARD' right in his face. Again, perhaps a tad too militant. So here's the question - what does being a feminist mean?

Freud put it beautifully when he said: "The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?"  I honestly don't know what I want. One day I want to be a housewife, the next I want to be a successful career woman at the top of some global corporation (yes, I'm aware that I can do both), sometimes I think I'd make a good hand model, other days I realise that I'd like to be an author, and occasionally I get those days where I want to sack it all in to just eat chocolate all day. Women don't know what they want because we have so much choice, but we also are continuously getting told what we want, who we are, and what we should be.

I was reading an article the other day on the Daily Mail that told me I'm fat. It then told me what to wear, what to eat, the music to listen to, and to remember that Taylor Swift is a bit of a 'slut' because she's dated more than four men. What baffles me is that most of the time articles on websites like that, or in weekly magazines are written by women. Essentially these are women fucking up other women just so they can pay their rent. I don't need to be told that I'm not attractive enough, that I'll never have an LA body, or that George Clooney is never going to date me. I know these things myself, the media taught me all of this whilst I was growing up, allowing me to develop self-esteem issues, and knocking my confidence. I know this didn't just happen to me, this happens to 99% of the female population, so why are we still putting up with it?

I wish the media would stop telling me what is sexy, or who the hottest person currently is at the moment. The GQ scandal that's going on at the moment makes me laugh. Every one is jumping on the bandwagon that the magazine has been racist. I can't believe that's the big issue here. I honestly don't think it's a big deal that they voted M.I.A as the 'Hottest Pregnant Sri Lankan', she is, I mean I haven't come across many pregnant Sri Lankans, if someone asked me, I would have probably said her.

I do understand that people are a tad pissed off that GQ ranked some of their women according to their race, and that Beyonce was crowned queen of the world, but not 'Hottest Black Chick'. Come on now, that's not the issue here. If the magazine was really racist, would they have picked a black woman has their hottest woman of all eternity? No, of course not, they would have picked Nick Griffin's wife.

What baffles me is where are the people who should be standing up asking why in this day and age we still rate people based on their looks?

The issue is the psychology of what these articles do. What most women will do is look at the article and do the following:

  • Bitch about the choices
  • Stare at the ladies for hours comparing body shapes/faces
  • Become depressed because they work a 9-5 job in an office earning enough to pay their rent, but Beyonce is a multi-millionaire who hangs out with the newly inaugurated President Obama.


But I don't want to feel like that. I don't want my friends to feel like that. I don't want my future children, and grandchildren to feel they're not worth it because perhaps they're not a size 8, rich or famous. I'm sick of seeing people read the calories in a sandwich, then you see them getting out the app to figure out how many miles on the treadmill it'll translate to. EAT THE GODDAMN SANDWICH, THERE IS MORE TO LIFE.

In Germaine Greer's book 'The Whole Woman' she commented that: "Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful." It's sad because it's true. What makes it worse is she wrote it in 1999, 14 years ago, and nothing has changed.

Being a feminist isn't about tasting your period, not shaving or hating men. Being a feminist (for me) is realising that you are beautiful, smart and interesting enough and don't need the media to tell you other wise. Being a feminist (again, for me), is about having that confidence to be the best woman you can be, and not hiding behind your vagina, but instead reclaiming your cunt.

 

Follow Katy Campbell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LostPRGirl

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That has to be my favourite phrase, taken from The Vagina Monologues, it not only makes me laugh, but also rings true. 2013 is the year to reclaim the cunt. Hi, my name is Katy, and I'm a feminist. Be...
That has to be my favourite phrase, taken from The Vagina Monologues, it not only makes me laugh, but also rings true. 2013 is the year to reclaim the cunt. Hi, my name is Katy, and I'm a feminist. Be...
 
 
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jf12
Esta vez saldré como las otras y me escaparé.
04:16 PM on 01/29/2013
"Women don't know what they want because we have so much choice", and here is the big gender divide. Men do know what they want, but they do not get much choice.
This user has chosen to opt out of the Badges program
05:40 AM on 01/29/2013
It's funny that every time I hear it described by a woman who says that everywhere the "media tells me what I want"...I realize they do that for all of us. It's just that some of us never notice it because we just weren't listening.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
BarryMayor
04:55 AM on 01/29/2013
Nobody can say hows someone else really feels but why do so many women who ID as feminists act and speak as if they hate men?
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Imma Okay
09:05 PM on 01/27/2013
Except not everyone is beautiful, smart, and interesting. In fact, most people aren't.
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jf12
Esta vez saldré como las otras y me escaparé.
04:17 PM on 01/29/2013
I agree.
04:22 PM on 01/27/2013
How come the headline say's C---T when the last word is spells it out?
04:14 PM on 01/27/2013
Call it what you want I call it the passion box. The more feminists the better but when you want a baby you have to give it to a man.
04:09 PM on 01/24/2013
I am absolutely in love with this article! I agree completely with your point of view and THANK YOU for finding the words and taking the time to clack them out!

