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.

One thing almost everyone could agree on however, was this: there is a very fine line between celebrating feminism and co-opting it.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The insidiousness of second-generation gender bias—informal exclusion, lack of mentors and role models, fear of conforming to stereotypes—colluded with the ideological spread of neoliberalism to recast institutional inequity as mere personal challenges.