Kelly Diels

Writer | Feminist Marketing for Culture Makers

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  • Hello!
    • About Me
    • Working Together
    • My Feminist Business Practices
  • Programs + Workshops
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    • Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand
    • Feminist Marketing Tools
    • All My Essays
    • Sources + References
  • Sunday Love Letter
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    • Archive of Sunday Love Letters

On the ‘Mental Triggers’ of Online Marketing, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, Assessing Who Deserves Your Money, and Why We Should Be Skeptical of Makeover Stories

May 18, 2016 By Kelly Diels

authority is not a mental trigger we should use in our empowerment businesses

Jeff Walker’s launch formula – taught in his best-selling book, Launch and his course, Product Launch Formula – has had a profound impact on online marketing. Take a gander at his book blurbs or google the big names + Jeff Walker and you’ll quickly find that most online business models are premised on a version of his sales process. He’ll tell you that, himself:

“I’ve coached or helped all kinds of experts such as Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, Rich Schefren, Frank Kern, Dean Graziosi, Yanik Silver, Greg Clement and dozens more “gurus”…”

Walker wasn’t the first to launch products, but what he quickly noticed was that very few people were getting the kinds of results he consistently produced. He was doing something differently. He understood that humans communicate in stories and structured his launch communications to construct a story and build to a conclusion. Each email, each video was a scene in a play.

The other thing he grasped – he calls it “The Final Piece of the Puzzle” and this is arguably the heart of his book – is that people make emotional and mentally programmed decisions. Presenting facts and benefits is logical but it doesn’t sell products. Instead, “there are a number of mental triggers that influence those decisions and behaviors. These triggers are always working just below our consciousness, and they exert enormous influence over how we act.”

What Walker recommends, then, is activating these mental triggers to compel people to buy.

The first three triggers he outlines are scarcity, authority, and community.

“For instance, if we perceive something s being scarce, we will naturally give it more value.

Or if we consider someone as an authority figure, we are almost automatically more influenced by that person.

Or if we consider ourselves part of a community, we will overwhelmingly act in accordance with how we think the people in that community are supposed to act.” (27-28)

Walker’s launch formula teaches entrepreneurs how to activate these triggers (and several others) in order to trigger buying behaviour: “…your launch sequence gives you the ultimate opportunity to activate those mental triggers that will influence your prospects and clients.”

So let’s talk about only one of Walker’s recommended triggers (I’ll come back to the others in future posts).

Authority.

Basically, Jeff Walker teaches entrepreneurs how to use their authority to trigger obedience. If you want people to follow your instructions and buy, they need to believe you have authority. That you are an authority. As he explains,

People tend to follow others in positions of authority. Think about doctors in their white coats. For most of us, as soon as we see that white coat walk into the examination room, a certain part of us becomes deferential. We listen to what the doctor has to say and take any advice seriously. We probably feel at least a little intimidated to disagree with anything the person in that white coat says.

This isn’t unusual. We often look for others to help guide our decision. Like so  many other mental triggers the authority trigger helps us shortcut the decision-making process…

If you want to be more influential in your business and marketing, it pays to be seen as an authority. And the good news is that it can be shockingly easy to create authority.”(61)

Basically, to garner the benefits that accrue to authorities (in this case, sales and profit) all you have to do is signal authority – like with the white coat. Or a flashlight and a pose:

“When I was a teenager in high school, I learned a very important lesson about authority. Three of my friend and I were driving home after a school football game – just like  few hundred other people – and got stuck in a traffic jam in the parking lot. There were so many cars trying to get out the exit that no one was moving at all. One of my friends, who understood a lot more about authority than I did, found a flashlight rolling around on the floor of the car and immediately knew what to do. He jumped out of the car, turned on the flashlight, and started directing traffic Actually, he didn’t really direct traffic; he mostly just walked in front of our car and waved us forward through the congestion. Seeing the flashlight’s beam, other drivers made way for our personal “traffic director” and we drove right out of the parking lot. The only authority he had to direct traffic came from the flashlight. But people saw that flashlight, and they assumed he was in a position of authority. And I learned a big lesson that night: It doesn’t take very much to create authority.” (61; italics mine)

