Why is it so hard to come out as a feminist?

In this innovative deployment of

feminist curiosity Penny Griffin links together the supposedly disparate realms of
international political economy and popular culture, showing how they work hard
to make ‘anti-feminism’ the new normal.
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, UK
Violence and male heroes are omnipresent in popular culture. In this innovative
and important new book Penny Griffin reveals how they are part of much deeper
entrenched and highly problematic gender stereotypes that shape both our identi-
ties and our politics.
Roland Bleiker, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland
This is a book brimming with curiosity about the intricate connections between
feminism, popular culture and IPE. Griffin has taken the time to weave an acces-
sible and lively path between the ‘popular’ and the ‘academic’. Highly illuminating
and energising.
Marysia Zalewski, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
This page intentionally left blank
POPULAR CULTURE, POLITICAL
ECONOMY AND THE DEATH
OF FEMINISM

A number of scholars have examined the marginalization of feminist concerns in

contemporary Western societies. They have articulated how representations
matter to people’s ideas, assumptions, perceptions and beliefs about the world,
carefully connecting the world of ‘make-believe’ with the serious business of
world politics. They have sought to understand how images and cultural
constructions are connected to patterns of inequality, domination and oppression
and have revealed how feminist concerns have been appropriated and absorbed by
institutions that contribute to the perpetuation of gender inequalities. Some have
argued that we live in a ‘postfeminist’ era that renders feminism irrelevant to
people’s contemporary lives.
This book takes ‘feminism’, the source of eternal debate, contestation and
ambivalence, and situates the term within the popular, cultural practices of everyday
life. It explores the intimate connections between the politics of feminism and the
representational practices of contemporary popular culture, examining how feminism
is ‘made sensible’ through visual imagery and popular culture representations. It
investigates how popular culture is produced, represented and consumed to reproduce
the conditions in which feminism is valued or dismissed, and asks whether
antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable.
Written in an accessible style and analysing a broad range of popular culture
artefacts (including commercial advertising, printed and digital news-related journalism
and commentary, music, film, television programming, websites and social media),
this book will be of use to students, researchers and practitioners of International
Relations, International Political Economy and gender, cultural and media studies.

Penny Griffin is Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the School of

Social Sciences, UNSW Australia.
Popular Culture and World Politics
Edited by Matt Davies (Newcastle University),
Kyle Grayson (Newcastle University),
Simon Philpott (Newcastle University),
Christina Rowley (University of Bristol), and
Jutta Weldes (University of Bristol)

The Popular Culture World Politics (PCWP) book series is the forum for leading
interdisciplinary research that explores the profound and diverse interconnections
between popular culture and world politics. It aims to bring further innovation,
rigor, and recognition to this emerging sub-field of international relations.
To these ends, the PCWP series is interested in various themes, from the
juxtaposition of cultural artefacts that are increasingly global in scope and regional,
local and domestic forms of production, distribution and consumption; to the
confrontations between cultural life and global political, social, and economic
forces; to the new or emergent forms of politics that result from the rescaling or
internationalization of popular culture.
Similarly, the series provides a venue for work that explores the effects of new
technologies and new media on established practices of representation and the
making of political meaning. It encourages engagement with popular culture as
a means for contesting powerful narratives of particular events and political
settlements as well as explorations of the ways that popular culture informs main-
stream political discourse. The series promotes investigation into how popular
culture contributes to changing perceptions of time, space, scale, identity, and
participation while establishing the outer limits of what is popularly understood as
“political” or “cultural.”
In addition to film, television, literature, and art, the series actively encourages
research into diverse artefacts including sound, music, food cultures, gaming,
design, architecture, programming, leisure, sport, fandom and celebrity. The series
is fiercely pluralist in its approaches to the study of popular culture and world
politics and is interested in the past, present, and future cultural dimensions of
hegemony, resistance, and power.
Gender, Violence and Popular Culture
Telling stories
Laura J. Shepherd

Aesthetic Modernism and Masculinity in Fascist Italy

John Champagne

Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism

The new millennium Hollywood rom com
Betty Kaklamanidou

Battlestar Galactica and International Relations

Edited by Iver B. Neumann and Nicholas J. Kiersey

Popular Culture, Political Economy and the Death of Feminism

Why women are in refrigerators and other stories
Penny Griffin

The Politics of HBO’s The Wire

Everything is connected
Edited by Shirin Deylami and Jonathan Havercroft

Sexing War/Policing Gender

Motherhood, myth and women’s political violence
Linda Ahall

Documenting World Politics

A critical companion to IR and non-fiction film
Edited by Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest
This page intentionally left blank
POPULAR CULTURE,
POLITICAL ECONOMY
AND THE DEATH
OF FEMINISM
Why women are in refrigerators
and other stories

Penny Griffin
First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
” 2015 Penny Griffin
The right of Penny Griffin to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patent
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record is available for this book

ISBN: 978-0-415-52226-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-71938-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74053-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Book Now Ltd, London
For Edie
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS

List of illustrations xiii

Preface xv
Series editor’s preface xix
Acknowledgements xxi
List of abbreviations xxiii

1 Introductions 1
Background 3
Strategy(ies) of research 5
Notes 18

2 Analysing popular culture 21

Popular culture and the importance of visual language in studying global politics 22
‘Culture’, popular culture and (erroneous) high/low binaries 27
Popular culture and political economy 31
Commercial viability and (cultural) popularity 44
Notes 53

3 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 55

Production 56
Representation 60
Consumption 70
Notes 88

4 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 89

Feminist ‘successes’: How feminists have changed things 90
The (premature) burial of feminism 96
xii Contents

Australia and ‘men in blue ties’ 106

The sexualization of popular culture and the recentralization of feminist concerns 109
Notes 116

5 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 119

Overt antifeminism (1): Why the development of decent female movie
characters is not encouraged 120
Overt antifeminism (2): Why women are in refrigerators 125
Overt antifeminism (3): Why games with female characters don’t sell 129
Overt antifeminism (4): Why men are entitled to sex but (independent)
female sexuality is unacceptable 132
Overt antifeminism (5): Why stupid girls are more profitable 134
Overt antifeminism (6): Why feminists can only be characterized negatively
in popular culture 139
Tacit antifeminism (1): Why ‘strong female characters’ have become boring 141
Tacit antifeminism (2): Why Hollywood is not good at ‘girl power’ 144
Tacit antifeminism (3): Why women shouldn’t read The Economist 148
Tacit antifeminism (4):Why men’s lifestyle magazines reflect sexual paranoia 151
Tacit antifeminism (5): Why the media promotes ‘enlightened sexism’ 154
Overt feminism (1):Young women are interested in and actually
practice feminism 156
Overt feminism (2): The enduring strength(s) of liberal feminism(s) 162
Overt feminism (3): The (increasing) popularity of celebrity feminism 165
Overt feminism (4): ‘Riot grrrl’, sextremism and guerilla feminisms 169
Tacit feminism: Supportive but not self-professed 172
Notes 175

6 Conclusions 177
The trouble with IPE 177
Feminism, gender tropes and popular culture 178
Is antifeminism more commercially viable than feminism? 180
Note 183

Appendix A: Survey questions 185

Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana 189
Glossary 197
Bibliography 211
Index 233
ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
1.1 Demographics of survey respondents 14–16
2.1 Attendance at cultural venues and events, by region 30
2.2 Advertisement on Facebook 50
2.3 Author’s Facebook newsfeed, 8:14am, October 2013 50
2.4 ‘Airbag by Porsche’ 51
2.5 ‘Sydney Riders’ Facebook Page, 17 July 2013 52
3.1 Newsweek cover, 23 November 2009 69
3.2 Average hours per week spent consuming media by online
Australians aged 16 and over, 2007–10 75
3.3 ‘How to Synergize’ 85
3.4 Advertisement for Cif Cream cleaner 86
4.1 ‘The Big Feminist But’ 105
4.2 Mouse pad with wrist support 116
5.1 Searches related to ‘feminists are’ at www.google.com.au 140
5.2 ‘Rush Vs Feminism’ 141
5.3 The Economist, slip-cover 149
5.4 ‘What is Feminism?’ 162
5.5 Examples of guerrilla feminism 171
6.1 The Facebook page of Zoo Weekly magazine (Australia), 2012 182
B.1 D&G Esquire campaign images 191
B.2 D&G ‘knives’ campaign images 192
B.3 D&G ‘objectifying men’ campaign images 194
xiv Illustrations

Tables
4.1 Do you think women face more or less pressure over their
behaviour and appearance than they did 20 years ago? 108
5.1 The Dark Knight trilogy 127
5.2 Survey Question 16, ‘Feminism is Accessible to Young Women
in the 21st Century’ (age) 158
5.3 Survey Question 16, ‘Feminism is Accessible to Young Women
in the 21st Century’ (education) 159

Boxes
3.1 How do adverts get made? 86
5.1 ‘My Feminism’ 163
PREFACE

In 2009, as I began writing this book, I was struck that, in popular terms, feminism
appeared very much in decline, its actual popularity seemingly at odds with
conservative critiques that chastised it for its lingering and baneful power. At this
point, it seemed that the status of feminism and the increasing sexualization of
popular culture in Western societies more generally were related, and related
inversely. Sexually explicit content and demeaning representations abounded, yet
feminism seemed submerged by popular rhetoric and representations that ques-
tioned its relevance and obscured its incisiveness. Feminists appeared on television,
when they appeared on television, as shrieking harpies devoid of humour, even
across cultural sources I otherwise admired and enjoyed. If feminism was suffering
from an image problem, how, I wondered, had the representational practices
embedded in our everyday cultural lives come to constitute and shape feminism
and our responses to it? Were cultures of production and consumption in the West
contributing to derogatory attitudes to women and, particularly, to feminism? To
what extent were negative representations of the women’s movement in the
popular media depoliticizing feminism as a form of collective politics in a world
where young women were being taught that discrimination had been eliminated
and individual efforts, self-definition and choice were key to women’s advancement?
Why was sexism so prevalent across popular culture? Why could popular culture
produce at best only uninspiring, and uninspired, representations of women, while
sexism was all that consumer culture seemed to be selling?
Like feminists such as McRobbie, Whelehan and Levy, I was convinced that
popular culture was indeed reproducing the conditions in which feminism was
being dismissed and the sexualization of market products valorized. I found myself
irritated, as I started this book, that a leading fashion house would be patronizing
enough to claim that the images it used to sell its products were not ‘real life’
and that, as ‘artists’, well known and widely publicized designers had no social
xvi Preface

responsibility (see Appendix B). During days spent teaching, it seemed that I only
ever encountered students who insisted that they were not ‘feminist’, although,
yes, they supported the projects espoused and achievements gained by the feminist
movement and, no, they did not much care for the idea that they would earn
more or less as graduates depending on their sex. When I began this book, I felt
despondent; for the prospects of feminism in Australia, and for a future teaching
apparently uninterested, desensitized, neoliberalized youth. Feminism did, indeed,
appear ‘undone’ in the contemporary West, dismissible and irrelevant to young
women’s (and men’s) lives and incompatible with a cultural landscape in which
the sexualization of market products and objectification of the human body was
valued above all else.
This book began, then, as a catalogue of sorts of the prevalence of discrimination,
sexual violence, prejudice and asymmetry in the relations of power and authority
that drive popular culture representations of women, men and children. Although
I have long noted sexist and discriminatory practice across sources of popular
culture (such as television, the internet, movies, music, books, and so on), it has
only been relatively recently that I have come fully to appreciate the various levels
of hostility generated by the ‘f ’ word, both academically and across sites of popular
practice. Some of the most vitriolic comments on feminism (and feminists), made
so readily available now through the internet, have truly shocked, disgusted and
disturbed me. I do not repeat the most profane in the pages that follow out of the
fear that to reinscribe them is somehow to justify their presence.
When, in October 2012, Julia Gillard gave her now famous, if obviously
crafted, ‘misogyny’ speech, and it seemed that, actually, not that many Australians
were jeering, I was, then, quite surprised. This was not because women in
Australia have not experienced sexism and would therefore not be encouraged by
anything Gillard said in this regard, since Australia is undoubtedly sexist, and quite
horribly so in some ways. I was surprised because I had begun to expect only
disdain and sarcasm at the mention of feminism. I was well versed in student
disinterest and celebrity denials (‘I’m a humanist, not a feminist’), but, and it seemed
almost sudden this change although on reflection it cannot have come from
nowhere, people began publicly to admit that they might identify with the f word.
Even my students started expressing an unprovoked (or possibly slightly provoked
by me, but not consciously) interest in gender issues.
While my research has taught me that support for feminism appears cyclical,
and thus potentially unstable, from something of an itinerary of failure, this book
has evolved into a far more optimistic labour. This has surprised me. I have been
even more surprised to find that there is little actual evidence (anecdotal or survey-
based) to support any claim that young women, today, are less likely to support
feminism or the women’s movement than previous generations. Where only a
couple of years ago I would likely have argued that young women were not as
concerned with feminism as past generations, and that the, now rather clichéd,
‘I’m not a feminist, but . . .’ refrain was undoing feminism among my student
cohort, examining in greater depth popular engagements with feminism has taught
 Preface xvii

me that people are rarely as naïve in their appreciations of relations of power as I

