Not “Simply the Breast”

Two prominent media events involving breastfeeding celebrities prompted unprecedented transnational media attention to their bodies, their breastfeeding practices, and their beliefs about the act of breastfeeding. This study critically analyzes media representations of Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie that feature (or imply) a nursing celebrity breast to argue that discourses about celebrity breastfeeding are a semiotically potent phenomenon that destabilize boundaries of public and private, perpetuate normative beauty standards, and prescribe proper breastfeeding practices to audiences. The transnational celebrity of Jolie, Hayek, and others makes analyzing media discourses of their breastfeeding particularly necessary because they are prominent purveyors of femininity and have made activism about women's health a key aspect of their public personae.     

Visibility of the ovaries and breasts: an analysis of Angelina Jolie’s medical announcements

Advanced epithelial ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic cancer; yet public knowledge about the disease is limited. This essay critically examines the limited visibility of ovarian cancer using Angelina Jolie’s medical announcements in 2013 and 2015 as examples. The essay also examines how Jolie’s case reinforces and also challenges hegemonic notions of femininity, the woman’s body and health, and how it explicates limitations in discourses of choice and risk. I argue that normative views about the female body play significant roles in shaping how and what we know about women’s health.     

Welfare Queens,Thrifty Housewives,and Do-It-All Mums

In this paper, we consider how the cultural politics of austerity within Britain plays out on the celebrity maternal body. We locate austerity as a discursive and disciplinary field and contribute to emerging feminist scholarship exploring how broader political and socio-economic shifts interact with cultural constructions of femininity and motherhood. To analyse the symbolic function of mediated celebrity maternity within austerity, the paper draws on a textual analysis of three celebrity mothers: Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, and Beyoncé. This analysis was undertaken as part of a larger qualitative study into celebrity culture and young people's classed and gendered aspirations. We show how these celebrity mothers represent the folk devils and fantasy figures of the maternal under austerity—the thrifty, happy housewife, the benefits mum, and the do-it-all working mum—and attempt to unpick what cultural work they do in the context of austerity within Britain. Through the lens of celebrity motherhood, we offer a feminist critique of austerity as a programme that both consolidates unequal class relations and makes punishing demands on women in general, and mothers in particular.     

Teaching Students to Challenge the War-as-Justice Rhetoric

This paper will examine former supermodel Tyra Banks as a contemporary “celebrity entrepreneur,” focusing on Banks' recent shift from television persona to multimedia icon within a neoliberal popular culture. I argue that our contemporary new media environment, marked by convergent media texts, self-branding, and interactivity, provides an ideal space for Banks to produce and globally circulate her postfeminist star text. Through her websites, Facebook, and Twitter confessionals, Banks is able to successfully navigate the contradictory discourses that insist female celebrities be both “authentic” selves while maintaining a disciplined, hegemonic femininity that becomes legitimized and naturalized. I conclude that while Banks' mobilization of a hypervisibility and sense of individual agency generates an authenticity that may resonate with her fans, she remains contained by the neoliberal and postfeminist discourses that allow her to have such a prominent Internet presence. Consequently, this paper serves to raise unexplored questions about the relationship between celebrity culture, postfeminist and neoliberal subjectivities, and new media.     

From Old Media Whore to New Media Troll

On the 18 January, 2009, an online pop music fan posted over fifty outtake images from Madonna's photographic shoot for her previously released Hard Candy album. These photos produced a backlash of abuse of the then fifty-year-old Madonna from music fans and can be situated in a wider online discursive sphere of brutal and offensive critique of Madonna's ageing body and femininity in social networking sites such as Facebook, for example. While longevity, experience and wisdom ensure that Madonna continues to be meaningful to nostalgic and new audiences alike, these attributes slide out of view as the focus remains upon her body, its femininity and its ability to ‘pass’ in a youth-centred popular music culture. In the wider context of a cultural, political and industry debate around the practice of releasing pre- and post-airbrushed images, the leaked photos are instrumental (albeit unintentionally) for interrogating the relationship between media and authentic ageing female bodies. This article offers a theoretical analysis of the online discursive (textual and visual) poaching and negotiation of Madonna's image, celebrity and marketing of the ageing female body.     

Women,ageing, and Hip Hop: discourses and imageries of ageing femininity

Abstract

This article investigates how discourses of ageing femininity are constructed and negotiated amongst females in Hip Hop. Through the analysis of narratives and imageries constructed within the music and videos of rap veteran Missy “Misdemeanour” Elliott, press responses to Missy’s work and comparative accounts of other prominent female rappers’ performative strategies, this article explores some of the ways that female artists are responding to socially gendered notions of ageing in Hip Hop. I argue that Hip Hop females are in some cases using Hip Hop as a vehicle for subverting age narratives that are commonly associated with ageing femininity. Murray Forman’s concept of “age-representing” is brought into dialogue with representations of ageing Hip Hop females to support this analysis. The writings of Ros Jennings and Abigail Gardner are also drawn on to form a supportive framework by offering comparative accounts of female ageing in other popular music sub-fields. This article aims to contribute to the growing feminist critique of ageing and popular music culture.     

