Wresling with Postfeminism

Sarah Projanski’s offers several reasons the word “girl” has replaced “woman” in much of contemporary media. The most compelling is that girlhood “is always in process,” reaching for adult power, but never achieving it. (45) Not to get too second-wave, but what about internalized misogyny? ? It seems that some canonical postfeminist texts like What Not to Wear exhort their subjects to put away girlhood and act (or purchase) age appropriately. What does “age appropriate” mean? What marks the end of girlhood? To whom is this transformation made available? Why do I only answer to texts that interpolate me as a girl? Where are texts that address women? Where are the texts that address women as neither girls nor cougars? What anxieties does the word “women” provoke?

I'm still confused by the differences between 3rd Wave Feminism and Postfeminism. Does anyone identify as “postfeminist?” One author seems to think that young women reject the label “feminist” based on their knowledge of the shortcomings of second-wave feminism. Yet, in my experience listen to students disidentify with feminism, most do not have a reference for feminism outside of popular media. How do we account for their disidentification?

Projansky calls for scholars to move beyond either/or and both/and thinking about the pleasures and pitfalls provided by postfeminist texts. How does the postfeminist call to individual uniqueness and consumer identity make life more livable? For whom does it make life more livable?

Reading Questions: April 9 Tasker/Negra

1.In McRobbie’s article, she makes the claim that postfeminism has undermined gains of feminism, and that feminism is now regarded as unnecessary. Have feminist gains been fully dismantled, and if so, what are the root causes of this happening? If not, what traces of feminism have lasted, and why? Granted, women have earned greater freedoms, but according to Projanksy’s findings, consumption is the new remedy for providing women with empowerment. One can see signs of this everywhere, with changing roles of women balancing it “all,” and in many cases, spending is the savior. For example, women can have gym memberships to look fit, spa treatments to feel young, nannies and dog walkers to take the load off when they’re at the office. However, have the underlying restraints on female identity been lifted? Have women’s struggles, while not identical to the original struggles of early feminists, really disappeared? If not, what are the new struggles within postfeminist culture? Is feminism “embarrassing” to younger women because it threatens their new identity and powers gained through consumption? Does this mean that class differences will take precedent for women in postfeminism?

2. Projanksy’s study of the rhetoric of “girl power” illuminates the discourses that surround media’s portrayal of the “new” realms of femininity. It seems that girls’ achievements are modeled within a heterosexual, capitalist framework that defines them with values that would originally have been placed on boys. However, the ultimate message coming through is that girls will never be as strong as boys, and although it’s okay to be a girl and enjoy these freedoms while you can – as girl becomes woman, such "freedoms" once again become limited. In other words, the essence of freedom trails away over time. Girls have “the life”; as women experience the”new empowerment” of postfeminism, they also suffer the backlash when they hit 40, and are still expected to find a husband, AND work, AND have children, AND look ten years under their age. Is this progress?


3. Banet-Weiser makes some depressingly accurate points, when she describes how the media, realizing that they have to pay attention to diversity, do so because it’s smart business. The sliding scale of color, in what she describes as “ambiguous” ethnicities, is similar to the gender issue regarding girl/woman as presented in the media. One could also argue that gays are often presented in a non-threatening manner, commoditized for palatable consumption. It's like some of these deep lines that have divided society, are being effectively rubbed off as if they were soft pencil lead . If differences of race,culture and gender can now be marketed within safe parameters, effectively whitewashing deeper issues or cultural differences, does this mean racial and gender differences will become increasingly passe, like the supposed disappearance of feminism? In other words, by consuming, does this mean we can all live together happily in “one world,” defined by the global corporations? Will those deeper issues disappear through our new roles as global consumers, as a result of globalization and the New Economy? Are these attempts at erasing differences to create a “global consumer” that can be more easily targeted? Would this be a good thing, and how would it manifest itself in terms of gender? -Molly

Interrogating Post-Feminism

1.) “Postfeminist culture’s centralization of an affluent elite certainly entails an emphatic individualism, but this information tends to confuse self-interest with individuality and elevates consumption as a strategy for healing those dissatisfactions that might alternately be understood in terms of social ills and discontents” (2). How is this solution different than how women have been viewed as consumers in the past? Tasker and Negra also discuss how post-feminist women must remain silent about feminism and uncritical of ‘hegemony’ and ‘patriarchy’ to maintain their freedoms (3). This silence combined with post-feminism’s emphasis on the “self as a project,” individual choice, etc. isolates women from the previous mass movement goals of feminism. Does post-feminism deprive us of a collective voice in exchange for new rationales for guilt-free consumerism? Is the right to be enthusiastic about the ability to perform patriarchal stereotypes sexually worth being denounced for articulating feminist discourse?

