Shave and (mis)behave? : En studie om användandet av feministiska budskap i ett nyliberalt samhälle med utgångspunkt i rakhyvelsföretaget Estrids marknadsföring.

The aim of this essay is to examine if, and in that case how, feminism is being used as a marketing strategy. I have over the years noticed that feminism and messages aimed at being empowering toward’s women has become somewhat of a cool trend in marketing. I therefore wanted to examine this phenomena using the Swedish new razor brand Estrid’s marketing as my empiric material, and see what kind of messages Estrid uses, what the public’s response to the brand is, and what positive and negative consequences this kind of branding could possibly have on feminism as a political movement. Using theories about femvertising, commodity feminism, consumptions part in shaping the identity, and neoliberalism’s effect on feminism, I analyze Estrid’s website, one of their commercials and the comments posted on some of their pictures on their Instagram account. The aim of my tri-partite analysis is to demonstrate how today’s neoliberal society often appropriates political and cultural movements in order to fulfill a commercial and capitalistic purpose. My first conclusion is that the feminist statements being used are influenced by neoliberal ideology with messages such as free will and individual responsibility instead of focusing on criticizing structural inequalities. This type of femvertising has a harmful impact on feminism as a political movement because it depoliticizes it and turns it into a commodified version of feminism. Secondly, I conclude that although this appropriation has negative consequences, Estrid can’t only be seen as harming the movement. In terms of for example representation, Estrid (compared to many other razor brands) is showcasing body hair and casting influencers with ranging body types - therefore they are somewhat challenging society’s beauty standards