might once have worried. Positive representations certainly jostle for space with
disappointing caricatures and unflattering stereotypes, but, for every derogatory
portrayal of girls, women, feminism or feminists, a genuine and affirming engage-
ment emerges to lift the spirits. What I have found that seems more significant to
feminism’s future, today, is that young women learn, unsurprisingly perhaps, to
fear and reject negative media representations of feminism and the women’s
movement. Such representations need only be relatively common: the power of
stereotype threat and the considerable complexity in what women say about
feminism is such that better attention is probably paid to considering feminist
practice rather than what (young) women say about feminism, per se. While
popular culture represents feminism, and feminists, in various and ambiguous
ways, the contradictions involved in understanding contemporary popular cul-
ture’s representational practices make conclusive statements on feminism’s future
impossible.
This research has invariably found it easier to uncover examples of antifemi-
nism, both tacit and overt, filtered through multiple popular culture channels, than
examples of patent support for feminism. Yet such examples are rarely enough to
support definitively any claim that feminism is ‘in decline’. Rather, writing this
book has taught me that the so-called ‘death of feminism’ is entirely irrelevant to
understanding either the complexity of social relations in capitalist, liberal societies
such as Australia, or the significance of feminist imaginings within popular culture
and popular culture imaginings of feminism. The important question today is not
‘where has feminism gone?’ but ‘where is feminism embodied?’ and the answer to
this, I suggest, lies in understanding feminism as simultaneously vibrant and frag-
mented. It is this that makes feminism both vulnerable and enduring. While
feminism’s very fragmentation is ambivalent, rendering feminism incomplete to
some and vital to others, to argue that feminism has many and various definitions,
to different people, is not to vacate feminism of meaning; it is not, as per Kalb’s
analysis, to argue that the meaning of feminism is so scattered that, really, feminism
means nothing at all. Often stigmatized and, sometimes, celebrated, however
many times popular media have heralded, and will continue to herald, the death
of feminism, feminism continues to relate in multiple ways to the different challe-
nges people pose to sexist, hierarchical and restrictive practices, structures and
institutions. People arrive at feminism, or they do not, for all sorts of reasons.
Refusing to police the boundaries of the political and defining feminism according to
its multiplicity constitutes part of the strength, not the weakness, of our engagements
with the term.
I did not know, when I began this book, that I would fall pregnant and would
have a baby girl. While the discriminatory and derogatory possibilities that my
daughter will face alarm me, I am also, however, more confident than I once was
that alternative possibilities exist and will be available to her. I comfort myself with
the knowledge that, empirically, feminist leanings have been linked to self-esteem,
self-efficacy, gender perceptiveness and academic achievement and I hope that she
xviii Preface

learns as much from feminist practice as I have. Writing this book, I have learned
(unconsciously, perhaps) to be less horrified by the shock tactics deployed by
antifeminists, to expend much less emotional energy on the detractors and the hate
speech, to feel sorry for the people that spend their time writing vitriolic nonsense
and to be encouraged by those that seek to be a little different. Writing this book,
I have been surprised by the diversity and prevalence of feminist messages across
popular culture sites and I am, now, more sanguine about feminism’s future, and
more confident in the options my daughter will face as she grows up.
I am biased, of course, because I have always been inspired by feminist work.
It has been feminist scholarship that has proved most instructive across my experi-
ences of adult learning, from early engagements with Julia Kristeva and Simone de
Beauvoir, to my current work on gender and the global political economy. I never
felt as an undergraduate student that feminism might be considered a marginal,
embarrassing even, subject area or mode of enquiry, a (now I discover) slightly
unusual state of being that I perhaps owe to exceptional pedagogy during my studies.
Feminists have, for me, always been the most astute commentators on social life,
privilege, power and the production of (discriminatory) common sense. I have
never really understood how people can claim to have made sense of the world,
social relations or foreign affairs without thinking about the gendered restraints by
which people everywhere are shackled.
Arguing that we ignore the significance of visual language in global politics at
our peril, this book makes a case for centralizing analysis of popular culture in
studies of international relations and political economy. Asking whether popular
culture is contributing to a dismissal of feminism is a question worth thinking about
because, more than simply being interesting, it is a question of the politics of power
and the circulation (and regulation) of knowledge, exclusion and appropriate
behaviour. Representations matter and the representational practices of contempo-
rary popular culture help define our codes of conduct and horizons of possibility.
While mainstream (conventional) International Relations and Political Economy
frequently offer a picture of the world as a sequence of isolated events unrelated to
everyday practices of social and cultural reproduction, this book instead proceeds
on the assumption that we cannot understand the processes and forms of our social,
economic and political activity without engaging the properties, biases and effects
of the cultural systems in which we are located and that make ‘real life’ possible.
Images and cultural constructions are intimately connected to patterns of inequality,
domination and oppression: to understand their power is to begin to unravel the
exclusive and discriminatory hierarchies that sustain them.
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

Within international political economy, there has been a longstanding concern

with examining the dynamics that conjoin popular culture and world politics. The
focus has often been on how popular culture serves as a vehicle for the dissemina-
tion of dominant ideologies and/or how the structures of capitalism determine
cultural forms. Thus, representations within artefacts themselves were understood
as derivative of deeper underlying socio-economic structures. Popular culture
simply reflected some other politics that was situated in some other place.
In this volume, Penny Griffin takes a different approach. She uses popular cul-
ture as a means of analysing contemporary feminisms from a perspective informed
by international political economy. Her goal is to understand an important con-
temporary political paradox: how is it possible that as popular culture has become
more overtly sexualisFed, popular rhetoric and representations have questioned
the contemporary relevance of feminisms, portraying them as anachronistic ves-
tiges from a bygone era of gender inequality that has passed? From this paradox,
the analysis seeks to understand how cultural production is gendered so that par-
ticular understandings, meanings, and subjectivities that are hostile to feminisms
emerge and circulate. The aim then is not to provide readings of popular culture
that are read through feminisms but rather to see what popular culture tells us
about contemporary feminisms, the politics of gender, and cultural political
economy. Thus, throughout the book, we are confronted with the representa-
tional practices of popular culture that have made anti-feminisms more appealing,
acceptable, and marketable for cultural producers and consumers. And we are
introduced to new political subjectivities like the ‘feminazi’ and ‘straw feminist’
that emerge from these processes.
Griffin’s focus is primarily on visual culture with an emphasis on those quotidian
aspects that can be easily overlooked despite their ubiquity: advertizing, digital
ephemera, and social media. But where the analysis becomes particularly innovative
xx Series editor’s preface

is in its pursuit of the commercial logics underpinning their production. And what
her analysis makes clear is that in the current historical period, market discourses
and sexist discourses reinforce one another; producers point to the existence of
objective market forces to justify decisions that contribute to the subordination of
women while proponents of anti-feminism note that the popularity of sexist forms
of representation demonstrates their broader acceptance. After all, as empirical work
in the book demonstrates, often the most overt forms of misogynist sexualization
are publicly justified on the basis of variants of the ‘we’re just having a laugh’
defence. Thus, the book provides new insight into the politics of ‘taste’ and raises
a troubling set of questions about the mores of neoliberalism.
By taking feminisms, political economy and popular culture seriously while also
challenging traditional understandings of the spaces, processes, and relationships
that produce them, Griffin makes a significant contribution to the study of popu-
lar culture and world politics. What this volume shares with others in this series is
the firm conviction that popular culture matters politically. While it may be enter-
taining (and therein lies part of its appeal), if we are interested in how power and
production contribute to forms of inequality – as well as forms of resistance to
them – that are infused across the micro, meso, and macro levels of world politics,
we must take popular culture seriously. This necessarily requires moving beyond
an accounting of the allegorical properties of artefacts that can be mapped onto our
preconceived notions of what world politics ‘is’. Being serious means seeking to
analyse how the popular culture-world politics continuum itself produces popular
culture through practices of world politics and world politics through the practices
of popular culture. In doing so, it is also a call to problematize the dividing lines
that are assumed practically and analytically in contemporary IR scholarship
between disciplines, locations of politics, methodological approaches, structure/
agency, and production/consumption. In embracing the challenges of taking
popular culture seriously and challenging arbitrary boundaries along the way, this
volume is emblematic of the ethos of the series to better understand the relations
of power that are productive of the popular, cultures, worlds, and their politics.
Thus, for this reader, Griffin does partake in the forging of an international polit-
ical economy more attentive to popular culture and more engaged with the ways
in which markets, identities, and culture produce the relations of power that shape
the private and public spaces of politics.

Kyle Grayson
March 2015
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have enabled and encouraged this research, which began in response
to the questions raised at the Popular Culture and World Politics conference, at
the University of Bristol in July 2009. I am particularly indebted to Christina
Rowley and Jutta Weldes for supporting the initial development of this research
and, especially, for having the unwavering faith that it would take shape as a
monograph. I would like to thank all the Popular Culture and World Politics
Series Editors’ and editorial staff at Routledge, not least Kyle Grayson, Nicola
Parkin and Peter Harris, who have each been unflappably cheery throughout the
(somewhat extended) writing process.
Thanks are due to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of
Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales for their financial and
individual support of the research required to complete this project. I will be
forever grateful to Ian Zucker, Julian Trofimovs and Charles Gregory for their
enthusiasm, care and industry as research assistants. Conversations at the 2009
(BISA) IPEG conference at the University of York and with staff and students at
the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland,
in October 2012, were a great spur in the process of writing up this research.
Thank you to all who attended, to Heloise Weber for inviting me and, especially,
to Kath Gelber.
Many people completed an extended survey from which this research draws
and to which it refers. Their time, attention and careful comments were inspiring
and provoking. Thank you.
This book relies on various examples of popular culture sources and artefacts.
Many of these are in the public domain but thanks are due to those who have
granted permission for their images and work to be used here.
xxii Acknowledgements

On a personal note, I would particularly like to thank Jo Skinner for patiently

listening to my various anxieties over this project for at least two years (and
introducing me to ‘Feminist Ryan Gosling’, who holds a particularly dear place
in my heart), Laura Shepherd for her constancy and kindness, Adam Thompson
for his (eternal) enthusiasm and positivity, and for always being certain of me,
even when I really was not, and, last but not least, Edie Isabelle Thompson, for
waiting until I had sent this manuscript to the publishers before making her
world debut.
ABBREVIATIONS

ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics

ALP Australian Labor Party
ASA (British) Advertising Standards Authority
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System (an American commercial broadcast
television network)
CEDAW United Nations Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against
Women
D&G Dolce and Gabbana
EU European Union
GPG Gender pay gap
ICC International Criminal Court
IMDb The Internet Movie Database
IPE International Political Economy
IR International Relations
MPAA Motion Picture Association of America
MRW Media Report to Women
NGO Non-governmental organization
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
PC Personal computer
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UN-Habitat United Nations Human Settlement Programme
US, USA United States of America
WEF World Economic Forum
Source: The Hoopla (2013)
1
INTRODUCTIONS

The use of sexual, sexually derogatory and sexually violent imagery across Western
popular culture does not appear to be waning. Network-television crime dramas
arrange silent female corpses across our screens while social media users are
invited to consider cosmetic surgery on every Facebook page they open.
Hollywood continues to produce movies in which women are noteworthy
celluloid presences only for the speed with which they can undress, receive vio-
lence or await rescue. Advertising campaigns in fashion magazines glamorize gang
rape, but fashion designers protest that those (feminists and others) who complain
fail to see the point that fashion is about aesthetics. Aesthetically butchering women
is, it seems, quite desirable.
This book explores the intimate connections between representation, the
politics of feminism and the cultural practices of modern, Western, consumer
society. It explores feminism ‘made sensible’ through visual imagery and popular
culture representations, examining feminism’s popular and commercial value. It
investigates how popular culture is produced, represented and consumed to
reproduce the conditions in which feminism is valued or dismissed. It asks where
and how the sexualization of cultural products is maintained and to what effects.
It asks, finally, whether sufficient evidence can be marshalled to argue that
antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable.
This book argues, as many scholars have done, that representations matter.
There are no ‘facts’ that speak for themselves, nor ‘objects’ that exist apart from
(that is, separate to) our knowledge of them. ‘Material objects’ constitute reality
only through our knowledge of them, and this is necessarily partial, contingent
and fluctuating. This means also that our ‘knowledge’ of the world organizes us, and
not that we are necessarily in control of it. We do not just learn to speak, ‘we learn
to construct utterances’ and we learn more than language, we learn the system,
which speaks through us (Bakhtin 2004, quoted in Griffin 2009: 28). Popular
2 Introductions

culture offers us pictures, stories, fantasies and imaginings about the world, and we
recognize and respond to these strongly because they create meaning for us. If what
exists in the world is made real to us only by virtue of our knowledge of it, and if
we possess ‘knowledge’ only partially and inconsistently, according to the political,
social, economic and cultural discourses in which we are located and that are avail-
able to us, it would be naïve, I think, to dismiss the power that popular culture,
and thus storytelling, bring to our knowledge of the world. This book is based on
the assumption that the processes and practices of Western popular culture are, as
Weldes articulates, intricate and extensive and help ‘to create and sustain the
conditions for contemporary world politics’ (2003: 6). The representative practices
of contemporary popular culture are more than simply an aside to feminism’s waning
or ascending influence, they have come to constitute and shape feminism and our
responses to feminism.
When I began the research for this book, it seemed to me that the status of
feminism in Western societies and the increasing sexualization of popular culture
in Western societies more generally were related, and related inversely. Sexually
explicit content and demeaning representations abounded, yet feminism appeared
submerged by popular rhetoric and representations that questioned its relevance
and obscured its incisiveness. Feminists appeared on television, when they
appeared on television, as shrieking harpies devoid of humour, even across sources
I otherwise admired and enjoyed. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler had not yet made
feminism on TV ‘acceptable’ and any criticism of a male public figure behaving
like a lecherous old pervert was immediately decried as conspiracy. Thus I wanted
to know why sexism was so prevalent across popular culture, since it seemed to
me as if popular culture could reproduce at best only uninspiring, and uninspired,
representations of women, while sexism was all that consumer culture was selling.
I wondered if, in the West at least, antifeminism was more viable in popular and
commercial form than feminism and whether there were in fact links to be made
between the development and maintenance of commercialized antifeminism and
the sexualization of popular culture artefacts. Like feminists such as McRobbie,
Whelehan and Levy, I was convinced that popular culture was indeed reproducing
the conditions in which feminism was being dismissed and the sexualization of
market products valorized.
McRobbie argues that feminist work is often dismissed as irrelevant to peo-
ple’s contemporary lives, particularly the lives of young women, and that
antifeminism is channelled routinely in and through the popular to disseminate
aggressively ‘modern’ ideas about women ‘so as to ensure that a new women’s
movement will not re-emerge’ (2009: 1). Despite initially being convinced of
this, I wanted with this book to fashion an enquiry into popular culture and
feminism that took seriously that there were other possibilities. I was reluctant to
simply assume that there is a case for arguing that feminism is being dismissed in
and through popular culture. I designed this book, then, to investigate the relation-
ship between feminism and popular culture without (hopefully) starting from my
unproven assumption in 2009 that popular culture and feminism are antithetical.
 Introductions 3

