Recently, actor Sydney Sweeney released what could be deemed the weirdest product of the 2020s: a bar of soap allegedly infused with her bathwater.
Think Belle Delphine, the content creator who once sold jars of her bathwater, but make it soap. It sold out immediately, leaving in its wake a cascade of memes, online debates, and resellers who eagerly resold it on eBay for $2,000.
Many thought the act was despicable and “set women back 100 years,” while others celebrated how an enterprising woman was profiting from her notoriety. Some even said it was just a way to garner attention and stay relevant.
However, while we may dismiss the incident, such actions by Hollywood stars can reveal how we, as a society, package intimacy—be it bathwater soap or other gimmicks—and sells it back to us. This bar of soap, which may or may not be her actual bathwater, holds the essence of neoliberalism’s takeover of feminism – choice feminism.
Choice feminism is the belief that any decision a woman makes is inherently feminist as long as it is her choice. In this case, the fact that Sweeney chose to sell her soap intrinsically makes it feminist by definition.
The basis on which this operates is that if she wishes to monetise her symbol as a “sex icon,” who are we to judge? If we go by this notion, every single choice a woman makes becomes an act of feminism and self-empowerment.
“Feminism is about the ability to make a choice.”
It is not. How free is choice when it is made within a structure that tells us what empowerment looks like? People often believe choice is equal to power.
That idea has flaws.
We operate within the confines of a system which perpetuates patriarchy and capitalism. Inside these boundaries, agency is drawn by profit margins, and autonomy risks being nothing more than an expensive illusion. We are making choices within these limits, so how could they be inherently ours?
Feminism is about the collective liberation of women. As women, we must break free from systemic inequalities and dismantle the patriarchal structures that exist within society. On the other hand, choice feminism focuses on the individual.
Let’s say you want to be a stay-at-home mother; that is a personal preference, not a feminist act. By claiming that choice is feminist, it downplays structural forces which push us toward such choices, often ignoring power dynamics.
As long as it stems from personal autonomy, it is labelled feminist. I reiterate, it is not.
When women fought for the liberty to vote in democratic elections worldwide, many women opposed the idea. According to this notion, it would seem that they were also feminist, even though they were active agents limiting their own rights and autonomy.
Our choices are made within limits. Perhaps the stay-at-home mother aims to avoid the lower pay that women often receive in the workforce, or the stigma associated with not being at home to raise their child. Sure, it could be her choice to be one but disregarding the fact that these norms are pushed upon women from a young age is ignorant. As such, choice feminism is born to validate individual choices, even though feminism at its core is not about the individual but about the collective.
No woman is free until we all are.
In the case of Sweeney, the market, as neoliberalism would have it, is the ultimate moral compass. It doesn’t matter whether the soap is absurd or ingenious; it matters that it sells.
And it did sell.
The mere act of selling the soap, however “stupid” it may seem, reinforced a system where a woman is an object of consumption and monetised rebellion, claiming it was her choice. But the gag is that what looks like liberation (control over her image, profit from her desirability) feeds into a structure that extracts more value than she ever could.
The market always wins.By commodifying empowerment, the bathwater soap grows in power. It reflects a new cultural shift where private intimacy is anything but.
Unlimited access to celebrities has blurred the lines between personal and public, with people often stating that “fame” and lack of privacy are just “part of being a celebrity”. Many celebrities have leaned into this collapse of the private and public by monetising what was once off-limits—case in point: bathwater soap.
Fans aren’t just buying a product; they’re buying the idea of access, of proximity to the celebrity’s most intimate self. In doing so, they reinforce the very system that makes them long for such access in the first place.
This same logic is at work in a seemingly unrelated trend: the resurgence of the trad wife. Across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, young women present curated visions of domestic bliss. They bake bread, iron clothes, create items “from scratch”, and speak about the joys of submission.
“Divine feminine” or “how to channel your feminine side” are all common concepts on the rise within all forms of media, with the working woman seen as the villainous counterpart, inserting herself into a field exclusive to men.
