Bra-burning and hairy armpits, or airbrushing and lads’ mags?

Trying to pin-down what feminism means these days is tougher than an over-cooked steak.

But one woman with a good handle on it is author and campaigner Melissa Benn.

The mother-of-two was at St Hilda’s college in Oxford last week to give her take on the state of feminism today.

She says curiosity about what kind of world she was bringing her daughters, Hannah, 19 and Sarah, 17, into, led her to write her book What Shall We Tell Our Daughters?

It explodes a number of myths, asks some uncomfortable questions and highlights a revival in women’s lib.

What’s dubbed the fourth wave of feminism is being spearheaded by young women, which she is delighted about.

She said: “If I had been asked to give this lecture a couple of years ago, my questions would surely have been: Where has feminist activism gone? Why did it die? Why do young women seem to reject the feminism that shaped my generation so profoundly?

“We cannot say that here and now.

“Everywhere, there is a new political energy and protests springing up on so many related issues, often shaped and led by young women themselves.”

She points out that this new wave of activism is fuelled by the internet.

Twitter, Facebook and blogging are instant and capture the drama of modern-day sexism in an infectious way.

She added: “Many of these campaigns are injecting new life into issues we thought we had fought and lost.

“In witty, creative fashion younger women are taking on the distorted, sexualised images of women that appear in everything from Page Three to computer games, children’s toys to lad’s mags and of course in pornography.

“They are saying ‘no’ to the pressures on them to hide, shrink or surgically alter their bodies in order to fit some unreal stereotype.”

But before we all get too excited, there are more than a few flies in the ointment.

For starters, she reminds us, it’s “extraordinary” that requests for Jane Austen’s picture to be put on £10 notes led to campaigner Caroline Criado Perez having to go into virtual hiding earlier this year after a flood of rape and death threats on Twitter.

Melissa has had her own run-ins as a result of speaking out.

After co-writing a pamphlet on sexual harassment in her 20s, she was publicly trashed in the Daily Mail.

“I keep that tattered double page spread to this day – a badge of great honour, to my mind,” she joked.

Of course, the Daily Mail enjoyed pointing out that her father, former MP and cabinet minister Tony Benn, was known for his left-wing views.

It irks her to be 56 and still labelled as “daughter of Tony Benn” and she sees it as an example of the way women are someone’s wife, daughter or mother, rather than just themselves.

Meanwhile, she says this latest surge of feminist anger is making us look long or hard at what women have achieved.

“It shows us that we have made the most extraordinary strides in the last century,” she said.

“After all, 95 years ago, no women would have been able to vote but we have not reached the egalitarian nirvana that some seem to think we have.”

So what exactly should we tell our daughters?

“Apart from the imperative of staying thin at all times and pleasingly attractive, that it would help if they did not get poor or old,” she said sarcastically.

In fact, she ended her book convinced that the greatest gift a mother can give her daughters is to teach them to think out loud.

“We need urgently to encourage girls , who can so easily lose their intellectual and emotional confidence in adolescence, to speak more and to speak up.”

Oxford-based film maker Rhonda Evans went to Melissa’s talk with her 18-year-old daughter Ruby Woolfe.

Rhonda said: “Equality was never really achieved for the majority of women.”

Ruby added: “As a young person, I always thought the image of feminism was so distancing, I didn’t really consider it.

“It conjures up images of older women but listening to Melissa talk has made me realise how relevant it is.”

We’ve become distracted by a glittering top 20 per cent of high-flying females, according to Melissa.

Women at the top of the banking, architectural or political sectors are not typical.

She explained: “It’s usually representatives from this group who pop up on our television screens, telling us that all the battles are won.

“Or that being a woman can be a positive advantage in the modern world.”

But she points to the “miserably low wages” of many women over 50.

Half of them work part time and more than half of those earn less than £10,000 a year.

In general, women in their 50s earn less than women in their 30s.