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This article explores how femininities in Estonian pop music are co-constituted by global postfeminist trends as well as local post-soviet attitudes and eco-nationalist folkloric beliefs. It uses visual and textual discourse analysis to study content of popular music videos and interviews with Estonian preeminent pop stars, music experts, and producers. The results show that Estonian pop music femininities are tension-riddled, revealing an assembling of themes of shared struggle, triple shift femininity, feminist push-back, nature/strength, and success into a dialectical femininity of competition and solidarity. Instead of adopting one discourse and rejecting the other, these portrayals reveal remixing of dominant discourses, combining elements from more and less hegemonic femininities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has explored how the rise of new social media platforms affords new opportunities for public representations of femininity to varying effects. This paper contributes to this body of work drawing on videos posted on the social media platform, TikTok. We ask, how is womanhood being represented on the platform? To address this, we thematically analysed TikTok videos (n = 150) garnering the most attention from platform users that represent experiences unique to being “a woman” which share the sound “Oh how I love being a woman.” The following themes were identified: safety, beauty as self-care and feminine bonding, and authenticity as mess. Videos concerned with safety offer a critique of structural gendered norms by representing the lived realities ofg women’s management of a dangerous public sphere. Concurrently, there are contrasting representations of womanhood in the private spaces of bedrooms and bathrooms. Feminine connection and enjoyment via beauty rituals celebrate a retreat into the private sphere, whilst mess signifies a particularly authentic performance of femininity. We contend that these representations may indicate a concerning trend in post-feminist culture where the public/private binary is reinforced, and structural gendered inequities are acknowledged yet perceived as inherent and unchanging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of female puppeteers in cultural diplomacy through the performing arts of wayang skin in Central Java. Wayang leather, which has been recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage, functions as a medium of cultural communication rich in educational, moral, and historical values. The role of female puppeteers, despite facing patriarchal challenges, is increasingly growing thanks to the use of digital technology such as social media. This study uses a qualitative approach with a case study method, using interviews, observations, and documentation analysis to understand the contribution of female puppeteers in promoting Indonesian culture at the global level. The results show that female puppeteers not only maintain traditional arts, but also introduce new, more inclusive narratives in cultural diplomacy. Through platforms such as YouTube, female puppeteers are able to reach global audiences, strengthen Indonesia's positive image, and influence international perceptions of gender equality in art and culture. This study enriches the literature on cultural diplomacy by highlighting the power of femininity as soft power in international relations, especially in facing the challenges of modernization and cultural globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies on the popular icon Barbie have focused on the representation of the character Ken. This study aims to investigate the extent of masculinity employed in Greta Gerwig's blockbuster picture Barbie (2023). I follow the film's use of post-feminist language to critique hegemonic masculinity's symbols and discuss theoretical issues such as gender identity crises and gender performativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how shaonügan, a media-driven aesthetic of womanhood, is practiced and promoted in contemporary China through a case study of a well-received woman-themed talent show. This article first conceptualizes shaonügan in postfeminist discourses to unpack how a narrowly-constrained female beauty ideal paradoxically both empowers and disciplines women who embrace normatively feminine pursuits in a neoliberal consumer culture. This article then examines how shaonügan is constructed and perpetuated by the celebrity sisters through their bodily performance of girlish cuteness and relentless pursuit of eternal youth in the show. Ultimately, the postfeminist beauty norm embodied by the celebrity sisters rearticulates a heteropatriarchal definition of female beauty and readdresses women's subjectivities in neoliberal consumerism that is further complicated and enhanced by media techniques in contemporary Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spice Girls were a unique pop phenomenon, promoting feminist ideology while being dismissed as proponents of postfeminism and positioned as collaborators with the patriarchy. Drawing on music videos the band released during 1997, this article suggests that the band's queer choices, regarding the spice personas the band adopted, were overlooked. This article explores the spice personas presentation of femme embodiments using drag: subverting notions of femininity as natural and monolithic, and resisting femininity as ubiquitously disempowering. By highlighting the heterosexual bias and anti-sex undertones in postfeminism, this analysis generates a multifaceted reading of popular femme performances as female-to-femme drag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001, the film Legally Blonde was released into a pop cultural landscape saturated with the Spice Girls' brand of feminism-lite and postfeminist media texts like Sex and the City (1998–2004). With its firm hold on "girlie" feminism, Legally Blonde is postfeminist — but not post-femme. I extend the claim that femme theory can be located in low-cultural spaces and texts to understand the "chick flick" as another possible site of femme theory. I argue that Legally Blonde demonstrates that femme resistance can be located in the success of femininity, rather than only in its failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist analyses of postfeminism too often abject femininity, rendering spectacular femininity as a masquerade that endears women to heterosexual men. Moving into the era of popular feminism, feminist analyses have yet to renegotiate this abjection of femininity, often eclipsing the potential for resistance in favor of highlighting the pernicious effects of capitalism. Analyzing vignettes from The Bold Type (2017–2021), this research draws on femme theory to map an analytical framework that reinterprets spectacular femininity, developing strategies for critical analyses that can