Denise Duhamel<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I admit that I was drawn to the title of Andi Zeisler\u2019s We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl<\/em>\u00ae<\/em><\/strong>, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement<\/em> because of my own poem \u201cBikini Kill Villanelle.\u201d\u00a0 In it I chronicle the Spice Girls\u2019 co-opting of the Riot Grrrl movement, in turn de-politicizing \u201cgrrrls,\u201d de-fanging them of all those extra \u201cr\u201ds, rendering \u201cGirl Power\u201d an accessory available at the mall.\u00a0 I sensed in a poetic, rather intuitive way how this happened.\u00a0 But Zeisler\u2019s We Were Feminists Once<\/em> gives me (and all other thinking people) the political and historical chops to understand \u201cmarketplace feminism,\u201d a vibrant, flourishing oxymoron.\u00a0 Zeisler documents the strong presence of feminism in 1970\u2019s pop culture, with Helen Reddy\u2019s battle cry\/hit song, a feminism that captured my imagination as a teenager when I could reconcile my love of pop culture with my budding political views.\u00a0 By the 1980s, the backlash was in full force with movies such as Fatal Attraction<\/em> and The Witches of Eastwick.\u00a0 <\/em>Then 1990\u2019s feminism came back strong with The Riot Grrrl movement only to be squashed by Camile Paglia\u2019s A Natural History of Rape,<\/em> which dropped like an anvil on all of our heads in 2000.\u00a0 Slow-forward, with exacting arguments, humor, and grace, Zeisler breaks down how corporations and media have most recently embraced a surface view of feminism which is all about \u201cempowerment\u201d tinged with just the right amount of stink to capitalize on a woman\u2019s self doubts and make her reach for her wallet.<\/p>\n Zeisler\u2019s most hauntingly describes \u201cthe uncanny valley\u201d of corporate feminism that uses the language of feminism to embrace exceedingly un-feminist ideas, leaving consumers a little off kilter.\u00a0 She cites Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s Lean In<\/em> which, using feminist rhetoric, encourages conformity to embrace corporate culture instead of dismantling that culture.\u00a0 Other \u201cuncanny\u201d examples occur when Maxim<\/em> magazine is described as \u201cfeminist\u201d because Taylor Swift is on the cover and she says she\u2019s<\/em> feminist.\u00a0 Or when The Bachelorette<\/em> is deemed feminist because it allows female promiscuity. While I agree that there are indeed feminisms (plural), Ziesler makes a rather hilarious observation in which celebrities are asked their<\/em> definitions of feminism, as if a definition doesn\u2019t already exist.\u00a0 She also deftly and concisely chronicles feminism\u2019s waves (we are on wave four) and the hallmark tenets of each.<\/p>\n In We Were Feminists Once<\/em>, Zeisler calls out the crazy ways in which feminism is portrayed in the media, all the while keeping real issues of inequality off the table.\u00a0 She cites loophole feminists (those who believe they are so evolved that they don\u2019t need feminism\u2014think Paglia and Naomi Wolf\u2019s \u201cpower feminism\u201d which is posited against what she calls \u201cvictim feminism\u201d); bizarro feminists (like Sarah Palin and the Washington Post\u2019<\/em>s assertion \u201cPro-life Feminism is the Future!\u201d); trickle-down feminists (Tressie McMillan Cottom characterizing Anne-Marie Slaughter\u2019s Atlantic <\/em>article \u201cWhy Women Still Can\u2019t Have It All<\/a>\u201d); and straw feminists (like Polly Vernon who writes about the joys of getting catcalled).<\/p>\n In this book, feminism is also seen through the neoliberal prism that dictates a woman\u2019s choices affect only that particular<\/em> woman, thus denying the power of feminist community.\u00a0\u00a0 Zeisler links this to \u201cchoice feminism,\u201d a consumer-driven feminism in which women seemingly have the choice to wear makeup or not, get Botox or not (one ad\u2019s tagline is the faux empowering \u201cI did it for me\u201d), wear push-up bras or not.\u00a0 These false choices are, of course, from a narrow menu of conventional beauty standards.\u00a0 And we are left with a sinking sense that a woman\u2019s \u201cchoice\u201d in and of itself is a feminist choice so there is no way to judge or evaluate any decision as marketplace feminism flatters and privileges the individual.\u00a0 The book\u2019s analysis of Dove\u2019s Campaign for Real Beauty is especially fascinating.\u00a0 You may remember all those \u201creal\u201d Dove women in print advertising\u2014non-models who agreed to pose in their underwear in celebration of their curvy bodies.\u00a0 This \u201cbody boosterism\u201d was embraced by many women, myself included, and I remember talking about the campaign with my friends.\u00a0 But a closer look at the ad strategy revealed that Dove used it to sell a cream to battle cellulite, doing little in the end to change beauty perceptions and perhaps, most depressingly, reaffirming beauty as such an important concept to women in the first place.<\/p>\n Zeisler\u2019s book will make you think and re-think feminism whose very core is at odds with capitalism.\u00a0 So how can we brand feminism?\u00a0 Should we even try?\u00a0 She confirms and explains the strange sensation many of us had seeing Beyonce dance in front of the word FEMINIST in bright lights. \u00a0Zeisler writes, \u201cthere is a very fine line between celebrating feminism and co-opting it.\u201d\u00a0 And after reading We Were Feminists Once<\/em>, I no longer have just a poetic hunch.\u00a0 Instead I have a much stronger sense of where that fine line is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl<\/em>\u00ae<\/strong>, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement<\/em><\/p>\n Andi Zeisler<\/p>\n PublicAffairs Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Denise Duhamel I admit that I was drawn to the title of Andi Zeisler\u2019s We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl\u00ae, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement because of my own poem \u201cBikini Kill Villanelle.\u201d\u00a0 In it I chronicle the Spice Girls\u2019 co-opting of the Riot Grrrl movement, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}