Negotiating Empathic Communication

The popularity of personal blogs has instigated a debate on how to define the type of communication taking place between the authors and readers of these blogs. Can it be considered as a dialogic form of communication, or should it rather be characterized as a form of communication with more self-centered aims and potentially commodifying implications? This article analyzes the case of top-ranked personal blogs written by young Swedish women in the year 2009. The popularity and commercial aspects of these blogs make them an interesting case through which to explore a presumed shift from what will be termed “empathic” to “phatic” communication in personal blogs. The article analyzes comments to postings in the blogs and ways in which the bloggers handle these comments and, using the theory of emotion work (Hochschild 1979, 2003), shows how young female top-bloggers negotiate between different communicative forms and purposes in their interaction with readers. In conclusion, the article argues that this communication should be seen as a form of dialogue confirming, but also re-constructing shared values and relations between young female bloggers and their readers.     

“But we still try”: affective labor in the corporate mommy blog

This article studies three “mommy blogs,” online platforms catering to (in these cases) American mothers of various sub-demographics, through an affective labor framework. Using digital labor and Althusserian subject formation to inform my reading of the common rhetorical gestures made in these blogs, I ask how they conceive of their readership and contributors. I argue that mommy blogs should be understood as sites of digital labor because of the ways in which their publishing conditions and rhetorics establish labored expectations of the “mommy” subject. Contestations of the nature of affective labor in motherhood are reflected by anxieties around digital labor, which play out via ideological conflicts that manifest rhetorically in the blogs under discussion. This analysis is informed by affect theory, Althusser and Butler’s work on subject formation, and the existing feminist literature on digital labor and the mommy blog.     

Posing as art: the ambiguities of feminist body art and the misclassification of Natacha Merritt’s pornographic photographs

At the launch of the twenty-first century, the online pornographic photographs of Natacha Merritt, a young American woman (23 years old at the time), were categorised as art in two publications by art publisher Taschen, precipitating a critical acceptance of her work as such. This particular foray of pornography into an art context was briefly contested by one art critic; however, this relatively rare example of misclassification warrants further investigation in order to better understand the role played by what had, by the late twentieth century, become a pervasive post-feminist culture. Drawing on feminist media studies writing that analyses post-feminist modes of “self exploration,” and feminist art criticism on the ambiguities of feminist body art, this paper argues that Merritt’s “adult-oriented” online digital photographs are more persuasively situated within the increasingly prevalent online genres of the intimate blog and amateur porn. Acknowledging the risk of “collusion” inherent in feminist artworks that focus on the objectified female body, this paper concludes that a compelling critique of a post-feminist (pornified) culture resides in the reactivation of a politics of female sexual pleasure.     

Towards a language of sexual gray zones: feminist collective knowledge building through autobiographical multimedia storytelling

This article examines the narrative and discursive feminist labor of the Swedish 2010 Twitter-initiated #talkaboutit campaign focusing on sexual “gray areas.” The campaign sought to lessen the perceived gap between experience and discourse and work towards an adequate language encompassing difficult sexual situations presented as residing in the gray area between choice and coercion. Autobiographical narratives of negative sexual situations amounting to something less than rape were summoned, produced, and intensively disseminated online and in print media. I mainly analyze the autobiographical stories produced by what could be called the core members of the campaign as they signal the purpose of collective autobiographical storytelling as well as what is sayable and culturally exigent. I analyze how new grounds of contention in between sex and violence are staked out focusing equally on the feminist act of personal/political storytelling and on the story told about sexual “gray areas.” The article discusses the tension between the feminist collective, side-by-side, mode of storytelling and knowledge building and the equally present neoliberal narrative arc which culminates in a subject personally responsible for acting differently next time.     

