Obedience Has A Marketing Department

A few weeks ago, I wrote about “Kiss Me Goodbye” as the song where the girl begins to break free from the mold.

The mold of who she was supposed to be.
The mold of what a woman is supposed to want.
The mold of politeness, obedience, prettiness, softness, silence.

“Kiss Me Goodbye” is personal. It is the sound of a girl standing at the edge of the life being advertised and realizing she does not have to step into it.

“Run Baby Run” is what happens next. It is the woman realizing the mold was never just personal. It had a machine behind it.

It had architects.
It had incentives.
It had factories.
It had churches, politicians, billionaires, media empires, movements, algorithms, laws, sermons, campaigns, and marketing departments all working together to make obedience feel natural.

That realization did not arrive all at once for me.

I have to admit, while I was always interested in government as a student, I was not particularly politically active or educated until Donald Trump ran for office and was elected in 2016. I had voted enthusiastically for Obama. I voted enthusiastically for Hillary Clinton. And I will never forget the feeling of that night, when it became clear that we were not going to see our first woman president.

There was a despair in the air that felt bigger than disappointment. It was the heartbreak of every woman who caught a glimpse of the sky and then watched as they built a ceiling to block its view.

And something changed in me.