Abstract
In this paper we explore the use of feminist themes in contemporary advertisement campaigns, emphasizing their appropriation of the notion of empowerment. The analysis of this “commodity feminism” shows that, despite its potential emancipatory aspects, the uses of the notion in advertisement reveal an individualizing meaning that is ideologically compatible with the ethos of late capitalism and with forms of subjectivation that emphasize self-consciousness, self-government, independence, individual success, and freedom to choose. Such conception is at odds with the collective commitment to structural changes that characterized the notion of empowerment developed by second wave feminists. If the feminist slogan according to which “the personal is political” linked individual self-transformation to social transformation, the idea of empowerment advanced in femvertising negates that commitment to structural changes by implying that “the political is personal”. We illustrate these arguments with the analysis of an advertising campaign developed by the brand Always. Here we show how the political dimension in theories of second wave feminists such as Carol Gilligan and Iris M. Young can be appropriated in a way that make their ideas compatible with a neoliberal ethos and their specific forms of subjectivation.
Keywords:
Feminism; Advertising; Empowerment; Subjectivation