Authority, in Walker’s understanding, is getting people to do what you want them to do, and doing things that primarily benefit you. His friend did not create a way out of the parking lot that benefited all the drivers following his orders. He got other drivers to follow instructions so that the car he was traveling in could advance faster than the others. His authority signals advantaged him at the expense of the people who cooperated and complied. There was no mutual gain there. There was exploitation.

That’s the authority underlying Jeff Walker’s launch formula, and it in turn underlies many, many, many of the business models of our most respected Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands. They’re selling you products, courses, services by signalling this kind of hierarchical and empty authority.

I am not saying their offerings and work lack substance or value.

I am also not saying that anyone associated with Walker or who uses Walker’s Launch formula is a predator or unethical. (I often tell people, for example, that the sequence and structure is useful but that if you use it you must jettison or at least very carefully evaluate how you’re using the mental triggers intended to disarm and disadvantage buyers.)

What I am saying is this: when they adopt Walker’s Launch formula wholesale and without alteration, they are both cosigning and leveraging this exploitative model of authority as a sales trigger to get you to buy from them. The authority is manufactured and inauthentic; contains lopsided benefits that accrue to the “authority”; and reinforces an authoritarian dynamic most of them claim to be challenging with their world-changing empowerment practices – and yet somehow this technique didn’t appear to activate moral alarm bells in their consciences. Instead, they’re using it. They’re lauding it. It works and that’s the extent of the conversation they’re willing to have about authority and compulsion – except to celebrate it and endorse it.

Who endorses the subconscious manipulation and the manufacturing and leveraging of privilege  recommended by Jeff Walker’s Launch formula, apparently without reservation?

Marie Forleo:

“What Jeff Walker teaches in LAUNCH is vital for modern marketing success. You don’t need more tactics or tools; you need smart strategy, and that’s exactly what this book delivers.”

Lisa Sasevich:

  • Calls Jeff Walker her ‘bestie’
  • From March 9 through 16, Jeff Walker sent 4 emails promoting her course
  • Jeff Walker presented at her Sales Authenticity and Success Mastermind in 2014

Kris Carr

  • Jeff Walker is “proud to call her a friend, and proud that she’s a PLF Owner”
  • Comments on his blog
  • Promotes courses and joint-trainings with him to her audience

Gabrielle Bernstein

The blog post promoting her Spirit Junkies Master Class course does not mention any of the people below but does include these tags:

brendan bruchard, coaches training, derek halpern, gabby bernstein, gabrielle bernstein,how to negotiate, jeff walker, kris carr, marie forleo, meditation, negotiating, Negotiating is a spiritual practice…, plf, spirit junkie, spirit junkie masterclass, yoga

(boldface mine)

Editorial note: If I had to hazard a guess, which is what I’m doing, I’d say that the people tagged in Bernstein’s post are likely affiliates who promoted the course and, in Walker’s case, guided her in constructing her launch sequence for the course  (I suspect “plf” stands for Walker’s “Product Launch Formula”).

To be clear: I’m not criticizing Gabby Bernstein or any of these entrepreneurs for having affiliates, courses, online businesses or making money. Instead, I’m suggesting that Jeff Walker’s launch strategy is part of their business models – and that, in itself, may or may not be a problem depending on whether or not they choose to deploy the emotionally manipulative triggers that Walker teaches and recommends.

Mastin Kipp:

“To my peers: Gabby Bernstein, Kris Carr, Marie Forleo, JJ Virgin, Simon Sinek, Michael Fishman, and Nick Ortner. You guys inspire me to up my game and let me know it’s okay to shine.

Special shout out to Gabby Bernstein – you have become such a dear friend. I am grateful for having you in my life.

