Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

Flat shoes are now so widespread and stylish that the chapter on heels seems unnecessary

I think we may have Lady Diana to thanks for that. I recall that after she first appeared on the scene in 1981 in her Sloaney outfits with flat shoes that pretty flat shoes (as opposed to female traffic warden flat shoes) were everywhere and have been ever since.

Re: sex, periods etc.

drum roll:

JUDY BLOOM!!!!!!!!

She's writing for a disposable market. All she has to do is think up a catchy line about 'relevance' - meaning it feels fresh and zeitgeisty and 'now' enough for magazines and newspapers to give her column inches or whip up a mini-story from it, and propel her book to the Top 10 for a few weeks. In 5 years time she'll write another book about how funny the flimsy ideas in it seem then.

It's feminism for the fast-fashion generation.

Could she, Moran, be any more the silly little rich girl stereotype

I don’t think she can be accused of being a silly, little rich girl.....she came from a background of being quite poor according to her biography.

But I think she’s out of touch with reality now and has rapidly morphed into the upper middle class Londoner stereotype. At least that’s how she comes across.

I was 16 when I read The Female Eunuch. I read the others when I went to university when I was 18. All of them are mainstream writers for anyone interested in feminism - even in 2011. Germaine Greer published The Whole Woman 1n 1999. (As an aside, a quote: “Real women are being phased out; the first step, persuading them to deny their own existence, is almost complete.")

But Naomi Wolf; Dale Spender; Deborah Tannen; Susan Faludi; Catharine McKinnon, bell hooks; Robin Morgan and Angela Davis, amongst many others, were writing in the 2000s.

I suppose authors have to promote themselves, but the airy dismissal of generations of other women writers is a bit rich.

'Silly little rich girl' - come off it

Comedy writers/peformers:

Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Victoria Wood, Emma Thompson.

I'm really no fan of Moran, but I don't think her comments are meant to be taken literally.

She’s rapidly disappearing up her own arse.

I’m the same age as her and I’d totally disagree with what she says about no female role models. Plus there were all the Nancy Friday books for a start which were very focused on female masturbation, etc.

Also Susie Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue, her first book, published in 1978.

I was going to say if she thinks she was the first to write about female masturbation she'd faint if she read any Nancy Friday!

Could she, Moran, be any more the silly little rich girl stereotype? Can we do anything to help her gain a wider appreciation of the real world, the one that does not circle around her?

Has she never heard of Madonna ?

I think, with great satisfaction, how this is the the best era for joyous, mainstream feminist role models young women have ever had.

This really, really isn't true. I think Moran is churning out a column and for these purposes has forgotten that she has been a journalist since about 1990. I don't for one minute believe she thinks this is true.

She's writing as if 2011 were the dark ages - it was only nine years ago.

I'm about the same age as Caitlin - as pps have said, Greenham Common was all over the news in the 80s, you couldn't miss it.

Even if you assume that a woman growing up in the 80s/90s had only the most mainstream sources of information, things such as masturbation were openly written about ('More' magazine, anyone?) and then there was huge publicity surrounding Madonna's 'Sex' book in the 1990s.

But Caitlin isn't even talking about the 80s and 90s. She's not even talking about the 00s. She's talking about 2011.

I love this individual re stating of a personal reality with a serene disregard for facts/ history/ anyone else on the planet.

Until I got dressed this morning women had never before worn trousers you know. Yay me. Ground breaking in my own breakfast time. I may launch my own range.

Err, in the mid 80s Caitlyn would have been 10 - I was a little older. How many of these women would your average 10-15 year old girl be aware of?

I think that is fair, and I also think Moran is making a joke rather than a serious point. However, even as child/teenager who wasn't aware of much outside the mainstream, I had noticed that Harriet Harman existed.

3/4 channels and one TV meant that we all watched the same TV, whether it was Top of the Pops or the News.

I'm of an age with Moran and I was aware of feminism, Germaine Greer, Greenham Common and more in the 80s. They were pretty mainstream. There were also lots of artists and musicians who were gender nonconforming and lots of questioning of stereotypes. And we did talk about masturbation and sex and beauty standards and all the rest of it too. Women's Lib was a fairly common topic of discussion, even if a lot of it was joking at women's expense.

Feminism was SO mainstream in the 80s. But really, what do you expect from someone so superficial and self-centred.

Apparently in the 1980s there were no female role models for girls apart from Mrs Thatcher and Miss Piggy.

Challenge accepted!

Culturally:

Annie Lennox, Alison Moyet, Muriel Gray, Sandi Toksvig (presented the ITV Saturday morning TV show number 73 back in the 80s)

Politically Barbara Castle (more 70's than 80's, but still), Shirley Williams. (I'm sure there are more, but these were just people I was aware of as a child in a not very political family)

Very self centred
Completely up herself more like

she's a lightweight, it's a populist version of feminism that's why she's popular... its easy you don't have to think too hard, people like that

Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Rowbotham, Sheila Jeffries, Kate Millet, Maya Angelou, Shulamith Firestone were all publishing in the 70s and 80s, to name a few feminist writers.

Err, in the mid 80s Caitlyn would have been 10 - I was a little older. How many of these women would your average 10-15 year old girl be aware of? Heck, feminists were still women libbers back then. As a slightly younger child Miss Piggy was my only "kick ass, take no shit" female role model.

I don't think it's erasure to point out that mainstream feminist role models were a bit thin on the ground probably because feminism wasn't main stream.

Very odd that she thinks even sexism in the workplace wasn't discussed until she wrote about it. Also:

You enter a profound stage of mourning

Not my experience. Is she just projecting her own feelings? She seems very self centred.

I don't think it's necessarily that so many women are fascinated by her, just that she styles herself as the go-to modern media feminist.

Great - she ticks the media boxes - she's whacky, colourful, gender-conforming (in terms of make-up and fashion, but without being intimidatingly beautiful/polished/stylish so she can plausibly be seen to grapple with issues around beauty standards etc) she writes fluently (if irritatingly) and she has a high embarrassment threshold. All of these things make her great for the clickbait age. She's a soundbite feminist.

She hasn't read Dworkin or Greer or Jeffries so she assumes no one else has either. Lengthy tomes about sexual politics? Nah. Women need a quick, funny instruction manual with empowering slogans on smashing the patriarchy and handy tips on perfecting that flicky eyeliner look. Oh - and Caitlin just happens to have one coming out, you say..?