Article

Single Women in Popular Culture

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

Single Women in Popular Culture demonstrates how single women continue to be figures of profound cultural anxiety. Examining a wide range of popular media forms, this is a timely, insightful and politically engaged book, exploring the ways in which postfeminism limits the representation of single women in popular culture.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... Since the early 2000s, the figure of the single woman has been reinvigorated and reconfigured within US-UK popular culture representations, often through postfeminist discourses of agency, freedom, self-surveillance and self-accountability (Busch, 2009;Negra, 2004;Taylor, 2012). Recent TV shows such as And Just Like That, Girls, Broad City, Fleabag and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend see her continued centring within popular culture. ...
... This is relevant to my focus on how postfeminism circulates psychosocially across media texts and self-narratives of lived experience, at the cultural and the psychic level. This approach builds upon Negra (2009) and Taylor's (2012) observation that the single female subject is the 'ideal' postfeminist subject; who coexists alongside more ambivalent or abject representations, in complex, contradictory and contested ways. ...
... 1 While my focus is on women in the UK, the texts I analyse here are all US-based. This is because US and UK popular cultures feature a strong 'discursive harmony'; US texts form a fundamental part of UK popular culture (Tasker and Negra, 2007: 13). 2 It should also be noted that all of the texts predominately feature a narrow form of young, white, heterosexual, middle-class femininity, which mutes more diverse depictions but is typical of postfeminist culture (Negra, 2009;Taylor, 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Drawing on analysis of media representations and interviews with 25 single women, this article argues that the single woman is abjectified in US–UK popular culture through processes of instability and incoherence, which construct her as a threat to heteronormative femininity and recentres the coupled norm. Yet there are moments of contestation within media portrayals, where her ‘illegibility’ allows for a troubling of the gender binary and opens up spaces for working with and against such oppressive structures. Drawing on Butler’s heterosexual matrix, I show that singledom is produced here as a non-normative heterosexual practice, which radically destabilises femininity and heteronormativity. This article examines not only how single femininity is being culturally delegitimised, but also how single women in the United Kingdom experience such delegitimisation. Through complex processes of what José Esteban Muñoz calls ‘(dis)identification’, the women work with, alongside and against representations of normative coupled femininity. They also tactically work with portrayals of the single woman to self-reflexively construct alternative single feminine subjectivities. Yet more troublingly, even in moments of resistance, the single women make painful identifications with their abject positioning.
... As presented so bluntly in the episode of SaTC discussed above, the life paths of singles tend to be overlooked in significant ways, compared to those of their married counterparts (see, for example, DePaulo, 2006;Lahad, 2014;Simpson, 2006;Taylor, 2011). While weddings, as an 'ever evolving social ritual' (Carter and Smith, 2020: 57) retain rich symbolism, singles generally lack rites of passage for recognising and celebrating auspicious occasions in their adulthood trajectory (Lahad and Kravel-Tovi, 2020). ...
... This article introduces the scholarly prism of exchange and gift-giving (influenced by Bourdieu, 1998;Mauss, 2000Mauss, [1954), to the literature on singlehood (e.g. DePaulo, 2006;Lahad, 2017;Taylor, 2011) for the first time. This prism provides a compelling analytic toolbox for understanding the subordinate and inferior position of singles in social life. ...
... While we aim to contribute to singlehood studies (see, for example, Chow, 2019;DePaulo, 2006;Lahad, 2017;Taylor, 2011) through the perspective of gifting and exchange, we also offer a reversed direction with regard to our theoretical contribution. A great deal of the literature on gifting teaches us about the dynamics of extant reciprocities, or of the intentionally unilateral modes of giving. ...
Article
This article employs the prism of gift-exchange to analyse the marginalised status of singles within social relations. We trace an emerging critique voiced by single women, who challenge the unilateral etiquette of gifting marital and family-making celebrations. While dominant social norms normalise gift-giving at weddings and subsequent family-related occasions, there are no commensurable opportunities for singles to receive back their accumulative investments in the life events of others. Drawing on various online sources, we explore the discursive articulations through which single women highlight the unfairness that underpins their position as constant givers. We show how single women manage the social risks that such public complaints entail, and how they claim to be worthy receivers themselves. This article offers singlehood as a valuable case study for engaging with broader questions concerning reciprocity – specifically, what happens when reciprocal gifting is not an established norm within ostensibly reciprocal social relations.
... In parallel to the rise in the number of single women in Anglo-American societies, several scholars have noted there has been a simultaneous proliferation of images and narratives of the single woman within popular culture (Lahad, 2017;Negra, 2004Negra, , 2009Taylor, 2012) 8 -a trend I discuss in greater depth in Chapter 2. Yet amidst this proliferation, contemporary representations appear to often adhere to narrow, historical patterns. These depict the single woman as the pathological 'abject', who is constructed through discourses of chastity, asexuality, deviancy, unattractiveness, mental instability, isolation and vulnerability (Arrington, 2010;Holden, 2007;King, 2014;McRobbie, 2004). ...
... These depict the single woman as the pathological 'abject', who is constructed through discourses of chastity, asexuality, deviancy, unattractiveness, mental instability, isolation and vulnerability (Arrington, 2010;Holden, 2007;King, 2014;McRobbie, 2004). At the same time that the figure of the single woman continues to be constructed through such historical tropes (McRobbie, 2009, p. 21;Taylor, 2012), several scholars have noted that since the early 20th century she has been reinvigorated and reconfigured through postfeminist discourses of agency, freedom, selfsurveillance and self-accountability (Busch, 2009;Israel, 2003;Taylor, 2012). 7 Gender disaggregated data was unavailable. ...
... These depict the single woman as the pathological 'abject', who is constructed through discourses of chastity, asexuality, deviancy, unattractiveness, mental instability, isolation and vulnerability (Arrington, 2010;Holden, 2007;King, 2014;McRobbie, 2004). At the same time that the figure of the single woman continues to be constructed through such historical tropes (McRobbie, 2009, p. 21;Taylor, 2012), several scholars have noted that since the early 20th century she has been reinvigorated and reconfigured through postfeminist discourses of agency, freedom, selfsurveillance and self-accountability (Busch, 2009;Israel, 2003;Taylor, 2012). 7 Gender disaggregated data was unavailable. ...