My Job is Me

My aim in this paper is to think through a number of issues concerning the relationship between postfeminist/neoliberal brand culture, celebrity femininity and commodified authenticity. Using the case study of British glamour model and media mogul Katie Price, I suggest that the affective and commercial appeal of postfeminist celebrity culture depends on the commodification and gendering of authenticity whereby the currency of “realness” in the current media economy is harnessed to neoliberal and postfeminist expressions of (self-)branding, entrepreneurship and feminine agency. I argue that the “Katie Price” brand makes use of a series of authenticating strategies to involve consumers in the construction and assessment of postfeminist celebrity subjectivity. In particular, I focus on three tropes that occur in conjunction with this type of authenticity in consumption: personal narrativization, class groundedness, and entrepreneurial/plastic femininity.     

Sexy women sports fans: femininity,sexuality, and the global sport spectacle

In recent years the relationship between women and sport fandom has undergone significant shifts. The rapidly changing sphere of global sport is seen to offer women newly visible roles in the global sport economy as fans, broadcasters, celebrity athletes, and media personalities. In light of calls for greater inclusivity and diversity in sport, this paper examines the emergence of new forms of “sexually empowered” female fandom, which situate women as active participants in the sporting spectacle. Whereas sexy women who followed men’s sport or male athletes were once derided as “groupies,” thus socially marginalised and excluded from identification with sport fan communities, I argue that the sexy sport fan has emerged in the context of post-feminism as a visible and necessary type of feminine fan identity to meet the needs of the global sport economy. This study extends feminist sport media analysis beyond its focus on how female athletes are represented whilst also contributing new insights to sport fan research by analysing how female supporters are constructed through mediated accounts in terms of gender, sexuality, and nation.     

The Best of Both Worlds?

The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as particularly post-feminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can be understood as having chosen to perform a femininity that finds its locus in the maintenance and control of the body, as an illustration of her power as a girl, though without reference to feminist gains or “empowerment” rhetoric. Via discursive, narrative, and ideological textual analysis, this project explores the circulation of a post-feminist sensibility, as Rosalind Gill refers to it, and its iterations and ramifications for constructions of girlhood in contemporary media foregrounding girls and attracting young female audiences.     

“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.     

The Changing Shape Of Pregnancy In New Zealand Women's Magazines: 1970–2008

This article examines the representation of pregnant embodiment in thirteen New Zealand women's magazines published between January 1970 and December 2008. It offers a theoretical focus on postfeminism, media, and embodiment, and situates their conjuncture within cultural, demographic, and labour market trends. Magazine representations of pregnancy concurrently illustrate the degree to which discourses surrounding pregnancy have shifted, and the continued association of motherhood with feminine success. Monthly and weekly publications were sampled and a visual analysis undertaken of images and spreads. Over nearly four decades, substantial changes were found in the normative or extraordinary status of pregnancy, the appearance and display of the pregnant body, the frequency of representations, the association of pregnancy with celebrity, and its dissemination through celebrity culture. Changes in the status of pregnancy parallel larger social changes, in particular the increase in delayed childbearing amongst white, middle-class women. Pregnancy images were also influenced by changes in the format and substance of women's magazines, the advent of celebrity culture, and the emergence of a maternity market.     

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.     

John Amaechi: Changing the Way Sport Reporters Examine Gay Athletes

In 2007, John Amaechi became the first former National Basketball Association (NBA) player to publicly announce he was gay. Former NBA star Tim Hardaway made a series of homophobic remarks a week later. A textual analysis was used to analyze narratives on Amaechi's revelation and/or Hardaway's comments published in 50 international newspapers. Four dominant themes emerged from the data. While most of these themes supported narratives that gay males remain unwelcome in men's team sports, all were challenged consistently, thus, showing the fluidity of hegemonic masculinity and the increasing societal acceptance of gays and gay lifestyles. Moreover, print media writers exhibited little homophobia and frequently called for more acceptance of gays, particularly within sport.     

