I like Susan Faludi and read her books. I also dislike Sheryl Sandberg and would never read hers. (Yes, I’m a snob, let’s get over that already.) But this attack Faludi makes on Sandberg and her Lean In movement is petty and pathetic.
The only criticisms Faludi seems to be able to make of Sandberg is that she wears ballet flats (there is quite an obsession with them in Faludi’s article) and that she has everybody who wants to participate in the movement register through Facebook. I don’t like Facebook but I can definitely understand expecting people to be in touch with you and keeping track of your ideas through the medium of your choosing. If people want to keep track of my life, they should come to the blog and not expect me to post things on tumblr or Instagram.
What I find especially unattractive about Faludi’s article is how gleefully she ridicules women who participate in Sandberg’s Lean In program. She offers a selection of particularly gushy quotes that make these women sound like a bunch of stupid air-heads. This probably serves some hugely feminist purpose in Faludi’s opinion but I can’t figure out what that purpose can be.
In the article, Faludi creates a completely specious dichotomy between fighting for structural changes in society and vanquishing personal insecurities that stem from interiorized patriarchal discourse. Having a career, making money, getting promoted at work, enjoying life and buying gold necklaces – let alone the scary ballet flats – somehow transforms into an incapacity to be politically active. It is as if Faludi needed to see women being permanently miserable in all areas of their lives.
Faludi, who is a very successful writer and who doesn’t seem to be living in dire poverty and extreme obscurity, begrudges other women the kind of success that has made her life comfortable and gave her a voice. She rants against the women who are good at harnessing the forces of capitalism to serve their individual needs but forgets to mention that she is one of such women. Even Sandberg, who at least doesn’t rely on the dishonest rhetoric of 99% versus 1% to conceal that she is richer than the absolute majority of people in her audience, looks good by Faludi’s side.
Clarissa's Blog 
It seems like Faludi is opposed to suggesting that people should try to take agency of their own lives and change themselves which is really odd.
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Yeah, I don’t care about Sandberg or Lean In — if it helps her, and women like her, that’s great, but I don’t see it having much to offer most women, and I frankly think it has a lot more to do with Sandberg trying to “brand” herself and grow her business empire than it does with empowering women — and I am definitely the kind of person who is easily annoyed by excessive cheerfulness and energy in other people, but the mocking of Sandberg’s fans for their enthusiasm strikes me as a low blow. It also seems like she’s ignoring the medium where these supportive comments are being written — people often work to telegraph emotion in social media and blog comments, because it’s the Internet and you’re communicating with strangers via text alone.
(I liked the second part of the article, though, where she talked about the history of feminism and female labor activism.)
I see this in a lot of radical-feminist writing about liberal feminism, too. I agree with almost all their criticisms, but the characterization of liberal feminists as giggling, bubble-headed “fun feminists” who’ve never cracked a book older than themselves is really off-putting. Like, can’t you criticize their ideas without appealing to sexist stereotypes?
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