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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Postfeminism'
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1
Thouaille, Marie-Alix. "The single woman author on film : screening postfeminism." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2018. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/68982/.
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This thesis theorises the single woman author as a recurrent and distinctive character in Anglo-American film in the period 1994-2018. Tracking the figure across genres and industrial provenances through detailed textual analysis, I uncover the shared meanings and feeling rules embedded within, produced by, and circulating through, this figure. In doing so, I identify four key interrelated representational tropes. Firstly, authorship and singleness signify as mutually constitutive identities indicative of postfeminist agency. Secondly, authorship functions as an autobiographical outlet enabling the expression of the heroine’s innate femininity, partly defusing anxieties about women’s professional labour. Thirdly, authorship facilitates the performance of relational labour promising to remedy the single woman’s disordered unmarried subjectivity. And, finally, the single woman author’s success is authorised by a male mentor in ways which authenticate or naturalise patriarchal authority. Through these tropes and their repetition, authoriality is imagined as an ideal form of labour for the single woman subject. Though both female singleness and female authorship are mobilised as signifiers of female agency with the potential to upend the traditionally gendered distribution of power, this thesis reveals how the single woman author has become a desirable postfeminist subjectivity precisely because she leaves undisturbed hierarchies of gender and power. This figure is therefore a site of contradiction, ambiguity, and ambivalence. As such, she is an ideal prism through which to chart shifts within postfeminism itself. The evolution of the above tropes in recent films accordingly suggests that the postfeminist sensibility has lately undergone an affective shift. Recent texts, this thesis concludes, demonstrate the filtering of feminist critiques of patriarchal structures into popular culture. However, at the same time, they are also suggestive of the continued resilience of postfeminism, and its ongoing ability to take feminism into account.
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Ginsburg, Sara A. "Postfeminism Analysis of Sexualized Images in Fashion Advertisements." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1543.
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This article applies methods of semiotic analysis to representations and understandings of female sexuality in fashion advertising. Through the framework of Paolo Freire’s Action Learning model, also known as the “empowerment spiral”, it is concluded that advertisements dealing in overt sexualization's of traditional conceptions of femininity produces a one-sided discourse in femininity in which the decoding of media images is oversimplified through a binary approach. In effect, this produces conflicts detrimental to feminist progress by virtue of ostrisizing postfeminist appreciations of sexual empowerment.
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Heatwole, Leslie Alexandra. "Renegotiating the Heroine: Postfeminism on the Speculative Screen." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13959.
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This thesis examines postfeminism as a multi-faceted cultural phenomenon and considers its lasting impact on understandings of girlhood. Its particular focus is a discussion of speculative fiction texts (literature, television series and films) oriented towards young adults, pursuing the idea that, in the postfeminist context, girl heroes are ideally placed to imagine both the future and the past. Considering the striking popularity of speculative fiction centrally featuring girls, and often addressed to them, this thesis considers the central concerns of postfeminism as it has been conceived in feminist criticism since the 1990s from a contemporary perspective. This thesis offers three key hypotheses: first, that speculative fiction offers a privileged space in which gender identity is interrogated, most often with a central focus on girls; second, that postfeminism marks a cultural shift in which some key elements of feminism are integrated with the culture industry and thus available to be consumed in forms that especially appeal to girls in a complex and at times problematic way; and third, that our contemporary understanding of girlhood as a concept and girls as a category also crucially changed during this period, heavily influenced by media representations of postfeminism. Built on these hypotheses is a thesis that discourse surrounding postfeminism is currently shifting, and issues traditionally associated with postfeminism are being reconsidered within contemporary media. The thesis examines recent popular films such as the Twilight films and The Hunger Games and popular science fiction and fantasy television series, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Orphan Black, and Once Upon a Time. It also pays particular attention to current adaptations of texts key to girl culture, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Disney princess films, to reflect on differences in the way these texts understand both contemporary girlhood and the impact of feminism. It understands these texts as responding to, and producing a contemporary commentary on, crucial feminist issues that themselves centre on ideas about girlhood, including risk, sexuality and desire, and the ‘postfeminist masquerade’. Discussion of contemporary popular culture enables this thesis to historicise feminist representation of girls relative to these issues during the 1980s and 90s. The primary objective of the thesis is to contextualize the popularity of speculative fiction within a changing popular discourse of girlhood and, more specifically, feminist girlhood.
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Dosekun, Simidele Olatokunbo. "Fashioning spectacular femininities in Nigeria : postfeminism, consumption and the transnational." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.680161.
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This thesis concerns class-privileged young women in Lagos, Nigeria, who dress m a 'hyper-feminine style' characterized by the spectacular use and combination of elements such as cascading hair extensions, long acrylic nails, heavy make-up, false eyelashes and towering heels. Understanding gender as discursively and performatively constituted, and the practice of 'dressing up' as one of its technologies, the thesis explores what kinds of gendered subjectivities such women are constituting in and through their particular style. It is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 18 women aged between 18 and 35, and takes a discursive analytic approach to explore the subject positions that the women variously negotiate as they talk about their style and its requisite practices, considerations and meanings. Repertoires of individualized choice, pleasure, entitlement and empowerment run through the women's talk, while contrary notions and also experiences of their dress practice as normative, disciplined, laborious, physically risky and painful are downplayed and deflected. The research participants position themselves as knowing and skilled consumers of fashion and beauty, and proffer this as both an empowered and empowering feminine rationality. Asserting simultaneously black, Nigerian and cosmopolitan positionalities, they reject any suggestion of performing a racially or culturally inauthentic style of femininity. They name their fashion as 'girly' and themselves as 'girly-girls' but emphasize that these discursive positions signify neither feminine frivolity nor traditional domesticity but stylized freedom. Abstract: As such the thesis argues that the women see themselves as postfeminist subjects: already individually empowered, beyond gendered politics and power. The thesis supports this empirical contention by re-theorizing postfeminism as a classed and commodified transnational cultural sensibility. In its concern with the performative intersections of gender, race, class, consumption, locality and transnationality in the fashioning of contemporary African femininities, the thesis makes unique and critical contributions to feminist and African cultural studies.
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Braithwaite, Andrea. "Triple threats: young female detectives and the crimes of postfeminism." Thesis, McGill University, 2010. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=86825.
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Triple Threats: Young Female Detectives and the Crimes of Postfeminism examines the increasingly visible character of the amateur female sleuth in popular culture. I argue that, while a postfeminist media and political environment conditions this "chick dick's" existence, the chick dick also "talks back" to postfeminism, specifically to the postfeminist insistence that feminism has been successful and is no longer relevant or necessary. The chick dick thus "speaks feminism" in an environment that makes such a voice difficult to hear.I focus primarily on the aspects of these popular narratives that engage with the postfeminist notion that women and men are social equals. I demonstrate how the rhetoric of "choice" is used to depoliticize the conditions in which young women live, work, and study, individualizing their problems into matters of personal choice rather than political consequence. I examine how both social space and investigative technologies are gendered through concepts of risk and authority, and how such gendering works to uphold a patriarchal power dynamic that makes women vulnerable to a spectrum of sexualized violence. I deconstruct the concept of a "crisis in masculinity" to show how this trope legitimizes the exercise of an aggressive and violent masculinity on the bodies of female and feminized "others."
These popular narratives also illustrate the labour involved in embodying a postfeminist or "chick" femininity, affectively recounting how these female characters feel about the regimes of self-care and self-management they undertake daily, and how they respond to a "new traditionalist" model of womanhood that requires monogamy, marriage, and motherhood for female worth. I contextualize these stories within the cultural and industrial productive contexts to argue that the chick dick's feminist and proto-feminist undertones make her an unsuitable subject for mainstream, blockbuster filmmaking.
« La triple menace : jeunes inspectrices et les crimes de le postféminisme » examine la caractère plus en plus visible de l'inspectrice amateur dans la culture populaire. Considérant que le milieu du média et la politique dans le postféminisme conditionne l'existence de la « chick dick », elle réplique au postféminisme, plus particulièrement à l'insistance postféministe que le féminisme est un succès et qu'il n'est pas encore pertinent ou nécessaire. La « chick dick » parle ainsi le féminisme dans un milieu qui fait une telle voix difficile à entendre.
Je focalise sur les aspects de ces récits populaires que s'engagent avec la notion postféministe que les femmes et les hommes sont égales. Je démontre comment la rhétorique du « choix » est utilisée pour dépolitiser la condition de la vie, du travail et d'étude pour les femmes. Ces conditions individualisent leurs problèmes comme des affaires du choix personnel au lieu des conséquences politiques. J'examine comment l'espace sociale et aussi les technologies d'investigation sont basées sur le genre par les concepts du risque et l'autorité. Ça soutient une dynamique patriarcale du pouvoir qui fait les femmes vulnérables à plusieurs formes de la violence sexuelle. Je déconstruis l'idée d'une « crise de la masculinité » pour montrer comment ce trope justifier l'exercice d'une masculinité agressif et violent sur les corps des « autres »--femmes et féminisés.
