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The article "Perfect: feeling judged on social media: a roundtable discussion" by Rosalind Gill explores the experiences of young women on social media, focusing on the pressures of perfection and judgment they face. The research highlights the anxieties young women feel about being watched and judged, leading to intense feelings of anxiety and fear of making mistakes. The study also delves into the labor young women invest in maintaining their social media presence, as well as the emotional distress and mental health struggles they navigate in a visually dominated culture. The author aims to challenge stigmas around mental health and promote discussions on the structural and cultural factors influencing young people's well-being. [Extracted from the article]

This article introduces the concept of 'freelance feminism': a term we use to highlight how a combination of casualised precarious labour and platformised entrepreneurialism constitute a key terrain through which contemporary feminist work is enacted. The article proposes that this term can be a way to understand new formations and constellations of activity which are being shaped in the intersections between precarity, feminism and entrepreneurialism. How, in what ways, and with what consequences are feminist activism and platformised entrepreneurialism becoming entwined? How are new forms of self-promotion, self-branding and precarity shaping feminist cultures? Are entrepreneurial projects more broadly taking on feminist forms and, if so, how can we understand their politics? To explore these issues, the article examines in turn (1) neoliberal, short-term, precarious labour in the cultural industries and its exacerbation during the pandemic, (2) contemporary entrepreneurial 'platformisation' and (3) the increased visibility of feminism in contemporary popular culture. It concludes by introducing the range of articles in the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how women bar workers manage violence at work. Women bar workers in our study described that the capacity to recognize, intervene, and defuse potentially violent situations was a pragmatic response to the problem of men's violence in the night‐time economy. We analyze the gendered norms and expectations at play in how violence in bar work is managed by staff and locate this as a form of "femininity work" extending from the modes of attentive, emotionally‐attuned femininity that labor feminist labor studies theorists have described. In a context where hospitality labor already makes complex and often unexamined demands on young workers, the positioning of women bar staff as being more adept at managing violent situations suggests a particularly important demand made of women bar workers, central for understanding the enduring gendered power relations in contemporary interactive service labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiences of queer workers in the service economy with a focus on hospitality labor. Studies of gender, sexuality and service labor approached mainstream service work as a scene of compulsory heterosexuality, while literature on the position of queer workers has tended to approach work in terms of structural inequalities that prevent queer workers from participating in the labor market, and has therefore focused on notions of diversity and inclusion as frameworks for understanding how the heteronormativity of service relationships can be overcome. This paper shifts focus to examine how queer subjectivities are enacted within the disciplinary requirements of service labor, and on the way that workers negotiate and contest their positioning at work. The paper situates the subjectivities and laboring practices of queer workers at the nexus of tensions between heteronormativity and the politics of diversity in service venues, and examines how workers negotiate and contest their positioning at work. We explore the normativities that shape permissible queer embodiment at work and show how biographical experiences specific to queer workers inform their laboring practices. The paper shows that queer workers in mainstream hospitality venues are enrolled into a specific mode of interactive service labor that capitalizes on their queer biographies, requires highly cultivated relational capacities, and repositions work as a site of political intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper reports on research I conducted in 2020/21 with a diverse group of young people living in the UK. The research is interested in multiple aspects of "life on my phone" and is centred on listening to young people's accounts of their lives on and off social media. Here, I draw out several key experiences that young women in particular told me about again and again. First, the impossibility of being perfect but also real. Second, the experience of feeling watched and surveilled. Thirdly, the sense of feeling and being judged all the time. Fourthly, the palpable fear—particularly when posting—of "getting it wrong" in one or more ways. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the current conjuncture and field of study as Feminist Media Studies celebrates its 20th anniversary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading the current conjuncture is challenging. Alongside the exigencies of the current global pandemic, we live in a moment of resurgence of right-wing nationalism, populism, and a crisis of the left across the West. At the same time, we observe a different kind of political commonsense emerging in consumer culture. From burger chains and oil companies to fast fashion, there is an increasing saturation of 'feel good' and 'positive' messages of female empowerment, LGBTIQ pride, racial and religious diversity and inclusion, and environmental awareness. In this article, we question how radical politics - especially around gender, race and sexuality - is put to work in current moment as a response to crisis/crises in this context of corporate 'wokeness'. We analyse the texture of woke capitalism - what it re-articulates and disarticulates - using Stuart Hall's ideas of conjuncture but contribute an explicitly feminist perspective that notes the extent to which these ideological formations operate affectively. We draw on contemporary feminist work illustrating the affective operation of neoliberalism in the production of everyday life and subjectivity. Going beyond a simple diagnosis of incorporation and recuperation of radical movements, we use the case study of woke capitalism to suggest the production of new affective movements structuring the ongoing obduracy of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this unconventional article, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg conduct a three-way 'conversation' in which they all take turns outlining how they understand the relationship among postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism. It begins with a short introduction, and then Ros, Sarah and Catherine each define the term they have become associated with. This is followed by another round in which they discuss the overlaps, similarities and disjunctures among the terms, and the article ends with how each one understands the current mediated feminist landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A short essay is presented that explores how female anger may become legible as feminist rage. Particular focus is given to how female rage is allowed to enter the mediated public sphere. Actress Uma Thurman's anger about sexual violence and coercion is discussed as is the expression of anger by lower-class women. Sexual abuse by film producer Harvey Weinstein and other senior men in the entertainment industry is also noted.

Creative labour studies focus almost exclusively on Euro-American metropolitan 'creative hubs' and hence the creative worker they theorize is typically white, middle-class, urban and overwhelmingly male. This article outlines the contours of a de-Westernizing project in creative labour studies while introducing a special journal issue that examines the lived dynamics of creative work outside the West. The article advocates an 'ex-centric perspective' on creative work. An ex-centric perspective does not merely aim at multiplying non-West empirical case studies. Rather, it aims at destabilizing, decentring and provincializing the taken-for-grantedness of some entrenched notions in creative labour studies such as informality and precarity. An ex-centric perspective, we contend, offers a potential challenge to many of the claims about creative work that have taken on the status of general truths and universal principles in spite of them being generated from limited empirical evidence gleaned from research sites situated almost exclusively in the creative hubs of Euro-America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of postfeminism and highlights its value for research in language and gender studies. After discussing theoretical, historical and backlash perspectives, we advance an understanding of postfeminism as a sensibility -- a patterned-yet-contradictory phenomenon intimately connected to neoliberalism. We consider elements widely theorised as constituting the postfeminist sensibility, alongside concerns shared by those who take post-feminism as their object of critical inquiry, in addition to an analytic category for cultural critique. The article then illustrates how the postfeminist sensibility may operate empirically, in the context of the doing and undoing of gender equality policies in workplaces. The article responds to calls for the field of language and gender to reinvigorate its political impetus, and to engage with feminist scholarship on postfeminism, particularly as recently developed in media and cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author talks about changes in the scholarly field of gender, sexuality, and intimacy, sexualization in which sex and power intersect, and the Me Too movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. Topics discussed include the role of self-representation in sexual identities, the effect of digital media on sustaining intimate relationships, and pornography, genital cutting, and sex work.

The author talks about the role played by mass media in sexual advice by referring to the book "Mediated Intimacy" by Meg-John Barker, Rosalind Gill, and Laura Harvey. Topics discussed include the representation of men and women in media, female sexuality in context with television programs such as "Girls", "Fleabag" and "Insecure", an increase in the representation of LGBT people and relationships in mainstream media, and heteronormativity.

