Normally I do not finish nonfiction nearly this quickly, but Zeisler's voice is compulsively readable - and, of course, feminist analyses of pop culture are pretty much my thing (and what my degree is essentially in). I was actually expecting it to be a bit more on the excoriating side (which I would have enjoyed), but I suppose the irony of the book is that in order to sell it to a mass market the argument has to be a bit more even-keel than I might have anticipated. I do feel that occasionally Zeisler's argument got away from her: while her look into the structural inequality in the film industry was very interesting, it didn't necessarily neatly or obviously link to her thesis about the commodification of feminism.
For that matter, my biggest gripe about the book is that it didn't quite delve deep enough into the commodification aspect. The book was as much about economics as it was feminism, but it didn't portray itself that way. This topic is almost begging for more overt Marxist analysis, but aside from directly referencing Marx's concept of commodity fetishism Zeisler mainly tiptoed around Marxism. I mean, much of her argument is based on how feminism has become an individualist movement, and individualism is at the heart of Marxist analyses of capitalism. I really feel that her point would have been much more potent had she engaged more deeply with Marxism. There are great Marxist feminist essays which emphasize how capitalism and patriarchy cannot be viewed separately, and surely the commodification of feminism is a topic which warrants this type of two-pronged approach.
That said, this was a very enjoyable read due both to Zeisler's smart but very accessible and entertaining writing style and her argument about how feminism has been commodified and watered down so as to be a meaningless, amorphous brand rather than a political movement. Her examples were all contemporarily relevant and illustrative. Compared to Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, another prominent work of feminist cultural analysis, I'd say that her cultural examples were a little more relevant, though it's true that the book just came out and most were very timely - I wonder how they'll hold up over the years. Regardless, I'd definitely recommend this one to people who are interested in such topics. It's very refreshing for those who, like me, are more than a little tired of how the term "feminist" has come to indicate almost nothing.
