This page includes my definition of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

+ all my essays and blog posts explaining why it's bad for women, our businesses and our culture.

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand:

An archetype women must comply with and embody in order to be deserving of rights and resources

AND

A marketing strategy that leverages social status and white privilege to create authority over other women.

on love, fight, grief and masculinity

May 3, 2016 By Kelly Diels

I was going to write a massive missive on femininity today, because I’m worried that The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand is not just a marketing narrative, it’s also an ideology about how to be a woman (that’s why the narrative works!).

And, as an ideology framing our lives, it’s not substantially different than any previous cultural imperatives about how to be pretty and appropriate except that it contains,whole and complete, all the previous iterations – the feminine mystique, the beauty myth plus a new demand for financial and career success – AND it’s adherence to mainstream patriarchal norms is positioned as new and rebellious and empowered.

The 21st century woman! Thin and pretty and white and rich!

Tell me how that’s anything different or less restrictive than anything that’s come before.

I was going to go through it step-by-step so we can see it for what it is. An ideology. Coming from all directions, not just online. One that’s trying to body-snatch us and speak with our tongues and our lives.

But I went to my godfather’s memorial yesterday and I am demolished.

I need to figure out how we get through devastations like this.

So instead of writing about femininity, I want to talk about fight and being a fighter. Tomato, tahmahto.

Lemons, Lemonade.

I think our culture gets ‘fight’ all wrong. Or maybe it’s just me. When I think about fighting to get through something, I think about it like Fight Club. You show up in a ring or a basement and you take to your fists. You take a beating and you fight back. It’s short, it’s predefined, you know what to expect, and it’s a physical flurry. It’s dramatic, it’s bloody, it’s over quickly.

Fight, in my life, isn’t like that at all.

It’s not public and quick and physical. It’s never-ending and mental, emotional, psychic.

(It’s sometimes physical, too, but usually there’s no tangible opponent. Just concepts. Doubt, death, ideologies. Thieves.)

Fight isn’t brief. It’s endurance. It’s hanging in there. It’s keeping on, keeping on. It’s tucking your kids in even though you want to cry. It’s doing it while you cry.

It’s showing up for chemo, again and again.

It’s showing up for your spouse who betrayed you and being strong enough to rage and forgive.

It’s being the person who betrayed a loved one – or anyone – and showing up to make amends. (I find this more of a challenge than forgiving.)

It’s showing up for the interview for the job of your dreams even though you’re terrified.

It’s showing up for a job that’s a nightmare or just a slow burning grind because that’s what you’ve got to do right now to survive.

It’s having a hard conversation that you’re pretty sure is going to change things but you don’t want things to change.

It’s twenty years, not twenty minutes.

Fight is resilience, not a boxing ring.

Fight is quiet and often unnoticed. There’s usually next to no audience for your struggle.

Fight is daily. It’s not a flurry, it’s not dramatic. (Except when it is.)

That’s one of the reasons I bring up fight. Because, like I said a second ago, I think our culture gets fight wrong. When we talk about fight, we talk about battles. You fight that thing and then it’s over and you’re done fighting.

But I’m never done fighting. And my life is easy. Privileged. It’s still so deeply, unrelentingly hard. I have to fight hard every day, every year – and, like the famous privilege+video game analogy, my life is set to the easy level. It’s infinitely harder for people who don’t wear multiple forms of privilege on their bodies like suits of armour.

This is why we, as society, have so much work to do. We need to keep fighting, together, so people don’t have to fight, alone.

The other reason I talk about fight is because that’s what my Uncle Dave’s son said about him, yesterday: he had more fight in him than anyone.

And his fight didn’t land on other people. It wasn’t aggression. It was never harmful. He just never gave up.

Seven years ago he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. It was grueling. I’m not going to go into it.

But miraculously, luckily, he survived (it was a stroke, out of nowhere, that ended his life last week). After cancer, he gained seven beautiful years. Seven more years with his children and grandchildren. Seven retired years. Seven years of extravagant travelling with his wife.

I’m not going to say they had those years because he fought and won because I despise that narrative. It makes it seem like people who die didn’t fight hard enough and that’s a lie. It stigmatizes our dead and it stigmatizes our living peeps with diseases who then have to put up their fists and put on a brave face and smile.

You don’t have to put on a brave face and smile for me.

That’s not the kind of fight we should demand of anyone.

Fight isn’t something you demand of other people. It’s something you summon in yourself.

Fight is showing up and keeping on even though you don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

Fight is action – and endurance – in the face of uncertainty.

Fight isn’t putting on a show of strength so people don’t worry.

Fight is letting people into the worry.

Fight is being willing to worry.

Fight is love.

That’s the other thing my Uncle Dave’s son said about him: “He taught me how to love.”

Everyone was talking about his common sense, his work ethic, his lifetime of effort to provide for his family – all the usual masculine tropes, and he did that, he fought hard for forty years to do that; I’m not diminishing that – but his son said his greatest contribution, his legacy, was love.

I’m crying so hard as I write this.

But I want us to know that, remark on that.

