Empowertising

Ads selling empowerment might depict women in a better light than sexist ads of yore, but do they actually contribute to equality? Cristen and Caroline look at the history of using feminism to sell products and whether advertisers' intentions matter.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about advertisements. Yeah.
So we've already talked a lot about women in the

(00:23):
advertising world, and of course on Sminty we've talked a
lot about the actual women and sexism that are in ads.
But today we are zeroing in on basically advertising co
opting of feminism. Yeah. I thought about this, Caroline, the
other day when I was watching something on YouTube. It

(00:47):
was not a stuff Mom Never Told You video. I
promise I don't watch videos of myself in my free time,
but there was a pre role Secret Deodorant ad and
usually I clicked through them, but I did not with
this one because I wanted to see what happened. I
wanted to see if they were doing what I thought

(01:09):
they were going to do, and they did. So. The
campaign is something on the lines of the Secret Stress Tests.
So they I've seen a few of these commercials where
they all have, oh, a woman who's in some kind
of stressful situation, but she's got secret deodorant, so it's okay.
So in this one, it's a guy and a girl

(01:31):
at a dinner. It's a busy restaurant and they're talking
and you can see the woman starting to get nervous
and oh my god, she's proposing. She is proposing to
a man. And I was like, oh ho ho, secret deodorant.

(01:52):
Well done with that empower tizing because you know, liberated women.
And don't we millennial ladies love that. We'll buy that deodorant.
We will, I know. And it's interesting to watch how advertising,
of course, is going to follow the money. And historically

(02:16):
if they see they know advertising, if they see an
opportunity to be able to sell more stuff there, make
more money, they're gonna do it. And so as women
have gained more rights, more of a voice in society,
um and have actually stepped up and said no, this

(02:37):
portrayal of women is not okay. We are you know,
three dimensional, hot blooded human people. We you know, deserve
equal rights. We can propose if we want to, that's right,
and throw like a girl and have hair that's not bossy.
I think that was the point of that ad, right,
the Pantine prov shin strong campaign. Your hair is not bossing?

(03:00):
Is that apologizing too much? Right? Exactly? Um? So naturally,
you know the way that society goes, so we'll advertising
a little slower and maybe not commit quite as hard.
But yeah, I mean, they'd be foolish to to not
follow the way that culture is going. Absolutely, And probably
the most famous example of this that we'll get into

(03:22):
later in the show is the nineties seventies Virginia Slims
campaign of You've Come a long Way Baby. And in
most articles you'll read about empowertizing, which is also referred
to as fem vertizing within the industry, that's cited as

(03:43):
the first. But no, no, no, no, my friends, the
history of brands and companies catering to female consumers with feminist,
e liberated ish taglines is extensive. I mean, it really
has been as old as the ad industry. And the

(04:05):
question that we're going to look at really today, after
we sort through how all of this has come about,
how how we have now gotten to the point to
where women on deodorant commercials are proposing to their boyfriend
is whether, as some claim it is, this is good
that femvertizing, as advocates of it call it, is a

(04:26):
sign that our society has progressed. And these are the
brands that we should be supporting. It's great right that
feminism is in our commercials. And this is the same
question basically that we grappled with in our Feminist Fashion
episode where we talked about how you had brands like
chanel Um and others who are parading feminist slogans and

(04:49):
signs even and staging fake feminist protests on the runway.
And there was even one recently was a Dior Dior
that had quote unquote feminist T shirts with just I mean,
it was the same you know, average white models sporting
feminist slogans on T shirts that you and I can't afford. Um.

(05:12):
But you know, we we had to grapple with that
in that episode two of Okay, raising awareness and bringing
attention to issues of feminism positive um, but not taking
it a step further and actually participating in any sort
of meaningful conversation not helpful. Well, it's just a fundamental

(05:34):
question too, of whether feminism and capitalism can kind of
coexist in that way, whether it's okay for you know,
these commercials to be not only selling a brand but
also allegedly trying to sell us an idea of cultural change.
I mean, it's the thing I asked myself all the time,

(05:55):
can feminism exist outside of my coven? I have no idea.
It's true, it's true. Uh So, let's first talk about
this whole concept of empower tizing. This is something that
was coined by a former Stuff Mom Never Told You guest,
Andy Zieesler, who is also a founder of Bitch magazine,

(06:15):
and she also recently wrote a book that talks a
lot about this called We Were Feminists Once, and she
came up with the fabulous portmanteau of empower tizing to
refer to the use of feminist e choose your consumer
choice messaging to just sell things to women. And she

(06:36):
doesn't mean this in a flattering way, no, And nor
does she mean that there's anything inherently wrong in buying
a T shirt or a toebag or whatever that has
some sort of feminist slogan on it. But she does
take issue with the concept that I just mentioned of Okay,
well you're gonna walk the walk, but are you going

(06:59):
to talk the talk? Or is it the other way?
You're talking to talk but are you gonna walk the walk? Yes,
feminism exactly. There was actually a terrific parody two of
this advertising trend of empowertizing that was made in by
a Canadian agency called John Sat And there it's a

(07:24):
spoof of this ad agency that specifically made to like
sell stuff to women via empowertizing. And there's a poster
in this fake agency that says, if she's crying, she's buying.
And to me, that sums up empowertizing. Yeah, that's right.
Whether it's like trying to sell yogurt to women who

(07:45):
are worried about their weight or selling body wash too
women who are worried about their weight, it just seems
like we've got a lot of advertising out there that's
trying to tell women what a lot of us already know,
which is that it's okay to accept yourself. Yeah. Well,
and and also in the in the words of it,
though to put it a little more harshly, the message

(08:08):
of that st John's spoof was that really at the
core of all of this is quote fastening on something
women hate about themselves, emphasizing that self doubt, and then
presenting this brand as a philanthropic champion of women's healing
and self actualization, right, which is exactly what so many

(08:33):
media and cultural critics have brought up about a lot
of the beauty brands that are getting in on this
so called and power tizing these days of like, well,
you've sold us how we have to be hairless and
smooth like critters you know that roam through the woods
only eating fruit, nuts and berries, um, so that we

(08:54):
can be super skinny in addition to you know, not
having any smell or hair at all. Um. And now
you're turning around and saying, oh no, but the way
that you are is okay, so by our soap, right,
or by our lipstick or whatever it is. And empower
tizing isn't to be confused with fem vertizing, which was

(09:14):
a term as far as I could tell, that was
coined by She Knows Media, and femvertizing cast all of
this in the more glass half full perspective that these
kinds of feel good ads are legitimately empowering female consumers
because they are challenging negative gender stereotypes. So some examples

(09:38):
of this would of course be the Dove Campaign for
Real Beauty, which has now been renamed to the Dove
Movement for Self Esteem, which kind of started at all,
at least in terms of our modern post New millennium
era of fem vertizing. Yeah, I hadn't realized that that
goes back to two four that campaign using non model women.

