So I was on my way to Euston last Friday and was immediately inundated with lots of ridiculous adverts on the underground. I would have started scribbling in the name of political intervention but it was very busy and the majority of the ridiculous ones were behind the tracks. Anyway, I saw this and it got me thinking about the relationship between the tyranny of happiness and the commodification of empowerment. These are both rather well linked as it is through such commodification that the tyrannical nature of advertising can be fully grasped. In our meeting this week I was talking to Sari about the idea that a huge part of advertising, and where my immediate problem lies, is through how adverts take real joy from human interaction and suck all of the life from them in order to sell us stuff. I believe that is the real tyranny. In the case of feminism it's clear that we are sold faux empowerment in order to get us to buy things. It's so gross and manipulative. With the advert I saw in particular, it's like 'you're a superwoman but your legs are still fat so wear our shoes'. It really is completely ridiculous
This is a really great article about it:
https://qz.com/692535/we-sold-feminism-to-the-masses-and-now-it-means-nothing/
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