The purpose of this thesis is to research different factors that help shape and form the concept of feminist guilt. This is how I name the discomfort that occurs as a response to difficulties in exercising feminist principles in daily life in relation to (non)practising beauty practices or as a dichotomy between feminist ideology and patriarchal social order. The theoretical focus explores how the pressure of normative femininity as a Foucauldian disciplinary project of contemporary society, femininity as an integral part of construction of one’s self, the connection of the latter with consumer habits in the period of late capitalism and guilt as a basic form of female experience of her own position and reality (the concept of female desire and female narcissism) are hindering the exercise of feminist beliefs. I also note that the dominant feminist perspectives represent an additional obstacle, making it impossible to collectively tackle the problem of feminist guilt, while generating their own normative feminist aesthetic requirements, which are becoming the means of assessing one’s feminism. This diverts the attention from the very system that creates these given ambivalent positions and which is paralyzing broader feminist action. On this basis, I conclude that in order to avoid dogmatism, it is better to use feminist beliefs as a way of understanding the complexity of the system and culture, as footholds for further discussion and not as a point of constant self-criticism and feeling of feminist inconsistency, since the concept of femininity always places feminism in ambivalence with itself in the patriarchal society.
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