To Brendon Burchard – buddy, your work and mission are a game changer. Thank you for all that you offer the world.

To Jeff Walker – you have inspired a generation to LAUNCH, including me.”

Editorial Note: Based on the sequence of those paragraphs in the acknowledgement to his book, it seems to me that Kipp is implying that he and his peers (or most of them) rely on Walker’s launch formula to promote their books and products.

Which isn’t necessarily a problem. Maybe. Unless.

Here’s the thing: I think you probably can use Walker’s formula IF you strip it of the mental triggers.

The launch sequence infrastructure, composed of blog posts, emails and videos, culminating in a sales page isn’t inherently “evil design“.

It’s only when you layer uncritically examined + disadvantaging and disempowering (to the consumer) mental triggers and social privilege- otherwise known as ‘persuasion’ but the kind of persuasion designed to disadvantage one party – on top of Walker’s launch sequence infrastructure that you have now built a business model and sale funnel that is deeply questionable.

These tactics –mental triggers, social triggers — are the same thing as monetizing privilege.

And Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands are deploying them in the name of empowerment.

(That’s not empowerment. That’s empowermyth.)

Which brings me to my questions:

  1. Are Mastin Kipp and his peers, many of whom I would categorize as Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands, critically evaluating the impact of the mental triggers championed in Walker’s Launch formula?
  2. Are they carefully selecting which ones they do or do not choose based on that potentially harmful impact?
  3. Are they assessing whether the use of these triggers is consistent with their empowerment missions or assessing whether they actually undermine the conditions they’re trying to create (empowerment, good decisions, agency, choice, excellence)?

I believe that if you claim to be a leader devoted to fostering personal agency, collective empowerment and conscious personal and social change, you ought to eschew using techniques that trigger oppressive mental programming and that reinforce authoritarian social dynamics.

If you adopt Jeff Walker’s launch formula wholesale and without alteration, then you are deliberately choosing to manufacture and signal the appearance of authority/privilege in order to create a hierarchical relationship that disproportionately advantages you and you are consciously choosing to construct an authoritarian sales funnel that triggers obedience and irrational buying decisions from the people you otherwise claim to serve and empower. 

So how can we assess whether people — especially the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands that are so significant in our lives –are leveraging these triggers and replicating in their business models this kind of authority and authoritarian process?

  1. You assess where the benefit flows. If an online process is designed to disadvantage the consumer, this is “evil design” and just plain unethical.
    • An example: RyanAir automatically added travel insurance to every airfare purchase. This lever is built into their sales funnel and advantages them over their client. Just Fab and Fabletics make it super-easy to sign up online but impossible to unsubscribe unless you call and work your way through a phone-tree. This advantages them over their clients. When you’re in a sales funnel, ask yourself who has the advantage. Ask yourself if you’re making conscious, logical choices or whether you’re reacting to engineered circumstances and deliberately emotionally triggering rhetoric.
  2. You assess the ‘about’ story of the “authority”. The way Walker advises people to manufacture authority – especially if they don’t have any external signifiers of credibility, like extensive education, deep experience, decades of devotion to a practice or in-depth knowledge – is with a rags-to-riches or makeover story.
    • The first installment of the launch sequence is literally the “I was just like you” story. I was just like you, our new wannabe authorities will tell us, I was broke, struggling, fat, unfulfilled, lonely, and then I discovered X. I became a whole new person! I can teach you, too! This kind of story seems empowering to both parties, because it waves at our lived experiences which matter, but it actually betrays a fundamental contempt for the client. The message from authority to follower is this: you are broken. You are unacceptable. You need to be fixed. I was just like you and it was horrifying. It’s contempt, pure and simple, and that same client contempt gives entrepreneurs permission to construct authoritarian and psychologically manipulative sales funnels that disproportionately advantage sellers over buyers.
    • So when you see leaders – especially established ones who’s how-I-got-started story is far in the past – using makeover stories and rags-to-riches stories, lean in and ask yourself why they’re using those rather than telling you about their deep expertise and the tangible benefits and outcomes of their work.
      • For example: you never hear Oprah telling her rags-to-riches story anymore. Why would she? She has so many more creases in her shoe leather by now. Now she talks about her cable network,  her accomplishments, her knowledge. On the very last page of every O magazine she tells us what she knows for sure.
      • To embody your true and substantial earned authority – leadership, knowledge, devotion, training, lived experience – tell us what you know and do, not how you used to be just like us (while implying we’re disgusting). Instead of telling makeover stories, document the full scope of your lineage and excellence. This is especially important for women and marginalized peoples because mainstream cultural narratives presume our incompetence. Resisting that assumption is how we push back and claim the space we’re often systematically denied.