This article examines the growing prominence accorded to the idea of ‘resilience’ as a regulatory ideal, locating it in the context of a ‘turn to character’ in contemporary culture which we see as part of a wider psychological turn within neoliberalism. Building from discussions of ‘resilience’ as a quality demanded and promoted by public policy in the context of austerity and worsening inequality, we argue that resilience has also emerged as a central term in popular culture in genres such as self-help literature, lifestyle magazines, and reality television, as well as in a burgeoning social media culture focussed on positive thinking, affirmations, and gratitude. It calls on people to be adaptable and positive, bouncing back from adversity and embracing a mind-set in which negative experiences can–and must–be reframed in upbeat terms. The article examines three case studies–women’s magazines, self-help books, and smartphone apps–to explore how resilience is constituted, how it operates, and how it materialises across different sites. We extend existing work by highlighting the classed and gendered dimensions of injunctions to resilience, pointing to the ways that middle-class women are hailed as emblematic ‘bounce-backable’ subjects. We explore how notions of elasticity, inspiration, and affirmation are deployed in ways that systematically outlaw critique or any need for social transformation while inciting a vast range of physical, social and, above all, psychological labours on the part of ‘resilient’ subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we make an argument for why thinking critically about neoliberalism is important for media and communication studies. We advance a case for a critical media analysis that will take seriously the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism as an increasingly central means of governing and producing people’s desires, attachments, and modes of “getting by.” To illustrate our broader theoretical argument, we will discuss the contradictory neoliberal regulation of affective dispositions for women, which prescribe confidence or alternatively, the pleasing, lighthearted readiness to “not take the self too seriously.” We make a case for expanding our theoretical and conceptual vocabulary in order to foreground the relationship between neoliberalism, media and subjectivity in the maintenance of continuing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that ‘beauty apps’ are transforming the arena of appearance politics and foregrounds a theoretical architecture for critically understanding them. Informed by a feminist-Foucaultian framework, it argues that beauty apps offer a technology of gender which brings together digital self-monitoring and postfeminist modalities of subjecthood to produce an hitherto unprecedented regulatory gaze upon women, which is marked by the intensification, extensification and psychologization of surveillance. The article is divided into four sections. First, it introduces the literature on digital self-tracking. Second, it sets out our understanding of neoliberalism and postfeminism. Third, it looks at beauty and surveillance, before offering, in the final section, a typology of appearance apps. This is followed by a discussion of the modes of address/authority deployed in these apps – especially what we call ‘surveillant sisterhood’ – and the kinds of entrepreneurial subjectivity they constitute. The article seeks to make a contribution to feminist surveillance studies and argues that much more detailed research is needed to critically examine beauty apps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the notion of ‘postfeminism’ 10 years after its formulation in critical terms as a sensibility characterizing cultural life. The article has two broad aims: first to reflect upon postfeminism as a critical term – as part of the lexicon of feminist scholarship – and second to discuss the current features of postfeminism as a sensibility. The first part of the article discusses the extraordinary uptake of the term and considers its continuing relevance in a changed context marked by deeply contradictory trends, including the resurgence of interest in feminism, alongside the spectacular visibility of misogyny, racism, homophobia and nationalism. I document a growing attention to the specificities of postfeminism, including attempts to map its temporal phases, its relevance to place, and intersectional developments of the term. The second part of the article examines the contours of the contemporary postfeminist sensibility. I argue that postfeminism has tightened its hold upon contemporary life and become hegemonic. Compared with a decade ago, it is much more difficult to recognize as a novel and distinctive sensibility, as it instantiates a common sense that operates as a kind of gendered neoliberalism. It has both spread out and intensified across contemporary culture and is becoming increasingly dependent upon a psychological register built around cultivating the ‘right’ kinds of dispositions for surviving in neoliberal society: confidence, resilience and positive mental attitude. Together these affective, cultural and psychic features of postfeminism exert a powerful regulatory force. This article forms part of ‘On the Move’, a special issue marking the twentieth anniversary of the journal. It also heads up a special online dossier on ‘Postfeminism in the European Journal of