recognize fem(me)inine resistance within a landscape that commodifies femininity and feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly popular 'feminine spiritualities' urge women to foster personal transformation and social change through spiritual empowerment and healing of 'the feminine'. However, in spite of feminist undertones, feminism is rarely explicitly evoked, and is often even rejected. Gender scholars have debated over the ambivalent feminism of contemporary spiritualities, which are readily seen as closer to postfeminist rather than feminist ideals, or framed as a form of old-fashioned cultural feminism. While some recent analyses do explore the feminist potential of feminine spiritualities in more positive terms, the debates often lack practitioner perspectives on feminism and deeper considerations of the practitioners' own self-definitions. Based on ethnographic interview material across Finnish and Anglo-American contexts, this article explores how adherents of feminine spirituality imagine feminism, and whether they consider their spirituality to be feminist or not and why. I argue that while practitioners hold varying, often ambiguous positions in relation to feminism, the narratives iterate shared themes that render feminism and feminine spirituality as incompatible: an emphasis on femininity over feminism, and a focus on spirituality instead of politics. Furthermore, practitioners critique mainstream feminism for being too secular, while often simultaneously agreeing with feminist criticisms of both cultural feminist and postfeminist ideals. I suggest that failing to take the voices of spiritual women into account prevents constructive dialogue and solidarity among secular and spiritual feminists as well as non-feminist women, and offers little room for emerging postsecular feminist identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on analyzing Indian writer Advaita Kala's debut novel Almost Single from two perspectives: that of the typical Indian woman who has been emancipated by feminism's achievements and that of the intersection of postfeminism and queer theory. The novel is based on the ideology of postfeminism, a theoretical framework that affords women the agency to embody both femininity and attractiveness while simultaneously embracing feminist principles. This emerging phenomenon is a novel manifestation of empowerment, tailored to the specific socio-cultural milieu of the present era. The foundations of this emerging feminism encompass principles such as autonomy, personal agency, the pursuit of sexual gratification, the influence of consumerism, the realm of fashion, the blending of diverse cultural influences, the use of humor, and the revitalized emphasis on the female physique. With its focus on themes of sexuality, female solidarity, independence, and the pursuit of romantic relationships, the novel seeks to challenge conventional gender norms by portraying a typical urban single woman and her companions. This article undertakes an examination of the extent to which the characters exercise agency in their personal lives, sexuality, actions, and decisions, while also exploring the influence of the desires of modern Indian women on the evolving concept of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically examines post-feminism through a 50-year analysis of car advertising targeted at women in Chile. It explores feminism's evolving significance in media culture, aiming to establish a comparative framework to identify changes and consistencies in feminist-themed media discourses over different periods. Using a qualitative approach, we analyzed 74 ads from a women's magazine from 1967 to 2021. The results reveal changing gender role discourses, showing a nuanced interplay between progressive components and neo-conservative principles across historical periods. The evolution of female-focused advertising within post-feminist narratives depicts portrayals of women isolated or alongside family, highlighting individuality but implying limited representations of collective empowerment. The findings underscore the need to analyze media messages aimed at women in shifting temporal contexts. We argue that analytical frameworks must critically assess the progression, or lack thereof, in women's (misleading) emancipation amidst the transitions from commodity feminism to post-feminism and femvertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine portrayals of digital media and technology in Barbie, analysing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) symbolism in conjunction with the film's thematic commentaries on gender and contemporary affects. I draw my theoretical framework from Tracey Mollet's conceptualisation of twenty-first-century American nostalgia and Donna Haraway's iconic discussion of the cyborg, tracing all appearances of digital screens and devices, media franchises, computer software and virtual platforms in the film. I demonstrate that Barbie consistently associates ICT with toxic masculinity and corruptive futures, while disassociating desirable feminine spaces and interactions from technological artifacts and their use. This gendered representation of technology is contextualised within two competing nostalgias portrayed in the film: a hyperfeminine, commercialised girlhood and a masculine, nationalist and patriotic past. Analysing the strategic placement of digital ICT across the film's settings – Barbie Land, the Real World and Kendom – I illuminate the paradoxical relationship between the film's selectively feminist message and its dichotomous portrayal of technology. This case highlights the challenges of portraying feminism without stakes in popular culture, evoking Sarah Banet-Weiser's observations of neoliberal girl-power narratives in the guise of feminism. Ultimately, I argue that the portrayal of technology in Barbie reinforces biological essentialism, revitalising archaic logics which fixate on the physical gendered body as the motivator for feminist solidarity; moreover, it overlooks the importance of digital spaces in feminist praxis and theory, complicating its status as a pop feminist film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting a walkthrough of the game application, participant observation of online fan communities, and a narrative analysis of storylines, this study seeks to understand how local female-orientated love simulation games re-calibrate Western feminist ideologies with/through constructions of romantic love. This study argues that with the development and backlash of feminist ideologies and neo-liberal economic restructuring in post-socialist China, female-oriented love simulation games now present what I coin “Platformed Post-Feminist Negotiation” (hereafter PPN). First, the PRP transplants Western post-feminism to veil the latent and toxic consumerism with the rhetoric of women’s empowerment. Second, the PPN inherits