In other words: check your About page and the About pages of the people to whom you give your attention and money. Check the stories you tell in your sale funnels and the stories “authorities” are telling you when you’re buying from them.

When we know better, we do better.

Jeff Walker’s launch formula is nearly ubiquitous in online marketing, and when it is adopted without alteration, it’s a business model premised on constructing the appearance of authority (rather than substantive leadership) to automatically and unconsciously trigger obedience in the form of sales. This has a personal and social cost for consumers. It can disadvantage us, materially, and habituate us in obeying authority even when it is only loosely signaled. That’s a social problem because it reinforces the disempowering and authoritarian dynamics that fuel oppression and constrain our lives.

And no, we’re not having it. Not any more.

Because we are the culture makers.

 

Filed Under: empowermyth, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, The Meaning of Life Tagged With: commercializing privilege, commodifying privilege, empowermyth, FLEB, marketing privilege, monetizing privilege, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand: We Can Do Better

March 31, 2016 By Kelly Diels

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand: We Can Do Bette

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/.

Filed Under: empowermyth, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, The Meaning of Life Tagged With: empowermyth, FLEB

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. An introduction.

January 4, 2016 By Kelly Diels

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

 

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows “that is not me.” In America, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure.

– Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference (1984)

 

We need to talk about The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand.

What I see is this: a legion of women entrepreneurs, many of whom used to be in ‘the display professions’ (models, actresses, dancers) are now running online businesses selling other women “empowerment”.

Or so they say.

What I think they’re actually selling us is an exclusive fantasy: how to be youthful, white, skinny, very pretty and very privileged.

That’s not empowerment. It’s empowermyth.

***

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (FLEB) is a marketing narrative. It’s meant to sell products. But what it also does is use the political language of revolution and the personal desire for growth to define the expectations of women, inside and out, personally and politically. And not in a good way.

To me, the marketing and messaging of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand is the modern incarnation of what Betty Friedan called The Feminine Mystique; what Naomi Wolf called The Beauty Myth; and a feminized version of what Audre Lorde called “The Mythical Norm” – only now, instead of being sold to us by male-dominated corporations, ad agencies and magazines, it’s women entrepreneurs at the helm. They’re leading the way in spaces that could in fact be sites of empowerment, growth and change for women. Career. Wealth. Wellness. Yoga. Fitness. Spirituality. These could be places to grow possibilities and challenge the limits and expectations our culture places on women. Instead, the most significant leaders in these spaces rely on The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand to promote ways to individually triumph, not by challenging cultural prescriptions, but by being the exception to the rule. Be hotter, tauter, richer, more positive, more productive and more serene. In other words, be more of what our mainstream media and culture already demands of women.

Again: that’s not empowerment. It’s empower myth.

The other difference: The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand co-opts the language of feminists and revolution . They explicitly market the way they help women conform to mainstream social expectations as a form of rebellion and activism.

It’s like a cruel parody – we’re trying to invest in our liberation but are actually buying new and improved chains – but it’s real and it has real political and social consequences.

