To think that most ‘female empowerment’ content today is just rebranded materialism?

[MyKhakiDreamer]

Empowerment now seems to mean “buy the expensive bag” / “go on the luxury trip” or “treat yourself” - always linked to spending money.

What happened to actual empowerment: independence, boundaries, building skills, living on your own terms?

AIBU to think a lot of so-called empowerment is just clever marketing aimed at insecure women?

YANBU. Re-branded materialism and re-branded sexist stereotypes (fetishising of cleaning and 'homemaking', the so-called empowering nature of sex work and of looking like a blow-up doll).

Or worse, "empowerment" is used to describe things like pole-dancing, stripping, escort work/prostitution, polygamy, shagging around. Who benefits from those things? Would it be men?

Not that I've noticed. Though I have noticed that some people think the only reason why women work is so that they can buy expensive bags.

That’s a big part of what I mean - empowerment gets framed around individual choice but not all choices are equally liberating in practice. We rarely ask who benefits most from certain trends or whether something genuinely increases women’s agency long term. Just calling something ‘empowering’ doesn’t make it so.

You mention boundaries. This has been terribly hijacked and misinterpreted to mean people expect other people to do and behave how the person wants. That’s not a boundary. That’s controlling