When Branded Feminism Yells the Loudest
On this International Women’s Day, I’m tired.
Of course, I could never be as tired as women who routinely face workplace discrimination, lack of financial autonomy, sexual harassment and abuse, or racial discrimination on top of being a woman. I do recognize that the tiredness I feel is different, and by almost all stretches, not an obstacle to how I live my daily life.
Since leaving college, I definitely feel a loss of routine solidarity around gender equality. In some ways, breaking out of academia could be a good thing: discussing feminism in a classroom or with primarily white friends is an insulated privilege. But still, I’ve realized how vital “showing up” is to real-world feminism, because otherwise it’s easy to be surrounded by people either actively against feminism, apathetic to it, or co-opting it for capital.
That last point is why I feel tired. Brands have been revving up for International Women’s Day with their own versions of why they’re woke about gender equality. Snooze. This kind of corporate feminism has, in the last ten or so years, dominated the conversation around feminism. Corporate feminism is the act of assimilating the idea of “feminism” into the mainstream rather than de-constructing or re-thinking the system as a whole. It’s very much the antithesis of what feminism has been in previous waves.
Corporate Feminism
As Caroline Framke of Variety Magazine put it last month,
“Corporate feminism . . . tends to smooth the edges off the moment’s radicalism by frantically waving pink pom poms in our faces, turning the idea of “girl power” into an aesthetic. It’s not overall a terrible thing to promote encouraging messages in the name of equality, or something like it. But one side effect of being so blatantly pandered to, with the endgame of getting us to buy what they’re selling, is a bone-deep, irritated exhaustion.”
This was written as a response to the 2020 Oscars’ five minute spiel that “all women are superheroes” while continuously being unrepresentative of women in film.
Corporate feminism became a topic of discourse back in 2013 around the time Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In was published, which was both beloved and then heavily criticized for being a “mainstream, corporate vision of feminism, sidelining actual critique in place of a narrow reaffirmation of the virtues of capitalist consumerism” (Lauren Rankin, Mic).
As Michelle Obama said in 2018, “It’s not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesn’t work all the time.”
#MeToo revealed a major crack in this system. That leaning in doesn’t work when you’re being harassed, are financially dependent or don’t have a benevolent workplace culture. But corporate feminism creeps into this era, too. The Women’s March in 2017 became just as much about selfies and celebrity and white feminism as it was about real, justified rage.
I do love the “Nevertheless, She Persisted” or “A Woman Belongs in the House and Senate” or “HERstory” tote bags and stickers and shirts, too. On one hand, it’s amazing that we’re empowered enough to share these things widely and find communities of women who have gone through the same experience. On the other hand, seeing #girlboss over and over again can lead to fatigue. Saying you can do anything and living the reality that you can’t is confusing and exhausting.
You see it all the time in advertising. Dove’s “Real Beauty” and Aerie’s “#AerieREAL” are two big ones. While it’s so awesome to see all sorts of body types in mainstream marketing, does the marketing reflect the corporate structure of the organization? It is just about the bottom line? …Or does that really matter, in the end, if the conversation around beauty and bodies and equality is changing, regardless?
Even more narrowly, many companies create a one-day-only women-centered marketing campaign on International Women’s Day. You’ll see it all day today. One California station of Shell Oil will change their name to “She’ll” for a day, part of their larger “She Will” initiative–a nice little example of performative feminism.
We’ll destroy your homes in the third world but pander to you in the first world by adding an apostrophe to our name today. As a treat.
When major disasters occur, natural disasters or war, women are by far more affected. This is a common and widely accepted phenomenon. In climate disasters, 80% of displaced persons are women. What the fuck, Shell? I’m tired.
Feminism in Mainstream Conversation
Corporate feminism can also be embarrassing. It may take the edge off more “radical” forms of feminism, and therefore bring more moderates into the fold–and make discussions about feminism easier with older, more skeptical women–but it can also push people away.
