What is empowerment?

Though it is difficult to find one overarching, universally applicable definition of ’empowerment,’ A Dictionary of Gender Studies defines it as “A concept that refers to the giving or delegation of authority to someone to enable them to deal on their own or others’ behalf” (Grifin). This is often understood in relation to feminism as the process through which women are given the power to control their own lives and have access to opportunities to which they have historically been denied.

How is this being deployed in advertising? Why does it matter?

In recent decades, so-called ‘third-wave feminism’ or ‘post-feminism’ has shifted understandings of feminism from a focus on structural inequities to an individualized, depoliticized, commercialized, “defanged” feminism (Anderson 8). In this post-feminist world, women are encouraged to “focus on their private lives and consumer capacities as a means of self-expression and agency,” rather than on collective action (Anderson 1, 6).

As this new ‘feminism’ has made its way into the mainstream, companies have coopted “some of the language of the feminism movement such as ’empowerment’ and ‘choice'” in order to sell their products (Anderson 1). Though this has the appearance of what may now be termed ‘wokeness,’ brands simultaneously advance a neoliberal strain of feminism that prevents substantial political engagement and tell women that “without [a] product or service, [women] will never reach their goal[s]” (Prins).

Examples of ’empowering’ ads

#GirlsCan… buy our makeup

A #GirlsCan Covergirl ad tells girls that they can achieve their dreams, no matter what anyone says.


In this 2014 Covergirl ad that first aired during the Sochi Winter Olympics, a spate of successful and famous women, including Katy Perry, Ellen Degeneres, and Sophia Vergara, cycle through statements listing things that “girls can’t” do: “girls can’t be funny,” “girls can’t be strong,” “girls can’t rap” (Banet-Weiser 51; #GirlsCan video). “Oh yeah,” Queen Latifah then says, “girls can” (emphasis added).

The messages that follow reinforce the idea that, no matter who says that girls are unable to achieve their dreams, girls need only believe in themselves. “You have to just be courageous,” says professional hockey player Natalie Wiebe, describing how she was told that she could not play the sport as well as boys (emphasis added). “I like it when people say I can’t do something,” claims singer P!nk. Ellen Degeneres pipes in, telling us that she “learned that you have to just be yourself… Make the world more easy, breezy, beautiful.”

Kristin Anderson tells us that “an implicit assumption of post-feminism is that women’s status has improved” overall, making it unnecessary to engage in collective action to change the institutional barriers that still render women and other groups marginal (Anderson 13). By using celebrity women who have already economically succeeded, who tell viewers that they can do anything if they try hard enough, the #GirlsCan advertisement suggests that women (or, rather, girls — another layer of demeaning misogyny) can achieve greatness through their own efforts alone. The logical extrapolation of this message is that any failure to succeed is the fault of the individual woman, not a result of larger oppressive structures.

Sarah Banet-Weiser also comments on the fact that this advertisement, and others like it, “focuses on the body… even as it implies that confidence [or empowerment] is something unrelated to the body” (Banet-Weiser 53). The ad is populated by conventionally attractive women, who have also been conventionally successful (52). Clearly, as Banet-Weiser says, the ad “belies the generality of ‘girls can,’ as it is specific girls who can:” those who are thin, attractive, somehow talented, and, most importantly, able to purchase Covergirl makeup (52, emphasis original).

#GirlsCan says professional hockey player Natalie Wiebe, who skates through the advertisement with a full face of makeup and perfectly done hairstyle.

The Covergirl #GirlsCan ad contains another insidious element: because no actual product is directly referenced, the advertisement seems to be purely about female empowerment. As Kaila Prins says, however, “At the end of the day, we have to remember that these marketers and advertisers are still selling a product.  And they need you to buy it” (Prins, emphasis original). Even though the viewer is not presented with a specific product, she is still subliminally receiving the message that #GirlsCan… as long as they buy Covergirl makeup.

Imagine the Possibility… of not being taken seriously

Barbie’s Imagine the Possibilities ad encourages girls to see themselves in traditionally male dominated professions.

“What happens when girls are free to imagine they can be anything?” asks Mattel’s 2015 Imagine the Possibilities Barbie advertisement, in which ‘hidden cameras’ record the reactions of real people watching young girls pretend to be professors, veterinarians, traveling businesswomen, museum guides, and soccer coaches. “A dog’s brain can’t think as much as a human’s brain,” says a young girl acting as a college professor. “There’s no high school for the dog,” she concludes, as the students in the class laugh. Later, a young soccer coach commands her (adult male) players to put their “knees up like a unicorn” and the players stifle their smiles as they obey.

At the end of the video, the scene switches to show that the girls have actually been playing with Barbies in their rooms. The ad then ends with the text: “when a girl plays with Barbie she imagines everything she can become.” At the end of the day, however, she’s still just pretending.

In a post-feminist world, “companies [such as Mattel] draw on the language of ‘girl power’ as if to bestow on their products a sense of dynamism, modernity, and innovation” that both allows them to market products to “younger and younger” consumers and “relieves [them] of the burden of having to grapple with their own gendered asymmetries” (Anderson 8; Banet-Weiser 54). In this ad, Mattel positions itself as an advocate for girls’ empowerment, only a year after being criticized for publishing a sexist book titled Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer (Lorenz). It seems plausible to suggest that this failed marketing attempt, and not a truly benevolent investment in girls’ futures, was a catalyst for the Imagine the Possibilities campaign (Burns).

“You Can Be Anything,” the Mattel Imagine the Possibilities advertisement claims. Except, apparently, be treated with respect.

