Kendra Marston
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474430296
- eISBN:
- 9781474453608
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430296.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, ...
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This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, arguing that the character of the ‘melancholic white woman’ operates as a trope through which to explore the excesses of late capitalism and a crisis of faith in the American dream. Melancholia can function as a form of social capital for these characters yet betrays its proximity to a gendered history of emotion and psychopathology. This figure is alternately idealised or scapegoated depending on how well she navigates the perils of postfeminist ideology. Furthermore, the book considers how performances of melancholia and mental distress can confer benefits for Hollywood actresses and female auteurs on the labour market, which in turn has contributed to the maintenance of white hegemony within the mainstream US film industry. Case studies in the book include Black Swan (Darren Aronofksy 2010), Gone Girl (David Fincher 2014) and Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton 2010).Less
This book is the first extended study into the politics of whiteness inherent within postfeminist popular cinema. It analyses a selection of Hollywood films dating from the turn of the millennium, arguing that the character of the ‘melancholic white woman’ operates as a trope through which to explore the excesses of late capitalism and a crisis of faith in the American dream. Melancholia can function as a form of social capital for these characters yet betrays its proximity to a gendered history of emotion and psychopathology. This figure is alternately idealised or scapegoated depending on how well she navigates the perils of postfeminist ideology. Furthermore, the book considers how performances of melancholia and mental distress can confer benefits for Hollywood actresses and female auteurs on the labour market, which in turn has contributed to the maintenance of white hegemony within the mainstream US film industry. Case studies in the book include Black Swan (Darren Aronofksy 2010), Gone Girl (David Fincher 2014) and Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton 2010).
Sarah E. Whitney
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040467
- eISBN:
- 9780252098895
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040467.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
In-depth and refreshingly readable, this book is a bold analysis of postfeminist gothic, a literary genre that continues to jar readers, reject happy endings, and find powerful new ways to talk about ...
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In-depth and refreshingly readable, this book is a bold analysis of postfeminist gothic, a literary genre that continues to jar readers, reject happy endings, and find powerful new ways to talk about violence against women. The book explores the genre's challenge to postfeminist assumptions of women's equality and empowerment. The authors it examines—Patricia Cornwell, Jodi Picoult, Susanna Moore, Sapphire, and Alice Sebold—construct narratives around socially invisible and physically broken protagonists who directly experience consequences of women's ongoing disempowerment. Their works ask readers to inhabit women's suffering and to face the uncomfortable, all-too-denied fact that today's women must navigate lives fraught with risk. The book's analysis places the authors within a female gothic tradition that has long given voice to women's fears of their own powerlessness. But it also reveals the paradox that allows the genre to powerfully critique postfeminism's often sunshiney outlook while uneasily coexisting within the same universe.Less
In-depth and refreshingly readable, this book is a bold analysis of postfeminist gothic, a literary genre that continues to jar readers, reject happy endings, and find powerful new ways to talk about violence against women. The book explores the genre's challenge to postfeminist assumptions of women's equality and empowerment. The authors it examines—Patricia Cornwell, Jodi Picoult, Susanna Moore, Sapphire, and Alice Sebold—construct narratives around socially invisible and physically broken protagonists who directly experience consequences of women's ongoing disempowerment. Their works ask readers to inhabit women's suffering and to face the uncomfortable, all-too-denied fact that today's women must navigate lives fraught with risk. The book's analysis places the authors within a female gothic tradition that has long given voice to women's fears of their own powerlessness. But it also reveals the paradox that allows the genre to powerfully critique postfeminism's often sunshiney outlook while uneasily coexisting within the same universe.
Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199914760
- eISBN:
- 9780190202545
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199914760.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology
What does sexiness mean today? Has sexiness become something that is bought and sold? What identity effects does a sexiness informed by consumer culture have? This book addresses these questions, off ...
