Feminism has hit the big time. Once a dirty word brushed away with a grimace, feminist" has been rebranded as a shiny label sported by movie and pop stars, fashion designers, and multi-hyphenate powerhouses like Beyoncé. It drives advertising and marketing campaigns for everything from wireless plans to underwear to perfume, presenting what's long been a movement for social justice as just another consumer choice in a vast market. Individual self-actualization is the goal, shopping more often than not the means, and celebrities the mouthpieces.But what does it mean when social change becomes a brand identity? Feminism's splashy arrival at the centre of today's media and pop-culture marketplace, after all, hasn't offered solutions to the movement's unfinished business. Planned Parenthood is under sustained attack, women are still paid 77 percent,or less,of the man's dollar, and vicious attacks on women, both on- and offline, are utterly routine.Andi Zeisler, a founding editor of Bitch Media, draws on more than twenty years' experience interpreting popular culture in this biting history of how feminism has been co-opted, watered down, and turned into a gyratory media trend. Surveying movies, television, advertising, fashion, and more, Zeisler reveals a media landscape brimming with the language of empowerment, but offering little in the way of transformational change. Witty, fearless, and unflinching, We Were Feminists Once is the story of how we let this happen, and how we can amplify feminism's real purpose and power.
Feminism is a broad subject that is difficult to cover in-depth in a single book, so I'm glad that isn't the purpose of We Were Feminists Once. The primary focus of this book is how commercialisation and capitalism has impacted feminism — on one hand popularising it but on the other, trivialised pressing issues. Zeisler discusses white feminism, or "marketplace feminism" as she likes to call it, considering body politics, gender, as well as economic and social power.
One salient point throughout the book is choice. While an individual might think they have a choice, and that that is a reflection of their equal standing as woman vis-à-vis a man, Zeisler reminds readers about circumstances. Not everyone has the privilege of choice. Even when choice is presented to one, it's a veiled non-choice. Choice is limited by other personal liberties, such as time, spending power, etc.
Just because it's in vogue to claim the feminist label, what exactly are we doing that advances the cause? We've come a long way but feminism still has a lot of work ahead, which We Were Feminists explored through various chapters broken down into essays.
