Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand

KELLY COLLAGE_Female Empowerment Brand

The Female Lifestyle

Empowerment Brand

(It's not a good thing.)

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.

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Definition:

A "perfect woman" archetype 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.

KD – Square Images-07
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In Our Culture

Every Woman Is a Brand

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Start here

Pop art vintage comic. A woman with a poster and place for text. Girl in retro style. Advertising

The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. An introduction.

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. -...

Featured posts

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

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

cartoon of 1950s man in suit with his feet propped up on table saying "it's not my problem" about the so-called "feminist pendulum"

Feminism, Femininity and The Swinging Pendulum. A Question for You.

The Context for The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brrand

Not Enough Compensation in the World

April 27 2018

Sorry! The Lifestyle You Ordered is Currently Out of Stock

Graffiti by Banksy; photo by Bruce Krasting https://www.flickr.com/photos/bruce_krasting/7695349260 This feels like some anti-FLEB (Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand) awesomeness in graffiti form. It's by Banksy. So ...

April 26 2018

“Prettiness is Not a Rent You Pay…” by Erin McKean

YES. AND ALSO: I've seen this quote floating around on Instagram, usually attributed in error to Diana Vreeland. In fact Erin McKean, the founder of ...

April 25 2018

Our Audiences Aren’t Stupid. Let’s Take Them Seriously.

I have never written for a cowardly or passive or stupid reader -- Andrea Dworkin in her book, Intercourse This from Andrea Dworkin -- although ...

April 21 2018

Business Tip for Culture Makers #421: Ditch the Makeover Myth

One of the things I worry about, as a progressive, pro-democracy, pro-human rights, culture-making entrepreneur living in a world increasingly dominated by right-wing mindsets and ...

March 19 2018

Business Tip for Culture Makers #1225: Yes, Use Photos of Yourself!

Yes, use selfies.Yes, use professional photos.Yes, be visible. You don’t have to disappear and stop using photos and images to avoid the excesses and beauty-signalling ...

February 23 2018

Is the Voice Of Culture is Working Through You Without Your Consent?

"When I read your essay," she said, "I gotta admit, I felt personally called out." We were talking on the phone for the first time ...

October 25 2017

Business Tip for Culture Makers #1025: Invest In Your Community

When I was first starting out online, I witnessed an influential woman using her platform to boost the signals of others (including mine). She tweeted ...

September 3 2017

How Culture-Makers Vanquish Perfectionism: Publish, Then Polish

You know I'm on a mission to extinguish the perfection imperative, right? Resisting perfectionism one of the ways culture-makers undermine white supremacy. It's also how ...

August 19 2017

The Wealthy Feminist

Can we talk about money? I've read this 30+ year old article about Gloria Steinem's once-precarious financial situation and her subsequent book deal several million ...

August 16 2017

Business Tip for Culture Makers #816: How to Audit Your Brand Photos for White Supremacy and White Beauty Norms (And Create Different Imagery!)

How white women entrepreneurs can resist and dismantle white supremacy in their own businesses and marketing White women entrepreneurs: Let's connect the dots between white ...

Every week, I send you a

Sunday Love Letter

I write them so that…

  1. You remember your life-changing, culture-making power
  2. You have the inspiration + tools you need to bring something new to the world
Are you in?

A word. (And an excerpt from something that's dropping VERY soon 🔥)
Some of this was news to me but go Lola go!
This is my daughter Sophie and I at Lola’s graduation tonight. I cannot get my center part centered to save my life. But we give these glasses life.
Culture Making (aka Thought Leadership) Means Speaking *Their* Language⁠
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Culture Makers and Thought Leaders have a Language Dilemma and it is getting in the way of our work in the world.⁠
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Here's the invisible barrier in our IP & thought leadership:⁠
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We are practitioners. We are in mastery. We are in love with our subject matter. ⁠
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And so we speak Expert. ⁠
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We speak Nerd. ⁠
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We forget how to speak People.⁠
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And if there's not a bridge between those two languages, our people won't be able to hear us, find us or understand that we've got things that will help.⁠
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Because we're speaking a different language. ⁠
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And so we need to understand what the person --who we want to influence or who wants to learn from us-- wants, in their own words. ⁠
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We need to understand what THEY think the problem is (especially if we've come to a different conclusion).⁠
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We need to understand what it is they're trying to learn. ⁠
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We need to know what's going on in their life. ⁠
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We need to know the words that fall out of their mouth and then start using them, ourselves. ⁠
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We need to know intimately and forensically the person we're trying to influence or who wants to be influenced by our systems of thought.⁠
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And when we're over here in love with our subject matter, we don't speak that language anymore. ⁠
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We speak Expert. ⁠
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We have to remember how to speak People. ⁠
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#BridgeTheLanguageGap #ThoughtLeadership #ThoughtLeader #SpeakTheirLanguage #IP #IntellectualProperty #MeaningfulWork #BodyOfWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers⁠
#CultureMakersLanguageDilemma #Externalize #GetYourIdeasOutOfYourHeadAndIntoTheWorld #PutTheThoughtsBackInThoughtLeadership
Most of the people doing the *real* thought leadership work - ⁠
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the ones in the mix with us, developing new practices, processes, ideas, solutions and challenging industry norms --⁠
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would cringe at the idea of calling themselves a thought leader.⁠
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Because the dominant narrative around 'thought leadership' is about positioning, posturing and clout-chasing.⁠
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But that, IMHO, is fake thought leadership. That's about manufacturing authority rather than earning it with a robust, methodologized, coherent body of work. ⁠
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(No wonder we cringe.)⁠
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True thought leadership -- culture making! -- is about so much more than just standing on a stage or topping Google searches. ⁠
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True thought leadership is about externalizing your ideas into a meaningful, systematic body of work. ⁠
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Let's get our ideas out of heads and into the world --⁠
And let's put the thoughts back in thought leadership. ⁠
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#ThoughtLeadership #Externalize #MeaningfulWork #BuildYourBodyOfWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers #FakeThoughtLeader
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