Rather, I use this book to ask how the representative practices found in popular
culture that have come to constitute and shape feminism (and our responses to
feminism) might, or might not, make antifeminism a more appealing option,
both for cultural producers and consumers.
To answer this question, however, I have found it increasingly important to
expand my ideas about ‘feminism’. As a category subjectively created and sustained
across cultural sites, negotiating feminism (as it is understood and practised) has
proved a much more challenging prospect than I anticipated. Feminisms and
antifeminisms are sometimes overtly identifiable and sometimes far more tacitly
located, contradictory and difficult to describe within and across popular culture.
This book represents an effort to identify and categorize feminism as it is created
and sustained in the popular, but such an endeavour will always be constrained by
the limitlessness of popular imaginings. Whether the representations deployed by
contemporary capitalist societies relate to any definable erosion of political engage-
ment, activism and support for feminism is exceedingly difficult to ascertain.
Scholars, such as McRobbie, have argued that ‘postfeminism’ represents the
‘rewarding’ of young women, with the promise of freedom and independence, for
abandoning feminism, yet the ‘truth’ of this argument depends in large part on
knowing exactly (and being able to assert) what ‘activism’ means today to young
people, what young women actually think about feminist ideas and how feminism
is perceived. The production of such knowledge is entirely fraught with peril.
What diverse groups and generations believe to be and define as activism and
feminism might not be recognizably activist or feminist to other groups, people or
generations. Whether this is celebrated or dismissed involves judgements and
claims to authenticity that are highly problematic.

Background
I found, like Shepherd, and as she so evocatively conveys in Gender, Violence and
Popular Culture: Telling Stories (2013), that this book was easy to research but
difficult to write. Finding sources to support analysis of popular culture artefacts
and interpreting the artefacts themselves were ‘relatively straightforward tasks to
undertake’ (ibid.: 2). Yet actually convincing oneself that the writing should be
done (in the sense that the writing mattered) was much harder. My feminism is an
intimate and constituent part of me, formed in waves of excitement for various
literary, cultural and political theories. My earliest experiences of feminism were
formed both within the academic and the popular (one might think that endless
deconstructions of Moderato Cantabile, Güten Morgen, Die Schöne, Fight Club or
Boys Don’t Cry would kill my love of popular culture sources, but no) and I have
rarely separated my feminism from my experiences of popular culture. This, for
me, is what made this research so important, and yet so impossible to describe in
a wider, ‘so what?’, ‘who cares?’ sense. The point that has always made this book
so important, personally, for me, and so difficult to come to terms with, is that
feminism is not an objective category and cannot be written about as if it is. Just
4 Introductions

as my feminism was formed entirely from the specifics of my own, subjective,

experiences of reading, listening and watching, so the feminisms of others develop
and coalesce around the wider world of their various experiences. Feminism is
very much about the promulgation of certain principles, ideas and assumptions,
and yet there is no uniform project and no ‘authentic’ feminism.
In terms of where my research comes from, I define myself as a scholar of
International Political Economy (IPE), which some argue is a sub-discipline of
International Relations (IR), while others assert exists as a discipline in its own
right (I shall not attempt to negotiate this debate here). IR has frequently (and
rather consistently) offered a picture of the world as a sequence of isolated events
unrelated to everyday practices of social and cultural reproduction. Yet, if IR has
struggled to take (frivolous and insubstantial) popular culture seriously (Weldes
2003: 4–5), IPE has not even got close. Popular culture is, in all its dimensions, a
core part of the global political economy, its successful globalization, the endur-
ingness of its corporate capitalist content, its legitimations, dominant narratives,
practices, and sources of support and subversion, and yet IPE scholarship rarely
considers it a worthy subject of analysis in and of itself.
It is thus a large hope of this book to generate an IPE that is more attentive to
popular culture. This book argues that IR and IPE scholars need desperately to do
more than investigate a variety of texts, sites and performances of meaning, they
need, as Rowley notes, to put on their gendered lenses to see how world politics
really works (2009: 322). I proceed here on the assumption that we cannot under-
stand the processes and forms of our economic activity without being fully aware
of the socio-cultural properties, biases and effects of the structures that govern us.
Understanding the representational practices of contemporary popular culture
requires a particular form of insight into world politics not elsewhere available and
requires that we ‘employ the full register of human perception and intelligence’,
both to understand ‘the phenomena of world politics’ and, then, to engage with
‘the dilemmas that emanate from them’ (Bleiker 2001: 519). Crucially, popular
visual language is ‘increasingly circulated through wireless networks onto the
digital screens of our daily lives (computers, telephones, and televisions)’, is expe-
rienced ‘as much if not more by amateurs than it is by experts’ and ‘is increasingly
the language that amateurs and experts rely upon in order to claim contemporary
literacy’ (Weber 2008: 137–8).
As Bleiker notes, many social scientists remain sceptical about approaches
‘whose nature and understanding of evidence do not correspond to established
scientific criteria’ (2009: 44). Boundaries are, however, what have kept feminist
international relations in place (Zalewski 2013: 127). Boundaries, though they
offer comfort, exist to be violated. Cultural theorists have often discussed political
economy in their considerations of culture and identity, but political economists
(in their incarnation as a discipline in IPE, at least) have not often ruminated on
the world of popular culture. I cannot say for certain that many IPE scholars
would care what the relationship was between feminism, popular culture and
political economy. The possibility that popular culture might undo some of IPE’s
 Introductions 5

constructions of ‘legitimate’ knowledge remains, however, too tantalizing a pros-

pect to ignore.

Strategy(ies) of research
As a political economist, my focus is often on showing how questions of economics
are relevant to finding answers to problems that, superficially, appear unrelated to
economics. These are not questions that mainstream economists would necessarily
ask or be interested in and my concern is not to promote economism and eco-
nomic determinism in analysing social life.1 I do not suggest that there is a
predetermined economic base to society, reproduced through a fixed mode of
production. Where I look for the economics in questions that might not seem
economically motivated, I try simply to find where we might ask questions about
how, for example, the economic choices people face constrain their life chances,
or how certain economic discourses reward particular behaviours that only a
privileged few bodies have the resources to embody. The theoretical framework
that underpins this research is relatively mixed, and this book draws from feminist
theory, poststructural discourse analysis, cultural and communications studies, IR
and IPE enquiry. As far as I know, there has been no sustained IPE scholarship
that has, as yet, centred on the importance of analysing the meanings circulating
in and though popular culture in order to answer questions relevant both to
political economy and analysis of social life more generally.
As a feminist analysis of popular culture, this book takes seriously that feminism
is important in and to understanding contemporary social life and the politics of
social identity. By looking for representations of feminism in popular culture, this
book, however, heeds Hollows and Moseley’s advice to examine feminism in
popular culture (rather than, say, as a political project standing outside popular
culture and passing judgement on popular culture). Feminism here, therefore, is
taken to be something shaped and understood through the popular. This book
does not assume that there exists a ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ feminism somewhere out-
side popular culture, offering ‘a position from which to judge and measure
feminism’s success or failure in making it into the mainstream’ (Hollows and
Moseley 2006: 1). As such, this book is less an examination of what feminism, or
the feminist, can tell us about popular culture, than one of what popular culture
can tell us about feminism (ibid.).
Feminist analyses of the media have so far, as Gill articulates, been drawn
primarily from five key approaches. First, feminist approaches have examined
representations and textual practices in some detail. They have, second, empha-
sized the active, creative negotiations that audiences make with their texts. Third,
they have sometimes foregrounded the ‘pleasures’ offered by the media or, fourth,
foregrounded the ideological impact of the media. Lastly, they have sought to go
‘behind-the-scenes’ and examine the production of particular media or the
political economy of media industries. Feminist analyses of the media have, in
particular, ‘been animated by the desire to understand how images and cultural
6 Introductions

constructions are connected to patterns of inequality, domination and oppression’

(Gill 2007: 7).
This book deploys a combination, of sorts, of some of these approaches,
examining in detail examples of contemporary popular culture, including particu-
lar cultural products, representations and textual practices, their constitution,
symbolism and impact (through and on an active audience) and of the media that
(re)produce them. Through the survey, research here also examines audience
experiences of and opinions around popular culture. To a certain extent, this book
seeks to go ‘behind-the-scenes’ to investigate the political economy of contemporary
popular culture industries, asking questions about the gendered nature of cultural
production to sustain a critical investigation of the processes through which cul-
tural industries and their products create and sustain prevailing ideas, subjectivities,
representations and meanings.
In terms of understanding the ideological impact of the media, as a discourse
analyst and poststructuralist, I understand the impact of the media less in ideological
terms than through an understanding of the discursive relationship between gen-
dered meaning, representation and authority in human encounters with cultural
industries and their products. These industries (producing commodities that
include commercial advertising, printed media, news-related journalism and com-
mentary, film, television and radio programming) are central to Western
commercial success and are thus highly significant in and to the contemporary
global political economy. I do not suggest, however, that we should necessarily
choose to understand these industries in ideological form. I take Storey’s point that
ideologies are discursive constructs that ‘attempt to impose closure on meaning in
the interests of power’ and ‘to make what is cultural (i.e. made) appear as nature’
(2003: x). As such, they may produce, express and legitimate, at certain points in
time, particular ideas and suppositions that may be defined as sexist, or racist, for
example. Sexist and racist ideologies are, however, the products of wider social
discourses, structures and practices and their coherence and apparent uniformity
must be investigated and not assumed. Discursive structures and practices, as
human products, are subject to change and renegotiation and will necessarily vary
over time. The intonations, syntaxes and images they deploy are creative of many
aspects of meaning and tell various stories about contemporary social life. They
might, for example, provide the particular discursive parameters through which
cultural products repudiate feminism. Or they may enable people to articulate
responses to cultural products that exhibit a particular care to hold on to feminist
categories and arguments.

Discourse, power and popular culture

Although methodologically, this work is closest to deconstructive, poststructuralist
accounts of politics and, in particular, global politics, I share Derrida’s scepticism
of describing deconstruction as either a ‘method’ or ‘tool’ of analysis. Derrida
himself was careful to reject the claims to objectivity, certainty, accuracy and truth
 Introductions 7

that characterize traditional approaches to human behaviour (or international

affairs, state action, organizational process, etc.) (Griffin 2013a: 208–9). Derrida
saw no separation in ‘text’ (which he defined broadly) and exterior application of
method, advocating, rather, that deconstruction be considered always internal to
the text (ibid.). Deconstruction, for Derrida, was less a method than a ‘critical
sharpness’ applied to contextualizing, historicizing and seeking out the ambiguities
and ambivalences in a given source.

