'Postfeminism', Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 2016 PDF

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Postfeminism incorporate conservative and innovative ten- dencies (for example, see Genz and Brabon CAMILLE NURKA 2009). Although their emphasis is not strictly Independent scholar comparable, in the latter two approaches postfeminism is understood to be a contra- In its broadest sense, “postfeminis...

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'Postfeminism', Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 2016 Camille Nurka

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Postfeminism CAMILLE NURKA Independent scholar

In its broadest sense, “postfeminism” means “after” or “beyond” feminism. The term simultaneously references feminism as a historical legacy and creates distance from that political identity. There are broadly three (sometimes overlapping) approaches to defining postfeminism in the scholarly literature. The first is that postfeminism is an anti-feminist backlash, as a politics which actively pushes back, or aggressively resists, feminism in periods where it has made the greatest gains (for example, see Faludi 1991). The concept of “backlash” implies a retrogressive movement backward, toward a prefeminist time. The second is that feminism is over or dead because it is assumed to have been successful in its aims, having passed into mainstream culture and politics, and is thus no longer needed. As Angela McRobbie puts it, “for feminism to be ‘taken into account’ it has to be understood as having already passed away” (2009, 12). This second approach is complex and should be distinguished from the simplified “backlash” position. This is because it depicts postfeminist discourse as accepting that female empowerment is of value, but promoting female agency on the condition that feminism “fades away.” The third approach positions postfeminism as signifying the evolution of feminism through the process of productive selfreflection – for instance, in its intersection with postmodernism (for example, see Brooks 1997). This approach also includes perspectives that associate postfeminism productively with third-wave feminism, to

incorporate conservative and innovative tendencies (for example, see Genz and Brabon 2009). Although their emphasis is not strictly comparable, in the latter two approaches postfeminism is understood to be a contradictory politics that assumes familiarity with feminist concepts and refashions them in response to the demands of a changing social context where women are called upon to “do” gender politics and identify as female in strikingly new ways. The difference between theorists on this point is the extent to which this refashioning can be considered reactionary (where the “new” is a reformulation of the “old”) or pragmatic (in the surprising alignments of competing discourses). The prefix “post” also acts as a chronological marker that situates the “going beyond” of feminism in time. Susan Faludi suggests that in the US context, postfeminism emerged in response to the gains of first-wave feminism and that a postfeminist attitude was discernible in the reactionary responses to suffrage of the 1920s press (1991, 70). The term “postfeminism” is acknowledged to have become widely popularized in the 1980s (Faludi 1991, 14; Gamble 1998, 38; Brunsdon and Spigel 2008, 176) and commonplace in the 1990s (Tasker and Negra 2007, 8). The source of this more recent usage is usually attributed to a 1982 New York Times article written by Susan Bolotin, entitled “Voices from the Post-Feminist Generation” (Rosenfelt and Stacey 1987; Walters 1991; Dow 1996; Henry 2004; Genz and Brabon 2009), which sought to identify the reasons why feminism provoked a lack of interest and antipathy among young women. In the Bolotin article, postfeminism is represented as the historical product of generational change. Younger women display a tacit acknowledgment of

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss238

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gender inequality, while rejecting feminism as a political force for change; feminists are characterized as bitter and unhappy, and feminist politics is replaced with an individualist ethos of advancement. This particular article provides the context for more recent work that examines the ways in which the historical rise of postfeminism is imbricated in the rise of individualist “neoliberalism” as a dominant paradigm organizing social relations. Neoliberalist ideology holds that individuals are responsible for their conditions of existence and can therefore change those conditions through their own actions – there is no recognition, in this perspective, of shared experiences of oppression as a result of structural inequality. Much of the recent theoretical scholarship on postfeminism examines its currency in popular culture and highlights the way in which postfeminist narratives celebrate female autonomy through the rejection of a collectivist feminist identity in favor of an individualist mode of self-actualization. Moreover, the consumer culture embedded within late capitalist Western society is integral to significant changes in the way that gender is politicized and discursively represented. Postfeminist discourses can thus be situated as a feature of late capitalist society, where consumerism, rather than collectivist political movements like feminism, provides the primary means for identity construction and gender identification. Postfeminism, then, can be broadly defined in relation to its capacity as a marker of political identification in the current late capitalist era. “Postfeminism” is a notoriously difficult term to define, although it has benefited greatly from feminist attempts at refinement over the past decade. Part of the problem of definition lies in disagreements over the nature of its relationship to feminism, with early feminist accounts of the term divided over whether postfeminist resistance to the feminist identity is radical or

