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Citation: Gill, R. (2016). Post-postfeminism? New feminist visibilities in postfeminist
times. Feminist Media Studies, 16(4), pp. 610-630. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1193293
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Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15641/
Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1193293
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Post-postfeminism? New feminist visibilities and postfeminist times
Abstract
This article contributes to debates about the value and utility of the notion of
postfeminism for a seemingly “new” moment marked by a resurgence of interest in
feminism in the media and among young women. The paper reviews current
understandings of postfeminism and criticisms of the term’s failure to speak to or
connect with contemporary feminism. It offers a defence of the continued importance
of a critical notion of postfeminism, used as an analytical category to capture a
distinctive contradictory-but-patterned sensibility intimately connected to
neoliberalism. The paper raises questions about the meaning of the apparent new
visibility of feminism and highlights the multiplicity of different feminisms currently
circulating in mainstream media culture – which exist in tension with each other. I
argue for the importance of being able to “think together” the rise of popular
feminism alongside and in tandem with intensified misogyny. I further show how a
postfeminist sensibility informs even those media productions that ostensibly
celebrate the new feminism. Ultimately, the paper argues that claims that we have
moved “beyond” postfeminism are (sadly) premature, and the notion still has much to
offer feminist cultural critics.
Keywords: postfeminism neoliberalism feminism media magazines
Introduction: Feminism, postfeminism and generation
On October 2, 2015 the London Evening Standard (ES) published its first glossy
magazine of the new academic year. With a striking red, white and black cover design
it showed model Neelam Gill in a bright red coat, upon which the words “NEW
(GEN) FEM” were superimposed in bold. To the left of this, another large headline
asserted “NEELAM GILL TOP GIRL: IN MY INDUSTRY WOMEN EARN
MORE.” Further teasers promised “TODAY’S GENDER WARRIORS,” “HOW TO
DATE A FEMINIST,” and “BOYEURISM: MEN THE NEW SEX OBJECTS.”
[Insert image here]
The timing of this publication was not accidental, coinciding as it did with the
beginning of the academic year in London’s many Universities. On the same day, The
Times Higher published its global rankings, highlighting the position of several
London universities near the top of the international league tables, and claiming
London as the world’s most important university city. As tens of thousands of
students returned to studying, or started university for the first time, the London
transport network was awash with free copies of the ES magazine proclaiming
feminism as stylish, successful and youthfully hip.
In this article I seek to unpick this constellation of values linking youth (or at
least youthfulness), fashion and feminism. I will do so by starting from this
ephemeral, yet emblematic, publication – a publication whose resonance in
celebrating “new generation feminism” I argue goes far beyond London but connects
to a wider discursive formation in the UK and many other countries in which
feminism is increasingly signified within the mainstream media as “cool” (Valenti,
2014; Keller & Ringrose, 2015). I wish to discuss a series of questions connected to
feminism, postfeminism, and generation, in order to think about the current cultural
and political moment – a moment in which feminism has seemingly moved from
being a derided and repudiated identity among young women (Scharff, 2013) to
becoming a desirable, stylish and decidedly fashionable one. How should we read this
apparent shift? What place does the notion of postfeminism have at a moment in
which feminism has seemingly become hip? Is postfeminism irrelevant in these new
times? Are we now post-postfeminism?
In addressing these questions, the paper seeks to respond to a number of recent
discussions about the “new cultural life of feminism” (Diffractions, 2015) and
suggestions that postfeminism needs to be “problematized” (Keller and Ryan, 2014)
because “emergent feminisms” pose a “challenge to postfeminist media culture”
(Keller and Ryan, 2015). Engaging with these ideas I will make a case for the
continued relevance of postfeminism as an analytical category in media studies.
Responding to the claim that postfeminism lacks analytic purchase for engaging with
a moment characterised by a resurgence of interest in feminism, the paper seeks to
engage with current mainstream media constructions of feminism and to unpick some
of the complexities of a cultural moment seemingly characterized by a multiplicity of
(new and old) feminisms which co-exist with revitalized forms of anti-feminism and
popular misogyny. The paper disputes the idea that the concept of postfeminism has
nothing to offer in reading the current moment and aims to show how some of the
popular mediated feminism circulating is in fact distinctively postfeminist in nature. I
suggest the need to make distinctions between different kinds of (mediated)
feminism, arguing that the corporate/neoliberal feminism (Rottenberg, 2014) of Lean
In (Sandberg, 2013) may have little in common with – and indeed may be antithetical
to – the activist feminism of those protesting budget cuts to women’s services or
deportation of migrants. I posit that these feminisms may in turn be remote from
dominant media constructions of feminism as a youthful, stylish identity.
