“Sexy” And “Laddish” Girls

Unpacking ideologies at work within contemporary popular media discourses about young womanhood can be challenging when the terrain of their representation is often presented in a kind of binary-oppositional fashion. There is concern that in contemporary popular culture traditional gender roles are becoming even more entrenched, with femininity increasingly defined around notions of (hyper, hetero-normative) “sexiness.” At the same time, it seems that certain aspects of masculinity, namely sexual hedonism and social, drinking-centred hedonism, have conditionally opened up to young women. The panics that exist around both the figures of the “sexy girl” and the “laddish girl” lead me to unpack here how it is that concerns about women's excessive “sexiness,” and the gendered reinforcement of the sex-object role, relate to discourses of gender “transgression” that often circulate around the figure of the “ladette,” and the supposedly new-found freedoms she is exercising. I suggest that while the figures of the “sexy girl” and the “laddish girl” are both to some extent deplored and constructed as “excessive” and “transgressive” in recent media discourses, they are also both normalised and publicly imag(in)ed through such discourses as central post-feminist paradigms of young womanhood. I go on to explore a possible ideological function of the co-existence of “sexy” and “laddish” girls as normative figures within contemporary media culture.     

Olivia Pope: a black post-feminist subject? Analyzing Scandal’s intersecting post-feminist and colorblind discourses

Previous analyses of Scandal have focused on how colorblind discourse in the series influences the representation of lead character Olivia Pope’s Blackness. Less has been written about how dominant discourses of race and gender intersect in the series. Correspondingly, post-feminist scholarship has overwhelmingly concentrated on discourses of gender in depictions of white women. This article seeks to bridge the gaps between scholarship on representations of race and gender on television. Situating Scandal within the context of post-feminist and colorblind discourses of gender and race that have been prominent on mainstream television since the early 2000s, this article takes an intersectional approach to interrogate how Olivia Pope, a Black woman, is incorporated into post-feminist discourse. Rhetorical analyses of episodes of Scandal’s seasons 1 through 5 uncover how colorblind and post-feminist discourses provide at their junction a restricted space for a Black post-feminist subject. Olivia Pope’s post-feminist characterization comes at the expense of obfuscating how her Blackness affects her identity as a woman, and effectively “posts” her Black womanhood. The visibility of the Black post-feminist subject in colorblind post-feminism is thus paradoxically contingent on the concurrent invisibility of Black women’s experiences and Black feminist concerns.     

The Influence of the Built Environment and Other Factors on the Physical Activity of Older Women from Different Ethnic Communities

ABSTRACT

Inactivity has been identified as a major contributor to the burden of disease in older women. Study aims were: (a) to assess the personal, social, and environmental facilitators and impediments to physical activity in older women from ethnic communities; and (b) to determine the factors associated with physical activity participation. Older women (aged 60–84 years) were recruited from the local Italian (n = 20), Vietnamese (n = 26) and Anglo-Celtic (n = 26) communities. A survey questionnaire was administered in the participants' preferred language. The most common barriers were: “I am not in good health,” “I am self-conscious about my looks,” “I am too tired,” “I don't have time,” and “The weather is bad.” When comparing the ethnic groups, the Vietnamese women reported fewer barriers than the Italian women (2.6 vs. 5.9). While the Vietnamese women were much more likely to report being “self-conscious about my looks,” the Italian women more commonly reported poor health, being too tired, and not liking exercise as barriers. Overall, those living alone were more likely to be active and those who reported fear of injury, less active. Recognizing ethnospecific differences in the prevalence of barriers may be important when devising strategies to increase activity levels of older women.     

Putting Her on the Shelf

This article analyzes discourse around pop stars Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj as fragrance spokeswomen. It mobilizes the term “post-feminist entrepreneurialism” to describe business strategies for female recording artists representing themselves as workers and capitalist subjects through the endorsement of mass-produced, hegemonically feminine consumer products that exploit individual brands to engender feelings of proximity and empowerment in consumers. Because such entrepreneurial efforts extend female pop stars' industrial viability, post-feminist entrepreneurialism is defined through a critical reclamation of “shelf life,” or the timespan that a commodity can be stored before it spoils. This concept is meaningful for female celebrities who embody the passage of time in complex ways and defend themselves against industrial and cultural perceptions of their own disposability. Post-feminist entrepreneurialism describes the contradiction between empowerment and the erasure of agency for such media professionals. Thus “shelf life” metaphorizes the affective registers embedded within the consumption of endorsed products and the demands placed on female pop stars to sell normatively feminine ancillary properties.     