Our worth is not our productivity or our finances.
All of these are important. We do those things to make our family’s lives better, easier.
My Uncle Dave did that.
I’m doing that.
But a man’s worth is not his work ethic.

We construct a masculinity in our culture – just like we construct a femininity – that says men are what they do, not how they feel.
Not who they are.
What they do.
Or don’t do. Like express their emotions. Be vulnerable. Be present. Love.

But that’s the thing my Uncle Dave lavished on his sons. It’s what he taught his sons.
And they know how to do that, because he showed them.
He gave them his attention and time. Love is attention. Love is time.
His sons will love their children, too. They do.
They are present. They love.
Every day.

Fight, love. Lemons, Lemonade.

Every day. All of us.

It’s how we’re gonna get through and celebrate this electric thing called life.

xoxo,

Not Every Man is a Patriarch. Not Every Patriarch is a Man.

April 14, 2016 By Kelly Diels

I talk a lot about how personal beauty is used as a marketing tool by The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand.

Everyone’s gonna think I have a problem with that because I’m jealous. Because I’m fat.

Nope. That’s not it.

Here’s the deal: cultural standards around beauty aren’t even about being beautiful. They’re about signalling privilege and access to resources.

If you are thin and white and elaborately maintained and wear Gucci boots and do “business” photo-shoots in front of the Eiffel Tower, you’re not signalling “beauty”, you’re signalling privilege. You’re signalling wealth. You’re signalling immunity and power and luxury. That’s what people want from you. They want what you have, not who you are. It’s not even *really* about beauty. It’s about allegiance to a system that rewarded you. It’s telling other people that the system worked for you because you’re exceptional and maybe it can work for them, too.

It can work for the exceptions.

That’s how patriarchy works. A few at the top, the rest below. Not every man is a patriarch. Not every patriarch is a man.

That’s what The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand is about: exceptionalism. It’s not about collective empowerment or changing things and opening more opportunities and more choices to more women. It’s about showing a few exceptions-to-the-rule how to maneuver in the existing system to get yours and yours alone.

IF you fit the mold.

Who fits the mold? Pretty, young white women.

And that’s why The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand – which is literally founded on embodying a lifestyle other women will want to emulate – is not about collective empowerment at all. It’s about a few people learning how to switch positions in the existing hierarchy.

And that hierarchy is white patriarchy.

—-
I’m writing a book about The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand and if you want updates, I send them out each Sunday by e-mail:http://www.kellydiels.com/subscribe/

Women Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

April 13, 2016 By Kelly Diels

Our culture’s base assumption about women is that we are a problem.

At school, our bodies are a distraction and keep boys and men from their studies. In houses of legislature, our bodies, fertility and persistent human desires for autonomy are a problem to be solved and regulated. In the media, we’re scorned and lying harridans falsely accusing athletes of rape and ruining prestigious sports events with our calls for justice. At home, too. At parties, too. At work, too. We either say too much, lie, or don’t say it correctly with the right amount of bass in our voice. We insist on being heard or we’re not loud enough and no one hears us. Why didn’t we say something? And then when we say something, we say it wrong. We fail to signal male competence and authority in our speech patterns. We wear the wrong clothes, clothes that remind people we are women. We don’t wear the right clothes, clothes that remind people we are women. We bear children. We don’t bear children. We stay home to take care of our children. We don’t stay home to take care of our children. We go to work and take care of our children and our loved ones and therefore wreak havoc in the workplace designed around the idea that someone else is supposed to be at home doing that for us. That’s how the men who occupy 95% of top jobs do it. But we are not men. We are a problem to be corrected.

So we try to compensate. We try be perfect. We try to improve.

Self-improvement, as an industry, is often about correcting the fundamental problem that women have in our culture and our culture has with us: that we are women. We need to be fixed. We need to fix ourselves.

You don’t need fixing. The world needs fixing. – Poppy Lochridge

—–

I’m writing a book about The Female Lifestyle Empower Brand, a phenomenon that markets to women using this same assumption: that we are a problem. According to The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, women need to change themselves to better fit into the world, the workplace or those size 2 jeans. Screw that. Let’s change the world, instead.

If you’d like to read more in this vein, I send a Sunday Love Letter by email and I’d appreciate it if you’d join: http://www.kellydiels.com/subscribe/

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand: We Can Do Better

March 31, 2016 By Kelly Diels

What is The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand and ’empowermyth’?

It’s go-go entrepreneur-ism without the caveat that most women entrepreneurs start micro-businesses which generate subsistence-level revenues rather than untrammeled abundance.

It’s yoga – or let’s be real: stretching classes – sold as a way to get taut and hot rather than a way to prepare the body for seated meditation.

It’s calling your new crash diet a cleanse and a wellness journey rather than an act of female obedience (at best) or orthorexia (at worst).

It’s striving to be in a good mood and calling it a spiritual journey.

It’s pursuing upward mobility and Mammon – good for you! me too! – but calling that a spiritual journey, too.

It’s refusing to watch the news or mainstream media lest it taint your positive vibe.

