#consumerism and feminism

[haggishlyhagging]

The history of drawing on feminist language and theory to sell products has been driven by the idea that female consumers are empowered by their personal consumer choices—indeed, that choice, rather than being a means to an end, is the end itself. The idea that it matters less what you choose than that you have the right to choose is the crux of "choice feminism," whose rise coincided with the rapid, near-overwhelming expansion of consumer choice that began in the 1980s. Consumption, always associated with status, became elevated as a measure of liberation and swelled with the self-obsession of the privileged but insecure. Tom Wolfe identified this dynamic in his coinage of the term "Me Decade," and later satirized it in his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Historian Christopher Lasch, author of the 1979 bestseller The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, laid the enshrinement of a cycle of consumption and neediness at the doorstep of the advertising and marketing industries, but also excoriated left-wing movements, feminism included, as enablers. (The temperamentally antifeminist Lasch would later target burgeoning marketplace feminism in his posthumously published collection Women and the Common Life, writing that "the feminist movement, far from civilizing corporate capitalism, has been corrupted by it. It has adopted mercantile habits of thought as its own.")

The feminist cultural historian and media critic Susan J. Douglas has noted, for instance, that the success of advertising to women in the 1980s hinged on its effective pairing of status and power with liberation. As neoliberal, greed-is-good, if-I-have-an-umbrella-it-must-not-be-raining rhetoric became the common tongue of the overclass, luxury beauty products, designer labels, and exercise regimens (Buns of Steel, anyone?) became liberatory achievements, rather than mere consumer goods. "For women in the age of Reagan," wrote Douglas, "elitism and narcissism merged in a perfect appeal to forget the political already, and get back to the personal, which you might be able to do something about.” The representations of choice in a time of tacit postfeminism translated neatly into what could be called "empowertising"—an advertising tactic of lightly invoking feminism in acts of exclusively independent consuming.

Take the infamous 1994 billboards for Wonderbra that featured model Eva Herzigova looking down in delight at her suddenly pneumatic breasts swelling out of a scalloped black bra, alongside the words "Hello Boys." The Wonderbra had been sold in the UK since the mid-1960s, but sales rocketed up thanks to the billboards. The ads worked so well in part because they were tongue-in-check (others in the series read "Look me in the eyes and tell me you love me" and "... Or are you just happy to see me?"), but also because they assumed a level of what feminist theorist Angela McRobbie calls "feminism taken into account"—a belief that the movement's success has rendered it irrelevant as something to be considered in shaping culture. You can almost hear the rationale proffered in the Wonderbra billboard concept review: "This would seem sexist if we didn't know better, but we do know better, and because women know we know better, this is, in fact, empowering." If Herzigova, Kate Moss, and the millions of other women who sent Wonderbras flying out of department stores were making the choice to wear this underpinning, and they’re exhibiting sexual agency in doing so, such logic went, what's more feminist than that?

There are no concrete numbers on how many consumers indulged that postmodern reading of the ads, but based on Herzigova's own reflections twenty years later, probably not a ton. Recalling the billboards (which, in 2011, were voted the most iconic ever by Britain's Outdoor Media Centre), she initially told the UK's Mail Online, "My Wonderbra campaign empowered women.... It didn't degrade them like some said." But in the same article, Herzigova complained that when she tried to shift from modeling to acting, Hollywood executives wanted to check out her underthings first: "I met people who said, Yes, we can talk about the movie over dinner. I was, like, What dinner? I can just read the script here." The fact that the supposedly empowering ad did nothing to chip away at the routine sexualization of women—that it might have further galvanized it, even—didn't seem to register.

-Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once

[6-beez]

One facet of female solidarity that needs more discussion is anti consumerism and anti consumption. Our current western mindset is one of obtaining as much as possible, both as a show of wealth and for personal comfort. However, much of what we buy (for example, fast fashion) is produced in a non-transparent supply chain that frequently relies on female and Global South labor to make goods cheap and easily affordable, and thus more tempting for the consumer. These low wages that are paid to workers result in economic desperation and trap women in poorly paid, often abusive positions. Additionally, women and children are the most at risk from the negative effects of climate change, which is exacerbated by industrialization and over production.

By consuming less we reduce support for these predatory supply chains and their deleterious effects on the environment. Ideally if we buy goods, they are from female owned businesses whenever possible. Personally I also avoid spending money on items that enforce the beauty standard (this includes makeup, uncomfortable or impractical clothes or shoes, and cosmetic procedures). Essentially, what ways could you support female solidarity through consumption habits?

[she-is-ovarit]

It's all connected. Corporations began marketing gay pride themed merchandise. An increase in "I-identify-as" populations began to flood gay bars and events, where outward appearance (marketed as "gender expression") became heavily emphasized.

Commercial visibility and marketability does not equal human rights progress.

Ability to consume does not equal citizenship to an oppressed group.

Biology, (referring to sexual orientation and sex) is not a brand you can buy into or boycott out of.

Corporations selling rainbows do not reflect our values.