Questions of generation are implicit in this paper as I seek to respond to
suggestions that postfeminism is outdated as an analytical concept. Feminist
scholarship does not exist outside of fashion, nor outside the pressures of
contemporary neoliberal academia, that may contribute both to the investments that
each of us has in particular critical vocabularies, as well as to the need for the “new”,
the fresh, the unique. Whilst recognizing that generation shapes life experiences in
profound ways, I am troubled by the idea of using “generations” as a lens both
because I am mindful of feminism’s regular “generation wars”, and deeply informed
by an ethics and politics concerned with how we “tell feminist stories” (Hemmings,
2011). Generational framings – including critical ones like this special issue – seem
perennially to risk pulling us back into polarized positions characterised by mistrust
and suspicion on both sides (and why are there always only two sides, rather than
three or four generations?) That is not what I want to do. The scholars whose work I
engage are feminists I like and admire; people whose new publications enthuse and
excite me. Moreover, even beyond the ethical concerns, it seems to me that a focus on
political and ideological differences within feminism is more empirically relevant and
productive than one that relates to birth dates. Rather than fuelling intergenerational
animosity, then, my aim is to contribute to the building of an intersectional
understanding of postfeminism that can be used critically in making sense of
contemporary culture. It will not tell us everything, to be sure, and it should not be the
only term in our critical lexicon, but it does still have something to offer those who
wish to make sense of the complexities of contemporary mediations of gender,
alongside issues of gendered inequality and power relations.
Interrogating postfeminism
Over the last three decades, the notion of postfeminism has become a key term in
feminists’ critical vocabulary (e.g. Modleski, 1991; Brooks, 1997; Coppock et al,
1995; Gamble, 2004; Projansky, 2007; Genz and Brabon, 2009; Tasker and Negra,
2007). The term is contested and has been characterised in various different ways: as
a backlash against feminism, to refer to an historical shift – a time “after” (second
wave) feminism; to capture a sense of an epistemological break within feminism,
suggesting an alignment with other “post” movements (poststructuralism,
postmodernism and postcoloniality); and to propose connections to Third Wave. In
two formulations that have been influential within feminist media and cultural studies,
postfeminism has been characterised as a “gender regime” (McRobbie, 2009) and, in
my own terms, as a “sensibility” (Gill, 2007), deeply enmeshed with neoliberalism.
According to this perspective, postfeminism is a critical analytical term that refers to
empirical regularities or patterns in contemporary cultural life, which include the
emphasis on individualism, choice and agency as dominant modes of accounting
(Thompson and Donaghue, 2014); the disappearance – or at least muting – of
vocabularies for talking about both structural inequalities and cultural influence
(Kelan, 2009; Scharff, 2012); the “deterritorialisation” of patriarchal power and its
“reterritorialisation” (McRobbie, 2009) in women’s bodies and the beauty-industrial
complex (Elias et al, 2016); the intensification and extensification of forms of
surveillance, monitoring and disciplining of women’s bodies (Gill, 2007); and the
influence of a “makeover paradigm” that extends beyond the body to constitute a
remaking of subjectivity – what I have recently characterised as a central part of the
“psychic life of postfeminism” (Gill, 2016). Crucially, as Angela McRobbie (2009)
among others has argued, postfeminism is involved in the undoing of feminism.
However, the value of postfeminism as a critical term has been called into
question recently by a number of scholars (Lumby, 2011; Whelehan, 2010). Amongst
them are several scholars who have worked productively with the notion, yet who
point out that the heightened visibility of feminist activism, alongside a growing sense
that feminist questions and issues increasingly take up space within the mediated
public sphere, should give us pause for thought. In this changed context, analysis of
postfeminism is cast as out of date, “falling short” and in need of “problematization”
(Keller and Ryan, 2015). As Jessalynn Keller and Maureen Ryan (2014) put it in a
recent call for papers:
Over the past two years feminist politics have become increasingly
prevalent within popular media cultures, complicating the logic that
feminism is in retreat. This visibility can be mapped across a range
of media texts…Postfeminism falls short of adequately accounting
for these complicated politics, as well as the internal dynamics of
various forms of feminisms currently visible across media culture.
Elsewhere, Retallack, Ringrose and Lawrence (2015) suggest the need to “interrogate
some of the core ideas of postfeminism as theorised by media scholars”, arguing that
postfeminism is “potentially redundant” in the light of “fourth wave” social media-
based feminist activism. In turn, Diane Negra (2014:275) notes “we now need to
inquire whether/how accounts of gender developed in an earlier era still apply”.