Ces récits populaires illustrent aussi le travail d'incarner une féminité « chick » ou postféministe. Ils racontent affectivement comment ces femmes se sentent des régimes quotidiens de soin et d'administration de soi-même. En plus, les récits nous disent comment ces femmes répondent à un modèle de la vie de femme « nouveau traditionaliste » qui requise la monogamie, la mariage et la maternité pour valoriser les femmes. Je situe cette histoire dans le contexte de leur production culturelle et industrielle et je conclus que les currents féministes et proto-féministes de la « chick dick » la faisant un sujet inapte pour la cinétographie blockbuster.
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Mahoney, Cathy. "A historical sensibility : television, postfeminism and the Second World War." Thesis, Northumbria University, 2017. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/35041/.
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Postfeminism is not an ideological position or coherent theoretical framework that can be applied externally to the analysis of texts. Indeed popular postfeminism – as distinguished in this thesis from academic postfeminism – is knowable only through its workings in culture, specifically in the representation of gender in “postfeminist” media texts. Therefore, this thesis does not adopt a postfeminist position or approach to analyse the source texts, but rather seeks to identify and deconstruct a postfeminist sensibility within them. This sensibility became apparent in 1990s depictions of characters such as Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) and Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart); however, it prevails in texts created in the current moment and inflects their representation of women. This thesis seeks to identify the themes and characteristics of this sensibility at the site of their creation – media texts representing women – expose the reasons why they are problematic, and show that the same traits exist in the texts considered here. In so doing it seeks to demonstrate that postfeminist ideals are still informing representations of women in the media. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate that this postfeminist sensibility, despite being a product of 1990s postfeminism and the current post/post-post-feminist moment, inflects representations of women from different time-periods, specifically from the Second World War and immediate post-war period. Because of the media’s (and specifically television’s) central role in the formation of cultural memory, this creates a lens through which women’s history and women’s historical identities are viewed in the present day. This postfeminist lens, or sensibility (Gill 2007), is thereby dehistoricised as an aspect of essential femininity. In this way the politics of the present are cast onto the past. Through this process, the events of the past are drained of any independent meaning and repurposed/redeployed to meet the needs of the present. The centrality and ubiquity of such postfeminist visions of the past is such that postfeminist discourse has become a central component of what this thesis terms, the Historical Sensibility which informs and structures historical drama on television.
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Tully, Meg. "Trainwreck feminism: women, comedy and postfeminist culture." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6315.
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This dissertation develops the theoretical framework of “trainwreck feminism.” Forwarded by contemporary women in comedy like Mindy Kaling, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and Amy Schumer, trainwreck feminists adopt the trope of the trainwreck—excessive in need, sex, and madness—to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of growing up in postfeminist culture that both insists women are finally liberated and continues to police their choices. Engaging ongoing debates about whether postfeminism is over since feminism is becoming a status symbol for celebrities and public figures, I argue that postfeminism remains a powerful cultural force, and women in comedy are some of its most vocal critics. Trainwreck feminism exposes the misogyny at the core of postfeminist culture, while arguing that feminist activism is still needed. Trainwreck feminism is reflective of a larger rejection of postfeminist culture, a contradictory moment that celebrates feminism’s achievements while insisting the movement is outdated. Trainwreck feminism represents a larger re-politicization of feminism in pop culture.
Each chapter examines a different comic and the specific branch of postfeminism they undermine: Mindy Kaling and the postfeminist life cycle, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer and commodity feminism, and Amy Schumer and choice feminism. Ultimately, these women imbue the trainwreck with true feminist potential, pointing a finger at postfeminist culture as a source of women’s madness. Because they are cautionary tales, trainwrecks can highlight the unspoken rules and expectations of femininity. While comedy can have a fairly nasty, depoliticizing relationship with feminism, often turning feminism into a lifestyle or label devoid of political activism, I argue that some contemporary comic texts are actively politicized, inspiring viewers to critique and change the world around them. They do so by appropriating particular vernacular rhetorics that appeal to younger, millennial audiences and using it to demonstrate how postfeminism has failed women. That is, each comic I examine leverages postfeminist sensibilities in order to critique and undermine them, engaging in a trainwreck feminism that highlights the contradictions, absurdities, and misogyny at the heart of postfeminist culture.
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Kent, Miriam. "Marvel women : femininity, representation and postfeminism in films based on Marvel comics." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2016. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/64255/.
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Recent years have witnessed an influx of superhero films, particularly those based on Marvel comics. From X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) to team-up mega-blockbuster The Avengers (2012) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the stream of Marvel superhero adaptations is ongoing and relentless. These films have received modest academic attention; however, close examination of the specific portrayals of women in superhero films has remained sporadic. This thesis is the first work to cohesively consider representations of women in films based on Marvel comics, from The Punisher (1989) to more recent films such as Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). Through textual analysis which accounts for discursive, contextual and ideological issues surrounding these films, I discuss how representations of women in Marvel adaptations are informed by discourses of anxiety and struggle regarding gender issues in wider Western culture. The superhero boom occurred at a time which can be considered “postfeminist,” in which discourses of women’s “empowerment” are actively incorporated into media texts, while specific references to political feminism are shunned. Tracing historical and cultural contexts from the characters’ comic book forms, this thesis provides an exhaustive account of issues of women’s empowerment in Marvel films with particular emphasis on the ways in which postfeminist culture has shaped such portrayals. The films are considered within a wider action genre framework, drawing from existing scholarship in the field of feminist film studies. However, attention is also drawn to the role of sexuality and race within these largely white, heterosexual portrayals of feminine empowerment. Overall I consider the questions: How is power negotiated within female Marvel characters? How does an emphasis on sex appeal relate to feminist and postfeminist culture? How do these representations intersect with greater issues involving sexuality and race? And, importantly, in what ways do these representations tie in to modes of women’s empowerment in the time periods during which these films were released?
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Albouss, Faleh. "Postfeminism and Middle Eastern female academics in UK universities : a discursive analysis." Thesis, University of Kent, 2017. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/62594/.
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This thesis explores how Middle Eastern Female Academics appropriate postfeminist discourses emphasising choice, agency and individual decision-making to account for their work experiences in British universities. In looking at their accounts of their academic work experiences, the thesis highlights how they downplay inequality - a contrast to much of the existing literature on gender and the academy which suggests that all women and in particular women of colour, face multiple levels of exclusion in university workplaces characterised by a masculine norm. Approaching postfeminism as a discursive formation and using it as a critical concept to interpret the data, the analysis identifies four interpretive repertoires drawn on by 20 female academics of Middle Eastern origin within the context of in-depth interviews. These include (1) individualism, choice and empowerment, (2) 'natural' sexual difference, (3) retreatism - western tradition of working mothers, (4) retreatism - Middle Eastern tradition of extended family of origin. Through use of these interpretive repertoires the respondents firstly deny experiences of inequality and secondly constitute an academic "feminine" identity derived from the co-existence of masculine and feminine behaviours as follows: (1) the independent academic woman, (2) the academic mother - western tradition, and (3) the traditional Middle Eastern academic. As the thesis takes a discursive approach, these identities are not treated as fixed and stable rather they are understood as being constructed through postfeminist discourses and constantly negotiated with work colleagues and others. Thus, the identified academic femininities are understood in processual terms as something MEFA 'do' or 'perform' as opposed to being a static attribute they 'have' (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). Identification of these interpretive repertoires and the three academic femininities demonstrates the following: first, that similar to their white, western colleagues, Middle Eastern Female Academics draw on the discursive formation of postfeminism and that their use of postfeminist discourses shapes how they configure and speak about their academic work experiences. Second, Middle Eastern Female Academics constitute academic identities within postfeminism. Third, our understanding of tradition as an element of the postfeminist discursive formation needs to be expanded to include domestic responsibilities attached to family of origin as well as domestic responsibilities connected to motherhood.
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Magladry, Madison Rose. "Fitspiration or Fitsploitation? Postfeminism, Digital Media and Authenticity in Women’s Fitness Culture." Thesis, Curtin University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/75531.
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Women’s fitness culture calls for women to take responsibility for their physical fitness in a way that contests but also actively draws from well-established models of femininity. This thesis asks how and to what extent women’s fitness represents itself as empowering at the same time as it reinforces gender roles. Women’s fitness conveys a postfeminist sensibility characterised by a neoliberal emphasis on transforming the self while presenting this project as a mode of feminist liberation.
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Harry, Shannon A. "Whose Fantasy Is This: Postfeminist America." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1385983884.
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Venter, L'André. "#EvenMore than just a brand of soap: a case study analysing LUX soap's use of Instagram." Master's thesis, Faculty of Humanities, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33030.
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This research investigates the ways in which Unilever's LUX soap has repositioned their brand away from their historical association with beauty pageants. This research aims to unpack the ways in which Instagram is utilised by LUX soap to effectively communicate a distinct brand personality. This research identifies that the repositioning of the brand on Instagram was achieved through a strategy that integrated social media influencers and brand events, whilst incorporating social marketing. Not only does this research focus on LUX's branding on Instagram, it critically engages with the content from a postfeminist perspective. This is the secondary theoretical engagement of this work. The paper highlights the ways in which the content is postfeminist in nature and how this was incorporated into the branding messages. The main focus of this dissertation is the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore LUX soap campaigns. Through a mixed methodology of interviews, content analysis, and survey the paper focuses on the ways in which LUX created a relationship with their customers on Instagram and effectively repositioned the brand. The research suggests that three key techniques were repeated on Instagram to effectively create new associations with the LUX brand during the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore extension campaign. The paper, furthermore, suggests that the LUX soap campaign employs postfeminist rhetoric in their Instagram strategy. This dissertation argues that the development of a strategy consisting of branded events, social media influencers, and social marketing content allowed LUX soap to reposition their brand.