reactionary. Ann Brooks (1997) argues that while postfeminism in popular culture is crude, reactionary, and hostile to feminism, in the academy it signifies a shift in emphasis from equality to difference, a product of its engagement with the anti-foundationalist aims of postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. For Brooks, postfeminism’s radical politics lies in its interrogation of the integrity of the stable categories of feminism (such as “oppression” and “woman”) because they are implicated in maintaining “hegemonic” feminism and its unacknowledged hierarchies of class, race, and ethnicity among women (1997, 4–8). On the other hand, “difference” theory has been associated with postfeminism because it is seen to delegitimate feminist activism by turning away from feminist aims to achieve equality and erasing “woman” as the prioritized material category of feminist analysis (Walters 1995, 136; Murray 1997, 37–38; Walby 2011, 18, 20). Other arguments posit that postfeminism in the academy neutralizes feminism’s political challenge to patriarchy through the appropriation of feminism – as well as femininity – by male-centered theory in an attempt to mitigate the threat of female empowerment (Modleski 1991; Jones 2003, 321–324). Another problem of definition lies in postfeminism’s relationship to third-wave feminism. It is difficult to determine whether postfeminism is synonymous with third-wave feminism, whether it is an offshoot of thirdwave feminism, or whether it is a set of political claims that do not bear any association with the third wave at all. For instance, Amanda Lotz (2001), as well as Brooks, defines postfeminism as a progressive subset of the third wave, which productively diversifies and shifts central second-wave formations of identity and activism. But a counterview is that postfeminism is a conservative, oppositional politics that must be

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distinguished from the “third wave” (Heywood and Drake 1997, 1). For Heywood and Drake, “‘postfeminist’ characterizes a group of young, conservative feminists who explicitly define themselves against and criticize feminists of the second wave,” while thirdwave feminism is “neither incompatible [with] nor opposed” to the second wave (1997, 1). In this view, the waves model assumes continuity with, and identitarian commitment to, the second wave while also problematizing certain second-wave principles. The third wave is, for Heywood and Drake, a hybrid politics that draws on prior feminist critique of the power structures within which women are positioned, and also makes ironic use of those very same structures as a tool for female self-definition (1997, 3). For example, it allows for the seemingly contradictory pairing of “feminine” and “feminist” (Hollows 2000, 193). Similarly, Ednie Kaeh Garrison argues that the third wave should be distinguished from postfeminism because third-wave feminists still identify with feminism (2000, 149). However, Genz and Brabon argue that such attempts to separate “third-wave feminism” and “postfeminism” are faulty because they don’t recognize the interrelatedness of the two terms, and tend to (wrongly) oversimplify the complex workings of postfeminism as anti-feminist backlash (2009, 156). Clearly, any attempt to outline the various theoretical approaches to postfeminism/third-wave feminism involves negotiating troubled, difficult, and contradictory terrain. While some theorists position postfeminism as an expression of anti-feminist backlash (Faludi 1991; Modleski 1991; Walters 1995; Heywood and Drake 1997; Garrison 2000; Whelehan 2000; Jones 2003), other scholars prefer to define postfeminism as a contradictory movement between acknowledgment and disavowal (Rosenfelt and Stacey 1987; Stacey 1987; Rapp 1988;

