April 6, 2016

This isn’t empowering, it’s marketing

Browsing Facebook aimlessly recently I came across the usual holiday pictures (cue: envy), political posts (okay, okay), moaning (here we go again), cute animal photos (awww) and then this: “Dear Kim. Please stop using the term ’empowerment’ when you really mean ‘marketing’”. Cue: intrigue, interest, agreement, frustration.

It’s a feature on the recent photo Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski posted on Instagram – yes, that topless selfie. It was captioned “When we’re like…we both have nothing to wear LOL @emrata”, following on from Kardashian’s other completely naked selfie taken a week or so ago.

And whilst this time they’re both posing with their middle finger up in the air, it’s hardly an agressive image. As the author of the article, Jacqueline Lunn writes,

“…we’re all meant to sit back, have a look at the black stripe over their boobs, their middle fingers in the air and that omnipresent bathroom mirror and say, “Oh, Thank God for female empowerment. How empowering. Just look at those two women empower. I need to get me some of these empowerment black strip things…”

But it isn’t really is it? As Lunn points out, it’s marketing. The coincidence they’re both together? The coincidence that a lamp is just there? The coincidence that it comes so soon after Kardashian’s naked selfie? Please. Lunn isn’t stupid and neither are we. The worrying thing is, however, that some people will see these photos and see empowerment; the even more worrying thing is, as Lunn says, that through sharing such ’empowering’ images, they are “telling our daughters how empowering it is to look exactly like they do and take a nude selfie while you are at it”.

The definition of empowerment is “authority or power given to someone to do something”; or “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights”.

Marketing, on the other hand, is defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services [we’d add people to this], including market research and advertising”.

Read those definitions, read Lunn’s piece, and let us know what you think.

Stephanie Bolton

@StephanieBolton