“Little Lena's a Big Girl Now”

Lena Zavaroni became famous as a child star on the British TV talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1974, suffered from anorexia from age thirteen, and subsequently died from complications associated with the problem in 1999, age thirty-five. This article uses 165 press articles from 1974 to 1999 to analyse how Zavaroni's relationship with anorexia was constructed in the British popular press. Existing feminist work suggests that stars with anorexia are worth studying because they make eating disorders popularly visible, with the coverage providing an occasion to analyse how the media constructs anorexia in relation to particular ideologies of femininity. But this article argues that it is important to explore how discourses on fame become intertwined with discursive constructions of anorexia, shaping how such problems are explained and gendered. Because Zavaroni appeared in the media as a child, her trajectory also dramatises how anorexia is seen to be linked not only with the role of the media, but with the development of female identity. Thus, whilst bringing stardom and celebrity into the frame, this article thus seeks to contribute to the feminist work which interrogates how popular constructions of anorexia mark out normative/disordered femininities.     

Hidden in Public View

This study analyzes the visual representations of women in Bulgaria from the 1950s to the 1980s, as depicted in photographs in the official daily newspaper of the communist party. The study is theoretically informed by feminist theories of media representations and engages specifically with Gaye Tuchman's idea of “symbolic annihilation,” which referred to Western media's condemnation, trivialization, and omission of women in public discourse. However, this analysis adapts Tuchman's theory to the specificities of socialist societies, where women's participation in public life was ideologically mandated. The authors propose the concept of “symbolic glorification” as a correlate to Tuchman's idea, and argue that symbolic glorification was a necessary part of ideological efforts to claim that women's participation in the labor force and political life was a sign of true emancipation. Nevertheless, the visual data reveal that certain aspects of femininity, related to motherhood and sexuality, were symbolically annihilated as a way to make female identities conform to ideological goals. The paper concludes by raising questions about the ways in which the ideologically constructed identities of women during socialism may impact on a feminist agenda after the end of the Cold War.     

Gender mobility: survival plays and performing Central American migration in passage

Bandits, corrupt officials, travel companions and smugglers rape Central American migrants during their clandestine journey across Mexico. However, migrants do not passively accept this violence; they devise performances of gender to arrive at their destination. Based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork from El Salvador through Mexico to the United States, this article examines how men and women improvise new understandings of masculinity and femininity as they travel the migrant trail. In the transient social field of the transnational migration route, migrant narratives of the journey are ‘survival plays’ that re-imagine gender.     

Scene of the Crime

The brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus became a media spectacle, flooding the news stream worldwide with articles, commentaries, blogs, and images. Drawing on theoretical insights from transnational feminism and social geography, this analysis focuses on the mediated deployment of space and place as potent signifiers of gender and sexuality in news coverage of the event. Using feminist critical discourse analysis to interrogate the verbal and visual texts in mainstream US news media during the first two weeks of coverage, this analysis found that the American news media invoked archetypes of the Third World as a primitive and undisciplined place populated by savage males and subordinate women, a space in which women's mobility is constrained and where state authority is complicit in rendering women vulnerable to sexual assault due to its incompetence. The study found that through this limited and ethnocentric lens, the US news media reinscribed social geographies of power in terms of sex and gender. The overall tenor of the coverage obscured the incidence of sexual violence in the First World/global North, effectively countermanding transnational feminist praxis and collective action against the worldwide problem of sexual violence against women.     

Between conformity and transgression: Chinese women’s gendered discourse of fan authenticity for European football

This essay explores Chinese women’s discourse of fan authenticity for European football. Conceptualizing Chinese female fans as the readers of the transnational text of European football, I conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen self-identified female fans in Shanghai, China. The analysis shows that in their discursive formations of gendered fan authenticity, these women simultaneously reproduce and contest the patriarchal dominance and female stereotypes in European football fandom. As a result, they articulate an ambiguous relation between fan authenticity and themselves as women. Instead of regulating feminine identity to fit into the masculinist fandom, these fans still hold up to the traditional Chinese expectations of femininity in their fan experience.     

Fat Monica,Fat Suits,and Friends

This paper examines narratives about fatness that are represented and reproduced by the character of “Fat Monica” played by Courteney Cox in a fat suit on the sitcom Friends. By drawing on David T. Mitchell's framework for analyzing “narrative prosthesis,” I examine how Fat Monica's narratives on Friends represent complex intersections of identities. I argue that fat suits often evoke fatness to support limited and clichéd narratives; however, fat suits may also enable new means of representing and understanding fatness. Through an analysis of the ways in which Fat Monica is represented in the episodes she appears in, three key uses of Fat Monica's fatness are discussed. Firstly, I examine the comic uses of Fat Monica and their relationship between fatness and humour. Next, I examine how Fat Monica storylines represent interlocking narratives of fatness, femininity, and sexual desire. Lastly, I consider how Fat Monica represents the construction of the normative body and claims about fatness and authenticity. Ultimately, Fat Monica illustrates how fatness relates to understandings of humour, gender, social class, and heterosexuality.