It’s easy to take women less seriously who just shout “girl power” into the void. This was a very apparent phenomenon with Hillary Clinton and, more recently, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Warren’s debate attack on Sanders about him saying “a woman couldn’t be president” felt cheap and desperate. And, unfortunately, if one woman, or black person, or hispanic person, fucks up, it looks bad on the group as a whole. Yes, these women have been fighting to get a spot in the boys’ club for decades. But today, the pandering can feel empty. And I still keep hearing “I’d vote for any woman but her” over and over again, regardless of the “her.” I don’t feel like much of a #girlboss when the conversation is much the same.
I’ve noticed that corporate feminism can also feel like a relief to older generations who think we’ve finally achieved equality. Can I blame them? I often have this conversation with my female coworkers, ages ranging from mid-fifties to mid-seventies. I ask what it was like to be a teenager in the 60s during second wave feminism. “Not any different,” they say. “We were in a bubble.” As if the bubble ever went away.
When I talk about feminism today, they say that I have no idea how far we’ve come. I ask, do you? If all you ever did was watch activism from afar, how can you claim responsibility now?
Sometimes we’ll find common ground. One coworker may describe the behavior of an ex-husband, and I’ll point out that it sounds a lot like “gaslighting” one time or “mansplaining” another. Having a vocabulary for that discomfort can be empowering, and it has been for me.
Other times I’ll be reminded that these women share more ownership with their husbands or their families than I realize; that maybe their dads told them they couldn’t be this or that when they were girls; that we’re all having these conversations together in a women-owned, women-run, women-employed small business. How humbling for me, when I get caught up in thinking I know it all.
What I’m trying to point out is the constant feeling of being pulled in many different directions when it comes to the post-third or whatever wave of feminism we’ve now entered. Corporate feminism feels so glossy, but the actual hodgepodge of marketing and conversation and internet talk feels so messy.
Combatting the Fatigue
Sometimes I think about the irony that I primarily exist in traditionally feminine spaces. I have a typically female-heavy English degree, I freelance in a female-dominant categories (travel magazines and nonprofits), and, most apparent, I sew clothing at a local alterations shop.
As Maureen Daly Goggin puts it in Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles,
“Needlework has been both a domestic and domesticating labor, both a tool of oppression and an instrument of liberation, both a professional endeavor and a leisure pastime, both an avenue for crossing class boundaries and a barrier confirming class status. It has been constructed and pursued as a religious duty and a secular pleasure, as a prison sentence and an escape, as an innocuous pastime and a powerful political weapon . . . Reviled and celebrated, it has nevertheless been a significant cultural practice of meaning-making.”
Sewing, knitting, and needlework are no longer the visual creation of a woman’s space, but the visual creation of the wider world as women see it. It was born out of a common craft that created a rhetorical space for women to voice, and make physical, a desire for change.
Though sewing and needlework are becoming more common practice again due to this rhetorical space, many women and female-identifying people still do not sew. How else can we celebrate International Women’s Day in long-term, sustainable ways? Here are a few ideas that I’ll be working on myself:
Be skeptical about the women-centered marketing today, and everyday, from companies who want to co-opt the conversation to be trendy and target a demographic. Women aren’t a monolith.
Watch, read and support women-led/written/owned movies, books, and businesses
Create your own rhetorical spaces: through social media, book clubs, at work, in protest, through volunteering, etc.
Volunteer in your community! I’ve found this to be especially vital to being intersectional and learning about the many different facets of women’s lives beyond my own
Listen and learn. It may sound broad, but when everyone has a voice on the internet, it can be difficult to have nuanced conversations about struggles, issues and resources. We can recognize the challenges women have overcome, the progress we’ve made, and the fight that lies ahead at the same time. There is room to hold all those things at once.
There is much more, of course. Feminism isn’t just for women; gender equality affects everyone in fundamental ways. Even though I’m more exhausted than usual on this International Women’s Day, I’m still inspired. Because through the crap of branded voices, the ones that ring louder are those of everyday women sharing their stories and lifting each other up. That keeps me going.
So Happy International Women’s Day, everyone. Here I am, real woman, if you’d like to talk.