The point, for a deconstructive approach, is that the text always carries
within itself its own undoing: the task of the analyst is simply to highlight
the incoherencies, inconsistencies and problematic assumptions the text has
otherwise rendered indiscernible. Thus, it might be more in keeping with
Derrida’s own thinking to see deconstruction as a form of critical sharpness
rather than a method in and of itself.
(Griffin 2013a: 209)

As Carver argues, the methodology of the discourse analyst is inherently internal

to the world of political contingency and conceptualization: the discourse
analyst is unlikely to claim any kind of position of objectivity and neutrality
(the territory of scientific and empiricist philosophies) and they are unlikely to
detail the descriptive case and offer causal rationalizations for it. Instead, they are
far more likely ‘to situate themselves politically, and to tell you contingently and
conceptually where they think the power-relations are and how they are
deployed’ (Carver 2002: 51).
With this is mind, Andersen’s conclusion that the ‘method’ of the discourse analyst
is actually more of an ‘analytical strategy’ is pertinent (2003: xiv). As Andersen points
out, discourse ‘methodology’ is less concerned with the observation of ‘objects’, but
with observation of ‘observations as observations’ (ibid.: xii). Discourse analysis pre-
sents the reader with a theoretical framework based upon interpretation. Interpretive
methodologies ‘remind practitioners that social science is conducted through the
medium of language, and that language is not a transparent “window” on “fact”’
(Carver and Hyvärinen 1997: 2. Emphasis added). The driving force of my research
does indeed lie in an analysis of language, which is argued to structure human rela-
tions at every level, but ‘language’ here should be broadly understood: verbal and
visual, language might also be the language of behaviour, practice and institution, or
the language of power and social pressures that forces the internal functioning of
relationships, that is, people’s personal drive, obedience, creativity and understanding.
As Shapiro (1986) contends, all research employs grammatical, rhetorical and
narrative structures that bestow meaning, create value and constitute knowledge,
intentionally or not. ‘Raw data’ never speaks for itself and meaning is applied,
never implicit (although some forms of research seek to conceal their own politi-
cal agendas by professing objectivity). As a researcher, I ‘see’ things in popular
culture because of my history, context, training and personal tastes and I miss
things for the same reasons. I ask questions, for example, about sexism, economy
8 Introductions

and sexuality, where I might miss important questions about race, disability or
security, for example. I am thankful that both feminists and poststructuralists are
more forgiving of the limitations of an individual’s research agenda, since both
these traditions are more likely to combine a sense of reflexivity with the knowl-
edge that we are all bounded beings (in the sense that we live amidst multiple and
various structural limitations). Deconstructing gendered relations of power does
not, of course, tell us anything necessarily about the cultural and disciplinary
racisms that discipline bodies and minds, but a project sensitive to the relations of
power that enable certain behaviours, assumptions and representations to appear
to gain mastery over reality opens possibilities for considering widely the constitu-
tion and effects of dominant, heteronormative, discursive structures. Discriminations
rarely fit neatly into easily labelled boxes (‘race’, ‘disability’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’,
and so on) and the intersectionality of ‘isms’ should be on the mind of all careful,
committed and reflexive discourse analysts.
‘Discourse’, in this book, denotes a system of signification (meaning) infused by
power as both productive and repressive. Beyond simply language, discourses are
powerful purveyors of meaning, social practice and social reality: they ‘are social
configurations of political space, including at their core not only languages but
material conditions and effects, institutions, texts (visual and written), imparted
wisdoms, linguistic and cultural contexts, ideologies, processes of social production
and reproduction, interactions and relationships’ (Griffin 2009: 24). Dominant
discourses provide the limits of intelligibility to our practices and knowledges, by,
for example, configuring and prescribing human identity through certain sexuality
and gender binaries, or successful economic behaviour according to stories about
capitalist ingenuity, technological innovation and human progress through eco-
nomic growth. Discourses are sign systems, systems of meaning-making, and they
configure social, political, cultural and economic spaces. ‘Bodies’ in discourse (organic
and inorganic, textual, visual, material and immaterial) exist as ‘objects’ of discourse
and are surfaces and scenes of discursive inscription and although discourses exude
language, they are more than language alone.
As a discourse analyst and employer of poststructural ‘discourse theory’, I analyse
political life in terms of discourse, which means that my work understands ‘power’
as more complex and diffuse than a question of something having power over
something else. The power of a photographic image, for example, is understood
in this book less in terms of the extent of broadcasters’ efforts to ‘get their message
across’, than the ways in which the image produces meaning, and the effects of
this. Images in popular culture are not dependent upon their makers: their impor-
tance lies in the effects they produce, the relationships that they create between
representations of reality and our experiences of it. How we make sense of the
world, and our ability to act within it, is regulated both overtly and tacitly,
through institutions and mechanisms of governance, but also the formal and infor-
mal rules and conventions of our cultures, the patterns of authority and influence
at play in any given form of communication and the social relations in which our
cultural rules ‘work’.
 Introductions 9

The world is much more than simply as we find it, and the structures and
practices that mediate our realities, our knowledges and our experiences condition
us through multiple channels. As Weldes describes, of course some of the power
that defines and sustains world politics resides at a level far out of the reach of most,
in what has been labelled the realm of ‘high politics’, or the arena of diplomacy,
(inter)national security, war and peace (2003: 5). ‘High politics’ is not separate in
any sense from the ‘low’ politics of, for example, gender, race, class and culture,
and it is the mundane practices of the classroom, our family and working lives,
bedroom politics, and so on, that constitute our exclusion from and ability to
know and act in certain arenas. The artificial boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’
are discursively (and powerfully) useful when the public are to be kept out of
‘official’ decision-making processes, but the constitution of these boundaries is
both contingent, on dominant forms of ‘common sense’ at any given time, and
contestable and they remain permeable.
We might consider, for example, their permeability in relation to the ways in
which official discourses draw upon popular culture sources to make plausible
their representations. Tony Blair’s now-cringeworthy (and much mocked) 1997
‘Cool Britannia’ reception at Downing Street, attended by Oasis guitarist Noel
Gallagher, and Blair’s other appearances with Britpop illuminati were, at the time,
both a fuel to his popularity and considered symbolic of his closeness to ‘normal’.
Similarly, US President Obama has made frequent recourse to popular culture
sources to sediment his authenticity as a ‘man of the people’, claiming to catch up
on TV shows like Mad Men and Homeland as he flies to Afghanistan on Air Force
One (CBS News 2012), engaging in witty putdowns of Zach Galifianakis
on YouTube and, with his wife Michelle, making a combined 195 television
and movie appearances since 2004, according to the Internet Movie Database
(IMDB) (Rothman 2012).2
We might also consider the ways in which the permeability of the high/low
political binary works to constitute sources of popular culture as credibly accurate
in their representations. Trademark applications, for example, received by the US
Patent and Trademark Office increased dramatically for exclusive use of the term
‘shock and awe’ following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The same term is also
the tenth campaign mission in the video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Increasingly not even those in the arena of ‘high politics’ are naïve enough to
assume that their legitimacy is not sustained in the realm of the low.
(Mainstream) popular culture has often, as Shapiro has argued, tended to rein-
force prevailing power structures ‘by helping to reproduce the beliefs and
allegiances necessary for their uncontested functioning’ (1992: 1), but resistant
forms of popular culture do frequently and subversively contradict convention and
orthodoxy through more complicated narrative discourses. The modern culture
industry is variegated and we can no longer assume (as per Adorno and
Horkheimer’s (1999) famous thesis) that popular culture only works conserva-
tively and in the interests of those in power to produce safe, standardized products
geared to the larger demands of the capitalist economy (Milestone and Meyer
10 Introductions

2012: 5). The codes and representations deployed in popular culture will most
likely be contested and, as Hall has described, ‘contradictory forms of ‘common
sense’’ take root in and help shape popular life and culture (1986: 26).

Gender and popular culture

The stories that popular culture tells us and the images through and with which
popular culture artefacts represent their narratives work in several, powerful, ways,
including our vicarious experience of them and their role as fantasy:

When we watch a story, we relate emotionally to the goals and obstacles of

the main character.We temporarily give up our own subjecthoods to live the
story through the point of view of the protagonist, who we relate to.
Conversely, we also take pleasure in seeing particular circumstances played
out, separate from ourselves (‘fantasy’). In TV and film, women are tradition-
ally not the protagonist (the subject of narrative), but the object of the
protagonist’s desire (the subject of fantasy). […] [T]his relationship makes it
difficult for women to claim the subject position in their own lives, as we
learn how to desire and how to construct identities from the world around
us, which has become entirely constituted by the world of images generated
by media. If TV is always defining a woman in terms of the man in her life,
that’s how little girls will learn to define themselves.
(Callot 2009)

Not only little girls, I would add. The constant repetition of gendered tropes
through popular culture affects also how society more generally forms expectations
of female (and male) behaviour.
This book deploys an understanding of ‘gender’ as a form of cultural meaning
assumed by the human body, produced through discourse, language, culture,
practice and history. As such, gender is discursive, a ‘norm governing reality’
(Griffin 2009: 31) that makes sense of our ideas about ‘sex’, ‘gender identity’,
‘sexuality’ and ‘sexual practice’ and thus appropriate and acceptable human behav-
iour. Gender, or discourses of gender, of course vary between social location, time
and context, and are produced through language, culture, practice, history and
circumstance: as such, they are inherently subject to change and the potential for
transformation. The ‘truth’ about people, our very sense of personhood, are, as
Butler has articulated so clearly, the results of matrices of power and discursive
relations that regulate and make sense of concepts such as a ‘person’, a ‘sex’ or a
‘sexuality’ (1990: 42).
Taking gender seriously in analysing popular culture necessitates taking seri-
ously that each of us are surrounded by overt and tacit sexual norms, which impact
on our lives in various and important ways. As Milestone and Meyer argue (2012),
gender and popular culture are connected in inextricable, pervasive and complex
ways. Popular culture often and broadly depends on certain hierarchies of human
 Introductions 11

behaviour that are gendered: it represents women, men and children in certain
ways (for example, as white, able-bodied, middle class, heterosexual), and it repro-
duces versions of the world that create and sustain certain ideas about what people
can, or should, do according to a variety of (physical and psychological) attributes.
Understanding gender as constructed, and always possibly mutable, necessitates
considering the ways in which popular culture convincingly represents certain
‘truths’, ‘facts’ and social ‘realities’. Popular culture is not a uniform, fixed or
determinable entity and its representations are dynamic. ‘Popular culture’ as a term
also encompasses ‘an enormous range of cultural texts and practices, from cinema
films to newspaper articles, from designing computer games to playing music’ and
mass media such as the internet or email (Milestone and Meyer 2012: 1). Much,
but not all, popular culture is media culture (TV, the press, radio, cinema) and
relates to, but is not ultimately equatable with, mass media, corporate media and
consumer culture. Popular culture is also, of course, a term that embodies both
quantitative and qualitative dimensions. It is liked, practised and consumed by
many, although this need not be the case, but it also imbued with many different
meanings and is a more powerful concept than something we simply produce.
Challenging the gendered foundations on which hierarchies, ‘truths’, codes of
sexual conduct, and so on, are built is an important part of many feminisms.
Feminism’s position within popular culture, and popular culture’s creation of
feminism within the popular, is more than simply an interesting question, it is a
question of the politics of power and the circulation (and regulation) of knowl-
edge, exclusion and appropriate behaviour. This book attempts to trace a picture
of the links between the production, representational practices and consumption
of Western popular culture and the nature (and successes) of feminism as it is
constituted within the popular today. It argues that the ways in which feminism is
treated and/or dismissed is central to understanding contemporary Western popu-
lar culture and hopes to contribute to ongoing (and productive) engagements
between studies of popular culture, gender, IR and IPE.

Sources
Research findings and data were collected from my research of general discussions
around and analysis of popular culture artefacts. The popular culture sources
included in this book emanate largely, although not solely, from Australasia, the
UK and USA. Television and film products are, however, often dominated by
US-produced artefacts and research on US sources tends to monopolize reports in
this regard. There was no categorized approach to the popular culture artefacts
chosen; I elected simply to focus on and highlight as wide a range of discussions
and analysis as I could. Needless to say, this gave my research a certain quality of
potential infinity, and it was with some effort that I forced myself to stop writing.
I began this book reading two pieces of scholarship, both of which proved
rather inspirational. The first was Angela McRobbie’s impassioned The Aftermath
of Feminism (2009), the second, Janet Halley’s provocative and frustrating Split
12 Introductions

Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (2006). In The Aftermath of
Feminism, McRobbie is convinced that popular appropriations of (and misengage-
ments with) feminism have been achieved by aggressively disseminating ‘modern’
ideas about women ‘so as to ensure that a new women’s movement will not
re-emerge’ (McRobbie 2009: 1). Contemporary (Western) popular culture, she
argues, helps not only to define our ‘codes of sexual conduct’, but, moreover, has
deployed its ‘many channels of communication’ to routinely disparage and disen-
courage feminism (2009: 15). In each of its aspects (including textual, visual and
survey-respondent analysis), research here examines the links between representations
of feminism across popular culture (print, television, film and digitally based) and
popular accounts of, attitudes to and support for feminism.
McRobbie’s strength of argument has been particularly instructive. Feminist
work, because it threatens important and powerful socio-cultural status quos, has
often been dismissed as irrelevant to people’s contemporary lives, particularly the
lives of young women, while ‘postfeminism’ can, I believe, be argued to reward
young women with the promise of freedom and independence for abandoning
feminism. For McRobbie, ‘an array of machinations’, including crucial elements
of contemporary popular culture, are perniciously effective in ‘undoing’ feminism,
‘while simultaneously appearing to be engaging in a well-informed and even well-
intended response to feminism’ (2009: 11).
Halley suggests that feminism ‘is running things’ and that feminists themselves
‘walk the halls of power’ (2006: 20–1). Resoundingly critical of what she perceives
as the irresponsibilities of governance feminism, Halley focuses her analysis on
feminism’s weaknesses and excesses. Feminism, or more specifically ‘governance
feminism’, has become particularly problematic for Halley because it has failed to
take responsibility for its pernicious effects, closing its eyes to the effects of its
power on neighbouring but different theoretical and political projects and failing
to acknowledge its costs (ibid.: 33).
For Halley, feminism has become most powerful in its ‘governance’ forms,
which she finds evident in the domestic (US-based) governance of areas such as
child sexual abuse, pornography, sexual harassment, sexual violence, family law,
and so on. As Halley (among others, see also Hawkesworth 2004 and Prügl 2011)
notes, feminism is also thoroughly institutionalized in the human rights establish-
ment and in international organizations such as the EU and World Bank,
achieving great and widespread success in national governments, international
governance and through inter- and non-governmental organizations. This has
been in large part, Halley suggests, because of the successes of family law, sexual
harassment, domestic violence victories and highly effective feminist activism
aimed at the ad hoc criminal courts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. For
Halley, ‘governance’ issues not only from the formal mechanisms of state and
legislature, but from everyday processes and practices, including from employers,
‘schools, healthcare institutions, and a whole range of entities, often formally
‘private’ (2006: 21). Feminism, she argues, ‘has substantial parts’ of these entities
‘under its control’ (ibid.). ‘By positing themselves as experts on women, sexuality,
 Introductions 13

motherhood, and so on’, argues Halley, ‘feminists walk the halls of power’ (ibid.,
emphasis in the original).
It is this claim that, initially, proved a catalyst for this research. It is also a claim
that is made in the midst of the prevalence of (often violent) sexually explicit
imagery and highly derogatory innuendo in the advertising, marketing and selling
of otherwise mundane commercial items. On first reading Halley’s work, in 2008,
I was annoyed that a prominent North American feminist scholar would seek to
take aim at what I considered something of a sitting duck. I had already examined
an extensive back catalogue of sexually derogatory and violent advertising cam-
paigns and had had the misfortune of sifting through what felt like endless pages
of antifeminist hate speech on various blogs and internet sites. Halley’s suggestion
that we reconsider our allegiance to ‘feminism‘ struck me as ignorant and cultur-
ally blinkered, the protestations of a successful scholar spoiled by her North
American, Ivy League privilege.
At the same time, at the earliest stages of putting together this project, I found
myself often faced with a student cohort who seemed highly ambivalent about
feminism and who, worryingly frequently it seemed to me, displayed outright
hostility towards feminism. Faced with their obligatory ‘week on gender’ in a
course on International Political Economy and asked about what gender might
mean in the context of the machinations of the global political economy, young
female students felt obliged to lead off with the much opined cliché ‘I’m not a
feminist, but . . .’, while proceeding to catalogue a list of feminist concerns.
Their male peers felt no need to qualify their sentiments, since how could a man
possibly be a feminist? A few actively adhered to the school of ‘women should
sort out women’s stuff ’, some paid lip service to feminist theory and others,
more interested in diverse ideas about gender, also seemed uncomfortable that
they might be seen to be treading on feminists’ toes. Yet these students really
did care about the human lives that capitalist development impinges on. When
faced with what a gender pay gap might mean for their and their friends’
futures, they were, often forcefully, angry. They felt keenly the dangers of
assuming anything about a person based on a set of imposed attributes. What
then was so embarrassing about admitting that one might be publicly identifi-
able as a feminist thus eluded me, but also inspired me to pursue this question
more fully throughout this research.
Research findings were also collected from research participants and respond-
ents, whose completion of an online survey generated analysis both of statistical
relationships and descriptive analysis of respondents’ longer-length written replies.
Statistical relationships were analysed using SPSS software and respondents’ com-
ments were analysed and deployed qualitatively and are provided throughout this
book, together with the age, gender and residency of the respondent cited. The
survey is reproduced here in full in Appendix A. Respondents to the survey were
questioned specifically and in some depth on their opinions, thoughts on and
understandings of feminism and contemporary popular culture, and attitudes to
and experiences of prevailing gender norms. Open from 12 April to 31 July 2012,
14 Introductions

the survey involved responses to a total of 45 questions, arranged in five parts, and
received in total 169 responses.
The image used for Question 38 is not reproduced here,3 but was circulating
on Facebook in early 2012 through the Facebook page ‘Meanwhile in Australia’,
which is dedicated to ‘taking the piss out of all things Australian as well as debat-
ing news topics and showing everyday Aussies and the world what’s happening
in Australia’ (https://www.facebook.com/MeanwhileInAustralia). The image
details three, clearly intoxicated, young women squatting to urinate outside an
office building, under the Facebook page’s leading caption, ‘Meanwhile in
Australia’. The picture was removed from Facebook after a complaint was made
to the social networking site, but not before several hundred comments had been
made on the picture, many of which criticized young Australian women, ‘ladette’
culture, drinking culture in Australia (and elsewhere, particularly women’s drinking)
and the poverty of etiquette among young Australian women.
The survey itself was advertised to students (through my teaching and any
relevant student organizations), via email to interested parties (academic and
community-based), through organizational affiliations and professional associations
and in a public post on the author’s Facebook page. Students, academics and profes-
sionals constituted the biggest percentage of respondents, although education levels
varied more evenly from high-school education to doctoral degrees. More women
(79 per cent) responded than men, and most respondents classified themselves as
Australian residents (72 per cent). In age ranges, the 25- to 34-year-old category
represented 35 per cent of respondents, with age range varying from young to more
established adult. Demographic data were generated using the survey report, self-
generated by the survey site (https://www.surveys.unsw.edu.au) and computer
software (SPSS) and are summarized in Figure 1.1.
Part One of the survey investigated respondents’ demographic details, asking
them their age, gender, ethnic/cultural background, residency, highest level of
education and present occupation. Parts Two, Three, Four and Five of the survey
asked respondents for their opinions in four areas in particular: the relevance of

F
E A
5%
9% 17%
A 18–24
B 25–34
D
16% C 35–44
D 45–54

35% E 55–64
18% F 65+
B

FIGURE 1.1 Demographics of survey respondents.

 Female
21%

Male

79%

2%
1%
I A B
C
Ethnic/cultural background
H D
7% 5%
4% A Aboriginal/TSI
7%
G B Other Islander
1% 4% E
F C Asian
D Asian Indian
E White Caucasian
F Middle Eastern
G Hispanic/Latino
70% H Mixed race
I Other

D
C 8% A
7% Place of current residency
A Australia
B
13%
B UK
C USA
72% D Other

FIGURE 1.1 (Continued)

16 Introductions

1%
F A

B Highest level of education

11%
4%
A High school
E 34% B Diploma/certificate
C Bachelor’s
23% C D Postgraduate degree
E Doctoral degree
F Other

27%

I
A Present occupation
5% A Professional
20% B Teacher/educator
C Academic
25%
H D Military/government
10% B E Office/clerical
F Self-employed
2%
G G Retired
3% H Student
F 4% 26%
E 4% I Other

D C

FIGURE 1.1 (Continued)

feminism today; the popularity and accessibility of feminism today; how feminism
is practised today; and the relationship between popular culture and feminism.
The purpose of the survey was to generate an understanding of whether
feminism can be described as a relevant, accessible and popularly practised category
in the minds and lives of people across various walks of life. I wanted to know if
people had experienced sexism and discrimination based on their sex, including
how they would describe the impacts of this. Given my own discomfort, I
wondered also how comfortable others are with the sexualization of popular
culture. ‘Feminism’ in the survey was not intended to be considered an objective
category (respondents were asked to define their own thoughts on what constituted,
 Introductions 17

for them, ‘feminism’), although one respondent considered that it was being
treated as such. I tried deliberately to avoid a situation where respondents were
asked to define themselves either ‘for’ or ‘against’ feminism, since, as Aronson
argues, a study that does so is unlikely ‘to tap into the highly complex and contested
meanings of feminism today’, including ‘the ways these diverse meanings influence
people’s reactions to the term itself ’ (2003: 906).
As Aronson notes, existing surveys of feminism have often looked exclusively
at young women and tried to establish their feminist credentials. They have
observed how, for example, young women view their own opportunities and
obstacles, particularly when compared with those faced by women of their mothers’
generation, how they perceive and experience gender discrimination, how they
identify themselves with respect to feminism, how we can make sense of their
seemingly contradictory perspectives and what the impacts are of racial and class
background and life experience on attitudes toward feminism (Aronson 2003: 904).
Such surveys have been particularly useful in outlining various types of attitude to
feminism, which survey analysts have generally articulated according to five possible
descriptions, ‘I’m a feminist’, ‘I’m a feminist, but …’, ‘I’m not a feminist, but …’,
‘I’m a fence-sitter’ and ‘I never thought about feminism’ (ibid.: 913–18; see also
O’Leary and Reilly 2012).
These surveys have also, however, been criticized for tending to operate with
uniform definitions of feminism and for ignoring generational differences. While
I wanted to share previous surveys’ focus on how people identify themselves with
respect to feminism, and how we might begin to make sense of their seemingly
contradictory perspectives, I did not wish with the survey conducted here to
isolate young women, or indeed women, but to interrogate wider social and
popular perceptions of feminism. Surveys on young women have, Aronson notes,
offered study groups that are too homogeneous to provide conclusions about the
full diversity of today’s young women (2003). With a relatively small sample of
respondents, this survey can make no claim to speak widely to a general popula-
tion’s perceptions of feminism, but I would challenge any claim that it necessarily
constitutes a ‘homogeneous’ sample.
Several statistically viable relationships did emerge from the data collected that
are worth detailing and the strongest relationships and statistical associations that
emerged are summarized below (where I refer to a relationship or association
as ‘significant’, this refers to the relationship having met the criteria of statistical
significance). Short answer responses to longer questions also received some
interesting, and unexpected, responses and showed a wealth of engagement with,
and knowledge about, feminism and popular culture that I had not quite expected.

1 Data analysis revealed a relationship between gender and whether individuals

describe themselves as feminist (Q7). A strongly negative statistical relationship
exists here, with male survey respondents less likely to self-describe as feminist
compared with female respondents.
18 Introductions

2 The relationship between education level and whether individuals describe

themselves as feminist (Q7) is significant. A moderately strong negative rela-
tionship exists here, with lower levels of education resulting in the decreased
likelihood of individuals describing themselves as feminist.
3 Data analysis revealed a significant difference in the responses of male and
female respondents to Q39 (‘The feminist movement, like the civil rights
movement, is one that almost everyone is afraid to criticise. […] Do you
agree?’). Male respondents were, on average, more likely to agree with the
statement, while female respondents, on average, were less likely to agree.
4 There was no statistical difference between men and women in rating feminism
‘being as relevant to men today as it is to women’ (Q12). On a seven-point
scale, where 1 is disagree, 7 is agree, men averaged 5.94, women 5.96, indicating
both were more inclined to agree that feminism is relevant to both genders.
5 Male respondents viewed feminism’s representation on television (Q29) more
positively than female respondents.
6 Male respondents viewed feminism’s representation in film (Q31) more
positively than female respondents.
7 Male respondents agreed more frequently than female respondents with the
assertion that ‘feminists largely see men as the enemy’ (Q13).
8 Post-hoc testing of Q10 (‘Feminism is professionally relevant to me’) revealed
that individuals with a postgraduate or doctoral degree rated the professional
relevance of feminism higher than other groups.

Notes
1 These ideas refer to the simplistic belief that society is defined entirely in economic terms
or that anything interesting socially, culturally or politically might be explained only in
relation to economic factors.
2 According to Rothman (2012), Obama overtook Ronald Reagan as the most televised
President in US history in early 2012.
3 A complaint specifying that the position of the women in the picture might be consid-
ered ‘compromising’ was received. I removed the picture to avoid further antagonizing the
complainant, who perhaps is not as aware as I am of the depth of freely available but
potentially troubling representations of women across the Internet. I suspect that an image
detailing three drunken men urinating in public would have been largely ignored and this
double standard (including the use of women ‘misbehaving’ as symbolic of social decline)
was one of the key reasons I used the image. No offence was intended.
This page intentionally left blank
Source: Kara Passey (2012)
2
ANALYSING POPULAR CULTURE

As noted in the previous chapter, and as many scholars have articulated, ‘representations
matter’ (Gill 2007: 7). They ‘are not “only” words and images, but reflect and
encourage certain ways of thinking about and acting in relation’ to human bodies
(Milestone and Meyer 2012: 112). When we ask how much impact popular culture
can have on people’s ideas, assumptions, perceptions and/or beliefs about the
world, we need to ask what kinds of ‘common sense’ about what people can, ought
to or will do is reproduced through contemporary popular culture. This is why, I
argue, it is important to examine, for example, popular culture if we are interested
in feminism, or to ask what fictive scenarios and representations have to do with
the serious business of world politics. The ways in which feminism is treated and/or
dismissed, and how this is related to the successes of Western popular culture, is
more than simply an interesting question. It is a question of the politics of power
and the circulation (and regulation) of knowledge, exclusion and appropriate
behaviour. Feminist analyses of the media have, in particular, ‘been animated by the
desire to understand how images and cultural constructions are connected to patterns
of inequality, domination and oppression’ (Gill 2007: 7). As Rowley articulates, ‘our
understandings of gender, like our understandings of world politics, are to such
a large extent constituted through our interactions in popular culture and in our
everyday lives’ (2009: 310).
In Australia, watching or listening to television remains the activity that
absorbs the most amount of people’s leisure time, according to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics (2011a). Australian children, of ages 5–17, spend an average
of over two-and-a-half hours a day watching television. According to the 2012
documentary, Miss Representation, in the USA a teenager will, over the course of
one week, watch 31 hours of television, listen to music for 17 hours, watch mov-
ies for 3 hours, read magazines for 4 hours and spend 10 hours online. This ‘adds
22 Analysing popular culture

up to 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day’ (Miss Representation, 2012,

emphasis in the original).