One of them is that we’re so thoroughly trained by The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand in thinking positive that we refuse to grapple with shadow side of this sunny belief system. If everything in your life is a result of your personal choices (and nothing else), then every person who isn’t an untrammeled success and kazillionaire – never mind the struggles of people grappling with poverty and injustice – did it to herself and it’s up to her, entirely, to change the situation. If she doesn’t, or if during her life-changing hustle she requires too much of our attention and emotional support – AKA becomes a “toxic” friend – then we’re entirely justified in cutting ties and abandoning her.

What then happens to our sick, our struggling, our injured, our young, our elderly? Not everyone can be an  unencumbered twenty- and thirty-something on the rise.

The unrelenting insistence on positivity and boot-strapping is an essential component of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand and it absolves the rest of us of interpersonal and social responsibilities and the duty to care for and support each other.

Chasing happiness as a singular self-improvement or spiritual goal is a wildly personal, nearly-narcissistic endeavor that forecloses the possibilities for collective action and community – except for the ones devoted to these cults of personality.

The disturbing consequences of militant positivity and empowermyth play out socially (just be thin and pretty already because pretty fixes everything!), politically (upset about refugees drowning? Racism? Injustice? Just don’t watch the news!) and also personally.

A friend of mine was in a devastating car accident in which she almost broke her neck. A year later, she’s still dealing with the consequences: chronic pain, frequent debilitating migraines, exhaustion…

…and a total lack of emotional and community support. A fitness trainer  she works with, and to whom she has paid thousands of dollars, blithely told her that she could ‘reframe’ her very real physical injuries and solve them with a better attitude. The trauma, the injuries, the pain: it’s all a blessing in disguise and opportunity for self-improvement!

(Perhaps thanks to the efforts of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, this is how we’re starting to approach cancer, too: as though cancer is a choose-your-own-adventure game or a charming heroine’s journey that will one day make a good story rather than being terrifying, traumatizing, and life-and-fucking-death.)

My friend was outraged. She is doing everything she can to stay positive and empowered. She is wildly proactive about her health and healing. But the person she hired to guide her, physically, is so firmly in the grip of magical thinking that it allows – nay, demands – that she reflexively dismiss a bid for community and support as something someone ought to handle on her own. In other words: get a better attitude and stop being so needy.

The skewed logic of empowermyth – solve it yourself; think positive; and if you don’t or it doesn’t work, that’s on you and you don’t deserve the support and community that wasn’t forthcoming anyway – absolves us of responsibilities to other people. It’s like sending light and love to a family in crisis rather than showing up with a casserole. You can’t eat positive intentions.

And we can’t solve The Big Cultural Problems as lone individuals.

(Trying to solve The Big Cultural Problems individually rather than collectively = Empowermyth.)

That’s what I was trying to get at with my essay about how time is a feminist issue. The reality is this: most women in our society – especially women who are mothers of very young children – are wildly overworked and overwhelmed. This is not an individual problem. This is a predictable outcome of a system that requires the care-taking labour of women in order to function. Yes, women are ‘allowed’ to work outside the home, have careers and undertake meaningful projects, but that doesn’t mean that they’re now no longer required to maintain and sustain others and, by extension, the system. Men with big careers, on the other hand, are nearly utterly exempt from those expectations even when they’re the fathers and even if they have large families. And, traditionally, they can only function in that unencumbered way because the women in their lives handle every other function for them. They escape the domestic demands of care-taking and domestic sustenance and maintenance by relying on the labour of women. That’s how some women escape these responsibilities, too: by hiring other women to take them on. No matter who commissions it (men, women), the pivot that makes corporate and public spheres possible is the domestic labour of women.

So the time-suck and straight-up exhaustion most women struggle with is a collective problem. We’re not going to solve it with super-cool tricks on how to save scraps of time here and there. We’re only going to solve it by changing the system and its requirements.

That’s a big job. That isn’t easy work.

It gets even harder when we’re all indoctrinated to believe that any problem we ever experience is a product of poor individual choices and we get what we deserve so we don’t need to help each other (empowermyth).

