We looked at a series of ads which seemed to promote female empowerment and choice and asked: “What is the purpose of these ads?”

We acknowledged that, at its core, advertising is a capitalist practice. These ads emphasize individual psychological change rather than structural inequalities. Their purpose is to sell products rather than fuel activism and institutional change. In some cases, this insidious popular ‘feminism’ takes the form of supposedly empowering messages for girls and women; however, upon critical examination, such messaging actually only ’empowers’ girls to become neoliberal consumerist subjects. In other cases, representations of women in advertisements reclaim harmful stereotypes, positioning them as innate or even desirable for female consumers. This embrace of the stereotypically “feminine” is distinctly postfeminist. Lastly, advertisers capitalizes on feminine insecurities about the gendered body, using a market-inspired rhetoric of “self-esteem” and “real beauty” as a primary promotional vehicle, which is characteristic of the contradictions of a postfeminist ethos.

We categorized these ads a post-feminist because the women have the agency to choose how they are presented as they have control over their bodies. Moreover, they can express this choice through purchasing products which manifest this agency.