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Falk, Towe. "Have You Met Miss Jones? : Identity Construction of a Chick Lit Heroine." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-4112.
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Take a random woman in her mid-twenties, with a crazy mother, a lousy job and no sex life, add some insecurity and a lot of alcohol and wrap her up in pink, and congratulations, you have just created your own chick lit heroine.The question is whether a chick lit heroine is this simplistic, or if she carries an important message to the readers. The most important traits in a chick lit novel are the complicated mother-daughter relationship, the career and the love life.Thus, this essay will outline to what extent the postfeminist features are depicted in theidentity of Bridget Jones, as an epitome of later chick lit heroines.
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Wahlström, Sofie. "Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Harmony? : A Critical Discourse Analysis of Postfeminism in Women's Magazines." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-131106.
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This essay investigates postfeminist discourses in women’s magazines with the use of Fairclough’s (2014) critical discourse analysis (CDA). Additionally, it presents consumers’ perceptions of women’s magazines in order to explore how women’s magazines might influence readers’ constructions of identity. Postfeminism is mainly defined by Gill (2007, 2009) and McRobbie (2004) as an idea of feminism and antifeminism combined with the use of neoliberal views. Previous research conducted between 1990 and 2009 has stated that women’s magazines follow a postfeminist discourse and therefore give a contradictory message to their readers, emphasising the importance of individuality and empowerment as well as promoting a traditional feminine image. The magazines analysed in this essay were the January 2016 issue of Elle Magazine US and the February 2016 issue of Elle Magazine UK. The magazines follow a postfeminist discourse, and it is constructed with the use of wording and modality. To complement the CDA, an interview with a target group of women’s magazine readers was conducted. Findings indicate that the magazines both largely follow a postfeminist discourse, constructed through the use of rhetorical features such as wording and modality, and readers believe magazines affect their identity construction negatively. The article is concluded with a discussion on what the aim of a postfeminist discourse is.
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Sands, Victoria. "Neoliberalism, Postfeminism, and Ideal Girls: A Semiotic Discourse Analysis of Successful Girlhood in Seventeen Magazine." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/23354.
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This thesis looks at how a contemporary notion of successful girlhood is negotiated in the social text of Seventeen magazine. Moreover, it demonstrates the ways in which Seventeen’s representations of successful and ideal girls reflect and mediate timely values of postfeminism and neoliberalism. This thesis will also make visible how race, class, ability, and sexuality are negotiated within Seventeen’s “success” framework, in order to illuminate intersectional issues implicit in conceptualizing ideal girlhood. The method for this research is a semiotic discourse analysis, looking at the visual and linguistic signs within the text in order to connect them with broader ideologies and themes surrounding contemporary ideal girlhood. Drawing on girls’ studies and feminist cultural studies literature, the discourse of ideal girlhood is situated in a so-called “postfeminist” moment, in which girls, as popular, highly visible subjects in contemporary society, are perceived to be poised for achievement and social ascension, all while being closely surveilled. These expectations of postfeminism intersect with current neoliberal principles of individualized success; analysis is therefore connected with and contextualized by discussion of late modern principles of neoliberalism and its economic, social, and political logic.
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Glasburgh, Michele M. "Chick lit: the new face of postfeminist fiction?" Thesis, School of Information and Library Science, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1901/349.
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This study is a content analysis of ten chick lit books, a genre of women’s fiction. Books were analyzed for five postfeminist characteristics as defined by Susan Faludi’s backlash theory, outlined in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women and in further research on popular culture’s notions of womanhood: 1) negative reaction to second wave feminism, 2) focus on the individual instead of a collective sisterhood, 3) desire for more traditional femininity through domesticity, consumerism, romance, and motherhood, 4) female identity crisis causing fears of a man shortage, a loudly ticking biological clock, and career burnout, and 5) feelings of anxiety over ability to make the correct future decisions. Analysis has found that chick lit does generally reinforce the notions of postfeminism/backlash, however the characters displayed anxiety over how to incorporate feminine paths into their lives and generally disregard motherhood.
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Seaton, Wallis Anne. "The labour of feminist performance : postfeminism, authenticity, and celebrity in contemporary representations of girlhood on screen." Thesis, Keele University, 2018. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/5441/.
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This thesis examines the labour that is made visible by the individual on-screen performances of five distinct postfeminist identities from contemporary popular culture. Each chapter focuses on one of three texts: the English-language film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011); The Hunger Games film adaptations (2012-2015); and HBO’s cable-television series, Girls (2012-2017); as well as the girl figures at the centre of them: Lisbeth Salander; Katniss Everdeen/ Jennifer Lawrence; and Lena Dunham/Hannah Horvath. In these analyses I identify two marked strands of work acting as a conceptual thread that harnesses the potential of these gendered performances: firstly, the narrative, thematic, aesthetic, and representational work of the texts, which complicate current ideological and conceptual understandings of girlhood, feminism, and postfeminism; secondly, the cultural and ideological work of the magnetic identities of the girls at the centre of these texts, who help to bring these politics to the surface. The texts and the performances that inform my analyses are often associated with feminism, although the value of this work is often contradictory in nature, both questioned and reinforced by virtue of the performative, creative labour that underpins their authentic, yet commodified, representations. In the case of Lawrence and Dunham, this concerns their work as celebrities and how they mediate feminist ideas through their branded performance. The main objective of this thesis, then, is to demonstrate how each of the identities in this corpus effectively open out the tensions involved in performing feminism in twenty-first century culture, and thus to render the gendered labour attendant with this as politically imperative towards current understandings. This is an interdisciplinary study, drawing on scholarship from film, media, celebrity, gender, and cultural studies in order to grapple with the complexities and myriad meanings of contemporary feminism in the broader context of media culture.
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Kung, Wing Sze Kaby. "From feminism to postfeminism : a feminist critique of the works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2014. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/20346/.
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The aim of the thesis is to investigate the development of female consciousness under the impact of Western feminist ideologies in Chinese female writings by examining specific works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua using a feminist and a postfeminist approach. By analysing the earlier and later works of Hong Ying and Li Bihua, one is able to recognise the shifts from feminist to postfeminist ideas that are apparent in the works of the two authors. The thesis is divided into four main sections and will include; the feminist and post-feminist ideologies of the two aforementioned authors' works, the different representations of women in the authors' original texts with their sequential movie and TV adaptations, and finally the impact of internet weblogs on Chinese women writings. In the first two core chapters, I use both feminist and post-feminist approaches to scrutinize the earlier and later literary work of Hong Ying and Li Bihua. Despite the fact that the two authors have very different writing styles, their common interest is to rewrite Chinese historical women with a hint of feminist rationale. Therefore, through comparing and contrasting the feminist ideologies in both writers' works, the development of feminism in and the impact of Western Feminism on China can be revealed. Apart from literary texts, owing to the widespread movie and TV adaptations of the two authors' literary writings, I examine the ramifications caused by the difference between the original and the adapted forms of representation of feminist ideas in the works of the Hong Ying and Li Bihua in the third core chapter. Seeing that both authors also maintain Internet weblogs (blogs), which are accessed by numerous Internet users, especially in China, therefore, in my last core chapter, I employ a cyberfeminist approach to read the blogs of the authors in order to show how feminism works different on the Internet.
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Schowalter, Dana. ""The bitch," "the ditz," and the male heroes : representations of feminism and postfeminism in campaign 2008." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0003016.
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Bailey, Linda. "Young women and the culture of intoxication : negotiating classed femininities in the postfeminist context." Thesis, University of Bath, 2012. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.558895.
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The thesis explores current debates about postfeminism, social class and new forms of femininity within the context of young women’s social drinking practices. A pervasive culture of intoxication has emerged amongst contemporary young drinkers where drunkenness is constructed as integral to a good night out. This is played out in highly visible public displays where gender, femininities and class are performed, positioned and reconfigured. The culture of intoxication therefore provides a productive arena to undertake an in depth analysis of how postfeminism works and how different social groups of young women navigate gender relations, new formations of femininity and class within this terrain. Data are in the form of middle-class and working-class young women’s accounts of their social drinking in bars and clubs within a relatively small city in the South West of England. The data was collected through 2 phases of semi-structured focus groups with 6 friendship groups of 24 women between 19-24 years of age. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was employed to identify key discourses in young women’s talk, focusing on the intersection between postfeminism and the culture of intoxication. These young women are called on to occupy positions of excess through drinking practices and display a hyper-sexualised form of femininity. This produces an impossible dilemma for young women. The young women drew on four discourses to construct drunkenness as a cultural norm. Within these discourses a particular level of drunkenness was constituted as highly desirable but also as a precarious risky state. Femininity was defined around a ‘right’ look and a ‘wrong’ look within two interlinking discourses and the young women drew on discourses that re-inscribed the gendered politics of drinking. The working-class and middle-class young women drew on different discourses to articulate class differentiation and class was reproduced through highly coded terms. There was an absence of feminist discourse throughout the young women’s accounts and this was involved with re-producing the sexual double standard and with constructing classed postfeminist subjectivities. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of a new classed femininity within an absence of feminist discourse in the context of postfeminism.
