On Thursday, December 17, we met with and interviewed feminist high schooler Esme Edwards. Walking into the we were mostly curious about what she had done in the past and the perspective of a teenager because she had a perspective so close to ours. Esme told us about how she had learned about women’s rights and began to notice the problems of how women are portrayed in the media. She talked a lot about how from a very young age, girls are expected to be sexy and mature, but not slutty. Esme shared her opinion about how she is completely okay with make up and other beauty products that other feminists are against, as long as girls are wearing it for themselves and how stereotypes have an effect on the minds and self esteems of children and young adults. We talked a lot about how she had a rather unique perspective that we could really relate to. Not many people associate teenagers to the word feminist, but the topic of women in the media affects adolescents more than any other age group. Esme raised important points and brought attention to topics and ideas we had not even considered.
Before we had the chance to interview Esme, we were kind of stumped about what fieldwork we could do. The topic we chose was really broad and many of the fieldwork opportunities we had looked into had not worked out. Esme was really helpful and told us about real things we can do to make a difference and gave us many organizations to look into. She told us we could really do something about the way women are portrayed in the media by photographing everything that we see as objectifying and demeaning. During our interview, we got to tell Esme about many of our own opinions on gender based stereotypes and share a lot of the research we have done for our social justice project. Something that was discussed that I had never even considered before was that opinions can change so quickly and so many people would be on board with doing something about our topic if they just knew more about it. People can are often embarrassed or scared of the word feminist or feminism, the idea of feministic words being considered “bad words” in terrifying on it’s own. It was amazing to learn all this from someone who had so much in common with our group.
Esme’s thoughts on the topic were inspiring. I felt her passion to make a difference in the world and to stop the way society is exposing women. Unlike so many others, Esme did not just point out all the problems with the way women are portrayed, she talked about how every woman, including herself, embraced so many of the stereotypes that are expected of them. For example, Esme talked about how make up made her more confident, as long as she was wearing it for herself, not someone else. She wants to open the topic and raise awareness. Overall, I think that we could not have left the interview more inspired, newly educated and excited about further working on our social justice project.
