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"This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebritymagazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies"--
List of contents
Acknowledgements Preface; A.McRobbie Notes on Contributors Introduction; C.Scharff & R.Gill PART I: SEXUAL SUBJECTIVITY AND THE MAKEOVER PARADIGM Pregnant Beauty: Maternal Femininities under Neoliberalism; I.Tyler The Right to Be Beautiful: Postfeminist Identity and Consumer Beauty Advertising; M.M.Lazar Spicing It Up: Sexual Entrepreneurs and The Sex Inspectors ; L.Harvey & R.Gill '(M)Other-in-Chief: Michelle Obama and the Ideal of Republican Womanhood'; L.Guerrero Scourging the Abject Body: Ten Years Younger and Fragmented Femininity under Neoliberalism; E.Tincknell PART II: NEGOTIATING POSTFEMINIST MEDIA CULTURE Are You Sexy, Flirty, Or A Slut? Exploring 'Sexualisation' and How Teen Girls Perform/Negotiate Digital Sexual Identity on Social Networking Sites; J.Ringrose 'Feminism? That's So Seventies': Girls and Young Women Discuss Femininity and Feminism in America's Next Top Model ; A.L.Press Media 'Sluts': 'Tween' Girls' Negotiations of Postfeminist Sexual Subjectivities in Popular Culture; S.Jackson & T.Vares Is 'the Missy' a New Femininity?; J.Kim PART III: TEXTUAL COMPLICATIONS Of Displaced Desires: Interrogating 'New' Sexualities abd 'New' Spaces in Indian Diasporic Cinema; B.Bose Notes on Some Scandals: The Politics of Shame in Vers le Sud ; S.Wearing The Limits of Cross-Cultural Analogy: Muslim Veiling and 'Western' Fashion and Beauty Practices; C.Pedwell PART IV: NEW FEMININITIES: AGENCY AND/AS MAKING DO Through the Looking Glass? Sexual Agency and Subjectification Online; F.Attwood Reckoning with Prostitutes: Performing Thai Femininity; J.Haritaworn Migrant Women Challenging Stereotypical Views on Femininities and Family; U.Erel Negotiating Sexual Citizenship: Lesbians and Reproductive Health Care; R.Ryan-Flood PART V: NEW FEMINISMS, NEW CHALLENGES The New German Feminisms: Of Wetlands and Alpha-Girls; C.Scharff The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: Third-Wave Feminism, Postfeminism and 'New' Femininities; S.Budgeon Skater Girlhood:Resignifying Femininity, Resignifying Feminism; D.H.Currie, D.M.Kelly & S.Pomerantz Will These Emergencies Never End? Some First Thoughts about the Impact of Economic and Security Crises on Everyday Life; G.Bhattacharyya Index
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"This timely collection offers an extensive and thought-provoking range of insights into contemporary feminist debates around sexual subjectivity and citizenship, postfeminist identity and consumerism, and the constructions of femininity in relation to 'race', religion, migration, national security and generation. It represents both an important and refreshing contribution to the advancement of feminist media research." - Cynthia Carter, Cardiff University, UK
"New Femininities is an outstanding collection of theoretically rich and engaging essays that analyze how the global project of neoloberalism has coopted many of the basic tenets of feminism in corporately shrewd and often reactionary ways while selling all this as female empowerment. New Femininities is especially strong in showing how various media have worked to constitute new female subjectivities that are deeply contradictory. A very smart, timely and important anthology." - Susan J. Douglas, Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, USA, and author of The Rise of Enlightened Sexism
"Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff's edited collection, New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, provides an excellent road map for understanding gender, contemporary media and pop culture today. Across twenty original essays, this book grapples with the pressures and opportunities afforded to women across a range of transnational media forms, including magazines, adverts, the web, reality TV shows, and diasporic cinema." - Feminist Memory, 2014
