What happens when feminism becomes trendy?

2015 has been a big year for feminism, you can hardly avoid online articles that spout titles like the “most feminist moments of Clueless” (or something to that effect) and online shrines that pay homage to Lena Dunham. I enjoy both Lena Dunham and Clueless, but I fear a revived social movement thats foundation rests on a fulcrum of quirky TV characters and Cher Horowitz’s garish pink pen. Feminism in 2015 seems branded in an aesthetic of 90’s teen movies and the ubiquitous and trite “feminism is about choice” rhetoric. Feminism becomes trendy and stripped of its purpose when it seems to be championed by a privileged society whose only attachment to the word subsists in their false and self serving desire to have a cause, but abdicating their humanitarian service when the issue becomes too tricky.

The film and hashtag Free the Nipple presents the most salient example of feminism becoming a trendy social movement. Free the Nipple was grounded upon an understandable and sobering principle: to end censorship of the female nipple. This censorship has produced outcry (and rightfully so) regarding breastfeeding women. It is a jaded and antiquated idea to criminalize women for doing something that is both natural and essential.

However, the intent to halt over-sexualization of the human form has gone awry with its entry into mainstream culture. Bearing the female breast will not desexualize its long history of sexualization, just as reducing the drinking age in the United States to 18 will not put it on sociological par with European countries who have abided by this practice for centuries. It is particularly irksome when the scope of female and women’s issues do not start and end at the areola.

The Free the Nipple campaign will only reinstate the double standard it seeks to eschew, especially when its chief promoters are women who already fit the standard of typical white privileged female beauty (i.e. Cara Delevingne and Miley Cyrus), and bearing their exposed breasts is seen as nothing more than a publicity stunt and act of youthful rebellion. It’s a movement that has become entirely grounded in celebrity exposure and enmeshed in pop culture.

What began as an honest initiative to abandon jaded notions of sexuality, has been wrought with the poison of its own ubiquity; this feminist initiative seems to be the only feminist initiative worth any attention. However, in hinds sight, it is only natural that this Free the Nipple campaign would garner the popularity and attention it has amassed; the female nipple has garnered this much attention because it is the female nipple. It has gained attention chiefly because it is sexualized, which begs the question: Is the crusade for toplessness and other kinds of trendy feminism the only way feminism can stay relevant in the 21st century?

The single thread that is laced throughout both the Free the Nipple campaign and the recent wave of trendy feminist phenomena is privilege. And a lot of this privilege comes from being a millennial with access to wifi. Perhaps it is bolstered by a post college and high school sense of idealism and activism, the need to feel selfless by latching onto a cause, or maybe I am extrapolating meaning where there is none. I can appreciate the intent of hashtag activism, but I certainly do not have to understand it. #FreetheNipple, #HeforShe, #YesallWomen and other similar strains of trendy feminism seem so incredibly invested in finding things that are “feminist” and clinging to their pseudo radical image rather than inciting actual and substantial change. So let’s stop lighting votives for a shrine of a movement, and instead pick them up and march.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

College Freshman from Los Angeles

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