The Long, Slow Death of Celebrity Feminism

New York Times

09-04-2025

A celebrity in 2025 looking to raise awareness about critical women's issues has no end of worthy targets. She could talk about the millions of women losing access to contraception and other vital health care because the Trump administration has taken a hacksaw to U.S.A.I.D. or discuss the mass layoffs at the early child care program Head Start, which will affect poor moms and their kids the most.
Instead, some prominent women — the ones able to command attention in our information-saturated world — are going to space for 11 minutes, and they're using the related publicity to raise awareness about eyelash extensions.
This is not an 'eat the rich' satire, though I don't think I could have invented a better one. Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of one of the world's wealthiest men, Jeff Bezos, organized an all-female flight on Blue Origin, her man's private rocket ship company. Sánchez and the rest of her crew, including the pop star Katy Perry, the CBS morning news host Gayle King, the aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, the civil rights activist and astronaut Amanda Nguyen and the film producer Kerianne Flynn, appeared on the cover of Elle magazine's digital edition to tout their 'historic' achievement.
While they discuss the importance of women in STEM and the value of representation for young girls of color, they spend a whole lot of time talking about their 'glam.' The most memorable, embarrassing exchange is between Sánchez and Perry.
Then later, Sánchez says, 'We're going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule!'
What goes unmentioned by these illustrious women is that the Trump administration recently laid off 23 people from NASA, including the chief scientist Katherine Calvin, and NASA is closing offices to comply with President Trump's directives on diversity, equity and inclusion. While the Blue Origin team was discussing the gender and racial disparities for astronauts with Elle, they could have also talked about how Trump's attacks on D.E.I. may threaten programs meant to help close gender and racial gaps in STEM fields, or how the administration has decimated science funding.
They certainly remained mum on the fact that Amazon donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, and that Bezos and Sánchez had prime seats at Trump's swearing-in. It's also worth mentioning that Blue Origin just won a federal contract worth over $2 billion.
This morally vacuous space stunt should be another nail in the coffin of celebrity feminism. There was a moment, more than 10 years ago, when being a loud and proud, self-proclaimed feminist was in vogue among the rich and famous. Actresses and pop stars were constantly asked about their feminism in interviews, and books like 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,' by former the Facebook/Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, were mega best-sellers.
I was always skeptical that this kind of surface-level advocacy would have a major impact on the average woman — I wrote a critical review of 'Lean In' for Slate in 2013 about the limits of the bootstrapping, individual female achievement (asking for raises, not shying away from new opportunities before having kids) of the kind Sandberg recommends in the book. I wrote, 'The entire thing gives short shrift to the massive structural barriers that are a major piece of preventing even privileged women from reaching their full potential.'
Even with my skepticism, I held out some small glimmer of hope that celebrity feminism could rub off in some way on the larger culture. Of course celebrities wield tremendous power — our president is one! So I thought: Perhaps if we had more women who were very public leaders and unashamed of that fact, maybe the average person would be more comfortable with the idea of powerful women. And Sandberg — along with other media-friendly businesswomen, like 'Girl Boss' Sophia Amoruso, who founded Nasty Gal clothing — could have inspired other women to make good money. While legal change is incredibly important (without it we still wouldn't have access to credit, for example), norm shifts matter, too.
Whatever promise trickle-down feminism had has been completely snuffed out by the reality of celebrity behavior. But when did it start to curdle? This question occurred to me while reading 'Careless People,' a new memoir-cum-exposé from Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global public policy director at Facebook. The Sandberg portrayed in its pages and the person widely known for her public cheerleading on behalf of women in business could not be more different.
Wynn-Williams describes a decidedly unfeminist atmosphere at Facebook; in the book, she alleges that lodging sexual harassment complaints led to employee retaliation from the company and her own firing. (Meta told CNN it did a monthlong investigation of Wynn-Williams's complaints and that the company determined her accusations were 'unfounded.')
But just as troubling is the way Facebook targeted vulnerable teen girls at a time when Wynn-Williams claims that Sandberg seemed 'completely removed' from her role as chief operating officer, because she was too focused on her pet projects outside the company.
In 2017, Wynn-Williams explains, 'a confidential document is leaked that reveals Facebook is offering advertisers the opportunity to target 13-to-17-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel 'worthless,' 'insecure,' 'stressed,' 'defeated,' 'anxious,' 'stupid,' 'useless,' and 'like a failure.' Or target them when they're worried about their bodies and thinking of losing weight.' The company knew when a teenage girl deleted a selfie, and it would bombard her with beauty advertisements, assuming she deleted it because she felt she looked ugly.
There have been many whistle-blowers and lawsuits since 2017, accusing Facebook and Meta of knowingly causing harm to teenage girls in particular. It's impossible to take anyone seriously as a feminist if she shows a callous disregard for the emotional health of the next generation of young women. (A spokesperson for Meta told The New York Times that 'Careless People' is a 'mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives.')
For celebrity feminism to be even a little effective, powerful women would speak up for the powerless, even if it hurt their bottom line or damaged some of their high-flying relationships. Now, there's no shame at all in co-opting the most superficial version of the movement for personal gain.
End Notes