The Illusion of Choice Feminism
The first time I saw the phrase “girl power,” it was printed in glitter across a pink T-shirt. I remember thinking it was pretty cool. I thought it meant that girls could do anything. Maybe I wanted to be an astronaut, a doctor, or an evil scientist. It meant that we could be loud and ambitious, that we had choice.
As I got older, though, the idea of “choice” became blurry.
When I started wearing makeup in high school, I insisted to myself and others that I was doing it for myself. I watched makeup tutorials before bed and took pictures of makeup inspiration to refer back to later. I came to learn which concealer matched my skin tone the best and which mascara made my eyelashes look the longest. Nobody forced me to buy concealer or spend an hour getting ready before school. It was completely my decision to do so. It all felt empowering, because it was my choice to do this labor. At least, that is what I liked to tell myself.
It wasn’t until some years later that I noticed how many of my so-called “choices” looked much like everyone else’s. We all wore the same makeup, the same hairstyles, and the same look that took an hour of time to achieve. Despite how much time we invested in our appearance, we all tried to look attractive enough while pretending like we didn’t try at all.
We were all choosing. We were all choosing the same thing. And I began to wonder if these choices really did come from within myself.
The phrase “choice feminism” argues that a decision a woman freely makes is a feminist one simply because it is her choice to do so. At first glance, this idea is very appealing. It rejects the notion that there is a correct way to be feminist. Therefore, a woman who becomes a stay-at-home mother can be feminist, and so can a woman who becomes a surgeon. She can wear lipstick, or refuse to. She can shave her legs, or skip the razor. She has the freedom to have dresses, suits, and sweatpants coexist in her closet. The point is to express her autonomy and exercise her freedom of choice. Yet, when we focus on individual choice, we fail to identify the systems that shape these choices. Social expectations are implicit rules that appear as preferences or common sense. They develop through the repetition of cultures and traditions that are reinforced by our peers, family, and the media we consume. Eventually, people may come to internalize these standards and begin to view them as their own natural preferences. It gradually becomes difficult to separate personal desire from social conditioning.
Instead of asking, “Did she choose that?” we should ask, “Who does her choice benefit?”
For centuries, the practice of tightly binding young girls’ feet was associated with beauty, femininity, and status in imperial China. A woman with bound feet was often considered more desirable, and families sometimes viewed the practice as necessary for their daughters’ futures.
Imagine if you asked one of these girls if they chose this lifestyle. Perhaps she would have said yes. Perhaps she would have looked down at her small feet and truly believed they were beautiful. If I had been born during that period, I could not confidently say I would have rejected the practice of foot binding. I might have wanted my feet bound, or looked at another girl’s smaller feet and become jealous. I might have believed it was a natural part of womanhood; I might have found it empowering. The possibility of that unsettles me.
I would like to examine how feminism has evolved to explain the gravity of this issue. For much of history, women have lived under a patriarchal system, where men held greater social, political, and economic power. Women’s roles were defined by their relationships to men, whether as daughters, wives, or mothers. Their access to education, employment, property ownership, and political participation was restricted and sometimes forbidden. These were not individual preferences. They were reinforced by laws, institutions, and traditions that shaped what women believed their lives would look like.
The feminist movement emerged, in part, to challenge these limitations. In the United States, the first wave of feminism gained momentum in the nineteenth century and focused largely on legal rights, particularly women’s right to vote. At the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, activists demanded equality for women, beginning a decade-long struggle that culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. However, this victory still did not mean that all women could exercise their voting rights equally. Women of color continued to face discrimination and barriers to political participation.
The second wave developed during the 1960s and expanded the reach beyond legal equality. Feminists began challenging the expectations placed on women within marriage, motherhood, the workplace, and everyday life. They questioned why women were expected to perform the bulk of domestic labor, why certain carers were considered unsuitable for them, and why their worth was so often tied to their appearance. Experiences that women had once considered to be private had begun to be recognized and magnified as sources of inequality.