Chinese feminism’s dynamic negotiation with Confucian ideals and the conservative state ideology. While compromising with dominant ideologies to escape from China’s stringent digital censorship, game developers have aligned with players to carry out micro, covert, and indirect resistance to protecting female sexual freedom. Third, the PPN refers to how digital games are platformed as technical tools to manufacture a variant post-feminism that can be defined as empowering women, ignoring structural gender inequalities, and negotiating with state censorship. This study contributes to Chinese digital games’ post-feminist narrative patterns and how contemporary post-feminism appropriates technological affordances in an increasingly platformed society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how Chinese female wanghongs on Douyin self-frame their image and identity, and how interactions between wanghongs and their followers co-frame the image of contemporary female Internet celebrities. We discovered that the four dominant self-frames of wanghongs are beauty, talent, personality traits, and gender expression through a qualitative coding analysis of the selected 30 female wanghongs' posts and media interview narratives, along with viewer comments. Besides, we found that the co-framing of influencers and fans as a collective strategy assists women in breaking the aesthetic framework of traditional patriarchal culture. Furthermore, when conflicts arise between framing actors like wanghongs, fans, media, and political parties, female wanghongs tend to respond with resistance or compromise. We argue that examining the identity framing process of female wanghongs on social media can reflect the dilemma that Chinese feminists face when attempting to highlight women's accomplishments in multiple roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In China, the postnatal bodily experiences of urban white-collar women intricately relate to the tradition of “doing the month” (DTM). The DTM guidelines serve a dual purpose: they aid women in recuperating from postnatal frailty and act as cultural restrictions that govern women’s bodies as bearers of fertility for patrilineal families. This research delves into the postnatal embodied practices of white-collar Chinese women and their articulations of subjectivity during DTM. The findings enrich the theory of embodiment with empirical materials in terms of embodied cultural practice by illustrating how women exhibit embodied subjectivity at the intersections of traditional, modern, and gendered discourses. The findings reveal the affirmative bodily practices of women we interviewed: (i) They astutely employ both beneficial DTM regulations and non-DTM knowledge to support their own body’s recovery. They also procure professional services for enhanced recovery. (ii) They express embodied subjectivity during postnatal breastfeeding, which serves as a way to adapt to motherhood. (iii) From the viewpoint of social relations, mothers can devise coping mechanisms to assert agency during interactions with primary family members concerning breastfeeding and infant care. These findings transcend the literature on women’s body–self relations and extend to the examination of body–self–family relations from a postfeminist standpoint, thereby enriching embodiment theory by suggesting that cultural values and disciplines shape and inform the expression of subjectivity through the body–mind connection during embodied practices.

This article employs a critical postfeminist lens to examine experiences and perceptions of motherhood and climbing, with a focus on negotiating childcare and risk. Drawing on interview data, I consider gendered societal pressures placed on mothers who participate in climbing. I argue that although climbing is a site that may facilitate agency and resistance to pressures, mothers' experiences of climbing are varied, and women remain constrained by societal expectations. This article contributes towards the growing body of literature considering women's experiences in climbing. Findings on experiences of motherhood and climbing may be transferable or comparable when thinking about experiences of motherhood in other lifestyle activities, particularly those that involve risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Purpose: This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers' collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities. Design/methodology/approach: The community of "presenteers" is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe's defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe's enactments. Findings: Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism. Research limitations/implications: The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of "presenteering" and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market. Originality/value: The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of "presenteering" and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Red Pill adherents believe "feminist doctrines" in society deprive men and women of being their natural selves, disrupting heterosexual relationships in consequence. Research on manosphere groups generally focuses on men's involvement, but women participate in these movements too. One such form of participation is the RedPillWomen subreddit ("r/RPW" in reddit jargon). Hegemonic femininity remains an understudied component of the manosphere. Using a qualitative critical thematic analysis, 127 texts are analyzed to establish what constitutes hegemonic femininity on the r/RPW according to moderators and how this is enacted and maintained by Subreddit members. It is found that moderator texts use discourses of evolutionary psychology, neoliberalism, and anti-feminism to construct a local postfeminist femininity that is both subordinate to men as well as highly entrepreneurial. Subreddit-member posts showed how this femininity is enacted and maintained, demonstrating the responsibility women feel in transforming both the physical and psychological. Peer-surveillance served to reach consent on group norms, correct those who deviate from these norms, and create boundaries between RedPillWomen and other women. This research demonstrated how postfeminist sensibilities in the manosphere shape the articulation of various local hegemonic femininities that both contrast and parallel each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent trends toward introducing female characters with increasingly active roles in video games, there is still a noticeable conservatism regarding shaping central female protagonists in Ubisoft’s franchises. However, in Assassin’s Creed Origins, the trajectories of the protagonists, Bayek and Aya, are as different as possible. While Bayek’s gamic narratives are centered on family values aimed at avenging the death of his dead son, Aya’s story and