Self-Optimization in the Face of Patriarchy: How Mainstream Women’s Media Facilitates White Feminism

Abstract

Fourth-wave white feminism is defined by and is aligned with corporate narratives of capitalistic success with neoliberal foundations. This particular interpretation of gender inequality exempts itself from critiques of race, class, or heteronormative advantages and lacks a critical lens of systemic or structural institutions that perpetuate them. White feminism, both historically and in the fourth-wave, has relied extensively on individualized understandings of gender equality that relies on the singular, often economic, success of one woman rather than collective gains. This metabolizing of gender equality is reflected in both how feminism is communicated to the reader within mainstream women’s media and what profile subjects are deemed “feminist” as well as how these subjects personally interpret misogyny, sexism, and feminism.