Thesis
While the number of single women in the UK and the US has grown over the past two decades, there has been a simultaneous proliferation of representations of single femininity in Anglo-American popular culture. Yet there has been little exploration of how the cultural construction of the single woman is encountered, experienced and negotiated in single women’s lived experience. This thesis examines the interplay between the cultural and the psychic formation of single feminine subjectivity in a postfeminist cultural context. I take Foucault’s understanding of subjectivity as discursively constructed, alongside Butlerian psychosocial theory and the concept of fantasy, to theorise singledom as a form of gendered performativity. I ask how cultural fantasies of singledom performatively sustain, threaten or transform the norms of feminine subjectivity, and importantly what it means to live amongst such an imaginary. To do so, I analyse the discursive construction of the single woman in eight contemporary popular cultural US-UK texts and the self-narratives of 25 single women living in London. My analysis finds that celebratory fantasies of ‘successful’ single femininity coalesce around freedom, autonomy and independence. Yet, paradoxically, the freedom of the successful single subject is produced through regulatory incitements to identify, maintain, regulate and transform the single ‘self’. Where the single woman fails to correctly self-survey she is subject to painful abjectifying processes of silencing, invisibility and incoherence, which work ideologically to sustain the boundaries of normative femininity and produce deep psychic tensions. But I also argue that such ‘failures’ more productively open up opportunities for the transformation of gender norms in intimate life. In these moments of ‘radical unbecoming’ the liminal positioning of single femininity outside the coupled norm, decentres romantic love, reconfigures hierarchies of intimacy and care and troubles the single/coupled and gender binary.
... They are desiring of the male's look (cf. Adriaens 2009;Gill 2007b;Taylor 2012). Carisa Showden (2009, 176) posits that "women as well as men participate in female objectification-thereby making sex objects of other women and of themselves, 'ironically' adopting the male gaze as their own." ...
... However, there is a well-established scholarship of postfeminism and Hollywood films, which is extensive (cf. Brabon and Genz 2007;Munford and Waters 2014;Polaschek 2013;Purse 2011;Taylor 2012). It must also be noted that this extensive research is clearly situated in, and from, the West. ...
... Heteronormativity, another characteristic that I argue is part of an ideal postfeminist aesthetic, along with "romance and marriage" (Negra 2004) and with heterosexuality presented as a marker of postfeminism with other choices negated or excluded (cf. Taylor 2012;Hammers 2005, 169). This heterosexual love is re-inscribed in Planet Terror where happy, domestic scenes play out, and the "sexual" encounters all take place with their respective "husbands" and within the confines of their "marriages." ...
Article
Full-text available
Since its inception in 1982, postfeminism continues to be a highly contested concept in cultural, media and gender studies, due to its diverse interpretations by academics. While a specific definition is debatable, for purposes of this article, the meaning of postfeminism is articulated as a pluralistic and contradictory discourse that has a particular fascination with, and the erotic representation of, female bodies. It includes hyperfemininity, heterosexual love, and hypersexuality, as well as an emphasis on the maternal drive and domesticity. This articulation of postfeminism frames the discourse used to analyse the female heroines in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Furthermore, this article questions the (ir)relevancy of postfeminism to the socio-political realities in post-apartheid, postcolonial South Africa.
... In the US, 25 percent of women were single in 2003, rising to 29 percent by 2015 (US Census Bureau, 2019). As numbers have increased, there has been a proliferation of representations of the single woman within contemporary popular culture (Taylor 2012). But despite this, cultural texts continue to construct her in narrow ways (Taylor 2012). ...
... As numbers have increased, there has been a proliferation of representations of the single woman within contemporary popular culture (Taylor 2012). But despite this, cultural texts continue to construct her in narrow ways (Taylor 2012). There has also been a resurgence in representations of single female detectives, with shows such as Killing Eve (BBC One, 2018-), The Fall (BBC Two, 2013-2016, Homeland (Channel Four, 2011-2020 and Jessica Jones (Netflix, 2015(Netflix, -2019, enjoying immense popularity. ...
Article
Full-text available
As the number of single women has grown within Anglo-American society, there has been a proliferation of discourses around single women within popular culture. At the same time, there has been a resurgence in female-centered media representations of detectives. This article asks what cultural work the convergence of the single woman with the unconventional figure of the detective performs, and what this means for contemporary feminine subjectivities, exploring how she is constructed in three primetime TV crime dramas: The Bridge, The Good Wife and Fargo. I argue that while the single female detective foregrounds discourses of professionalism, rationality, and sexual autonomy, she simultaneously reinscribes patriarchal discourses of heteronormative coupledom and normative femininity through her social dysfunction, vulnerability and deviance, rendering the single woman a threat to femininity. Yet, at times, her liminal positioning allows her to occupy a more transgressive feminine subjectivity and subversively trouble the gender binary.
... Sejak saat itu, bermunculanlah novel-novel sejenis yang semakin memopulerkan subgenre romansa yang kemudian disebut chick lit di Indonesia, terlebih dengan difilmkannya The Bridget Jones' Diary yang sukses di pasaran. Seperti juga terlihat pada novel Sex and the City, (para) tokoh perempuan dalam chick lit memang lebih mengarah pada sosok perempuan "muda", atau TWITS Teenage Women In their 30s 'perempuan remaja-matang menjelang umur 30 tahun', protagonis yang mandiri, lajang, bergaya hidup kosmopolitan dengan berbagai problematika percintaannya, dan heteroseksual (Taylor, 2012). ...
... Seperti chick lit pada umumnya, tokoh utama Beauty Case, Nadja, memang lebih mengarah kepada sosok perempuan "muda", atau TWITS Teenage Women In Their 30s 'perempuan remaja-matang menjelang umur 30 tahun', protagonis yang mandiri, lajang, bergaya hidup kosmopolitan dengan berbagai problematika percintaannya, dan heteroseksual (Taylor, 2012). Nadja adalah seorang perempuan berumur 25 tahun, tidak memiliki pacar dan pekerjaan tetap. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study aims to reveal the formulation of romance in chick lit Beauty Case (2005), the second work of Icha Rahmanti after Cintapuccino (2004). The methodological approach used is the study of feminist literature and structural analysis methods. Because chick lit always discusses women, the theoretical foundation of this research must be linked to women's perspectives, includes the ideas of Radway, Modlesky, Gill and Herdierckerhoff who were used to explore the narrative aspects of romance formulation, which included plots, characterization, and point of view. The results show that (1) although chick lit is a romance subgenre, the novel Beauty Case storyline does not follow the normative narrative standard of romance because there are changing plots. However, the end of the novel follows the romance formulation, which ends happily; (2) the main female figure in the novel does not really make a search for true love, but rather searches for identity. In addition, the portrayal of male characters also does not follow the formulation of romance that has exemplary characters; (3) the storyteller in this novel is the first single person, the main female figure, with an intimate, subjective, and limited nature of storytelling, according to the formulation of romance.
... Sejak saat itu, bermunculanlah novel-novel sejenis yang semakin memopulerkan subgenre romansa yang kemudian disebut chick lit di Indonesia, terlebih dengan difilmkannya The Bridget Jones' Diary yang sukses di pasaran. Seperti juga terlihat pada novel Sex and the City, (para) tokoh perempuan dalam chick lit memang lebih mengarah pada sosok perempuan "muda", atau TWITS Teenage Women In their 30s 'perempuan remaja-matang menjelang umur 30 tahun', protagonis yang mandiri, lajang, bergaya hidup kosmopolitan dengan berbagai problematika percintaannya, dan heteroseksual (Taylor, 2012). ...