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Juškaitė, Kristina. "Thematic comparison of Lynne Graham's "An Arabian Courtship" and Eve Gladstone's "Between Two Moons" as popular romance and Lauren Weisberger's "The Devil Wears Prada" and Marian Keyes's "Sushi for Beginners" as chick lit." Master's thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2010. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2010~D_20100617_104738-26153.
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This thesis examines the two literary genres of romance and chick lit with regards to the treatment of relationships, career, sexuality, consumerist culture and beauty industry as represented in Lynne Graham’s An Arabian Courtship, Eve Gladstone’s Between two Moons, Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada and Marian Keyes’s Sushi for Beginners.
Lynne Graham (b. 1956) is a popular Northern Irish author of over sixty romance novels. After the first unsuccessful attempt to be a writer Lynne Graham got married to a man she had loved since her teens. When their first daughter was born Graham began writing again, this time with success. The novel An Arabian Courtship is about a young female protagonist, Polly, who is arranged to marry an Arab prince Raschid.
Eve Gladstone’s Between Two Moons is a Harlequin romance written by two authors, Joyce Gleit and Herma Werner. Both Gleit and Werner are married and worked in the fashion industry before becoming romance writers. Eve Gladstone is the name of their writing team. The novel is about a young and successful career woman, Kelly, in charge of a big store Lambs. Suddenly she realizes that her store has been sold to Tony Campbell, a handsome, charming and enigmatic man.
Lauren Weisberger (b. 1977) is the writer of the contemporary new woman’s fiction (called as chick lit genre). Her first job as the assistant to the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, influenced her to write The Devil Wears Prada. This novel was her first book... [to full text]Šiame baigiamajame magistriniame darbe nagrinėjami du literatūros žanrai – tradicinis meilės romanas ir šiuolaikinis moterų romanas. Lynne Graham „An Arabian Courtship“ ir Eve Gladstone „Between Two Moons“ yra tradiciniai meilės romanai, o Lauren Weisberger „The Devil Wears Prada“ ir Marian Keyes „Sushi for Beginners“ yra šiuolaikiniai moterų romanai. Šie romanai yra analizuojami norint atskleisti jau minėtų žanrų panašumus ir skirtumus atsižvelgiant į pagrindinių herojų tarpusavio santykius, karjera, lytiškumą, jų santykį su vartotojiška kultūra ir grožio pramone. Romano „Between Two Moons“ autoriai – Joyce Gleit ir Herma Werner. „Eve Gladstone“ buvo pasirinkta slapyvardžiu. Abu rašytojai yra sutuoktiniai, kurį laiką dirbę mados industrijoje, vėliau nusprendę rimtai atsiduoti rašytojo karjerai. Romanas „Between Two Moons“ pasakoja apie jauną, sėkmingą, karjeros siekiančią moterį, kuri vadovauja prekybos centrui „Lambs“. Staiga ji suvokia, kad parduotuvė parduota pasiturinčiam ir žavingam anglui vardu Tonny Campbell. Lynne Graham (1956) yra populiari Šiaurės Airijos autorė, išleidusi daugiau kaip šešiasdešimt romanų. Pirmasis bandymas tapti rašytoja buvo nesėkmingas, todėl Lynne Graham panėrė į šeimyninį gyvenimą: ištekėjo už vyro kurį mylėjo nuo pat paauglystės, susilaukė dukros. Pabandžiusi rašyti dar kartą Graham sulaukė sėkmės. Jos romanas „An Arabian Courtship“ atskleidžia jaunos merginos vardu Polly istoriją. Ši netikėtai sužino, jog yra pažadėta Jungtinių Arabų Emyratų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
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Jimenez, Morales Laura Veronica. ""IT'S SO HARD TO BE ME": REBELDE AND THE SUBGENRE OF THE TEEN TELENOVELA IN MEXICO." OpenSIUC, 2019. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1754.
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Although research on the genre of the soap opera is some of the earliest research present in mass communications scholarship, and despite the considerable amount of existing scholarship on the genre of the telenovela, the subgenre of the teen telenovela, as present in Mexico and other Latin American countries, has been mostly overlooked. It is undeniable that this subgenre is worth researching, however, if not because of the quality of its content, which has been called into question many times, then due to the significant number of people who consume it. At a time when Mexican telenovelas are struggling, it is the teenage public that continues to give Televisa, Mexico’s largest network, its highest ratings. This study focuses on one particular text in the genre, the teen telenovela Rebelde (Damián, 2004). Rebelde is an important telenovela to study for several reasons: its place in time, its target audience, its deviations from the genre, its massive popularity, and the fact that most of the existing scholarship on Mexican telenovelas focuses on texts which are much older. This dissertation uses textual analysis as a methodology in order to analyze six common themes of the teen telenovela: friendship, romance, childhood, school, rebellion and music. The purpose of this dissertation is to look at how these themes are represented in Rebelde, and at the way in which they draw elements from the genre of the traditional telenovela as well as from teenage content popular in other countries. The study also aims to analyze how this has allowed Rebelde to promote ideologies such as postfeminism, while still engaging with the more traditional ideology of the telenovela genre.
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Herling, Jessica Lauren. "Online Community Response to YouTube Abuse." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/78126.
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This study draws on social problems literature about rhetoric in claims-making and social movement literature about credibility in framing to understand the construction of YouTube abuse and relationships between member role in the community and their frames/the reception of those frames. I also draw on feminist, non-feminist, and postfeminist literature to understand how YouTubers incorporate feminism into their claims about why YouTube abuse is wrong. Here feminism refers to understandings of sexual harassment as stemming from gender inequality, and non-feminist understandings of sexual harassment refer to individualized and degendered violations of rights and power imbalances. Postfeminist literature informs this study in understanding how a feminist issue has been disassociated with gender inequality and individualized. Drawing on this literature, I conducted a content analysis of YouTube videos and the comment sections on these YouTube video webpages to address how the community members responded to the sexual harassment problem. First, how do the YouTubers describe the problem? Second, what explanations for why the behavior is wrong, do the YouTubers use? Options include portraying the issue using a more feminist frame of "gender equality," a post-feminist frame of gender-neutral "consent," or a gender-neutral frame of "power imbalance." Lastly, are there relationships between the YouTubers' position in the community and/or gender, their responses, and positive and negative comments left on the videos? Analysis supports that YouTubers did not connect the issue to feminism and that YouTubers' positions in the community relate to how they politicized the abuse and how much commentator support they received.Master of Science
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Håkansson, Ebba. "GIRL POWER - En postfeministisk visuell bildanalys av Veckorevyns omslag." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21597.
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Denna uppsats undersöker hur kvinnor visualiseras och representeras på omslagen av Veckorevyn. Materialet består av 23 omslag av Veckorevyn från perioden 2014 till 2015. Syftet är att analysera kvinnor i mediala sammanhang som subjekt. med fokus på kamerapositioner, poser, passivt eller aktivt kroppsspråk, uttryck och blickar. Metoden för arbetet är en visuell bildanalys genom ett postfeministiskt perspektiv. Perspektivet tolkar sexuella uttryck och kvinnligt kodade grejer som ett sätt att få makt och uttrycka sin sexuella identitet. Undersökningen utförs i två delar där två exempel först demonstreras i en mer djupgående analys där bildens olika aspekter analyseras utifrån teori. I andra delen analyseras resterande omslagen och diskuteras de koder som indikerar på sexualisering, stereotyper och maktpositioner utifrån postfeministisk teori. Analysen visar att omslagsmodellerna avbildas på olika sätt där manlig och kvinnlig porträttering kombineras. Posering visar ett yttrande av kvinnlig frihet och makt.This essay analyses how women are visualized and represented on the covers of Veckorevyn. The material consists of 23 magazine covers, randomly chosen from the period between 2014 and 2018. The purpose of this essay is to analyze women in medial contexts as subject. The method for this essay is visual image analysis through a postfeminist perspective. The perspective interprets sexual expressions and feminine coded material to gain power and express a sexual identity. The analysis is divided into two parts. First, a deeper analysis is shown on two covers where different aspects are analyzed through theory. In the second part, the other covers are analyzed and the codes that indicate on sexualizing, stereotypes and power positions discussed through a postfeminist perspective. The analyze shows that the women are portrait in ways that are more common for both women and men. The posing shows a statement of women’s rights and power.
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Umbaugh, Melanie. "Meet-Cutes & Motherhood: Roles of Women in Recent Rom-Coms." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1524838486510027.
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Xu, Qingyang. "The Zeitgeist of Feminist Rebellion through Fashion Blogging Amongst Chinese Millennial Young Women." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1562060183096049.
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Killander, Susanna. ""Are you mad 'cause you couldn't get hard?" : En narrativ analys av huvudkaraktären Hannah Horvath i TV-serien Girls ur ett genus-och (post)feministiskt perspektiv." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-30770.