How can we band together and support each other in challenging structures and circumstances that are not our fault when we’re busy blaming and judging each other and believing it is our fault?

And that’s EXACTLY the distressing and dis-empowering consequences of empowermyth sold to us by The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand:

  1. It purports to be empowering and liberating and uses the language of political activism but its reliance on positive-thinking and The Law of Attraction depoliticizes people. It’s not a coincidence that many of its proponents explicitly instruct or encourage their fans and clients to disengage from distressing realities so as not to compromise their positive mental states.
  2. Inculcating the belief-system that you can define and dictate every circumstance in your existence seems empowering, but the dark side of that moon is self-hatred and a pervasive and corrosive sense of personal failure. If everything is possible and everyone can do it, then what the hell is wrong with me?

And that’s why I’m writing about empowermyth and The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. I want to destabilize that process and conclusion. The last thing women in this world need is one more reason to feel inferior .

But there’s money to be made in making women feel bad. That’s the psychology employed by consumer marketing at its most basic: name, stoke or invent fear and then offer a product or service that solves it.

In their eras, and still, that’s what marketing narratives of The Feminine Mystique and The Beauty Myth accomplished: invent problems, make women afraid, then sell products to ameliorate that fear.

And it’s what I see The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand doing, too. The women at the helm of these empowermyth enterprises market to women with images of their professionally beautiful selves and their enviable lives. They do it in the guise of building a relationship with you but what they’re doing is dramatizing the gap between your ordinary apartment and their New York loft, their frequent and fabulous holidays and your staycations, their flat abs and your squishy stomach, their nearly-naked yoga and your see-through yoga pants (the ones that their inventor never intended for your kind of ass, after all), their famous besties and your toxic friends, their bottomless bank accounts and your overdraft. This kind of empowermyth lifestyle marketing relies on you internalizing the comparison between their exteriors and your interior; feeling bad about your present and fearful about your future; and then buying an individual solution for your individual problem from them. Because obviously they’ve got it all figured out.

These entrepreneurs explicitly market themselves as role models and leaders but balk at assuming the risks and burdens of substantive cultural leadership. They have built exceptionally large platforms and cultivated influence but make a strategic decision not to reach beyond their generic, “universal”, evergreen advice content to offer leadership and counsel on specific current events (except, sometimes, on Facebook, which is more evanescent and less archival than a personally-owned website).

I have seen, however, one of these leaders capitalize on the outrage and grief we’re feeling in response to police killings of men and women of colour by repurposing pre-existing content to address it and, in so doing, garner clicks and traffic to her site. She used something she’d already created, retitled and introduced it so that her piece appeared to speak to the happening-right-now despair and distress. And she did this while never naming the actual people and events (Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ferguson, Black Lives Matter) she was purporting to address. She wrapped up her piece by instructing commenters not to get political in their responses. This is someone who exhorts you to change your life/change the world (as though it is one and the same). The oblique, exploitative, yet seemingly-helpful way she handled a specific contemporary political problem is emblematic of the depoliticizing process, strategic positioning and outcomes of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. They seek the prestige and profits of leadership but not the responsibilities.

Side note: I’m going to specifically name and refer to this instance (and others) in my next series of posts. Right now, in this piece,  I’m just laying out my idea and framework, not the specifics.

All of this makes it seem like I think these women and Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brands are evil tricksters out to hustle you. That’s not what I think at all.

I think they’re truly, madly, deeply sincere about their beliefs and their businesses. I believe that they believe that they’re helping people. I think that many of them have helped people. I think some of them have as much substance as they do style and that some their products and services are effective.

I’ve bought many of their books and products. I’ve taken their challenges and courses and publicly sang their praises. Some of them are truly, no-doubt-about-it, excellent.

It doesn’t excuse the damaging marketing strategies they deploy and its consequences. It doesn’t mean that this is the only way to market. It doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do it differently or better.