Cultural Studies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore how confidence works as a technology of self, exhorting women and girls to act upon themselves, and how it is reconfiguring feminist concerns. Our analysis demonstrates how the confidence cult(ure) has materialised in three different sites: discussions about women in the workplace; texts and practices promoting 'confident mothering'; and contemporary sex and relationship advice. We show that confidence acts as a disciplinary technology of self which is addressed almost exclusively to women and is articulated in highly standardised terms which disavow any difference between and among women. It is an individualising technology which demands intense labour, places the emphasis upon women's self-regulation and locates the source of the 'problems' and their 'solutions' within a newly upgraded form of confident subjectivity, thus rendering insecurity and lack of confidence abhorrent. We then discuss how the confidence culture is deeply implicated in the new luminosity of feminism, and argue that it contributes to the remaking of feminism in three central ways: by continuing and promoting elements of postfeminist sensibility, yet through celebration rather than repudiation of feminism; through an inclusive address that expunges difference and the possibility of its critique; and by favouring positive affect and outlawing 'negative' 'political' feelings. We argue that this move, which calls forth a new kind of a 'cool' 'feminist' subject, is simultaneously political, psychological and aesthetic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postfeminism remains a relatively unexplored concept for scholars in the area of gender and organizations. In this article we first provide theoretical perspectives on postfeminism and elaborate a critical approach to it. Postfeminism is seen as a concept, rather than an identification, that can assist in understanding the patterning of gender in the modern workplace. The second part of the article illustrates different discursive moves that we observed in our own research exploring how sexism is repudiated and how gender fatigue is enacted. This meta-theme is supported by four discursive moves: first, gender inequalities are routinely allocated to the past or, secondly, to other countries or contexts; third, women are seen as the advantaged sex; and fourth, the status quo is accepted as just how workplaces are. The article thereby makes a contribution to understanding the patterning of a postfeminist sensibility both theoretically and empirically in the work context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Biggest Loser(TBL) is a reality television weight-loss programme that positions itself as a response to the so-called “obesity crisis”. Research onTBLhas thus far focussed on audience responses and its effect on viewers’ beliefs about weight loss. This article focuses instead on how meaning is constructed inTBL. We conducted a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a key episode ofTBL(the 2012 Australian season finale) to examine how the textual, visual and auditory elements combine to construct meanings beyond the ostensible health messages. Although the overt message is that all contestants have worked hard, turned their lives around and been “successful”, examination of editing choices, lighting and colour, clothing and time spent on contestants allows us to see that the programme constructs varying degrees of success between contestants and provides accounts for these differences in outcomes. In this way the programme is able to present itself as a putative celebration of all contestants while prescribing narrow limits around what constitutes success.TBLreinforces an ideology in which “success” is a direct result of “the work” of weight loss (both physical and emotional), which can apparently be read straightforwardly off the body.TBL’s “celebration” of weight loss thus reproduces and strengthens the widespread view of fat bodies as physical manifestations of individual (ir)responsibility and psychological dysfunction, and contributes to the ongoing stigmatisation of obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to debates about the value and utility of the notion of postfeminism for a seemingly “new” moment marked by a resurgence of interest in feminism in the media and among young women. The paper reviews current understandings of postfeminism and criticisms of the term’s failure to speak to or connect with contemporary feminism. It offers a defence of the continued importance of a critical notion of postfeminism, used as an analytical category to capture a distinctive contradictory-but-patterned sensibility intimately connected to neoliberalism. The paper raises questions about the meaning of the apparent new visibility of feminism and highlights the multiplicity of different feminisms currently circulating in mainstream media culture—which exist in tension with each other. I argue for the importance of being able to “think together” the rise of popular feminism alongside and in tandem with intensified misogyny. I further show how a postfeminist sensibility informs even those media productions that ostensibly celebrate the new feminism. Ultimately, the paper argues that claims that we have moved “beyond” postfeminism are (sadly) premature, and the notion still has much to offer feminist cultural critics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the