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I call it marketplace feminism. It’s decontextualized. It’s depoliticized. And it’s probably feminism’s most popular iteration ever.
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.
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
When it comes to women’s and gender equality, backlash will probably always sell better than consensus, individual exceptionalism better than collective effort, and choice better than almost anything else.
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
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.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
Empowertising and femvertising are both ways to talk about the business of selling to women without conflating examples of that business with actual feminism.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
It shouldn’t be a radical notion that the experiences of women have the potential to be as universal and as broadly felt as those of men.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
One thing almost everyone could agree on however, was this: there is a very fine line between celebrating feminism and co-opting it.