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What does sexiness mean today? Has sexiness become something that is bought and sold? What identity effects does a sexiness informed by consumer culture have? This book addresses these questions, off the back of a heightened visibility of “sex,” “sexiness,” and “sexualization” in everyday life. Neoliberal, consumerist, and postfeminist media culture have shaped ways of understanding, embodied by the figure of the choosing, empowered, entrepreneurial consumer citizen-woman, whose economic capital determines feminine success (and failure). Informed by older constructs of privilege (e.g., class, sexuality, race, and (dis)ability), this version of sexiness also constrains by folding contemporary femininity back into previous panics about youth, excess, “bad” consumption, and appropriate feminine behavior. This book identifies how current understandings of sexiness in public life and academic discourse have produced a “doubled stagnation”: stuck places that cycle around old debates without forward momentum. Developing a theoretical and methodological framework from which to work productively within these debates, the book expands on the notion of a “technology of sexiness.” What happens when people make sense of themselves within the complexities of consumer-oriented constructs of sexiness? How do these discourses come to “transform the self”? Through this framework, the book provides the opportunity to understand how women make sense of their sexual identities in the context of a feminization of sexual consumerism. Exploring age-related femininities in the context of what “sexiness” means today, the book develops a series of insights into various “technologies of the self” through analyses of space, nostalgia, and claims to authentic sexiness.Less
What does sexiness mean today? Has sexiness become something that is bought and sold? What identity effects does a sexiness informed by consumer culture have? This book addresses these questions, off the back of a heightened visibility of “sex,” “sexiness,” and “sexualization” in everyday life. Neoliberal, consumerist, and postfeminist media culture have shaped ways of understanding, embodied by the figure of the choosing, empowered, entrepreneurial consumer citizen-woman, whose economic capital determines feminine success (and failure). Informed by older constructs of privilege (e.g., class, sexuality, race, and (dis)ability), this version of sexiness also constrains by folding contemporary femininity back into previous panics about youth, excess, “bad” consumption, and appropriate feminine behavior. This book identifies how current understandings of sexiness in public life and academic discourse have produced a “doubled stagnation”: stuck places that cycle around old debates without forward momentum. Developing a theoretical and methodological framework from which to work productively within these debates, the book expands on the notion of a “technology of sexiness.” What happens when people make sense of themselves within the complexities of consumer-oriented constructs of sexiness? How do these discourses come to “transform the self”? Through this framework, the book provides the opportunity to understand how women make sense of their sexual identities in the context of a feminization of sexual consumerism. Exploring age-related femininities in the context of what “sexiness” means today, the book develops a series of insights into various “technologies of the self” through analyses of space, nostalgia, and claims to authentic sexiness.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of ...
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In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.Less
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.
Hannah Schwadron
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190624194
- eISBN:
- 9780190624231
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190624194.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This book documents the unorthodox case of the Sexy Jewess, a distinctive figure of twenty-first-century American Jewishness. Versions of her image proliferate in US popular culture among ...
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This book documents the unorthodox case of the Sexy Jewess, a distinctive figure of twenty-first-century American Jewishness. Versions of her image proliferate in US popular culture among neoburlesque, movie musicals, comedic television, ballet parody, and progressive pornography. In embodied plays with sexed-up self-display, the Sexy Jewess revises long-standing stereotypes of the ugly hag, the insatiable Jewish mother, and the self-obsessed Jewish American princess that sustain images of excess even as they have assimilated into the American mainstream. Talking back and dancing back at these stereotypes through gender and humor rebellion, a slew of celebrity and lesser known performers play up their Jewish and female difference as self-conscious comments on their majoritarian sameness. In doing so, performers invoke the Sexy Jewess as a postassimilatory, postfeminist persona with radical and conservative effects. The introduction, five chapters, and the conclusion show how this occurs in a spectrum of spectacle embodiments across a range of performance contexts. Extending across stage and screen legacies of a hundred years, The Case of the Sexy Jewess links humor to classed ideas about sexiness and links ethnicity to gendered constructions of race. Unique to the study of American Jewishness but not limited by its scope, the book situates the body as a site of critical agency in discussions of parody and representational politics, with an emphasis on cultural appropriation and reappropriation that provokes questions applicable to a wide range of other identity acts and impersonations.Less
This book documents the unorthodox case of the Sexy Jewess, a distinctive figure of twenty-first-century American Jewishness. Versions of her image proliferate in US popular culture among neoburlesque, movie musicals, comedic television, ballet parody, and progressive pornography. In embodied plays with sexed-up self-display, the Sexy Jewess revises long-standing stereotypes of the ugly hag, the insatiable Jewish mother, and the self-obsessed Jewish American princess that sustain images of excess even as they have assimilated into the American mainstream. Talking back and dancing back at these stereotypes through gender and humor rebellion, a slew of celebrity and lesser known performers play up their Jewish and female difference as self-conscious comments on their majoritarian sameness. In doing so, performers invoke the Sexy Jewess as a postassimilatory, postfeminist persona with radical and conservative effects. The introduction, five chapters, and the conclusion show how this occurs in a spectrum of spectacle embodiments across a range of performance contexts. Extending across stage and screen legacies of a hundred years, The Case of the Sexy Jewess links humor to classed ideas about sexiness and links ethnicity to gendered constructions of race. Unique to the study of American Jewishness but not limited by its scope, the book situates the body as a site of critical agency in discussions of parody and representational politics, with an emphasis on cultural appropriation and reappropriation that provokes questions applicable to a wide range of other identity acts and impersonations.
