She Knows More Than You Think

Gender Normativity, Mass Consumerism, and Other Reflections on the #BlogHer18 Summit

Being a woman alone in the Great Expanse of Entrepreneurship, I often wonder whether I’m doing it right.

Is there a secret memo I didn’t get that everyone else is working from to win the Instagram lottery? Is it simply my lack of discipline in daily blogging that’s holding me back? Maybe if I Tweeted more regularly, things would just fall into place?

Amidst the great expanse of unanswered questions, I started looking for answers.

As a result of some internet wizardry, I found myself among the 2,000+ women who descended on a warehouse in lower Manhattan last week for the BlogHer Creators Summit, a two-day extravaganza of inspirational celebrity appearances, product trials, and selfies. A production of SheKnows Media now in its fourteenth year, the BlogHer Summit is the quintessential femme-power gathering. Mommy bloggers and bodacious insta-celebs converge in one place to figure out how to maximize their “brand influence” amidst a shifting multimedia landscape. A must-attend for “health, beauty, and wellness influencers — and female entrepreneurs,” it’s become an industry pivot point for brands who have built their business on the backs of “influencers,” insta-famous beautiful people who bring authenticity and visibility to products seeking female customers.

Lofty, inspirational missives from actresses turned inspiration moguls Gabrielle Union (Bring it On, Breaking In), Jessica Alba (Dark Angel, Honey?), and Tiffany Thiessen (90210, White Collar) intermingled with go-get-em pep talks from the likes of life coach Marie Forleo and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, while instructional demos from new content creation tools, like Adobe’s #ProjectRush and Storyblaster offered attendees new tricks of the trade. You could boost your confidence and your website SEO, all in just 90 minutes.

Lifestyle brands poured thousands of dollars into giveaways and product promotions, including everything from FreshDirect peaches to Vagisil white jasmine “intimate wipes.” Matel was eager to showcase how they’re hip to the times with a Barbie giveaway, offering up their newest and most empowered models, including the Scientist, the Pilot, and the Robotics Engineer. Among the exhibitors, you could get yourself an Honest Company make-over, a Worth Collection wardrobe upgrade, and an Adobe Adorama headshot. You could pick up a pack of emergency contraceptive, enter a raffle to win a standing desk from Human Scale, and fuel up with an iced coffee, a salad, and a cookie, courtesy of Pret a Manger.

Yet, while the crowd was both racially and generationally diverse, the audacious consumerism felt stifling. As much as it recognized and celebrated the buying power of women, the event also perpetuated established cultural norms about a woman’s place and her suggested aesthetic. You’re a badass “creative” with the power to change the world, so long as your changemaking involves a delicious confection, a tight booty, and a fresh pussy — extra points for a flawless mani-pedi and some well-applied fake eyelashes. Mainstage celebrity speakers repeatedly emphasized the “intersectionality” of the female experience, while the event itself insisted on a fuschia-colored, jasmine-scented, binary-conforming, gender-normative construct of what exactly it means to be a “her.”

The events emphatic focus on health, beauty, and wellness also underlined the subtle message that a woman’s place is with her credit card. Where were the brands encouraging us to become farmers, foresters, or athletes? Where was the discussion of politics, racial justice, and economic inequality? Just 90 days away from the midterm election, Senator Gillibrand was focused on touting her paid parental leave legislation rather than engaging women on more pressing non-parental political issues facing the nation this year. The limitation was clear. A savvy lady wields the power of the purse, and brands will line up all day to win her business, especially if she’s posting their product on Instagram. As a woman, I have license to public authority, so long as my self-expression stays in the boudoir, the nursery, or the kitchen.

“Find the people who align with your core values. That holds up the roof.”

Of course, we can’t blame SheKnows Media for following the money. Brands profit when I’m calorie counting, binge eating, and image insecure. They’re simply connecting me with the brands I need to purchase my #BestLife Ⓣ. They also not-so-subtly imply they are cheerleaders for my success as a lifestyle insta-celebrity, while as a political commentator or a B-to-B entrepreneur, I’m on my own.

Just one speaker I heard offered a strategic perspective that was both insightful and ungendered. Whitney Casey, the founder of Finery, an app that digitizes your closet into a searchable database of selectable items — think Cher from Clueless’s mechanized closet, but from your phone — got real at the start of day one. A journalist turned tech entrepreneur, she offered up her best advice for others in the process of starting a company.

According to Casey, core values are the heart of any successful enterprise. “Integrity, intellectual curiosity — whatever it is,” she said, knowing what your company stands for is the cornerstone of success. “Find the people who align with your core values,” she said. “That holds up the roof.” This clarity of conviction helped her and her co-founder, Brooklyn Decker, hire the right people who they know share their beliefs. That rock-solid foundation ensured everyone is pointed in the same direction.

I chuckled to myself as I listened to Casey describe the importance of values. This very conviction was the cornerstone of my own startup, Heptagon Productions, an agency that helps mission-driven organizations start with ideological clarity as the starting point for engagement and impact. I’ve done the work to define my own values of curiosity, expression, imagination, transformation, empathy, and persuasion, which inform statements of belief and an unwavering focus on the importance of human relationships, meaningful connections, and new narratives of endless possibility. New narratives of endless possibility aren’t easy. But they’re a starting point.

There it was, a flare in the dark wilderness of the Great Expanse of Entrepreneurship: keep going, it seemed to say, you’re on the right track. In spite of my paltry Instagram following, my incoherent color palette, my lack of aesthetic cohesion, and my general aversion to myself on video, I was doing something right.

At the end of the two days, I wished that there had been more substantive introspection, more chances to talk in small groups based on common interest and experience about our vision for ourselves and our values as both organizations and individuals. I wished that BlogHer’s creative team had put as much care into curating the personal relationships and resolve I would leave with as they did a flawless on-stage production and a luxurious product display.

I hope that Samantha Skey and her team at SheKnows Media take Casey’s advice to heart. Somewhere in the values of this femme-power media empire, there’s a seed of endless possibility just waiting to be realized.