The term self-care gets thrown around a lot these days. Feminism in late-stage capitalism is focused on “treating yourself” as a response to the constant oppression of marginalized groups. The instinct is certainly an understandable one, but I question how much self-care is actually good for the health of marginalized groups, and how much is intended to distract from real activism. Is the purpose of self-care in the cultural lexicon to actually take care of ourselves and be healthier? Or is it just like when George Bush told us to go shopping as a way to feel better about 9/11?

Capitalism is laser-focused on marketable female empowerment right now. We are repeatedly told that women are equal because we have all-female reboots of movies that were originally written by and that star men. But is a female Ghostbusters really a mark of progress? Of course, representation plays an important role in dismantling systematic inequality, but we still have a government that forces us into lifelong free labor by restricting our access to legal abortions. Women of color are still being imprisoned en masse for nonviolent crimes, and the most likely place for a woman to be murdered is still her own home.

Meanwhile, the proponents of late-stage capitalism are hard at work shoving women into male roles, like putting a round peg in a square hole, and telling us we have to like it or we aren’t feminists. Instead of giving women the space and respect to create their own roles—to tell their own stories— we are reinforcing the idea that the only acceptable kind of feminism is one in which women are supposed to be grateful for male-approved representation in a society that actively discriminates against us.

In her work, artist and scholar Audrey Wollen grapples with the female reaction to these issues, and what role our emotional response plays in advancing political rhetoric.

I first came across Audrey Wollen in 2015. At the time, she was working on a series of self-portraits on Instagram in which she posed herself to mimic classical paintings, but with overtones of modern girlhood. One photo in particular caught my eye: Wollen was nude, lying on her side in bed, her red hair contrasting with her pale white body. The bottoms of her feet were so red they almost matched her hair. Her back was facing the viewer as she looked directly at a laptop perched upon a small plastic bed tray. On the gently glowing computer screen, you can just barely make out a blurry webcam image of her face and nude body. The photo is a re-creation of Diego Velázquez’s 1651 painting The...