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Dow 1996; Brunsdon 1997; Nurka 2002; Gill 2007; Tasker and Negra 2007; McRobbie 2009; Taylor 2012). This is best summarized by Judith Stacey as the “simultaneous incorporation, revision and depoliticization of many of the central goals of second wave feminism” (1987, 8) and is probably the definition that informs the key current definitions of postfeminism. Rosalind Gill argues that postfeminism is distinctive because it incorporates “feminist and anti-feminist ideas” (2007, 269), while McRobbie defines postfeminism as a “double entanglement,” which refers to the way in which feminism becomes “commonsense” or mainstreamed, “while also fiercely repudiated, indeed almost hated” (2009, 12). Postfeminism thus represents both a presumption of feminist achievement and a dissociation from feminist politics. As Natasha Walter, author of the book The New Feminism, wrote, feminism now “works from the inside” (1998, 33), while Walter’s ideological contemporary Rene Denfeld expressed, “we are feminists – in action, if not in name” (1995, 5). According to McRobbie, a radical feminism that questions or critiques the social order, rather than one that can be aligned with female progress, is rejected as a site of identification for women (2009, 14–15). Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra agree that postfeminism requires that as women assume feminist success in achieving equality, feminism is othered, constructed as “extreme, difficult, and unpleasurable” (2007, 4). According to Monica Dux and Zora Simic, millennial postfeminism “invites us to abandon feminism as a failure that has actually made women’s lives worse” (2008, 21). Postfeminist discourse thus erects a “straw feminist” – usually the ubiquitous figure of the “hairy-legged lesbian” – who symbolizes “all that is wrong with feminism” (Dux and Simic 2008, 34). Second-wave feminism is charged with being puritanical, punitive, and too invested in

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female victimhood (Bulbeck 2010; Nurka 2002, 2003). Author of DIY Feminism Kathy Bail writes: “The word ‘feminism’ suggests a rigidity of style and behaviour and is still generally associated with a culture of complaint. Young women don’t want to identify with something that sounds dowdy, asexual or shows them to be at a disadvantage. They don’t want to be seen as victims” (1996, 4–5). Naomi Wolf’s Fire With Fire (1993), Katie Roiphe’s The Morning After (1993), and Rene Denfeld’s The New Victorians (1995) are three US texts that are paradigmatic of the postfeminist critique of second-wave “victim feminism” (Genz and Brabon 2009). All three argue that contemporary women must be liberated from the sexual and ideological repression of second-wave values that emphasize danger over pleasure and disadvantage over empowerment. A large part of the postfeminist resistance to feminism is based on a particular conception of a puritanical feminist view of heterosexual intercourse as a manifestation of patriarchal violence, a theory most notably espoused by US feminists Catharine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. Because postfeminist discourse can be identified via its positioning against a particular image of second-wave feminism (i.e., bra burning, man-hating lesbians), a central theme by which this differentiation is enacted is through an identification with a “pro-sex” narrative (Projansky 2001, 83), also called “do-me feminism” (Genz and Brabon 2009, ch. 4). Hence, one of the primary splits by which postfeminism can be identified is between the sexually repressive feminist mother and the sexually assertive and empowered postfeminist daughter (Nurka 2003; Henry 2004). Postfeminism has been articulated by Ariel Levy as “female chauvinism,” an effect of what she terms “raunch culture,” in which women are now the new male chauvinists making sex objects out of

themselves, as well as other women (2005, 4). This is taking place as part of what is commonly dubbed “the sexualization of culture,” which refers to the normalization of a pornographic aesthetic in “a hyper-culture of commercial sexuality” (McRobbie 2009, 18), where young women obtain a sense of sexual self-expression through mimicry of the visual codes found in heterosexual male-oriented pornography (Levy 2005; Gill 2007, 256–259). In contemporary consumer culture, femininity is something to be improved upon through buying power, with its attainment a reflection of the value placed on the self. Therefore, the way in which women are hailed as sexual agents by advertisers is an important aspect of postfeminist culture. Where traditional sexist advertising says “buy this product and you will be irresistible to men!” postfeminist sexism says “this product gives you the choice to perform your own style of sexiness which is irresistible to men!” Choice, freedom, and individuality are essential concepts in defining the constitution of postfeminist sexual subjectivity. The concern for some feminists is that as Western culture becomes increasingly sexualized, there is less room for traditional feminist critique of the sexual objectification of women by men. For instance, Gill (2007) and McRobbie (2009) argue that “irony,” as the ludic manipulation of culturally recognizable sexist imagery and discourse, justifies the sexism it represents through an implied historical separation between present and past audiences. The contemporary audience is invited to share an illicit enjoyment in sexist imagery through our distance to its content, which is presumed to render it harmless. It is this pretense of separation that works to legitimate sexism in the media because we “get the joke” (McRobbie 2009, 17). In the postfeminist media context, feminist objections to the sexualization of women

