Illustration by Alisha Davidson

Because there’s more power in crowd-based, grassroots action—that’s why. Soraya Roberts challenges the cult of feminist celebrity

IF A FEMINIST FELLS CANADA’S PATRIARCHY and the media isn’t around to hear it, does it make a sound? Last year, Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick was lambasted online for using the headline “Why Can’t Canada Build a Feminist?” to promote How to Build a Girl, the new book by renowned British feminist Caitlin Moran. A few days later, Maclean’s seemed to prove her point by publishing a cover story on the new faces of feminism—Malala Yousafzai, Tavi Gevinson, Emma Watson—most of which belonged to celebrities. The article’s sole Canadian, feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian, actually lives in the U.S. and only recently became a household name in the wake of Gamergate.

Though the Star changed its headline to “Why Can’t Canada Build a Famous Feminist?” Mallick’s original message stuck. Though fame underscored it, the takeaway seemed to be the mainstream invisibility of Canada’s feminists. What Mallick didn’t realize—unsurprisingly in an era in which feminism has been celebrified to the point that its non-celebrities are eclipsed—was that their invisibility is integral to their work. Canada’s feminists are invisible precisely because being visible limits what they can represent. And what the country’s current crop of feminists represents is everybody—you can’t be a so-called “somebody” and everybody else all at once.

“If there’s one trend I’m seeing among feminist activists, it’s that we generally do not want to be ‘the voice of our generation’ because one truth that we, as a movement, are plodding toward, is that whenever there is a woman considered the voice of her generation of feminists, she is generally white, generally middle or upper middle class, generally cis, often straight or straight-presenting,” says Stephanie Guthrie, founder of Women in Toronto Politics. “The reality is that her perspective will inevitably have blind spots as a result of those privileges.”

Canadian-based feminist organizations such as SlutWalk are conceived in crowd form. Even more recent campaigns, such as #AmINext, which raises awareness of murdered aboriginal women, only give the semblance of individuality—they are defined by a chorus. But dispersing Canada’s feminist mandate across the population—to all genders, races and age groups—can imply a dilution of the movement’s original intention. “I think sometimes the fact that the movement is generally more inclusive and more sex-positive than in the past can sometimes make second-wavers feel like we’ve gone ‘soft,’” says Anne Thériault, a feminist blogger from Toronto.

But today’s feminists aren’t soft—far from it.

A number of the Canadians who took issue with Mallick’s column argued that our country’s feminists are too busy working to vie for her attention. This is particularly true in Canada where, as feminist icon Lee Lakeman notes, funding is not as developed as it is in the U.S. “The swing to the right since 1995 has wiped out the last generation of more nationally- based women’s organizations,” she says, “and [the government] has not been forced to allow any new global waves to form.” Since conservative leader Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada’s largest national feminist organization, closed due to lack of funding (it now operates as an NGO). Canada’s Feminist Alliance for International Action and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women also rely on donations. According to Lakeman, Canada’s desperation for funds causes its feminists to be “swamped” and “hidden from each other” at the grassroots level.

Canadian feminists are largely only visible to the people they help. They spend their days working directly with victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and various other forms of exigent exploitation—they are too preoccupied with the work to actually promote it. “They’re not celebrities, they’re not writers, they’re not famous people,” says Meghan Murphy, founder of the most-read feminist blog in Canada, Feminist Current. “That’s not the point of the work they’re doing.”

And their biggest workload comes in the form of Indigenous women’s rights. According to Statistics Canada, aboriginal women are three times more likely to face violence than non-aboriginal women, yet Harper slashed funding to the Sisters in Spirit initiative and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and in August rejected a national inquiry into Canada’s murdered and missing aboriginal women, denying it was a “sociological phenomenon.” This compounds Canadian feminists’ invisibility—the fact that their biggest concern is women who are themselves invisible.

That these activists are still being ignored despite the increased awareness of feminism worldwide does not surprise Murphy. The issues they are addressing have been ignored for decades thanks to historical racism, not to mention abuse, addiction, and mental illness, all of which the government—and Canada as a whole—refuses to face. “The real issues of feminism are not very attractive issues,” Murphy says. “It’s not like Beyoncé.”

Canada does not have a Beyoncé. We don’t, in fact, have much of a celebrity culture in general—it’s not a natural fit for us to dress up feminism to make it more palatable or social media friendly even though that is what is currently being demanded of the movement. The internet has “democratized access to a platform,” says Guthrie. Authors of seminal feminist texts, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem, the original thought leaders of feminism, have been replaced by bloggers, Tweeters, and YouTubers. “Increasingly,” Guthrie explains, “we are taking advantage of that access to a diversity of voices to listen, to learn, and to inform our activist approaches.”

But how do you get heard over the din? Increasingly individual feminists are branding themselves as distinct voices of the movement in order to stand out. It’s a culture that seems to agree less with Canadians than Americans, who come from a more individualistic society in which the self is favoured over the collective. “I don’t know that Canadian feminists would grow up thinking that they’re number one goal was to be Jessica Valenti or Gloria Steinem,” says Murphy. “Certainly when you start making feminism about personalities and individuals, it stops being representative of the work that’s being done.”