... Seperti chick lit pada umumnya, tokoh utama Beauty Case, Nadja, memang lebih mengarah kepada sosok perempuan "muda", atau TWITS Teenage Women In Their 30s 'perempuan remaja-matang menjelang umur 30 tahun', protagonis yang mandiri, lajang, bergaya hidup kosmopolitan dengan berbagai problematika percintaannya, dan heteroseksual (Taylor, 2012). Nadja adalah seorang perempuan berumur 25 tahun, tidak memiliki pacar dan pekerjaan tetap. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study aims to reveal the formulation of romance in chick lit Beauty Case (2005), the second work of Icha Rahmanti after Cintapuccino (2004). The methodological approach used is the study of feminist literature and structural analysis methods. Because chick lit always discusses women, the theoretical foundation of this research must be linked to women's perspectives, includes the ideas of Radway, Modlesky, Gill and Herdierckerhoff who were used to explore the narrative aspects of romance formulation, which included plots, characterization, and point of view. The results show that (1) although chick lit is a romance subgenre, the novel Beauty Case storyline does not follow the normative narrative standard of romance because there are changing plots. However, the end of the novel follows the romance formulation, which ends happily; (2) the main female figure in the novel does not really make a search for true love, but rather searches for identity. In addit ion, the portrayal of male characters also does not follow the formulation of romance that has exemplary characters; (3) the storyteller in this novel is the first single person, the main female figure, with an intimate, subjective, and limited nature of storytelling, according to the formulation of romance. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap formulasi romance dalam chick lit Beauty Case (2005), karya kedua Icha Rahmanti setelah Cintapuccino (2004). Pendekatan metodologis yang digunakan adalah kajian sastra feminis dengan metode analisis struktural. Karena chick lit selalu membahas perempuan, landasan teoretis yang menjadi kerangka penelitian ini harus dikaitkan dengan perspektif perempuan, di antaranya gagasan Radway, Modlesky, serta Gill dan Herdierckerhoff yang digunakan untuk mengupas aspek-aspek naratif dari formulasi romance, yang meliputi pengaluran, penokohan, dan sudut pandang. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa (1) walaupun chick lit merupakan subgenre romance, tetapi alur cerita novel Beauty Case tidak mengikuti standar narasi normatif romance karena ada beberapa plot yang berubah. Namun demikian, bagian akhir novel ini mengikuti formulasi romance, yaitu berakhir dengan bahagia; (2) tokoh utama perempuan pada novel tersebut tidak benar-benar melakukan usaha pencarian cinta sejati, melainkan pencarian identitas diri. Selain itu, penggambaran tokoh laki-laki juga tidak mengikuti formulasi romance yang memiliki karakter teladan; dan (3) pencerita dalam novel ini adalah orang pertama tunggal, tokoh utama perempuan, dengan sifat penceritaan yang intim, subjektif, dan terbatas, sesuai dengan formulasi romance.
... Adamczyk, Janowicz & Mrozowicz-Wronska, 2022;McKeown, 2017;Shevtsova, 2023), friendships (McKeown, 2021), and leisure activities such as solo dining (Lahad & May, 2017;McKeown & Miller, 2019) or traveling (Heimtun, 2012). Marketing and consumptions research has also engaged with singlehood (Lai, Lim & Higgins, 2015;Morris & Dobson, 2023), as has research on television and film on representations of singlehood across different gendered positions (Cobb, 2012;Gilchrist, 2023;Taylor, 2011;Yodovich & Lahad, 2018). We believe it is time to bring insights from such different fields together to show what feminist and related critical epistemologies specifically can offer to the study of singlehood. ...
... Having a distinctive target from teen-lit, where the readers are mostly young, female characters in chick-lit present an image of women at older range of age which commonly known as TWITS or Teenage Women in Their 30s. In chick-lit, the protagonist is usually a single, independent, cosmopolitan, and heterosexual woman that encounters various problems in her love relationship (Taylor, 2012). Discussing chick-lit means discussing singleness and the behavior of woman characters who enjoy single life (Mujiningsih, 2016). ...
Article
Full-text available
The discourse on women’s beauty and femininity are inseparable from the patriarchal cultural construction. Women are to constantly strive to achieve a standard, that is known as ‘beautiful’ to men. The purpose of this research was to study the myth of beauty and consumer culture in a ‘chick-lit’ novel entitled Beauty Case by Icha Rahmanti. Data for this study was gathered from fundamental research that used a qualitative research design. This study utilized the notion of beauty in the various context presented by Wolf and the interpretation of beauty in marketing and colonial discourse raised by Priyatna, as it’s a theoretical framework. Wilson and Wolby’s idea of consumer culture was also employed to examine female consumer culture in this novel. The finding of this study is that the myth of beauty in Beauty Case revolves around profession, culture, and sexuality. This study also concludes that the consumer culture of the main and other female characters in this novel is very much influenced by the myth of beauty constructed by men. The female characters constantly try to look young and seek recognition from men in matters regarding their appearance. Besides that, Rahmanti’s female characters also always try to gain the approval of their deeds from their society. Keywords: Myths of Beauty, Consumer Culture, Chick Lit, Beauty Case
... In demography, the focus on population patterns and reproduction has led to a specific interest in couple formation, which is historically closely linked to fertility behaviors (Lesthaeghe & Moors, 2000). In sociology, a growing body of qualitative research takes interest in the individual experiences of singlehood (Budgeon, 2008;Davies, 2003;Kislev, 2019;Klinenberg, 2012), especially among women (Kaufmann, 2008;Macvarish, 2006;Reynolds et al., 2007;Taylor, 2011), but studies on contemporary forms of singlehood are rarer in quantitative sociology. This does not mean that statistical studies entirely overlook the topic. ...
Article
Singlehood appears to be an understudied topic in the social sciences, and a particularly diverse field of research. Focusing on the United States and France, this article reviews existing literature to answer three questions that are prerequisites for theorizing singlehood (1) What is singlehood? We first discuss the diversity of terms used in ordinary language to designate singles, and the different statistical measures that coexist in the scholarly literature. (2) Who and how many are single? We show that different definitions lead to different counts of the single population and discuss the driving forces behind the rise in singlehood. (3) What is new? Drawing on literature on the couple norm and the single lifestyle, we then turn to the question of the specificity of the contemporary era. In the last section, we discuss the implications for theorizing singlehood. The answers to all three questions lead us to promote a life course approach to singlehood.
... Western feminist scholars, including Angela McRobbie (2004McRobbie ( , 2008 have observed the increasing visibility of post-feminism in western popular media which is highly co-opted by the neoliberal consumer culture. Post-feminism posits that women have the power to self-discipline their bodies and identities (Taylor, 2012); further, it values such power as "aspects of an individualist, consumerist and neoliberal identity" (Weitz, 2016, p. 221). Under the assumption that all women possess and are able to make "free" choices, post-feminism privileges an affluent elite group of women and advocates consumption as a strategy to cope with the unsatisfying status quo. ...