(10:02):
I'm not going to say real women because that is
obviously can be insulting and condescending to models, for instance.
I don't know well, and I remember when those ads
first came out and it was a refreshing change, absolutely,
But then I also remember as the campaign went on

(10:24):
that feminist outlets such as Bitch Media started to become
increasingly wary of what Dove was really selling. And I
think the turning point for this was the commercial they
made where women came in and described themselves to a
forensic sketch artist, and then a friend of theirs came

(10:46):
in and described, you know, the woman to a forensic
sketch artist in surprise. The way we describe ourselves is
that we're all like haggard and withered, just awful deflated
basketballs essentially, whereas our friends describe us is basically looking
like Heidi Klum. Women, your self esteem is so bad

(11:07):
and so on the one hand, it's like yeah, this
like their their body diversity is great. It has absolutely
contributed to this broader movement for body positivity. But on
the other hand, like, what's up with just really insisting
that no woman has a shred of self esteem whatsoever.
It's almost like they overcorrected. Yeah, yeah, the went a

(11:30):
little too far. Um. And you know we already mentioned
the Pantine Shine Strong ad that actually got the stamp
of approval from Lenan Cheryl Sandberg. Um, but basically in
that ad did they even mention shampoo until the very end? Yeah,
and they did the classic Pantine hair slow mole's lego

(11:52):
hair because it's like it doesn't come apart right right. Um,
I don't know how they do that. Is there an
invisible hairnet holding all of that hair together? I need
one of those. I need one to be the empowertizing
is working on us already, not for their shampoo, unfortunately,
but for their invisible hairnet. Um, they could be helpful

(12:13):
the food service industry. I guess seriousic of wearing hairnets. Well,
here is an invisible one by Pantine. Well in that
commercial started off saying why do women apologize so much?
And it did tap into the site geysy conversation happening
around the time with Ryl Sandberg and lean In about

(12:36):
you know, women not apologizing for themselves all the time
and not undercutting their own authority, and us recognizing that
bossi is a very negatively gendered term. All things that
are terrific. But again it's like, did we need a
Procter and Gamble product to tell us this right? I
remember seeing a magazine ad for you know, don't call

(12:57):
her bossy or whatever, She's the boss. And I took
a picture and posted it to our sminty Instagram and
I just asked listeners. I asked our followers, like, what
do you think about this? You know, you know? And
it was about evenly split, I would say, between women
who were just saying, oh, this is obnoxious, you know,
stop trying to sell us shampoo with the feminist movement,

(13:17):
stop trying to take our empowerment initiatives and sell us
something back. The other half of the people who responded,
we're pretty adamant and saying, if it's got to be something,
it might as well be feminist. Absolutely, and I think
that there are completely valid arguments on both sides of it.

(13:38):
And to maybe help us make a little more sense
of this and contextualized where all of this came from,
let's look at a little bit of history, because what
I at least didn't realize before this was how pretty
much as soon as women got into the advertising industry,
which was from the get go, they tried to infuse

(14:02):
a lot of early advertisements with more of that uh
turn of the centuries suffragist new woman ethos well, right,
And that has a lot to do with the whole
separate sphere thing. Men were already going out into the world,
into the workforce, making a paycheck, making money. Women were

(14:23):
at home, and so in order to kind of open
up the economy, essentially, they had to create the female consumer.
I mean, our economy had to have this female consumer
and treat her as if part of her wifely household
duties was to do all of the shopping. And so

(14:43):
advertising was certainly pitching to this new woman, who, even
if she didn't work outside the home, was still expected
to leave the house and consume, consume, consumed shop, shop shop.
And so even if the new woman, so to speak,
wasn't even in the major already, necessarily she was a
really strong and important pop culture figure that proved really

(15:08):
powerful to sort of advertise two and around. Yeah, I mean,
and she also existed completely detached from the home as well.
This is really the first generation of women who could
potentially leave the house without any intent of marriage, go
to college if they you know, typically if they were
white and could afford it, and then get into a

(15:30):
profession like advertising. And this is coming from h ad
ages Encyclopedia, and I gotta give a shout out to
ad Age. They have been covering women in advertising for
quite some time now. Um And if you want more
background on the ins and outs of women in the
advertising industry, I highly recommend you going back and listening

(15:53):
to our two parter on that Mad Women, parts one
and two, in which we talked about how in the
nineteen tens and twenties there was this feminist badass named
Helen Lansdown Razor, and she was one of the first
ad women. She worked at an agency called j W

(16:16):
T and her claim to fame was creating a women's
editorial department with the goal of cornering gender based marketing,
which really didn't exist before them, because obviously, like marketing
in general, was still kind of in its infancy in
the way that we think of it today. But Razor

(16:36):
recognized that the growth of advertising depended on female consumers
and that you've got to reach those women. And Razor
was pumped about this because she was one of those
new women out like making a living for herself. Yeah,
So under her guidance, they end up hiring a team
of white, middle and upper class college educated women to

(16:59):
serve as copywriters, because who better to pitch products to
women than women themselves. Women, women get women. You know
you need that dishwashing detergent. That's easy on your hands,
don't you, ladies. Uh. And they did primarily work on
things like soap, food products, drugs, toiletrees, basically things that

(17:24):
were considered part of that home sphere, like here's your responsibility.
You better be buying all of this soap and all
of these little medical tinctures well, and even just your
personal upkeep, whether you even just had like a small
apartment to yourself, a woman still had to put on
a face. And we've all seen if you've ever been
on Pinterest. Those ads from a couple decades later, I

(17:46):
believe they're from maybe the thirties, but definitely the forties
for lis Al douches of like ladies, ladies, ladies, your
man is gonna leave you if you have an olf
of smell on you anywhere. So yeah, licel was a
real two for one back in the day, where it
will clean your floors and your vagina you're inside. And

(18:06):
by the way, don't put licel on your vagina, it's
not good for you. And because you were wondering, yeah, no,
we're not promoting um. But here's the thing. Those women
who raised are brought in also had kind of activist backgrounds,
and that was one reason why some of them were
even hired. Because these women were all active in the

(18:27):
suffrage movement. They were all coming with experience from organizations
including the League of Women Voters, the Consumers League of
the National Women's Party, and all of that amounted to
in raisers eyes of someone hiring, that was publicity experience,
like these women knew how to run a campaign get
people's attention, and that experience was crucial because, especially in hindsight,

(18:51):
this group of women was considered the most influential and
advertising at the time because they were literally shaping this
earliest construct of what a female consumer looks like and
also defining normative femininity. Yes, things that haunt us even

(19:11):
still part of the reason we have a podcast and
try to contextualize and dismantle some of these things. Advertising
is powerful. It is so powerful, I mean because really,
what before they could sell women's stuff, they had to
even teach women how to consume it. So you remember again,
like if you go on Pinterest, all of those vintage

(19:32):
advertisements had so much copy because they were having to say, listen, ladies,
just between us, friends, here's your problem. You don't know
that you have a problem up, but I'm gonna tell
you've got a problem, and this is how it can
make it better. But there was this whole catch twenty
two with us because a lot of these women who
were these earliest copywriters, you know, they were all for

(19:55):
a liberated woman. And so they're like, well, we don't
want to, you know, box up women into just one
size fits all. Not everyone is just a housewife, you know,
chained to her kids and her husband. But at the
same time, in doing that, they just divvied up women
into a bunch of smaller stereotypes like the socialite or

(20:19):
the working woman. Yeah. So in other words, you can't
be a mix of these things like we have to
in order to and I get that if you are
trying to market a product to somebody. You've got to
know on your on your chalkboard, You've got to be
able to write who it is that you're marketing to
so you can tailor that campaign. And I get it.