“Battle of the Mei-Meis”

On May 7, 2011, Singapore held its 16th General Election. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) predictably secured a landslide victory, and yet the result was contextually historic, with the opposition winning six seats from a possible eighty-seven—the largest loss for the PAP since political independence in 1965. At the centre of the General Election was a persistent media buzz surrounding two young female candidates: Tin Pei Ling of the People’s Action Party and Nicole Seah of the National Solidarity Party. While the former suffered sustained criticism, the latter received sustained praise. This article seeks to analyze the manner in which these two women were positioned as inverse feminine subjects within the mediascape. The analysis emerges from data collected from 194 sources which appeared online between March 29, 2011 and May 8, 2011, comprising political blogs, discussion forums, articles, and reports from online news sites. It aims to reveal how the gendered media constructions of, and public responses to, both women interpolate a diametrically opposed positive and negative binary of womanhood which functions to: (1) reify national discourses of ideal femininity; and (2) corroborate regional conceptualizations of “good” and “bad” feminine subjectivities.     

Homing blogs as ambivalent spaces for feminine agency

This article discusses a form of lifestyle blogging where women blog about their homes and everyday lives. In these homing blogs, self-representations are characteristically spatially demarcated within the private sphere of the home. As these repeated representations of women in their homes take place in the public space of the internet, homing blogs work towards naturalizing the home as a women’s sphere. Written and commented on mostly by other women, homing blogs represent a feminine form of self-expression and communication that functions as a discursive expression of ongoing social, economic, and cultural changes in affluent Western societies. In this article, Finnish versions of these homing blogs are analysed in the cultural and political context of contemporary Finland, and discussed as a form of intimate publics that reverses the gender politics of other historical, semi-public spaces for the exercise of women’s agency, such as the salon.     

Rhetoric and Etiological Beliefs About Sexuality: Reader Responses to Cynthia Nixon’s New York Times Interview

In 2012, the U.S. actress Cynthia Nixon was quoted in the New York Times Magazine as having stated that “for me, it [being gay] is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” The interview attracted international media attention and public criticism by lesbian and gay activists. This article suggests a rhetorical approach to understanding etiological beliefs and provides a discursive analysis of 198 online comments by readers of Pink News, a gay news Web site that reported on Nixon’s controversial interview. This article explores common arguments used in readers’ comments about Nixon and examines the rhetorical construction of sexuality. The analysis examines three themes within the data. First, biological essentialism was treated by many readers as common knowledge; second, readers suggested that only bisexuals have “choice”; and, third, it was suggested by both Nixon’s critics and her supporters that counterarguments colluded with homophobia. The article suggests that there is an ideological dilemma whereby both “born-this-way” and “choice” arguments can be understood as colluding with anti-gay prejudice.     

Sex/love skirmishes: “swinging,” “polyamory,” and the politics of naming

The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.     

Taking time between g-string changes to educate ourselves: Sinéad O’Connor,Miley Cyrus,and celebrity feminism

This article examines the feminist response to a 2013 online “feud” between singers Miley Cyrus and Sinéad O’Connor that began when Cyrus connected the video for her single “Wrecking Ball” to O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U.” O’Connor’s response criticised Cyrus’ sexualised image, and the exchanges that followed sparked debate among feminists over the limits of sexual “agency,” and the sexual politics of feminism. This took place within a wider media context that has seen an apparent increase in female celebrities explicitly identifying themselves as feminist. Critics of this “celebrity feminism” argue that the sexualised star systems of its proponents are at odds with the aims of feminist politics. This article draws on post-structuralist feminist theory to question the positioning of celebrity feminism as exterior to an imagined “feminist movement.” Using the Cyrus/O’Connor feud, I argue that such a binary potentially reaffirms the structures of power that feminism seeks to oppose, and ignores the ways celebrity culture and contemporary media practice might combine to produce new understandings of the field of feminism.     

Playing with Sims as a Space of One's Own

Studies of women's use of popular media have highlighted how these contested genres may be used by women to create a space of their own. Is this also the case when the media text in question is a digital game and the community around it moves online? Investigated via a netnographic approach, this article analyses the articulated experiences of playing The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 in relation to how the players perceive the activity's function in their everyday lives. Seven emic categories are identified and discussed in the inductive analysis, namely “relaxation and dealing with stress,” “playing according to mood,” “managing and taking control,” “experimentation,” “get what one does not have,” “making something one's own,” and “creative outlet.” A central denominator of these seven categories is the notion of a space of one's own in the widest sense of the phrase. In the discussed accounts playing becomes a way not only to escape other obligations for a while but also in various ways to work with the self and its place in everyday life.     