Article
The tendency of late marriage and the increasing single population in Chinese society have galvanized a considerable amount of anxiety in recent years. Part of such anxiety has been manifested through the constant media representations of “shengnü” or “leftover women” since 2010. Referring to women in their late twenties or over thirties while still not getting married, the term “leftover women” indicates a continuous patriarchal policing of single women circulated in mass media. This study, by comparing two popular Chinese television series— We Get Married (2013) and Nothing but Thirty (2020), discusses the altering constructions of unmarried women on Chinese television against the backdrop of China's post-socialist gender politics. The comparison provides a useful vantage point to examine the emerging gendered structures and new cultural imperatives under specific historical contexts.
... 480). The terms 'deliberation' and 'hopeful' describe the mentality of gendered expectation perfectly, and one that is compatible with work on the self of the kind that opens up the possibility for fulfilment to come from the outside, a constrained version of agency, in which work is done on the self whilst waiting for that external (usually male) agent that is typical to the kind of mentality encouraged in self-help literature (Taylor, 2012). Carroll and Krolokke note: 'By freezing their eggs as a form of acting in the present, some women in the study believed it would optimise their potential romantic future by making their reproductive potential a risk-managed asset to create their own genetically related "perfect" children'. ...
... The percentage of single women (defined as never-married or in a civil partnership) in England and Wales has risen over the past two decades, from 27% in 2003to 33% in 2015(UK ONS, 2015. In Scotland, 27% of adults were single in 2003, increasing to 35% in 2015 (Scottish Government, 2015); in Northern Ireland, 36% of adults were single in , up from 33% in 2001(NISRA, 2011. 1 While narratives of the single woman within contemporary Anglo-American popular culture have proliferated over the same period, they continue to narrowly draw on historical, postfeminist tropes to stigmatise single femininities (Negra, 2009;Taylor, 2012). As a result, cultural representations render more diverse constructions and lived experience of single femininities invisible (Butler, 2011;Halberstam, 2011). ...
Article
Full-text available
Despite a growth in single women in UK society over the past two decades, single femininity continues to be highly stigmatised. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the heterosexual matrix and applying this to qualitative interview data with 25 single women, I argue that single femininity is produced as abject through processes of silencing which render the single female a ‘failed’ subject and reinscribe heteronormative coupled femininity. Yet while deeply painful, such ‘failures’ may also be productive, offering moments where the boundaries of heteronormative feminine subjectivity and hierarchies of intimate life are troubled and transformed. This article complicates understandings of stigma and resistance through a nuanced analysis of processes of abjectification and ambivalence.
... Tokoh perempuan yang menjadi pusat penceritaan seringkali digambarkan sebagai sosok TWITS (Teenage Women in Their 30s) 'perempuan remaja-matang menjelang umur 30 tahun', yaitu sosok perempuan yang tidak terlalu muda. Mereka adalah protagonis yang mandiri, lajang, bergaya hidup kosmopolitan dengan berbagai problematika percintaannya, dan heteroseksual (Taylor, 2012). Dalam novelnovel yang lain, Stephanie Zen menggunakan gaya penokohan TWITS, seperti yang tergambar dalam metropop One Last Chance (2012) dan More than Words (2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Perjodohan merupakan fenomena yang tidak populer dalam pandangan feminis karena dianggap cenderung merugikan perempuan. Namun demikian, perjodohan masih saja terjadi dalam konteks kekinian sebagaimana ditampilkan dalam sejumlah karya sastra kontemporer Indonesia. Hal yang membedakan, bila dibandingkan dengan tokoh perempuan yang hidup di masa lampau seperti Siti Nurbayakarya Marah Roesli atau tokoh MidahSi Manis Bergigi Emaskarya Pramoedya Ananta Toer, perempuan modern telah memiliki ruang untuk menunjukkan resistensi atas perjodohan yang menimpanya. Kondisi ini tergambar dalam novel metropop Summer Skykarya Stephanie Zen yang menjadi objek penelitian. Analisis dilakukan dengan pendekatan sosiologi sastra dan kajian sastra feminis. Kajian ini menunjukkan bahwa dalam novel tersebut, orang tua hanya membantu mencarikan pasangan dan keputusan untuk menjalin hubungan merupakan keputusan masing-masing individu sebagai pribadi dewasa. Empat tahap interaksi yang dikemukakan Randall terpenuhi, yaitu pertemuan fisik, saling menyadari keberadaan, berada dalam situasi emosi yang sama, dan adanya simbol yang mewakili fokus bersama.
... As Anthea Taylor argues, women 'are no longer indoctrinated into believing a man will make them happy, they now (apparently) actively choose to believe he will, and this is seen as cause for postfeminist celebration'. 18 Choice is indeed a central, albeit ambiguous and complex, trope in postfeminist discourses. Quite in contrast to second wave feminism's claim that the personal is political, postfeminist discourses postulate that choices are apolitical, precisely because they are personal. ...
... sinkkukomedian elokuvagenreen (esim. Brasfield 2006;Taylor 2012). Edelleen tavanomaista on ollut tutkia lähinnä naishahmojapitkälti siksi, että sinkkusarjat-ja elokuvat käsittelevät nimenomaan naissinkkujen elämää. ...
... This brings to mind some of the inconsistencies of postfeminism, as described by Gill, who states that "what makes contemporary media culture distinctively postfeminist, rather than prefeminist or antifeminist, is precisely this entanglement of feminist and antifeminist ideas, " 48 or by Anthea Taylor for whom postfeminism consists in "'suturing' of feminism and antifeminism. " 49 The contradictions and tensions that have been mapped around the figure of Amy are indicative of the contradictions that are constitutive of postfeminism itself. Like postfeminism, Amy simultaneously endorses and disavows feminism, according to the logic of "double entanglement" that is at the core of Angela McRobbie's definition of dominant postfeminist discourse: ...
... 47 The combination of these various linguistic devices narratively constructed women's sexuality as natural and to be enjoyed by 'unabashedly sexual' single women, completely contradicting the 1950s' view of sex as a chore meant to subordinate women within the paradigm of marriage. 48 The narrative on sex encouraged the pursuance of sex outside long-term relationships, and affairs with married men, thus showing that the horoscopes rejected sexual mores in which adultery was considered immoral. Cancer and Taurus, who were described as domestic and faithful, were 'vulnerable […] to fleeting adventures with married men' and 'sharing someone else's husband', respectfully. ...