(20:39):
Unfortunately it's you know who knew boxes were limiting well.
And this is also the first time we kind of
come to that crossroads of can our feminism and our
capitalism coexist? How can we make all of that work together? Um.
And one prominent method that you see come up in

(21:03):
the nineteen twenties when you start having more of these
women's editorial departments coming up, is the personal approach that
ads took, where selling a brand of the time was
more about selling the potential of leisure, labor saving goods,

(21:23):
you know how it was going to really improve your life,
not so much the quality, but just the thing of like,
listen between those scales, this is what you need to
be doing. It's the same thing that we do these
days with influencers on Instagram and Snapchat and all of
the the makeup tictorials that I've watched on YouTube and
not been able to recreate at all. Yeah, and so

(21:47):
before we ever had Virginia Slims telling us how far
we had come as women. You had a totally separate
cigarette campaign that was telling women how far they could
go if only they picked up a torch of freedom.

(22:09):
Oh yeah, suffrage smells like stale cigarette smoke. A lot
of listeners might have heard of this before because we
have talked about it on the podcast. But Easter Sunday
was a big day in advertising. This is when Edward Burnet's,
who's considered the father of public relations, launched the Torches

(22:34):
of Freedom campaign on behalf of American tobacco. And what
went down was Burnet's hired this group of uber stylish
women to walk in the New York Easter Parade because
that used to be a big deal, and these very
stylish ladies smoked cigarettes in public. Oh my gosh. Well,

(22:57):
but the thing is just like when you see a
Door or a Chanel co opting feminist slogans for their
fashion today, or just like when you see you know,
always doing it's like a girl campaign. They're not just
pulling this out of thin air. They're not inventing the
movements that they are trying to capitalize on. Burnet's looked

(23:19):
around and was just savvy enough to notice that this
is all part of popular modern culture. Anyway, we've you know,
women have won the vote. Um, you've got this new woman,
these flappers who were already stepping outside the home, they're dating,
they're going in car rides with boys, and they're already

(23:39):
a lot of them probably lighting up having a cocktail. Um.
And so what great inspiration for this whole pr campaign
for cigarettes. Well, and I didn't realize that Berne's had
already masterminded for lucky strikes, the campaign of reach for
a lucky instead of a sweet, So already capitalizing on

(24:02):
women's weight in security. Cool. Yeah, you know, who needs
a lunch when you could just have a pack of cigarette. Um.
But there was of course a ton of media coverage
of the Easter parade. That's part of why it was
such a success. The New York Times, you know, it
was covering the fact that these women were smoking in public.

(24:22):
And there was a quote, I think from the New
York Times from one of bruns smoking ladies who said, quote,
I hope we've started something, and that these torches of
freedom will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women,
and that our sex will go on breaking down all

(24:42):
the scriminations. What is it with tobacco companies and feminism
like throughout the twentieth century, Like that's been our big breakthrough.
Like two of the most successful in power tizing campaigns
of the past one years have just been women's cigarettes
and we've lit up. Yeah. No, I I think when

(25:06):
you latch onto a powerful movement at a time when
there are a lot of people who want to break
away from the past. I mean, I think it was
part of this Burnes campaign right where they featured ads
showing women who you know, obviously weren't real these were
fictional stories, but women who were like having to sneak
to the basement to smoke a cigarette and we're being

(25:28):
told by their parents or their husbands that they had
to like go to their rooms as punishment for smoking.
And it was basically like, ladies, you don't want to
be told what to do, do you well know you
should light a cigarette and be proud of it. And
I'm sure at that cultural moment as today, as with
the Virginia Slims campaign, there were a lot of women
who were like, yeah, I do want to be able

(25:50):
to do whatever I want, even if it includes lighting
a cigarette. That's not good for me. But also, I mean,
aside from package ng and branding and like flavors, I guess, like,
how do you even really distinguished cigarettes from each other?
And so like all of these cigarette companies are having
to mastermind all of these different ad campaigns to open

(26:14):
up new consumer channels. So what then gets us from
Torches of Freedom to the nineteen seventies. You've come a
long way, baby, is when the awakening begins in the
nineteen sixties and seventies. Because of course, before feminists can
come around and respond to sexism and ads, we have

(26:36):
to have the ad industry like first, like start getting
really really sexist. Um. So, by the time the feminine
mystique comes out in nineteen sixty three, oh man, I mean,
especially like we're in post World War two domestic cities,
queen like ads are all about really boxing women into

(26:59):
a house life shaped Uh box. That's not right. Um
it sounds like a coffin. Oh god, well, you know
who'd agree with that. Caroline Betty for Dan tell me
more so. She publishes a feminine Mystique in three and
in it she really takes advertising to task, and for

(27:23):
good reason. The same reason that even today, if you
want to get attention on your blog post, make it
about some prominent company creating some kind of blindly sexist ad.
The first one that comes to mind of late is

(27:44):
one from Gap Kids, where the classic T shirt for
girls said something princessy and T shirt for boys had
Einstein on it and he spelled his name. Oh right,
great kind of irony. I think it is a little
bit um. But in the feminine mystique for dan rights,

(28:06):
if advertisements are not responsible for sending women home, they're
surely responsible for keeping them there. Yeah. Well yes, And
this is because you see all sorts of ads that
are not only for things like lisol and and beauty
products and whatever, but you also have the explosion of
ads that are targeting both men and women for like

(28:29):
the new vacuum cleaner or the new oven range or
stove of like, oh girl, there was one I think
I think this one was from like the forties or fifties.
It was basically like, oh girl, I have all this
free time now that I've got a new stove. And
I'm sure that was the copy for it. Was that
a Valium ad or Speed housewife on Trucker Speed I

(28:55):
just get so much cleaning done. Clean my night nine,
I am the house the spot loss Um and a
lot of women took to this obviously. There's there's a
reason why we we still talk in so many episodes
about this book that came out in nineteen sixty three.
A lot of upper middle class white women in particular,
we're like, oh my god, this is this is what

(29:16):
I have been noticing myself. I thought I was the
only one. So it kicks off the beginning of a
movement of women protesting these sexist ads. And of course,
at first the ad industry, which is very heavily male
at this time, they balked, yeah, I just got a
room full of Don Draper's right, yeah, like what and

(29:38):
let's see you with sex objects. But you did around
this time start to have some Peggy Olsen's. You have
a growing number of women who are starting to bit
by bit promoting change from the inside, like Helen Lansdown
Racer Hope to do Um. Even though it wasn't change,
it was just you know, building the foundation back in
the nineteen tens and twenties. And on the flip side

(30:01):
of that, what really convinced on drapers in the room
that maybe they should pay more attention and maybe make
their as less sexist. Is the fact that the women
who were buying the feminine mystique and who were suddenly
side eyeing certain ad campaigns were largely white, middle class
women who had a lot still do of buying power.

