We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
amazon.com
Saved by Gabrielle Vendette and
We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
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.
Andi Zeisler • 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.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
But reinscribing feminism as something you dress in or consume, rather than something you do, accomplishes nothing—not for you as an individual, and not for how women as a whole are viewed, valued, and validated in this culture.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
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
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
Empowertising not only builds on the idea that any choice is a feminist choice if a self-labeled feminist deems it so, but takes it a little bit further to suggest that being female is in itself something that deserves celebration.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
The business of marketing and selling to women literally depends on creating and then addressing female insecurity, and part of the revelatory potential of women’s lib involved rejecting the marketplace’s sweet-talking promises about life-changing face creams and shampoos—not to mention the entire premise of women as decorative objects.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
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.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
The feminist uncanny valley is the result of a larger neoliberal framework that over the past five decades has come to unite politics, economics, and culture in a web of individualism, privatization, and decreasing focus on both community and compassion.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
What girl power meant in a post–Riot Grrrl world was simply whatever elevated girls as consumers.