At first glance, the movement appears to reject feminism, positioning itself as an antidote to modernity’s chaos. Yet it thrives on the same market dynamics as the bathwater soap. These women, far from being simply homemakers, are entrepreneurs. They sell eBooks on traditional cooking, collaborate with lifestyle brands, and monetise their curated nostalgia for the old days. This content, packaged and distributed through the power of the algorithm, becomes a product—a product that unfortunately sells.
Here lies the paradox: the tradwife claims to reject feminism while embracing neoliberalism. She presents domestic submission not as oppression but as empowerment, not as obligation but as choice.
Despite this, her proclaimed choice persists within narrow confines. It is only available to those with enough privilege to aestheticise domesticity—usually middle-class women in the West whose lives are insulated from the economic precarity that forced domestic labour upon their ancestors.
For these women, staying at home is a brand, not a burden. They film their lives for millions to watch, turning unpaid labour into monetised content, supporting the very structures they claim to transcend. And funnily enough, this very system they claim to reject is the one that allows them to capitalise on their business. So yes, they are working women too.
Purity culture has undergone a similar transformation. Once rooted in religious ideologies which restricted women, it now floats through social media feeds as an aesthetic. The new purity is not about avoiding sin; it’s about achieving a curated “clean” lifestyle. Think white linen sheets, braided hair, glowing skin, too many candles and gratitude journals. The language of abstention has been replaced with the language of wellness. Yet, the underlying message remains: value is tied to how well one can embody an ideal.
The market always wins.
Purity is no longer forced upon people; instead, it is now sought out and purchased. It comes in the form of modest clothing lines, speaking in soft, delicate speech, and rejecting unhealthy food and lifestyles. Why? Because you can never be pure enough, but you can always buy something to get closer.
These trends —bathwater soap, traditional wives, purity culture —may seem worlds apart. Still, they converge on a single point: empowerment defined by consumption. Neoliberalism thrives on this convergence.
It takes feminist ideals of autonomy and equality, strips them of their political edge, and repackages them as individual choices. The system doesn’t care whether a woman sells her bathwater or embraces domesticity, so long as her choices generate profit. In this way, empowerment becomes indistinguishable from branding. Feminism, once a radical movement aimed at dismantling oppressive structures, is reduced to a lifestyle that can be curated and sold.
Critics of choice feminism argue that this commodification hollows out what feminism stands for. Now, empowerment is measured solely by whether a woman profits from her decisions, while structural inequalities are ignored. Important questions are often disregarded: Who gets to choose? Who benefits? Who pays the price?
Maybe Sydney Sweeney’s soap is empowering for her, but it does nothing to address the gendered dynamics of an industry that continues to exploit women’s bodies. Take Megan Fox, who tried so hard to shed the title of “sex symbol” but was constantly typecast by Hollywood into those roles. Or consider how Emma Watson and Millie Bobby Brown both had countdowns celebrating their eighteenth birthdays in a perversive, intrusive manner. It is not empowerment if it feeds back into the same system that exploits. Trad wife aesthetic videos may feel radical to some, but they leave untouched the economic structures that make unpaid domestic labour invisible and undervalued.
True empowerment cannot be bought. It cannot be packaged as soap or filmed as content. It must be collective, rooted in dismantling the structures that limit our choices in the first place. That means moving beyond the aesthetics of rebellion to the politics of resistance. It means questioning not only what we buy, but why we buy it, who profits, and at whose expense. It means reclaiming feminism as a movement, not a brand, and certainly not a trend.
Sydney Sweeney’s soap will fade into celebrity trivia, the trad wife trend will eventually give way to the next viral aesthetic, and purity culture will find new ways to market itself. But the forces they represent—neoliberalism’s grip on our choices, the commodification of empowerment—will persist unless we challenge them.
The bathwater bar is sold out. The like counts swell. The trad wife’s reels gather millions of views. The market croons, triumphant and unbothered, while we are caught between following and questioning.
If empowerment is just another product, what is freedom then?
“Women’s march against Donald Trump” by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Related
Choice Feminism: Meaningful Freedom or Perpetuating Neoliberalism?