The churning out of new "all inclusive" pride flags to pledge allegiance to is not indicative of liberation.

A historical homosexual slur being sold by the multi-billion dollar media obfuscates predominantly lesbian relationships ("queer women", "queer relationship") and retraumatizes many gay and lesbian people.

Gay pride only extending to people able to purchase detracts from the meaning of gay pride and distracts from the struggles of the most vulnerable. It positions the most privileged within marginalized and oppressed groups as those who represent the whole.

And associating body modification, aestheticism, and "expression" with self identity turns the lived experiences and material realities of entire subgroups of people into niche market categories that people who aren't even a part of these groups can identify into and out of based on social trends.

Biology becomes devalued, overshadowed by the social and manufactured "genders". Infinite genders means infinite target audiences. Lived, material realities of certain groups of people become materialism.

Human rights movements are becoming human rights industries, with the wealthy more directly capitalizing off of the exploitation of the poor, of the homosexual, of the female, of the immigrant, of the dark skinned, of the mentally ill, of the disabled, of the sick, of the marginalized and oppressed.

Don't buy into it.

[sunbeamedskies]

I love Taylor Swift, but you all have got to stop falling for the media pitting women against each other.

Billie was most likely not shading Taylor- she was talking about how she personally does not want to do a 3 hour show, and she believes her fans don’t want her to do one either. She also emphasized releasing multiple versions of physical albums that aren’t eco friendly is a systemic industry issue.

I’m a huge Taylor fan, but not every comment another artist makes is specifically about Taylor.

The amount of people here who see anything that could vaguely be criticism of Taylor as a personal attack is not healthy. If you are prone to jumping to conclusions, you need to take a step back from the internet and chill. The media LOVES framing quotes from someone like Billie as being 100% about someone like Taylor because it gets them clicks.

Taylor is also not flawless. She is one of MANY musicians who release multiple versions of albums as part of cash grabs. She doesn’t need to do it- she’s the hugest musician on Earth- but there’s such a pressure to do so that she does. There’s nothing wrong with wanting her and all the other musicians who do it to do better

[barbiebutgayer]

🚨FUCK THE SUPER BOWL AND TAYLOR SWIFT!!! THE CITY OF RAFAH AND THE REST OF THE GAZA STRIP ARE UNDER ATTACK!!! MARTYRED CHILDREN DANGLING WITH THEIR LIMBS TORN, TENTS BEING BOMBED, AND THE SMELL OF DEATH EVERYWHERE!!!🚨#freepalestine and start holding ourselves and our governments accountable!!

[fem-lit]

A woman who thought she was sick with femaleness couldn’t buy an ultimate cure for her gender. But a woman who thinks she is sick with female ugliness is now being persuaded that she can.

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth

[gordiita]

it's kind of wild how a woman cannot become famous for anything anymore unless she's conventionally attractive regardless of how talented she is in her field

[grrrlwiththemostcake]

Having too much makeup or skincare products is not normal, I'm sorry but 😭

[hadesoftheladies]

"No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do."

-Dorothy Day

[catterrificposts]

It’s kind of funny how conservatives are more pissed off at Barbie which is a mostly liberal soft take on feminism, versus Oppenheimer an anti-war, pro-union, anti-us government movie. It’s almost like they don’t care about their beliefs at all and only care about aesthetics. Oppenheimer was an entirely white cast so they didn’t bother to think too hard about its themes.

[katarh-mest]

yes, Barbie failed as a critique of capitalism

and that's because I don't think the movie was even trying that hard to be a critique of capitalism in the first place, it was a critique of gender based class systems, systemic ageism, and the rigid boxes that boys and girls are put in instead

so yes of course it failed hard at the message it was not really trying to send

[bitchesgetriches]

The Pink Tax, or: How I Learned To Love Smelling Like Bearglove

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[multi-fandom-lunatic]

I absolutely think the people on booktok used to be lovers of wattpad/ao3 tropey fanfiction. A lot of the stuff that is pushed out now feels like fanfiction of an existing franchise, rather than a book/series that stands on its own. People will make videos talking about how they find uber masculine and patriarchal cis men with shadow powers hot. And because this is what the people on booktok want, I find authors are writing for the readers rather than themselves - which is never good as someone who writes. Most people do write for themselves, and books that are made to be marketable by including (usually) white male characters with shadow powers and white female protagonists who don't actually have agency sell well, yes, but they usually have tons of problems and are analysed to the moon and back by critics because of the prevalence of these tropes within original fiction, specifically romantasy, which in my opinion does read like fanfiction of already existing media. I mean, you might find the Darkling, the abusive and misogynistic villain, from shadow and bone hot but that doesn't mean we want white people to make their own similar characters to glorify and romanticise toxic behaviours that men like him show in fiction and in real life.

I'm definately not the person to be saying "back in the good old days..." but I guess I really am that person now, wishing for when fanfiction was fanfiction and literature was literature.