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Medieinnehåll bidrar till uppfattningen om hur man som kvinna är och bör vara. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur den kvinnliga huvudkaraktären Hannah Horvath framställs i Girls säsong 5. Detta för att se hur hennes femininitet kommer till uttryck genom vänner, kärlek, sexualitet och karriär. Vidare kommer att utläsas hur hon utmanar samt knyter an till den traditionella bilden av kvinnor i TV. Uppsatsen använder sig av en narrativ analysmetod hämtad från How to Study Television (1995), som specialiserar sig på hur man studerar innehållet i TV och TV-serier. Analysen kommer att göras utifrån ett genus-och (post)feministiskt perspektiv för att möjiiggöra utläsningen av traditionella och stereotypa egenskaper, attribut samt beteenden kopplat till femininitet och kvinnor. Analysen består av sex scener från sex olika avsnitt ur den femte säsongen av Girls. Analysen har visat hur karaktären Hannah Horvath både utmanar och knyter an till traditionellt framställda bilder av kvinnor i TV. Detta genom att hennes karaktär tillskriver sig, samt skapar en dialektisk relation mellan både maskulint och feminint förväntade egenskaper och beteenden. Utöver följande aspekter går det att utläsa att Hannah Horvath uttrycker sig både inom feministiska, och postfeministiska ramverk.
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Poulos, Samantha. "“Who cares about pretty?”: Examining the construction and performance of femininity in Young Adult literature." Thesis, University of Sydney, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23704.
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This thesis investigates the feminist project of revaluing the feminine and seeks to understand the seemingly dichotomous relationship between femininity and strength as presented in young adult (YA) literature. Through a close reading of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series this thesis examines, using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, how femininity is constructed and performed and why, and then explores how to understand femininity outside of a hierarchical gender binary. A framework of Eve Sedgwick’s paranoid and reparative reading is used to look suspiciously at these texts while also allowing space to examine how they offer new understandings of femininity. This thesis argues that YA literature is a unique fictional space that can reflect and subvert contemporary theories of gender, feminism, and identity. It then offers a historical overview of feminist and gender theory to examine hierarchical binaries that position femininity as Other. It later challenges postfeminist and neoliberal discourses that promote choice feminism as a way of performing femininity as a personal choice, rather than questioning greater social structures. The narration of protagonists Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior reveal the mechanisms through which gender is performed and valued in these books. Irigaray’s theories of masquerade and mimicry are invoked to examine how these characters understand themselves and their relationship to femininity. The thesis then questions the nature of identity and how identity and gender can be created in a dystopic society, later looking at what new futures can be created to allow for imagining gender and identity outside gender binaries. The primary objective of this thesis is to examine how the Hunger Games and Divergent series represent and value femininity, to understand what that says about contemporary feminist theory, and then imagine how femininity can exist beyond a hierarchical gender binary.
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Åhlund, Angelica. ""Girl Power in Advertising" : A qualitative study of how postfeminism and intersectionality are appropriated in two advertising campaigns." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, JMK, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-157165.
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Advertising is increasingly, and has become one of the most powerful forms of global communication. It is one of the most influential tools in spreading ideas about gender, ethnicity and sexuality that create perceptions. Advertising has becoming increasingly global due to the globalization of the Western society and culture. This creates a need for intersectional awareness in advertising in order to avoid communicating inequalities. This bachelor thesis examines and analyze how femininities are articulated in advertising that exists within the contemporary context of popular feminism. Specifically, it offers an analysis of how postfeminism as a contemporary formation of feminism informs these advertising campaigns. The study examines two visual commercials, one from Adidas Originals and one from H&M. A multimodal semiotic analysis was used to analyze the empirical material in order to find out its meanings. The result indicates that the two advertising campaigns from H&M and Adidas Originals presents various and diverse forms of femininities by showcasing women with different looks, bodies and ethnicities. H&M’s commercial showcase women who are seen as empowered, confident and who acts out in different environments. Adidas Originals rather puts emphasis on showcasing women and men who speaks about issues concerning gender, body image and ethnicity. Both campaigns, it is argued, articulate and negotiate a discourse of postfeminism.
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Grundberg, Lina. "Flyga högt och falla fritt : Feminism och postfeminism i Erica Jongs Rädd att flyga och Tone Schunnessons Tripprapporter." Thesis, Mittuniversitetet, Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-38127.
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This comparative essay discusses feminist and post-feminist concepts in the novels Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973) and Trip Reports by Tone Schunnesson (2016) from a generational perspective. The term feminism embraces both second-wave and third-wave feminism, while the term post-feminism represents the contradictions between and within the two. The analysis centers on the first-person narrators, Isadora Wing, in Fear of Flying, and the anonymous narrator, in Trip Reports. A phenomenological close-reading was employed to uncover generational differences, contradictions, and similarities in the texts, which were then analyzed through the lens of feminism and post-feminism. Examination of the texts was facilitated through the use of three categories: love, the body, and artistry. The primary theory utilized in the analysis is Toril Moi’s feminist theory developed out of Simon de Beauvoir’s reflections on “the body as situation,” where it is argued that a person’s lived experience, one’s whole subjectivity, is dependent upon and reflected through one’s body. The body forms the relationship to ourselves and our experience of the world, as well as how others view us. Thus, the female lived experience and each woman’s individual project is in this regard connected to having a female body. The results define differences in the narrators’ lived experiences and how the two women view themselves and others, in relation to societal norms and each narrator’s specific generation. Furthermore, the narrators’ are both ambivalent in their thoughts and actions. The identified similarities center around male dependency, various degrees – or lack of - female identification and traditional gender norms, independent of generation. The results of the analysis could offer a cultural and generational contribution to the current feminist literary discussion.Godkännande datum 2019-06-03
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Lindblom, Maja. "Feminism till salu : En multomodal analys av rakhyvelsföretaget Estrids marknadskommunikation." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Svenska, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-45630.
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I denna studie undersöks rakhyvelsföretaget Estrids marknadskommunikation och hur de laddar sitt varumärke med feministiska värderingar. Studien ämnar besvara hur Estrid framställs som feministiska och vilken presupponerad kvinna kommunikationen riktar sig mot. Studien syftar till att kritiskt belysa hur etisk marknadskommunikation tar sig i uttryck med multimodala medel på den svenska marknaden, och tar avstamp i sociosemiotiken där en skrift-, bild- och reklamfilmsanalys görs med utgångspunkt i den systemisk funktionella grammatiken och multimodalitet. Resultatet visar att Estrids feministiska värderingar framträder genom att de skapar personan Estrid, vilken ses som handlingskraftig och självsäker, och som stöttar kvinnan i ett svårnavigerat och polariserat politiskt klimat. Kvinnan framställs som förhållandevis passiv och osäker, men legitimeras som feminist genom att köpa rakhyveln och synas med den. Kommunikationen går i linje med en kommodiferad aktivism och marknadsfeminism där konsumenter görs till politiska aktivister och som genom konsumtion skaffar sig bättre värderingar och blir en bättre människa. Studien visar även att ökat kvinnligt självförtroende är ett viktigt element i marknadskommunikationen, vilket vidare kan härledas till postfeminismen.
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Kristoffersen, Paula, and Kristina Kitchaou. "DEN FRIA SEXUALITETENS BEGRÄNSNINGAR : En kritisk diskursanalys av sex- och relationsråd på Amelias websida." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Sociologiska institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-174384.
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By using critical discourse as a method three discourses have been exposed as active in the advicing articles published on the website of Amelia, a Swedish magazine for women. The three discourses are the neoliberalist, postfeminist and the heteronormative. The research shows, by using the theories of governmentality and the heterosexual matrix, that these discourses collaborate to form the advices that is being given around women’s sexuality and their sexual health on the website of Amelia. The discourses that is being exposed in the research can be described as they are imposing guilt upon women. It also poses women as the solely responsible for the relationship to work and the women are as well expected to conform to their partner, which often is described as a man. This implies that in the advicing articles of Amelia, women and men are not allocated the same position in a relationship. Indicating that it exists an inequal relation in the context, where women are subordinated to men. Finally, the research can contribute to an understanding of the ambiguous expectations existing regarding women´s sexuality.
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Appel, Alexa Irini. "The Father-Adolescent Daughter Relationship in United States Media Culture: Postfeminist Renegotiations of Ideal Girlhood and Hegemonic Masculinity." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/22116.