(30:23):
And so a few years later we start to see
pocketbook protests, right, and yeah, so that makes sense then
why advertisers would suddenly be paying attention to all these
silly feminists because oh wait, are they willing to spend
their money elsewhere? Yeah, we might choose another brand of
douche that's not liceol. People who don't know the background

(30:47):
Lisolo and douche are very confused. Right now, just go
on Pinterest or watch Boardwalk Empire. Oh, is there a
scene with her lots of them? Well to prevent pregnancy.
That's also not a thing, right, we all have an
episode on douching in case you're unclear on that as well. Yeah,
but all right, So if we traveled to nineteen sixty nine,
there is a feminist advertising protest in front of the

(31:09):
New York City Macy's over this Mattel ad that was
featured in Life magazine, which used the ad copy little
girls dream about being a ballerina or a young fashion model,
while boys were born to build, learn and find science
fund which, hello, nineteen sixty nine, we are fighting the

(31:33):
same fight. Still, yeah, what was the gap? That the
gap kids example, I just escaped. It's the same kind
of thing of the pink and blue boys are smart
and girls are pretty well Girl's Life and Boys Life magazine.
That scandal just happened. Like how in the world, I mean,
are people just sticking their heads in the sand and
not realizing, like, hey, let's not only pitch pink and

(31:55):
princesses to girls and only pitch blue and like toy
trucks to boys exactly. But then, of course, not to
get ahead of ourselves. But then you'd see say a
Target making the move to make their toy aisles gender neutral,
which you could argue is a bit of empower tizing.
Are they just you know, capitalizing literally and figuratively on

(32:18):
our desire to bust kids out of these pink and
blue boxes and we're just buying into it all? I mean, well,
it is funny that when you go to Target side note,
because they didn't change anything else about the toy section.
They just took the sign off. Really. Yeah, so like
all of the pink stuff is still grouped together in
the pink ghetto, and all of like the you know,

(32:40):
Star Wars toys are still in another aisle, but they're
in the mechanic aisle. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's weird. Um.
But Mattel was far from the only product and campaign
that feminists at this time we're protesting. They also held
boycotts against Silva Thins cigare gurettes because it's ad campaigns

(33:03):
revolved around taglines like cigarettes are like women, the best
ones are thin and rich. Sounds like a Donald Trump quote. Well,
and then when the Sila Thins came out with their hundreds,
which are you know, longer, thinner versions of typical cigarettes,

(33:24):
they're that tagline was I'm a thinner, long and lean.
That's the way I like things. I like my figure slim,
my men trim, and my cigarettes thin. And it features
Brunette seventies fantastic model who is indeed thin. She is thin. Yeah,
but I mean, like that ad copy is just not

(33:46):
very good aside from everything else about like trying to
fat shame me or convince me to start smoking like
right right right, more inspired ad copy. Well, then we
got to talk about Pristine, because Pristine, speaking of douches,
Christine was a feminine hygiene deodorant. I think it was

(34:09):
actually like a like an aerosol spray that he would
spray all around your vulva. I just stick one of
those pine tree air fresheners for your car up in there,
you know, Yeah, yeah, I don't father with a spray,
it's not gonna last, or like a glade air freshener um.

(34:29):
So feminists were not only concerned over just the idea
that our vaginas needed to smell like something they don't
mountain fresh. Yes, they were also skeptical of the safety
of this product, and in response, the Pristine manufacturer Warner

(34:51):
Lambert said, Pristine is for femininity, freshness and women's confidence.
How can anyone be against that? Which I kind of
feel like, if you're look can get in power tizing
and femvertizing from the glass half mte perspective, that quote
might as well stand for any any product, right, I mean,
we're promoting confidence. Don't you want confidence and femininity and freshness?

(35:14):
And it wasn't just picketing outside of say the New
York Macy store. You also have more radical groups like
the Red Stockings, who in nineteen sixty nine started bombing
subway ads with stickers that said, this ad insults women,
or this ad oppresses women. I we all need those

(35:35):
stickers in our purses or our knapsacks or our Fannie packs, um,
whatever you carry your belongings in, um, because I feel
like I've even seen stickers like that, or at least
pictures of them. Yeah. I forget which group did it
or if it was a specific group, but a couple
of years ago someone started doing that in New York
subways again and it got a bunch of online attention.

(36:00):
So that brings us up to the nineties seventies, when
the ad industry responds with what some people call commodity feminism,
which is another way of describing and power tizing, shifting
focus essentially to say, okay, maybe maybe these women have

(36:20):
a point. And this is when Advertising Age magazine starts
covering this. So I mean this deis become like an
industry wide conversation. Yeah, these conversations are being led by
women who were in the trenches in the ad industry
working to yes, sell their products and yes, be good
advertisers for their clients and those products, but also working

(36:42):
to make less maybe overtly sexist ads. Uh, motivated by
both profits and politics. Yeah, and it's interesting to see
how they went about this because of course these were
still businesswomen. You know, they were ambitious, they were career driven,

(37:04):
and at the same time they didn't want to promote
sexist imagery. So you have people like ad executive Franchilli Cadwell,
who took out a two page spread in Advertising Age
magazine announcing the Lady of the House is dead. No
force has demeaned women more than advertising, and she goes

(37:26):
on to argue that brands that ignore this fact will
suffer financially. In other words, hey, talking down to women
is bad business. Do you want to lose money? No? Okay,
well get with the program then. So in the early
nineteen seventies you also start to see places like B
B d O, a prominent ad agency, still conducting focus

(37:50):
groups among feminists to find out exactly what they hate
about ads, and their major gripe was the reinforcement of domesticity,
all of those efficient stoves and vacuum cleaners, um. And
when we come right back from a quick break. We're
going to talk about uh, feminist perfume getting in on
the act. I don't know. Maybe it's used to clear

(38:12):
the air after you smoked all those feminist cigarettes. I
don't know, but we will be right back, so, Caroline,
my favorite chapter of our fembortizing history comes in nineteen

(38:35):
seventy three when Revalon debuts a feminist perfume. Oh good, yes,
so this perfume is protesting for women's rights. Yeah, the
perfume is out on the streets with a sign picketing
sexist businesses. The perfume is actually like paving the way.

(38:57):
This is the same year as Roby Wade, you know.
And it was actually because of this perfume, you know,
because a bunch of lawyers wore it in the courtroom
and the judges were like, it's fine, legalized abortion. Let's
get out of here. It smells disgusting. But in the headache.
On a serious note, Revalan comes out with this perfume
called Charlie, and listeners, if you have a chance, go

(39:22):
on YouTube and look up one of these Charlie commercials.
In fact, watched them all because Charlie was not only
a perfume. She was a persona, and Charlie was this
pants suited, horldly woman who was always out on the town.
She was dazzling gentleman. She wore a sequin blazer and
one which you know, if you can make a sequen

(39:44):
blazer work, then you must be liberated somehow. And within
a year it was America's best selling drug store fragrance.
People were all about this liberated Charlie and her perfume. Yeah,
there was even an for Charlie. She the woman is
not wearing a pant suit, she's wearing a power suit.
It's skirt suit, and it's this reversal of the stereotypical

(40:10):
gender roles were reversal of sexism almost because the woman
is grabbing the man's butt and it's like she's very
Charlie is the copy. Can we can we make that
a term so Charlie women who get in trouble for
sexual harassment in the workplace, never mind such a she's

(40:33):
a Charlie term. Yeah, that was actually that. That's one
thing too, is that the ad industry and also feminist
at the time, didn't fully understand how just flipping the
sexism script isn't necessarily feminism. Like, no, liberation is not
women being being able to grow men at their leisure.

(40:56):
It's no one groping anyone at all, all of us
being treated as human people with rights and responsibility. There's
no non consensual groping in feminism. No, but I mean,
Charlie was hardly the only quote unquote feminist empowering perfume.
You also had gene Natte, which I gotta tell you, like,

(41:17):
I just turned the ad off. I like pulled it
up and she's splashing. This was me projecting, right, Okay,
so she's like splashing gene nite all over herself, and
I turned it off because I just kept thinking, like,
if that woman was my coworker and she was standing
next to me, I would have to leave work with
a migraine because she would just reek of genata well.

