In this accessible introductory guide, the author identifies key feminist approaches to popular culture from the 1960s to the present and demonstrates how the relationship between feminism, femininity and popular culture has often been a troubled one. The book introduces the central ideas of both second-wave feminism and feminist cultural studies and demonstrates how they inform feminist debates about a range of popular forms and practices through a series of case studies: the woman's film; romantic fiction; soap opera; consumption and (...) material culture; fashion and beauty practices; and youth culture and popular music. (shrink)

From 30 contributors--including Kate Millett, Barbara Kruger, and Sharon Olds--a richly diverse collection of essays and poetry exploring female sexuality.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, a heated debate took place over the relationship between Marxism and feminism. In the current moment the perhaps more disturbing question arises: has feminism entered into a dangerous liaison with capitalism? The profound "restructuring" of the U. S. and world economy since the 1970s parallels the rise of the women's movement during the same period, and reveals some ideological and practical uses of this movement for capitalist interests at home and abroad. In particular, the (...) decline of the family wage and the abolition of welfare "as we know it" in the United States, and the use of microcredit and female labor in export processing zones in the "developing" world, both can draw upon feminist ideas, as can the U. S. government as it pursues its "war on terrorism." There is a kernel of truth in U. S. propaganda: feminism acts as a cultural solvent, as globalization erodes the traditions of patriarchy. The left must take on board the crucial contribution of feminist ideas and activism, as we contemplate a world where alternatives to capitalism have become devalued and de-legitimized. (shrink)

Addressing the contradictions surrounding modern-day femininity and its complicated relationship with feminism and postfeminism, this book examines a range of popular female/feminist icons and paradigms. It offers an innovative and forward-looking perspective on femininity and the modern female self.

The article starts with a definition of the concept feminization of labour. It aims to signal how, at both the Italian and the global level, precarity, together with certain qualitative characteristics historically present in female work, have become decisive factors for current productive processes, to the point of progressively transforming women into a strategic pool of labour. Since the early 1990s, Italy has seen a massive increase in the employment of women, within the wave of legislation that has introduced various (...) flexible contracts – so-called atypical work. I show how cognitive capitalism tends to prioritize extracting value from relational and emotional elements, which are more likely to be part of women's experiential baggage. The results of a study conducted in November 2006 among freelance workers of the Rizzoli Corriere della sera group, the largest publishing group in Italy, will be used to show how women are able to move more easily on the shifting sands of precarity, within the context of cognitive work. (shrink)

The multimodal nature of web pages enables them to interweave text, images, colour and other graphical material to create discursive contexts which may be difficult to identify or challenge. Multimodal discourse analysis provides a tool for deconstructing such websites. This paper examines websites that promote the growing practice of female genital cosmetic surgery, in particular labial reduction or labiaplasty. We examine the ways in which four Australian cosmetic surgery websites normalise unnecessary surgical intervention. From our multimodal critical discourse analysis, three (...) themes emerged – ‘pathologising the normal’, ‘normalising modification’ and ‘cosmetic surgery is easy’. All were embedded in a neoliberal discourse of individual choice, self-improvement and objectification, through text and images that medicalised normal women's bodies, normalised the use of surgery to fit a cultural ideal of beauty and stressed the rhetoric of choice, empowerment and agency, thus creating an ideological foundation and justification for cosmetic surgery. (shrink)

In so doing it puts forward a distinctive thesis, namely that within late modernity gender and sexuality are being reworked in terms of categories of reflexivity and risk. It shows that this reworking places increasing significance on issues of mobility and identity in late modernity. It therefore outlines the politics of mobility in regard to identity, suggesting that mobility is an important but often neglected source of power in late modernity. Revisions: gender and sexuality in late modernity will be essential (...) reading for advanced undergraduates, research students and academics working in the fields of feminist theory, social theory, sociology, women's studies and cultural studies."--Jacket. (shrink)

The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism. Some have further (...) identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance. I will discuss Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today. I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith’s Butler’s seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism. (shrink)