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How many Instagram scrolls does it take to find an artist sporting armpit hair and a pastel-colored shirt reading, “Daddy’s girl?” There is nothing wrong with body hair or freedom of expression, but the meaning of feminism changes when it enters popular culture.
Modern feminism hit this generation primarily through the Internet. The web provides a multitude of spaces for women to start conversations about patriarchy but also gives businesses the opportunity to profit from the movement. Instagram has become a home for feminist idols because they can raise consciousness, but self-proclaimed “feminist-oriented” companies promote their designs on these women’s bodies online. Thus, feminism becomes an identity that is bought and sold.
Andi Zeisler, the founder of Bitch Media, a feminist magazine, wrote a book titled, “We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement.” In this book, Zeisler describes the trendiness of modern feminism perfectly: “Granny panties are the new feminism. That’s not me, that’s The New York Times, which, in early June 2015, featured an article on the front of its Style section … thanks to a new set of young female entrepreneurs designing Indie underpants … which features the word ‘feminist’ on the butt … Remember when we thought the horizon of feminism was going to be wage equality or universal health care? Turns out it’s underpants.”
As female empowerment becomes more popular among communities of women around the world, feminism can lose sight of tangible goals and become a monetized trend.
Below are four factors contributing to the trendiness of feminism in modern culture:
Social media has been a large force in shaping the modern feminist movement. The movement online, comprising mainly millennials, constitutes what feminism means to mainstream culture. These sites can be a great forum to raise consciousness for oppressed races, genders, and classes. It gives these communities the chance to have their voices heard in spaces where they would normally be overpowered.
However, with the growth of intersectional and non-intersectional feminism on Tumblr and Instagram, white feminism has emerged. White feminism tends to overshadow intersectional feminism because its interests are centered on white women. The most celebrated white feminists online post selfies wearing pastel “girl power” clothes, which are sent to them by companies hopping on the trend. All women’s feminist demands have some importance and validity, but social media gives the illusion white feminism is the first concern.
Stemming from white feminism and extending to all female-bodied people is the “Free the Nipple” movement. It has been the definitive political action among teenagers to fight patriarchy, partially because of its accessibility to this generation. Instagram provided a fantastic foundation for protest because of its exclusive female breast censoring. While Instagram still removes photos for qualified profanity in women’s photos, “Free the Nipple” paints a generalized photo of female struggle and shrinks how far we still have to go.
‘Free the Nipple” was successful because people understood the double standard of male and female nudity. The movement directs attention to the hyper-sexualization of the female body, but the impact of the campaign is, at most, giving women the option to show their nipples without shame. It is a step, but it should not define our goals. The larger problems such as structural economic disadvantages to women, non-intersectional analyses of disability, race, and sexuality, and the pre-discursive constitution of the gender binary are covered up.
With female empowerment entering popular culture, there is an attack and scrutiny of women’s feminist credentials. This can be seen in the endless articles quoting celebrities’ moral reasonings for not being a feminist. For example, the Huffington Post lists “10 Celebrities Who Say They Aren’t Feminists.” In this article, most of the celebrities defended their identification by calling themselves “humanists,” concerned with seeing the goodness, potential, and connection among people.
These celebrities comments tell us that feminism has become a restrictive identity in popular culture. It is an outlook that must be obtained, revised, and defended through the critical acknowledgment of patriarchy and political correctness. Scrutinizing forms of subjugation is vital to social change, but overanalyzing whether someone fits into the identity of a feminist keeps the conversation between women and distracts us from achievable goals.
Feminism as a trend is most obvious in companies and corporations who strategically sell feminist-oriented products to women. Brandy Melville, a popular brand that sells to teenage girls, is one of these companies. The store is known to discredit artists and has maintained its “one size fits all” policy for years. Plus size girls and anyone who does not fit the “one size” cannot purchase “trendy” clothes, thus adding to body and gender expectations inflicted on women.
The company has numerous shirts saying or defining “feminist,” physically labeling a fluid outlook on girls purely for relevance. One of their shirts reads, “Raise boys and girls the same way.” At first glance, this shirt seems rather positive because it encourages gender equality from a young age. However, this message is symbolic of a watered down feminism rooted in essential notions about the binary. When these shirts are mass produced and sold, their messages establish a feminist discourse that caters to cisgender, thin, middle-class women. Feminism becomes trendy for a select group of people and we are misled on what gender equality is. Raising boys and girls the same way would only work in a utopian environment where identities are static, linear, and genderless. The problem is that we are in the present day and gender is a still a huge means of identification and relation. It is unrealistic to separate it from its place in popular culture.
Feminism becoming a trend is crucial to the movement’s success, but we need to be critical. It is important to note how capitalism manifests into our daily lives and even into the spaces we construct as “safe.” Feminism is an economic, social, and environmental movement. It does not just exist on the surface of our phone screens; it is a multi-faceted discipline of thinking. In order to empower all kinds of women, we have to call out non-productive expressions of gender equality. If we let privilege do the work, white feminism will redefine the movement’s goals. Consequently, subjugated voices will not be heard and progress will not be made.