(41:38):
And it was called the Oliver fragrance, which is probably
why she was literally putting it all over herself. And
the tagline was take Charge of your Life. And the
Gina Tay commercial that we watched features another blond woman
who is just dousing herself in gena te and suddenly

(42:00):
she is transported to being a jockey right, and she
wins the race, and you know the voice, the voiceover
comes on and the commercial saying, is she a Gena
Te kind of woman? Don't buy up a fume by
her Gena And then the final cut is just this

(42:21):
disembodied hand presumably covered in Gena Te all over fragrance,
just slapping the body this like naked woman's body with
Gina Te, which just did not seem like a pleasant
way to apply fragrance. But I like that, out of
all of the things we can imagine for women in

(42:42):
terms of equality and like women you need to break
the glass ceiling, Gina Te is like, ah, had a jockey,
women can be small, women love horses. But that is
not to be outdone by Julie, who came out around
the same time, also a selling perfume via empowerment. They

(43:04):
used this jingle that included the line I can bring
home the bacon fried up in a pan and never
let you forget. But you're a man. Yeah, yeah, you
kind of like they went off the cliff. They're they're
promising like, oh, she's a working woman, and the ad
it talks about being the eight hour perfume for the
twenty four hour woman, which does just sound exhausting. Um,

(43:28):
but it shows flashes of her in a power suit
and then she's at home, and then she's what she's
in pajamas too, or there's there's several outfit changes. Being
a twenty four hour woman requires a lot of clothes. Yeah,
you need a lot of wardrobe changes and a lot
of perfume. So while all of this feminist perfume is

(43:48):
being sold to us in the Natural, Advertising Review Board
releases an Advertising and Women report highlighting sexisteotyping and offering
guidelines for better representation. Terrific, but to give an idea
of where we're at at this point. Some of the

(44:11):
checklist questions that they provide in the report for advertisers
to kind of, you know, check themselves before they wrecked
themselves include do my ads portray women as more neurotic
than men? And do my ads portray women actually driving cars?
I mean, we're at a very one oh one point

(44:31):
here in the mid seventies, like maybe we've established that
women are people, like maybe, but yeah, have you thought
about having a woman driving a car or being not neurotic?
Like maybe we're still at the hysterical uterus stage well,
and this is when we see the Helen Landsdown Razor
era of a new woman all over again, because it

(44:55):
wasn't Razor, but another prominent woman in her women's editorial
department at JA w T, who was openly um critical
of the stereotype back then of the housewife, is being
particularly neurotic and saying, you know what, we need to
portray women as being intelligent and discriminating. Um. And so

(45:20):
hopping to the seventies, we see a similar thing going
on where Madison Avenue starts to refashion the new woman
so to speak, um and co opting the feminist movements language. Um.
But as Steve Craig, who has researched this, talks about
in a paper that we read, even before that National

(45:43):
Advertising Review Board report ADS quote began to appear that
not only avoided objectionable images, but even attempted to curry
favor with women who had become sensitized to liberation issues.
I just I like that language. I mean, it's a
very good point, but I like the language. It's funny

(46:04):
of like I imagine and being like, oh, oh liberation issues. Um.
And so what do we see if history is indeed
in the ad industry repeating itself that means we've got
to talk about cigarettes again. It's been about five minutes.
It's time to talk about SIGs again. Torches of Freedom.
Almost fifty years later, after the Easter Parade with all

(46:29):
those attractive white women lighting up in seventy eight, the
Leo Burnett Agency creates that You've Come a Long Way
Baby campaign for Philip Morris because they're like, hey, we
need to sell some cigarettes to women. We've got these
Virginia Slims. Let's make it happen. And it's a huge success. Um.

(46:50):
It also, by the way, prompted the feminist retort don't
call me Baby, that I appreciated well, of course, because
I mean they're still being demeaning to women on top
of pretty much only advertising still to white, middle and
upperclass women. But industry wise, the bar is set so

(47:10):
low that You've Come a long Way Baby really set
a new standard for how you should advertise to women.
And I mean, for better or worse, this ad campaign
and the way that they approached talking to female consumers
worked so well that Virginia Slims are still a top

(47:31):
brand among women smokers. And it also perpetuates. Around the
same time, advertisers and brands thinking, oh, let's just flip
the sexism script um, which I gotta fay. I was
not terribly pleased to see that. At the time. The

(47:51):
National Organization for Women, of course, was very involved in
protesting the sexist ads. Their big reason why this entire
move movement happened. Um. But they were totally down with
the flipped sexism script. Not necessarily flipping gender roles, but
the sexism. So in the case of an American Express ad,

(48:14):
around the time you have a male model asking in
the copy, isn't a time women got their own credit
cards and started taking me out to dinner? So again,
liberation is buying a handsome man dinner, right And and yes,
and like we said earlier with a Charlie ad with
a woman accosting the man. Equality, it's not just like

(48:38):
empowerment is not something that one group has and then
the other one doesn't. We're trying for equality and and
so that's the bone that everybody had to pick. Well,
a lot of people had to pick with these gender
flipped ads. But still, like you were saying, now was
on board. A lot of the women in now were

(48:58):
and at MISMA magazine, including Glorious dam we're on board
with some of these gender swapped ads, right, I mean,
because it's difficult to rain to navigate um And in fact,
the first issue of MSS ran what was considered a
controversial ad for Copper Tone suntan lotion, which featured a slim,

(49:21):
blond woman in a bikini with a copy that said
that it helps more people get a magnificently deep, fast
tan and that doesn't sound that terrible, but at the
same time, it's like, well, this magazine, I mean, it
was on the inside, the front cover. You suddenly have
this image of a slim woman in a bikini. And

(49:44):
Steve Craig also points out the magazine later ran ads
for Virginia Slims, which not surprisingly prompted a negative backlash
from readership. But at the end of the day, Glorious
dynam had a business to run, a mag gazine business
to run. Yeah, and it's author Steve Craig points out

(50:04):
she did work to attract ads from cosmetics companies, from
people like Revlon, and that was seen as sort of
a negative too for a magazine likeness to be kind
of singing the same tune. It's just about every other
publication out there when it came to advertising, right. And
this too is a conversation that we had with Andy

(50:29):
Seesler from Bitch Magazine and author of We Were Feminists Once,
because you know, she started Bitch Magazine, which, like MS
is feminist through and through, and Bitch has had a
lot of challenges as a nonprofit. You know, that does
not take out typical Revlon Virginia slims ish advertising, um,

(50:52):
which can you know, I mean it's it's it's hard
to survive as independent media if you aren't taking that
kind of corporate cash. But dims the brakes. So when
we move into the nineteen eighties to the two thousands,
as a helpful breakdown over at Women's e News talks
about along with more women joining the workforce, the fem

(51:17):
vertizing trope that you see becomes the superwoman. This is
like the working mom with the octopus arms, the how
does she do it all? Yeah, every stock image ever,
You've got the power suit, the briefcase, the baby, the salad,
the money, the credit card, the cell phone. Yeah. Again,
she sounds like the Enjolie woman. You know, she's the

