garçonne

.. Experience cannot simply be thought of as a source of knowledge: experience is not self-evident and an explanation of how things are but is itself a construction, 'Experience is at once already an interpretation and in need of an interpretation.'

- Joanne Hollows, Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (2000)

Reading Hollows' text I have to question the legitimacy of experience. Second wave feminism is criticized for subjugating those women who did not fit neatly into the privileged category of the 'woman' at the time and their experiences were thus labelled illegitimate in the motivations of feminist practice. I had a teacher who

brought to my attention the role of the feminist movement in the exclusion of Black and working class women noting how feminism, a label strewn with uncertainty and built upon assumed and universalized concepts of womanhood, acted as a further system

of oppression for those condemned from participation. Contemporary

pop culture phenomenons (reminiscent narratives) show us that while white

women fought for their rights in the public sphere, Blacks and working class 

women had already penetrated the working world based on the necessity of

their survival. Constructed was women's work outside the home and ignored

was the concept that there existed various female experiences. 

Even today we see an assumed characterization of women's abilities  in the working world. I think that Hollows' excerpt is an important concept  in recognizing the functionality of feminism in conjunction with a defined femininity amidst a world of constructed identities. 

Feminism is often about challenging identities yet, built upon constructs of legitimate femininity, criticisms of the nature of the movement hold a certain power in the progress of feminist practice.