In a recent academic conference I presented at, I discussed the empowerment vs. exploitation debate that often runs through feminist conversations on pole dance and sex work. However, I realised when scrolling through Twitter (X) during the period in which I was preparing for this presentation that this debate underpins so many issues that are considered feminist concerns, not just in academia, but also in popular culture. The British newspaper The Guardian had tweeted a review of the Barbie film and framed this with the question ‘Are Barbie dolls demeaning or empowering?’. I groaned internally and wondered to myself how long we’re going to keep asking the wrong questions when it comes to looking at practices, whether that’s engagement with popular culture or forms of work and leisure, that are associated with women and girls in public consciousness.
I have to admit that as an undergraduate university student dipping my toes into feminist philosophy for the first time, and at times during my master’s degree in gender studies, I often found myself getting drawn into these debates, hoping to find the ‘right’ answer in relation to various issues so that I could be a ‘good’ feminist. If I’m being really honest, there are probably still times when I’m subconsciously doing this. Whilst it’s obviously essential to consider and critique gendered norms in relation to inequalities, these debates often ignore the nuances and complexities at play within these conversations.
For example, recently when reading Britney Spear’s new book The Woman in Me, it was fascinating to learn of her positive experiences when shooting the famous (and iconic) …Baby One More Time music video. She said that the idea for the music video, which is set in a school and involves Britney dancing in school uniform with her classmates, was her idea and was one of the most fun videos to make. I found this so interesting because I’ve often heard music videos like this being used as examples of women being ‘sexualised’ and ‘exploited’. However, what Britney’s experiences show us is that it may be most helpful when looking at representations within popular culture, work and leisure practices to consider who is in control in these situations and how they are experienced.
If we were able to adopt this approach more in contemporary feminist discussions, maybe this would allow for more understanding of the issues experienced by marginalised people and enable us to work towards solutions. For example, sex workers have long campaigned for legislation that enables them to have safer and better working conditions, like decriminalisation of sex work. However, some groups claiming to be operating from a feminist standpoint argue against this and view all sex work as exploitation of women, arguing that decriminalisation would ‘normalise and encourage’ sex work and put women at risk. By viewing sex work through their own lens rather than turning their attention to the lived experiences of sex workers, who is in control of their work and who is actually doing the work (as after all, we know that it is not only cisgendered women who perform sex work), they completely miss the structural factors that are actually putting women and other marginalised groups at risk and ironically increase the risks to sex workers.
Under global capitalism, hardly anything most of us do is going to be completely free from exploitation because the whole system relies on exploitation to function. Most people go to work primarily because they can’t afford not to. However, nobody talks about people who work in industries like retail and hospitality, where long hours and low-pay are the norm and working conditions are often challenging because of this, being ‘coerced’ into their work. Yet these are the narratives that constantly surround sex workers. This often leaves them in a bind because they can end up feeling like they have to justify their work to outsiders and can feel hesitant to discuss any challenges that they face because it can be used as ‘evidence’ that their work is ‘inherently exploitative’.
When you think about it, to constantly be asking whether practices generally associated with women and girls in the public imagination are empowering or exploitative reveals how our culture still views women and girls as entirely passive subjects with absolutely no agency. The word empowerment is arguably also relatively meaningless in these contexts, as ultimately there’s no way to truly individually ’empower’ ourselves within a capitalist system that relies on the mass exploitation of people to continue existing. The stereotypical image of the empowered ‘girl boss’ with her high-flying career, fancy apartment and expensive clothes usually doesn’t include the woman cleaning her home on a minimum wage zero hour contract. If every woman becomes an empowered girl boss, who’s going to clean all their homes whilst they’re at the office during the week and brunching at the weekend? Capitalism is inherently hierarchical because it relies on having people to extract capital from so it just isn’t possible for everyone to be empowered under it. As Audre Lorde said, ‘I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own’. I’m not saying that our individual choices don’t matter. However, I don’t think picking faults with how marginalised people choose to navigate and survive the exploitative systems that we’re all living in is the solution to the collective change that the people who critique these choices often claim to want.
Pole, PTSD and me 