Controversy, controversy, controversy! Buzzfeed has declared that Pinterest is killing feminism.
I often argue on this blog that Pinterest can hurt women. I believe in equality and a woman’s right to self-determination, and am therefore a feminist, and like the article’s author Amy Odell, this often results in me condemning the new social platform. Pinterest normalizes behaviors that undermine female empowerment–thinspo, youth worship, overemphasis on marriage and men, time-sucking beauty routines (braid your hair and paint your nails or else!)–but it is also a place where women congregate to share empowering pins. Todd Akin is stupid! No, your daughter doesn’t have to wear a tutu! Odell does concede on that: “Pinterest might come with airbrushing, but at least it lets you decide just how much of it becomes part of your own user experience.”
Here’s the article’s basic thesis:
“Pinterest — which drives more traffic to marthastewart.com and marthastewartweddings.com than Facebook and Twitter combined — has become impossible to ignore, even as critics deride it as ‘the Mormon housewife’s image bookmarking service of choice.'”
What do you think?
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