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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... perhaps more significant , universally accessible . If , as bell hooks writes , " feminism is for everybody , " postfeminism is in many ways antithetical to the notion of an open society in which all members are valued in accordance ...
... perhaps as subjects only to the extent that we are able and willing to con- sume , is one of the contradictions at the core of postfeminist culture . Post- feminism is , we contend , inherently contradictory , characterized by a double ...
... perhaps unsurprising that so many of the contributors to this anthology draw examples from the broad categories of lifestyle programming and reality television , with several focusing on the significance of the makeover as a recurrent ...
... perhaps indicative ; lesbian lives are simultaneously fetishized and celebrated , mediated through a curious heterosexual gaze that is marked as both male and female . We are not in the business of simply celebrating icons of ...
... perhaps suggesting the unpalatable aspects of such invasive procedures . For a discussion of the plastic surgery industry and contemporary body politics , see Blum , Flesh Wounds . 3. hooks , Feminism is for Everybody . 4. Ibid . , 50 ...