In early 2025, Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl, a glittering chronicle of fame and reclamation. But just months before that, another headline clung stubbornly to her name: her private jet had emitted over 8,000 tons of CO₂ in a single year – more than a thousand times the average person’s footprint. When called out, her team replied that she “purchases carbon offsets,” effectively buying permission to pollute.

The irony was almost cinematic. A woman who had become the world’s most celebrated feminist icon was now the poster child for luxury’s ecological excess. It captured our cultural moment perfectly, resistance that sparkles, guilt that is offset, and feminism that is beautiful but bloodless. Swift performs empowerment that feels lyrical but rarely radical. Her carbon trail, much like her feminism, remains insulated by devotion and devoid of consequence.

Showgirl, pop feminism and the myth of safe power

In the 21st century, empowerment is a brand category. Feminism, stripped of its politics, now functions as an aesthetic of self-celebration, palatable and algorithmically friendly. Swift, arguably the most scrutinised woman in pop culture, is the clearest example of this transformation.

Her storytelling has always revolved around heartbreak and girlhood nostalgia, a loop of emotional survival that feels empowering but ultimately keeps her politics sentimental, not structural. Her insistence on eternal adolescence makes her feminism comforting rather than challenging. Power, here, is a feeling and not a demand.

The Eras Tour took this logic global. Resilience became spectacle, and fandom became moral validation. Any critique of her wealth or silence on politics was reframed as misogyny, sanctifying her brand as untouchable. Swift has turned feminism into a luxury good, that’s comforting, and perfectly owned.

India’s own ‘branded rebellion’

India mirrors this pattern with remarkable precision. Influencers like Apoorva Mukhija, alias Rebel Kid, and self-help icons like Wizard Liz preach confidence, self-love and detachment from the male gaze, all in neatly packaged reels. Their rebellion is algorithm-approved: it unsettles no one and sells effortlessly, and also ends where corporate sponsorship begins.

Prajakta Koli, better known as MostlySane, embodies this same digital comfort zone. Her cheerful advocacy for women’s confidence and body positivity has made her one of India’s most beloved creators, yet her feminism remains “soft” and non-confrontational. 

During a 2025 panel at the Jaipur Literature Festival, when asked about Palestine and India’s environmental crises, she deflected, saying she “can’t answer” such political questions. The moment captured something essential about India’s influencer feminism: it is motivational, not confrontational, intimate, but rarely insurgent. Koli’s reach is vast, her impact, genuine, but her brand of empowerment remains built for comfort, not disruption.

Then there is Divija Bhasin, known online as The Awkward Goat, whose #ProudRandi campaign attempted to reclaim the Hindi slur “randi” as a badge of defiance. The idea, on paper, was radical, turning a word long used to dehumanise women, especially sex workers, into a symbol of power. But Bhasin’s elite background insulated her from the slur’s actual violence. For many marginalised women, “randi” is not an abstract insult but a weapon that enforces shame and exclusion. Her campaign, echoed by urban teenagers proudly adding “proud randi” to their bios, turned this history into aesthetic performance. The result was not liberation but detachment, an empowerment unmoored from accountability, turning trauma into trend.

Our digital feminism borrows from the Western script, which says, empowerment as self-expression and not collective struggle. It leaves no room for the language of caste, class or labour. Indian pop feminism offers the illusion of agency while leaving the structure of power untouched, a rebellion so palatable, it’s brand-safe.

When empowerment sells, backlash profits

The backlash to this aesthetic is equally marketable. In 2024, Nora Fatehi’s comments calling feminism “toxic” and “dangerous” went viral. The statement resonated precisely because mainstream feminism now appears elite and exclusionary. Fatehi’s rejection wasn’t radical, it was reactionary, but it thrived on the same digital logic.

Both feminist icons and their detractors now rely on the same economy of outrage and visibility. Empowerment and antifeminism have become twin spectacles, each feeding the other. The result is not ideological clarity but commercial equilibrium. 

