You could be forgiven, reading the headlines and opinion columns of recent weeks, for thinking that you had woken up in 1978. At protests greeting the recent Miss University London beauty pageants, there were screams of moral outrage, pickets at the entrances to nightclubs and yells of “Objectification” ringing out across pavements, as angry young women in duffel coats protested at cute young women in ball gowns. On the one hand, it was cheering to see that feminist activism had not died, but on the other, it might have struck you as looking a bit, well, retro.

For Marie Berry, 27, who started up her own feminist magazine, KnockBack, three years ago, it certainly didn’t advertise a brand of feminism she identifies with. “I thought the protesters looked a bit silly, a bit like a stereotypical idea of what a feminist should be. The slogan was ‘SOAS is for education, not for your ejaculation’, but I don’t think it’s a gender issue. This competition wasn’t about men. It’s for girls.”

A beauty pageant might not be your average woman’s idea of fun, but these contestants were all girls enlisted at top-notch universities, and who all had chosen to be there. Targets ripe for feminist outrage? Not according to the American feminist Katie Roiphe. “I think the proper reaction to a beauty pageant these days is to be bored by it. I would have thought that old version of feminism, which was violently opposed to lipstick and high heels, had died out by now. It’s an extinct image of feminism — that you can’t be both frivolous and serious or care about clothes and read books at the same time. And, in a way, it’s sort of depressing that these same old-fashioned battles keep on being recycled.”

Take heart, sisters, for there is a new breed of feminist out there that is reinventing the ideology. Subscribing to the original feminist theories of equality (equal pay, equal rights and the importance of a right to choose), they pick the fights that mean something to them, ignoring the elements of feminist politics they find irrelevant. For Berry, whose zine is billed as the anti-women’s mags women’s mag (cover lines include ‘The magazine for women who aren’t silly bitches on a diet’), that fight is about how women are represented in the media. “KnockBack started as a spoof women’s magazine,” she says. “We despise Cosmo and Heat. They broadcast a fascination with getting boyfriends, getting married, make-up, appearance and gossip that appeal to the least desirable parts of our emotional spectrum — jealously, gossip and being mean. And that’s not what we care about. Being a girl isn’t like that for us.”

Though that doesn’t mean they can’t take an interest: “As a woman, you can’t not buy shoes and wear dresses. Plus all of that stuff is fun — it doesn’t take away from your power as a woman.”

One fan of KnockBack is Zadie Smith, who wrote to them to say: “Your zine made me feel that the present situation for women is possibly not as absolutely f***ing awful as I had previously felt it to be. It was a little ray of pink and black hope. Keep up the good work, from an old feminist, zx.”

For Dunja Knezevic, 26, and Victoria Keon-Cohen, 21, the target is entirely different. Both models, they are campaigning for fair working conditions in the fashion industry and fighting for the establishment of the first models’ union. Their strand of feminism shuns gender altogether. “For us, it has always been about equality for everybody in our workplace,” says Knezevic. “We are fighting for rights for both male and female models.” And while not branding herself a feminist, she is keen to insist: “I don’t think being a model means that I can’t be one.”

It is impossible to stick to the battle lines that once seemed so clear, but that is also why it is possible to be both a model and a feminist. At the same time as being more emancipated than ever, we have never been more obsessed with youth, thinness and celebrity. Ask any woman if she minds being judged on her looks, and she will say yes. But ask her if she would like to look better, and she will also say yes to that. Beauty is power, and our relationship with it is complicated, as are our ideas on sexuality. On the one hand, we feel empowered; on the other, drooled over. Where to go in between? Jordan may have fashioned herself as a caricature of male fantasy, but she is also an extremely rich and successful working mother — and what is unfeminist about that?

What is different about this new wave is that it is careful to allow these contradictions to play out. According to Ellie Levenson, author of the forthcoming The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, it is just this flexibility that identifies it. “In the past, you had to subscribe to a whole set of beliefs to be a feminist, including how you should look and behave. But Noughties women have made it their own. It’s like a pick-and-mix feminism, where you can choose the bits you care about yourself.”

As Jess McCabe, editor of The F Word, an online site for contemporary feminism, says: “The point of feminism isn’t to replace one set of expectations with another. It is to get rid of that whole dynamic. It wouldn’t be healthy to say, ‘You shouldn’t be wearing make-up’, as that is unfeminist in a way.”

Phoebe Frangoul, 27, editor of Pamflet, a self-styled “feminist fashion zine”, is also keen to embrace just such a brand of modern feminism and has campaigned heavily for the right to be both a feminist and glamorous. “I write about the right to wear high heels and still call yourself a feminist. I don’t feel they’re mutually exclusive, and my friends don’t either.” She laments the extreme feminism on show at the LSE and other universities, saying it puts people off the cause. “There are so many people out there who wouldn’t describe themselves as feminists, but they blatantly are in their actions. They’re just scared of the word. If you asked Gwen Stefani if she was a feminist, she would probably say no, although Charlotte Church has said she is. I don’t know if we’re third-wave or post-feminist, but we definitely want to be all things and don’t feel like we can’t be.”

“One of the most unappealing things about the feminist movement right from its inception was its tendency to judge other women,” says Roiphe. And, given the polarising of opinion between old-school feminists and modern young women engaged with popular culture — which, like it or lump it, is obsessed with celebrity, consumption and youth — there is much room for judgment. (See The Guide Association’s new manifesto on the sexualisation of young girls and Germaine Greer’s recent berating of Cheryl Cole as “too thin to be a feminist” as yet more proof.)

“I do feel it’s time for those feminists to step aside,” says Frangoul. “It’s like, we’re grateful for what you did, but it’s time for you to hand over. We’ve got a different world-view, and we might have something different to say.”

NEW GIRL POWER

Icons: Beth Ditto, Cheryl Cole, Zadie Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Martha Lane Fox

Outfits: Lipstick, heels,1950s dresses — think Dita Von Teese meets the Bloomsbury set — or girlie grunge (look to Courtney Love circa 1990)

Agenda: The right to do what the hell you like, however you like, in heels — if you like

Actions: Reclaim the Night marches, subscribing to feminist zines

Websites: thefword.org.uk, marmaladya.com, knockback.co.uk, myspace.com/pamflet, kcandk.com

Times recommends

• How I lost the gift of joy for a while
• How to get Coleen Rooney's post-baby body
• The A-Z of winter style rules