Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular CultureYvonne Tasker, Diane Negra Duke University Press, 2007 M11 2 - 344 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 |
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... Fashion Police : Governing the Self in What Not to Wear 227 MARTIN ROBERTS 10. Divas , Evil Black Bitches , and Bitter Black Women : African American Women in Postfeminist and Post - Civil - Rights Popular Culture KIMBERLY SPRINGER 249 ...
... fashion to that identified by McRob- bie ; for Rich , this anecdote points to the complex intersection of feminist politics , appearance , and consumption and to the ways in which living with feminism and living as a feminist have ...
... fashion suicide , " featuring gaunt , unhappy- looking women in dark clothing . Jenna's proposal narratively inverts but ideologically extends the film's broader focus on the retention of youth . Her concept showcases the ritual of high ...
... fashion that is ( perversely perhaps ) informed by feminism , even as that feminism is firmly " posted . " Similarly , as Kimberly Springer notes in this volume , while reality Tv is more than willing to make use of the " angry black 10 ...
... fashion awareness and - of course - consumption among men ) . Whether in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , British dramas such as Life Begins ( 2004 ) , British reality shows such as Wife Swap ( Channel 4 , 2002- ; Abc , 2004 ) , or ...