How ‘Empowerment’ Became Something For Women To Buy

At my day job as an editor at a women’s website, I receive a daily mess of emails promoting random products and activities as “empowering.” Recent offerings include the Pure Barre workout, divorce, Miley Cyrus, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ancient Egyptian sex rites, leggings, sending nude photos, receiving nude photos, declining to send or receive nude photos, doing stand-up comedy and purchasing full-bottomed lingerie. The mix of things presumed to transmit and increase female power is without limit yet still depressingly limiting.

“Empowerment” wasn’t always so trivialized, or so corporate, or even so clamorously attached to women.

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