Post-feminism at an impasse? The woman author heroine in postrecessionary American film

In this article, I sketch some of the ways in which postrecessionary films such as Young Adult problematise post-feminism as a “genre of living.” In deploying heroines who orient themselves toward the post-feminist good life by taking up the desirable subjectivity of “woman author” and yet find themselves unable to reap the promises of post-feminism, these texts exemplify what Lauren Berlant terms “cruel optimism.” Through its analysis of Young Adult, this article advocates for the need to integrate affect theory concepts and methodologies in the study of post-feminist media culture. Affect theory, and in particular the framework of cruel optimism, I contend, has the potential to open up new avenues of enquiry within the study of post-feminism, a critical genre that has arguably arrived at an impasse.     

Television And The Domestication Of Cosmetic Surgery

An exploration of the discursive production of cosmetic surgery on the television shows Extreme Makeover and Nip/Tuck illustrates that these programmes contribute to and reflect the processes through which cosmetic surgery has become domesticated within increasingly globalised contexts. I demonstrate that across a range of cultural sites, including some feminist scholarship, the press, and surgical television, post-feminist frames have displaced feminist frames for comprehending cosmetic surgery, enabling the culture's surgical turn. Feminist attention to risk, oppressive standards for appearance, and the cultural and discursive location of suffering around the deviant body is displaced by the post-feminist celebration of physical transformation as the route to happiness and personal empowerment. It is this logic that is played out through Extreme Makeover's rendering of surgery as the solution for personal suffering and a meting out of justice to the “moral” individual. Extreme Makeover explicitly domesticates cosmetic surgery by publicising its benefits and undoing the former imperative to hide surgery rather than be viewed as “inauthentic.” As a corollary, the show promotes a system of visual eugenics where “unaesthetic” raced and gendered facial and bodily features are erased. Nip/Tuck gestures toward feminist responses to surgical culture through making its violent interventions into the body explicit, by including a feminist character, and through incorporating plot lines which critique the narcissism and gendered cruelty of surgical appearance work. However, these gestures serve as dramatic devices, the political potential of which is curtailed by the requirements of the melodrama to favour sensational story arcs and to retain a degree of sympathy for the surgeon leads. Thus, both shows contribute to a post-feminist mediascape which renders the inevitability of the culture's surgical turn, providing limited frames for viewers negotiating their own responses to the meanings of cosmetic surgery.     

Pregnancy,Then It's “Back To Business”

This essay theorizes the contours of a post-feminist gender regime that utilizes figures such as Beyoncé in order to hail women as self-governing subjects who make the right choices with respect to career, marriage, motherhood, and the disciplining of their bodies. As a black woman, the narrative about Beyoncé's life and choices has specific implications; it positions professional black women as ideal citizens and mothers and also seeks to reconfigure and normalize representations of the black family. The body, specifically the black female body, plays an important role in attempting to transform and normalize these representations. This essay offers one of the few examinations of black women's relationship to post-feminism. Although post-feminism has been conceptualized in ways that ignore black women, I aim to demonstrate why further consideration of black women's relationship to post-feminism is needed. It is my contention that with successful black women increasingly in the public eye, what they say about feminism and how they relate to feminist politics have important implications for how all women, but especially young black women, engage in types of activism that go beyond placing value on individualism at the expense of the collective.     

Tinder and humanitarian hook-ups: the erotics of social media racism

In March 2014, at the height of the popularity of the hook-up application Tinder, The Guardian published the “Seven Shades of Cliché” of user profiles claiming that Humanitarians of Tinder are the “creepiest ticket yet to laidsville.” Humanitarians of Tinder are Tinder users (a hook-up application) who have selected to present images of themselves in humanitarian or volunteer settings outside of the West (or Global North, developed world). With a Tumblr devoted to this subgroup of Tinder users, and mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and the feminist blog Jezebel following this story, Humanitarians of Tinder evoke dialogue about the intersections of sexiness and racialized benevolence. This article takes seriously Humanitarians of Tinder to think through the connections between social media hook-ups, racial affect, feminist studies humanitarianism, and racisms in development. It asks: why do people use humanitarian photos to generate hook-ups on social media? How does holding an African baby make someone “hot”?     

