Lady Gaga and the Third Wave of Feminism

Feminism is an interesting topic to look at in the context of today’s college students because in many ways they’re leading what I call the third wave of feminism and it’s a wave that ironically is in many ways personified by Lady Gaga.  

Lady Gaga embraces her sexuality, but it’s okay for her and for women today to be sexy and smart, to be sexual and serious, to embrace sexual liberation without having baggage attached to it by either men or women. And what we’re finding in today’s college students is very much a culture that embraces feminism, but not feminism from an activist’s point of view, but feminism from a women’s rights point of view.

It’s naturally embraced because these kids in college grew up on the Internet where human equality is a birthright, where acceptance of diversity is embraced.  Women’s rights are a norm.  They’re expected.  It’s not something to be encouraged or enforced. And in that same way, sexuality is embraced and accepted as a woman’s right.  

So what we’re finding for this generation that’s grown up on the Internet, whether you’re a woman or a man or whether you’re black or white or Asian makes no difference.  You don’t know the differences when they exist on the Internet. They go into their day-to-day experiences in much the same way and embrace feminism, embrace diversity, embrace human equality in the same way they do online.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy fo Shutterstock.