Interview: Natasha Walter, author of The New Feminism

TWELVE years ago, in The New Feminism, Natasha Walter argued that the feminist agenda was healthy and robust, "part of the very air we breathed". Therefore, "we had only to put in place the conditions for equality for the remnants of old-fashioned sexism in our culture to whither away." In her new book, Living Dolls, she admits: "I was entirely wrong."

Living Dolls is disturbing reading. Walter describes a recognisable, hyper-sexualised culture that swathes little girls in pink and encourages them to obsess about their looks from an early age. Many young women, she writes, "now seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having". The ubiquity of pornography makes matters worse, convincing both sexes that the parameters for female beauty are narrow in the extreme.

Attitudes meant to liberate us – such as sexual freedom – have trapped us instead. Objectification of women is on the rise, discovered Walter. Talking to young women about their attitudes toward sexuality, she was startled to find that they all "agreed that they would never want to have sex if they hadn't depilated their pubic hair". Why? As one university student explained: "We know what men will have seen and what they will expect."

Walter took a lot of flak for her first book, and Living Dolls is also polarising opinion. One early dissenter was a female columnist who said that the book's descriptions of nightclub contests in which women are encouraged to strip off, shake it about, and remain impassive in the face of lewd, rude, and nasty comments are hardly representative.

"There are always going to be places where people are carving out alternative experiences," says Walter, "so if someone says it doesn't strike me as such a big problem, that's fair enough. But I found a lot of people for whom it was a big problem, and a lot of statistics to back up my theory. Even if it's not all the girls in the UK, it's a sizeable number and that's too many.

"I think there will be some (disagreement] coming back to me from middle-class parents whose girls are being well educated: 'Well, my girl feels she can achieve anything.'

"It's a slightly head-in-the-sand view, because we (middle-class parents] do protect our girls. I think it's easier for middle-class families to have their girls find their way through all this stuff, but I don't think it's something that's confined to one class. I interviewed people from middle-class families."

As I read Living Dolls I grew convinced that class issues lay at the heart of the problems Walter described.

And she writes: "The mainstreaming of the sex industry has coincided with a point in history when there is much less social mobility than in previous generations."

Does she think when men are frightened about their place in the world – for instance, during a recession – that they fight harder to keep women down? "I suppose that's part of it, people trying to hold on to what they believe is their social position. But I feel more that it's about the fact that there are fewer options for working-class younger women. They see that the girls who can just ride through are the girls who are highly prized for their bodies. It's almost that they feel this is the way out and think they don't have other ways of getting out."

Walter was born in 1967 into an educated, liberal, Jewish family. Her father, Nicholas, was a renowned anarchist and atheist writer and activist. Her mum, Ruth, was, "very conscious that she wanted my older sister and I to grow up without boundaries. She did an Open University degree, became a teacher for adults with learning disabilities, and a social worker. She created a real career.

"She wasn't interested in setting up a totally gender-free environment, it was more of a journey. I remember she bought me my first make-up, but we didn't have Barbies.

"She was keen to set a good example. If my sister or I had ever wanted to model, I think she'd have said you must use your brain. It was the Jewish tradition of learning and doing well at school and standing up for what we believed. My parents were pretty forceful politically. There was never any idea that marriage was the only goal. It was always: work out what you want to do and then do it."

At Cambridge she went through a mildly rebellious period. "To be honest we all go through those phases where we try to explore other options. For me it was in my late teens, early twenties when I was apolitical, because I'd grown up in such a political atmosphere. You think, do you want to stay with the values your family gave you, or are you doing other things like reading novels and falling in love and trying to live your life free of what your parents gave you – and then you can choose, and find your own way back home to those values."

The danger, we decide in the course of our conversation, is that we can get backed into a corner by our beliefs. Having established our similar backgrounds, when our talk turns to pornography she says: "We're not prudish. But then you start to think, actually, what's going on? It's all around us and what effect is it really having? We know that you can't censor it: we don't believe in censorship. We want our freedoms, but what is the negative side of that? My father's dead now, but I'd like to go back and have that conversation with him.

"I think it is hard for us liberals to take that on board, isn't it? I wrote and rewrote the chapter on pornography, wondering if I came over like some kind of pro-censorship prude. You don't want to shut down expression; it's a point of view."

All the same, I say, the language is shocking. Investigating online I was upset by the aggressive verbs employed to describe X-rated action. She agrees. "There's such a violent undercurrent to it. It's corrosive, and young people are seeing that when they haven't yet started to explore an equal relationship in a human way."

One of the many uncomfortable trends she explores is the insistence that activities such as pole dancing and stripping are empowering rather than degrading. Not to mention, I add, the penchant for female celebrities to mark life's milestones – a baby, a divorce, weight loss – with a nude photo session. Nodding, she says, "Why does an actress – or any woman – still feel that to get real approbation she's got to be photographed naked or in her underwear? Who made up this idea that the way to make women feel free is to get them to strip off? How has the idea of liberation become so narrow?

"I think that columnist asked, 'What did Walter expect to find at a Babes on the Bed competition?' But it's not just a one-off, it's going on all over the place. There are women living in that culture all the time. It's constantly reinforced and not being challenged. Those of us who feel this isn't OK have to say so, to say, 'You are not just defined by your body; you can be so much more.'

"If we can be more conscious of how this has happened, then we can begin to challenge it. Some of what I say in the first half of the book will be quite familiar territory to feminists, but it needs exploring again. The younger women haven't been through the kind of debate that we have been through."

She's reluctant to apportion blame, saying only that feminism needs to regain its momentum. "There was a young girl who wrote to me who really opened doors in my mind at the beginning of the writing process by saying that there is no one out there (promoting the feminist message]. I thought, that's not true, but the fact that you think that you're alone shows that we dropped the ball. Girls are not finding a reflection among the women who have the power to put these ideas into a public space, and that worries me."

If the debate is as lively as Walter insists, who are the outspoken women? "There are women in the media, who write specifically in their own voice, such as Polly Toynbee, or women creating places for debate, like Jenni Murray. They are exemplary. And I think the creative spirit is very important – to see women achieving beyond the body, but not necessarily in the political sense, people like Zadie Smith, or women in music.

"Politically, it's a hard life, but I respect those Labour women who've been working hard, even if they haven't had the support of the party and the support in the culture. What Harriet Harman has been trying to do – I think these are women to respect.

"It's a difficult word to say and write, but sisterhood is important. There's been a bitchiness in the air. We need to get back to more solidarity and support for women who are trying to push the boundaries."

Walter and her partner have ample reason to want a better future, two children, Clara, nine, and Arthur, one. And, of course, "things can't change for women unless men change as well, that's the bottom line. Liberation for men is the right word, because it's about the freedom to do and be what they want. They don't need empowerment. They have power. But they need the freedom."

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter is out now from Virago, priced 12.99.