Teenagers are constantly bombarded with media, and the quality of what
they consume will shape their sense of self. After watching hours and hours
of Nickelodeon, even I would want to be iCarly.
(Miss Representation 2012)

As The Feminist Wire notes, ‘popular children’s channels such as Disney and
Nickelodeon have the power to dictate and even create teen and tween culture in
the United States’ (Sánchez 2012).

According to Nielsen data provided by Horizon Media, over the past year,
Nickelodeon averaged 1.1 million daily viewers between the ages of 2 and 11.
Disney averaged 978,000. This is especially troubling because teenagers
are currently the hottest consumer demographic in America. At 33 million,
they make up the largest generation of teens in American history, even larger
than the Baby Boom generation. Last year, America’s teens spent $100
billion, while influencing their parents’ spending by $50 billion. This huge
cultural and economic influence allows media to manufacture anti-feminist ideologies
that are targeted to young girls. In JESSIE, for instance, a show about a small
town Texas girl who moves to New York City and becomes a nanny to a
celebrity couple’s four children, the children are depicted as much smarter
than their bumbling 18-year-old nanny. Shake it Up, which revolves around
two best friends who become professional dancers on a local show, depicts
teenage girls as shallow, vain, and ditsy, perpetuating the notion that young
women can be little more than cute or pretty.
(Sánchez 2012, my emphasis)

Popular culture and the importance of visual language in

studying global politics

[T]he mechanically or electronically reproduced image is the semantic and

technical unit of the modern mass media and at the heart of post-war
popular culture. However, while this is acknowledged widely within the
discipline of media and cultural studies, normally via ritual reference to the
seminal work of Walter Benjamin, the visual image or photograph seems only of
interest as the origin, as the technological dawn, of a great process of develop-
ment in which, in an era of mass communication and the commodification
of information, messages can be transmitted in principle to a plurality of
recipients and audiences.
(Evans and Hall 1999: 2, my emphasis)
 Analysing popular culture 23

In the introduction to their visual culture reader, Evans and Hall argue that visual
culture has been neglected by the ‘linguistic’ (or ‘cultural’) turn in the social and
human sciences. Enquiry has instead privileged the linguistic model in the study
of representation, which has led to an ‘assumption that visual artefacts are funda-
mentally the same, and function in just the same way, as any other cultural text’
(Evans and Hall 1999: 2). Accordingly, the authors argue,

[T]he specific rhetoric, genres, institutional contexts and uses of visual

imagery can become lost in the more global identification of cultural trends
and their epic narratives of transformations of consciousness in the rubric of
postmodern culture.
(Evans and Hall 1999: 2)

This book tries very hard not to lose the specificity of rhetoric, genres, institutional
context and various uses of visual imagery in its analysis of whether contemporary
popular culture artefacts support the dismissal of feminism. It is a core purpose of
research here to pay attention to the ways in which meanings and use ‘are regu-
lated by the formats and institutions of production, distribution and consumption’
(Evans and Hall 1999: 2–3). ‘Representation is always an act of power. This power
is at its peak if a form of representation is able to disguise its subjective origins and
values’ (Bleiker 2001: 515).
As Weldes argues (2006), the discipline of International Relations (IR) has, in
the past, tended to ignore popular culture. Instead, ‘mainstream’ approaches to IR
(that is, rationalist and/or positivist approaches) ‘typically take a rather narrow
view on the kinds of evidence appropriate’ for analysing meaning, if, indeed, the
question of ‘meaning’ arises at all (Weldes 2006: 177). The same is also true, I
argue, of International Political Economy, where popular culture and ‘the visual’
are rarely considered trustworthy or legitimate objects and/or sources of social
science enquiry. Thus, although ‘popular visual language is increasingly the language
that amateurs and experts rely upon in order to claim contemporary literacy’ and
despite much politics being ‘conducted through popular visual language’ (Weber
2008: 137), apart from media and cultural studies, IR and IPE academia have been
hesitant to explore the power (political, economic, social, cultural) that visual and
popular culture wield on and through world politics. In particular, these disciplines
have been reluctant to see the intrinsic politicality of popular culture, failing to
read the ‘competing and contesting discourses and their various ideological effects
and implicit power relations’ that, as Weldes articulates, popular culture expresses,
enacts and produces (2006: 180). Yet, the cultural basis of action, behaviour, theory,
value, and so on, is so important because it is here that actions, behaviours, values,
and so on, are made commonsensical (ibid.: 178).
The USA and its relationship with popular culture and militarization provide
an interesting example here. Specifically, it is unclear how we might meaningfully
engage with the extent of a society’s (such as the USA’s) level of militarization,
24 Analysing popular culture

and the effects of this, without considering the ways in which the acceptance of
‘the military’ has become so mundane, so commonsensical, that ‘civilians’ wear its
camouflaged outerwear as fashion, or know what ‘AWOL’, ‘jarhead’ or ‘ground
zero’ mean because they have grown up watching MASH, Rambo and Black Hawk
Down. We might know that the USA is heavily militarized, and that its leaders
make decisions based on ‘natural’ assumptions about military justifiability, but how
we (and by ‘we’, I mean consumers and producers of popular culture) know this
is ‘in and through the mundane culture of people’s everyday experiences’ (Weldes
2006: 178). Elite rhetoric is, of course, important in understanding the form and
function of, for example, US foreign policy and intervention, but the ways in
which the options, strategy or policy initiatives of elites are represented in and
through popular culture can make a world of difference. Popular culture provides a,
if not the, ‘background of meanings that hep to constitute public images of world
politics and foreign policy’ (ibid.). Boardshorts in camouflage, water pistols, even
some of our words, would not exist if the military did not, and these would not
have been made logical, commonsensical, if the cultural landscape of the USA had
not absorbed, and did not depend on, the givenness of the military. Understanding
that the US military is culturally constructed and located means, of course, that it
is neither given nor inevitable but is an arbitrary institution, and the develop-
ment of the military-industrial complex that pumps out war novels, video games
and movies, is circumstantial. This means that representations of the military as
natural become even more important, not least to those whose livelihoods depend
on its existence. Popular culture, Weldes argues, to the extent that it ‘reproduces
the structure and content of dominant discourses’, helps to ‘generate approval for,
or at least acquiescence to, familiar policies and prevailing world order’ (Weldes
2006: 179). Popular culture ‘is thus implicated in the “production of consent”’
(ibid., quoting Hall 1982).
IR and IPE’s dismissive, or perhaps simply defeatist (although I tend to think
there is a pernicious laziness in refusing to engage with the visual world that is
deliberately dismissive), attitude to visual representation is disappointing but also
highly misleading, since, as Carver notes, international politics ‘is rarely done in
any direct sense by philosophers but rather by people whose intellectual horizons
are largely formed by TV, movies, visual reports in the news and rather more
remotely, textual journalism and verbal briefings’ (2010: 426). ‘Geopolitical realisms’
(where the ‘theoretical frameworks and methodologically correct protocols of IR’ do
have some purchase) are at work across the political world, but ‘these discourses are
arguably as much image-based as fact-based (in so far as the two could possibly be
separated’ (ibid.: 427). Popular culture is a particularly important site of discursive
power (the power of meaning-making) precisely because it is so mundane and yet,
as Weldes argues, so innately political. While it matters eminently whether, and
how, feminism is being taken seriously in the halls of power (Chapter 4 considers
this in more detail), I would argue that politics is more pervasively narrated, and
thus reproduced, in everyday ways (across the news media, for example, in film,
on television and social networking sites, and so on).
 Analysing popular culture 25

Stuart Hall, visual language and the importance of

social practice
The more widely articulated and consumed a message or meaning, and the earlier it
is learned, the more powerful that message is likely to be, and the least ‘constructed’
it will appear. The televisual sign, in particular, is noteworthy because it combines
‘two types of discourse, visual and aural’ and, moreover, constitutes ‘an iconic sign’
in that it ‘“possesses some of the properties of the thing represented”’ (Hall, quoting
Peirce 1931, 1999: 511). As Hall argues, visual culture of course needs to translate a
three-dimensional world into two dimensions and thus, as such, reality exists, to a
certain extent, outside language (1999: 511). This reality is, however, ‘constantly medi-
ated by and through language’ and ‘what we can know and say has to be produced
in and through discourse’ (ibid.). For Hall, ‘naturalism’ and ‘realism’ are nothing but
products of discourse, since our ‘knowledge’ is ‘the product not of the transparent
representation of the ‘real’ in language but of the articulation of language on real rela-
tions and conditions’ (ibid.). Since representation is the result of discursive practice,
so too is the ‘real’, at least in Hall’s influential analysis.
Hall, as this book does, centralizes the role of discourse in processes of com-
munication and meaning-making, arguing that the ‘discursive form of the message
has a privileged position in the communicative exchange’, at least if we consider
the importance of circulation (1999: 508). For example, a ‘raw’ historical event
relayed on television is being signified ‘within the aural-visual forms of the televisual
discourse’: that is, an event cannot be transmitted as it is without some form of trans-
formation and is, as such, ‘subject to all the complex formal rules by which language
signifies’ (ibid.). To become a ‘communicative event’, then, the event must be told
and the meaning of the event can only be understood through its telling.
Hall articulates the process of communication according to five distinct
‘moments’: of production, circulation, distribution, consumption and reproduc-
tion. These ‘connected practices’ create meaning and messages, which must be
articulated into social practices if the ‘circuit is to be both completed and effective’
(Hall 1999: 508). The importance of social practices here is significant, since (while
allowing for the possibility that it might be used or understood at least somewhat
against the grain) a ‘message’ is, in Hall’s analysis, most often receivable at a particu-
lar stage only where it is recognizable or appropriate (During 1999, summarizing
Hall 1999: 507), which means that the message must make a certain amount of
sense to us based on our existent social experiences. We cannot consume the mes-
sage without taking its meaning, Hall argues, and thus if ‘meaning is not articulated
into practice, it has no effect’ (ibid.). Already coded signs thus intersect with ‘the
deep semantic codes of a culture’ taking on additional and different dimensions as
they circulate (Hall 1999: 513). Several patterns of power and influence will be at
play in any given form of communication, including the formal ‘sub-rules’ of
discourse, the ‘social relations in which the rules are set to work’ and the ‘social and
political consequences of the event having been signified in this way’ (ibid.). To an
extent, production, Hall argues, ‘constructs the message’ and the institutional
26 Analysing popular culture

structures of broadcasting are therefore important (including the ‘knowledge-in-use’

of technical skills, routines of production, and so on) (1999: 509–10). At a certain
point, though, broadcasting structures ‘must yield encoded messages’ to the wider
structures of social practice, which are themselves framed by structures of under-
standing, ‘as well as being produced by social and economic relations’ (ibid.).
Hall uses advertising as an example to argue that every visual sign ‘connotes a
quality, situation, value or inference’, which may be present ‘as an implication or
implied meaning, depending on the connotational positioning’ (1999: 510). The
sign, for example a sweater, might connote a ‘warm garment’, ‘the coming of
winter’, or a ‘cold day’, and set against ‘the right visual background and positioned
by the romantic sub-code’, it may connote a ‘long autumn walk in the woods’
(ibid.: 513). In the same way, according to the codes through which relations of
power are made to signify in particular discourses, masculine and feminine imagery
may connote certain culturally specific values or qualities, depending on time and
place. The ‘generic male stereotype’, for example, may often be represented as
active, ‘in accordance with Berger’s dictum that “men act and women appear”’, but
it may also be represented as androgynous in an effort to subvert the ‘macho hero’
and connote sensitivity rather than brute strength (Stern 2003: 221–2).
I have recently been struck (and irritated) by a particular campaign for the Kia
(car) range in Australia (launched in January 2013 during the Australian Open
tennis competition, which Kia currently sponsors). In 2010 Kia ran a campaign for
their Sportage SUV (YouTube 2013a) in which a seemingly average Australian
male is driving around the suburbs listening to Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’
(first released in 1983).1 The hook here is that Grandmaster Melle Mel and Scorpio
are actually in the car with the driver, so apparently evocative of long lost good
times is this vehicle. The driver then pulls into his driveway, whereupon his wife/
partner, who has been pruning the hedges, asks him if he ‘remembered the
nappies’ (which he did not, because he was, presumably, so absorbed in driving
his exciting Kia Sportage). This is a good example of a representation of the clas-
sic stereotype of men in action, with woman as a cameo and including a
smattering of the much-loved ‘nagging wife’ cliché. In Australia, the ‘macho male’
stereotype of masculinity has been particularly pervasive and the idea that
Australian men are intrinsically tough is so widely articulated and consumed as to
pass for ‘fact’ in Australian society. A YouTube user’s comment is particularly
revealing in this regard.