Journalists like you are the inspiration for me to get to where you are. (I'm studying to possibly become a writer of some sort.) Again, love it and thanks!

Gigi
Dallas, Texas
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Katy Campbell
04:16 PM on 01/24/2013
Thanks Gigi, that means a lot. I'm really glad you liked it!
10:19 AM on 01/24/2013
YES!
05:25 AM on 01/24/2013
What lovely article. Congratulations. Steve
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Katy Campbell
10:21 AM on 01/24/2013
Thanks Steve.
10:46 PM on 01/23/2013
And I thought a c**t was a sheath for keeping your scythe stone in, ladies reclaim it..
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greatbrittan
love or leave my country
10:11 PM on 01/23/2013
what a charming lady,one to take home to meet the family,
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Katy Campbell
01:22 PM on 01/24/2013
Thanks! I like to think so too.
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greatbrittan
love or leave my country
01:27 PM on 01/24/2013
your welcome,perhapse,you could bake a pie for us,
09:51 PM on 01/23/2013
The biggest problem with that whole idea is that we are genetically programmed to judge on appearance as a measure of genetic fitness - at least for females. About all we have managed to do is change what were unconscious unaffected measurements with direct genetic relevance like symmetry and pelvic size into programmed conscious awareness about weight (often survival negative levels of weight at that) breasts, androgynous everything else with pre pubescent elements like hairlessness to boot (I refer to pubic area not underarms and legs).

If you want to stop people judging women on appearance you will have to rewire hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Surely a better way would be for women to take ownership of their appearance and attractiveness and start promoting healthy realistic appearance that it is both achievable and beneficial.
At the same time we need to start drawing more attention to the flip side of the equation namely becoming conscious of how we select males (either the pure survival attributes of bad boys or the ability to provide of success career men) and making men far more aware of it.
12:55 AM on 01/24/2013
Human mating strategies are actually a lot more subtle and complicated than simply appearance based choices.

Yes, appearances are important - at first. Then other stuff kicks in. For example, although women appear to be initially interested in the 6 foot hunk, they will also keep their options open, and for some reason which is not immediately obvious in Darwinian terms - women find humour in a man sexually attractive, as they also find the ability to sing. Why? No-one knows. But Danny De Vito was able to pull long before he became rich.
09:30 PM on 01/24/2013
I have not said appearance is important in the choice of males. There is either the high physical ability not necessarily linked to providing for young an not automatically related to "good" looks or the steady ability to provide for young .

Ability to provide does not necessarily mean rich hence De vitos ability to pull before he had money.

We have indeed covered these drives up with layers and layers of subtlety including the way we have warped the essential appearance related element but the fact is when men see women they judge on appearance and that is not going to change - we can and do change what the "perfect appearance" is but we cannot change that appearance is the point.
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jf12
Esta vez saldré como las otras y me escaparé.
04:18 PM on 01/29/2013
Not really.
08:02 PM on 01/23/2013
Some pretty smart observations, the most insightful of which is that the most pervasive and insidious crap that women have to deal with comes from women. This can be organised and systematised in various way, appealing to women's fears and insecurities, identifying their weaknesses, undermining their sense of themselves, spreading disinformation, confounding truth with lies, and devising methods of control. The most perfected of such systems is called "feminism".
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Richie2012
Your micro bio is empty.
07:18 PM on 01/23/2013
I did the test. No vag. Boo hoo. I can't be a feminist. Shall I become a Muslim instead?
03:56 PM on 01/23/2013
What a poor article. Implies it is all about "feminism", but actually touches on bias, prejudice, self-confidence, the psychology of judging people on their looks alone....etc. ALL these things apply to blokes as well.

As for reclaiming one's C**t.....sensationalist (and unnecessary) headline which speaks volumes for the quality of the author - a PR girl in London!

Does HP wander the streets looking for any old muppet to write something to fill the pages...?
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Katy Campbell
04:02 PM on 01/23/2013
No...they found me in the kitchen.
04:20 PM on 01/23/2013
Lol. Great reply.
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greatbrittan
love or leave my country
10:14 PM on 01/23/2013
poor down trodden c,,t