Recently, actor Sydney Sweeney released what could be deemed the weirdest product of the 2020s: a bar of soap allegedly infused with her bathwater.
Think Belle Delphine, the content creator who once sold jars of her bathwater, but make it soap. It sold out immediately, leaving in its wake a cascade of memes, online debates, and resellers who eagerly resold it on eBay for $2,000.
Many thought the act was despicable and “set women back 100 years,” while others celebrated how an enterprising woman was profiting from her notoriety. Some even said it was just a way to garner attention and stay relevant.
However, while we may dismiss the incident, such actions by Hollywood stars can reveal how we, as a society, package intimacy—be it bathwater soap or other gimmicks—and sells it back to us. This bar of soap, which may or may not be her actual bathwater, holds the essence of neoliberalism’s takeover of feminism – choice feminism.
Choice feminism is the belief that any decision a woman makes is inherently feminist as long as it is her choice. In this case, the fact that Sweeney chose to sell her soap intrinsically makes it feminist by definition.
The basis on which this operates is that if she wishes to monetise her symbol as a “sex icon,” who are we to judge? If we go by this notion, every single choice a woman makes becomes an act of feminism and self-empowerment.
“Feminism is about the ability to make a choice.”
It is not. How free is choice when it is made within a structure that tells us what empowerment looks like? People often believe choice is equal to power.
That idea has flaws.
We operate within the confines of a system which perpetuates patriarchy and capitalism. Inside these boundaries, agency is drawn by profit margins, and autonomy risks being nothing more than an expensive illusion. We are making choices within these limits, so how could they be inherently ours?
Feminism is about the collective liberation of women. As women, we must break free from systemic inequalities and dismantle the patriarchal structures that exist within society. On the other hand, choice feminism focuses on the individual.
Let’s say you want to be a stay-at-home mother; that is a personal preference, not a feminist act. By claiming that choice is feminist, it downplays structural forces which push us toward such choices, often ignoring power dynamics.
As long as it stems from personal autonomy, it is labelled feminist. I reiterate, it is not.
When women fought for the liberty to vote in democratic elections worldwide, many women opposed the idea. According to this notion, it would seem that they were also feminist, even though they were active agents limiting their own rights and autonomy.
Our choices are made within limits. Perhaps the stay-at-home mother aims to avoid the lower pay that women often receive in the workforce, or the stigma associated with not being at home to raise their child. Sure, it could be her choice to be one but disregarding the fact that these norms are pushed upon women from a young age is ignorant. As such, choice feminism is born to validate individual choices, even though feminism at its core is not about the individual but about the collective.
No woman is free until we all are.
In the case of Sweeney, the market, as neoliberalism would have it, is the ultimate moral compass. It doesn’t matter whether the soap is absurd or ingenious; it matters that it sells.
And it did sell.
The mere act of selling the soap, however “stupid” it may seem, reinforced a system where a woman is an object of consumption and monetised rebellion, claiming it was her choice. But the gag is that what looks like liberation (control over her image, profit from her desirability) feeds into a structure that extracts more value than she ever could.
The market always wins.By commodifying empowerment, the bathwater soap grows in power. It reflects a new cultural shift where private intimacy is anything but.
Unlimited access to celebrities has blurred the lines between personal and public, with people often stating that “fame” and lack of privacy are just “part of being a celebrity”. Many celebrities have leaned into this collapse of the private and public by monetising what was once off-limits—case in point: bathwater soap.
Fans aren’t just buying a product; they’re buying the idea of access, of proximity to the celebrity’s most intimate self. In doing so, they reinforce the very system that makes them long for such access in the first place.
This same logic is at work in a seemingly unrelated trend: the resurgence of the trad wife. Across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, young women present curated visions of domestic bliss. They bake bread, iron clothes, create items “from scratch”, and speak about the joys of submission.
“Divine feminine” or “how to channel your feminine side” are all common concepts on the rise within all forms of media, with the working woman seen as the villainous counterpart, inserting herself into a field exclusive to men.
