A former editor at Jezebel, Vogue, and Marie-claire.com, Beck illuminates how prejudice and elitism suffuse mainstream feminist thinking ... As a biracial and queer woman, Beck knows what it means to be excluded from this narrative. But because she’s 'light skinned and very conventionally feminine' — and often mistaken for white and straight — she has also experienced its privileges. Her status as both an outsider and insider to white feminism’s default identity gives her a prime vantage point from which to critique its mechanisms ... What’s 'feminist about oppressing other women within the shadow of slavery so you can have a corner office and be profiled in The Cut?' Beck rightly asks. Beck artfully traces how these contradictions have been baked into the feminist movement from its beginnings ... Beck is a perceptive cultural critic, but even more importantly, she’s a visionary. Her book ends with a rousing blueprint for a more inclusive 'new era of feminism' ... powerful and inspiring.
Beck names and identifies white feminism in the hope of replacing it with a 'more holistic, ambitious approach to inequality.' Beck’s book teems with examples of how white feminism has always been an exclusive club ... A section on the COVID-19 era brings into sharp relief the failings of white feminism, as poor and minority women have disproportionately suffered ... A former editor in chief of Jezebel and executive editor at Vogue, Beck interweaves tales of how white feminism would rear its head while working on the front lines of women’s media ... The project of extensively defining white feminism suggests the book’s audience is primarily white feminists; these are truths people of color, queer women and nonbinary people know from their experiences and histories. The book spends less time on solutions, but here, the author lands on the places white feminism overlooks.
Just in time for the hundredth anniversary of white women’s suffrage comes this masterful outlining of the progress and flaws of the feminist movement. Journalist, critic, and fiction writer Beck skillfully challenges the centralizing of white feminism ... Beck’s clearly laid-out examination and interrogation of white feminism will change the way readers think on a daily level. This new history is a timely call to action, and earns its place as required reading for anyone who claims to care about the future of feminism.
The real key to the shape and tone of the book may lie in Beck’s exposure to the 'ideology' of white feminism in the offices of Marie Claire and Glamour. She has many interesting observations of the essence of this particular feminism as being not only white and elite, but also thin, capitalistic, individualistic, and exclusive. But this obliges her to find other labels for non-white, working class, collective movements of women (and non-women) activists; or to appear to contradict her own very limited characterization of feminism ... This book is probably best seen as a series of essays in the course of which Beck’s thinking evolves and matures ... Perhaps the single label, feminism, so heavy with baggage, preconceptions, and contradictions has served its purpose and does not deserve further refurbishment and elaboration. This may be why so many people who espouse equality, collective action, 'intersectionality,' and non-discrimination of all kinds can be heard to say 'I’m not a feminist but . . .'
A clear analysis of the commodification of feminism from protest to brand ... With both vigor and rigor, Beck outlines a variety of fundamental problems with contemporary liberal feminism, which relies too much on brand endorsements and shallow empowerment ... A timely, compelling dissection of feminism's reliance on consumerism and useful suggestions for paths forward.
Nowadays, Beck writes, profit-oriented corporate culture has merged with white feminism, resulting in a transactional #feminism brand that merely reinforces the status quo rather than challenging power structures. She argues for a more collective approach, urging readers to use their privilege to ensure that marginalized people are considered ... Beck makes many scholarly ideas about neoliberal and intersectional feminism accessible to lay readers, but her hyperfocus on the media sphere contradicts her call for a more inclusive movement. Still, this is a bracing rethink of what feminism can achieve.