Emily Spiers
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198820871
- eISBN:
- 9780191860461
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198820871.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Emily Spiers explores the recent phenomenon of ‘pop-feminism’ and pop-feminist writing across North America, Britain, and Germany. Pop-feminism is characterized by its engagement with popular culture ...
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Emily Spiers explores the recent phenomenon of ‘pop-feminism’ and pop-feminist writing across North America, Britain, and Germany. Pop-feminism is characterized by its engagement with popular culture and consumerism; its preoccupation with sexuality and transgression in relation to female agency; and its thematization of intergenerational feminist discord, portrayed either as a damaging discursive construct or as a verifiable phenomenon requiring remediation. Central to this study is the question of theorizing the female subject in a postfeminist neoliberal climate and the role played by genre and narrative in the articulation of contemporary pop-feminist politics. The heightened visibility of mainstream feminist discourse and feminist activism in recent years—especially in North America, Britain, and Germany – means that the time is ripe for a coherent comparative scholarly study of pop-feminism as a transnational phenomenon. Pop-Feminist Narratives constitutes the first attempt to provide such an account of pop-feminism in a manner which takes into account the varied and complex narrative strategies employed in the telling of pop-feminist stories across multiple genres and platforms, including literary fiction, the popular ‘guide’ to feminism, film, music, and the digital.Less
Emily Spiers explores the recent phenomenon of ‘pop-feminism’ and pop-feminist writing across North America, Britain, and Germany. Pop-feminism is characterized by its engagement with popular culture and consumerism; its preoccupation with sexuality and transgression in relation to female agency; and its thematization of intergenerational feminist discord, portrayed either as a damaging discursive construct or as a verifiable phenomenon requiring remediation. Central to this study is the question of theorizing the female subject in a postfeminist neoliberal climate and the role played by genre and narrative in the articulation of contemporary pop-feminist politics. The heightened visibility of mainstream feminist discourse and feminist activism in recent years—especially in North America, Britain, and Germany – means that the time is ripe for a coherent comparative scholarly study of pop-feminism as a transnational phenomenon. Pop-Feminist Narratives constitutes the first attempt to provide such an account of pop-feminism in a manner which takes into account the varied and complex narrative strategies employed in the telling of pop-feminist stories across multiple genres and platforms, including literary fiction, the popular ‘guide’ to feminism, film, music, and the digital.
Katherine Mullin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198724841
- eISBN:
- 9780191792342
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198724841.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Working Girls: Fiction, Sexuality, and Modernity investigates the significance of a new form of sexual identity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Young women of the ...
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Working Girls: Fiction, Sexuality, and Modernity investigates the significance of a new form of sexual identity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Young women of the lower middle and working classes were increasingly abandoning domestic service in favour of occupations of contested propriety. They inspired both moral unease and erotic fascination. Working Girls considers representations of four highly glamorized yet controversial types of women worker: telegraphists and typists (in newly feminized offices), shop assistants (in the new department stores), and barmaids (in the new ‘gin palaces’ of major British cities). Economically emancipated (more or less) and liberated (more or less) from the protection and constraints of home and family, shop-girls, barmaids, typists, and telegraphists became mass media sensations. They energized a wide range of late Victorian and modernist fiction. This study will bring late Victorian and modernist British writers into intimate conversation with a substantial new archive of ephemeral sources often regarded as remote from high art and its concerns: popular fiction; music hall and musical comedy; beauty pageants and fairground exhibitions; visual art and early film; careers manuals; magazine and periodical journalism; moral reform crusades, royal commissions, and attempts at protective legislation. Working Girls argues that these seductive yet perilous young women helped writers negotiate anxieties about the state of literary culture in the United Kingdom. Crucially, they preoccupy novelists who were themselves beleaguered by anxieties over cultural capital, the shifting pressures of the literary marketplace, or controversies about the morality of fiction.Less
Working Girls: Fiction, Sexuality, and Modernity investigates the significance of a new form of sexual identity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Young women of the lower middle and working classes were increasingly abandoning domestic service in favour of occupations of contested propriety. They inspired both moral unease and erotic fascination. Working Girls considers representations of four highly glamorized yet controversial types of women worker: telegraphists and typists (in newly feminized offices), shop assistants (in the new department stores), and barmaids (in the new ‘gin palaces’ of major British cities). Economically emancipated (more or less) and liberated (more or less) from the protection and constraints of home and family, shop-girls, barmaids, typists, and telegraphists became mass media sensations. They energized a wide range of late Victorian and modernist fiction. This study will bring late Victorian and modernist British writers into intimate conversation with a substantial new archive of ephemeral sources often regarded as remote from high art and its concerns: popular fiction; music hall and musical comedy; beauty pageants and fairground exhibitions; visual art and early film; careers manuals; magazine and periodical journalism; moral reform crusades, royal commissions, and attempts at protective legislation. Working Girls argues that these seductive yet perilous young women helped writers negotiate anxieties about the state of literary culture in the United Kingdom. Crucially, they preoccupy novelists who were themselves beleaguered by anxieties over cultural capital, the shifting pressures of the literary marketplace, or controversies about the morality of fiction.