It’s abstaining from fraught, unwinnable and wildly necessary conversations about race and justice because you don’t want to be a drag. Or, even worse, impolite.

It’s thinking you can be the change and that’s good enough.

It’s insisting that everything in your life is the sum of your personal choices and that there aren’t any systemic barriers or lubricants slowing or speeding your roll.

Sheryl Sandberg broke it down for a room of thousands of people – mostly men – like this:

“There’s only two options: One is that men are far, far, far more talented than women and deserve 95% of the top jobs, or the second is that there’s systemic bias. Those are the options. Pick one.”

It’s never mentioning that the reason women – and especially black women – start their own businesses is because the corporate workplace still fails to see them as competent and offer them fair pay, promotions and family-friendly policies.

It’s teaching women entrepreneurs that success means using the predatory internet marketing practices developed by pick-up artists and patriarchs.

It’s justifying using manipulative marketing and sales techniques by saying “But it works…”.

It’s conflating personal financial freedom with collective liberation.

It’s seeking transformation and empowerment for yourself but not the world.

It’s claiming to change the world but staying silent while Ferguson and Baltimore burn.

It’s championing self-care as a revolutionary practice without ever mentioning Audre Lorde or bell hooks.

It’s smudging and weight-loss salons marketed as “urban sweat lodges” and white lady shamans who don’t do shit for indigenous peoples.

It’s preaching and teaching empowerment, a distinctly feminist goal, while saying feminism is “flawed” or finished or “the pendulum has swung too far” and distancing yourself from it.

It’s courses teaching women how to be women.

It’s the problem that has no name and the iron maiden and the mythical norm all rolled into one and reloaded.

It’s empowermyth and The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (FLEB) and it’s yet another ideology of ideal femininity being sold to us by the women entrepreneurs and leaders we most admire, trust and hire.

And all of us – sellers and buyers – can do better than this.

Let’s do better.

Because we are the culture makers.

———-

I’m writing a book about empowermyth and The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. If you want updates- and it would thrill me if you do – you can sign up for them here: http://www.kellydiels.com/subscribe-a/.

#tbt Toes in the Sand but NO PEDI. Also, The Beauty Myth then and now.

March 25, 2016 By Kelly Diels

Ixtapa, Mexico + John Rawls + No Pedi. Unthinkable now, right?

It was the 90s – before Instagram, before I even had a cell phone. (That’s why there’s an alarm clock – because I didn’t have a watch, either and I didn’t want to miss lunch). I was at Club Med in Ixtapa, Mexico – the first time I’d ever gone travelling without a back pack, and only because someone else was footing the bill, and sure enough, this experience forever ruined me for budget travel – and this was my toes-in-the-sand photo.

This photo seems so naive, now. It was before toes-in-the-sand pics were everywhere. Before selfies were a thing (this pic was taken with an actual camera that used film). Before pedicures and salon-polished toes were a norm and required if one dared to photograph one’s sunburned feet. Now, to be honest, I wouldn’t take or post a pic of my not-professionally-pedicured toes. I wouldn’t dare let the seams show like that.

And that’s a problem.

I’ve been railing against the relentless exhortations and expectations that we think positive and be positive at all times. I’m against the psychic pruning of our souls and our reality. I think it depoliticizes us. I think it explicitly strives to make us feel insecure and disenfranchised in order to sell us the illusion of empowerment. I think we should be very, very worried that international institutions and repressive governments are using happiness rather than human rights as a good governance metric.

But it’s bigger than the relentless pursuit of happiness. It’s The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. It’s go-go entrepreneurism without the accompanying info that, in fact, most women entrepreneurs gross around or less than $50K per year. It’s yoga – or let’s be real: stretching classes – sold as a way to get taut and hot rather than a way to prepare the body for seated meditation. It’s calling your new crash diet a cleanse and a wellness journey rather than act of female obedience (at best) or orthorexia (at worst). It’s striving to be in a good mood and calling it a spiritual journey. It’s pursuing upward mobility and Mammon – good for you! me too! – but calling that a spiritual journey, too. It’s refusing to watch the news or mainstream media lest it taint your positive vibe. It’s trying to feel positive and happy and empowered but not actually doing anything with that (illusory) power. It’s thinking everything in your life is the sum of your personal choices and that there aren’t any systemic barriers or lubricants slowing or speeding your roll. (Sheryl Sandberg just broke it down for a room of thousands of people – mostly men – like this: “There are two options. 1. That are far superior to women and deserve 95% of top level positions. 2. That there is systematic oppression. Pick One.”) It’s seeking transformation and empowerment for yourself but not the world. It’s only posting the perfect photos of your decidedly imperfect life. It’s all part of the same damn thing, and that thing is The Beauty Myth 2.0…

…AKA: The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand.

Let’s smash it. Let’s stomp it, together, with our pedicured and unpedicured feet.

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand:

on love, fight, grief and masculinity

Not Every Man is a Patriarch. Not Every Patriarch is a Man.

Women Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand: We Can Do Better

What is The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand and ’empowermyth’?

#tbt Toes in the Sand but NO PEDI. Also, The Beauty Myth then and now.

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