spring of 2013 a British feminist campaign sought to have men’s magazines, such asZoo,Nuts, andLoaded, removed from the shelves of major retailers, arguing that they are sexist and objectify women. The campaign—known as Lose the Lads’ Mags (LTLM)—received extensive media coverage and was the topic of considerable public debate. Working with a data corpus comprising 5,140 reader comments posted on news websites in response to reporting of LTLM, this paper explores the repeated focus on men and masculinity as “attacked,” “under threat,” “victimised,” or “demonised” in what is depicted as a sinister new gender order. Drawing on a poststructuralist feminist discursive analysis, we show how these broad claims are underpinned by four interpretative repertoires that centre around: (i) gendered double standards; (ii) male (hetero)sexuality under threat; (iii) the war on the “normal bloke”; and (iv) the notion of feminism as unconcerned with equality but rather “out to get men.” This paper contributes to an understanding of (online) popular misogyny and changing modes of sexism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we explore how confidence has become a technology of self that invites girls and women to work on themselves. The discussion demonstrates the extensiveness of what we call the ‘cult(ure) of confidence’ across different areas of social life, and examines the continuities in the way that exponents of the confidence cult(ure) name, diagnose and propose solutions to archetypal feminist questions about labour, value and the body. Our analysis focuses on two broad areas of social life in which the notion of confidence has taken hold powerfully in the last few years: popular discussions about gender and work, and consumer body culture. Examining the incitements to self-confidence in these realms, we show how an emergent technology of confidence, systematically re-signifies feminist accounts, by turning away from structural inequalities and collectivist critiques of male domination into heightened modes of self-work and self-regulation, and by repudiating the injuries inflicted by the structures of inequality. We conclude by situating the ‘confidence cult(ure)’ in relation to wider debates about feminism, postfeminism and neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at the predominance of freelancing in the film and television industries as a lens to examine the persistence of gender inequalities within these fields. Previous research has indicated that women fare better in larger organizations with more stable patterns of employment, and in this article we explore why that might be the case, by focusing on the experiences of female freelancers at a moment when project-based, precarious work and informal recruitment practices are increasing in the UK film and television sector. We highlight in particular the ways in which gender inequality is mediated by age and parental status, and the impact of intersectional identities on women's ability to sustain a career in film and television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequalities within the cultural and creative industries (CCI) have been insufficiently explored. International research across a range of industries reveals gendered patterns of disadvantage and exclusion which are, unsurprisingly, further complicated by divisions of class, and also disability and race and ethnicity. These persistent inequalities are amplified by the precariousness, informality and requirements for flexibility which are widely noted features of contemporary creative employment. In addition, women in particular are disadvantaged by the boundary-crossing (for instance, between home and work, paid work and unpaid work) and new pressures around identity-making and self-presentation, as well as continuing difficulties related to sexism and the need to manage parenting responsibilities alongside earning. This article introduces a new collection which explores these issues, marking the significance of gender for an understanding of creative labour in the neoliberal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine the ‘turn to the girl’ and the mobilization of ‘girl power’ in contemporary global humanitarian and development campaigns. The paper argues that the ‘girl powering’ of humanitarianism is connected to the simultaneous depoliticization, corporatization, and neo-liberalization of both humanitarianism and girl power. Located in broad discussions of campaigns around Malala, Chime for Change and the Girl Effect, the paper seeks to understand the construction of girls as both ideal victims and ideal agents of change, and to examine the implications of this. It suggests that this shift is intertwined with what we call ‘selfie humanitarianism’ in which helping others is intimately connected to entrepreneurial projects of the self, and is increasingly figured less in terms of redistribution or justice than in terms of a makeover of subjectivity for all concerned. The structure of the paper is as follows. First we consider the literature about the depoliticization of humanitarian campaigns in the context of neoliberalism and the growing significance of corporate actors in the world of international aid and disaster relief. Next we examine similar processes in the commodification and export of discourses of ‘girl power’. We then argue that these have come together in the emerging ‘girl powering