Congratulations, You’ve Reinvented the Patriarchy
What happens when we stop analyzing systems and start policing women's choices
I was once informed—helpfully, smugly—that shaving my legs was “inherently patriarchal” and “for the male gaze,” and that by doing it I was betraying feminism. Small plot twist: I’m a lesbian. There is no male gaze in my bathroom, unless you count the ghost of Don Draper haunting the marketing ads in the razor aisle.
The logic went like this: because patriarchy helped invent the standard that women should be hairless, any participation in hair removal is capitulation. Therefore, real feminists don’t shave. And if you do? Turn in your feminist credentials at the door.
It was presented as a consciousness-raising moment, but it felt a lot more like being dress-coded by my vice principal in Junior High because my skirt was too short.
Here’s what stuck in my craw: I grew up being told my body belonged to everyone but me—I did not escape all that just to let feminism become the new hall monitor standing between me and my bodily autonomy. If the point of liberation is bodily autonomy, then telling me what I’m allowed to do with my body hair is just a new kind of leash. Different ideology, same tug.
And while I don’t kink shame, I’m just not into that.
Does shaving exist inside a mess of history and marketing and misogyny? Absolutely. But the leap from this norm has patriarchal roots to you’re unfeminist if you don’t defy it every day in every way is where critique turns into control. And when control is the method, patriarchy is the vibe—no matter who’s enforcing it.
I’m not asking anyone to love razors. I’m asking us to stop confusing analyzing a system with policing women. Because the minute feminism becomes a purity test—no shaving, no mascara, no marriage, no babies, no fun—it stops being liberation and starts being a uniform.
If your feminism needs a dress code, it’s not feminism. It’s a cult.
Which brings me to the point of this piece: the idea that choice feminism or individualism feminist is trash is an idea that comes up in discourse regularly, but it’s a concept that can easily slide slides into the same old gender-role policing with a fresh coat of moral superiority. We can name the water we’re swimming in—the beauty industry, heteronormativity, the algorithm’s thirst—without drowning the very autonomy we should be trying to fight for. Critique the pattern. Support the person. And maybe let me keep my razor burn and ingrown hairs if I so choose.
Every few months, the feminist internet has a moral panic about “choice feminism.”
Someone on TikTok or Threads will post: “Ladies, we need to stop pretending every choice we make is empowering. Choice feminism is trash.”
Cue the flood of think pieces, stitches, and duets, all yelling past each other while the algorithm rubs its greasy little hands together in delight.
The critique usually starts from a fair point: not every choice a woman makes is inherently feminist.
If feminism is supposed to dismantle patriarchy, it’s worth asking whether a given choice—say, cosmetic surgery or becoming a stay-at-home wife in a society that still expects women to do all the caregiving—actually challenges or reinforces gender norms. That’s legitimate feminist analysis.
But too often, the conversation devolves from “Let’s examine the system that shapes these choices” into “You’re not a real feminist if you make them.”
Suddenly, “choice feminism” isn’t just a flawed framework; it’s a scarlet letter for women whose feminism looks too pink, too pretty, too domestic, or too comfortable. The vibe shifts from critique to control.
You can trade husbands for hashtags, but if you’re still being told how to live, the patriarchy’s still calling the shots.
So, what exactly is “choice feminism.”
At its simplest, “choice feminism” is the belief that a woman’s personal choices are automatically feminist because she made them.
Wear makeup? Empowering! Don’t wear makeup? Also empowering!
Work full-time? Feminist! Stay home? Still feminist!
Buy a pink “Girlboss” mug? Somehow feminist!
It’s the feminism of hashtags, marketing campaigns, and Dove ads—the kind that tells you empowerment is something you can buy, or at least exfoliate your way into.
Critics call it neoliberal feminism: it treats freedom as an individual consumer experience, not a collective political struggle. It flattens oppression into personal preference.
And the critics aren’t wrong about that.
When every choice is labeled empowering, feminism becomes a lifestyle brand instead of a movement. The question “Is this feminist?” might as well be replaced with “Does this spark joy?”
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But here’s where the backlash trips over its own shoelaces: in trying to escape “choice feminism,” a lot of people wind up right back in patriarchal logic.
They say things like:
“You can’t be feminist if you wear makeup.”
“Marriage is inherently patriarchal.”
“Motherhood is just unpaid labor for men.”
“Femininity is a trap.”
Different vocabulary, same old control mechanism.
When a feminist tells another woman what she can’t do with her own body, she’s not dismantling patriarchy—she’s auditioning to run it.
