‘Elite women are, and always have been, the trendsetters for feminism’: Koa Beck
Within existing social and political structures, fighting for gender equality is futile, writes American author and former women’s magazine editor Koa Beck.
What happens when ‘feminism’ is messaged primarily through ‘ambition’—code for white-collar ambition (a phenomenon I’ve witnessed as a longtime editor at mainstream women’s publications like Vogue and MarieClaire.com)?
What is presented as ‘feminism’ is often actually ‘white feminism’, and gender progress is often presented as achieving a white-collar leadership position, starting a company, or finding a long term ‘equal’ partner. What is messaged through white feminism is that marginalised genders, and those looking to interpret their realities, should aspire to privilege—not equal rights.
That’s because white feminism of now and 100 years ago has never been wholly invested in changing structures; it is anchored in teaching women to ascend within them. But many of the institutions that white feminism upholds and protects keep women and non-binary people food-insecure, homeless, impoverished, harassed, and victimised—a reality that has made many women even more vulnerable during COVID-19, particularly in the United States, where I am from.
If we are approaching the feminist movement as the American suffragists designed—simply as having access to what cis white men have—white feminism has been hurtling along at a pretty successful rate. When I vote, open a credit card in my own name, and secure birth control without written permission from my father or husband on my way to pursue a college education, I am actively inhabiting the world that many middle to upper-class white, American suffragettes envisioned.
If feminism is presented as a hot new trend among elite women like Beyoncé, then that same math works backward too: elite women are, and always have been, the trendsetters for feminism. They will dictate the decor in the proverbial ‘room of one’s own’. Feminism will ultimately be framed as having a certain fashionability, and it’s very easy to look out on the cultural landscape to discern who the trendsetters are.
In 2016, it was The Wing, which I was a member of from 2017-2018. “An exclusive social club for women” with high-profile founding members across entertainment, media, politics, business, and the digital influencer space, like then president of J.Crew Jenna Lyons, editor Tina Brown, Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine, rapper Remy Ma, among many others.
Upon opening their first location in New York City, co-founders and CEOs Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan told multiple outlets that the club drew inspiration from the American women’s social clubs of the turn of the century while also offering members a highly curated “network of community,” according to The Wing’s website.
In the 1910s, it was the suffragettes actively courting the interest of popular actresses Mary Pickford and Ethel Barrymore, both young, glamorous women who were challenging conventional understandings of gender with their very public personas and professional prowess, dual aberrations for women of the time. Pickford was one of the first American actresses to be a powerhouse with instant name recognition. She set the template for hearing the name “Jennifer Lawrence‘’ or “Julia Roberts” and knowing exactly who that is, down to their hair colour, dress, and most recent films. Billed by her name, a rarity in early American cinema, she expanded her influence from the big screen to controlling virtually every aspect behind it: writing, costumes, lighting, makeup, casting, and set design. Her professional titles would go on to include producer, screenwriter, and, later, studio executive—she would co found the film studio United Artists Corporation with other big names like Charlie Chaplin.
Barrymore was equally recognisable, considered ‘the first lady of the American stage’, with an iconic upswept hairstyle that was emulated by fans. From the acclaimed Barrymore acting dynasty, Ethel stood out for her unparalleled talent but also for her multi- disciplined passions: she read Henry James, she wrote short stories, she wrote plays—and she had “swish.”
In short, both women were brands.
Since the beginning of organised women’s rights in the United States, white feminism has lurked, adapted, and endured—rebranding and reincarnating alongside the revolution of its day. Women like Barrymore and Pickford lended a chic allure to suffrage with the added dimension of instant press coverage. (In 1910, when Barrymore attended a suffrage meeting, the New York–based Morning Telegraph went with the headline, ‘Ethel Barrymore is a suffragist’. The musical nature of that headline is the mellifluous sound of a suffrage PR director getting promoted.)
As white women began advocating for the vote and challenging the traditions, social etiquettes, and decorum that limited their social participation beyond the domestic sphere, they encountered a serious PR problem. Because women who spoke publicly, before large crowds and in public spaces, were deemed deviant—breaking from what was considered respectable lady behaviour—they realised they essentially had to change the public perception of what a suffragette is. But they had a new platform to consider that radical suffragists before them did not have: growing consumer culture.
Since the 1880s, the development of department stores and the mass production of wares made stores the new centralised place for Americans. And with the impetus to sell, these stores, managers, and advertisers had to orchestrate elaborate fantasies by which to get people, namely women, to buy.
Suffragettes embarked on their branding challenge by usurping the channels of mass culture to remake their image in what America, tradition, and power valued: whiteness; thin, able bodies; youth; conventional femininity; middle-class motherhood; heterosexuality; and a dedication to consumerism above all else. This depiction of a suffragette, a young white woman who sheltered white children and wore her hat just so as to indicate a certain class and respectability, was outlined in-house and exported virtually everywhere.
Maud Wood Park, a suffragist and founder of the Schlesinger Library, where I executed much of the research for this book, put the strategy this way: “People can resist logic but can they resist laughter, with youth and beauty to drive it home? Not often.”
The publicity of women’s suffrage was, from the onset, engineered not to challenge or educate the American public on women’s expanding roles—it was to affirm that suffrage shared them.
Relatively quickly, the appearance of the suffragette on posters, signs, and advertisements (because they did make straight-up advertisements for suffrage) was the type of young woman the average American would want to extend rights to, because she didn’t digress too far from what women are supposed to be or who is deemed a woman in the first place. She was not a scary ‘other’ with horns and a ‘shrill’ voice who was ‘trying to become a man’ and vote. She was soft, feminine, fair-skinned, and therefore unthreatening to business as usual.
Suffragettes of this strategy also envisioned the conflation of a political and commercial identity, an enduring political strategy. Using this specific ‘face’ of suffrage, they were keen to capitalise on commercial influence and get their stylish suffragettes in store windows, magazine advertisements, and with accompanying political gear for purchase. Macy’s was declared the ‘headquarters for suffrage supplies’ in 1912, offering an official parade marching outfit that included hat pins, lanterns, a sash, and a war bonnet, among other need-to-have accessories.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association [NAWSA], along with many other suffrage groups, would establish suffrage stores within prominent shopping districts, cementing the idea that you could, and in fact should, buy your feminism.
And businesses were all for the merging of politics and products. In the 1910s, as suffrage began to blossom into growing popularity, many stores profited on the trend by using suffrage colours and branded paraphernalia in their window displays, including the very elite Fifth Avenue boutiques in New York City. Macy’s created a special suffragette window display with official suffrage white hats, complete with yellow trimming, adorned with ‘votes for women’ flags or pennants. By 1920, those trinkets would expand to include mass-produced playing cards, drinking cups, luggage tags, fans, dolls, hats, valentines, and a variety of official suffragette-endorsed attire.
White feminism isn’t new. But it has found new life. The same platform that motivated the middle-class and upper-class suffragettes to partner with commercial retailers, endorsing an official ‘suffrage blouse’, a ‘suffragette cracker’, and ‘womanalls’, lives on today. And it’s the posh women, like Barrymore, like Pickford, like founding members at The Wing, who relay these messages and products through mass culture.
Beginning an explicitly feminist mission from within posh circles runs just as deep as the movement itself.
This is an edited extract from White Feminism by Koa Beck, out now. Beck will appear live via video link this Sunday 7 March only at the Sydney Opera House’s All About Women Festival. For more information visit sydneyoperahouse.com
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