“Young women of the world, two things are lacking in your life: gender equality and shiny hair.
And we can help you achieve at least one of those things.”

Such is Pantene’s message in this video, part of the company’s #ShineStrong campaign.

This ad is part of a larger trend, termed “Commodity Feminism” by some, which uses (a version of) feminism to market products to women.
Examples are ubiquitous:
Always’ #LikeAGirl.   CoverGirl’s #GirlsCan.   Verizon’s #InspireHerMind.

These campaigns have been accused of propagating a watered-down, de-clawed feminism that agitates little for actual social change.  Impressively, companies convince us that by consuming the product we are supporting the feminist cause.  Also valid is the comment that the “you be you” message of these ads is at odds with the very nature of marketing, which emphasizes a lack or imperfection in order to then provide a product with which to solve this “problem”.

Such critiques certainly have value.  However, these ads also raise interesting questions about understandings of product and commodity.
Though the term Commodity Feminism plays nicely on Marx’s Commodity Fetishism, are there similarities between the latter concept and this advertising trend that forefronts social causes and ideology?

Marx recognizes that an object produced by labour processes gains a “mystical character” and social status unrelated to its use-value as soon as it enters relations of exchange and becomes a commodity.  The result is that, to quote Marx, the “social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.”  The focus shifts from labour to the product as its own entity with its own intrinsic value.

Much contemporary advertising, including the examples mentioned above, engages in obfuscation of the labour and product-ness of the commodity being presented.  Value is instead assigned or implied by linking the commodity to a particular lifestyle, identity or social cause.  Commodity feminism is one example of the addition of an ideological layer that distracts from the origins and nature of the commodity advertised.  Significantly, it also invites the consumer to buy into an ideology – here, feminism – in order to divert attention from the fact that by purchasing the Pantene product advertised, the only ideologies that the consumer is truly supporting are consumerism and capitalism.

Thus both commodity fetishism and commodity feminism are engaged in veiling potentially problematic economic relationships.  Commodity fetishism masks the exploitative relationship between worker and capitalist, focusing on the independent commodity object.  Commodity feminism provides a social-ideological focus in order to obscure the exploitative capitalist relationship that exists between company and consumer.