Malala, Clinton and the making of a brand

No story illustrates the taming of resistance more clearly than Malala Yousafzai’s. Once the face of defiant girlhood against the Taliban, she now occupies a softer global stage, appearing with Hillary Clinton, co-producing the Broadway musical Suffs, and entering Hollywood’s red-carpet circuit.

Her new memoir, Finding My Way (October 2025), marks a striking turn. It is personal, full of reflections on friendship, anxiety, love, and even Taylor Swift songs. The promotional campaign, featuring glossy interviews and viral clips, transforms her from symbol to celebrity. This is not a criticism of her vulnerability but a recognition of what it signifies: that even survivors must now become relatable to stay relevant.

Malala’s story reveals a new demand placed on women icons, to be inspirational yet approachable, political yet marketable. Her rebranding invites empathy but also raises a quiet question: when every act of resistance must be packaged for public consumption, what remains of dissent?

 Greta and the refusal to be marketed

Few figures embody resistance outside the machinery of celebrity branding like Greta Thunberg. Since launching her lone climate strike outside the Swedish parliament at age 15 in 2018, Greta has steadfastly rejected the trappings of fame that many celebrities eagerly embrace: no lucrative corporate endorsements and no gilded appearances. 

Her activism flows through grassroots mobilisation and direct confrontation with power structures. In 2025, Greta’s campaigns extended beyond climate to political solidarity actions such as the Freedom Flotilla, advocating for humanitarian aid to Gaza amidst Israeli bombardments. Her refusal to toe the line of brand-friendly activism is costly: she faces relentless online abuse, vilification by conservative media, arrests during protests, and smear campaigns portraying her as a puppet or extremist. 

Unlike Taylor Swift, whose silence on the Gaza conflict has frustrated fans and sparked online movements like #SwiftiesForPalestine, where concertgoers gesture their dissent with Palestinian flags and friendship bracelets, Greta’s refusal to be commodified marks her as genuinely dangerous to entrenched interests. Taylor’s marketing team’s move to purchase carbon offsets for her private jets only underscores this contrast: Swift’s activism is easily sanitised, encapsulating guilt without meaningful accountability. Greta’s rejection of such compromises reveals the fundamental truth that activism which cannot be bought or controlled is punished and marginalised.

The ‘mother’ meme and the church of fandom

Across platforms, calling women like Swift, Rebel Kid, or Wizard Liz “mother” has become a cultural reflex, a digital coronation that transforms critique into heresy. Fandom masquerades as feminism, devotion replaces dialogue. The “mother” meme, born out of admiration, now captures how easily solidarity becomes worship.

Feminism, once a movement, now performs as spectacle. It sells empowerment as personality, not politics.

What power celebrates, it owns

Today, visibility on social media, branded content and viral moments have become the currency of liberation, often replacing actual structural change. The vocabulary of capitalism, caste and class, the very words needed for intersectional politics, have largely disappeared from popular feminist discourse. 

Across Bollywood and Hollywood, patriarchy no longer silences women through overt repression. Instead, it sponsors them, shaping narratives of empowerment that are palatable, marketable, and safely contained within consumer culture. 

Taylor Swift, Malala Yousafzai and countless others embody not insincerity but entrapment: navigating a world where womanhood and power must always be curated for wide appeal and corporate profitability. Their influence is both a product and a constraint, a form of empowerment that is pleasurable but circumscribed. The lesson is stark and clear, that true empowerment will never be algorithmically endorsed or commodified. 

It cannot be offset like carbon emissions or packaged as relatable vulnerability. Real empowerment, often uncomfortable, frequently unprofitable, is collective and fiercely uncompromising. Until feminism breaks free from the logic of convenience, and marketing, it will inevitably continue to sell rebellion as spectacle rather than live it as revolution.

Mysha Manaal Taj is an undergraduate student at Women’s College, Aligarh Muslim University, exploring the intersections of culture, identity and art in her writing.

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