Profiles of women who help us to age in place

ABSTRACT

As our population ages and people overwhelmingly prefer to age in place, the need for home care workers is steadily increasing. Unfortunately, due to the low value society places on caring work, filling these positions and retaining workers is a challenge. Drawing on a pilot study involving in-depth interviews with eight female home care aides, this brief report profiles three categories of worker perceptions of their jobs: “satisfied” (n = 3), “need more support” (n = 3), and “on my way out” (n = 2). Study participants liked their work but believed their jobs needed to be improved. Policy implications based on study findings are explored.     

White Feminist Stories

The last decade has witnessed an increased visibility of grassroots feminist activism in Britain. This article concerns the representation of such activism in the left-leaning newspaper The Guardian, and focuses on issues related to race and whiteness. Drawing on anti-racist critiques of “white feminism,” the article presents a close reading of three articles which have appeared in recent years. Combining a content and narrative analysis, the article unpicks underlying assumptions about British feminism, and identifies three specific narrative techniques which are problematic in relation to race. These construct contemporary feminist activism as: (1) a continuation of a white feminist legacy; (2) a unified movement of “like-minded” individuals; and (3) “diverse” and “happy.” Presented as common sense, these narratives erase power differences between women, as well as a multitude of feminist organising in Britain, including black British feminism. While anti-racist feminists repeatedly challenge such representations, including occasionally on The Guardian's own blog, this appears to have little effect on the dominant constructions of feminism in the more prominent news and feature articles. This resistance to change highlights the continued unequal power relations between white feminists and feminists of colour, and the persistence of whiteness in defining feminism within mainstream liberal media.     

What Makes an Activity Most Enjoyable? Alternative Ways of Measuring Subjective Aspects of Time-Use

Time-use analyses typically report the duration and frequency of pursuing specific types of activity. But how people evaluate what they report doing is not necessarily evident without additional, complementary forms of data. There are many alternative approaches to the measurement of subjective aspects of daily time-use, ranging from short term and activity-specific to long term and general. How is the extent of enjoyment operationalized, and what aspects of activity are then shown as germane? A special analytic focus in this paper is on a question pursued in the past by Statistics Canada—on the most enjoyable activity reported on a respondent’s time diary. Data show that the activity most frequently chosen as most enjoyable is not the same as activities less frequently pursued but of greater salience for enjoyability if done. Watching television is a nearly ubiquitous activity, hence gathering a high frequency of “votes” as most enjoyable activity. In contrast, a significantly higher percentage of those pursuing activities with active social participation or a live venue choose these as the affective highlights of their day. This paper explores what these constructs make possible with time-use data for understanding what makes an activity most enjoyable.     

Spare Rib,Second-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Consumption

This article examines the significance of representations of both consumer culture and consumption practices in the British feminist magazine Spare Rib during its initial years of publication from 1972 to 1974. The analysis identifies how the magazine combined an established feminist critique of consumer culture with guidance on responsible consumption practices. The dispositions towards consumption that are recommended to readers are shaped by four key values: these are health, the natural, economy and craft production. These values underpin a politics of consumption during a period in which Spare Rib attempted to negotiate a feminist identity. However, once this feminist identity was established, content centred around consumption rapidly diminished as it was apparently not “feminist” enough. The article questions how a “conventional” position was established against both consumer culture and consumption practices within second-wave feminism and raises questions about the impact of this position on feminism's relationship to both consumer culture and consumption practices today.     