2.) The term post-feminism itself is troubling because it implies that feminism is both taken into account, and simultaneously irrelevant. Feminism has been transformed into a form of “Gramscian” common sense by society, and is simultaneously hated not only by men, but also ironically by women. Was the mainstream co-option of feminism only a hegemonic tool to support patriarchy under a guise of empowerment and choice? What triggered this denunciation of feminism, particularly by younger women? Is individualization replacing feminism—is the allegedly declining support for a political/social movement being replaced by the capacity for individual agency?

3.) Sarah Banet-Weiser says that gender and race identities, like Flavas, can be tried on. Does post-feminist culture make race and gender differences and identities into commodities for consumption? Weiser talks about how “race as flavor” and “girl power” are identity categories that are ambiguous instead of specific, would you categorize post-feminist identity construction that way? It seems counter to the individualization and promises of uniqueness created through materialism and consumption that post-feminism is known for. Why are Flavas different? Also, does the term post-racial have the same implications as post-feminism?

Every time I examine articles about postfeminism, a question always comes to my mind: “What would be the ‘perfect’ place (e.g., utopia) for women in feminism?” Of course, the ultimate goal of feminism is achieving sexual equality, yet it is hard to imagine what women would be like and how they would be understood in the “perfect” society where sexual discriminations do not exist. In other words, what would be a “liberated woman” like? Within the accelerated capitalism, women became empowered (yes, it is a problematic term) through consumptions and postfeminism reinforces such understanding of women. However, as Tasker and Negra claim, liberation through consumption and aspiration might not empower women as women still remain unequally treated in various economic and social circumstances. (12) What would eventually liberate and empower women? Is an “empowered woman” an abstractive concept? How would you describe an “empowered woman”?

Reading a number of articles discussing postfeminim and media, especially the ones by Banet-Weiser and Springers at this time, I understood the nature of feminism: there are multiple kinds of feminist interests. As Banet-Weister writes, “the politics of feminism is quite obviously different for different generations.” (210) Similarly, feminist interests and the politics of them might be different amongst people depending on their identity categories, such as races, ethnicities, and nations. As are produced in the younger and later generations, the discourses of postfeminism are centered on youth. Acknowledging this very nature of feminism, I wonder if we can draw a common voice from these different kinds of feminist interests and situations. Is diversifying feminism possible? Could the same critiques of postfeminism or postfeminist representational culture in Western media be made in other countries? How does “context” come into play in feminism?

Angela McRobbie, one of the most influential scholars studying postfeminism and media, argues that in postfeminism “for feminism to be ‘taken into account’ it has to be understood as having already passed away.” (28) Yet, I am wondering if there is any popular media text that sees feminism to be necessarily addressed and puts forward some room for a feminist development in its text. Since postfeminism by nature is flexible, ambiguous, and ambivalent, sometimes a postfeminist media text can be understood as a feminist text. Understanding that feminism is understood, projected, and rejected in different ways among different groups of people because of their unique social and individual contexts, I question how a media text would be differently interpreted amongst various social groups. For example, how differently or similarly would “The Cosby Show” be decoded between well-educated, (upper) middle-class white and less-educated, working-class non-whites? What about the shows like “The ‘L’ Word”?

For a refreshing interlude...

Week Nine

1.) In The Etiquette of Masculinity and Femininity, the author details how “traditional” sex roles are constructed in opposition to one another. Masculine men are powerful, dominant, aggressive, and ambitious. Feminine women are dependent, submissive, and nurturing. When gender boundaries became more fluid, these character traits were interchangeable. One way to remove uncertainty was to conform to etiquette rules; the other was for men to retreat into separate spaces. It is weird how threatened men are by “aggressive women” because after all, “women” are still “women.” The author talks repeatedly about how men retreated into separate masculine worlds and how women regained their femininity to rescue men from emasculation. How can presumed inherent characteristics exist when aggressive women “so easily” cause men to retreat? How can men find solace in their threatened gender role if it is felt solely from women acting less aggressive than they naturally are? Are our gender traits only constructed oppositionally? Can women only assume power, aggressiveness, and other socially categorized masculine traits if men concede theirs?