Beyond the “digital divide”: the “computer girls” of Seelampur

In the last decade, India’s position as a global information economy has aided its status as the poster child for Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) initiatives in the global South. Policy discourse emphasizes that crossing of the “digital divide” through access to technology will bring a leveling of economic and social hierarchies. Based on sustained ethnographic observations and interviews in Seelampur in New Delhi, my paper critically examines the promise of inclusion in the information society for low income “Muslim women.” In following the lives of the “computer girls” of Seelampur, I argue that access to computer training contradictorily reproduced and reified interconnected divisions of gender, class, caste, and religion. Ethnographic research reveals the complexities of everyday lived experiences among Seelampur women. The space of the ICT center was rigidly stratified and the center primarily attracted women from relatively higher class and caste positions within Seelampur. However, I argue that the women had contradictory experiences related to their status as India’s “middle-class” that restricted their economic and social mobility outside the ICT center. Their experiences testified to structural disempowerment that disrupted deterministic assumptions about ICT and mobility.     

Women who experience feelings of aversion while breastfeeding: A meta-ethnographic review

ProblemLimited literature is available about women who wish to breastfeed but experience unexpected feelings of aversion in reaction to their infant suckling at the breast while breastfeeding.BackgroundBreastfeeding benefits mothers, infants and society yet breastfeeding rates continue to fall below recommendations in part due to inadequate tailored support after hospital discharge. Influences on breastfeeding are complex and include many physiological, psychosocial and cultural factors.AimTo better understand the experience of women who have feelings of aversion during breastfeeding by synthesising the existing literature.MethodsMEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Maternity and Infant Care databases were searched for relevant literature published between 2000 to 2019. Using Covidence software, five qualitative research studies were identified. Studies were then analysed using meta-ethnographic qualitative synthesis.FindingsFeelings of aversion during breastfeeding were described as visceral and overwhelming; leading to feelings of shame and inadequacy. This synthesis identified five findings; a central conceptual category of “it’s such a strong feeling of get away from me” with four key metaphors translated from this central conceptual category: “I do it because I feel it is best for my baby”, “I can’t control those feelings”, “I should be able to breastfeed my son and enjoy it”, and “I’m glad I did it”. This phenomenon may negatively affect a women’s sense of self and impact on the mother-infant relationship.ConclusionSome women who want to breastfeed can experience feelings of aversion while breastfeeding. The feelings of ‘aversion’ while breastfeeding can inhibit women from achieving their personal breastfeeding goals.     

Brides N' Bumps

This paper accounts for the rise of a monolithic contemporary post-feminist pregnant bridal identity that is upheld and sold as the “ultimate” pleasure of femininity in Australia, the US, and the UK. I shall critically analyse the enfranchisement of the contemporary pregnant bride as a “new” consumer identity using the purchase of a maternity wedding dress as a key example. I argue that as pregnancy is already an experience deeply embedded in the marketplace, with this comes the added pressure for pregnant women to use bridal maternity clothing to conform to normative feminine bodily ideals. This claim is supported by interviews with a sample of Australian pregnant brides as part of a longitudinal qualitative study of pregnancy and body image. I conclude that as much as the pregnant bride challenges convention, in many ways, paradigms of femininity, in this context, remain ultimately unchanged and unchallenged.     

“I’m Not like That,So Am I Gay?” The Use of Queer-Spectrum Identity Labels Among Minor-Attracted People

ABSTRACT

Largely based on an erroneous belief that individuals who are preferentially attracted to minors are necessarily sex offenders, queer communities have distanced themselves from this population over the past several decades. There are now those who object to the use of labels such as “gay” and “queer” by minor-attracted people (MAPs), raising the question, “to whom do queer-spectrum identity labels belong?” I engage with this question using data from my research with 42 MAPs, exploring their uses of queer-spectrum identity labels and the conflicts they have encountered regarding their use of these terms. I then discuss the potential consequences of accepting the use of these labels by MAPs.     

From under the veil to under the knife: women,cosmetic surgery,and the politics of choice in Afghanistan

This study investigates the factors motivating women in Afghanistan to seek cosmetic surgery through qualitative in-depth interviews with 16 consumers of cosmetic surgery. Providing a discussion of contemporary life for women in Afghanistan during a time of social and political change, where many suggest women have more freedom and opportunities available to them following the fall of the Taliban and the US-led intervention, this study explores the extent to which post-feminist discourses of empowerment and choice are reflected in these experiences. While some have attributed the consumption of cosmetic surgery among Afghan women to newly granted freedom, this perspective presents cosmetic surgery as an individual choice rather than a response to the complex systems that promote limited beauty ideals. When challenged, this empowerment discourse dissolves to reveal the complexity of body-altering practices. The case of cosmetic surgery in Afghanistan comments on the complex global beauty economy through discussions of the post-feminist politics of choice, ethnic/class politics, and consumerism.     