Thesis
Full-text available
This dissertation explores the multiplicities of femininity offered to readers of Cosmopolitan through horoscopes. It does this by utilising the construction of the Cosmopolitan girl and textual analysis to explore the messages given to women and the contradictory nature of these messages. This dissertation focuses on the 1970s which followed what has been termed the ‘Sexual Revolution’ in the United States. The 1970s radically changed women’s roles, not only sexually, but as workers and consumers. Thus, in order to explore the construction of the Cosmopolitan girl in the 1970s, this dissertation focuses on narratives on sex and relationships, the workplace and consumerism. Firstly, this thesis will explore women’s relationships to men and their sexual roles and agency. It will reveal novel narratives of sexual agency that allow women to seek pleasure on a par with men, alongside messages of subjugation that encourage women to care for and satisfy men. Then, the analysis of messages relating to women’s role in the workplace will nuance the view of the Cosmopolitan girl construction as purely sexual and will show how it incorporates American Dream mythology and bolsters the belief in one’s own skill and value, despite harsh workplace realities. Lastly, this thesis will examine the reciprocity of femininity and consumerism that instructs women to buy products in order to emulate the middle-class aspirations of the Cosmopolitan girl. These analyses combine to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the Cosmopolitan girl and thus will also show the value of horoscopes in the popular press as a historical source.
... C-fem serves as a reservoir of energy, inspiration, and personnel both for activism challenging state policies 21 and for a range of organizations that provide counseling services. 19 McRobbie 1978; Mohanty 2013; Munford and Waters 2014;Taylor 2012. 20 Y. Dong 2019 For instance, the Feminist Five and Ma Hu came from a bigger, looser group of self-described "Young Feminist Activists" (qingnian nüquan xingdongpai) who use street art and popular theater to challenge sexist cultural norms. ...
Article
Full-text available
Contemporary Chinese feminism has drawn much attention in academe and popular media, yet its ontological roots and the politics of naming has largely escaped scrutiny. This paper first demonstrates that China’s post-socialist transition has given rise to a new gendered structure of power, in response to which urban young women have assembled various discursive and material practices in their struggles. Second, the social rupture and shock caused by these practices have led to the popular perception that an undifferentiated “feminism” has been proliferating in contemporary China. Combining historiographical and ethnographic research, this paper maps out the overall landscape of women’s agitations and identifies two latent strands of “made-in-China feminism” – with varied sociopolitical significance – that engage with cultural norms at the grassroots level. In grasping China’s ongoing gender antagonism with its full complexity, this paper discusses the limitations of existing scholarly approaches to contemporary Chinese feminism. This analysis contributes to the ongoing conversation on imagining a feminist politics in non-Western societies that disrupts the political, economic, and cultural orders all at once.
... In a letter that is signed off, 'A true Aussie woman', one author remarks, 'I was around in your hey day even then you were known as a loud mouth bitch with no in site into a real loving relationship' (RB, 10 September). I have previously argued (Taylor, 2012) that despite claims of their newfound cultural affirmation, single women continue to function as anxiety provoking figures, subject to various forms of regulation and management. That Greer has failed -for it is very much positioned as a personal failure -to marry, or reproduce, is seen to make her even less representative. ...
Article
In September 2006, Australia’s most iconic feminist, Germaine Greer, wrote a controversial article in response to the death of celebrity wildlife presenter Steve Irwin. In the Guardian piece, entitled ‘That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin’, Greer concluded, ‘The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin’. For hundreds of Australian readers, Greer’s public response to the untimely demise of a purported national ‘hero’ represented a symbolic assault not just on the ’Crocodile Hunter’s’ grieving family but on the nation itself. Following the article’s appearance, Greer’s agents – Gillon Aitken Associates, based in the United Kingdom – received copious amounts of hate mail directed towards the controversial celebrity feminist; these emails are contained in the recently acquired Greer archive at the University of Melbourne and provide important insights into affective responses to this polarising figure. Tightly policing the boundaries of what constitutes ‘Australian-ness’ as well as mobilising problematic assumptions about the correct way of publicly doing femininity, these emails call into question Greer’s authority to speak publicly not just about this matter but about any issue at all. In so doing, these emails – which include threats of violence – work to contest the ‘newness’ of the vitriolic, misogynistic hate speech commonly directed towards vocal women in the contemporary mediasphere (especially via platforms such as Twitter). Against the representation of Irwin as model Australian, Greer is dismissed not just as a ‘bad’ woman but as a ‘bad’ citizen. Accordingly, this article considers both the kind of ‘Greer’ and the kind of ‘Irwin’ being discursively constructed in these emails, and how the mutually constitutive discourses of misogyny and nationalism were deployed in these attempts to marginalise and silence Greer and to mourn and celebrate Irwin.
Article
This study explores how intimacy is shaped through mobile-mediated dating, which is seasoned with culinary preferences and gendered conventions. Drawing on the sociological concept of mediated intimacy and attending to emotionalised culinary experiences and gendered individualism, this study asks three questions. First, how is intimacy represented by dining-dating apps? Second, how do these dining-dating apps approach ‘being single’? Third, what gender relations and what contradictions between romance and consumerism can be identified in dating that is managed by an app and that trades in intimate commodities? By analysing the advertising text, testimonials, and reviews posted online, I demonstrate that individuals are not only invited to manage their intimate life through cultural consumption but are also compelled to adopt accelerated and mediated ways of engaging. I reveal that the limited and regulated access to communicative exchanges and the extended follow-up dinner dates in dining-dating apps is related to concerns about personal and relational investment. Furthermore, I argue that dining-dating apps participate in the mediation of emotions and gender relations by introducing intimate commodities that blur the borders between individualist aspiration and gendered and classed ways of experiencing intimacy. Together, these findings provide a particularly interesting context and open up new avenues for studying intimacy, gender, and cultural consumption in sociology and media studies.
Article
Full-text available
In this article, I explore how women’s singleness is represented by ‘living-alone’ wanghong on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小红书) and discuss the configuration of Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture. The term ‘“living-alone” wanghong’ refers to a group of Chinese vloggers – mostly women – who showcase their daily lives in domestic spaces while living by themselves. ‘Living-alone’ wanghong narrate their singleness as an autonomous choice that leads to a happy, high-quality, and bourgeois life. This narrative is distinct from the stigmatised ‘shengnü’ (剩女, leftover women) discourse in contemporary urban China. By conducting thematic analysis of 50 sampled ‘living-alone’ vlogs featuring female wanghong, I examine three recurring themes: economic independence; self-care/self-discipline; and enjoyable loneliness. The analysis contextualises these three tropes in the postfeminist wanghong culture on Chinese social media. I argue that while ‘living-alone’ wanghong productively challenge stigmas around single women in the context of urban China, they ultimately transform women’s singleness into a neoliberal and postfeminist object in feminised consumer culture. Within their narratives, the structural struggles that single women face become issues that can and should be resolved by individual women. This transformation overshadows the underlying logic of consumption/commercialisation within Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture. This article further discusses the importance of the intersectional gender dimension in wanghong studies, as evidenced by the case study of ‘living-alone’ wanghong.
