Rather than strengthening feminism from the inside—reiterating core values and amplifying the multiplicity of voices past and present that have contributed to feminist movements—a rebrand is outward-focused, a recruitment effort to make feminism appeal to as broad an audience as possible by distilling it down to an image and a few words.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
The ego, already so key to effective advertising, is indispensible to empowertising, with its emphasis on the “personal sell” that takes the focus off objective value and places it firmly within the buyer’s sense of individual mythology.
Andi Zeisler • We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement
In the end, matriarchy isn’t the fear. Rather, it’s the idea that women will define their own value, and their own futures, on their own terms instead of by terms men have laid out—put differently, that each gender, and each individual, will have the power to determine their own destiny.
Anne Helen Petersen • Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
Often, you’ll see this billed as “choice” or as women pursuing personal happiness because the language of feminism has been neatly co-opted by a strain of peculiarly American individualism.