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This thesis argues that the preoccupation with the father-adolescent daughter relationship in US media, from the early twenty-first century onwards, arose from and has been integral to a renegotiation of ideal girlhood and hegemonic masculinity in postfeminist culture. Through an examination of media texts produced from the early 2000s to the late 2010s, I establish how a confluence of cultural and ideological conditions – including post-9/11 gender anxieties, the commercialisation of ‘girl power’ and a fortified religio-political emphasis on girls’ bodies – precipitated the normalisation of two gendered subjectivities: the ‘sovereign postfeminist father’ and the ‘can-do/at-risk princess daughter’. Performing a close textual analysis of early-millennial ‘girl teen princess’ films; digital news mediations of Barack Obama’s ‘paternalised’ presidential persona; conservative evangelical girl-rearing literature; and television portrayals of father-daughter crime-fighting duos, I demonstrate how these subjectivities are constitutive of and constituted by imaginings of the father-adolescent daughter relationship in postfeminist culture. Furthermore, I assert that a wider cultural emphasis on the father-adolescent daughter relationship serves as a way of exploring new attitudes towards girlhood and paternity, albeit without disrupting dominant structures of masculine power. Focusing equally on girlhood and masculinity, I claim that contemporary media constructions of the father-adolescent daughter relationship engage feminist concerns about the paternalistic dynamics which constrain girls, whilst also often privileging whiteness and recalibrating hetero-patriarchal power. By examining the entanglements of postfeminism and patriarchal systems of authority, I illuminate how the father-adolescent daughter relationship operates as a key site upon which popular cultural contestations over gender arise, and the reproduction and disruption of gender-power relations takes place.
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Gronewold, Laura. "Chick Lit and Its Canonical Forefathers: Anxieties About Female Subjectivity in Contemporary Women's Fiction." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238894.
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This dissertation examines the anxieties that the contemporary genre of women’s fiction known as "chick lit" expresses about female sexuality, women and work, and the relationship between female identity and the global consumer marketplace. Furthermore, this project argues that chick lit can be productively traced to male-authored canonical texts that establish tropes and themes that chick lit novelists still grapple with at the turn of the twenty-first century. Chick lit heroines have benefitted from feminist progress, but they frequently participate in a backlash against the advances that empower them to pursue sexual pleasure outside marriage, find fulfilling careers, and challenge constructions of identity. Chapter 1 examines scholarship on constructions of gender and sexuality, affect theory, and Marxist theories. It also explores historical context through critiques of popular women writers. Chapter 2 argues that Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) establishes the first-person confessional narrative voice and a sexualized secondary female character who is punished for her non-normative sexuality. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada (2003) demonstrate that female sexuality must still be negotiated and contained in postfeminist culture. Chapter 3 explores how work contributes to female agency in literature. Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) depicts a heroine who successfully manages her gender, race, and class performances in order to thrive in an urban space, while Kate Reddy, from Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It (2002), must pass as a non-mother in order to participate in the affective economies that prevail in the gendered workplace. Chapter 4 analyzes the role of consumer culture in female subject formation in a capitalist material culture. In Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and Blake Edwards’s film version (1961), heroine Holly Golightly’s proximity to the luxury retailer legitimates her identity. But in Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (2000), heroine Becky Bloomwood struggles against a shopping addiction and strives to define herself outside of the discourse of consumerism. Overall, this dissertation provides an important contribution to the conversation on women’s writing and contemporary identity formation because it addresses literary criticism, contemporary culture, and constructions of female subjectivity.
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Weare, Andrea M. "Beauty work : a case study of digital video production and postfeminist practices on YouTube's Icon Network." Diss., University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3213.
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This dissertation study explored women's labor in the beauty industries of the YouTube vlogosphere, specifically beauty video production on the ICON network, the beauty and lifestyle channel of YouTube entrepreneur Michelle Phan. Via a case study of ICON's YouTube creators and their video production, this dissertation explored female digital labor by interrogating gender, ethnicity, bodies, and power to address two interconnected elements situated particularly in the YouTube vlogosphere: beauty and entrepreneurship. The study's key research questions asked: In the transnational world of digital employment, what are the material and ideological complexities of beauty YouTubers' experiences? And how do YouTubers interpret their technical production, their beauty ideologies, their power, their authenticity, and the material outcomes of their production for themselves and others? Following an analysis of ICON as a company, interviews with its management and video creators, and its video products, the case study's findings reveal that while ICON recruits beauty creators to market on behalf of its retail partners, the creators see themselves as entrepreneurs who negotiate their own stances regarding their beauty ideals, user-generated content, (post)feminisms, and online authenticity.
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Agnell, Emma. "Sadomasochism and compliance in the Twilight Saga : Female Submission and the Romance of Being Loved to Death." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-23375.
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This essay examines the sadomasochistic relationship between the main characters of the Twilight Saga from a psychoanalytic perspective, and looks at the family and gender roles in the Saga from a post-feministic view. Aspects also considered are the portrayal of female sexuality as something dangerous and negative, recreational sex as something perverted, and the pro-marriage and anti-abortion propaganda in the last two novels. The purpose of the essay is to reveal how the author’s personal, and to some extent religious, beliefs and values are validated through the storyline; how the relationship between the main characters, as well as their personal psychological and physical health, change after matrimony and parenthood.
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Segerberg, Petra. "Bloggare: personliga, populära och användbara." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för mediestudier, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-102639.
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Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur de populära unga bloggskrivarna Kenza, Kissie och Blondinbella ramats in i Aftonbladet och DN (under 2012) och vilka tolkningar av fenomenet läsaren därmed inspirerades till. De teoretiska perspektiv uppsatsen utgår från är konstruktionismen och inramningsteori, framförallt med utgångspunkt från Van Gorp och van der Goots studier. Andra teorier och perspektiv som legat till grund för arbetet handlar om det postmoderna samhället, postfeministisk mediekultur, populärkultur och ungdomskultur. Inramningsteorin ligger till grund för den metod som använts. Analysarbetet har bestått i att identifiera och dekonstruera inramningarna, de s.k. rampaketen, varefter ramarna namngivits och resultatet sammanfattats och utvecklats i en matris där rampaketens ”funktion” redovisas, d.v.s. vilka problemdefinitioner, orsaksförklaringar och problemlösningar som inramningarna har kapacitet att gynna. De fem inramningar som identifierats i texterna är ”Blondinbellahögerns framgångskult”, ”Den odrägliga (Blondinbella-generationen)”,”Entreprenörer, stekare, överklass, mediekändis”, ”De onaturliga (Kissie-)klonerna”, och ”Den naturliga, nakna kvinnokroppen”. Studien kom fram till att de tolkningar som ramarna leder till inte i första hand handlade om bloggkultur eller ungdomskultur utan rör sig inom andra områden. Bloggskrivarna framställdes framförallt som ”typer” med tillhörande attityder och deras roll i texterna handlade inte sällan om att personifiera ämnen eller händelser. De fem ramarna delar vissa manifesta element och ofta förekommer flera ramar i samma text, så tolkningens roll för resultatet är inte obetydlig.
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Lindberg, Frida. "Den digitala genusstrukturen : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys om hur genus konstrueras i tv-spel." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, JMK, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-125979.
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Populärkulturella medier som tv och filmer är något som under många år har granskats inom vad de berättar för dess konsumenter samt vilka strukturer och sociala konstruktioner som de representerar och reproducerar. Ett populärkulturellt fenomen som inte granskats lika tydligt är det idag växande tv-spelandet. Forskningen finns inom ämnet men har främst gjorts på sambandet mellan våld och tv-spel. Jag anser att det är tid att undersöka djupare om jämställds aspekter och genus i tv-spel. Syftet med denna uppsats är att identifiera de manliga och kvinnliga karaktärernas egenskaper och hur de ställs i relation till de motsatta könen utifrån tv-spel riktade till olika publiker. Detta har gjorts genom att undersöka två scener, en spelsekvens och en filmsekvens ur respektive spel utifrån karaktärernas egenskaper, kameravinklar samt dialoger. Studien utgår från en teoretisk referensram som handlar om maskulinitet/femininitet, tv-spel och postfeminism. Till undersökningen används en filmanalys inspirerad av ”How to study televison” med Selby & Cowdery samt inslag ur ”Visual pleasure and narrativ cinema” där Laura Mulvey redogör för ”the male gaze” och hur kameran vinklar blicken utifrån den manliga karaktären i scenen eller publiken. Materialet baseras på scener tagna ur två tv-spel, Grand Theft Auto V som riktar sig mot en manlig publik och Tomb Raider, definitiv edition, vilket istället är skapad för en kvinnlig publik. De valda scenerna har gjorts utifrån tillfällen i spelet där båda könen möts. Resultatet visade att kvinnor i spel utformade för en manlig publik ofta framställs som sexobjekt och att deras karaktärer utgår från deras relation till mannen. I spelet utformat för kvinnor är det fortfarande fokus på kvinnans kropp, men hon kan samtidigt agera som en postfeministisk förebild. Män framställs i båda spelen som aggressiva och dominanta medan kvinnor är deras objekt att styra, äga och erövra. I spelen som riktar sig till både män och kvinnor, ligger den sexuella framställningen i fokus. Min slutsats är att gamla föreställningar om maskulina och feminina representationer och egenskaper ligger till grund för spel riktade till en manlig publik. I spel riktade till kvinnor har ett steg närmare en jämställd spelvärld tagit form.
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Narcotta-Welp, Eileen Marie. ""The future of football is feminine" : a critical cultural history of the U.S. women's national soccer team." Diss., University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2125.