scholarly origins revolve around direct cooperation with elite politicians like Cleopatra to achieve the same purpose. I show that Aya embodies hegemonic femininity based on her social location, not only in class and race but also in gender as a source of power superior to the masculinity of her husband, Bayek (the “intersectional domination” framework). Subsequently, analyzing relevant comments on Reddit, I argue that the ambivalent reactions to Aya’s femininity coincide with a postfeminist playerbase, with ambiguous and often contradictory attitudes towards Aya’s better intersectional location. Considering digitally mediated misogynist tensions exemplified by #Gamergate and other viralized communities via Reddit, I explore the inequalities between the two characters in Assassin’s Creed using a postfeminist lens and highlight potential implications for video games and gender studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the release of the singles “You Need to Calm Down” and “The Man” in 2019 and 2020, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift positioned herself as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and a feminist artist. Swift’s longstanding pursuit of authenticity manifested as an attempt to be taken seriously as a political actor. “You Need to Calm Down” equates Swift’s own position as a controversial celebrity with structural homophobia while “The Man” is a neoliberal feminist manifesto that foregrounds dominance as feminist progress without examination of class- and race-based oppression. These examples illustrate the limitations of celebrity activism and allyship and the commodification of activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how regret is mobilized within a postfeminist cultural context, taking the 2007 BBC film Miss Austen Regrets (dir. Jeremy Lovering, UK) as its case study. The article proposes that what is regretted in postfeminist culture speaks to the values and tensions that underpin this cultural context and explores how the expression or experience of regret is treated as proof of women's failures of subjectivity and decision-making. Through examining three of the main characters — Jane Austen, Cassandra Austen, and Fanny Austen Knight — and their interactions with regret, this article argues that both normative femininity and feminist perspectives are key sites where notions of "success" and "failure" are negotiated and where the risks for making the "wrong decision" as a postfeminist subject are highest. Through exploring femininity, individualism, and relationality via regret, the article argues that regret offers a new perspective on understanding the affective register of postfeminism. Furthermore, the article suggests that expressions of regret simultaneously shore up conservative postfeminist logics regarding normative femininity and individualism, while also making visible and offering feminist critiques of structural inequalities and relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Girl crush" is a relatively new genre in South Korean pop music (hereafter "K-pop"). Unlike the stereotypes of female idols being cute and submissive, idols of the "girl crush" genre usually show provocative "girl power," challenging the patriarchy by incorporating feminist messages in their works. In March 2022, a girl group (G)I-DLE released a song entitled Tomboy, which went viral for its outrageous music video delivering a bold statement about women being independent, fearless, and abandoning toxic heterosexual relationships. This study conducts a social semiotic analysis of Tomboy with a postfeminist lens and comes up with three findings: first, the music video of Tomboy has shown a postfeminist sensibility by exhibiting an entanglement of feminism and antifeminism; second, Tomboy has tackled a queered theme by focusing on women's collective empowerment and sisterhood against patriarchy; third, "girl crush" has revealed the limitations of celebrity feminism, making the relationship between "girl crush's" success and feminism questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the romantic situation comedy program The Mindy Project as a conventional site where popular discourse about healthism appears. Despite a woman of color as the lead actor in the postfeminist television series, the rhetorics of healthism in The Mindy Project nevertheless strengthen postfeminist thinking and disguise dominant logics of racism and sexism. The series moralizes health to "other" women of color using three rhetorical strategies: (1) the representation of model minority women vis-à-vis health, (2) the white savior narrative in an era of healthism, and (3) the gendered/raced nature of negative role modeling. Since healthist rhetorics uphold Dr. Mindy Lahiri as both a threat to and reinforcer of white supremacist and anti-Asian ideology, this analysis has important implications for how women of color perceive themselves in relation to their health choices. The essay also demonstrates how healthism in The Mindy Project invites new considerations of the model minority trope that is embodied by Asian and Asian American television characters acting in medical professional roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses efforts to re-integrate feminist classroom perspectives and pedagogies within the undergraduate geography curriculum at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. As 'feminist educators' of this recently revised programme, we identify the mounting hegemony of postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies as key contextual challenges to our endeavour, coupled with the legacy of Dutch geography as a pragmatic, applied discipline. By zooming in on and collectively reflecting on our roles and practices in the courses we coordinate and teach, we delineate three strategies worth pursuing to achieve a feminist teaching agenda under the current political-institutional climate. The proposed strategies of valuing lived experiences, embodied immersive epistemologies, and partial local knowledges, are rooted in the main concerns of feminist-inspired research and help create and cultivate situated moments of connection, reflection, and learning. While these strategies are certainly not capable of subverting neoliberal and postfeminist tendencies on their own, we contend that they can be useful building blocks for feminist inspired teaching agendas beyond our discipline as they help expose traditional power hierarchies within and outside the classroom, as well as underscore the societal relevance of feminist thinking in times of increased social polarisation and reactionary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the crime genre, women who kill are provided with motivations that echo points of tension in society, killing to gain or retain something necessary for the successful life that they believe they cannot attain using any other method. The recent appearance of the image of postfeminist success, as outlined by Angela McRobbie, as a motive for murder in the novels of Ann Cleeves and Val McDermid is significant as it indicates a critical engagement with the neoliberal expectation that women need to achieve the postfeminist image of success to reach a feminine version of the good life. This article will examine how the image of postfeminist success becomes a motive for murder in Cleeves's and McDermid's novels, highlighting societal concerns over the impact on women of the expectations of the postfeminist image of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