You own a KIA dont [sic] you champ? Your [sic] a trodden down house
husband who has to drive one of these heaps of shit because your missus said
so and are all bitter and twisted at those who drive SS Commodores with
Chev badges because you wish you had one too.
(Comment posted 2012, YouTube 2013b)

Then, in January 2013, Kia released a new campaign, targeting, in two separate
commercials, the ‘New Age Man’ (YouTube 2013 c) and the ‘Woman of My
 Analysing popular culture 27

Time’ (YouTube 2013d). Kia borrows George Carlin’s ‘Modern Man’ sketch to
attempt to identify modern man and modern woman as independent, confident,
technologically savvy and environmentally aware. The end result, online comments
have noted, is a cringeworthy and rather arrogant pretentiousness with which very
few seem able to relate.

I’m not sure that being a ‘man or woman of now’ is at all a desirable attrib-
ute: they’re shallow, stupid, pampered, pretentious and with the attention
span of a...oh, that looks interesting. This is from the ‘there’s nothing to say
about the product, so let’s talk about the consumer’ school of 5 minute
strategic thinking.
(Old CD Guy, January 2013)
[T]he achingly appalling casting and performance has delivered a smarmy
piece of self-indulgent heart ache for every unfortunate sombitch2 who sits
down to watch the tube, dinner on lap, tin in hand. If I met that dude (from
the ad) in the street, I’d be happy to do time for caving his head in with a
plastic spoon.
(Jacob’s Creek, January 2013)

The difference in popularity of the two campaigns is striking. The 2010 campaign
speaks clearly to identifiable cultural codes, specifically gender stereotypes of
Australian married men as browbeaten and constrained and thus appears to map
social relations much more persuasively, and perhaps aspirationally, than its succes-
sor. The ‘New Age Man’ of 2012, on the other hand, represents so much of a
mash-up of various ‘new age’ clichés that he is considered irrelevant and is widely
criticized. This may be attributable to a simple misjudgement on the advertiser’s
part (the company Innocean). In many regards, this is just a poor advertisement
that is badly written and badly performed. Yet it is also an advertisement that is
misaligned somewhat with Australia’s ‘dominant cultural order’, which remains
resoundingly suspicious of ‘new age’ househusbandry and artyfartiness. The
Woman/Man of Now adverts, as ‘problematic events’, breach our expectations
and ‘run counter to our “commonsense constructs”’ (Hall 1999: 513). The
message of Kia’s 2012 campaign cannot be consumed and reproduced because the
story it tells does not intersect with the semantic codes of Australian culture: it is
not recognizable or appropriate to (many) Australians and it makes little sense to
them based on their existent social experiences or the wider structures of social
practice in Australia.

‘Culture’, popular culture and (erroneous) high/low

binaries
Quoting Williams, Storey notes that culture is ‘ordinary’; it is ‘how we make
sense of ourselves and the word around us’ and it is where ‘we share and contest
28 Analysing popular culture

meanings of ourselves, of each other, and of the world’ (2003: x, quoting

Williams 1958). Culture is not only, however, ‘how we live nature (including
our own biology)’, it is, Storey argues, an ‘active process’: it does ‘not lie dormant
in things (that is, any commodity, object, or event that can be made to signify),
waiting patiently to be woken by an appropriate consumer’, rather, it is ‘the
practice of making and communicating meanings’, often with a specifically social
substance (Storey 2003: ix–x).

Watching a soap opera and talking about what the characters are doing;
arguing about who should have won a football match; remembering
together the songs of a shared youth; debating the claims of politicians
and big business; protesting at the injustices and economic inequalities of
globalization. […] To share a culture is to interpret the world – to make
it meaningful – in recognizably similar ways.
(Storey 2003: x)

Popular culture, Strinati notes, is often defined ‘by how it is explained and evalu-
ated’ and is frequently used descriptively, ‘as covering a specific set of artefacts’
(2004: xviii). Strinati has very little hope that any agreement on a ‘theoretically-
informed definition’ can be reached, since ‘the attempt to achieve this involves
competing conceptions of the nature of the social relationships (or the lack of them)
within which these artefacts are located’ (ibid.).
As has been well-noted, popular culture suffers still from an implied inferiority,
as ‘the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture’ (Storey
2012: 5). This involves an erroneous, but somehow still pertinent, low/high
distinction that posits popular culture as less venerable than ‘high culture’, which
is viewed as the result of ‘an individual act of creation’ and deserving of a ‘moral
and aesthetic response’, while popular culture ‘requires only a fleeting sociological
inspection to unlock what little it has to offer’ (Storey 2006: 6). Popular culture,
in this definition, thus becomes ‘a residual category, accommodating texts and
practices that fail to qualify as high culture’ (ibid.: 5–6).
This is a powerful distinction that has led to descriptions of popular, ‘mass’,
culture as the epitome of commercialization. This book refuses this distinction and
does not argue that popular culture is interchangeable with ‘mass culture’ (see
Strinati 2004: 2). This is not to deny the crucial commercial foundations that sustain
and propel aspects of popular culture, but simply to sound a warning against a too-
easy equation of popular with mass culture. The association with mass culture has
arisen, Strinati suggests, due to the rise in new media and development in commu-
nication technologies that have made ‘culture available to the masses’ (2004, quoted
in Milestone and Meyer 2012: 4). The introduction, for example, of ‘mass production
techniques’ in the making of films means that, although films are not quite motor cars,
there is an obvious commercial aspect to their production and distribution (Strinati
2004: 4). For some, this means that, as a cultural product, cinema cannot constitute
‘authentic and genuine works of art’ (ibid.)
 Analysing popular culture 29

Although popular culture is, of course, often commodified, whether it is

enough to argue that popular culture is reducible to particular criteria of profitability
and marketability remains unclear. Embodying ‘high’ culture with an intellectual/
aesthetic quality and ‘low’ culture with popularism rarely holds strong, in
practice. Classical music, for example, is consumed by many; niche TV program-
ming much less so. Important aspects of popular culture are also simply not
equatable to mass or media culture. These include everyday practices that carry
cultural meaning, such as celebrating a wedding or getting a tattoo done. The
‘juxtaposition of high and popular culture’ in ways that associate ‘high’ culture with
‘a bygone golden age free of commercialization, where art thrived for art’s sake’
and popular culture with capitalism, profit and big business, is, Milestone and
Meyer argue, highly problematic (2012: 4). First, such assumptions exhibit an obvious
elitism that fails to recognize that there are no neutral or universal standards by
which we might measure culture. Second, all forms of contemporary Western
culture are shaped by, and produced in, the economic system of capitalism. As the
authors note, ‘there is no space totally free of commerce’ (ibid.).
As Storey suggests, ‘popular culture’ is ‘a category invented by intellectuals’
and ‘the idea of popular culture is often a way of categorizing and dismissing the
cultural practices of “ordinary” people’ (2003: xi–xii). This I find particularly true
of some attitudes towards popular culture as a legitimate area of scholarly enquiry.
Thus, although

the term popular culture can be articulated to carry a range of different

meanings, what all these have in common is the idea of popularis – belonging
to the people. Therefore, each of the different ways in which popular culture
is formulated always carries with it a definition of ‘the people’.
(Storey 2003: xii)

This is not to suggest that, in understanding popular culture as of/by/for ‘the

people’, we should assume that popular artefacts are necessarily popular, in
the sense of being widely favoured or well-liked, as noted above. A rather
large amount of ‘popular culture’ fails the quantitative index, whereas ‘high
culture’ products may often outsell their niche, or subculture, popular culture
cousins. Sales of jazz and classical music, or ‘high end’ literature, for example,
often outstrip sales of comic books and anime, and ‘arthouse’ cinema frequently
outperforms heavily marketed and more widely distributed mainstream movies.
In 2011 in the USA, for example, the black-and-white movie The Artist3
outperformed two of the year’s anticipated biggest films, Red Riding Hood4 and
Scream 4,5 both of which were shown at almost double the number of theatres
(Box Office Mojo 2013).
Similarly, in 2004, eighty-nine new editions or translations of the plays of
William Shakespeare, the ‘epitome of high culture’ (Storey 2012: 6), were released
in the USA and 657,000 Shakespeare titles were sold (this does not include the
copies bought in bulk by libraries and schools). Industry experts suggest that ten
30 Analysing popular culture

million copies of Shakespeare’s works are sold a year worldwide (Blakeley 2005).
Shakespeare’s plays are put on some 5,000 times each year in amateur and profes-
sional theatres worldwide and eight Shakespeare films were released in 2004,
including an Indian version of Macbeth titled Maqbool and a new Merchant of Venice
starring Al Pacino (Blakeley 2005).
In Australia, according to a 2005–6 survey by the Australian Bureau of
Statistics, 38 per cent of people aged 15 years and over had attended a performing
arts event in the previous 12 months (‘performing arts’ here includes theatre, dance
performances, musicals, operas and other performing arts events). Approximately
2.6 million people (or 17 per cent) attended other performing arts events, such as
variety shows, revues and circuses (ABS 2010). As Figure 2.1 shows, more
Australians visited botanic and zoological gardens and libraries than attended
popular music concerts. The final of Australia’s most viewed TV show in 2012
(The Voice) captured an audience of ‘only’ 3,325,000, or 14.7 per cent of the
population (the total population in Australia is 22,620,600).6
Despite the obvious popularity of cinema as a ‘cultural event’, and although
sources suggest that this is in decline in the USA and elsewhere (see, e.g., Atkinson
2012; BBC 2012), in 2006 the Australian ‘Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey
found that reading was a favourite activity for 61 per cent of people aged 15 years
and over’ (ABS 2011a). Interestingly, from 2009 to 2010 Australians spent
A$2,032 million on ‘literature’, which was the third highest ‘cultural’ expenditure
behind televisions ($3,350m) and pay TV fees (A$2,295m) (ABS 2011b). The ‘old
certainties of the cultural landscape’ (Storey 2012: 7) may not seem quite as stable
when close attention is paid to people’s everyday cultural practices.

FIGURE 2.1 Attendance at cultural venues and events, by region.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010.
 Analysing popular culture 31

Niche cultures (folk music, early rock’n’roll and ’90s techno, for example) are
various in origins, and many ‘are the aftermath of mass cultures that have lost their
currency with the general audience’ (Westbury 2009). The same is also true of
so-called ‘high’ culture. Theatre and opera were once popular, and well-populated,
forms of entertainment, as were the works of Charles Dickens or, as Storey notes,
‘film noir’ (2012: 6). Perhaps the point most worth emphasizing here is that the
high/low cultural binary does not allow for the dynamism of ‘culture’, fixing it as
a static assemblage of artefacts rather than a variable and unstable process.

Popular culture and political economy

I am continually surprised that so little IPE scholarship considers the ways in which
popular culture and economy are intertextual and mutually reproductive, since
understanding popular culture has such relevance to economic questions of pro-
duction, distribution and consumption. The following pages are concerned with
some key points in understanding the relationship between popular culture,
political economy and feminism. In this section, I turn to an older debate in the
history of cultural studies concerning the troubled relationship between cultural
studies and political economy. I then attempt to offer some clarity around how to
approach consumer and popular culture, and why it is important to distinguish
between the two.
Possibly one of the most famous, or at least the most commonly cited, ‘political
economy’ engagements with the relationship between popular culture, consumerism,
commercialism and capitalism is Adorno and Horkheimer’s Marxist critique of the
pernicious conservatism of popular culture (1999, originally published 1944). Adorno
and Horkheimer describe a heavily managed, hierarchically ordered ‘culture industry’
that centrally produces to widely dispersed ‘consumption points’ (During summariz-
ing Adorno and Horkheimer 1999: 33). They argue that popular culture is
necessarily conservative, since it works in the interests of those in power, helping to
maintain the status quo (existing relations of power) by pacifying the masses and jus-
tifying capitalism (cited in Milestone and Meyer 2012: 5). The modern culture
industry thus produces safe, standardized products geared to the larger demands of the
capitalist economy and it does so ‘by representing “average” life for purposes of pure
entertainment or distraction as seductively and realistically as possible’ (During sum-
marizing Adorno and Horkheimer 1999: 31). For Adorno and Horkheimer, popular
culture and consumer culture were essentially indistinguishable and were compared
to the much less dangerous ‘high arts’, since these were more technically and intel-
lectually difficult. While popular culture and consumer culture are often intertwined,
however, they should not be read as interchangeable. Popular culture was industrially
produced mass culture designed to enrich the capitalist elite, and the ‘culture indus-
try’, for Adorno and Horkheimer, was built to cultivate in individuals false needs that
only capitalist production and consumerism could meet. ‘[T]he basis on which tech-
nology acquires power over society’, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest, ‘is the power
of those whose economic hold over society is greatest’ (1999: 33).
32 Analysing popular culture

It is worth noting that Adorno and Horkheimer wrote their 1944 essay when
the cultural industry was much less variegated than it is today. The authors were
not writing in an era of mass media, mass communications and ‘new media’
(on-demand, digital and/or internet-based media, including, email, digital radio,
television, podcasts, blogs, wikis, websites, and so on). The rise of ‘new media’ has
arguably opened the ‘culture industry’ to a level of creativity, reconfiguration and
(possible) subversion that Adorno and Horkheimer were not privy to. New media
have virtually eradicated the possibility of always controlling public use of technology.
As Milestone and Meyer describe, new media and communication technologies
‘blur the lines between producers and consumers and allow users much more
flexibility’, while also intensifying the ‘connection between media and popular
culture’, such that, ‘while popular culture and the media are not identical, they are
increasingly intertwined’ (2012: 5).
Approaches to ‘culture’ within International Political Economy (IPE), while
they cannot be reduced to variations of Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique,
have, unsurprisingly perhaps, focused on the importance of the relationship
between consumerism, commercialism and capitalism. As I will argue below,
however, where other disciplines have produced lively and extensive debates on
visual and popular culture, beyond Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis, IPE has
fared relatively poorly in terms of speaking to popular culture. This is despite a
large amount of critical IPE scholarship dedicated to analysing the concept of
‘culture’.
Not all scholars of popular culture, of course, engage with political economy
questions and this book does not suggest that cultural studies says all that needs to
be said in terms of engaging economic life as cultural practice. A 1990s debate on
‘culture’ and the benefits and perils of political economy enquiry, summarized
below, is perhaps instructive to understanding why IPE and cultural studies have
followed rather separate tracks.

