The gulf between pop culture feminism and pop culture feminists is an important one, writes Alyssa Rosenburg at Think Progress:

Getting so upset over a name feels silly sometimes, but if you can get people to reject membership in a group, you’re a step closer to getting them to not make more substantive gestures of membership, like, say, donating time and money to Planned Parenthood. Of course, it doesn’t help that awesome feminist creators may put strong women on screen, or situations that explore the systematic oppression of women, but neglect to (or carefully avoid to) name feminism for what it is.

Guilty as charged. As someone who trades in “feminism by stealth” (if not in my conversations with the people who hire me, who are well aware of my views, then within the work itself), I’ve been known to say that I don’t particularly care if people call themselves “feminists” - my goal is to get people thinking like feminists. Or just to think, really. I don’t need you to think like I do.

And while women’s magazines in particular are often criticised for being politics-free zones, I actually think that is part of their beauty. It means that a lot of suspect advice and assumptions go unquestioned, sure, but it also means that you can subvert those assumptions without it being immediately recognised as such.

While the opinion pages of the newspapers often feel like debate team, with everyone arguing their particular sides, lifestyle magazines are presented as (glossed up, glamorous, aspirational) fact.

So, while many of my articles are political in a broad sense, rarely do I use political language in them. It’s not that I’ve been told not to by my editors, it’s that I think that - in the lifestyle magazine format - that’s the best way to change hearts and minds. If people want to engage more deeply (or, you know, actually use the word “feminism”) they can come here, where we shout the “f” word loudly and proudly.

Then again, there’s also value in calling things what they are. And as Alyssa points out in her post, there is something uncomfortable about the way in which we embrace the tenets of feminism in media and popular culture, while at the same time denying the label.

What do you think? Do we need to call it “feminism” in order for it to count?