What started as a critique of capitalist feminism becomes a purity test—one that somehow always ends up targeting women’s bodies, beauty routines, and reproductive choices.
You can practically hear the ghost of a 1950s housewife whispering, “You’re doing womanhood wrong, dear,” except now she’s got a gender studies minor and a TikTok account.
But Here’s the Thing: The Critics Aren’t Entirely Wrong
It’s not that critiques of “choice feminism” come from nowhere. They’re rooted in something real — in the frustration that neoliberal culture turned feminism into a brand, where empowerment became indistinguishable from consumption.
Writers like Athandiwe Ngcobo at FemInStyle Africa point out that “choice” has become a convenient shield — one that lets corporations sell feminism back to us while leaving the systems of inequality untouched. When every product, lifestyle, or influencer is framed as “empowering,” we risk flattening the radical edge of feminism into personal branding and ignoring the structural pressures that limit women’s options. In that sense, the critics are right: a feminism that stops at “you do you” can easily become a feminism that doesn’t do much at all.
“Choice feminism does not work in a world rampant with misogyny and patriarchy because these two systems get in the way of women making individual choices and being safe in those choices. The idea that a woman can dress however she wants and that being a feminist choice is fantastic. However, we also need to consider that what a woman wears can put her in danger and even result in her death.” - https://feminstyle.africa/politics/athandiwe-n/choice-feminism-and-upholding-the-status-quo/2022/03/
But as R. Claire Snyder-Hall argues in Third-Wave Feminism and the Defense of “Choice”, that doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater — or, in this case, the razor with the patriarchy. Third-wave and contemporary feminists weren’t championing mindless consumerism; they were defending pluralism, self-determination, and nonjudgmentalism as feminist values in themselves. The so-called “choice feminists” weren’t rejecting theory — they were rejecting judgment. They were trying to reunite gender equality with sexual freedom, after decades where feminists were told that liking sex, makeup, or motherhood made them bad at politics.
Snyder-Hall’s point still stands: feminism isn’t about endorsing every individual decision as revolutionary, but about respecting that women navigate contradictions — between equality and desire, pressure and pleasure, critique and joy — every single day.
That complexity is exactly what gets lost online, where everything collapses into moral binaries. As Betty Luther Hillman reminds us, even during second-wave debates over hair, beauty, and self-presentation, women disagreed sharply about whether cutting their hair or ditching makeup was liberation or just another uniform. One woman’s radical act of defiance could look, to another, like joyless conformity.
Modern versions of that same tension play out on TikTok and Twitter. Some women find freedom in rejecting beauty standards; others find it in reclaiming them. The theory should help us understand those choices, not shame them.
Because yes — it’s essential to ask why women choose what they choose. It’s feminist to interrogate the forces that make certain choices easier, safer, or more rewarded. But it stops being feminist the moment we start deciding which forms of joy are legitimate.
Feminism isn’t about whether individual choices are “feminist enough.” It’s about whether those choices are possible, safe, and valued.
The right question isn’t “Is it feminist to wear makeup?” It’s “Why do I feel like I have to?”
Not “Is motherhood empowering or oppressive?” but “Why does motherhood derail careers while fatherhood earns applause?”
Critiquing the system that shapes choices is feminist. Shaming the woman making them is not.
If your feminism needs to police someone’s outfit, lifestyle, or marriage, it’s time to check whether you’re dismantling patriarchy or just trying to change who runs it.
The Real Conversation We Should Be Having
Feminism isn’t a dress code, a diet, or a competition. It’s not a purity test or a performance review.
The point isn’t to decide which choices are feminist — it’s to create a world where women actually have choices. You don’t build that by telling women they have to conform to what you think their life should look like.
Because until the structures change — the wage gap, the care gap, the safety gap — it doesn’t matter if you’re in a power suit, an apron, or a crop top. You’re still playing a game that wasn’t built for you.
Analyzing the context of women’s choices isn’t judgmental—it’s essential. Pretending choices happen in a vacuum helps no one. But judging women for how they navigate those contexts helps even less.
Feminism’s job isn’t to assign moral value to leg-shaving, lipstick, or love lives. It’s to ask bigger questions:
Why do we feel better when we conform?
Who profits when we conform…and when we don’t?
What structures make some choices safer, more rewarding, or even possible?
Those are systemic questions.
Everything else is just grading women on a sliding scale of wokeness.
So, wear what you want. Marry who you want. Work, mother, shave, post thirst traps, raise ducks, or grow tomatoes.
Liberation means not needing anyone’s permission — and not demanding anyone else’s either.