On Halloween, an acquaintance of mine was celebrating the fact that she had convinced her three young daughters to dress up not as princesses, but rather as male superheroes.  I said that next year, she should really go for the jugular: her girls should dress up as plumbers and truck-drivers.  She laughed and agreed, although I don't think she understood what I was getting at. This friend is a classic feminist, believing that empowerment comes only in the form of traditionally masculine traits, such as physical strength and professional ambition.  To her, a male superhero represents all that a girl should be told she is: strong, brave, powerful, one of a kind.  This mentality certainly follows from the current feminist narrative that women are excluded from male-dominated professions due to a culture that does not convince girls thoroughly enough that they are the same as, or even better than, boys.  Yet what I've noticed...(Read Full Post)