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.     

Neoliberalism,Soul Food,and the Weight of Black Women

This article examines the representation of Black women's weight in contemporary diet advertising and African American film. It positions socioeconomic class as a significant factor that distinguishes between “good” weight and “bad” weight. I argue that there is a distinction to be made between representations of poor and working-class fat Black women and middle-class fat Black women. The increased presence of Black women as diet spokeswomen is also questioned. The social construction and filmic representation of the African American cuisine “Soul Food” and the political economic notion of neoliberalism are used as frameworks to deconstruct how notions of self-discipline, personal responsibility, and citizenship impact upon Black women's bodies. As a case study, I examine the careers of Oprah Winfrey and Gabourey Sidibe and the ways in which their weight has been differently coded based on class, the neoliberal rhetoric of “personal responsibility,” and food. I ultimately critique how contemporary media has helped to shape contemporary discourses on Black women's weight.     

“Come on, […] let’s go find your inner princess”: (post-)feminist generationalism in tween fairy tales

This article draws attention to the expansion of tween popular culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and in particular tween fairy tale films. It has two aims: first, to demonstrate how tween popular culture mediates feminism’s history; and second, to highlight the continued relevance of the terms “post-feminism” and “neoliberalism” at a time when confidence in their use is waning in feminist media studies. Importantly, it looks carefully at the relationship between these two discourses, and reveals that the figure of the tween princess emerges at the intersections of the two. By interrogating the dialogue between the onscreen maternal generations of feminism, represented in the female characters of teen princess, mother, step-mother, and grandmother/fairy godmother, this article reveals that the fairy tale narrative and the figure of the princess are employed to straightforwardly present feminism’s complicated history, and to put forward a post-feminist identity as the only “authentic” choice in this reflexive construction of a feminine self. The princesses are presented as neoliberal icons of post-feminist culture, representing the self as project.     

Making practice transparent through e-portfolio

BackgroundMidwives are required to maintain a professional portfolio as part of their statutory requirements. Some midwives are using open social networking tools and processes to develop an e-portfolio. However, confidentiality of patient and client data and professional reputation have to be taken into consideration when using online public spaces for reflection.QuestionThere is little evidence about how midwives use social networking tools for ongoing learning. It is uncertain how reflecting in an e-portfolio with an audience impacts on learning outcomes. This paper investigates ways in which reflective midwifery practice be carried out using e-portfolio in open, social networking platforms using collaborative processes.MethodsUsing an auto-ethnographic approach I explored my e-portfolio and selected posts that had attracted six or more comments. I used thematic analysis to identify themes within the textual conversations in the posts and responses posted by readers.FindingsThe analysis identified that my collaborative e-portfolio had four themes: to provide commentary and discuss issues; to reflect and process learning; to seek advice, brainstorm and process ideas for practice, projects and research, and provide evidence of professional development.ConclusionsE-portfolio using open social networking tools and processes is a viable option for midwives because it facilitates collaborative reflection and shared learning. However, my experience shows that concerns about what people think, and client confidentiality does impact on the nature of open reflection and learning outcomes. I conclude this paper with a framework for managing midwifery statutory obligations using online public spaces and social networking tools.     

“Xenasubtexttalk”

This article examines how some lesbian fans of the television adventure fantasy series Xena: Warrior Princess (X:WP) (1995–2001) became visible through the development of online fandom and the production of explicit lesbian Internet fan fiction. The self-identity of lesbian fans who are part of the “xenasubtextalk” (XSTT) fan group is explored and celebrated through social networks of lesbian fandom through the “Xenaverse.” Lesbian fans have written copious amounts of fan fiction online enabling a form of lesbian political discourse and activism as well as social and cultural discourses shared throughout the platform of the Internet. Many lesbian fans have been supported to create and write Xena lesbian fan fiction by engaging with various lesbian fan writers from the Xenaverse who offer their advice to develop lesbian fan fiction services for free to “newbie” writers. Their explicit lesbian fan fiction narratives are reproduced and distributed as lesbian stories about the two main characters Xena and Gabrielle from the original television series. I interviewed three women from “xenasubtextalk” who gain pleasure exploring their lesbian identities and fandom through the fan group.