They create interesting shapes, tessellating or linking in a chain of bodies and outstretched hands. Rather than ask for some fundamental re-adjustment to be made to the external world, ‘confidence-building’ initiatives render the woman herself accountable for her own empowerment. Having demonstrated the workings of the ‘funhouse mirror’ in the first chapter, the following chapters crystallize around ‘Shame’, ‘Confidence’ and ‘Competence’ as discursive fields within which popular feminism and misogyny compete. 1, https://maifeminism.com/the-lessons-we-have-learnt-how-sexism-in-american-politics-sparked-off-the-new-feminist-renaissance/ (last accessed 21 November 2019). More than just ‘making visible’ or even using the camera in a different way, we need to burst bubbles in order to look for, expose and reintegrate all that is obscured and buried by economies of visibility. The resulting advertising images show women viewed intimately from un unusual overhead perspective, against a cream, watery backdrop. Boljak was at least officially commissioned, while the labour of others remains invisible, such as when Flavia Dzodan’s words on intersectionality were commercialised without context and without her permission. Reading it, for example, made me especially alert to the link between the two campaigns mentioned above, the marketing for Weekday Swim and the Clean Clothes Campaign action against H&M. McRobbie, Angela (2009), The Aftermath of Feminism, London: Sage. It was exciting to see a major brand amplifying women’s creativity and celebrating diverse beauty, while actively promoting discussion and critique of the male gaze. The feminism explored in Banet-Weiser’s Empowered is what she deems ‘popular feminism’, which involves gender equality projects widely accessible in public media – broadcast, television, advertising, online and social media. Wearing the minimalist swimwear, the women’s differences and individual traits are emphasised (hairstyle or shaved head, tattoos, body shape, skin colour) as well as their togetherness: the women are shown touching or in connecting patterns, in groups or pairs. Rottenberg, Catherine (2014), ‘The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism’, Cultural Studies Vol. In the terms of popular feminism, we must ‘love our bodies’ and to do so we must expose them to potential humiliation: ‘Can you love your body in a culture that says you should hate it? [1] The video remains available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAGnK8nA2Qs and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/345963735 (last accessed 21 November 2019). Banet-Weiser’s analysis of the ‘Am I Pretty’ genre of online videos (2018: 78-83) exemplifies this structure, as girls post videos that both expose their low self-esteem and invite bolstering validation. These tend to ‘confine us to our own information neighbourhood, unable to see or explore the rest of the enormous world of possibilities that exist online’. Welcome back. Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics. It is not surprising that in our world, radical demands find their most visible distillation into easily digestible, commodifiable moments of self-branding. When Twitter feminists critique the way the black British novelist Bernadine Evaristo was made to share the Booker prize with a white woman (Margaret Atwood) whose mainstream fame was already far more established, is it too far-fetched to hope that such consciousness-raising will help to change the way women writers of colour are treated and valued in the future? Then, at the other end of the line, there’s Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 women initiative, a programme that ‘fosters economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business and management education’. This question brings me back to the example of Weekday Swim 2019. Specifically, how popular misogyny reacts against and challenges popular feminism. Like Banet-Weiser herself, we might even have had fleeting moments of optimism, as we have been able ‘to imagine a culture in which feminism, in every form, doesn’t have to be defended; it is accessible, even admired’. November 23rd 2018 | CreditsProudly supported by University of Gothenburg. [2] In other words, while the exciting, sensually appealing feminism of Boljak’s campaign for Weekday was encouraging a target audience of young consumers to buy their swimwear, the company as a whole was profiting from textile workers living in poverty. Counterpoint: men’s rights activists point to how men’s confidence has been hard done by through feminism. (Dzodan 2016) In the piece ‘My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit’, which triggered a huge number of commodities emblazoned with the title phrase and refrain, Dzodan also proposed playing ‘connect the dots’, noticing angrily the gaps through which feminism repeatedly fails women of colour. Visibility can also mean a spotlight or surveillance: it can be dangerous. Whether you are an inspired reader or a feminist author, we’d be delighted to hear from you.