We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement

The problem is—the problem has always been—that feminism is not fun. It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s complex and hard and it pisses people off. It’s serious because it is about people demanding that their humanity be recognized as valuable.

but it seems worth questioning whether this is feminism, or just a new twist on the age-old concept of selling products and ideas with gender essentialism.

As Roxane Gay noted, “Those who take safety for granted disparage safety because it is, like so many other rights, one that has always been inalienable to them. They wrongly assume we all enjoy such luxury and are blindly seeking something even more extravagant.”1

Feminism as a product, as a discrete measure of worthiness or unworthiness, as a selling point for products that have no animate capabilities, is a deeply imperfect way to assess whether feminism is “working” or not because it’s less about feminism than about capitalism.

Advertising and marketing philosophies that thrive on emphasizing “natural” differences don’t stay in the realm of advertising and marketing—they spill into how we justify sexism and racism at every life stage.

The central conflict, which I hope has been made clear throughout this book, is that while feminist movements seek to change systems, marketplace feminism prioritizes individuals.

Defining “feminist” as “a woman who lives the life she chooses” is great if you’re a woman who already has choices. But it does nothing for the vast majority on the outside of the conference hall, waiting in vain for that empowerment to trickle down.

So when we hear from those people—and, oh, do we hear from them—that feminism should modulate its voices, ask nicely for the rights it seeks, and keep anger and stridency out of the picture, let’s remember that large-scale social change doesn’t result from polite requests and sweet-talking appeasements. But make no mistake, that’s what marketplace

Instead of teaching girls actual self-advocacy and confidence, a shift toward increasingly gendered capitalism turned Girl Power into little more than a cute, chauvinist retail fad.