The Imagine the Possibilities advertisement is not only a probable PR move on the part of Mattel, but is also highly demeaning and infantilizing to the girls whom it claims to be empowering. Though girls are portrayed in a variety of professions with the claim that they “can be anything,” they are never taken seriously in these roles. Throughout the video, adults express confusion and amusement over the fact that young girls are inhabiting professional spaces. While this in and of itself is not necessarily harmful, one can extrapolate two assumptions from the way girls are treated in the ad. First, though girls with Barbie dolls can imagine themselves in their chosen career paths, pretending is as far as they will ever get. Second, if girls should happen to achieve their dreams of becoming vets, professors, or other professionals, they will not be shown the respect that is conveyed to their male counterparts. Though implicit, this message allows Mattel to put forward a progressive stance on female empowerment, while showing that women are not actual threats to male-dominated spaces.

Empower-Mace?

Mace’s line of Empower products, a portion of the proceeds of which are donated to programs benefitting victims of domestic violence and other crimes.

The final ’empowering’ advertisement that we will examine is an ad for the Mace Empower Personal Protection Products. In the image above, Mace displays a variety of their products in the color purple, which is associated with domestic violence. Below the products, which include a variety of different-sized pepper sprays and other items, the ad says “Empower: Spreading Empowerment Against Domestic Violence.”

On its website, Mace says that some of the proceeds from the specific “Empower” collection are “donated to support groups that benefit victims of violent crimes, domestic violence” (Empower: Spreading Empowerment Against Domestic Violence). This is better than nothing. The question remains, however: why must Mace create a specific collection of protective items in order to support victims of domestic violence, and, if they do choose to do so, why is the theme of the collection ’empowerment’?

A post from the Mace official Facebook page celebrates International Women’s Day, and says that the brand “empowers strong women every day” through its products.

The implication here is that women who are experiencing domestic violence will be benefitted by the sales of these products, but also, and more disturbingly, that the products themselves will empower women in abusive situations. This ad, as others like it, “begin[s] with a focus on the injury women experience as a result of living in a sexist world, and then move[s] to the hopeful message of women’s capacity” ie. her ability to change her own circumstances (Banet-Weiser 53). The Mace brand acknowledges the existence of domestic violence against women, but frames the issue as an individual experience that can be remedied with pepper spray, rather than as a systemic issue of misogynistic violence that necessitates massive cultural change.

Global ’empowerment’: commodity feminism contextualized

Though this page has discussed the language of empowerment in the specific context of advertising, some corporations also capitalize off of and exploit ‘feminist’ language of empowerment on a global scale. Hester Eisenstein defines ‘womenomics’ as the belief or purported belief that “investment in women and girls is now the key to ending poverty, hunger, and disease” (Eisentstein 35). Much in the way that post-feminist advertising neglects the existence of structural oppression in favor of a narrative that puts the burden of success on individual women, ‘womenomics’ campaigns promote the idea that state-led development does not need to occur and can be replaced by investing in the empowerment of individual women (36-37). In these contexts, women are empowered by their entrance into a global capitalist economy, and by their participation in (often) exploitative and back-breaking labor (38).

A promotional material for The Girl Effect, which frames international poverty as an individual rather than systemic, capitalist issue.

Most importantly for our purposes, these campaigns are occasionally funded by companies that also market their products using ‘feminist’ ads, such as Nike’s Girl Effect (40). Strikingly, as Eisenstein says, Nike’s supposed work to empower girls, both in the United States and in the Global South, “stand in stark contrast to the track record of the actual Nike Corporation in the exploitative employment of women in its notorious factories” (41). In these situations, when ’empowerment’ is invoked, something much more sinister is at play.

Is ’empowerment’ even what we need?

After seeing the way that ’empowerment’ has been co-opted by marketing teams in order to sell products, we must ask: is ’empowerment’ even the point of feminism? When only referring to the empowerment of individual women, perhaps the answer is no. In a Time article, Ruth Whippman says that “the word has taken on a kind of ubiquitous vacuousness, with virtually any act performed enthusiastically by a woman… now officially designated as “empowering” (Whippman).

In neoliberal conceptions of feminism, in which women are encouraged to rise through the ranks of an already inegalitarian and oppressive system rather than dismantle the system itself, ’empowerment’ sounds pretty good. But when this only entails “a feeling of inner potency” and not a call to collective action, coalition building, and structural change, ’empowerment’ remains “the sparkly pink consolation prize for the gender that continues to be excluded from actual power” (Whippman).

Bibliography

Anderson, Kristin J. Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Burns, Will. “Mattel Reframes The Barbie Brand In New Campaign Targeting Adults.” Forbes. 29 October 2015. Accessed 23 April 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2015/10/29/mattel-reframes-the-barbie-brand-in-new-campaign-targeting-adults/#2a51fb742d87.

Eisenstein, Hester. “Hegemonic Feminism, Neoliberalism and Womenomics: ‘Empowerment’ Instead of Liberation?” New Formations 91 (2017), 35-49.

“Empower: Spreading Empowerment Against Domestic Violence.” Mace. Accessed 24 April 2019. https://www.mace.com/collections/empower.

Grifin, Gabriele. “Empowerment” in A Dictionary of Gender Studies. Oxford University Press: 2017.

Lorenz, Taylor. “Meet #FeministHackerBarbie, The Best Responses To Mattel’s Sexist ‘Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer’ Book.” Business Insider. 24 November 2014. Accessed 23 April 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/responses-mattels-sexist-barbie-i-can-be-a-computer-engineer-book-2014-11.

Prins, Kaila. “3 Reasons Why Body-Positive Ad Campaigns Are Less Empowering Than You Think.” Everyday Feminism. 5 May 2015. Accessed 22 April 2019. https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/05/problem-with-body-positive-ads.

Whippman, Ruth. “‘Empowerment’ Is Warping Women’s View of Real Power.” Time. 30 June 2016. Accessed 22 April 2019. http://time.com/4385943/empowerment-power.