As exasperated as I am, my work isn’t about calling them out. It’s about calling them in.

It would be really easy to devolve into gossip. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I don’t really care about what these women look like, except that they’re using the way they meet conventional ideals of attractiveness as a marketing device. That strategy -and not the association between the content of their characters and the numbers on their bathroom scales, whether big or small – is reasonable grounds for critique.

So, to stay out of the space wherein I get snarky or construct these women as frivolous – a sexist practice I abhor and one that entirely misses the point, because I believe they’re sophisticated entrepreneurs who are having a serious impact on women’s culture – I’ve made up some rules for myself:

  1. No gossip. I’m not repeating hearsay or wondering about their childhood wounds or interested in their sex lives (for example). I’m critiquing their public personas, platforms, marketing strategies and their social consequences.
  2. Must have more than 30,000 social media followers. This might be a slightly arbitrary metric but I’m taking it as a success threshold. At this level of reach (and, presumably, revenue), it’s pretty unlikely my critique could devastate their reputation, business and livelihood.
  3. Can’t be anyone with whom I have a direct, 1:1, personal relationship.
  4. I must disclose any apparent conflicts of interest.

So those are my initial parameters (and no doubt the list will lengthen as my research deepens).

As I’m writing out my definition of – and problem with – The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, here’s my intention: to name and investigate a social phenomena that markets itself as revolutionary but actually reinforces the current patriarchal status quo .

To do that, I’m going to have spend time and chapters naming and analyzing the work of specific leaders that are emblematic of, and the occasion for, my critique of The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. That pains me, to be honest. I like some of them (that’s part of their positioning: professional likability). I value some of the work some of them are doing. But unless I point to specific blog posts, videos, interviews and marketing campaigns, I’d be doing the literary equivalent of vaguebooking. Without specifics, I’m building a straw woman.

Still: no gossip. I don’t care what their hair or weight apparently says about their characters or whether they’re mean to kittens or blah blah blah. I care about the impact The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand is having on women and the world we’re co-creating .

I think it’s possible for us to do better. I think we can be financially successful and amass influence without selling women out. And, given their skills and wild success, I’m pretty sure that these sophisticated, influential and sincere women could lead the way if they were so inclined.

And if they won’t, or can’t, we will.

Because we are the culture makers.


#WeAreTheCultureMakers #Empowermyth #TheFemaleLifestyleEmpowermentBrand #FLEB #FeministMarketing #FeministBusiness #EntrepreneurialFeminist #TogetherWeRise


  1. This is part 1 (the introduction) of the book I’m writing about empowermyth and The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand.
  2. Part 2 is here: Not Enough Compensation in the World: The Cultural Context of the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand.
  3. Feminism, Femininity and The Swinging Pendulum (a.k.a. “Blame Feminism”). A Question for You.

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

  5. Why I’m Writing About The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

  6. The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand: We Can Do Better

  7. On the ‘Mental Triggers’ of Online Marketing, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, Assessing Who Deserves Your Money, and Why We Should Be Skeptical of Makeover Stories

Are you interested in (or exasperated with) empowermyth and  The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand? As I’m researching my book and developing background pieces and chapters, I’ll share them by email in my Sunday Love Letter – and I’d be thrilled if you sign up to receive it.

Filed Under: empowermyth, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, The Meaning of Life Tagged With: empowermyth, The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, We Are The Culture Makers

Fortify

Every week, I email you a Sunday Love Letter
and they are blazing epistles of righteousness.
I write them to galvanize and encourage us.
Because we are the culture-makers and together we rise.
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Fortify.

Every week, I email you a Sunday Love Letter

and they are blazing epistles of righteousness.

I write them to galvanize and encourage us.
Because we are the culture-makers and together we rise.
Are you in?

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

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Made with love + justice by Kelly Diels

I write, live and work on land that is the traditional and unceded territory of the Stó:lō.


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