Core Response #5 - Andrea

I had too many thoughts inspired by the readings this week (rip to my Wonder Woman, Bridget Jones, and Hannah Montana drafts that came before this post), so I’ll try to wrangle some of my most significant conclusions on this week’s readings. For one, I appreciated Angela McRobbie’s breakdown of postfeminism, and I find her idea that postfeminism does not simply indicate the death of feminism but an afterlife in which “feminism [is] at some level transformed into a form of Gramscian common sense, while also fiercely repudiated,” really helpful in bringing these texts to our contemporary moment (256). This idea that feminism is taken as common sense really resonated with me and the media texts that interest me, and I think it makes clear the ways that contemporary media is able to give a wink and nudge to “outdated feminism,” to use McRobbie’s terminology, while also reinforcing the idea that individualism and “freedom of choice” require a move beyond feminism. I’m also fascinated by this idea of this postfeminist hatred for feminism according to McRobbie, and how vague notions of empowerment versus disempowerment fuel this strong animosity towards “outdated” feminism. 

In particular, this repudiation of feminism and the ironic engagement with outdated feminism reminded me of the old Carl’s Jr. commercials featuring supermodels eating burgers in the most sexually explicit ways possible (video). I had completely forgotten about these commercials from my childhood, and McRobbie’s text brought back the memories of bikini-clad models dripping sauce on their breasts and orgasming over burgers as she explored the concept of “self-consciously” or ironically “sexist ads” (259). I feel that this sort of ironic objectification reached a peak in the early 2000’s, and the proliferation of “commercial sexuality” coupled with narratives of “empowerment” lead to what Jess Butler defines as “the (imagined) success of the women’s movement, a sex-positive (and racially exclusive) feminist legacy, and the ever-expanding neoliberal celebrations of autonomy, individualism, and consumer choice” (41). I think these ideas of sexual liberation have manifested in similar yet different ways in contemporary media, for example, Bimbotok (the bimbo/himbo/thembo side of Tiktok) engages with this idea of sexual liberation and the freedom of choice over how one represents themself in the world (very heavily tied to consumer habits and clothes/makeup). I think Bimbotok is a pretty clear example of the ways postfeminism logic “conflates feminism and femininity, individualism and liberation, and consumption and activism,” according to Butler, however, I believe it more actively engages with feminist thought than outright repudiating or rejecting outdated feminism. Bimbotok definitely represents this sort of postfeminism tension the authors highlight this week, and it’s interesting to see the ways contemporary creators are speaking to these pervasive narratives of empowerment and sexual liberation. 

I’d like to think that we’ve moved beyond this sort of “ironic sexism,” however, I’m left questioning what place we’re at in this postfeminist environment. Despite the ways the authors this week clearly define intimate relationships between post-feminism, post-racism, and neoliberalism with white heteropatriarchy, I’m left wondering how postfeminism is represented in our contemporary moment in TV and film. I believe we’re at a strange moment in which feminism is taken as a sort of common-sense idea, yet there’s a new wave of “popular feminism” that many shows, particularly shows aimed at women and teens, embrace what Sara Banet-Weiser might refer to as “ambiguous diversity” in terms of gender and race. In shows today, (yes, I’m definitely thinking of Riverdale here), there are active attempts to explore what we might refer to as “outdated feminism,” yet almost everything is packaged in girl boss tropes. Is this just an extension of the postfeminism these authors explore or are we seeing something different? Is there still a sense of repudiation or hatred towards feminism, or are we just seeing fully coopted neoliberal politics now?