Hamilton is an English teacher at Cary Academy, an innovative private school in Cary, North Carolina. In the following essay, she discusses "power feminism" and Rebeck'sSpike Heels.

In his essay "Power and Knowledge," Michel Foucault wrote, "What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse." Foucault means that power, even dominant power, is not bad, but actually enticing. Recent feminists have adopted the Foucaultian idea of power as both attractive and compatible with pleasure, in a new form of feminism called "power feminism." The term "power feminism" was coined by Naomi Wolf, who offers it as a healthy alternative to the "victim feminism" that focuses on paternalistic oppression and denies women's sexuality. Victim feminism concerns...