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.     

Iron lady to old lady: the neutering of James Bond’s M

Abstract

This paper contradicts interpretations of James Bond’s M, played by Judi Dench, as a feminist triumph. Through a focus on aging, it argues that the initially powerful M is ultimately reinscribed into patriarchy. In Dench’s eight films, M undergoes two processes of age-based reconfiguration: “post-sexualization” and “domestication.” Drawing on Mulvey’s and Butler’s psychoanalytic theories, this paper shows that, early on, M is post-sexualized as she is distanced from youthful femininity and aligned with phallic masculinity. Following this, and contrary to consensus that M’s domestication began in the Daniel Craig era, this paper contends that by the middle of the Pierce Brosnan era, M’s power is already exposed as a façade and she consequently enters the maternal realm. Expanding on Tasker’s writing on women in action films, this paper details how M’s authority not only shifts entirely into the maternal sphere but is also systematically stripped until she becomes a peculiar mother-child. Finally, this paper identifies an emerging pattern within popular media of turning Ma’ams to Moms to martyrs. Evidence is taken from Dench’s final Bond films and other contemporary action film series (Star Wars, The Hunger Games, and Divergent). This paper concludes that age has become a post-feminist strategy to neuter powerful women and return them to patriarchal and heteronormative frameworks.     

The “smart” body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls

Since its 2012 debut Girls has received an extraordinary amount of attention and criticism from both academic circles and popular culture critics. It has been critiqued for its depiction of female nudity and its portrayal of female sexual subjecthood. At the center of these debates is how author–star Lena Dunham’s body is positioned and utilized aesthetically and politically. This essay examines the brand of body politics and mode of female sexual subjecthood that the series creates and performs. In order to track how Girls produces this body politics and female sexual subjecthood I position it in relation to earlier feminist television series and indie cinema. This essay argues that Girls’ particular brand of body politics and the mode of female sexual subjecthood it depicts is characterized by emotional intimacy, irony and reflexivity. Furthermore I contend that Girls’ gender politics is enabled by the series’ utilization of a low-key aesthetic and the “smart” tendency, more commonly discussed in relation to American indie cinema.     

(Un)doing feminism in (post)-Yugoslav media spaces

This paper engages in a mixed-method study combining the bibliographic method, textual media analysis of women’s magazines from different periods during and after Yugoslav socialism, and qualitative focus group interviews to map out the complex trajectories of feminism spanning a period of forty-something years. Its goal is to see how socialist and post-socialist media representations of women’s experiences correspond with feminist or post-feminist values in the former Yugoslavia and today. Engaging in a genealogical exercise and critical reading of the sources of data listed above, I aim to mark out some of the differences between the contexts of then and now, in order to make it more possible to reassess the potential for rethinking feminism as emancipatory politics in the present.     

Barbie and the straight-to-DVD movie: pink post-feminist pedagogy

As Barbie’s popularity began to decline across the first decade of the twenty-first century, the iconic doll underwent a makeover and became a maven of the straight-to-DVD sector. Across the movies produced since 2001, the narratives reflect an awareness of feminist criticism and seek to remediate Barbie’s particular femininity and the associated gender performance that has fallen into disfavor. Interestingly, these efforts are often facilitated by a movement in time and place that relocates Barbie from the here and now, as she plays the protagonist role in adaptations of classic works of fiction set in the past. Working with methods of textual analysis and informed by the history of literature for children, media studies, and feminist theory, we explore the complex composition of Mattel’s straight-to-DVD Barbie movies and consider how the adaptations intersect with feminist discourses. Looking closely at Barbie and the Three Musketeers (2009) in the wider context of the DVD series, we argue that the Barbie DVDs perform a post-feminist pedagogy and inculcate the post-feminist sensibility among young viewers and consumers worldwide.     

Invisible golden girls? Post-feminist discourses and female ageing bodies in contemporary television fiction

Abstract

The popular television series The Golden Girls (1985–1992) seems to be an exception in the history of the representation of third-age women femininities and bodies in television fiction. This series about four mature women living in the same house in Miami made ageing women visible in television representations. Older women are generally invisible in popular television fiction. Despite this absence, a discourse on ageing and femininities is present in all sorts of popular media texts. We will question post-feminist discourses on ageing bodies and femininities. Are the post-feminist claims regarding ageing bodies present in popular television fiction? Moreover, are these discourses represented by the portrayal of ageing bodies? We will analyse the representations of ageing femininities in television fiction labelled as “post-feminist television fiction.” The series Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and Girls will be studied using a textual analysis to look for discourses on ageing female bodies and their particularities in relation to post-feminism. We distinguished a limited set of three sets of discourses (losing femininity, masking of ageing, and the wisdom of ageing) on ageing femininities. Although ageing feminine bodies are absent, a discourse on ageing, “good” ageing, and acceptance of ageing is present in the narration in all three series. The discourse on the masking of ageing, however, is predominant.     

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.     

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.