Diane Railton and Paul Watson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633227
- eISBN:
- 9780748671021
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633227.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter situates the music video between feminism and popular culture. The notion of postfeminism became a key weapon in the ‘pre-emptive strike’ that prevented feminism reaching its political ...
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This chapter situates the music video between feminism and popular culture. The notion of postfeminism became a key weapon in the ‘pre-emptive strike’ that prevented feminism reaching its political terminus. Pink's ‘Stupid Girls’ is regarded as distinctly postfeminist. In terms of ‘Stupid Girls’, the video's own irony and playfulness is activated to drive home its critique of women who now have choices but use those choices to turn themselves into sexual objects. It is assumed that patriarchy is no longer a problem and that real choices can be freely made. Specifically in terms of music video, there are a number of important factors which bear on the ‘way they turn out the way they do’ and, moreover, how they make their meaning.Less
This chapter situates the music video between feminism and popular culture. The notion of postfeminism became a key weapon in the ‘pre-emptive strike’ that prevented feminism reaching its political terminus. Pink's ‘Stupid Girls’ is regarded as distinctly postfeminist. In terms of ‘Stupid Girls’, the video's own irony and playfulness is activated to drive home its critique of women who now have choices but use those choices to turn themselves into sexual objects. It is assumed that patriarchy is no longer a problem and that real choices can be freely made. Specifically in terms of music video, there are a number of important factors which bear on the ‘way they turn out the way they do’ and, moreover, how they make their meaning.
Lisa Purse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638178
- eISBN:
- 9780748670857
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638178.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The chapter introduces and historicises the key debates about the female action hero, before offering an extended investigation of the representation of the female action hero in contemporary action ...
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The chapter introduces and historicises the key debates about the female action hero, before offering an extended investigation of the representation of the female action hero in contemporary action cinema. Identifying an action heroine who is physically and economically empowered while also sexualized, the chapter argues that this figure is defined by her proximity to postfeminist discourses of female power and sexual agency, while suggesting that the potentially unsettling prospect of a physically violent woman is minimised by traditional containment strategies that locate her in comic or overtly fantastical settings. Using Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Kill Bill as illustrative case studies, the chapter shows how, in this dominant representational mode, images of physical stress and damage are suppressed for ideological reasons, but also argues that more ‘untidy’ forms of female physical agency are emerging in the margins of the mainstream.Less
The chapter introduces and historicises the key debates about the female action hero, before offering an extended investigation of the representation of the female action hero in contemporary action cinema. Identifying an action heroine who is physically and economically empowered while also sexualized, the chapter argues that this figure is defined by her proximity to postfeminist discourses of female power and sexual agency, while suggesting that the potentially unsettling prospect of a physically violent woman is minimised by traditional containment strategies that locate her in comic or overtly fantastical settings. Using Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Kill Bill as illustrative case studies, the chapter shows how, in this dominant representational mode, images of physical stress and damage are suppressed for ideological reasons, but also argues that more ‘untidy’ forms of female physical agency are emerging in the margins of the mainstream.
Jennifer M. Denbow
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479828838
- eISBN:
- 9781479808977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479828838.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Chapter 3 examines recent state-level informed consent laws, with a focus on laws that mandate ultrasounds before abortion. Beginning with an exploration of gender, neoliberalism, and ...
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Chapter 3 examines recent state-level informed consent laws, with a focus on laws that mandate ultrasounds before abortion. Beginning with an exploration of gender, neoliberalism, and biomedicalization, it shows that current debates over reproductive health and services are entangled with and informed by neoliberal and postfeminist perspectives, which emphasize the freedom and independence of agents and obscure power relations and social context. Feminist ideas of rights and empowerment are thereby perverted and employed to justify calls for individual responsibility and heightened surveillance of women. The chapter argues that in recent reproductive law, neoliberal and postfeminist perspectives converge with the tradition of autonomy as proper self-management to produce a new understanding of autonomy as risk avoidance. Moreover, the biomedicalization of reproduction, which frames reproductive health as a matter of individual moral responsibility, has facilitated and converged with these frameworks. The frameworks of postfeminism, neoliberalism, and biomedicalization provide context for the examination of recent state-level abortion restrictions and the role of ultrasound within them. The chapter shows that sonograms play a key role in shaping and representing cultural and political understandings of pregnancy and fetuses.Less
Chapter 3 examines recent state-level informed consent laws, with a focus on laws that mandate ultrasounds before abortion. Beginning with an exploration of gender, neoliberalism, and biomedicalization, it shows that current debates over reproductive health and services are entangled with and informed by neoliberal and postfeminist perspectives, which emphasize the freedom and independence of agents and obscure power relations and social context. Feminist ideas of rights and empowerment are thereby perverted and employed to justify calls for individual responsibility and heightened surveillance of women. The chapter argues that in recent reproductive law, neoliberal and postfeminist perspectives converge with the tradition of autonomy as proper self-management to produce a new understanding of autonomy as risk avoidance. Moreover, the biomedicalization of reproduction, which frames reproductive health as a matter of individual moral responsibility, has facilitated and converged with these frameworks. The frameworks of postfeminism, neoliberalism, and biomedicalization provide context for the examination of recent state-level abortion restrictions and the role of ultrasound within them. The chapter shows that sonograms play a key role in shaping and representing cultural and political understandings of pregnancy and fetuses.
Amaleena Damlé
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748668212
- eISBN:
- 9781474400923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668212.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
The introduction explores the terrain of women’s writing in French over the course of the late twentieth century and into the new millennium. It locates the place of women’s writing on the ...
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The introduction explores the terrain of women’s writing in French over the course of the late twentieth century and into the new millennium. It locates the place of women’s writing on the contemporary French literary scene, arguing for the ongoing fertility of the term in relation to contemporary feminist and postfeminist debates, and analysing the evolving relationship between body and text. It identifies an emphasis on the transformative becoming of the body in contemporary culture and begins to open out the possible intersections between feminist criticism, the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and authors Amélie Nothomb, Ananda Devi, Marie Darrieussecq and Nina Bouraoui.Less
The introduction explores the terrain of women’s writing in French over the course of the late twentieth century and into the new millennium. It locates the place of women’s writing on the contemporary French literary scene, arguing for the ongoing fertility of the term in relation to contemporary feminist and postfeminist debates, and analysing the evolving relationship between body and text. It identifies an emphasis on the transformative becoming of the body in contemporary culture and begins to open out the possible intersections between feminist criticism, the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and authors Amélie Nothomb, Ananda Devi, Marie Darrieussecq and Nina Bouraoui.
Heather D. Switzer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042034
- eISBN:
- 9780252050770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042034.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
The Introduction, “Situating Schoolgirlhood,” introduces readers to the local context of the case-study communities in Kajiado County, Kenya, and elaborates key concepts, including inhabited agency, ...
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The Introduction, “Situating Schoolgirlhood,” introduces readers to the local context of the case-study communities in Kajiado County, Kenya, and elaborates key concepts, including inhabited agency, girl-effects logic, and gendered responsibility and obligation. The chapter argues for the relevance of “postfeminism” and “girlpower”—concepts derived through analysis of girls’ lives in the Global North— for understanding Kenyan Maasai schoolgirls’ compelling insights that trouble the reductive demographic notion of “a girl enrolled in school” that animates development discourse targeting girls’ lives for intervention and investment. By tracing the outlines of “schoolgirlhood” as a specific kind of gendered and generational cultural space for girls who go to school, the introduction foreshadows subsequent chapters that each elaborate aspects of schoolgirlhood as narrated by schoolgirls, mothers, and teachers.Less
The Introduction, “Situating Schoolgirlhood,” introduces readers to the local context of the case-study communities in Kajiado County, Kenya, and elaborates key concepts, including inhabited agency, girl-effects logic, and gendered responsibility and obligation. The chapter argues for the relevance of “postfeminism” and “girlpower”—concepts derived through analysis of girls’ lives in the Global North— for understanding Kenyan Maasai schoolgirls’ compelling insights that trouble the reductive demographic notion of “a girl enrolled in school” that animates development discourse targeting girls’ lives for intervention and investment. By tracing the outlines of “schoolgirlhood” as a specific kind of gendered and generational cultural space for girls who go to school, the introduction foreshadows subsequent chapters that each elaborate aspects of schoolgirlhood as narrated by schoolgirls, mothers, and teachers.