of development’ (Koffman and Gill 2013), a cocktail of celebratory ‘girlafestoes’ and empowerment strategies often spread virally via social media; celebrity endorsements; and corporate branding which stress that ‘I matter and so does she’ and elide the differences between pop stars and CEO of multinational corporations on the one hand, and girls growing up poor in the global South on the other. Our paper focuses on contemporary examples from the Girl Up campaign. The paper argues that far from being ‘post’ girl power, global humanitarian and development discourses constitute a new and instensified focus upon the figure of the girl and a distinctive, neo-colonial, neoliberal and postfeminist articulation of girl power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Work in the cultural and creative fields is marked by stark and growing inequalities relating to gender, class, and race/ethnicity. Yet, the same industries are also characterised by an ethos that celebrates openness, egalitarianism, and meritocracy. This paper explores this paradox, focusing in particular on gender inequalities. It argues that there is a need to move beyond the standard conventional explanations for women's under-representation within the creative workforce, which point to female childbearing and childcare as central. Whilst not disputing the significance of motherhood to women's career trajectories, the paper suggests that the repeated focus on maternity is problematic and may close down other areas of potential investigation and critique. The paper suggests that three alternative foci would repay attention in understanding inequalities in the CCI. First, the new, mobile, subtle, and revitalised forms of sexism in circulation urgently require further examination. Secondly, the power of the dominant post feminist sensibility which, in suggesting that “all the battles have been won,” renders inequality increasingly difficult to voice or speak about, demands critique. Thirdly, the new forms of labouring subjectivity required to survive in the field of cultural work may themselves be contributing to the inequalities in the field, by favouring an entrepreneurial individualistic mode that disavows structural power relations. These three aspects of life in the field of cultural work merit further attention and suggest that gender inequality has a variety of different causes, not all located in women's childbearing abilities. Moreover, the paper argues that the very myth of egalitarianism at work in the CCI may itself be a key mechanism through which inequality is reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we focus on a new yet under-examined cultural phenomenon: the turn to 'Love your body' (LYB) discourses. Taking a feminist critical standpoint, we move away from an affirmative reading of LYB discourses and instead understand them as a postfeminist articulation of sexism. Our analysis identifies the key motifs of LYB discourses and contextualizes their dramatic proliferation over the last decade. Situated at the historical convergence of neoliberal governmentality, emotional capitalism, the growth of social media and commodity feminism, we trace how LYB discourses have emerged within the advertising genre to quickly saturate media more broadly. The article concludes with a critical assessment of LYB discourses that seeks to flesh out its distinctive contradictions and its ideological workings. In so doing, we will argue that far from representing a liberation from harmful beauty standards, LYB discourses are implicated in a deeper and more pernicious regulation of women that has shifted from bodily to psychic regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of a wider project concerned with the mediation of intimate relationships, this paper examines 'guy lit', 'lad lit' or 'postfeminist male romances'. The genre has been growing for the past two decades but has received little scholarly attention. Understood as an answer to 'chick lit', the genre is organised around the trials and tribulations of young to middle-aged men as they navigate the perils of growing up and looking for love. The analysis presented here is not concerned with literary merit or cultural value but rather looks sociologically at these popular texts, examining their constructions of masculinity, femininity and intimate gender relations. Drawing on an analysis of 25 novels, the paper explores the 'unheroic masculinity' depicted, in which men are presented as troubled, bumbling, hypochondriacal losers in counterpoint to women's (apparently effortless) success and accomplishments. Although the affable, self-deprecating (un)heroes of postfeminist male romances seem like unlikely ideological warriors, the paper argues that this patterned popular construction effects ideological work by contributing to a distinctively postfeminist sensibility in which male power is repudiated, while feminism is humorously 'sent up'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to locate academics within the sights of critical labour studies, and, in particular, the contemporary interest in cultural workers. Despite a growing literature about – and in response to – the transformation of the University there have been few attempts to study academics as workers. This paper argues that there are a number of parallels between academic work and the much more well-documented experiences of work in the cultural and creative