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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... woman as empowered consumer . Thus , postfeminist culture empha- sizes educational and professional opportunities for women and girls ; free- dom of choice with respect to work , domesticity , and parenting ; and physical and ...
... woman as pinup , the enduring linchpin of commercial beauty culture . In fact , it has offered new rationales for guilt - free consumerism , substan- tially reenergizing beauty culture ( primarily for women but sometimes also for men ...
... woman we have identified as the most visible emblem of postfeminist culture . With Wal - Mart and other low - cost chains , we see the triangulation of invisible ( and often offshore ) female workers , highly visible female consumers ...
... woman " as a type , the question of why she might be angry remains unspoken . And , as Paul Gilroy writes with respect to the domestic makeover so central to British television sched- ules , " By exploring the process of changing ...
... figure of the " bored woman worker " in such films as The Good Girl ( 2002 ) . In the increasingly privatized context of the United States and the United Kingdom , access to education , health care , and 12 Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra.