My best friend and I share a bookshelf of feminist books – it is an array of perhaps the most visually unappealing books we own, books you’re not exactly rushing to whip out on public transport. Nonetheless, book by book they nourish our understanding of the many women around the world and the many lives lived that we never get to hear about. However, it seems that recently everyone around us is craving feminist books that are laced with aestheticism and beauty. Everyone around us is craving feel-good feminism.
Feel good feminism encompasses a palette of feminism branded as self-love, individual empowerment and an aspiration of success within the capitalist world. It encourages women to be power hungry regardless of whether other women are starving. The most relevant example of this at the moment is the Florence Given feminist books of today, which feel hard to digest.
Florence Given has released a few books, most notably ‘Women Don’t Owe You Pretty’ and ‘Women Living Deliciously’, each of which is described and marketed as intersectional feminist books focusing on relationships and self-love. Given’s books allow women to unlearn a lot of the societal expectations that have weighed us down but do so by spoonfeeding women neoliberal values and Given-flavoured feminism. They suggest that confidence and self-worth are the recipe to ‘tackle the patriarchy’ – a lie that no one should consume.
In the 60s, my Great Uncle had been given a bell pepper in Yugoslavia, a vegetable he had never encountered before. He bit into it only to find emptiness and a mouthful of seeds. Given’s feel-good feminism is a similar experience. You can bite into this wonderful, vibrant text only to find it lacking. There is no depth, there is no theory, just aesthetically pleasing. Slapping a few illustrations of women with conventional bodies cannot cover the intersectionality one claims to encompass. However, it has seeds – it has the potential to grow and branch out – but not if you let people consume it as is.
At an age when anti-intellectualism is on a high, it seems dangerous that a lot of educated young women are being served these feel-good feminist books and their accompanying feminist influencers over a menu offering the reading and understanding of the true, global issues and complexities of modern feminism. Feminism thrives on being able to understand all women and hear their experiences, not just thriving as individuals in this world. “Women don’t owe you pretty?” We owe one another everything. We are here to support everyone and their rights, we are here to speak out for others, we are here to take actions and force change – and unfortunately, it is impossible through choice feminism.
I love female writers, and I love hearing women’s stories no matter who they are. However, it seems Florence Given and other feminist influencers are increasing their media presence but not saying anything. A lot of women don’t want to hear about a vintage haul or your ‘cut everyone off’ epiphanies, they want their feminist figures to speak out about women experiencing genocide in Palestine, women silenced by the Taliban, the unlawful ICE raids, transphobia, homophobia, forced marriages, human trafficking, femicides, they want to hear about ALL women. Given referring to her recent Los Angeles move as a dream and disregarding other immigrant women currently being taken away from their families and lives is not just tone deaf, it’s morally unpalatable. Who can care if Florence Given is living deliciously when the women of Palestine are starving?
My best friend’s feminist books are not so easy on the eyes. She too knows a marketing strategy when she sees one and if a feminist book is more focused on selling than teaching it is not one that she can stomach. A lot of people argue that everyone needs a feminist introduction from somewhere, but why choose to start with writers who say things like “modern feminism is too woke”? Start with intersectional literature, start with theory, start with factual feminism because that is the way we learn about the world we live in.
The Western world is on an increasingly quick path to right extremism and if we have any hope of slowing it down it is by listening and standing up for every woman, not just ourselves. At an age where we have so much access to so many different women’s stories around the world, unfiltered and often unheard, it’s time to branch out past the floral covers of feel-good feminism and listen to the women who aren’t able to just live deliciously in the blink of an eye. It is a hard pill to swallow to actually listen to the deep and varied struggles of women around the world, but it will heal your feel-good feminism indigestion. It’s time to consume better.
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