Something I am noticing across all three readings is this treatment of post-feminism as a kind of undoing. Now that issues pertaining to sex are being "addressed," they are seen as a past or post issue, when in reality, these issues have just been commodified for economic or marketable gain (Banet-Weiser, 204). We discussed this similar problem when discussing inclusivity in the workplace a couple weeks ago: show runners and studio executives checking diversity boxes for distributional gain, which while it "seems" like progress it in fact is not as the intention behind the inclusion is greedy and thereby unearned. To use Banet-Weiser's words, "...representations and narratives...are marketed by media corporations as cool, authentic, and urban, and have proven to be incredibility lucrative economic tools for marketing to broad, especially white, audiences" (Banet-Weiser, 204). This "normalization"so to speak can be seen as a kind of charade wherein the cinematic or commercial appearance or inclusive of race and gender issues thereby makes it seems like these so-called social problems have gone away when they in fact have not (Banet-Weiser, 204).
I found the Nickelodeon "girl power" example incredibly interesting: "the empowerment of girls is now something that is more or less taken for granted by both children and parents" (Banet-Weiser, 202). I, myself, own many "post-feminist" t-shirts so to speak, which I love and wear, but reading this article has made me question some of my purchases. It's similar to this notion of re-posting political articles on your instagram as a way to call attention to a problem without doing anything about it.
This reading left me thinking: How do you shine light on a problem without blinding the problem in the process?
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