Coda

Laurie Penny prefaces her review of Andi Zeisler’s We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl ^® , the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, published in 2016, with the following: “Now that women’s liberation is cool again, now that the f-word is cropping up on billboards, catwalks and talk shows, the pressing question is how far radical feminists can allow the mainstream to co-opt our movement without cheapening the message.” ¹ Zeisler’s book, and this review of it, point to two crucial issues in contemporary feminism. Firstly, feminism, or rather the values that it represents, has within the past decade been accepted vocally and visibly by a wide array of women from varying backgrounds. Secondly, the terms of these values are also being hotly debated, with women failing to achieve any meaningful public consensus. What does feminism mean? In particular, what does it mean in twenty-first-century United States? Neither Penny nor Zeisler are quite able to answer this question; both are more effective in pointing out the problems inherent in articulating such an answer.