MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Popular online writing with a feminist twist has proliferated in the last 10 years; for example, the site Jezebel reports on current events and offers commentary on pop culture from a feminist viewpoint, and the satirical online publication Reductress ridicules advice found in women’s magazines. Those who produce feminist cultural content online are working in an increasingly precarious neoliberal employment market, which requires self-branding, self-promotion, and constant audience engagement to succeed (Baym, 2015; Gill, 2010; McRobbie, 2002; Neff, 2010). Engaging in feminist practices in a digital environment thus requires the negotiation of individual self-branding and promotional activities alongside the advancement of collective politics, seemingly antithetical endeavors. This study uses 12 in-depth interviews with online writers who identify as feminist to explore how these cultural producers reconcile the individualistic undertakings required to succeed in the digital economy with their collective feminist values. The analysis reveals that some writers use feminism itself as a self-brand to promote themselves in an online environment where feminism is ostensibly the “in” thing. These writers argue, however, that such strategic self-promotion is also useful in starting conversations around important women’s issues. Others, who see self-branding as feminist as part of an inauthentic “mainstream feminism,” distance themselves from feminism as a label. However, this distancing is used strategically to “sneak” feminist conversations to audiences that may have otherwise been opposed to the ideology if presented with it directly. Thus “sneaky feminism” is evoked as a way of successfully balancing individualistic career prospects with the collective values of feminism.