THE REAL PRICE OF EMPOWERMENT
In this age of ‘fauxpowerment’, where does the real power lie?
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY AGO – possibly your entire lifetime – I used to teach feminist theory at Oxford University. Back then, our poster-thinker was Judith Butler, whose most famous works argued that gender, sexuality and man and woman as biological entities could only be determined in performance – as it played out, so to speak. Our heroine argued this in language so convoluted it rendered us cross-eyed. How we fretted, how we thrilled.
Fast-forward to 2O18, and I found myself gazing at Pret a Manger’s new gingerbread biscuits, Godfrey and Annie. Annie has a red (lipsticked?) smile, and sports a frock. However, according to Pret, neither are gingerbread men, making it clear they are gender-neutral biscuits. ‘Christ,’ I thought, ‘We did this. A couple of decades on, our elaborate academic wranglings are being packaged and sold with a “have a nice day”.’
It’s not just gingerbread snacks that are being deployed in the battleground for gender equality: in recent years, more and more brands are pushing supposedly empowering messages, often specifically aimed at women, to sell their products. And while femvertising is nothing new – hell, there are even #femvertising awards – lessons in female empowerment are being thrown at us from all corners of consumerism. Take Santander’s recent Tour de Force campaign: a ‘historical, inspirational female sightseeing cycling tour to encourage more women into banking’. Er, what? Then there was the furore over BrewDog’s pink ‘beer for women’, launched for International Women’s Day – allegedly to highlight the gender pay gap – and lambasted for being the marketing gimmick it was. As a journalist, I might receive 9OO or so emails a day, legions of them banging the empowerment drum over the latest hair thickener or protein bar.
However, in the fight for equality, weren’t there bigger, more pressing issues than the gender of your biscuit or the colour of your beer bottle?
THE REAL PRICE EMPOWERMENT OF
As it becomes one of the most overused words in the conversation around feminism, how do we cut through ‘faux powerment’ to find where the true power lies?
Aren’t these, in fact, just further examples of what one might refer to as ‘fauxpowerment’ – the overselling of false or banal so-called empowerment to women? For empowerment has become one of the most used – and abused – terms in the conversation around feminism, in a way that serves to dilute and undermine the cause itself. Bandying the word about for everything from childbirth to chocolate, fitness to floor cleaner is stripping the term of any meaning at a time when genuine power is still lamentably far from women’s grasp.
So where did this omnipresent word spring from? Its first appearance in the English-speaking West occurred in the Seventies, in relation to American black communities. Feminists began using the term in the Eighties and Nineties, tending to deploy it in reference to changes within the developing world. As the century staggered to its end, women’s magazines increasingly appropriated the word to buoy their readers, bolstered in turn by the Spice Girls’ championing of so-called ‘girl power’ (an ideology that occupied an uncertain territory encompassing pinching Prince Charles’s bottom and being nice to your pals). Then, in 1998, came HBO’s Sex And The
City, and empowerment became enmeshed with conspicuous consumption. ‘Hey, Manolo lover,’ the commercial clamour went, ‘prove your independence by enslaving yourself to a credit card’. Not only did this transfer empowerment from some sort of collective experience to an individual high, it put it firmly within the realm of the (designer) wallet, conflating consumerism with female autonomy. In 2OO3, the satirical website The Onion ran the headline ‘Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does’, with ‘does’ meaning ‘buys’.
Big business was not slow in striving to exploit the idea of ‘women’s lib’ as a commodity, a phenomenon that looked to be even mightier than the much-touted pink (ie, gay) pound. Whether it was an ‘It’ bag, an ‘It’ restaurant or an ‘It’ shoe, the ‘it’ we were being sold was empowerment; because we were worth it. The Global Financial Crisis of 2OO7–2OO8 looked to have thrown a spanner in the works of consumer feminism, but, in fact, it merely forced it underground.
When it emerged, it was no longer confined to luxury goods, but became a marketing free-for-all. Today, anything can apparently be sold as empowering, from leggings to lingerie, Weight Watchers to wine, sanitary towels to Kim Kardashian’s arse.
As Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, notes: ‘The idea of selling individual women “empowerment” can be an easy way for brands to jump on the bandwagon of a thriving feminist movement without actually engaging with the systemic, ingrained issues women are really battling. It is frustrating when we are sold the idea that women themselves could solve the problem of institutionalised discrimination and abuse by simply buying the right shampoo or T-shirt.’
That’s not to say organisations and companies can’t adopt a meaningful feminist message, ‘but they need to put their money where their mouth is if they expect it to be convincing,’ says Laura. ‘It’s no good slapping feminist quotes on your merchandise if your senior leadership is completely dominated by men, or you’re paying your female staff less than their male counterparts.’
This sheep/goats attitude – separating genuine feminist commitment from mere bandwagon leaping – lies at the heart of the issue. Kate Bosomworth, chief marketing officer at M&C Saatchi, argues that today’s fauxpowerment explosion was inspired by a handful of genuine attempts by business to engage with women’s issues. ‘The 2OO4 Dove campaign was the first of its kind,’ she tells me. ‘Then we had Pantene’s #Shine Strong, Sport England’s #ThisGirlCan – which I was involved with – and Always’ #LikeAGirl in 2O14. These campaigns were challenging, disruptive and truly tipped norms.
‘However, those that have followed suit haven’t always been that authentic. Like us, they need to apply real insight into how to solve problems and help; how to bring a truth that no one’s talked about before. Not just putting women in their adverts – consumers can see through that in a nanosecond, as they can find out very quickly whether organisations are true to their word.’
As an example of a company doing this right, Kate cites Legal & General’s head of personal investing Helena Morrissey’s decision to divest in firms that do not comply with L&G’s diversity goals, while making sure its own house is in order. As an instance of getting it wrong, she refers to Virgin’s ad in which a mother and daughter discuss women’s sport over an iPad. ‘It was a beautiful ad, but in this sensitising decade, Virgin needed to think about how diverse its brand is, how much women’s sport is on its channels, and how much it invests in women’s sport. Companies pay lip service at their peril.’
It is this lip service to empowerment that brings us so many platitudes: from one Dove campaign imitator too many informing us that our chubbiness is emancipatory, to Hollywood’s tokenistic rehashing of male-focused hits such as Ghostbusters and Wonder Woman. And so here we are, in a world in which we are presented with ‘empowering’ control knickers, rosacea cures and rosé, with power something you can buy in to so long as you’re not disempoweringly poor.
Call me a killjoy, but doesn’t this seem tawdry given that the issues women might more obviously seek empowerment over include voting access, equal pay, equal parenting, abortion rights, forced marriage, breast ironing, genital mutilation, and rape as a weapon of war? Moreover, isn’t the notion that getting your power can be reduced to the perfect pink drink a tad Marie Antoinettish at a time when the pussy-grabberin-chief occupies the White House?
In this fauxpowerment-saturated world, we need to distinguish the faux from the real deal. Sure, I bought myself a mock prefect’s badge saying ‘feminist’. It was funny and playful, and feminism is not without these qualities. But right now we need less stuff and fewer power poses: more action, progress, rights.
Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, tells me: ‘I’m not po-faced: there is a value in having fun with the message. We sell great feminist T-shirts and Tatty Devine jewellery and they get people talking. However, the concept of empowerment is something we slip into for want of something better, or clearer, to say. It suggests that women move from being powerless to powerful, when it’s more about recognising your own power, then recognising the structures and barriers designed to make women feel less powerful. It’s these barriers that need addressing: not changing the individual, but the system they find themselves in.’
As the novelist Naomi Alderman, author of the prize-winning The Power, asserts: ‘Products, my friends, are very nice. But they are not the same thing as doing the inner work to increase your confidence, or knowing you have a group of female friends to rely on, or understanding truly in your heart that the fact that you feel shit about yourself a lot of the time is not your fault and that there are societal forces trying to make women, in particular, feel shit about themselves. Enjoy the products – why not? But do the work, too.’ You said it, sister.
“BIG BUSINESS WAS not SLOW IN STRIVING TO EXPLOIT the IDEA OF ‘WOMEN’S LIB’ AS a COMMODIT Y “
“IT’S NO GOOD SLAPPING FEMINIST QUOTES on YOUR MERCHANDISE if YOU’RE PAYING FEMALE STAFF LESS”