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(Tory) Burch made her fortune peddling the costume of the Upper East Side to a nation of women in middle management. Massenet and Burch were the emblems of a neoliberal feminism determined to frame exploitation in terms of opportunity and advancing freedoms. Burch's taglines were #Embrace Ambition and "Feminism is about equality." This kind of "feminism" celebrates the upward mobility of a few women capitalists. It props up the narrative of steady progress for American women, and swallows minor inconveniences like the endemic and structural impoverishment of foreign and immigrant women laborers.
As the garment industry left the United States, it undid the work of industrial feminists like Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman, who had the audacity to demand that intellectual satisfaction was the birthright of every sewing machine operator. This new brand of feminism didn't care to protect sewing work as good work; rather it scoured the earth to find the cheapest new sources of exploitable, female labor.
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