This piece is so good it makes me want to punch myself in the face to calm my I-can’t-take-how-good-it-is adrenaline and then NOT run out for a rhinoplasty to fix my self-broken nose, even though that would be an even better cover than the usual “fixing a deviated septum” excuse.

But: PSA to everyone under 40 who does not know this, and given the extended discussion here on how choice feminism is bullshit: CHOICE FEMINISM IS NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN A REAL THING.

The reason you think it's consumerist bullshit is because it is! It honestly is such an amazing bit of cultural fuckery that Millennials and Gen Z have been led to think this is an actual thing, because it’s not and never was.

There is no feminist thinker or school of thought that ever advocated for this, at least prior to the 2000s when magazines trying to sell beauty shit to young girls started using a term meant as an INSULT regarding fake feminism as if it were a real thing.

The actual term derives from Linda Hirshman’s 2006 book, which I have on my shelf, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.

She coined the term “choice feminism” as an epithet to MAKE FUN OF fake feminism co-opted by people trying to sell shit. It was a critique, a joking phrase for a feminist theory that did not actually exist.

The phrase was inspired by the Season 4 Sex and the City episode where Charlotte tells Miranda she's quitting her job to “prepare” for being a stay at home wife/mother before she was even married or a mom, and Miranda was sharply critical of her for doing that, so Charlotte got defensive and hysterical and started babbling incoherently into the phone “I choose my own choice! I choose my own choice!!”. That scene was played for comedy in 2001 bc it was obvious to every adult at the time that all choices were NOT “feminism” just because a woman made them. The whole comedy of the scene was the absurdity of Charlotte hysterically trying to justify it that way.

In Linda’s book, she then extended this theme in her critique that choices made by individual women that undermine women’s actual societal and economic power could of course never possibly be considered “feminist". And she criticized how advertisers were constantly trying to co-opt the popularity of feminism by pretending it was an act of empowerment to buy mascara or a push-up bra. That whole idea used to be laughable on its face, so she coined it as a derogatory term for something that wasn't real. Sure, women bought mascara and quit their jobs and wore push-up bras, but no one used to seriously consider that a “feminist” choice.

I remember watching how the phrase that started as a joke get transformed and repeated by millennials who were seemingly confused. Though it may have been a purposeful campaign by NYC fashion editors. 🧐

If there is one woman to blame for doing this above all, it’s gotta be Jane Pratt. Bc in the 2000s we got the schizophrenic, incoherent, entirely fashion/beauty rag and blog-created false queen of “choice feminism” treated as if it was real.

And XOJane and Teen Vogue and Jezebel pumped out ads for makeup and procedures right next to headlines about the patriarchy and how glow-ups were somehow fighting it, right next to articles about how taking it up the ass and selling nudes was the ultimate female power move, and how trans women were the most important women to ever exist. Insane stuff.

Anyhoo, for anyone younger questioning if maybe this choice feminism is kind of suss...uh, yeah, because it was never feminist, it was literally co-opted and pretended into being by fashion and beauty magazines to sell shit to stupid young girls. Who, I should say, mostly ate that shit right up.

Yay!! They squealed. I get to indulge all my fantasies about being the biggest neutron bomb of a sex-pot to ever hit planet earth, the one true glamazon to rule them all, but actually it's empowering for everyone! And no can ever judge me for anything I do, no matter how vainglorious or narcissistic or self-obsessed or how much debt I go into. Yay for girl power!

Women’s fashion mags have literally been purveyors of “patriarchy” at a level almost greater than a Christian Nationalist men’s meeting.