We are in the midst of a violent backlash againist feminism that uses images of female beauty as political weapons against women's advancement.

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.

...When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.

When people get this consciousness of the way things are supposed to be in America - that the locus of agency is in them, that they are supposed to be the ones setting the agenda - if people believe this, they get very energized. Yeah, it's annoying to have this extra burden of saving the country.

Maybe the less pain we inflict on our bodies, the more beautiful our bodies will look to us

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

In the US, the 50s and 60s marked the documentary's golden age, especially at CBS, where pioneering televison journalist Edward R Murrow, immortalised in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, produced such landmark investigations as the CBS Reports programme Hunger in America.