San Diego State University Girl Empowerment Discussion

Assignment 1:

In Andi Zeisler’s article “Empowering Down,” she opens by saying that she has “empowerment fatigue.”

She gives a list of things that we are invited to feel “empowered about:”

“Embracing fat positivity. Embracing anorexia. Housework. Living like a slob. Being butch. Being femme. Learning self-defense. Buying a gun. Driving a truck. Riding a motorcycle. Riding a bike. Walking. Running. Yoga. Pole dancing classes. Being a Pussycat Doll. Growing your own food. Butchering your own meat. Doing drugs. Gettings dober. Having casual sex. Embracing celibacy. Finding religion. Rejecting born faith. Being a good friend. Being an asshole. By the time satirical newspaper The Onion announced “Women Now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does” in a 2003 article, it really did seem that “Today’s woman lives in a near-constant state of empowerment” (Zeisler, 170).

Zeisler argues that the word empowerment, in pop culture,“is apolitical, vague, and so non-confrontational that it’s pretty much impossible to argue against it” (191). She goes further to say that “’empowerment’ has gone from a radical social-change strategy to a buzzword of globalization to just another ingredient in a consumer word salad” (192).

If all of these things signify empowerment, then does the word/concept of empowerment mean anything? Zeisler tells is that the term, when it was first coined and circulated in the 1970s and 1980s, did have a specific, political meaning:

“The term was first used in the realm of social services, community development, and public health, particularly minority communities” (171). “Empowerment” .. [was defined as] … “an evolving way to rethink entire power structures and value systems, draw on shared skills and knowledge, and endow marginalized communities with tools for economic sustainability” (Zeisler 172).

But more recently, unfortunately, the term “empowerment” has been emptied out of its grounded, specific political meaning, and therefore it has been diluted and virtually meaningless. What is particularly damaging about that is that it can also dilute (or water down) our collective understanding of feminism:

“The pop cultural framing of empowerment is basically the one defined by the fluffmongering OK magazine article- ‘the ability to do what you want to do’- a meaning that isn’t about change or action or demands or even community” (191).

According to Zeisler,“Empowerment is both a facet of choice feminism –anything can be a feminist choice if a feminist makes that choice –and a way to circumvent the use of the word ‘feminist’ itself” (171).

————-Questions to be answered:————

What are your associations with the concepts of “empowerment” and/or “girl power”? Do you agree with Zeisler’s and Banet-Weiser’s assessments of how these terms have lost their meaning and their political edge? Can they serve as meaningful tools to work toward meaningful feminist change?

Be sure to specifically and directly reference at least one of the readings above (i.e., make it clear that you have engaged their arguments).

Assignment 2:

———————Questions to be answered:———————

write a post in which you analyze the imagery in the commercial to answer the broader question: is Pepsi diluting the meaning of social movements like Black Lives Matter in this commercial?

Use specific analysis of scenes from the commercial to support your argument. For example, you might think about and comment on:

*how is Kendall Jenner portrayed in the video? What activity is she doing when she notices the protest outside? What specifically motivates her to join it? How does she change her appearance when she joins? Why?

*What is the protest about as far as you can tell? What do the signs call for? What message does it send about protests in general?

*What message does the commercial send when Kendall Jenner gives the police officer a Pepsi at the end of the video? If you watched the follow-up analysis video about this commercial, what is its argument about the problem with the original Pepsi ad?