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.

As with branding, celebrity isn’t about complexity, but about offering up an enticing package that the largest number of people can understand with the smallest amount of effort.

Neoliberalism was curdling into an I’ve-got-mine-so-fuck-you attitude toward social responsibility, and there was a whole new corner of American media intent on mourning a time when nobody was forced to acknowledge things like inequality, institutional bias, or offensive language. “Political

Advertising has one job to do, and it’s not to reflect the nuances of social movements.

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.

I call it marketplace feminism. It’s decontextualized. It’s depoliticized. And it’s probably feminism’s most popular iteration ever.

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.

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 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.