Article: Femvertising: how brands are selling #empowerment to women

Source:https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/12/femvertising-branded-feminism

• The advertising industry, once bent on selling us sex is now selling us its disgust with sexism.
• Experts in the field might point to Virginia Slims, the godmother of allegedly feminist brands, selling female empowerment as far back as 1968. 
• These were the ads that showed women sashaying, strutting and smoking with the tagline: “You’ve come a long way, baby”, making lung cancer an equal-opportunity disease.
• Plotted elsewhere on the graph would be Dove's decade-old Real Beauty campaign, then considered revolutionary for selling body moisturiser – sorry, celebrating diversity in the female form – to all women.
• Later on, wising up to feminism “trending”, as it were, on social media, came cosmetic brand CoverGirl with #GirlsCan in February 2014. 
• This campaign, said the company, was “about discovering, encouraging whatever it is that makes a girl take up the challenge; break those barriers and turn ‘can’t’ into ‘can’”. It was fronted, credibly, by Pink, Ellen DeGeneres and Janelle Monae.
• Almost enough to make you forget that CoverGirl spent 50 years telling young women “your personality needs layers, your face doesn’t”.
• Later that year came Pantene and so, the real rise of hashtag feminism: #ShineStrong launched in June 2014 with a short film titled Sorry, Not Sorry, which highlighted how women constantly apologise without thinking at work, at home, to strangers and friends. 
• The video went viral. A conversation about the message, and not the medium – which let’s not forget, at heart is still an advert about selling swishy, shiny hair – was had on feminist blogs.
• If the commercialisation of the movement has taught us anything, it’s that you can challenge gender norms, battle inequality … and buy more shampoo.

However, the big success story of femvertising, and winner of shelves of awards, remains #LikeAGirl from Always, makers of maxi-pads and the like. Originally played during Superbowl 2014, the video made by film-maker Lauren Greenfield recruited women, men, boys and pre-pubescent girls and asked them to show what it physically meant to run like a girl or throw like a girl. The adults mugged for the camera – throwing and running, looking weak and embarrassed; but the young girls asked to do the same things ran and threw hard and fast. The result: viewers were forced to consider that doing things “like a girl” should be seen as strong, not pathetic.