industries. The paper examines the increasing experience of precariousness among academics, the intensification and extensification of work, and the new modes of surveillance in the academy and their affective impacts. The aim of the article is to build on the critical lexicon of studies of cultural labour in order to think about academic work as labour and to generate new ways of thinking about power, privilege and exploitation. It argues for the need for a psychosocial perspective that can understand the new labouring subjectivities in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores gender inequities and sexual double standards in teens’ digital image exchange, drawing on a UK qualitative research project on youth ‘sexting’. We develop a critique of ‘postfeminist’ media cultures, suggesting teen ‘sexting’ presents specific age and gender related contradictions: teen girls are called upon to produce particular forms of ‘sexy’ self display, yet face legal repercussions, moral condemnation and ‘slut shaming’ when they do so. We examine the production/circulation of gendered value and sexual morality via teens’ discussions of activities on Facebook and Blackberry. For instance, some boys accumulated ‘ratings’ by possessing and exchanging images of girls’ breasts, which operated as a form of currency and value. Girls, in contrast, largely discussed the taking, sharing or posting of such images as risky, potentially inciting blame and shame around sexual reputation (e.g. being called ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘sket’). The daily negotiations of these new digitally mediated, heterosexualised, classed and raced norms of performing teen feminine and masculine desirability are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist interrogation of the 'Girl Effect'. First coined by Nike inc, the 'Girl Effect' has become a key development discourse taken up by a wide range of governmental organisations, charities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). At its heart is the idea that 'girl power' is the best way to lift the developing world out of poverty. As well as a policy discourse, the Girl Effect entails an address to Western girls. Through a range of online and offline publicity campaigns, Western girls are invited to take up the cause of girls in the developing world and to lend their support through their use of social media, through fundraising and consumption. Drawing on a wide range of policy documents, media outputs and offline events, this paper explores the way in which the Girl Effect discourse articulates notions of girlhood, empowerment, development and the Global North/South divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2010, Gamu Nhengu, a Zimbabwean teenager, was ejected from the popular British reality TV talent show, The X Factor, on which she was a contestant. There was a public backlash to what many perceived as an unjust eviction. Within days, however, Gamu became the emblem of a contrasting kind of eviction campaign, when it was revealed that she and her family were living illegally in Britain. ‘Gamu-gate’, as the case was named in the press, animated a wave of public anger and resistance, as the stakes were raised from eviction from a TV talent show to deportation from the United Kingdom. In this essay we explore Gamu-gate as a way of thinking about postcolonial intimacies. We do this by setting out three key notions: mediated intimacy, postcolonial girlhood and migrant audibility. Our aim is to explore the political possibilities of the ‘affective surplus’ produced by ‘postcolonial girls’ – that is, how as ‘manufactured intimates’ they potentially create avenues for new forms of postcolonial migrant audibility, forms which might trouble the ‘current emergencies’ and neocolonial logic of neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines contemporary debates about the 'sexualisation of culture'. It sets out the context for claims that Western societies are becoming more sexualised and it explores a number of competing perspectives about sexualisation. It then looks in more detail at the nature of claims about sexualisation as they emerge from the different disciplinary perspectives of Psychology and Media and Cultural Studies, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of each, and raising criticisms of both. In a final discussion section, the article considers the usefulness or otherwise of the notion of 'sexualisation' as analytic category and points to the need to go beyond polarised positions. It advocates a psychosocial approach that takes seriously differences and power in considering the contemporary proliferation of 'sexualised' images, practices and media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the reflections of two academics on the blog Bitchy Jones's Diary (2006–2010), particularly its considerations of dominant femininity within the UK kink communities. Weaving together excerpts from the blog with our own dialogues, we consider the potentials of such a voice from within the communities in relation to more academic explorations. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between Bitchy Jones's arguments and our own understandings of limited sexualised femininities available within wider culture, the place of agency within these and the potentials for mutual recognition within both kinky and non-kinky relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]