Article
The term single is limited as it is defined as the absence of a romantic partner, which places one's relationship status within a binary, assumes availability for romantic partnership, and implies single is a transitory state preceding union formation. These perceptions of singlehood serve to maintain hegemonic structures of marriage and nuclear family. However, the implications associated with the term single do not represent the experiences of all singles. This paper proposes an alternative framework for classifying singles based on their approach to romantic relationships that considers both openness to and desire for romantic partnership. I provide a typology of singles that defy the assumptions of singlehood and situate these categories within my theoretical framework. Finally, I demonstrate how this framework highlights the potential stability of singlehood, and I conclude by examining how social scientists can use this theory to better understand heterogeneity in singles' experiences.
Article
Researchers have proposed various explanations for the increase in singlehood in post-industrialized countries, but the questions of how singles interpret their singlehood and what social meanings they attribute to it have received less attention. Using data collected through in-depth interviews with singles from various backgrounds in Israel, this study examined whether singlehood was considered the result of individual choice or constraints. Findings revealed that most participants expressed a strong wish to marry and viewed their singlehood as the result of unfavourable life circumstances, a pattern we call ‘normative singlehood’. Their narratives were aligned with the mainstream norm that does not consider singlehood to be a legitimate way of life. By contrast, a minority, all women from very traditional backgrounds, treated singlehood in terms of deliberate choice and considered it a desired alternative to a conjugal relationship, a pattern we referred to as ‘challenging singlehood.’ These women expressed strong educational and occupational goals at the price of distancing themselves from their communities of origin. Overall, the study points to the limitations of the discourse of choice at the intersection of individualism and familism and suggests that the hegemonic status of marriage persists despite normative change in favour of deinstitutionalization.
Article
This paper explores how Tinder marketing responds to gender politics and discourses within contemporary postfeminist media cultures transnationally. We provide a comparative semiotic analysis of the prominent Tinder advertising campaign Single, Not Sorry, which runs across several European countries, as well as the UK and USA, with marketing material from Tinder India’s YouTube page. Challenging sexist cultural stereotypes and norms of feminine sexual passivity and modesty has a clear economic rationale as a marketing strategy for Tinder. The Tinder marketing media analysed appears to be largely aimed at young women and speaks to postfeminist notions of women’s new sexual freedom in global neoliberal modernity, with Tinder positioning itself as a tool enabling such. Yet, as we illustrate, some key differences emerge across these marketing messages about women’s empowerment and the kind of gender roles and “modern” heterosexual relations made available through Tinder in the European and Indian contexts. The analysis we offer contributes to scholarship on transnational postfeminist media cultures and discourses.
Article
This study examines the visual representations of “leftover women” (unmarried women who are 27 or above) in the Chinese English-language news media by employing multimodal discourse analysis. The findings show that both conservative and gendered discourses are constructed by different visual resources in relation to “leftover women’s” actions, reactions, outfits, symbolic processes, and settings. Our research provides new understandings of Chinese single womanhood, which reflect the State profamily and pronatalist agenda intertwined with the pressure from tradition on the one hand, and women’s increasing awareness of individual choices, sexual freedom, and feminist values under the influence of globalisation and modernisation on the other.
Article
This article examines the complex and contradictory gendered desires and anxieties that reveal themselves in the representation of powerful women in contemporary global television. Focusing on the internationally most popular TV series of the Turkish TV industry, Magnificent Century, screened in over 75 countries and seen by more than 500 million people, the central objective of this article is to assess the cultural implications of the series’ portrayal of influential and dominant women. Set in the 16th-century, Magnificent Century projects into the past a postfeminist interpretation of history, celebrating competitiveness, self-interestedness, and ambition, especially for its central character Hurrem Sultan, who rises from her slave origins to become a powerful empress. The series promotes women’s individualistic empowerment in a patriarchal world, while recurrently re-asserting male hegemony. Magnificent Century relies on gendered power reversals between femininity and masculinity as its main narrative and affective structure in which postfeminist empowerment and misogyny co-exist. Close textual analysis of the series coupled with examination of online viewer responses demonstrate that popular feminism and popular misogyny have concurrent audience appeal and that the powerful woman is a figure of cultural disquiet in the contemporary global mediascape.
Article
Full-text available
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji kontruksi femininitas baru yang disajikan dalam novel metropop Runaway Ran karya Mia Arsjad. Metode yang digunakan adalah deskriptif-kualitatif, dengan pendekatan kritik sastra feminis. Data yang terdiri dari kata, frasa, dan kalimat dikumpulkan dari novel sebagai objek penelitian dengan teknik dokumentasi. Data selanjutnya diklasifikasi, diinterpretasi, dan dianalisis dengan teori-teori yang relevan, yang di antaranya yang digagas oleh Arvanitaki, Gill Herdierckerhoff,dan Taylor.Hasil penelitian ini memperlihatkan bahwa (1) sebagai sebuah karya bergenre metropop, novel Runaway Ranmenarasikan kehidupan urban dan mapan pada para tokohnya. (2) Indikator femininitas baru yang muncul dalam novel tersebut ditandai melalui kelajangan, warga urban, kemandirian, bekerja di ruang publik, terpelajar, penampilan menarik, dan perilaku konsumtif. (3) Sekalipun ada upaya pengarang untuk mengangkat dan menyosialisasikan nilai-nilai femininitas baru, novel tersebut ternyata masih mempertahankan konstruksi tradisional yang ditunjukkan melalui superioritas laki-laki dan dominansi maskulin secara stereotipik.
Article
Loneliness is often described as a deadly epidemic sweeping across the population, a silent killer. Loneliness, we are told, is a social disease that must be cured. But what does it mean to think of loneliness as a feminist issue, and what might a specifically feminist theorisation bring to conceptualizations of loneliness? In this paper I argue that feminism helps us see that loneliness is not just personal but political. I trace how stories of loneliness surface, circulate, shift, and compound within the specificity of the present, centring on recent strategies proposed by the UK government in their ‘national mission to end loneliness’. I outline how this policy discourse upholds certain normative attachments as having the promise to alleviate loneliness: coupled love, the family, community. Such framings serve to depoliticize contemporary conditions of loneliness, positioning loneliness as a personal failure, the cure for loneliness is the responsibility of individuals and communities. Absent in government depictions of the problem of loneliness are the wider mechanisms that condemn people to lonely lives, when infrastructures fail, when people find themselves violently cut off from the world. Finally, I speculate on what might happen if we were to challenge this framing of loneliness as always and only a problem in need of a cure. I seek to uncover some of the political potentials of loneliness, asking, what can be learnt through reflecting upon shared experiences of loneliness? For as feminist politics has shown us, feelings of disaffection and alienation can help us imagine other worlds.
