Gaia

to be accepted in our physical and spiritual beings rather than feeling we had to make ourselves into a fantasy self to become the object of male desire).

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.

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.