(51:38):
twenty four hour woman and she's on a horse, and
you know that's that's kind of going on in the
background when sem vertizing first comes up in its modern
iteration really with Dove and the Dove campaign for real

(51:58):
Beauty like You Mean earlier kicks off in two thousand four.
And one reason why She Knows Media has been giving
out defemvertizing awards for the past few years and it
provides a lot of positive press about this kind of
advertising is the fact that it works. Yeah. I mean,

(52:22):
they're they're effective ads, and that they sell a lot
of whatever products they are pitching, but they're also effective
in communicating and attracting the female consumer who's been so
turned off by sexist ads or ads that just don't
represent them visually well. And also keep in mind too,

(52:43):
for women today, we're very media literate. We can spot
a bad photoshop from a mile away, right exactly, especially
when they like cut off an arm or something. Um.
But according to She Knows Media surveys from sixteen of
their response and said that sexually objectifying ads are damaging. UM,

(53:05):
I would like to talk to the seven percent who
said that sexually objectifying ads are not damaging, just kind
of be like, hey, gals, let's talk. What are you thinking? Um.
They also found that of the respondents claimed that pro
women ads are important for positively shaping younger generations and

(53:27):
men the way that men view women in their place
in society, and of the women said that they wanted
to see non airbrushed, realistic lady bodies in their advertisements,
and sixty of the men they talked to agreed. And
this next stat is something that absolutely makes brands ears

(53:49):
perk up. If brands do in fact have ears, sure,
we're personifying them. It's fine. Percent I think this was
survey respondent said that they have bought a product because
of its positive portrayal of women. And I will count
myself as part of the I've absolutely gone with chosen

(54:11):
certain brands over others because I like their message. Because
it's kind of the least they could do, totally, even
if they do not pursue a quote unquote truly feminist
company culture, even if they're not supporting young girls in
stem or the arts for instance, or setting up a
you know, a nonprofit to help kids get to college,

(54:33):
or you know, sending products to women in underserved areas. Um,
the least they can do is tailor their advertising messages
to not be overtly sexist or objectifying. Well, and obviously too,
we're talking about more of the bigger household name brands
as opposed to an independent, woman owned, out and out

(54:56):
like feminist kind of brand, and some of is great
to see. I mean, we post this kind of stuff
on our social media all the time. One of my favorites,
for instance, has been under armours I will what I
Want campaign featuring ballerina Missy Copeland, because the more Missy
Copeland I can see in my feeds, the happier I am. Yeah,

(55:18):
and people love it. Our followers love it. Just people
on the Internet in general. I cannot get enough of
Misty Copeland. And I think part of it is just like,
oh my god, a woman who doesn't look like every
other model who's trying to sell me close. She is
an athlete, she's a woman of color, she's powerful and

(55:39):
strong and outspoken, and that's wonderful to see. Absolutely, she's
still selling you something, but it's wonderful to see that
new representation. And it's also notable to see how brands
that you would not expect at all to get in
on a little bit of femvertizing are also ponying up

(56:01):
to this. So one of the She Knows Media femb
Vertizing award recipients is bud Light for their equal Pay
campaign featuring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogan, and I tweeted
about it, I think, just on my personal Twitter about

(56:22):
one of those UM campaign commercials where they gave a
nod to all genders and speaking like very specifically in
that language, and I was like, Hey, this is cool
bud Lights doing this. I I like that, that's good
to see. I also know that you probably have a
legacy of that, you know, advertising too well to women.

(56:45):
But cool, especially if you're going to have people like
Seth Rogan and Amy Schumer who have spoken on behalf
of gender equality before. I'm glad to see it coming through,
even if it's through a punchline in your ad. Yeah,
because I think that that makes such messages a little
more palatable to a general audience that is not familiar

(57:06):
with these conversations. Absolutely, you and I are having these
conversations all the time, but the average person maybe watching
a bud Like commercial maybe isn't. And so why are
we complaining? Because we're feminists, We we we want to
be victims, right, That's what the Internet tells me exactly.
That's what feminism has been selling me. J K. So whenever,

(57:28):
though it comes to media and advertising, an ounce of
skepticism is worth a pound of what gain deodorant gained
the laundry detergent, Because from what I could find at
least or couldn't find, I should say, there's no empirical

(57:50):
proof that commercials are going to solve sexism. And here's
a crucial thing. This, to me is really the line
that we have to consider. Just because a commercial makes
us feel good and might make us in that moment
feel a sense of empowerment, that doesn't necessarily mean that
it is empowering, that it is affecting this kind of

(58:12):
change that it is portraying. Now, what it does mean
is that it's probably speaking to the audience that's already
receptive to it. It might not necessarily be out there
changing hearts and minds of people who are sexist or
misogynist or what have you. Racist. Um, but I, as
a self identified feminist, can see like a Dove ad,

(58:35):
for instance, and be like, oh, well that feels better,
thank you for doing that. And I mean dev is
saying no, no, we've seen a billion and a half
profit increase, so thank you. Oh yeah. Yeah. Ever since
that campaign for Real Beauty launched to so in ten
years they up their revenue by one point five billion dollars.

(59:00):
And again, if if you want to brand to pay attention,
start throwing out some bees. Yeah, honey, bees, honey. They
will terrorize you. Um, and you know you've also got some.
You know your favor is problematic. All your favors are problematic.
And that includes Dove because they are owned but Unilever,

(59:22):
who also hawks Saara and Lovely the skin bleaching cream,
which is not what you would call empowering. Yeah. And
and this is again something that Andy Ziesler does such
a good job of dissecting. And we were feminists once.
Because a lot of companies, like Procter and Gamble, like

(59:44):
a Unilever, etcetera, they have corporate responsibility teams. I know
this because my first internship out of college was on
one of these corporate PR teams where your job is
to figure out what you're good cause is going to
be and how you're going to market that good cause
to make your company look better. I am all for

(01:00:05):
corporations investing as much money as possible into these kinds
of good causes, but corporate responsibility often is more of
like um, just pr rather than actual cultural change within
that whole group or within you know, their consumers too.

(01:00:29):
It's like it's almos. It almost feels like moral licensing
in a way, where you're kind of like paying a
small chunk of money relative to your overall profits to
help out these you know, these people in a developing
country so that in this non developing country you can
do something shadier like maybe sell skin lightning cream skin

(01:00:49):
lightning cream, or not give your employees any sort of
paid family leave, or on and on and on, exactly
relying on a lot of contract work so you don't
have to pay any benefits at all. I'm not alleging
that that's something that Dove does. I'm just saying that's
very common among large corporations, and of course too, it's

(01:01:10):
this false sense of feminism that a lot of people
are wary of, not in the sense of like, you know,
I love the always Maxipad like a Girl campaign. It
got me, you know, teary eyed when I watched those
little girls. Loving the fact that they were girls, and
that's terrific. But there's more to feminism than sharing a

(01:01:32):
commercial on your Facebook. And there's more to feminism than
just running a ra ra yea ladies ad in a magazine.
And this next, this next little bullet point is something
that I had absolutely one percent blocked out of my mind.
I was reading about it and was like, oh my god,

(01:01:53):
the rage is coming back to me. So back in
l u K gathered up some ad agencies Brave Mother
and Widen and Kennedy, and they were like, all right, guys,
we've got a mission. We are going to rebrand feminism

