Book review: We were feminists once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the buying and selling of a political movement

In We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, The Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, Andi Zeisler, cofounder of Bitch Media, takes readers on a whirlwind tour through what she calls contemporary feminism’s “uncanny valley” (p. 74). From “empowering” commercials for tampons, to underwear emblazoned with feminist slogans, to celebrities embracing the once maligned f-word like the latest designer handbag, to corporate CEOs aligning the movement’s rhetoric with capitalist values, Zeisler documents popular culture’s cooptation of “facsimiles” of feminist “ideas, objects, and narratives that are, on closer inspection, almost exclusively about personal identity and consumption” (p. 74). Zeisler’s book, as entertaining to read as it is thoroughly researched, draws on a plethora of media texts, consumer goods, historical moments, and cultural phenomena to introduce a popular audience to the steady rise of marketplace feminism. Marketplace feminism presents a world in which “there’s a mainstream, celebrity, consumer embrace of feminism that positions it as a cool, fun, accessible identity that anyone can adopt” (p. xiii), a significant shift from the well-documented cultural moment of postfeminism, in which feminism was acknowledged but repudiated. For feminist activists, the diffusion of the movement into mainstream consumer culture may feel like cause for celebration, given that, particularly in the United States, feminism has struggled against decades of stereotyping, belittlement, and backlash. Zeisler, however, goes to great lengths to warn her readers not to buy into marketplace feminism’s powerful images, like Beyoncé putting feminism’s name in lights at the 2014 Video Music Awards. Rather than indicating a moment of true feminist revolution, marketplace feminism obfuscates the fact that “most of the problems that have necessitated feminist movements to begin with are still very much in place” (p. xii). This includes, in the United States, the continued cuts to welfare programs, the systematic retraction of women’s reproductive rights, the gendered wage gap, the lack of childcare resources or paid family leave, and the perpetuation of rape culture, to name just a few. The book is divided into two parts. In Part 1, Zeisler traces consumer culture’s “new embrace” of feminism, albeit a version decoupled from political analyses of structural power and focused exclusively on individual experiences. The first chapter lays the foundation for the rest of the book with a rich historical analysis of the development of “the idea that purchasing itself was a feminist act” (p. 4). From Lucky Strike cigarettes’ 1929 “torches of freedom” to Always’ 2015 “Like a Girl” campaign, Zeisler argues that feminism’s emphasis on women’s autonomy has dovetailed all too nicely with capitalism’s emphasis on self-actualization through consumption. These parallels became even more salient with the 1980s rise of “choice feminism” in tandem with the spread of neoliberalism, both of which boiled “empowerment” down to individual decisions rather than collective action. The marketplace’s emptying of feminism’s politics in favor of a one-dimensional Book reviews 694043 CTP0010.1177/2057047317694043Communication and the PublicBook Reviews book-reviews2017