This skewed focus frustrates Cherry Smiley, a Thompson and Navajo Nations activist for Indigenous women and youth recipient of the 2013 Governor General’s Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case. She thinks prioritizing individuals poses “a huge problem” for the movement. “I think my generation and younger have unfortunately embraced the idea of ‘feminisms’—that feminism can mean whatever you want it to be,” she says. “I think that idea has really watered-down feminism and has unfortunately embraced a very neoliberal ‘I’ as opposed to a collective ‘we,’ and it’s men and patriarchy that really benefit from these ‘me me me’ ideas.”

This misguided approach to feminism merely compounds the movement’s marginalisation by mainstream society, but that only makes Smiley work harder. “Feminism challenges patriarchy and colonialism, and it challenges racism and capitalism,” she says, “when we really begin ruffling feathers and pissing off the right people and truly challenging the status quo, that’s really when we’re on to something.” Hear that? That’s “we,” not “I.”

Media is a big message transmitter and dictates feelings, philosophies, morals, values—pretty much everything that makes up society rules. No matter how critical the viewer, we are still subjected to ads in subway stations and on buses, on billboards and in newspapers, radio, TV, Internet—it’s everywhere. And when these messages are being sold as truth, when things are altered, it gets scary. There is no problem criticizing the industry and challenging what makes this the norm.

However, going detective on something like a Beyonce picture (Headline: Beyoncé Caught Possibly Photoshopping Her Pictures Again )is vilifying the individual and ignoring the big problem. Beyonce is altering her pictures, which is sharing the impossible body ideal. This presentation is dangerous because many will see these photos and assume that this altered body is the norm, and then expect all women to have a perfect body, and that it is attainable, concluding if a woman doesn’t have this body it is a failure on her part. This is, of course, problematic. But isn’t Beyonce a victim of the same messaging?

It is hard to shed tears for the rich in general, especially those who profit from appearing to be perfect while the rest of us feeling enormous pressure to look the same. But why isn’t the real issue being fought against? It’s hard to see celebrity women as people when they are sold to us as objects. But why is Beyonce expected to look this way? Rather than shaming her, let’s look at marketing and public relations. Let’s continue discussing how what we are being sold isn’t real life. Let’s look at the industries that profit from our insecurities. Let’s think critically and do it without body shaming another woman.

Beyonce is just one example. Another could be Kim Kardashian. It is important to acknowledge that these pictures have been altered. But let’s do it without making personal attacks regarding these women’s physical appearance.

It is difficult battling against a superficial message that we have shoved in our faces everyday without resorting to superficial tactics ourselves. We see this with messaging about how “real” women have curves. It is instinctive to fight the more socially dominant group this way. And yet, it’s also very much an attempt to empower to one group by disempowering another. We’re fighting society’s expectations, but we’re also encouraging one group of women to fight another group of women. Dividing ourselves into superficial groups isn’t going to solve anything. What will help solve body shame issues is stopping the use of women in any objectifying way—even when we think we are doing so for good.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

“Maybe feminism feeling like it’s in style comes as a result of increased awareness,” feminist-identifying singer Lorde writes on her Tumblr earlier this year. “Which I think is a good thing regardless of whether or not it feels ‘trendy’ (which you’re right is rl weird). I definitely don’t think feminism is going to ~go out~ or anything, I feel like we’re past that now.”

When girls are looking at Beyonce they are seeing a woman who talks about body love, being a boss and being a feminist. Her January 2014 essay, Gender Equality is A Myth!, is published in The Shriver Report. She is also criticized for romanticizing domestic violence and lightening her skin. Movies Brave and Frozen have heroines worthy of Netflix category Strong Female Lead, yet these same heroines are also part of the cringe worthy Disney Princess line, next to gals idolized for their looks and ability to marry rich. We hear of celebrity ladies like Lady Gaga called feminist (though she says otherwise, kind of), work with R Kelly and Terry Richardson—two men who are famously facing their own sex abuse allegations.

And like how grunge and punk rock lead to lower-class fashions hitting high-end runways, the fashion world—which profits from the insecurities of women—is making feminist chic: “There is this debate about women again and I want to interpret it,” Miuccia Prada said earlier this year at her Spring/Summer 2014 show. “My instrument is fashion. I had this idea that if you wear clothes so exaggerated and out there, people will look, and then they will listen.”

“On the most surface level, it must be noted that increased awareness is a good thing,” Jezebel contributor Callie Beusman writes. “Why should we care what, exactly, gets someone interested in feminist thinking, as long as they arrive there eventually?” In other words, if being a feminist is now cool, then that should be a good thing.

Much of pop culture’s adoptions of feminism can be seen as necessary baby steps—I dig that Beyonce is proud of being the boss. Still, in a world where media rules all and raising awareness only goes so far, I really want to see a plunge with sincere action. We’ll need this to make social justice in the world of gender last—as opposed to something that was once “the new black” and has since become so last season.