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“The Future of Football is Feminine”: A Critical Cultural History of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team,focuses on the historical and cultural construction of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. The public and academic discourse that constitutes women’s soccer in the U.S. consistently links the game with the feminist legislation of Title IX, and positions male coaches as benevolent patriarchs who grant young girls and women the right to play. The combination of these two dominant narratives confronts the historical narrative of women’s soccer from an uncritical and celebratory space, which represses and decenters lines of power. I challenge these steadfast discourses by locating this team, and thus, women’s soccer, in the larger cultural frame of neoliberal, postfeminist, post-racial, and sexual politics. Through an examination of U.S. newspapers and magazines, United States Soccer Federation (USSF) and Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) documents, and extensive soccer-specific journals and magazines, I explore the intersection of capitalism, feminism, and racism in women’s professional sport.
This research also examines how the media and other corporations have cultivated the U.S. women’s national team and its individual stars, such as Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, Abby Wambach, and Hope Solo to promote themselves as consumer conduits through which moral and ethical behaviors circulate and influence civil society. Since the mid-1990s, young female soccer players find themselves at an ideological crossroad of individual choice and self-discipline. The soccer field has been promoted as a space of gender and racial inclusion as well as economic and political freedom while subtly reinforcing the exact opposite. Moreover, I examine the historical and ever-shifting landscape of women’s soccer, and how neoliberalism as an economic and cultural theory is central to the use of race, class, gender, and sexual ideologies to develop women’s soccer in the United States.
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Zell, Bonnie, and Latifa Zuwa. "First of all, ew : En kvaitativ innehållsanalys av feministiska inlägg på Instagram samt en kritisk diskursanalys av dess kommentarsfält." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Media- och kommunikationsvetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-27535.
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Detta är en kvalitativ studie som tar grund från teorin om postfeminism som ett epistemologiskt genombrott och forskningsverktyg. Syftet är att upptäcka diskurser som underbygger kommentarer på normkritiska, feministiska inlägg på Instagram samt skapa förståelse för korrelationen mellan inlägg och kommentarsfält. Studiens tar fokus och material ifrån den svenska artisten Zara Larsson, vars offentliga person kommit till att bli en slags inofficiell ambassadör för feminismen, och hennes instagramflöde hennes kommunikationsportal för feministiska budskap och uttalanden. Genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys har inlägg av feministisk karaktär tagits fram från Larssons instagramflöde och dessa har sedan har analyserats och vidare tagits till diskussion i relation till inläggens kommentarsfält, vilka genomgått en kritisk diskursanalys i syfte att förstå hur språk och text, i detta fallet kommentarer, kan bidra till en slags konstruktion av verkligheten. Studiens resultat visar å ena sidan att det finns en stark korrelation med inläggen och dess kommentarsfält. Detta innebär att den som är insatt i ämnet, åtminstone till en viss grad, kan styra sitt kommentarsfält. Beroende på tonaliteten, utformningen av texten, valet av bild och ämnet över lag förändras attityder och aggressiviteten i kommentarsfälten. Vem som publicerar inläggen påverkar också kommentarsfälten och attityderna där i. Studien påvisar också att många kommentarer i relation till den feminism som visas upp på Zara Larssons Instagram uttrycker ilska över att inläggen drar alla män över en kam – och detta ska poängteras sker även om inläggen garderar sig mot just generalisering. Studien vill därför också poängtera att så kallade nättroll förekommer i samtliga inlägg, det vill säga användare som kommenterar enbart i syfte att provocera. Studien kategoriserar dessa kommentarer som näthat då de uppenbart inte tar avstamp i inläggen och har således inga argument eller giltiga anledningar till sina negativa kommentarer.This qualitative resource takes ground from the theory of postfeminism as epistemological break within feminism as well as a resource tools. While using a qualitative content analysis to find post based on feminism, a critical discourse analysis has been used to understand how language, in this case – language used in comment fields – can construct realities. The study aims to find understanding for these discourses as well as get a deeper knowledge of the correlation between media content and the comment-section. To do so, the study grasp all the interaction from the pictures that are chosen, caption that are written and the varieties of reactions that are commented. This study uses the Swedish, yet internationally known, pop-artist Zara Larsson as main figure for the research since she’s somewhat of an unofficial ambassador for feminism, especially for the young media public. The study shows that there is a significant correlation between content/caption and the comment section. Depending on tonality, length of caption, picture, subject and who the author is – the comment section gets more or less aggressive. Power relationships is an importance factor regarding the relationship between publisher and the users in the comment sections. This means that for someone who’s well established in the media flow, controlling ones’ comment section is, at least at some level, doable, although – while not trying to state the obvious, the study would also like to point out that so called ‘trolling’ – meaning provocative comments – will appear in the comment section no matter the content and caption. Therefore, these comments go under the word trolling or hating due to the fact that they lack arguments or valid reasons other than spreading negativity.
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Petrovic, Maria. "Den postfeministiska reklamkvinnan : en kvalitativ studie om den postfeministiska kvinnoframställningen i kvinnotidskrifternas reklamannonser." Thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Communication and IT, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-394.
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Women magazines are like guides to women and girls, due to the fact that they consistently upgrade their women audience about different trends. Advertising ads that are directed toward women are enjoying being in the atmosphere of women magazines, based on their frequent presence in women magazine’s content. Postfeminism is regarded as being an escape from feminism or as the opposite of feminism because they don’t share feminism’s ideology about equality, gender, and feminism’s questions about power struggle. I therefore consider postfeminism having the tendency of being apprehended both as traditional and modern woman position, and not as radical as feminism. Therefore is postfeminism’s ideology a well fit to women magazine’s advertising ads which feminism criticizes of having a too traditional view on women.
The aim of this study is to analyze how ads reproduce and characterize postfeminism in women magazine’s advertising ads. To be able of answering this study’s question I have analyzed and characterized postfeminism’s different women representations that appears in advertising ads. After examining the advertising ads I divided them into postfeministic categories.
The results confirm that postfeminism does exist in women magazine’s advertising ads. This study can characterize seven postfeministic women representations that advertisers use. Postfeminism’s two main categories “chick” and “grrrl” is a previous theory which is also confirmed in this study, within the advertising market. The traditional “chick” women in advertising ads have a role to educate the female receivers. This by telling them how to take care of their appearance, how to be healthy, which products are good to use, what boys like etc. So to say, they educate the female receiver’s feminine things. Postfeministic “grrrl” women in advertising ads symbolize and embrace the individual, the uniqueness and the feminine, confident woman.
Kvinnotidskrifter är en guide för kvinnor och tjejer, då kvinnotidskrifterna ständigt uppdaterar sin kvinnliga publik om olika trender. Reklamannonser som är riktade till kvinnor trivs i denna miljö med tanke på dess frekventa närvaro i kvinnotidskrifternas innehåll. Postfeminismen anses vara en utflykt från feminismen eller är feminismens motsatts eftersom de inte delar feministernas ideologi om jämställdhet, kön och maktfrågor. Jag anser därför att postfeminismen tenderar att uppfattas som en både traditionell och modern kvinnoställning och inte lika radikal som feminismen. Därför passar postfeministernas ideologi bra in i kvinnotidskrifternas reklamannonser vilka feminismen kritiserar för sin traditionella kvinnosyn.
Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur reklam avbildar och karaktäriserar postfeminismen inom kvinnotidskrifternas reklamannonser. För att kunna besvarar denna studies frågeställning har jag utifrån reklamannonserna analyserat och karaktäriserat postfeminismens olika kvinnoframställningar. Efter granskning av reklamannonserna har jag delat in dessa i postfeministiska kategorier som jag har utvecklat efter att jag har granskat reklamannonserna.
Resultatet är att postfeminismen existerar i kvinnotidskrifternas reklamannonser. Denna studie kan karaktärisera sju stycken postfeministiska kvinnoframställningar som reklamannonserna använder sig av. De två postfeministiska huvudkategorierna ”chick” och ”grrrl” är en tidigare teori som i denna studie bekräftas även inom reklammarknaden. De kvinnliga traditionella ”chick” kvinnorna i reklamannonserna har en roll att utbilda de kvinnliga mottagarna. Detta genom att tala om hur att ta hand om sitt utseende, hur att vara hälsosam, vilka produkter som är bra att använda, vad killar tycker om etc. Med andra ord utbildar de kvinnliga mottagarna feminina saker. De postfeministiska ”grrrl” kvinnorna i reklamannonserna symboliserar och hyllar individen, unikheten och kvinnan som både är feminin och självsäker.
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Lindquist, Viktoria, and Ida Cavallin. "And the Oscar goes to... : En feministisk filmanalys av de karaktärer som spelas av kvinnor som vunnit en Oscar för bästa kvinnliga huvudroll mellan åren 2010 - 2015." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Media- och kommunikationsvetenskap, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-24657.
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Szucs, Eszter. "Space for Girls: Possibilities of Feminist Agency and Political Engagement on the Internet." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2010. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/18.
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This thesis analyzes the teen-targeted website gURL.com, which is committed to providing safe space for young girls to explore different aspects of girlhood. I primarily focus on girls’ comments and conversations posted on the message boards in order to trace how teens mediate and extend the borders of the popular conceptualizations of contemporary girlhood. I interpret young women's online activities within the discursive framework of the complex relation between Girl Culture and feminism. Without overvaluing the freedom of online environments, I assume that the relatively unregulated space of the Internet enables girls to step outside the dominant stereotypes and discover alternative modes of doing feminist activism. I argue that these new venues of political engagement are adequate ways of resistance within the specific era of postmodern global capitalism.