cThe glamour industry is an intersection where female empowerment parallels female objectification. The industry offers individuals an exclusive platform for exploring their inner beauty, owning their gender, and having financial independence. However, it has set many unrealistic beauty standards and myths, which the models constantly strive to achieve. This compels them to succumb to beauty demands, thus increasing the rates of plastic surgery and fat loss treatments. Capitalist giants take advantage of the tension between natural and ideal beauty, making huge profits out of the mental game. The middle ground is to strategically appropriate these beauty standards and femininity in favour of women to accomplish the more prominent targets of financial independence, social status, and individual identity. The present paper analyses the shift in women's strategy with reference to Manjima Bhattacharjya's Mannequins, which voice the emergence of a new generation of working women in India's glamour industry. This study explores how a woman's journey of empowerment in the Indian fashion industry diverts into a continuous process of commodification, obsession, and exploitation. It further attempts to view the platform of the glamour industry as a possible opportunity for women to strategically unite, own, and rule the social system, followed by analysing the present situation of the industry through a postfeminist lens. Finally, it connects how capitalist industries trigger this toxic version of beauty standards, which overshadows the immense opportunities that the glamour industry offers to women in both urban and global spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the postfeminist context, discourses of time panic and time scarcity are used to generate a culture of anxiety that justifies gender traditionalism. Food blogs offer unique insights into the ways that these postfeminist discourses of temporality and labour are negotiated in the daily, lived experiences of individual women. I draw on a sample of 19 Saveur Award-nominated food blogs to explore how they respond to concepts of time panic and time scarcity through discussions and depictions of women’s work, retreatism, and postfeminist subjectivity. I perform a thematic analysis in conjunction with an architectural analysis of food blogs’ database narratives to discuss how postfeminist time scarcity—and its attendant anxieties—are rejected through fantasised depictions of domesticity as a creative pursuit and digital entrepreneurialism as an empowering endeavour. While the reading of such fantasised representations is ultimately ambivalent, particularly given the diversity of ways an audience may respond to these positionalities, I find that food blogs tend to reinforce the focus on the individual’s resilience, resourcefulness, and responsibility to make correct choices and resolve postfeminist contradictions, particularly through the affective management of food work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the representation of women in corporate leadership is a key postfeminist project. Postfeminism—or the integration of women's empowerment and neoliberalism in the decades following the Women's Movement—has shaped the experience of Australian women in corporate leadership roles since the 1990s. As such, while efforts to improve the number of women in leadership have yielded admirable progress, achieving sustainable improvements in corporate diversity requires attending to collective postfeminist scripts. In order to better understand the global and local features of Australian postfeminism, this article analyses “Corporate Woman,” a mainstream newspaper column published regularly by the Australian Financial Review between 1988 and 1998. It finds that similar political and economic systems, and feminist histories, encouraged Australian postfeminism to adopt many core transnational tenets. At the same time, aspects of Australia's national history and identity, including egalitarianism, emphasis on nuclear families, and context of major economic change, contributed to localism in postfeminism's expression. This expands our understanding of postfeminism, and can help empower corporate women by uncovering the collective cognitive maps that have guided policy interventions, and women's lived experiences in corporate leadership roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDrawing upon Feminist Standpoint Theory and interviews with 25 rural women from Northwest China, this study explores the standpoints of marginalised rural women on the trendy notion of female empowerment in Chinese consumer culture. The finding reveals that Chinese rural women are no longer excluded from the consumer feminist joy associated primarily with their Western and urban counterparts. While commodified feminist concepts tend to imply liberal ideals, its rural manifestation does not appear to evoke feminist sentiments or knowingness of feminist consciousness among rural women, but rather to collude with local patriarchy. Due to structural inequalities at both global and local levels, the prevalence of ‘female empowerment’ subtly exacerbates bodily distinctions and social stratification among various groups of women through consumer markets and digital media, reflecting the marginalisation of working-class rural women in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, organizations aiming to empower women and girls to participate in STEM have proliferated. While the issue of gender inequality in STEM is well documented, little is known about the feminist appeals these organizations make to girls. This study analyses the websites of five Australian ‘women in tech’ organizations to understand how they frame and respond to the problem of gender inequality, and what feminist sentiments they reflect. Combining a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, 2007) with Myers et al. (2019) concept of STEMinism, we propose a ‘STEMinist sensibility’ to interpret the ways in which gender issues and subjects are represented on STEM initiative websites. We identify four themes characterizing a STEMinist sensibility: 1) acknowledging the problem and promoting solutions to gender inequality, 2) a focus on tech girls as problem solvers, 3) cultivating community and connection for success, and 4) playing with girlification. We show how websites acknowledge the structural impediments women and girls face, yet simultaneously represent girls as both problematic and as problem-solvers in a way that renders them individually responsible for resolving the problems arising from gender inequality in their fields. These findings have implications for organizations promoting STEM initiatives to women and girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critical-rhetorical analysis of women’s uniform activism that went viral surrounding the 2020 Olympic Games (held in 2021), this article builds on existing feminist scholarship regarding the ideological correspondence of postfeminism and popular feminism within gendered economies of visibility. By giving primacy to the notion of personal choice, women activist athletes (and the media coverage of them) employed postfeminist discursive practices in service of a popular feminist agenda. While the foregrounding of “choice” stretched the reach of their feminism, allowing it to shapeshift to please a variety of audiences and gain notice, its deployment also functioned to undermine their political commitments. Presenting the concept of “elastic feminism” to characterize this tension, this essay explores the power and pitfalls of prioritizing the rhetorically flexible logics of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study featured a survey of 32 LPGA athletes and follow-up interviews. We employed a postfeminist critique, highlighting the contradictions of modern feminism in a patriarchal, capitalist society. Findings reflected the athletes' conflicting views on their place in the sports world. They noted the hegemonic masculinity that has always existed in sports and media coverage of sports, but some viewed this as a problem for individual women rather than for the LPGA collectively. Some respondents said the LPGA did not need to take action as a whole, when such action clearly would benefit them. Some accepted women's bodies as a commodity to be traded in the sports marketplace. Some responses revealed ugly racism toward Asian players. Overall, the women's words raised questions and reflections on how to respond to structural sexism in sports, why the women believe they are treated unequally to men, and how to improve media coverage of women's golf by humanizing players. We also make recommendations on how an intersectional approach to the sport might improve its revenue, media treatment, and quell racist attitudes. We acknowledge that real change will require institutional responses to these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between media, gender, and sexuality, particularly in the context of education. It argues that the media can be a valuable source of information for young people to learn about sexualities and affective relationships, especially since traditional schooling often focuses on the risks rather than the complexities and diversity of these topics. The article includes five studies that examine different aspects of this relationship, including the use of fiction films as tools for queer pedagogies, the portrayal of gay male stereotypes in video-on-demand series, the informal learning of gender roles on TikTok, the spread of anti-feminist and anti-LGBTIQ+ discourse on social media, and the role of affect in understanding representations of sexuality in postfeminist television series. The studies highlight the potential of media as educational tools and the need to address inequalities and violence related to gender and sexualities in society. [Extracted from the article]

This study delves into the emergent and polarising representations of women on social media by analysing the issue of #StayAtHomeGirlfriends (SAHGF) profiles on TikTok. These profiles depict young women showcasing their domestic lives, emphasising activities such as cooking, cleaning, relaxing, meditating and exercising while being financially supported by their partners. The SAHGF trend emerged on TikTok in 2022 and received over 328.3 million views in one year. The research method involved a thematic analysis of three TikTok SAHGF case studies from different social contexts, focusing on both the creators' self-representations and the audience's reception, as reflected in user comments. The findings point to a contradictory relationship with instances of postfeminism and popular feminism, showing the use of social media as gender learning environments, where digital creators become informal educators transmitting norms, values and lifestyles, but also 'triggers' for dialogue and critical discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a theoretical exploration of the nuanced connections between the notion of affect and representations of sexuality in postfeminist television series. Drawing on gender studies, media studies and affect theory, it addresses the manifestation of postfeminist ideals in popular media and how it shapes the audience's understanding of gender and sexuality, acknowledging the complex negotiation of sexual identities, and emphasising the role of affective experiences in viewer engagement and interpretation of sexual scripts. Contributing to the ongoing dialogue on feminism, media, and affect theory, the study theoretically examines the affective dimensions of postfeminist learning to enhance comprehension of emotional responses to depictions of sex on contemporary television, using the series Fleabag as an illustrative example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nordic life vlogs are a popular genre among avid watchers of YouTube influencers across East Asia. The vlogs showcase "a slice of life" content, documenting the simple living, daily routines, beautiful landscapes, cultural festivals, and everyday norms of what it is like to live in the Nordic region. While there are many Nordic life vloggers, in this article, we focus on a subset: young immigrant women from Japan and South Korea living in the Nordics. By attending to the genre, content, and interactions between vloggers and viewers, we explore how female East Asian YouTube vloggers who have immigrated to Nordic countries construct fantasised and fantastical narratives around Nordic imaginaries. The discussion of multifaceted layers of Nordic imaginaries explains how Nordic life vlogs serve as a platform for young East Asian women to project their desire for a better life and cultivate subtle resilience at the juncture of postfeminism and postcolonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the postnatal bodily experiences of urban white-collar women intricately relate to the tradition of "doing the month" (DTM). The DTM guidelines serve a dual purpose: they aid women in recuperating from postnatal frailty and act as cultural restrictions that govern women's bodies as bearers of fertility for patrilineal families. This research