Her Body, Their Brand
Feminism in the Mirror of Capital
Radical ideologies, including feminism, are neutralized under capitalism through the commodification of its signs. That is one of the theories of Jean Baudrillard in his works revolving simulation of the semiotics and the hyperreal¹ existance. The capitalist superstructure² maintains and shapes not only the production and its produce, but also the consumer. The mirror of production is the consumption of its commodities, and through control of the mass-media, marketing and entertainment the capitalist superstructure designs its consumers to reflects its ideological desires; to reproduce class hierarchies and maintain the accumulation of capital by the owning class. It manages to do this, because it has redefined what identity entails.
¹ The hyperreal, according to Jean Baudrillard, is a state in which representations or signs no longer refer to any real object or experience but instead simulate reality itself, becoming more "real" than the real. In the hyperreal, meaning is detached from origin, and we interact with copies of copies, mistaking simulation for truth.
² In philosophical thought, particularly in Marxist theory, a superstructure refers to the institutions, cultures, ideologies, and social relations built upon the economic base (the material means and relations of production). The superstructure includes things like politics, religion, education, and law, and it serves to justify and maintain the existing economic system. While the base shapes the superstructure, the superstructure also reinforces and legitimizes the base, creating a dynamic but often unequal relationship.
Identity crisis
In pre-capitalist societies, identity was defined primarily through symbolic exchange, not commodity consumption. This symbolic order was embedded in rituals, kinship systems, social roles, honor, status and gift-giving economies. The clothes you wore, the tools you used, the interior of your house mattered, not because of its price or mass appeal. A gesture, an object, or a garment was meaningful because of who gave it, when, why, and within what cultural structure.
In contrast, in today’s capitalist society, identity is increasingly defined and decided by the logic of the capitalist superstructure, where consumption functions as the primary mode of self-expression and social differentiation. The symbolic systems rooted in reciprocity and communal meaning have been replaced by a regime of signs, commodities that circulate not for their use or symbolic depth, but for their capacity to signify status, taste, or belonging. The clothes you wear now signal brand affiliation or trend awareness; the interior of your home is curated to project a lifestyle image aligned with aspirational aesthetics.
Rather than being shaped by stable roles within a shared symbolic order, identity becomes fluid, performative, and endlessly constructed through the acquisition and display of commodified signs. We are interpellated not as citizens or kin, but as consumers, whose desires and self-conceptions are shaped by advertising, algorithmic targeting, and brand narratives. The capitalist system doesn’t just sell products, it sells identities, aspirations, lifestyles, and ideologies as brands, effectively scripting who we are supposed to be through the things we buy. In Baudrillard’s terms, we no longer consume objects for their material or symbolic value, but for their sign value, their power to communicate something about us in a system where meaning has been detached from reality and is now simulated.
The Feminism of the Superstructure
This reconfiguration of identity through commodified signs presents a fundamental obstacle to any radical political project that seeks structural change, including feminism. Under capitalism, feminism is permitted only insofar as it can be commodified, aestheticized, and rendered safe. The version of feminism that challenges the systemic commodification of women, the kind rooted in radical critique, is precisely the version that must be subdued, because it targets not just the symptoms, but the economic base itself.
Radical feminism, which opposes the objectification and commercialization of women’s bodies, directly threatens some of the most profitable sectors in global capitalism, advertising, fashion, pornography, and prostitution. These industries don’t just thrive in capitalism; they are essential commodities, optimized for endless consumption. The commodified female body is not a side effect of capitalism, it is one of its most enduring and efficient products.
To oppose this is to confront capital head-on. And the superstructure will not allow that. Instead, it neutralizes the critique by absorbing and reshaping it into something palatable, something marketable. It replaces the feminist radical with the feminist consumer.
Take, for example, the opposition to prostitution and pornography. Radical feminists who critique these industries, figures like Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Jeffreys, or Catharine MacKinnon, are routinely marginalized, ridiculed, or ignored. Their arguments, which frame pornography and prostitution not as individual choices but as systemic forms of exploitation rooted in patriarchy and capitalism, are fundamentally incompatible with the superstructure’s ideological function. They do not simply critique a cultural product; they challenge the economic logic that underpins it. And that is precisely why the system cannot afford to let them speak.