At first glance, the movement appears to reject feminism, positioning itself as an antidote to modernity’s chaos. Yet it thrives on the same market dynamics as the bathwater soap. These women, far from being simply homemakers, are entrepreneurs. They sell eBooks on traditional cooking, collaborate with lifestyle brands, and monetise their curated nostalgia for the old days. This content, packaged and distributed through the power of the algorithm, becomes a product—a product that unfortunately sells.
Here lies the paradox: the tradwife claims to reject feminism while embracing neoliberalism. She presents domestic submission not as oppression but as empowerment, not as obligation but as choice.
Despite this, her proclaimed choice persists within narrow confines. It is only available to those with enough privilege to aestheticise domesticity—usually middle-class women in the West whose lives are insulated from the economic precarity that forced domestic labour upon their ancestors.
For these women, staying at home is a brand, not a burden. They film their lives for millions to watch, turning unpaid labour into monetised content, supporting the very structures they claim to transcend. And funnily enough, this very system they claim to reject is the one that allows them to capitalise on their business. So yes, they are working women too.
Purity culture has undergone a similar transformation. Once rooted in religious ideologies which restricted women, it now floats through social media feeds as an aesthetic. The new purity is not about avoiding sin; it’s about achieving a curated “clean” lifestyle. Think white linen sheets, braided hair, glowing skin, too many candles and gratitude journals. The language of abstention has been replaced with the language of wellness. Yet, the underlying message remains: value is tied to how well one can embody an ideal.
The market always wins.
Purity is no longer forced upon people; instead, it is now sought out and purchased. It comes in the form of modest clothing lines, speaking in soft, delicate speech, and rejecting unhealthy food and lifestyles. Why? Because you can never be pure enough, but you can always buy something to get closer.
These trends —bathwater soap, traditional wives, purity culture —may seem worlds apart. Still, they converge on a single point: empowerment defined by consumption. Neoliberalism thrives on this convergence.
It takes feminist ideals of autonomy and equality, strips them of their political edge, and repackages them as individual choices. The system doesn’t care whether a woman sells her bathwater or embraces domesticity, so long as her choices generate profit. In this way, empowerment becomes indistinguishable from branding. Feminism, once a radical movement aimed at dismantling oppressive structures, is reduced to a lifestyle that can be curated and sold.
Critics of choice feminism argue that this commodification hollows out what feminism stands for. Now, empowerment is measured solely by whether a woman profits from her decisions, while structural inequalities are ignored. Important questions are often disregarded: Who gets to choose? Who benefits? Who pays the price?
Maybe Sydney Sweeney’s soap is empowering for her, but it does nothing to address the gendered dynamics of an industry that continues to exploit women’s bodies. Take Megan Fox, who tried so hard to shed the title of “sex symbol” but was constantly typecast by Hollywood into those roles. Or consider how Emma Watson and Millie Bobby Brown both had countdowns celebrating their eighteenth birthdays in a perversive, intrusive manner. It is not empowerment if it feeds back into the same system that exploits. Trad wife aesthetic videos may feel radical to some, but they leave untouched the economic structures that make unpaid domestic labour invisible and undervalued.
True empowerment cannot be bought. It cannot be packaged as soap or filmed as content. It must be collective, rooted in dismantling the structures that limit our choices in the first place. That means moving beyond the aesthetics of rebellion to the politics of resistance. It means questioning not only what we buy, but why we buy it, who profits, and at whose expense. It means reclaiming feminism as a movement, not a brand, and certainly not a trend.
Sydney Sweeney’s soap will fade into celebrity trivia, the trad wife trend will eventually give way to the next viral aesthetic, and purity culture will find new ways to market itself. But the forces they represent—neoliberalism’s grip on our choices, the commodification of empowerment—will persist unless we challenge them.
The bathwater bar is sold out. The like counts swell. The trad wife’s reels gather millions of views. The market croons, triumphant and unbothered, while we are caught between following and questioning.
If empowerment is just another product, what is freedom then?
“Women’s march against Donald Trump” by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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