The Problem With “Isms”

This past semester, while working for an online women’s magazine, I found myself heavily drawn to writing about feminist issues. By virtue of being a woman with strong opinions on the subject, I blindly considered myself an expert. I was quick to hail things like positive beauty campaigns as feminist and arraign others as anti-feminist, or sexist, if they bordered on archaic representations of femininity.

All that changed last Monday when I was asked to write about a recent advertising campaign for Fairlife Milk, a Coca Cola subsidiary, which features a number of nearly nude women covered in everyone’s favorite calcium source. By that time, the media had already denounced the article for multiple counts of sexism, so I prepared myself to be equally shocked and enraged upon viewing the campaign. Try as I might, however, I could not seem to find anything wrong with it. To me it was clear that the advertisements were a nostalgic homage to the old-fashioned pin-up girls featured in 1940s Coke advertisements rather than some regressive attempt to depict the ideal woman in a degrading and hyper-sexualized manner.

In the midst of trying to grapple with whether or not my interpretation was correct, whether these advertisements were in fact sexist or simply celebrating the female form, it finally dawned on me that there could be a gray area. What may come across as sexist, or anti-feminist, to one person might not translate the same way in the case of another. Still, I could not reconcile this idea with the definition of feminism I had come to champion over the years, the one promulgated by the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Emma Watson.

If feminism really is synonymous with gender equality (and it is), how could there be any confusion as to what is or is not equal? Moreover, anything suggesting the inequality of the sexes has to be anti-feminist by default. The problem is, while feminism in theory is simple enough to define, feminism in action is far more nebulous. Of course, there are certain phenomena such as the gender pay gap that we can all agree are undeniably discriminatory, but not all issues are this categorical, as evidenced by my response to the Fairlife Milk campaign.

The trouble with our current society is that we are obsessed with compartmentalizing things into definitive categories or labels. We are the hashtag generation; we feel the need to compress the entirety of an image or sentiment into a simple set of words. We throw around words like ‘feminist’ or ‘racist’ because they are provocative and recognizable, but, in doing so, we fail to realize the binary we have created, in which you are either feminist or anti-feminist, racist or tolerant, liberal or conservative.

This is not to say that we should do away with “isms” altogether. As a writer and English major, I am an ardent believer in the power of language and a respectful admirer of the heavy histories that accompany words like “racism,” “feminism,” or “sexism.” But perhaps it is time to shift our focus away from obsessing over definitions and toward the actions that these definitions aim to represent. Or, if we continue to emphasize these umbrella terms, perhaps we should do so with a more careful understanding of the ambiguities that arise in their application.

The most important thing to consider is whether these words serve a constructive purpose beyond categorization, for they will have little use if they continue to hover in headlines without the power to effect change. Instead, we should view language as a call to action rather than getting bogged down with determining who or what is or is not feminist, sexist, or racist. After all, while I would love to see certain starlets such as Shailene Woodley and Carrie Underwood claim the term “feminism” for the benefit of their young female fans, I would much rather see them on the frontlines fighting for gender equality.

Aria N. Bendix ’15, a Crimson editorial writer, is an English concentrator in Quincy House.