(01:02:15):
because apparently, you know, the work of feminism was totally
done before that and it was totally irrelevant. So like,
let's rebrand it to make it fun again. Yeah. There.
I mean, of course, there was a lot of criticism
of this initiative, but let's talk about what came out

(01:02:36):
of it. So Brave made an are you a feminist
flow chart with all roads leading back to yes. It's cute,
very tumbler. Friendly Mother teamed up with The Feminist Times
to produce a sex pistol V poster on the wage gap,
and Carrie Donne writing about this over at fast Code

(01:02:58):
notes how this ad does not meant and feminists or
feminism in their copy at all. It's sort of like
the sneaking and the feminist vegetables approach. And finally you
have Widened Kennedy teaming up with the Agenda to make
a hot pink cashtag I am a woman and poster
too in their words, saw the stereotypes and it was

(01:03:22):
a neat idea where they had I'm a woman and
and you could fill in the blank with all sorts
of things that you are or are not, again very
social media friendly, but also just just know, well, yeah,
because the whole point is that feminism is not a brand,
it's not a trend, it's not a poster. It is

(01:03:43):
a movement towards equal human rights for human people and
for equal respect and equal opportunities. And uh, you know,
the ads themselves weren't It's not like they had any
bite to them. It's not like they had a call
to action beyond you know, having you tweet something with
a hashtag. Right, And I thought it was interesting how

(01:04:07):
done noted in fast Code that l u K initially
vetoed mother in Feminist Times is original concept because its
message was too anti consumerist, and then their second concept
was a photomontage ad featuring a variety of Volva's aimed

(01:04:28):
at making the reader think twice before getting a Brazilian wax.
Not surprisingly, l UK, which features a lot of content
on pubic hair grooming, was like, that's a little too much.
So it's like if we're going to rebrand feminism, but
there's also a line to where it's like, that's too much.

(01:04:49):
That doesn't sound like rebranding, that sounds like again, what
was the woman shaped box in the coffin, Betty Draper coffin. Yeah,
we're just boxing feminism up in that it I mean.
And and this the point of talking about this l
example isn't to make fun of magazine initiatives, but rather

(01:05:10):
just how approaching feminism as a brand is a dead end, right, Yeah,
I know exactly. And the conversation continues to get more
interesting and raise my eyebrow a little bit more when
you think about the idea of someone else's definition of progress,

(01:05:33):
maybe because it seems like with um, the femortizing awards
from Shino's Media, they're like cool box checked, Like let's
move on past, just focusing on the empowering images of women,
the non objectifying images of variety of women. And let's
talk about how great dads are in advertising, and like,

(01:05:55):
I agree that it's just as bad to constantly show
the dopey dead ad who can't figure out how to
go grocery shopping or change a diaper, Like that's just
as stupid of a stereotype as the mom who is
chained to the kitchen sink. Um, But have we made
enough progress to be like, okay, women, like you're cool
over there. Let's talk about all the dads fixing their

(01:06:17):
daughter's hair and advertisements. And I think it's part of that.
It's it's that element of glossing over, which is what
gives me, just speaking personally, that's what gives me pause
for a lot of this where, um, you know, as
Samantha Sky, who's president chief revenue officer if she knows media, says,
you know that in most of their friend vertizing focus

(01:06:41):
was quote on how women are represented, and we've expanded
our contemplation to how all genders are represented and where
the stereotypes and the negative representation exists. But it did
feel like, you know, it's like okay, well, we've we've
given some pets on the act for some positive women
ads and now let's just look at look at all

(01:07:03):
of them. I don't know, but but again, even these
femvertising awards are ultimately intended to sell things, and you
could argue all they're selling like better advertisements, better for
the consumer. I would rather have me as my twelve
year old self watching these commercials than the commercials I
was watching as a kid. Sure, but are they selling

(01:07:26):
things that are actively harming other people? Because if you
sell things like fast fashion that are made in other
countries by exploited children and women who don't get to
leave their factories ever and have to use their tiny
little baby hands to make your clothes, like who is
being empowered? Right? And that was something I was thinking

(01:07:46):
of this past weekend when I was watching. It might
have been on Hulu, it doesn't really matter. But H
and M has a new fault commercial campaign and it
features as trans models. It features shaved heads and pit
hair and women of all different body shapes to represent

(01:08:10):
inclusivity in their words, and that is terrific. We're all
about inclusivity, all about representation. But the first thing I
thought was exactly that Caroline was like, Oh, I feel
so good right now, but I don't feel good knowing
that if I if I go and buy some of
that fall fashion, I'm supporting the number one clothing buyer

(01:08:31):
from Bangladesh factories that definitely are not empowering their overwhelmingly
female and possibly some child labor in there too, manufacturing
workforce of one point six million. Yeah, but at the
same time, I also cannot shirk off all of my
responsibility in this whole consumerist cycle either and feel like

(01:08:53):
oh well, each and in blah blah blah, because that
exact same week that I was side dyeing that app
which is a great I mean again, it's a terrific commercial,
but it's the whole package. And then I became even
more troubled when I remembered, oh, yeah, what are you
wearing right now, Kristen, while you're watching this ad? Oh
this like feminist e sweatshirt from H and M that

(01:09:14):
said property of No One, which I bought because it
was very cheap and it did have a feminist slogan.
So I'm part of the problem, I mean yeah, and
that which is a whole other episode about how you
are the now I mean I shop at targets, so right,
what do I? Yeah, exactly, Um, And this all ties

(01:09:35):
in all of this feel good advertising that kind of
disguise as a murky undertow uh comes into play. Also
when you have these big corporate feminist e lady power conferences,
UM that aren't necessarily actually helping the Bangladeshi garment worker

(01:10:00):
are really just your average women on the street here
in the United States. Um, But they are doing a
lot to bring a lot of powerful women together to network.
I think, yeah, those conferences which we have been to.
We did an entire series focused around the Maker's Conference,
and I can tell you those women individually are terrific

(01:10:20):
and they are very committed to feminism and believe very
much in it. But I will say that a lot
of those conferences are about as effective as my H
and M property of No One's sweatshirt, where it's a
good conversation starter, but I'm not changing the world by
wearing it, right, Like, are you inviting and you, I

(01:10:40):
mean the general you at a conference? Like, are you
inviting underprivileged girls from you know, schools, middle schools, high
schools to participate and meet powerful women and be inspired.
Are you taking all of those empowering conversations about the
wage gap or salary negotiation back to your actual job
and putting that into practice. Or you know, if we're

(01:11:01):
talking about where a lot of these conferences are held,
which are very fancy schmancy resorts, what about all the
people who are working at those resorts? What about all
the people who are serving the food at these like
fancy dinners that we have been to and making the food.
It's like those the that's where arguably, like the societal

(01:11:22):
change is happening. Yes, it's important that these conversations are
happening at the top, But can you call it empowering
if it doesn't trickle down to everyone else, If it's
still just concentrates power at the top, What does empowerment
even mean at that point? Right? Because at that point,

(01:11:44):
empowerment is just an emotion. Yeah, It's like how good
you feel after you eat a good lunch, Right, It's
like feeling full you just had a good sandwich, a
good feminist sandwich. But I am really fascinated, especially by
the conference arm of this and femortizing in general, because

(01:12:05):
to me, as a digital media nerd um native advertising
is the new name of the game, where it's ads
that don't look like ads, it's sponsored content, it's things,
you know, where it doesn't feel like a commercial. You're
actually learning something. Oh, it just happens to be brought
to you by Johnson and Johnson. And these kinds of

(01:12:26):
conferences feel like native in power tizing, where it's like,
we're bringing you this, you know, this, this rundown of
all these inspiring speakers who are gonna, you know, engage
your feminism and work and help you balance your life
with your twenty four seven job, et cetera. And it
just happens to be brought to you by X y Z. Yeah.