A Body of Text

This article re-evaluates the relationship between gender identities, embodiment, sexuality and text-based, synchronous CMC (computer-mediated communication). A discourse analysis was conducted on two different IRC channels: #Cyberbar, a channel that hosts predominantly “straight” male/female gender performances; and #Queer, a channel mostly visited by participants who articulate “gay male” gender identities. The notion of embodiment played a pivotal role in both channels, as demonstrated by the identification of three “interpretative repertoires” that involve the invocation of corporeal aspects in the participants' performance of gender and sexuality. This invocation reaffirms gender's status as connected to a binary sexed body, which limits the scope of gender performances in a text-based environment such as IRC. However, the discursive interactions in #Queer did articulate alternative interpretations of masculinity, which challenged traditional heteronormative standards governing “male behavior.” Eventually, it is concluded that the discourse in both channels is constructed by participants who bring their everyday, embodied experiences online. IRC might be a textual environment, in contrast to many of the web's popular graphical spaces, but this does not mean that the body is any less present.     

Preposterous Histories

This article explores maternal desire, loss, and control by reading Carolee Schneemann's performance Interior Scroll (1975) through Tracey Emin's photographic print I've Got It All (2000). More specifically, I consider Schneemann's work on the energy of female sexuality and maternal desire through Emin's recurrent visualizations of sexuality and maternal loss. The artists' refusal to disengage with the commodified (dis)pleasures of femininity leads me to consider the differently contextualized handling of these issues in each artwork. I explore the mediation of the body of each artist by positioning Emin's work as a “source” for my reading of Schneemann's performance. Invoking the notion of “preposterous history” (Bal 1999), I argue that the concepts of the “live” and the “mediated” are differently intensified by operating outside of the constraints of chronology. Hence the inter-generational dialogue between these particular female artists, whose work has been produced at different historical moments, is itself generative of thoughts and ideas that are irreducible to the individual works.     

Indigenizing girl power

This article considers the intersection of girlhood, agency, and indigenousness through a reading of the internationally renowned film Whale Rider. I suggest that Whale Rider presents a double project that resymbolizes girlhood as it also produces a “decolonizing of the screen.” On the one hand the film resonates with what emerged in the 1990s as the assertion of “girl power” and the notion of a new, active, powerful and agentic femininity. On the other hand, the film mobilizes a re-articulation of these discourses of “new femininities” by “indigenizing the image” of the empowered girl.     

“Exciting” and “borderline offensive”: bloggers,binaries, and celebrity feminism

Feminism is “cool” like never before in popular culture and celebrity feminism is arguably the most visible manifestation of this currently chic status. Some scholars and commentators see this as evidence of a global feminist resurgence; others critique it as empty and devoid of political traction. The hypervisibility of celebrity feminism makes it an ideal site to explore sense-making of contemporary feminism. Long-standing feminist debates about sexuality, intersectionality, and commodification cohere around the figure of the celebrity feminist, and are debated amongst media commentators, feminists, and celebrities themselves. We analyse blogs and comments sections as a particular site where meanings of celebrity feminism are constructed and contested in the everyday. Our analyses underline the operation of a good/bad binary that constituted celebrity feminism as “other” to an imagined authentic, politically engaged feminism, although consensus about what constitutes an authentic feminist was elusive. However, celebrities were not always positioned as “other,” with the recognition that celebrities share with all women the contradictions and demands of inhabiting a postfeminist media culture. Our findings emphasise the need for a nuanced approach to theorising and understanding celebrity feminism’s relationship with other feminisms and its implications for feminist practices and identifications.     

A Waif's Progress

This paper draws on a case study of media images of the British model Kate Moss to think through questions of affect, ideology, and pleasure in relation to fashion imagery. The question of whether and to what extent media images affect spectators is central to contemporary feminist media studies. The “turn to affect” has revitalised the debate about the extent to which media images can be held accountable for oppressive effects on the spectator's body image, with affect theory often being pitted “against” feminism in this regard. As Clare Hemmings states, affect theory emphasises how emotions place individual bodies in a circuit of feeling and response, connecting them to one another in ways that are potentially transformative. Through a critical reading of Kate Moss as a highly visible figure of projection, anxiety, and fantasy, I aim to show that whilst affects may be unpredictable, in that some media images become particular objects of attachment and anxiety, they are also mediated and political: that they engage us in intimate relations with ideologies of gender, power, and embodiment.