Interrogating Postfeminism

Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture

Diane Negra, Yvonne Tasker, Diane Negra, Yvonne Tasker, Lynn Spigel

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780822340324, 9780822340140
• eBook ISBN: 9780822390411
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Feminist Politics and Postfeminist Culture
• 1. Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime
• 2. Mass Magazine Cover Girls: Some Reflections on Postfeminist Girls and Postfeminism’s Daughters
• 3. Living a Charmed Life: The Magic of Postfeminist Sisterhood
• 4. “I Hate My Job, I Hate Everybody Here”:Adultery, Boredom, and the “Working Girl” in Twenty-First-Century American Cinema
• 5. Remapping the Resonances of Riot Grrrl: Feminisms, Postfeminisms, and “Processes” of Punk
• 6. Killing Bill: Rethinking Feminism and Film Violence
• 7. Queer Eye for the Straight Guise: Camp, Postfeminism, and the Fab Five’s Makeovers of Masculinity
• 8. What’s Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture
• 9. The Fashion Police: Governing the Self in What Not to Wear
• 10. Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women:African American Women in Postfeminist and Post-Civil-Rights Popular Culture
• 11. Subjects of Rejuvenation: Aging in Postfeminist Culture
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index