Michele Schreiber
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748693368
- eISBN:
- 9780748696772
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693368.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever-expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost ...
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In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever-expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism’s most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women’s ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women’s changing social and political status.Less
In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever-expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism’s most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women’s ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women’s changing social and political status.
Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479806157
- eISBN:
- 9781479847426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479806157.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This chapter engages an ongoing conversation within Hip Hop Studies in regards to masculinity. Instead of asking what Hip Hop masculinity does to girls and women, whereby they become victims of ...
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This chapter engages an ongoing conversation within Hip Hop Studies in regards to masculinity. Instead of asking what Hip Hop masculinity does to girls and women, whereby they become victims of masculine gender performance, this chapter asks what graff grrlz do with masculine gender performance. Examining the self-presentation, aesthetics of, and approach to graffiti art by graffiti writers Are2 (USA), Miss17 (USA), Motel7 (South Africa), Jerk LA (USA), EGR (Canada), and Ivey (Australia), the chapter proposes “feminist masculinity” to name performances of masculine gender characteristics that empower rather than subjugate. Rather than reproducing oppressive toxic masculinity at the center of Hip Hop’s discourse of “realness,” upholding hegemonic liberal feminism, or accepting a politically sterilized postfeminism, these grrlz fashion the traits of masculinity to demand equity on behalf of their graffiti grrl community.Less
This chapter engages an ongoing conversation within Hip Hop Studies in regards to masculinity. Instead of asking what Hip Hop masculinity does to girls and women, whereby they become victims of masculine gender performance, this chapter asks what graff grrlz do with masculine gender performance. Examining the self-presentation, aesthetics of, and approach to graffiti art by graffiti writers Are2 (USA), Miss17 (USA), Motel7 (South Africa), Jerk LA (USA), EGR (Canada), and Ivey (Australia), the chapter proposes “feminist masculinity” to name performances of masculine gender characteristics that empower rather than subjugate. Rather than reproducing oppressive toxic masculinity at the center of Hip Hop’s discourse of “realness,” upholding hegemonic liberal feminism, or accepting a politically sterilized postfeminism, these grrlz fashion the traits of masculinity to demand equity on behalf of their graffiti grrl community.
Michele Schreiber
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748693368
- eISBN:
- 9780748696772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693368.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction presents the framework of the book and explains how female-centered romance films made since the early 1980s operate as a cycle, with both comedic and dramatic films reflecting ...
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The introduction presents the framework of the book and explains how female-centered romance films made since the early 1980s operate as a cycle, with both comedic and dramatic films reflecting contemporary women’s anxieties and perhaps more importantly, anxieties about women during the postfeminist period. The chapter outlines the mechanics of the cycle, discussing first, its narrative conventions and expectations,and second, its discourses about romantic love that have particular relevance forwomen who are both at thecenterof, andmake up the audience for, these films (and media texts). Using the scholarship of Angela McRobbie, Diane Negra, Yvonne Taskerand Mimi White as a foundation, the remainder of the chapter discusses how the postfeminist romance cycle reveals the reciprocal relationship between the romance formula and the most salient concerns of the postfeminist era, and furthermore, how romance frames the central tensions and paradoxes that dominate the postfeminist period. These tensions—pragmatism versus sentimentality, the past versus present, sexy versus funny, and independence versus dependence— frame the case studies in chapters two through five.Less
The introduction presents the framework of the book and explains how female-centered romance films made since the early 1980s operate as a cycle, with both comedic and dramatic films reflecting contemporary women’s anxieties and perhaps more importantly, anxieties about women during the postfeminist period. The chapter outlines the mechanics of the cycle, discussing first, its narrative conventions and expectations,and second, its discourses about romantic love that have particular relevance forwomen who are both at thecenterof, andmake up the audience for, these films (and media texts). Using the scholarship of Angela McRobbie, Diane Negra, Yvonne Taskerand Mimi White as a foundation, the remainder of the chapter discusses how the postfeminist romance cycle reveals the reciprocal relationship between the romance formula and the most salient concerns of the postfeminist era, and furthermore, how romance frames the central tensions and paradoxes that dominate the postfeminist period. These tensions—pragmatism versus sentimentality, the past versus present, sexy versus funny, and independence versus dependence— frame the case studies in chapters two through five.
