Artifact 15 - 2010s Pop Feminism: A Painful Look Back - Lily Alexandre

I think this is an interesting example of analysis on the large presence of consumerism and choice/power feminism in the 2010s, and by my interpretation Alexandre largely takes the stance that it wasn’t particularly bad, but simply largely unguided and ineffectual. She highlights how much of what she calls “pop-feminist” rhetoric at the time focused on non-concrete goals that were centered around primarily cisgender and heterosexual white women and cultural assimilationism. This echos the criticisms in Gendered Lives on pg. 67 about Power Feminism, as well as the concerns on pg. 70 about how some third-wave feminism can ignore structural problems that hold women (especially disadvantaged women) down in favor of simply projecting a viewpoint of ‘the empowered woman’ who can be whatever she wants. I believe that this viewpoint is gaining traction, at least from what I gather from modern theory that I interact with, and I hope that the recent brazen attacks on women’s rights (i.e. Roe v. Wade) fan the flames of a more effective and destructive feminist movement in the 2020s and beyond.