2.) The traditional sex role dichotomy is that men are producers and women are consumers (Breazeale 226). I have always focused on the way that women are positioned as consumers within society and generally have bought into that sentiment. However, regardless of gender, it seems like we are hailed as consumers as much as other aspects of our identity (gender, age, citizen) or that through our consumptions we are able to fully embody masculinity or femininity. Do you think that male consumption is framed as a source of power similar to the way that is framed for women? Why was consumption initially synonymous with femininity? I assume this based on the notion that men’s magazines took such care in differentiating men’s consumptions from women’s “frivolous…gullible vulnerability to consumer’s trashy faddishness” (228). Just as an extra example, in a recent issue of Details, an article advised men about what types of vases and flowers to purchases as home accents that still maintain a sense of masculinity.

3.) Why is female sexuality so inherently threatening? Elvis Presley and Beatlemania were reminders of the emerging sexuality of young girls (Ehrenreich , etc. 92). Girls were admitting sexual attraction to these figures in an era when they were ostracized for failing to remain “pure” and “good,” during the early 60s (85). How has that changed today in an era that some refer to as post-feminism? Does a double standard still exist concerning sexuality and sexual activity? Just yesterday, I read in my roommates Cosmopolitan an article called, “Revenge of the Sluts,” detailing the way that women have become empowered through their sexuality by overcoming the negative repercussions from being sexually active or promiscuous as teenagers—is this just another example of sexuality existing under a guise of post-feminist empowerment? If Beatlemania era changed the sexual possibilities open to women and girls, does our current era qualify as a similar revolution?

Week Nine Reading Questions

Beth Bailey’s “The Etiquette of Masculinity and Femininity” referred to courtship as an acknowledged charade. It implied an almost rebellious quality in conforming wholly during courtship: “One way women could employ gender etiquette to challenge men was by conforming to the etiquette absolutely. Women could become so feminine and submissive that men felt inadequate because they could not possibly be masculine enough to meet all the demands created by absolute submission” (116). Is the impossibility of fulfilling these demands the only thing that makes complete submission threatening? Does submitting completely to etiquette rules, on either person’s part, make the behavior seem natural or completely affected to the partner? The passage goes on to say that “Impeccable manners without dominance were not masculine” (117). If someone perceived the behavior of who they were courting or who they were being courted by to be completely natural or a complete charade, how could control be asserted or identity differentiated? How is the courtship affected if there is no sense that something is being controlled or a desire is being repressed?

Barbara Ehrenreich’s article “Playboy Joins the Battle of the Sexes” suggests that “through its articles, its graphics and its advertisements, Playboy presented, by the beginning of the sixties, something approaching a coherent program for the male rebellion: a critique of marriage, a strategy for liberation (reclaiming the indoors as a realm for masculine pleasure) and a utopian vision (defined by its unique commodity ensemble)” (50). How is reclaiming the indoors as a realm of masculine power a strategy for liberation –if Hefner’s thought doesn’t see it as a space that has been claimed by women, would reclaiming it be a strategy for liberation? If the “indoors” or domestic hadn’t been claimed by either gender, would a rebellion of domesticity be successful by reclaiming the indoors? Ehrenreich claims that the magazine’s message was not eroticism, but escape –“literal escape from the bondage of breadwinning” (51). She also notes that while the magazine resisted the “conventional male role,” it didn’t resist work or consumerist values, but encouraged them. How has and how do consumerist values play a part in shaping restrictive gender norms and expectations? Can a magazine, or any source of dialogue, resist any conventions without resisting consumerist and capitalist values?

I found several of this week’s readings depressing, particularly the ones on Playboy, Beatlemania, and etiquette. They all seem to suggest that committed or monogamous adult relationships can only be a source of pleasure for the one in the relationship who has the most power at a given time. The article on Beatlemania suggests that female fans found acts like Elvis and the Beatles appealing either because of their rebellious sleaziness or unthreatening androgyny –appealing to fans by carrying personas that were the opposite of what was considered at the time “appropriate” men to marry. The article on Playboy presented quotes from Hefner who believed domesticity to be a “slow death,” and a “gray miasma of conformity.” To suggest that resisting domesticity is an act of rebellion is to assume that there is no pleasure in marriage or that the pleasure is seemingly false either because it’s based on power negotiations between the couple or found in the act of conforming to a conventional expectation. What does this suggest about desire? Is all desire in a relationship self-serving or can it take more subtle forms?