delves into the postnatal embodied practices of white-collar Chinese women and their articulations of subjectivity during DTM. The findings enrich the theory of embodiment with empirical materials in terms of embodied cultural practice by illustrating how women exhibit embodied subjectivity at the intersections of traditional, modern, and gendered discourses. The findings reveal the affirmative bodily practices of women we interviewed: (i) They astutely employ both beneficial DTM regulations and non-DTM knowledge to support their own body's recovery. They also procure professional services for enhanced recovery. (ii) They express embodied subjectivity during postnatal breastfeeding, which serves as a way to adapt to motherhood. (iii) From the viewpoint of social relations, mothers can devise coping mechanisms to assert agency during interactions with primary family members concerning breastfeeding and infant care. These findings transcend the literature on women's body–self relations and extend to the examination of body–self–family relations from a postfeminist standpoint, thereby enriching embodiment theory by suggesting that cultural values and disciplines shape and inform the expression of subjectivity through the body–mind connection during embodied practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine online news media coverage of the Australia–New Zealand joint bid to host the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. Following neoliberal feminist theory and a postfeminist framework, the meanings and discourses of women's empowerment produced in, and disseminated by, Australia and New Zealand's popular online news media were explored. A content analysis was used to examine 77 domestic online news media articles published in response to the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup bid and hosting announcement. The findings revealed that the popular online news media centered on three themes: opportunities for women and girls in sport, legacy outcomes, and commercial benefits. However, there was a clear lack of critical engagement from the news media over the bid's initiatives, claims, and promises. Only 2.5% of all online news media coverage engaged in meaningful discussion, analysis, and critique of the purported social and economic impacts of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. This study raises critical questions about the role of Australian and New Zealand (sport) media in (a) serving as a prominent forum through which the As One 2023 bid committee could circulate strategically crafted, preferred narratives regarding the event's legacies and impacts to manufacture consent and public support for event hosting and (b) propagating a postfeminist celebration of women's sport mega events that uncritically circulates specious claims of women's empowerment, participation growth, and commercial benefits of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores mainstream print media depictions of women’s work during COVID-19 and associated lockdowns in India. Specifically, it aims to understand perceptions of educated upper- and middle-class women regarding remote working arrangements during the pandemic. It delineates two broad themes that emerge from an analysis of selected articles in four national dailies; first, many women regarded these arrangements as mutually beneficial for women employees as well as their workplaces, and its counternarrative characterised by women having to juggle paid and care work with little support from the family, market or state. The paper then unpacks the arrangement of work from home that emerges in the media analysis and offers a critique of the simplistic and binary understanding of flexibility, choice, and agency sustained by the neoliberal and postfeminist framing of pandemic work arrangements. Our analysis provides a feminist critique of these dominant perceptions that invisibilise the complexity and heterogeneity embedded within women’s experiences. Finally, the paper reiterates the urgent need to consider the structural factors that undermine gender equality across work and home; and pushes for a rethink of neoliberal and postfeminist notions of ‘flexibility’, ‘choice’ and ‘agency’ through the intersecting lenses of gender, labour, care work, and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian premiered in 2017, adding a makeover show to the Kardashians’ already extensive media portfolio. This article contextualises the series in feminist media scholarship on postfeminism, neoliberalism and makeover TV. It argues that Revenge Body’s depiction of “experts” as potential sites of intimacy that facilitate inner and outer transformation furthers a postfeminist over-relation between bodily change and emotional wellbeing. By considering the show’s presentation of “experts” – both Kardashian and otherwise—this article contends that the bespoke matching of trainer and trainee plays into neoliberal conceptions of contemporary citizenship where subjects are instructed to transform and manage their own body in relation to the hegemonic expectations of their immediate social circle. Through various means, the series presents holistic lifestyle change as achievable through obedience, self-surveillance, and constant performative resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chetan Bhagat's One Indian Girl stands as a compelling text that warrants closer examination in the context of contemporary literature and feminist discourse. This research article embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the novel, with a particular focus on its representation of postfeminist culture and its intricate intersections with global connections. The study employs a multifaceted approach, incorporating textual analysis, feminist literary theory, and cultural studies to scrutinize the protagonist's journey and choices. It delves into the complexities of postfeminism in the Indian context, investigating how the character's experiences, aspirations, and dilemmas mirror the evolving landscape of gender roles and identity in contemporary India. Furthermore, the research also explores the global dimensions of the novel, elucidating how the protagonist's transnational experiences shape her perception of self and gender dynamics. It investigates how globalization, migration, and multicultural encounters influence her agency, identity, and empowerment. This facet of the analysis uncovers the intricate interplay between the local and the global in shaping the character's life choices and worldview. This study aims to contribute to the broader discourse on postfeminism, globalization, and literature by offering a nuanced examination of One Indian Girl. The research investigates the novel's resonance with contemporary issues, cultural sensibilities, and transnational narratives, ultimately revealing the rich complexities that lie within its