Article
Full-text available
Budaya patriarki telah membuat perempuan didorong untuk bersegera menjadi istri dan ibu dalam sebuah keluarga, sehingga ia lebih dihargai sebagai anggota masyarakat yang utuh. Fenomena ini masih berlangsung dalam situasi aktual, sebagaimana tercermin dalam sejumlah novel populer. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mempelajari stigma perempuan lajang dan perkawinan di dalam metropop 90 Hari Mencari Suami (2019) karya Ken Terate. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah deskriptif-kualitatif. Data berupa kata, frasa, dan kalimat dikumpulkan dengan teknik simak-catat. Data selanjutnya diklasifikasi, diinterpretasi, dan dikaji. Landasan teoretis yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah perspektif sosiologis dan kritik sastra feminis dari Beauvoir dan Humm. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dalam novel 90 Hari Mencari Suami: (1) kelajangan merupakan hal yang tidak wajar terjadi pada perempuan dewasa sehingga muncul mitos dan stigma yang mendorongnya untuk segera menikah. Protagonis perempuan membuktikan bahwa mitos itu tidak benar dan memutuskan untuk menentukan jalan hidupnya sendiri. (2) Perkawinan tidak seharusnya terjadi karena perasaan takut melainkan didasari oleh kesadaran penuh untuk menjalaninya. Perkawinan yang ideal adalah yang memposisikan perempuan dan laki-laki dalam kedudukan setara.
Article
Full-text available
Kelajangan dianggap sebagai hal yang tidak wajar pada perempuan dewasa. Penelitian dilakukan dengan tujuan mengungkap bagaimana perempuan lajang dan perjodohan ditampilkan di dalam novel “Jodoh Terakhir” (2016) karya Netty Vigiantini. Metode yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif dengan pendekatan sosiologi sastra dan kritik sastra feminis. Data berupa kata, frasa, dan kalimat dikumpulkan dengan teknik simak catat setelah melalui pemhacaan tertutup. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa perempuan lajang dianggap tidak wajar dan melanggar aturan, sehingga untuk mengembalikannya pada jalur normatif, perjodohan dijadikan solusi. Dalam novel, terungkap adanya resistensi dan negosiasi dari tokoh perempuan dalam menyikapi pernikahan yang dipaksakan kepadanya. Kecurigaan bahwa teks akan cenderung bersifat feminis tidak terbukti, karena wacana yang justru dikembangkan pengarang adalah kepatuhan anak perempuan pada konstruksi sosial yang ditanamkan melalui struktur keluarga.Katakunci: feminis, konstruksi sosial, lajang, perjodohan Abstract:Singleness is considered an unnatural thing for adult women. This research was conducted to reveal how single women and matchmaking are featured in Netty Vigiantini's novel Jodoh Terakhir (2016). The method used is descriptive qualitative with sociological literary approaches and feminist literary criticism. Data in the form of words, phrases, and sentences were collected using the note-taking technique after going through closed reading. The data are then classified, interpreted, and analyzed with relevant theories. The results of this study indicate that single women are considered unnatural and violate the rules, so to return them to the normative path, matchmaking is used as a solution. In the novel, it is revealed that there are resistance and negotiation from female characters in responding to the marriage that was forced on her. The suspicion that the text will tend to be feminist is not proven, because the discourse developed by the author is the obedience of girls to social constructs that are instilled through the family structure.Keywords: feminist, social construction, single, matchmaking
Article
Netflix show, Grace and Frankie, is significant in its representation of ageing. While it may appear ground-breaking to see people in their seventies and eighties navigating (re)invention of self and sexuality within mainstream media, upon closer inspection–in particular, Season Four–the inherent contradictions common to postfeminist texts are exposed. Initial offerings from ¹ Grace and Frankie extend to positive representations of ageing sexuality, female agency, and self-efficacy; however, these themes are rather negated as the seasons progress. Such incongruities feature notions of what might be considered as effective ageing: a dualism in which ageing femininity is both celebrated and fought; discourses of empowerment via rigorous, yet relatively ineffective, corporeal self-maintenance/somatic discipline; a sexualised ‘feminism’ which also features the women as variously alone, but dependent upon their ex-husbands, each other, or their children; and a postfeminist ‘makeover’ paradigm in which the pendulum swings between preservation and restoration, individualism and conformity. Albeit within neoliberal and postfeminist discourses, Grace and Frankie, while flawed, remains an important text in which visibly ageing bodies, ageing sexuality, and non-normative identification are elevated and explored.
Chapter
This chapter examines If You Are the One, a well-known “reality TV” show that focuses on dating and relationships. It analyzes the interaction between the show’s format and its depiction of masculinity and femininity, arguing that this program and others of the same type overemphasize the conjugal family as the path to happiness. Further, it reinforces stereotypical gender roles while portraying male and female contestants as revolutionary and liberal. Consequently, neoliberal views on the free market, individual choice, and self-realization are reaffirmed.
Article
In March 1971, American women’s magazine McCall’s published an extract of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Myriad unpublished letters to the editor contained in the Greer archive at the University of Melbourne reveal that the magazine’s readers were largely dismissive of Greer’s feminist vision. These reader-writers, best conceptualised as ‘anti-fans’, took both author and editor to task for criticising them as wives and mothers. Through an analysis of these letters, this article argues that their authors contested Greer’s burgeoning authority as a second-wave celebrity feminist largely by pathologising her, invoking essentialist assumptions about femininity, and mobilising discourses of ‘choice’ more commonly understood as the product of a ‘postfeminist’ representational environment. Through their anti-fan practices, they challenge Greer’s attempts to deprive housewives of agency, deploying rhetorical strategies that are at once reliant upon and highly critical of second-wave feminism. By complicating dominant ways of framing the feminist past and the postfeminist present, this article demonstrates how celebrity feminists, including ‘blockbuster’ authors, have historically always elicited complex affective responses.
Chapter
The chapter explores the ways self-published texts define their community and operate both within and outside narrative conventions of writing about disability. Blogging offers options for life writing that differ from the models pervasive in traditional publication venues, especially in the ability to manipulate visual space through alternative organizational patterns and narrative strategies. An analysis of the relationship between the paper diary and the blog offers specific insights into its functionality as a mode of disability life writing with the potential of addressing a wide variety of readerships through the integration of information, exposition, and personal narrative. Finally, self-referential performance art offers yet another medium for articulating embodied experience, and the conclusion thus treats the potential of performance art as a form of living text.
Chapter
Urban ecology often addresses issues of how to make cities more liveable and sustainable, unravelling the dynamics that are located within the space that it seeks to establish. One such dynamics can be found within the domain of rental housing where one’s identity plays a significant role in access to these spaces. There are many studies that have addressed this issue of discrimination based on different aspects of one’s identity, but very few have foregrounded the predicament of single tenants within the age group of 25–40 years, who have migrated to metropolitan cities. Using Lefebvre’s three-pronged strategy to understand the social nature of space and the spatial nature of the society, we begin with the contention that rental housing is not only a geographical space but also a social space. This paper also looks at what de Certeau calls “ways of operating” by looking at the spatial practice and representational spaces occupied by these women and men where “singlehood” emerges as a significant variable affecting one’s chances of accessing certain kinds of rental housing and once this access is established, the negotiations that happen thereafter.