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appear as a restriction of the pleasures of looking and being looked at. Yet, as Gill points out, young women are invited to inhabit sexual subjectivity on the condition that their bodies conform to a normative image of sexual attractiveness. Raunch culture constructs sexual desire in very precise ways: “only some women are constructed as active, desiring sexual subjects: women who desire sex with men (except when lesbian women ‘perform’ for men) and only young, slim and beautiful women” (Gill 2007, 259). Older or fat women, by contrast, are denied the pleasures of sexual subjecthood (Gill 2007, 259). The male gaze that second-wave feminism criticized for its dehumanizing, sexually objectifying effects on women is now internalized by women themselves as a “selfpolicing narcissistic gaze” through which an agentic feminine subject is constructed (Gill 2007, 258). On this basis, women are invited to express selfhood in the capacity for sexual empowerment, which is achieved through remaking the sexual body. Attendant on these demands of sexualization is the intensification of body surveillance. As Gill argues, it is not a set of “feminine” characteristics that serve to define femininity today; rather, postfeminism prioritizes the accomplishment of the “sexy body” as the achievement of a feminine identity (2007, 255). For McRobbie, now that financially independent women are able to make choices that are not solely determined by their orientation to the marriage market, the Symbolic restores the balance upset by feminism through relocating female self-worth to the never-ending work of body maintenance required by the fashion–beauty complex. Hence, the feminist achievement of women’s entrenchment in the workforce is undone by the symbolic imperatives of the fashion–beauty complex, which serves to restabilize gender relations under threat by female acquisition of independent economic

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capacity, or “female phallicism” (McRobbie 2009, 62–63). This restabilizing impulse reasserts traditional boundaries of gender and sexuality in that the freedoms gained by “the phallic girl” are enjoyed on the condition of a heterosexual gaze, thus reinforcing the repudiation of lesbian sexuality (McRobbie 2009, 86). The association of feminism with lesbianism motivates the postfeminist assertion that feminism is at odds with the desires of an implicitly heterosexualized “feminine” subject, for whom it seeks to reaffirm and recuperate heterosexual romance. Anthea Taylor suggests that in the sexual sphere, feminism is blamed for robbing women of the pleasures of romance (in its critique of marriage, for example) and encapsulates a reaction against a feminism that is considered to be both an “unhappy” politics and the cause of contemporary women’s unhappiness (2012, 26). One of the unhappiest heirs of feminism, according to postfeminist accounts, is “the single girl” (Dux and Simic 2008, 73; Taylor 2012), whose professional success is seen to come at the cost of personal failure. The postfeminist vision of the single woman is that she is a “lamentable product of the pervasive feminist rhetoric that encouraged women to pursue independence and autonomy at the cost of a husband and … a nuclear family” (Taylor 2012, 6). The most prominent fictional single women in recent decades – Bridget Jones in Helen Fielding’s book Bridget Jones’s Diary, Ally McBeal in David E. Kelley’s TV series of the same name, and the women in Sex and the City – are characters who “endure as reference points for talking about women who are purported to be struggling to find a balance between their careers and their biological clocks” (Dux and Simic 2008, 75). One of the defining characteristics of postfeminism is that it situates itself between public success and private failure (McRobbie

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2009; Taylor 2012). According to Taylor, we find that in postfeminist rhetoric the deeply held “feminine” desire to be coupled is the undercurrent that upsets the valorization of single women as confident, financially autonomous, and sexually agentic. For Taylor, postfeminist narratives of feminism’s failure to secure single women’s happiness “work to manage the threat posed by the woman without a man” (2012, 14). This tension is typically expressed through the figure of the lonely, childless, single white professional. Figures such as Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones also share the qualities characteristic of the postfeminist as...