Selling Feminism?

Looking at how media uses "commodity feminism" by using watered-down feminism in advertisements not for real social change, but to earn profit, which devalues #feminism      

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Audi #DriveProgress Big Game Campaign: “Daughter”

Progress is in every decision we make, every technology we invent, every vehicle we build. It’s our past, our future, our reason to exist. Audi of America is...

“this commercial is not exactly feminist”

“it feels disempowering to have a man explain sexism”

“attempting to associate Audi with feminist ideals, but the reality is that with no female board members.”

Taken from Nichole Fernández’s 2017 article, “The Problem with Femvertising” Sociological Pages

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“Celebrity Feminism” and choice

Professor Anita Brady’s article, “Taking time between g-string changes to educate ourselves,” explores how celebrities have adopted feminism and talks about the disagreement among celebrities. During third-wave feminism, or recent feminism, activists focused on the importance of “choice.” This has led to controversy as whether or not women, especially celebrities, portraying their bodies sexually is liberating or merely self-objectification supported by the music/media industry.

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Choice feminism: Time to ‘choose’ another argument

There’s much ado about “choice feminism” lately and some of it surely a bit of healthy autocriticism. If feminism means anything, after all, then it means nothing. “Choice feminism” — the idea that feminism means women can individually choose whatever they wish and consider it an inherently feminist act — is certainly an insidious outgrowth ...

Read  Feministing article about choice feminism, which the author, Katherine Cross, calls the “the commodification of empowerment.”  

Sociologist Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She specializes in online harassment and gender in virtual worlds research. 

Read about commodity feminism here 

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This Vogue advertisement “ caused a lot of back lash a couple years ago. What do you think? 

“They talk about empowerment when they are themselves slave to consumerism.”

Read the critique here.    

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The Society Pages (TSP) is an open-access social science project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota

A sociologist perspective on using feminism in advertising. 

“Femvertising is a term used to describe mainstream commercial advertising that attempts to promote female empowerment or challenge gender stereotypes.”

“But in general the connection between female empowerment and what they actually sell is weak…Don’t try to just apply feminist concepts as an afterthought in hopes of increasing consumer sales.”

“Femvertising shouldn’t be a thing because we shouldn’t have to give a term to what responsible advertising agencies should be aiming for when they represent women.”

Nichole Fernández is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Edinburgh specializing in visual sociology. 

Commodity feminism

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Landmark 1994 Wonderbra ad--Is this feminist? 

“How is it that women’s arousal has come to be tied so closely to pleasing men?”

Rosalind Gill’s article on Midriff advertising, which “re-sexualizes women’s bodies, with the alibi of a feisty, empowered postfeminist discourse that makes it very difficult to critique.”

Gill, R. (2009). Supersexualize me. Advertising and the ‘Midriffs.” In F. Attwood (Ed.), Mainstreaming sex: The sexualization of Western culture (pp. 93-99).

Read summary here

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Why A$AP Rocky's Feminist Dior Tee is Hypocritical

A$AP Rocky wearing a $700 feminist T-shirt by Dior is hypocritical and problematic, given the A$AP Mob's track record with women.

“the track simultaneously refers to women as bitches.”

What do you think?

Watch his video here

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What is Commodity Feminism?

 “Commodity Feminism” describes how advertisement for women have adopted feminist language to seemingly invoke female empowerment, yet they are still objectifying women’s bodies and attempting to make a profit. It misuses the concept of female choice on how to present themselves. Women ultimately have to use their bodies as tools for self-expression and freedom. This means women can ultimately use only their bodies to maintain power. They become objects.  This article explains how female  advertisements capitalize on this by promoting female choice through the ability to gain wealth, beauty, and power through things or commodities (e.g. the company’s products). 

read Robert Goldman’s article that coined the term here. 

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Get on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/Were-Feminists-Once-CoverGirl®-Political/dp/1610395891

Description: 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 center 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.