pages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visibility is a requirement of neoliberal postfeminist girlhood and social media is often attributed with the capacity to provide disabled young women with visibility that they lack elsewhere. While some attention has been paid to the intersections of gender and disability through the self-presentations of disabled young women who are known as disabled content creators, such as bloggers and YouTubers, this article goes beyond this to examine how disabled young women represent themselves on social media as part of their everyday practices. Using a combination of discursive textual analysis of Twitter and Instagram accounts and semi-structured interviews with five disabled young women, I explore how affordances such as Twitter retweets play a key role in how disabled young women navigate their visibility online as part of their self-presentation practices. I argue that visibility is potentially risky and disabled young women's social media use is shaped by concerns about harassment and questions about the 'legitimacy' of their disabled identities that operate at the intersections of gender, disability and race, stemming from their experiences of 'systemic disbelief'. Finally, I situate these self-representation practices within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses data from interviews with young girls (13-23) of African descent and is part of our larger research programme, entitled 'AfroGreek Cultures in Athens'. In it we wish to offer an exploratory mapping of African women's and girls' lived experiences in Greece. Given that women of colour usually have to wrestle with derogatory assumptions and stereotypes about their character and identity, in order to preserve their true selves and secure recognition as citizens, we would like to investigate the everyday practices and experiences of African teenage girlhood in Greece. What can African teenage girls tell us about how they see themselves within Greek society and their own community? To what extent certain patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies and power relationships about sexuality, religion, family, self-regulation, popular culture, are (unwittingly) internalized, and passed on to the next generation of young African girls in Greece? For the purposes of this article, we focus on how our participants accounted for the constructions of femininity within the African community; technologies of sexiness; managing one's sexual conduct; and parental control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay discusses three scholarly books that analyze the portrayal of complex and disruptive women in television. The books aim to correct the focus on male antiheroes in "prestige" or "quality" television and provide detailed analyses of series featuring difficult female characters. The first book, "Difficult Women on Television Drama" by Isabel Pinedo, examines international TV series that challenge traditional expectations of femininity. Pinedo argues that female creative control is crucial for the development of feminist-themed programming. The second book, "Woman Up" by Julia Havas, focuses on four US programs that disrupt postfeminist representation and foreground gender politics. Havas explores how these shows innovate television aesthetics and comment on the gendered politics of the industry. Overall, these books offer unique insights into the portrayal of women in contemporary television and highlight the importance of diverse perspectives and experiences. [Extracted from the article]

The article aims to present English-language research on YA fantasy and speculative fiction conducted from a feminist perspective. The author assumes that YA literature contributes to shaping the socio-cultural constructions of girlhood and femininity; at the same time, feminist criticism allows us to describe and revise the mechanisms and beliefs that fund this literary influence. The review covers 21st-century research, i.e., referring to phenomena and concepts in feminism as well as YA fantasy and speculative fiction that are relatively new or have gained importance in the last two decades. As fantasy is an element of contemporary popular culture’s landscape, the research presentation begins with a recapitulation of several reflections on the latter. Then, as a context for the next part, trends in English-language feminist research on literature for young people are outlined. Finally, the directions of considerations on YA fantasy and speculative fiction from a feminist perspective are presented, including postfeminism, the fourth wave of feminism, and posthuman feminism. A characteristic feature of the research discussed was the consideration of YA literature as a diagnosis of reality and the search for, on the one hand, the missionary nature of the works and, on the other hand, their socially harmful aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main topic in the article is a question about the place and role of literature and different technics of interpretation, practiced by the readers. In the focus of the study are 4 novels very popular and representative about Bulgarian mass literature - and especially - about chick lit. The novels as Za edna nosht, Yoga, lyubov i drugi mitove, Triumfat na kuchkite, Triumfat na kuchkite (Prodalzhenieto) provoke wide discussions in social networks. A new term - the social resemblance principle - is forged and used to explain the communicative position of big fan groups of readers, which in the process of literary texts explanation recognize chick lit novels as a description of reality. From that position they argue with the critically oriented readers, raising up fictional models to socially and moral valid norms in the battles for cultural categories interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the representation of female athletes in Gatorade's Sister in Sweat (2019) and Adidas' Reimagine Sport (2020) Femvertising campaigns. Adopting a critical feminist lens, this study examined verbal and visual strategies and the post-feminist elements that sports brands apply to communicate female-empowering messages. Guided by Fairclough's framework of critical discourse analysis and Kress and van Leeuwen's visual grammar, a multimodal critical discourse analysis was conducted to analyze verbal–visual strategies and semiotic resources used to construct/challenge the gender relations in sports. Also, following Gill's post-feminist media culture, recurring themes that characterize female athlete representation are identified. These themes include femininity as a bodily preoccupation, sexualization, individualism and choice, self-surveillance, and intersectionality. Results reveal that, despite the sports brands' support of gender equality and female empowerment through femvertising, gender stereotypes still exist within the campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]