The Met Gala’s fake feminism worships male wealth. But women can see through it now

As images from the Met Gala red carpet poured across people’s timelines earlier this week, it was shockingly obvious what a juddering shift has occurred in the reaction to this annual extravaganza. 

Hearts and flames, expressions of admiration and desire, were rare. Most frequent were irritation and bafflement, teetering into disgust. So many women seemed to share the view that they were watching an ostensible celebration of beauty that held a terrible ugliness in its heart.

I’m not criticising, here, the women who attend the gala. From Beyoncé to Lena Dunham to Madonna, many women who walked the red carpet have created their own art with authenticity and passion, and inspired other women to do the same. But while once upon a time their poses in front of the Met might have looked joyful, now they seem unmoored in this context where every talent, every idea, every personality, has been flattened by displays of gross excess and waste.

And this is not an aesthetic issue – although to be sure, many of the dresses we saw earlier this week were ugly and unwearable by design, and the pursuit of thinness and youth has clearly become an extreme sport in New York. 

No, this is a political and economic issue, and in order to understand it we have to talk about it in those terms. While the Met Gala has often set out to celebrate female glamour and talent, it has ended up celebrating a system which prevents so many women from flourishing.

The economic arrangements which have led us to a world of deepening poverty alongside extreme wealth are particularly harmful for women. While many commentators are keen to discuss inequality at the moment, it’s fascinating how few want to confront the sexed reality that lies at the heart of it. Let’s not forget, let’s never forget, that those who are hoarding an outsize share of the world’s wealth are almost always men. Let’s not forget, let’s never forget, that It is still women who do the bulk of unpaid and low-paid work. As shocking statistics from Oxfam tell us, 22 wealthy men have more wealth than all the women in Africa. 

And the fashion industry itself, which the Met Gala sets out to celebrate, is built on the low-paid labour of women to make the clothes and to clean up the waste it produces. As campaigner and writer Aja Barber has said: “It’s not feminist or intersectional to buy or sell clothing you don’t need from companies who exploit the women who make them.”

This ugly reality that outsize amounts of wealth are currently being captured by a small and shrinking group of men, who are now using it to buy outsize amounts of political influence, often masked by displays of false feminism. Indeed, the kind of feminism that we meet in mainstream culture seems weirdly embarrassed about talking about structural inequality and political resistance. Instead of such grim reality, it is constantly burnishing the dream that a few women are able to move up these destructive hierarchies – and that you, if you work hard enough and long enough, you could be one of them.

Since it was Jeff Bezos’s involvement in the Met Gala that particularly triggered the disgust of so many onlookers, it’s intriguing to see how Amazon itself uses this kind of fake feminism to veil its own complicity in inequality. Everyone now recognises Bezos as an embodiment of the gross excess of our world – not only because he has that unimaginable wealth of over $200bn but because his wealth is built on shrinking the incomes of others. Across the US, the very presence of Amazon warehouses in a county has been linked to wages falling in that county, as it creates a downward pressure on remuneration and workers’ rights across the board. Through predatory pricing and undercutting competitors, Amazon squeezes out other retailers and businesses that might pay workers and producers more fairly. While Amazon states that it complies “with all applicable tax laws”, many experts have stated that it practises aggressive tax avoidance, exploiting loopholes and incentives all over the world and routing its profits through low-tax countries. Even when economies struggle, Amazon gets stronger. During the pandemic, Amazon’s stock price grew by 70% – while its workers in the US saw their wages increase by just 7%. 

And yet Amazon has learned to use the language of feminism to mask its contribution to deepening inequality. During Women’s History Month in 2023, Amazon stated “we are strong advocates for gender diversity, equal opportunities, and inclusive spaces for women to thrive and feel comfortable at Amazon and beyond” and exhorted women to “lean into fear”. Amazon lists more than a dozen initiatives for women’s equality, including Amazon Amplify, which asserts that “‘lack of confidence’ is the top blocker for women’s contribution in the workplace”.  

All these initiatives sell women a kind of feminism that we are all familiar with these days – a feminism of individualism, of exhortations to lean in, of building our confidence, giving zero fucks and moving forwards on our own. 

I believe that women are now seeing through this kind of individualist feminism. While of course it’s vital – in a world where women are still so often punished for speaking up in public – that women are confident and ambitious, loud and fearless, our feminism cannot stop at the boundaries of the individual. At a time of deepening inequality, rising conflict and authoritarianism, growing misogyny and climate emergency, the dangers that women are facing are much too great to be combated through building our confidence and ambition alone.

And the reaction to the Met Gala shows that the mask of such fake feminism is slipping everywhere. As I’ve been exploring over the last few years in my new book, Feminism for a World on Fire, there is a growing recognition across the globe of the scale of resistance that is now needed if we are to turn the corner, away from this world of ever-deepening waste and inequality. 

This recognition is particularly growing among young women, who are swiftly moving towards the left politically and towards rage emotionally. They are no longer prepared to accept the blandishments of a competitive, consumerist culture that promised them empowerment but ended up condemning too many to an endless fight for survival. Some of them are turning away from politics altogether in their rage and despair, but others are working out how to build the connections between movements and among women that might lead us into a more equal future – one where we can celebrate beauty, achievement and talent without treating other women and our living planet as disposable. 

Feminism for a World on Fire is published by Virago (£25).

Natasha Walter will be speaking with Aja Barber and Nerve co-founder Carole Cadwalladr on Wednesday 13 May at Conway Hall, London WC1, 7pm-8.30pm. We have organised a generous 40% discount for Nerve readers: use code FFWOF5946 at checkout. And on Tuesday 19 May, Natasha will be at Bookhaus in Bristol. Members have been sent a code to buy tickets for £4 (please get in touch at [email protected] if you don’t have this). Normal price £7 – buy here