The superstructure does not defeat resistance by arguing with it, it absorbs, deflects, or silences it. It operates through a kind of ideological metabolism: digesting opposition and expelling it in a neutralized, commodified form. Radical critique is turned into marketable sentiment, or worse, re-coded as violence. Thus, anti-pornography feminists are not only labelled regressive but are often conflated with reactionary moralists or accused of aligning with right-wing agendas, despite their analysis being rooted in structural leftist critique.
This misrepresentation is not accidental; it is a feature of capitalist ideological management. It ensures that any discourse which threatens the commodification of sexuality, especially the sexual commodification of women, is dismissed before it can take hold. The superstructure frames such critique as “sex-negative,” “anti-freedom,” or “anti-choice,” effectively weaponizing the language of empowerment against those who challenge commodification itself. It substitutes political resistance with consumer choice, rtansforming the fight against sexual exploitation into a debate about personal branding.
Platforms like OnlyFans are a prime example. They are not subversive, they are deeply integrated into the capitalist logic of content production and labor. But the superstructure frames them as feminist victories. This serves two purposes: it protects the economic interests tied to digital sex work (which are vast), and it positions any critique of these platforms as an attack on women’s autonomy, thus disarming resistance by making it seem oppressive.
This is Baudrillard’s simulation in action: the image of liberation replaces actual liberation. Sex work is no longer a site of contested meaning or struggle, it is a brand, a lifestyle, a genre of content. The hyperreal feminist sex worker is celebrated precisely because she is a sign of rebellion without its substance, a safe figure who reinforces the status quo under the guise of subverting it. Not at all to blame, importantly, but rather a product of the system.
And when resistance persists, it is algorithmically buried. Radical feminism is de-platformed, or made algorithmically invisible. Academic institutions label their positions as dangerous. Mainstream feminism, shaped through glossy aesthetics and commercial partnerships, does not merely ignore these voices, it actively disassociates from them to maintain its cultural capital. In this way, the superstructure creates its own feminist orthodoxy, one that affirms the logic of capital while pretending to challenge it.
In the hyperreal, the appearance of feminist progress is inversely proportional to the reality of feminist resistance. The more visible feminism becomes as a brand, the more invisible it becomes as a politics.
Manufactured Feminism: Safe Signs for Unsafe Realities
Instead of engaging with these critiques, the superstructure manufactures its own feminism, one that is emotionally resonant, culturally omnipresent, and politically inert. It packages empowerment as pink-filtered rebellion: The Barbie Movie is not radical, it’s retrofit rebellion in the service of Mattel’s bottom line. Its message: girls can be anything, as long as they’re still buying something.
Popstarts like Taylor Swift and Cardi B, although vastly different on the surface, both market a clever, flirtatious brand of feminine defiance. But the rebellion is playful, consumable, and above all, non-threatening to the underlying economic base. These cultural products deliver a simulation of feminism, signs without the full substance, whose function is not to liberate, but to satiate. They offer a more consumable simulation of feminism where some of the most important, underlying issues that uphold patriarchy is completely ignored, because they directly target the economic system that enables it. They allow the consumer to feel politically engaged while remaining firmly within the logic of capital. This is exactly Baudrillard’s hyperreal in motion: feminism as aesthetic, emptied of antagonism, repeated until it signifies nothing but itself.
The mainstream feminism of the hyperreal is not a radical feminist movement, it is a management strategy. Its function is to contain, not to empower; to simulate resistance, not enact it. Radical feminism cannot flourish in this environment because it is not designed to circulate as a sign. Its truth lies precisely in what cannot be commodified: in refusal, in critique, in solidarity, in acts that defy profitability.
Under the gaze of the capitalist superstructure, the most dangerous form of feminism is the one that refuses to be commodified and neutralized.