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Bergström, Emma, and Lindgren Moa Eklund. "Normer om kvinnan och kvinnokroppen på Instagram : En kvalitativ studie av Bianca Ingrossos och Angelica Blicks självpresentation i bild." Thesis, Mittuniversitetet, Institutionen för medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-42224.
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Syfte och problemformulering: Syftet med studie är att undersöka hur normer om kvinnor och kvinnokroppen (re)konstrueras i kvinnliga influencers självpresentation i bild på Instagram. Studien undersöker detta utifrån fallet Bianca Ingrosso och Angelica Blick. Att normer om kvinnor och kvinnokroppen rekonstrueras genom de representationer av kvinnor som tillhandahålls i bilder i media är känt sedan tidigare. Forskning har visat att dessa representationer i sin tur påverkar sociala hierarkier i samhället, såsom att kvinnor tenderar representeras på ett sätt som gör att de underordnas män. Innan sociala mediers framfart under 2010-talet hade de traditionella medierna en unik position när det kommer till vilka representationer vi människor fick ta del av och inte. Idag är individuell bildpublicering, där vem som helst kan dela med sig av sina egna bilder, likväl en källa till representationen av kvinnor i bild. Inte minst via Instagram som kommit att bli ett av Sveriges mest populära socialamedium för just bildpublicering, samt en vital kommunikationskanal för influencers. Metod och material: I studien användes den kvalitativa metoden semiotisk bildanalys för att undersöka 12 Instagrambilder, 6 bilder på Bianca Ingrosso och 6 bilder på Angelica Blick. Samtliga bilder är bilder de publicerat på sig själv på sitt respektive Instagramkonto. Huvudresultat: Studien visar att influencernas självpresentation i bild rekonstruerar normer om kvinnan som sexig och något som ska betraktas. En ytterligare slutsats är att självsexualiseringen och självobjektifieringen som förekommer självpresentationerna kan upplevas mer eller mindre explicit, men ändå finnas där.
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Brodbeck, Seth. "Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1369055837.
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Siljendal, Erika. ""Jag tycker att dagens feminism är väldigt självcentrerad och ego" : – en kritisk diskursanalys av programmet Fittstim – min kamp." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för mediestudier, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-104285.
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Syftet med den här uppsatsen har varit att analysera innehållet i Belinda Olssons tv-serie Fittstim – min kamp som sändes i SVT under början av år 2014. Uppsatsen har undersökt vilka relationer och identiteter programmet innehåller för att komma fram till vilken bild av feminismen det är som representeras. Uppsatsen består av en övergripande forskningsfråga: hur representeras feminismen i programmet? Samt underfrågorna: hur ser identiteter, relationer och representationer ut i programmet? Hur går serien tillväga för att svara på programmets huvudfråga ”är feminismen på rätt väg? För att besvara frågeställningarna har en del ur lingvisten Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys används. Den teoretiska ramen uppsatsen bygger på består av teorier kring programgenrer, representation, definition av begreppet feminism, ett postfeministiskt medieinnehåll samt teorier gällande makt och ideologi hämtade från bland annat Fairclough. Tidigare forskning berör medias konstruktion av feminism och representationen av kvinnor i media. Uppsatsens slutsats och diskussion kommer fram till att den feminism som representeras är den som förekommit i mediebruset – någonting som kan kopplas till Belinda Olsson själv som kallar sig ”media-feminist”. Även det postfeministiska perspektivet är centralt i uppsatsens slutdiskussion eftersom Belinda Olsson som feminist ifrågasätter feminismen i ett program som i sin tur anser sig kartlägga feminismen. Framgår det vad som är subjektiva åsikter och vad som är allmängiltig fakta? Detta är frågor som funnits med under uppsatsens gång. Kärnan i undersökningen har därför varit att tolka hur feminismen representeras i ett dokumentärlikt samhällsprogram som vill kartlägga och ifrågasätta den svenska feminismen.
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Rosén, Emma, and Josefine Hedlund. "(O)filtrerat : En semiotisk analys av trenden Instagram vs. reality." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-433861.
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The main purpose of this paper is to examine the Instagram vs. reality trend and its meaning. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of whether the trend can be viewed from a postfeminist perspective, as well as if body ideals are reproduced or if the trend works as an opposition against the societal body standards. Earlier research indicates that particularly young women are affected negatively when being exposed to manipulated and filtered photos on Instagram. Other social media trends with a body positive focus have shown positive impacts on these issues, making young women gain more confidence regarding their body image. The theoretical framework applied consists of theories of postfeminism as well as Susan Bordo’s Reading the slender body. Semiotic analysis is used to analyze six images that explicitly represent the trend. The results conclude that Instagram vs. reality is consistent with the postfeminist ideology since the examined images aim to increase women’s self-esteem through empowerment and individualistic choices, demonstrating the reality behind the often ideal Instagram posts. Another result that emerges is that the trend on one hand contradicts the normative body ideal by showing flaws that are usually hidden on social media. On the other hand, the trend's impact might differ depending on who is viewing the images. Even though flaws are shown in what ought to be reality, the slender ideal is still visible in the chosen images. This paper contributes to the ongoing problematics of social media’s impact on young women’s body image.
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Ferhatovic, Höglund Jasminé. "Vem får höras? : En diskursiv analys av RFSL:s konstruerande av sexsäljare." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Genusvetenskap, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-41745.
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This essay aims to examine how RFSL (the swedish national association for sexual orientations) is constructing sexsellers by looking at how sexsellers are described in one of RFSL’s texts. The method used in this paper is Fairclough's discourse analysis which will be applied on one text from the website of RFSL. With this method it is possible to study the textual, the discursive and the social practices of the chosen text. The theoretical framework will be Foucault's power theory, the normalization principle and Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle. The result of this study shows that RFSL is forming discourses which construct sexsellers as either voluntary or involuntary. A voluntary sexseller includes sexsellers who see themselves as sexworkers or people who sell sexual services. By speaking of sexsellers as voluntary, RFSL is forming both a liberal feminist point of view but also a postfeminist point of view, and by speaking of sexsellers as involuntary a radical feminist point of view is formed. Therefore RFSL allows three kinds of sexsellers to be heard in their text: a working, a voluntary and an exposed sexseller.
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Kappelin, Hanna. "Den säljande kvinnan – objekt eller subjekt? : Postfeminismens individualism." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Malmö högskola, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-43553.
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Syftet med föreliggande alster var att undersöka huruvida utvecklingen av hur kvinnor exponeras i kommersiella sammanhang går hand i hand med postfeminism eller inte, och om det i sådana fall bidrar till att det fortfarande skapas kommersiellt innehåll utifrån den manliga blicken. Materialet som låg till grund för detta arbete var en av flera bilder från Bianca Ingrossos företag, CAIA Cosmetics, läppstifts reklamkampanj från år 2019. Metoden utgjordes, i grunden, av en semiotisk bildanalys, men med en sociosemiotisk dito som spets. Båda metoderna har likheter och har komponenter som går in i varandra, varpå båda, med utgångspunkt i en kvalitativ analys, spelade roller för mitt resultat. Analysen utfördes med följande forskningsfråga som grund: Hur förhåller sig postfeministisk teori och kommodifierad feminism till aktuell bild ur ett sociosemiotiskt perspektiv? Genom detta arbetes huvudteorier postfeminism, kommodifierad feminism och the male gaze – den manliga blicken – analyserades det valda materialet med kopplingar till pornografiskt bildspråk. Utfallet blev dubbeltydigt då kvinnan i bilden, utifrån applicering utav presenterad teori, både kunde ses som ett passivt objekt men även som ett aktivt subjekt. Makten i vald bild kunde alltså ses både som en kraft utifrån den postfeministiska individualismen samtidigt som det också kan tolkas som ännu ett fall av objektifiering av kvinnor i reklam.The purpose with this essay was to examine whether or not the development of the exposure of women in commercial contexts correlates with postfeminism, and in such case, whether it contributes to the ongoing production of commercial content based on the theory of the male gaze. The fundamental material of this work was one of several images from Bianca Ingrosso's company, CAIA Cosmetics, lipstick advertising campaign from 2019. The method was, basically, a semiotic image analysis, but with an extending, socio-semiotic ditto as a complement. Both methods have similarities and have components that go into each other, which made both of them, based on a qualitative analysis, play important roles for the final results. The analysis was carried out based on the following research question: How does postfeministic theory and commodified feminism relate to the chosen image from a socio-semiotic perspective? Through the main theories of postfeminism, commodified feminism and the theory of the male gaze, the chosen material was analyzed with links to, and in comparison, with, pornographic imagery. The outcome was ambiguous as the woman in the image, based on the application of presented theories, could be seen both as a passive object but also as an active subject. The power in the chosen image could thus be seen both as a feminin force based on postfeminist individualism, while it, at the same time, also can be interpreted as yet another case of objectification of women in commercial advertising.
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Rossie, Amanda Marie. "New Media, New Maternities: Representations of Maternal Femininity in Postfeminist Popular Culture." The Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397597413.
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