Article
The current representative wave of romantic female friendships (Girls, Broad City, Insecure) in the United States owes a great deal to the web series. The online platform bypasses conventions of the romantic comedy, which prioritize heterosexual romance over female relationships. This article seeks to bring two geographies (United States and India) into conversation with one another via a textual analysis of two such web series: Brown Girls (US) and Ladies Room (India). These stories of female friendship explore the unique concerns of urban female identity, sexuality, and solidarity. A central question we address in this textual dialogue is how these representations subvert and critically engage their respective political climates of neoconservatism. Brown Girls and Ladies Room move away from prioritizing heteronormative relationships reflects the transcultural disillusionment with the ideology of containment that defines the genre of romantic comedy. The acceptance of the romantic female friendship narrative within the mainstream thus fosters new critiques of old illusions of monogamous coupling, feminine duty, and heteronormative subjectivities.
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores temporal constituents of the female self in terms of their role in underpinning ongoing gender inequality. Drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young, together with sociological approaches to ambivalence, I suggest that these temporal subjectivities are embodied, arise from the split subjectivity associated with woman as simultaneously subject and object, and counterpose the neoliberal emphasis on “choice” and agency with a more traditional gendered “expectation,” or “waiting” style. The dialectic between both temporalities, in which neither is hegemonic, results in a chronic state of ambivalence which impedes women's ability to fully project themselves into the future, a skill significant to planning and career ambition and the absence of which suspends women instead in an extended present. The paper aims to do two things in particular. In conceptual terms it aims to explore aspects of the configuration of the gendered self that underlie the stalling and slowing down of the gender revolution and which can be seen to provide a “missing link” between structures, institutions, and micro‐cultures. In empirical terms, it suggests a future research agenda, of which this paper constitutes a beginning, through which such gendered temporalities can be explored in greater detail via ethnographies of women's lived experience of time throughout the life course.
Research
This Dissertation explores horoscopes in Cosmopolitan magazine from the 1970s and has been published to add to the sparse historical investigation with reference to Horoscopes as a historical source.
Article
This paper addresses journalistic coverage of Australian politician Barnaby Joyce’s extramarital relationship with his one time employee, Vikki Campion. The paper suggests that it is productive to examine this coverage as constituting a media sex scandal. Media sex scandals are useful in terms of what they suggest about the gender politics of the society in which they unfold. The Joyce-Campion scandal is revealing because it suggests how the single woman who is involved in a relationship a married man continues to be demonized in a way that the man is not. This, in turn, demonstrates how marriage or rather, a particular, (hetero)sexist model of marriage continues to have a degree of social currency.
Article
Depuis les années 1970, avec le recul de l’âge à la mise en couple et, plus encore, l’augmentation des séparations, les périodes de vie « hors couple » jalonnent de plus en plus les trajectoires des hommes et des femmes, au début de la vie adulte, d’abord, puis au fil du parcours affectif. En abordant ces épisodes de célibat dans une perspective biographique, et en s’intéressant à leur vécu subjectif, cet article met au jour des expériences contrastées selon l’âge, le sexe et le milieu social. La vie célibataire paraît plus pesante aux jeunes trentenaires, alors que les femmes de milieux modestes disent y gagner une indépendance appréciée, malgré les difficultés matérielles. Au-delà de cette diversité, le contexte français reste marqué par un niveau de conjugalité élevé – le célibat définitif est rare – et par une norme de vie à deux très prégnante, dont la pression s’exerce sur toutes et tous. L’analyse croisée de matériaux quantitatifs et qualitatifs tirés de l’enquête Étude des parcours individuels et conjugaux (Épic, Ined-Insee, 2013-2014, France) montre que les séparations et la diversification des manières de faire couple s’accompagnent d’un renforcement, et non d’un affaiblissement, de la norme conjugale.
Article
Is feminism compatible with mainstream TV cop shows? In the early 1980s, Cagney and Lacey made an impact on television. With its openly feminist agenda, the show broke away from a tradition of glamorized female law enforcers on screen, concentrating on a duo of ordinary New York female cops whose work resonated with the situation of women both at home and in the work place. When Rizzoli and Isles picked up on the female buddy formula in 2010, however, the formula was redirected towards a return to a glamorous version of feminism, rewriting in the singular a cause entirely divested of its social and political dimension.
Chapter
This chapter begins by presenting characteristics of self-improvement books, the data that will be used throughout the book to illustrate the role of language in creating and maintaining ideology. The focus then moves to a presentation of the origins of self-improvement books and ideologies that influenced the genre. Reasons for reading and writing these books are then explored, drawing on the research literature and interview data. The discussion considers the perspectives of writers, regular readers, and non-regular readers of the genre.
Chapter
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was published two decades before Pride and Prejudice (1813) went to print, but to talk about feminism is to name a qualitatively different attitude than anything that was contemplated by Jane Austen’s society. In the twenty-first century, the choices available to women have dramatically expanded and yet it still seems as if the only permissible ending for a fictional work involving a single female character is to marry her off.
Article
While commentaries on the phenomenon of postfeminism have centred on its manifestations in media and popular culture, this article highlights the potential of literature for extending existing debates within postfeminist studies. I argue that the emergence of contemporary women’s autofiction offers the possibility of a literary response to the individualising narrative of a neoliberal and postfeminist sensibility. I advance this contention via an analysis of two texts: Sheila Heti’s How Should A Person Be? (2012) and Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation (2014). Their writing practice is resolutely political because it employs the confessional mode, as indebted to the emancipatory roots of the feminist movement, to reflect on the enduring marginality of female artistic identity. By foregrounding the inherently provisional nature of their being, both texts emphasise that the search for a viable artistic consciousness and experiments in artistic method are as crucial as the final product itself, especially when the definition of woman as artist still remains contested. I thus locate the existence of these texts in a wider social imaginary conducive for feminist organising. In this respect, the rising popularity of contemporary women’s autofiction may offer strategies crucial for remediating an otherwise diminished feminist politics of the present.
Article
This essay juxtaposes readings of three films—1975's The Stepford Wives, 1987's Fatal Attraction, and the 2004 version of The Stepford Wives—to suggest that feminist media critics' understanding of the dynamics of feminist, postfeminist, and “post-postfeminist” discourses in popular culture should include attention to the rhetorical and political implications of representations of men and masculinity.
Article
This article brings together work at the intersection of critical psychology and cultural studies to explore the psychological and cultural significance of women’s magazine culture. Drawing on rhetorical psychology and Foucault’s later work on ‘techniques of the self’, it explores the complex injunctions and positionings that create the range of gendered anxieties and dilemmas produced within neoliberal relations. Self-help is discussed as a practice that condenses or brings together a range of cultural anxieties, bodily tensions, emotional economies and forms of psychopathology which are ‘already constituted’ lived realities for many of the readers engaging with these magazines. The article concludes that further engagement with critical psychology by cultural theorists will enable cultural studies to bring the body back into cultural theory and to consider the translation of cultural injunctions across the designations of race, class, sexuality and gender.