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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... seems to be premised . What appears dis- tinctive about contemporary postfeminist culture is precisely the extent to which a selectively defined feminism has been so overtly " taken into account , " as Angela McRobbie has noted , albeit ...
... seems most evident as a ' structuring absence ' for middle class young women . " As teachers and researchers committed to producing feminist work in an antifeminist context ( whether that of academic institutions , themselves ...
... seem to be incorporated within that culture ( and how feminism itself is understood within such formulations is not , of course , insignificant ) . As a result , postfeminist culture poses particu- lar challenges to feminist media ...
... seems to us self - evident . Postfeminist assumptions concerning gender — which , as we have seen , broadly revolve around the cultural and economic freedom of Western women . —are promulgated in a context in which women's actual social ...
... seems , on increased levels of body and 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 ...