By the 1990s, the third wave of feminism placed emphasis on the individual’s self-expression and recognized that women now do not experience gender inequality in the same way. Feminists challenged the idea that there was one universal female experience, and drew attention to how race, economic status, sexuality, and other aspects shape a woman’s life. They pushed back against the notion that embracing traditional norms of femininity or enjoying traditionally feminine interests made someone less feminist. This shift in ideology created a space for a more individualized understanding of feminism, where personal freedom was central. Women were allowed to create a definition of empowerment for themselves.
In contemporary feminism, social media has created new spaces for feminist discussion, allowing women to share experiences and connect on a global scale. However, these platforms have begun to twist into a product that is aesthetic, marketed, and easily consumed. Take the rise of the “Sephora kids” in 2024. Girls, some as young as eight or nine, became increasingly interested in elaborate skincare routines and makeup products that were generally manufactured for adult use. Beauty brands began attracting younger customers through social media, where influencers commonly shared their daily routines and recommended products. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with a child enjoying skincare or experimenting with different products, I am concerned with the growing connection between an obsession with appearance and growing up as a young girl. Children who are still developing their sense of self are being introduced to an industry that is fueled by identifying imperfections and selling ways to fix them. And perhaps, these routines and obsession with makeup products can feel entirely self-directed and internal. A teenage girl might genuinely enjoy watching skincare tutorials and experimenting with her routine, but her enjoyment does not erase the influence of an industry that feeds off of feminine stereotypes.
We see the same pattern in trends that seem much more lighthearted and even humorous. “Girl math” is an internet joke in which women invent creative justifications for their purchases. If you buy coffee with a gift card, it's practically free; if you return a dress, you just made money; and an expensive handbag is actually pretty cheap if you wear it every day. We also had the “girl dinner” trend where people assemble a meal from whatever crumbs the pantry contains, such as cheese, crackers, fruit, and a variety of snacks. Although it feeds into the perception that women are “petite” and eat less food, I actually found this trend appealing as it separated women from the traditional domestic task of cooking. But why does a plain and ordinary dinner become framed as a specifically feminine activity? Both of these jokes play into the infantilization of women, painting the picture that women are childish, disorganized, and incapable of basic adult responsibilities. Although it may seem like harmless fun, we are subconsciously reinforcing a common stereotype that bleeds into our everyday language and lives.
If a woman enjoys her “girl dinner,” buys an expensive handbag, or spends an hour each day on her makeup routine, who am I to tell her she is not empowered? I do not want feminism to grow into another box that women must conform to, yet I think we should pause to examine once in a while what it means to call a particular decision a personal choice. In her article Choice Feminism and the Fear of Politics, Michaele L. Ferguson challenges the concept of choice feminism and offers the idea that treating every individual as equally feminist risks overlooking larger political and social conditions that shape a woman’s options. With that in mind, we must respect a woman’s autonomous decision, and we must also examine whether the systems surrounding her decisions are fair. A woman may freely choose to participate in a beauty trend, while also living in an environment that places greater value on women reaching a certain beauty standard. Questioning a social expectation is not the same as judging the woman who participates in it. For example, we can respect a woman’s decision to become a traditional wife, while questioning why domestic caregivers remain undervalued in modern society. Maybe that is what happened to “girl power.” The girl in the glittery pink shirt imagined choice as an open door. She thought empowerment was being allowed to walk through whichever one she wanted. But perhaps we should look more closely at the room before we choose a door.
Who built the room? Who decided which doors should exist? Which doors are locked? Why are some painted and others left plain? Are there any doors that were never shown to us at all?
Girls definitely should be given the choice. But I do not think the work of feminism ends here.
References:
Feminism’s long history. (2019, February 28). History; A&E Television Networks. https://www.history.com/articles/feminism-womens-history
Ferguson, M. L. (2010). Choice feminism and the fear of politics. Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 247–253. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/choice-feminism-and-the-fear-of-politics/E6BD4B851D564D34312391F8F9692FCE
The Cult of Choice Feminism - We are Childfree. (2022, July 17). We Are Childfree. https://wearechildfree.com/laur-fitch-feminism/
Women’s history overview. (n.d.). Act.Liveyourdream.Org. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://act.liveyourdream.org/womens-history/