(01:12:49):
And again, I mean and I think that there's the
positives and the negatives. You know, if you have an
extended ad, like I think it's aerial. They make detergent
clothing deter urgent. And they had this whole ad in
India about getting the men to help with the laundry
because the women were doing all of the housework. Men
never touched the laundry, and so they're like, you know,

(01:13:11):
what can we do to help sort of even the
score here? And and it launched a great conversation, It
got people talking, you know, and yes it was total
viral hashtag activism kind of stuff, but it spawned a
great conversation. But it's still advertising, and they want you
to buy their product and they want you to feel
good about their products. So it's kind of you know,

(01:13:33):
it's that endless cycle. And to bring it full circle,
the place where I at least first saw that laundry
detergent ad was presented by Chryl Sandberg at a maker's conference. Yes, ma'am,
so you and I are kind of sitting here then,
almost almost right right in the middle of this whole
fem vertizing ecosystem. I mean, we sell products on this

(01:13:58):
podcast as well. We still feminist stamps from stamps dot com,
don't you know. Um So, on a lot of different levels,
this is something you know, that is important to me
as a feminist media maker, um to make sure that
what I'm selling does match up with the content that

(01:14:20):
I'm kind of selling in a way, you know, the
information I'm presenting, and also the kind of example that
I want to set for other people. And then it's
the question of reconciling all of these different moving parts
with one another, and it's challenging It is challenging because
you know, we live in a capitalist society that tells

(01:14:43):
us to be good consumers. You know, some people are
addicted to drugs and alcohol. Some people are shopping at
its like legitimately, and you know, I think that the
best we can hope to do is continue to vote
with our wallets, out with our money, and try to
put our money where our mouths are and hold companies

(01:15:05):
accountable because obviously, as we've just talked about for the
last hour, advertisers listen when you boycott their products. But
I and I think too that it's remembering that media
literacy goes beyond liking or not liking an individual commercial.
You know, there's a lot of work that goes into
knowing how you're my I'll personalize this, how my stick

(01:15:29):
of dub deodorant, which a do use because like how
it smells, it empowers my under arms to negotiate for raises.
But how that stick of deodorant that I'm using relates
to people on the other side of the world. And
we asked Andy Ziezler about this when we talked to

(01:15:49):
her a few months back, of just like, what do
you do you know? And she didn't really have a
tidy answer for it. I mean, obviously there's a go
to like support your local artisans and your local you know,
independent sellers and goods and things like that, And I'm
just going to add that there is. I don't think

(01:16:11):
there's any such thing as living like a perfect feminist life.
But I think that if you have the money to
be able to choose what you buy, because this is
also a privileged conversation to have, I'm saying this about
an hour too late. Um, if you have the money
to be able to make these consumer choices, I think
that it is our responsibility to make them wisely if

(01:16:34):
we truly believe that empowerment is something that in a
way can be bought. So listeners, help us sort this
out because it's tricky and we want to know what
you think about it. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com is our email addressed. You can also tweet

(01:16:54):
us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
when we come right back from a quick break in
which we'll sell you something. All right, Hello, I have
a letter here from Ingrid in response to our pants
suit episode. She says, it was really interesting to hear

(01:17:15):
the history of the evolution of women wearing pants. It's
so easy to forget sometimes, all the small things other
women had to fight daily for us to get where
we are today. It actually gave me some flashbacks to
the small private Christian college I attended all the way
back Yonder In nine I was a freshman at a
school of about five d and fifty students. I remember

(01:17:36):
the first week of school, our dormother had a meeting
with us about a dress code. She told us that
even though the administration had decided women could now wear jeans,
guys could always wear them, women could not. Until she
did not think women wearing pants was acceptable, particularly brown pants.
Why brown, she wouldn't say, but they were apparently the

(01:17:56):
most lust inducing of pant colors. She could not forced
us to stop wearing jeans or the sinful brown pants,
but she, along with the rest of the administration, still
policed our clothing to a degree I have never before
or since experienced. Shorts and skirts could be no more
than an inch above the knee, and they would use
rulers to measure and send you back to change if

(01:18:17):
they were too short. I remember One of the bigger
scandals a few months in was when we had a
special meeting to talk about button down shirts. We almost
lost the privilege of wearing them because the men on
campus had complained that the shirts we were wearing were
too tight and would sometimes gap a little and they
could see bras, which of course caused them to lust,

(01:18:37):
which was our fault. That is two hours of my
life I will never get back. Honestly, I could go
on for days about the dress code and double standards
at that school. All I can say is I pieced
out of there and haven't regretted it at all. It
was exhausting constantly worrying about other people's problems with my clothes.
At any rate, thanks for continuing to bring us such

(01:18:57):
an interesting and insightful podcast. Keep up the great work
and you do the same Ingrid. Thank you. So. I
have a letter here from Maggie about our pent Suit
Power Dressing episode, and Maggie writes, I'm a lawyer in Ontario, Canada,
a mother of two, and a fat woman. I think
something really not touched on in the episode was the

(01:19:19):
fat phobic way in which fat professional women and men
are treated in relation to dress I just returned from
my maternity leave of my second child. In prep for
the return, I wasn't brushing up on the law, which is,
you know, my job. I was worried about the extra
weight and the fact that nothing I owned fit. Shopping
for fat women could be an episode in and of itself.

(01:19:41):
Regardless of clothes I can find it fit and I
feel comfortable in, are truly not traditionally professional. My experience
being a fat woman in a professional career is a
constant feeling of being sloppy, frumpy, unkempt, and unprofessional. I
already have trouble being taken seriously as a young woman,
but on top of that, I'm fat, which is often
at as being lazy, not hard working, not knowledgeable, and

(01:20:03):
generally not really caring about myself. I feel the eyes
of my colleagues and co workers judging my appearance, but
even more so of my clients and of opposing counsel
who certainly don't look at me is tough or qualified,
which I attribute to the combination of being fat, young,
and a woman. I believe this issue is doubly or
triply problematic for women of color and women of poverty

(01:20:23):
who can't afford an incredibly expensive custom wardrobe to fit
a fat body and appear quote unquote professional on Aside
from the fat issues, I think the episode would have
benefited from a discussion of Muslim women in professional careers
who wear a hijab, nikab or burka and the perception
that the same is not professional attire, which has been

(01:20:44):
an issue dealt with directly in Canada when a judge
commented on a female lawyer's he job indicating she was
not suitably dressed and refused to hear her case unless
she removed it. I'll stop rambling, but thanks again and
looking forward to much more. And Maggie, that was not
rambling at all. You raise incredibly important points and this

(01:21:04):
is something too I have a feeling a lot of
other listeners can chime in on. So if you also
have thoughts on being a fat woman shopping for professional clothes,
let us know what you think, and also Muslim women
in the workplace in wardrobe issues around that. Let's keep
these conversations going. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot

(01:21:24):
com is where you can email us and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so
you can learn more about empower tizing. Head on over
to stuff Mom Never told You dot com for more
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