Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular CultureDiane Negra, Yvonne Tasker Duke University Press, 2007 M11 2 - 360 pages This timely collection brings feminist critique to bear on contemporary postfeminist mass media culture, analyzing phenomena ranging from action films featuring violent heroines to the “girling” of aging women in productions such as the movie Something’s Gotta Give and the British television series 10 Years Younger. Broadly defined, “postfeminism” encompasses a set of assumptions that feminism has accomplished its goals and is now a thing of the past. It presumes that women are unsatisfied with their (taken for granted) legal and social equality and can find fulfillment only through practices of transformation and empowerment. Postfeminism is defined by class, age, and racial exclusions; it is youth-obsessed and white and middle-class by default. Anchored in consumption as a strategy and leisure as a site for the production of the self, postfeminist mass media assumes that the pleasures and lifestyles with which it is associated are somehow universally shared and, perhaps more significantly, universally accessible. Essays by feminist film, media, and literature scholars based in the United States and United Kingdom provide an array of perspectives on the social and political implications of postfeminism. Examining magazines, mainstream and independent cinema, popular music, and broadcast genres from primetime drama to reality television, contributors consider how postfeminism informs self-fashioning through makeovers and cosmetic surgery, the “metrosexual” male, the “black chick flick,” and more. Interrogating Postfeminism demonstrates not only the viability of, but also the necessity for, a powerful feminist critique of contemporary popular culture. Contributors. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Steven Cohan, Lisa Coulthard, Anna Feigenbaum, Suzanne Leonard, Angela McRobbie, Diane Negra, Sarah Projansky, Martin Roberts, Hannah E. Sanders, Kimberly Springer, Yvonne Tasker, Sadie Wearing |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 47
... Black Women: African American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil-Rights Popular Culture kiMberlY sPringer 249 11. Subjects of Rejuvenation: Aging in Postfeminist Culture 277 sadie Wearing Bibliography Contributors Index 311 331 335 ...
... African American idiom “You go, girl!” the phrase “girl power,” etc.). Meanwhile postfeminism draws on and sustains an ... women (and men) conversant with feminist critiques of representation. Recent books such as those by Kim Akass and ...
... black women, in terms both new and familiar, within postfeminist media culture. Such analy- sis of gendered and ... Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), the promo- tion of black female stars as role models depends on ...
... black- ness and femininity ( images that , as McPherson shows , often highlight a con- trast between the propriety ... women consumers . The construction of women as both subjects and consumers , or perhaps as subjects only to the extent ...
... woman. As this example suggests, many postfeminist texts combine a deep uncer- tainty about existing options for women ... Women's lives are regularly conceived of as time starved; women themselves ... black 10 Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra.
Contents
1 | |
27 | |
Some Reflections on Postfeminist Girls and Postfeminisms Daughters | 40 |
The Magic of Postfeminist Sisterhood | 73 |
Adultery Boredom and the Working Girl in TwentyFirstCentury American Cinema | 100 |
Feminisms Postfeminisms and Processes of Punk | 132 |
Rethinking Feminism and Film Violence | 153 |
Camp Postfeminism and the Fab Fives Makeovers of Masculinity | 176 |
8 Whats Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture | 201 |
Governing the Self in What Not to Wear | 227 |
African American Women in Postfeminist and PostCivilRights Popular Culture | 249 |
Aging in Postfeminist Culture | 277 |
Bibliography | 311 |
Contributors | 331 |
Index | 335 |