Michele Schreiber
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748693368
- eISBN:
- 9780748696772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693368.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter One puts the postfeminist romance cycle into historical context by examining how it both follows, and deviates from, its predecessors: the classical romance film, and the feminist romance ...
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Chapter One puts the postfeminist romance cycle into historical context by examining how it both follows, and deviates from, its predecessors: the classical romance film, and the feminist romance film. This comparison sheds light on how romance’s structural and discursive traits operate in three films from different historical periods, and the degree of interchange between these conventions and the representation of women’s politics. The 1940 film Kitty Foyle (Wood) maintains a precarious balancing act between its commentary on the relationship between women’s rights, their professional aspirations and romantic relationships, keeping its political content largely within the boundaries of a conventional romance structure. The 1978 feminist romance film An UnMarried Woman(Mazursky) is more contemplative and exploratory in both politics and style. The 2008 postfeminist romance film 27 Dresses (Fletcher) combines structural, discursive, and stylistic elements from the classic and feminist romances while reflecting the anxiety surrounding women’s changing social and political status over the last 30 years. Outlining the terrain of the romance film in these different periods of Hollywood cinema is an excellent starting point for gaining a historically nuanced understanding of the origins and operations of the postfeminist romance cycle.Less
Chapter One puts the postfeminist romance cycle into historical context by examining how it both follows, and deviates from, its predecessors: the classical romance film, and the feminist romance film. This comparison sheds light on how romance’s structural and discursive traits operate in three films from different historical periods, and the degree of interchange between these conventions and the representation of women’s politics. The 1940 film Kitty Foyle (Wood) maintains a precarious balancing act between its commentary on the relationship between women’s rights, their professional aspirations and romantic relationships, keeping its political content largely within the boundaries of a conventional romance structure. The 1978 feminist romance film An UnMarried Woman(Mazursky) is more contemplative and exploratory in both politics and style. The 2008 postfeminist romance film 27 Dresses (Fletcher) combines structural, discursive, and stylistic elements from the classic and feminist romances while reflecting the anxiety surrounding women’s changing social and political status over the last 30 years. Outlining the terrain of the romance film in these different periods of Hollywood cinema is an excellent starting point for gaining a historically nuanced understanding of the origins and operations of the postfeminist romance cycle.
Deborah Gray White
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040900
- eISBN:
- 9780252099403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040900.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter looks at why women associated with the Promise Keepers and most black women supported the men’s marches. It shows that both groups of women believed in the folly of radical feminism, the ...
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This chapter looks at why women associated with the Promise Keepers and most black women supported the men’s marches. It shows that both groups of women believed in the folly of radical feminism, the evil of homosexuality, the need for strong two parent heterosexual families, and the equality of men and women based on the complementarity of their gender roles. It takes a historical look at black and white womanhood and concludes that Promise Keeper women and black women wanted similar things from men but for different reasons. In looking at black and white women historically this chapter explores the concept of postfeminism and the race-traitor trope. It shows the difference that race made in these women’s approach to the family and social issues.Less
This chapter looks at why women associated with the Promise Keepers and most black women supported the men’s marches. It shows that both groups of women believed in the folly of radical feminism, the evil of homosexuality, the need for strong two parent heterosexual families, and the equality of men and women based on the complementarity of their gender roles. It takes a historical look at black and white womanhood and concludes that Promise Keeper women and black women wanted similar things from men but for different reasons. In looking at black and white women historically this chapter explores the concept of postfeminism and the race-traitor trope. It shows the difference that race made in these women’s approach to the family and social issues.
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474425261
- eISBN:
- 9781474449632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425261.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this ...