I do think that the commercialisation of fanfiction is the root of all the problems I've complained about in previous responses. The white feminism (fandom being hugely white, cis women), the prevelance of uber masc cis men (the bad boy trope) and and more. Companies like Wattpad churning out the worst literature you've ever read and it achieving huge fame like being adapted into TV shows is encouraging emerging authors to write like that. Use those characters. Those tropes. Market it that way.

And absolutely, authors are writing for the readers rather than themselves. Unfortunately, the loudest voices of today are the freshly adult white cis women, who haven't quite finished with their fanfiction phase.

Booktok, consumerism and commercialisation of books breed anti intellectualism, so books become no longer an art that says something about the author's morals and political views, but rather the a quick buck. And the anti intellectualism is prevalent not only in the reading material itself but also how Booktok markets/thirsts over books. One reason there are so many videos that are "Spicy enemies to lovers book recs🔥🔥🔥" and "Billionaire romance books for 2025" is because that's all the are. The characters are uncompelling and the most inside-the-box thing you've ever thing you've ever read, but they satisfy the very specific thing that the reader (all of Booktok) wants to read. Authors now think that a mish mash of different tropes and cookie cutter characters is acceptable writing, because now more than ever, since writing is driven by profit, they need to appeal to the tropes and consumerist nature of Booktok. Gone are the days of analysing a good book to death and finding metaphors and analogies that never would've been caught upon a first time read.

And authors don't really care about the writing of their book anymore, really. They just care if it goes "Booktok viral" and as long as it does that, they don't really care what critics say. People now buy a book based on how much Booktok says they should, not by reviews, I suppose.

Romance, Fantasy and any version of the two genres suffer most anon, I agree. Probably because these are two very common genres for fanfiction to be in. There's so many (toxic) preexisting tropes that fall under these two tropes that Booktok wants to put into literature. So many versions of "Bad boy/billionaire/mafia/werewolf/vampire" tropes that authors seem to close their eyes and grab at a few and write a book like that (and then have the audacity to market it like "If Harry Potter was like Beauty and Beast but darker and spicy and it's also a Hades and Persephone feminist retelling").

I hate to demonise authors in the way I'm doing right now, but a lot of them really are adding fuel to the fire that is the shitshow of Booktok. I'm no published author, but I do write quite a bit (dare I say, it's my whole life), and I actively avoid doing what Booktok does. So, critiquing writers is really me critiquing the shitty position they were put into (writing shitty, problematic books).

If what's on Booktok is any indication of what the effect of this toxic, misogynistic, racist turn of literature is, then I fear for the nostalgia baited adults and sucked in teens of Booktok.

Again, thanks for the ask! I'm back to feeling a little less in the dumps right now, so feel free to send more. I'll answer them ASAP.

[hussyknee]

Tfw you see a listicle titled "Celebrities Who Have Aged Like Fine Wine" and two-thirds of them are between 30 and 45.

At this rate Hollywood's gonna take people who've hit 40 behind a barn and shoot them in the head like a lame horse.

[areniscaa]

The message of Sabrina Carpenter's new aesthetic has several things wrong (especially in Espresso and Please Please Please)

To clarify, in general, straight white American women making pop are not my thing, but Sabrina Carpenter is on another level. This is not a criticism of her as a person, but of her as a product, mind you, and I'm going to try to make a constructive criticism, so if anyone responds to me, please do so with respect.

I find it absurd that feminism and human identity in general are all about revolution, social change, and looking beyond capitalism and consumerism, and now Carpenter comes along to hypersexualize herself with an aesthetic that includes pastel colors (including the horrible baby blue, which many people might think I'm exaggerating, but the idea of ​​sexualizing herself with a color traditionally associated with childhood gives me the creeps), pretty, generally "adorable" things, plus perfect hair removal, makeup, and all that. I'm not saying that makeup is bad and that in general it's bad to have a certain self-expression of image, but in this case all of this is encompassed within an aesthetic of "Oh, I'm just a girl, my boyfriend is a bad boy but I'm not going to leave him, long live makeup and consumerism, I'm blonde and American."

I find it very unpleasant and as much as that "I'm just a girl" thing was created by girls as a way of claiming that women can be traditionally feminine without being a vase, as opposed to the idea of ​​a super aggressive "girl boss" that, well, basically rewarded women who had traditionally masculine characteristics, I think it's gotten out of hand and I feel that, although the album may have a deeper intention and all that, the message that all of this aesthetic conveys is that life is much easier if you don't think and look for a hegemonic man and that worries me a lot.

For example, in the espresso video, all the girls are the same, with the same bodies, equally shaved, and they give their perfect boyfriends their credit cards to fill them with whims and that turns my stomach.

One last note is that this whole text is written from the perspective of gender binarism, but of course gender is a spectrum and I feel aesthetics like Sabrina Carpenter's can cause dysmorphia.

[fem-lit]

A worshiper who does not feel guilty cannot be counted on to support the Church; a woman who does not feel damaged cannot be relied on to spend money for her “repair.”

— Naomi Wolf (1990) The Beauty Myth