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If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this might be particularly so in the case of horror cinema. The analysis of the much-maligned Jennifer’s Body (2009), written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, demonstrates precisely this point. The chapter begins by discussing the marketing of Jennifer’s Body, in order to show how those in charge of film distribution and publicity used the director’s and writer’s gender as a promotional tool, and how the filmmakers themselves might have determined certain feminist and postfeminist readings of their film. These readings are contextualised within Diablo Cody’s broader self-promotional activities and her “commercial auteurism” (Corrigan 1991) and raise several questions about what is at stake when women practitioners make horror films and the implications should a filmmaker self-identify as a feminist filmmaker. The chapter then offers a close examination of Jennifer’s Body by rethinking the theories of Barbara Creed (1993) and Carol J. Clover (1992) and by inscribing the film within the wider context of teen movies and postfeminist media culture, making room for reflection on female spectatorial pleasures. It concludes that rather than undoing the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body explores its productive potential, participating in its continuous re-inscription of the relationship between women and violence.Less
If, as Jane Gaines (2012) suggests, instead of ‘transgressing’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that is, instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with genre’, this might be particularly so in the case of horror cinema. The analysis of the much-maligned Jennifer’s Body (2009), written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, demonstrates precisely this point. The chapter begins by discussing the marketing of Jennifer’s Body, in order to show how those in charge of film distribution and publicity used the director’s and writer’s gender as a promotional tool, and how the filmmakers themselves might have determined certain feminist and postfeminist readings of their film. These readings are contextualised within Diablo Cody’s broader self-promotional activities and her “commercial auteurism” (Corrigan 1991) and raise several questions about what is at stake when women practitioners make horror films and the implications should a filmmaker self-identify as a feminist filmmaker. The chapter then offers a close examination of Jennifer’s Body by rethinking the theories of Barbara Creed (1993) and Carol J. Clover (1992) and by inscribing the film within the wider context of teen movies and postfeminist media culture, making room for reflection on female spectatorial pleasures. It concludes that rather than undoing the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body explores its productive potential, participating in its continuous re-inscription of the relationship between women and violence.
Sarah E. Whitney
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040467
- eISBN:
- 9780252098895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040467.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter discusses the continuing relevance of postfeminist gothic works in literature. “Postfeminism” is used throughout this book to describe a powerful cultural sensibility that assumes that ...
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This chapter discusses the continuing relevance of postfeminist gothic works in literature. “Postfeminism” is used throughout this book to describe a powerful cultural sensibility that assumes that gender equity has been achieved, and that feminism is now both obsolete and undesirable. Postfeminist gothic novels, however, violently intrude on the well-constructed fantasy of a safe and equitable world. They feature abject protagonists who are socially invisible, physically broken, or speaking from the grave. Emphasizing women's disempowerment, they go against the grain of a victim-resistant, empowerment-oriented age. In their very narratives, which often foreclose happiness, these works also eschew the therapeutic structures embedded in postfeminist popular culture.Less
This chapter discusses the continuing relevance of postfeminist gothic works in literature. “Postfeminism” is used throughout this book to describe a powerful cultural sensibility that assumes that gender equity has been achieved, and that feminism is now both obsolete and undesirable. Postfeminist gothic novels, however, violently intrude on the well-constructed fantasy of a safe and equitable world. They feature abject protagonists who are socially invisible, physically broken, or speaking from the grave. Emphasizing women's disempowerment, they go against the grain of a victim-resistant, empowerment-oriented age. In their very narratives, which often foreclose happiness, these works also eschew the therapeutic structures embedded in postfeminist popular culture.
Anne Emmanuelle Berger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823253852
- eISBN:
- 9780823260904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253852.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
In this preliminary chapter, the author, a leading Franco-American scholar, discusses the spatial and temporal discrepancies that affect her view of the theoretical and political landscape she is ...
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In this preliminary chapter, the author, a leading Franco-American scholar, discusses the spatial and temporal discrepancies that affect her view of the theoretical and political landscape she is attempting to map out: in the North-American academy, everything having to do with sex and gender is now treated retrospectively as if these issues and concerns belonged to the past, albeit a recent past. In France, gender and queer theory are up and coming. What happens, then, when one looks at these theories through lenses that are both “American” and “French”, thus simultaneously retrospective and anticipatory? How can one account for both their alleged exhaustion and their currency?Less
In this preliminary chapter, the author, a leading Franco-American scholar, discusses the spatial and temporal discrepancies that affect her view of the theoretical and political landscape she is attempting to map out: in the North-American academy, everything having to do with sex and gender is now treated retrospectively as if these issues and concerns belonged to the past, albeit a recent past. In France, gender and queer theory are up and coming. What happens, then, when one looks at these theories through lenses that are both “American” and “French”, thus simultaneously retrospective and anticipatory? How can one account for both their alleged exhaustion and their currency?