The (slightly troubled) relationship between cultural studies

and political economy
[C]ultural studies rests on the achievements of semiotics as a whole and
stakes its distinctiveness upon the analysis of the symbolic, classificatory
and, in short, meaning-making practices that are at the heart of all cultural
production and consumption.
(Evans and Hall 1999: 2–3)

A 1995 essay by Garnham, entitled ‘Political Economy and Cultural Studies’,

argues that a ‘founding antagonism’ characterizes the relationship between
Marxist political economy and cultural studies, based on cultural studies’ ‘pro-
found misunderstanding of political economy’. The ‘project of cultural
studies’, Garnham suggests, ‘can be successfully pursued only if the bridge with
political economy is rebuilt’ (1995, in During 1999: 493). Cultural studies was
 Analysing popular culture 33

born ‘of a set of assumptions about political economy’ and needs desperately
to reorientate itself to the capitalist mode of production rather than the cul-
tural practices to which it ‘assigns priority’: the ‘broken bridge’, for Garnham,
must be rebuilt for cultural studies to become a ‘meaningful political enterprise’
(ibid. 493–5).
Garnham’s controversial piece argues that, by focusing overwhelmingly on
‘cultural consumption rather than cultural production’ and ‘on the cultural
practices of leisure rather than those of work’ cultural studies has ‘exaggerated
the freedoms of consumption and daily life’, playing politically ‘into the hands
of a right whose ideological assault has been structured in large part around an
effort to persuade people to construct themselves as consumers in opposition to
producers (1995, in During 1999: 495–6). Political economists, on the other
hand, recognize, with Marx, ‘that all commodities must have a use-value’, they
‘must satisfy some need or provide some pleasure’ and that unequal power rela-
tions are ‘embedded in the production, distribution and consumption of cultural
forms as commodities’ (ibid.: 496). We ignore at our peril the inherent relation-
ship between the use-value of a commodity and its sources of production,
distribution and consumption. Echoing Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique,
Garnham asserts that

a delimited social group, pursuing economic or political ends, determines

which meanings circulate and which do not, which stories are told and
about what, which arguments are given prominence and what cultural
resources are made available and to whom. The analysis of this process is vital
to an understanding of the power relationships involved in culture and their
relationship to wider structures of domination.
(Garnham 1999: 496)

In a response to this piece, Grossberg argues that Garnham’s analysis is a historical

in its glorification of abstract capitalism (1995). Grossberg asks why it is ‘that the
USA is not the UK or Japan?’, which is just a superstructural problem, and neces-
sitates asking questions about the ways in which social relations develop ‘beyond
a simple binary distinction between the owners of the means of production and
waged labour’ (ibid.: 73). For Grossberg, Garnham is unable ‘to consider such
questions precisely because he refuses to engage the question of articulation’ and
it is articulation that is ‘the principle way in which the relations between produc-
tion, consumption, politics, and ideology are theorized in cultural studies’
(Grossberg 1995: 73). Much work on consumption and reception in cultural
studies, Grossberg notes, ‘looks at the complex and even contradictory nature of
consumption’, and, while it does indeed conclude that consumption can produce
pleasures and can be, in some ways, empowering, this ‘need not and does not
deny the exploitative, manipulative, and dominating aspects of the market’ (ibid.).
Grossberg argues that, ultimately, production and consumption cannot be
separated if we assume that ‘the notion and practice of production are themselves
34 Analysing popular culture

culturally produced’ (1995: 74). Marx himself noted the production involved in
consumption/reproduction. A ‘model of cultural analysis based on a separation of
production and consumption is itself problematic, as is the reduction of produc-
tion to waged labour’, Grossberg notes, suggesting that the relations between
production and consumption are more complex and less stable than Garnham
suggests (ibid.). Responding to claims that cultural studies has reduced itself to
uncritically ‘celebrating’ consumption, Grossberg argues:

Cultural studies does not assume that opposition, resistance, struggle, and
survival (coping) are the same; but it does assume that the possibilities for the
first two depend in complex ways on the realities of the last two.The question
of the relations and tensions among these forms of effectivity is important and
needs to be explored.
(Grossberg 1995: 75–6)

Grossberg stresses that scholars should pay attention to the small resistances and
amendments that people make in their everyday lives, the ways in which they use
‘the limited resources they are given to find better ways of living’ and the methods
by which they ‘find ways of increasing the control they have over aspects of their
lives’ (1995: 75–6). Ignoring these moments of contestation and resistance only
obscures a fuller understanding of ‘the structures of power and inequality in the
contemporary world and the possibilities for challenging them’ (ibid.).
I should note here that I am not qualified to embroil myself in the debate
about whether cultural studies has reduced itself to a form of ‘cultural populism’
and whether this has led to an exclusive focus on consumption and ‘a correspond-
ing uncritical celebration of popular reading practices’ (Storey 2012: 219). I am
also reluctant to suggest that cultural studies needs to do more political economy
to remain ‘politically credible’ (Storey summarizes some of these debates, which
he believes to be limited; see 2012: 232). This book is sympathetic to Grossberg’s
emphasis on the significance of (changing) social relations and articulation and is
wary of offering a meta-capitalist framework for understanding the ‘culture
industry’ or an exclusive focus on the domination and manipulation of the masses
by powerful elites. Like Grossberg, my analysis assumes that ‘people live their
subordination actively’. This might also mean that ‘they are often complicit in
their own subordination’ and ‘that they accede to it’, although power ‘often
works through strategies and apparatuses of which people are totally unaware’
(Grossberg 1995: 75–6).

[I]f one is to challenge the existing structures of power, then one has to
understand how that complicity, that participation in power, is constructed
and lived, and that means not only looking at what people gain from such
practices, but also at the possibilities for rearticulating such practices to
escape, resist, or even oppose particular structures of power.
(Grossberg 1995: 75–6)
 Analysing popular culture 35

Storey notes that the media and communication industries are owned and controlled
by an increasingly small number of powerful individuals and industries (2012: 232).
I argue here, however, that popular culture is not reducible to ‘industry’ alone and
is increasingly produced by the people as it is for the people (using technologies that
are, of course, built and produced, by corporations, institutions and individuals, but
which may, and often do, exceed their control). It is becoming increasingly
difficult, in Australasia, the UK and the USA at least, to identify the ‘delimited
social group’ that Garnham believes determines the meanings that circulate,
particularly because social media has given such widespread prominence to non-
elites. Yet, we should not ignore, of course, that Australian media ownership has
often been noted for its high levels of concentrated ownership, with eleven of the
twelve daily newspapers in Australia’ capital cities owned either by News Corp
Australia or Fairfax Media. Garnham’s warning regarding the importance of
paying attention to ‘the power relationships involved in culture and their relationship
to wider structures of domination’ (1995 in During 1999: 496) remains important.
Grossberg’s emphasis on the complexity of how people live their subordination
is important, but I am equally convinced that there is work to be done before we
can argue that people are, indeed, subordinated. Perhaps a more active grappling
with power, access and resources than some in cultural studies might be willing to
offer is needed. Consideration ‘of what cultural resources are made available and
to whom’ (Garnham 1995 in During 1999: 496) remains a key component of
analysis here. It might be problematic, for example, to assume that those that have
access to social media are ‘everypeople’. At A$20 a ticket, at least here in Sydney,
going to the cinema is not accessible to all, Foxtel, at a minimum of A$90 a
month, is too expensive for many and the A$100 plus it requires to organize
broadband powerful enough to download films, TV shows and music is out of
reach to a considerable number of Australians, before we even begin considering
the issues with availability and access that rural communities must face. As part of
the power relationships necessitated by a wider consideration of cultural pro-
duction, consumption and representation, the availability of wealth is important
in understanding the ‘significance and character of the values, norms and mean-
ings’ produced in the practices of consumption, which necessarily involves
considering the ‘complexity of the relationship between ownership and use of
material goods, economic status, inequality and meaning’ (Lury 2011: 11).
Scholars should take seriously the (significant) proportion of the populations of
so-called advanced consumer societies who are dispossessed and thus ‘excluded
from many forms of commodity consumption as they do not have access to the
economic resources necessary for participation’ (ibid.).

The picture becomes even more stark if a global analysis is introduced:

20 per cent of the world’s population – those residing in the rich nations –
account for over 80 per cent of total consumer spending. Clearly, poverty
places severe limits on the ability to participate in consumption insofar as it is
linked to the purchase of commodities: economic status restricts the possible
36 Analysing popular culture

extent of an individual’s participation in consumption or practical freedom – as

Bauman puts it [1990] – to exercise consumer ‘choice’.
(Lury 2011: 12)

This said, we should also be wary of assuming ‘a direct or straightforward relation-

ship between poverty and exclusion from consumer culture or wealth and inclusion’
(Lury 2011: 12). While poverty, which should be appreciated in its relative and
absolute forms, ‘restricts the possibility of participation in the consumption of
commodities’, it does not necessarily or always prevent participation in consumer
culture. Sometimes it may even incite this. As Lury notes, poorer US populations,
for example, where they own a car, pay a higher proportion of their income on
purchasing a luxury model (ibid.).

IPE and ‘culture’

As Storey notes, our identities ‘are not the expression of our “nature”, they are a
performance in culture’ (2003: 91).

[O]ur identities are made from a contradictory series of identifications, sub-

ject positions, and forms of representation which we have made, occupied,
and been located in as we constitute and are constituted by performances
that produce the narrative of our lives. Popular culture is a fundamental part
of this process.
(Storey 2003: 91)

IPE is highly attentive to understanding the power relationships involved in capi-

talist culture(s) and their relationship to wider structures of domination, as per
Garnham’s analysis. IPE also often deploys a critical analysis of culture as the
environment where meanings are made and shared, as per Storey’s analysis (2003,
2012). IPE scholarship on culture, rarely, however, goes as far as to articulate our
identities as performances in culture and has generally failed to articulate popular
culture as fundamental to any processes of identity-formation in IPE. While there
is a lot of ‘culture’ in IPE, there is much less engagement than there might be with
ideas about textuality, identity and difference, which are arguably more prominent
in cultural studies. Cultural studies ‘does not believe that all forms of power can
be explained by capitalist relations or in economic terms’ (Grossberg 1995: 78).
IPE, as it stands, has proven rather uninterested in any meanings circulating
in and through popular culture that might be relevant to understanding the realm
of the ‘economic’.
In IPE, critical scholars have often approached culture from a Gramscian
tradition, as defined by relations of hegemony. This echoes, to a certain extent,
Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique and posits ‘culture’ and its reproduction as the
preserve of a dominant capitalist elite. Germain’s analysis, for example, of Harvey’s
work deploys culture as a mechanism of class power, with the ‘dominant class’s
 Analysing popular culture 37

cultural manipulations’ forcing ‘subordinate classes’ to ‘acquiesce to its rule’

(Germain 2011: 67). For Germain, the dominance of neoliberalism in contem-
porary economic (and social) life is strengthened by its cultural value: this can be
read as a form of Americanization where ‘individual consumption and consumer
choice have the effect, pace Robinson, of depoliticizing people, of inducing
apathy so long as a certain lifestyle can be maintained’ (ibid.: 67). Thus, ‘culture
is derivative of, rather than determinant to, the economy as understood in materialist
terms’ (ibid.: 69).
IPE has, historically, tended to separate production and consumption and has
thus failed to highlight, as Grossberg suggests, the complex relations between
production and consumption that render practices of production themselves
culturally produced. Storey goes so far as to argue:

Political economy’s idea of cultural analysis seems to involve little more

than detailing access to, and availability of, texts and practices. Nowhere do
[political economists] advocate a consideration of what these texts and
practices might mean (textually) or be made to mean in use (consumption).
(Storey 2012: 233)

While I take issue with the monolithic picture of political economy that Storey
has designed, I would agree overall with the general assessment that political
economy has, generally, fared quite poorly in analysing the significance, and com-
plexity, of popular culture. Storey suggests that post-Marxist hegemony theory has
come closest to ‘the promise of keeping in active relationship production, text and
consumption’, whereas ‘political economy threatens, in spite of its admirable
intentions, to collapse everything back into the economic’ (2012: 233). For the
‘new Marxists’, for example, ‘culture’ has a role in the market economy as
a means ‘by which individuals can negotiate the hand dealt to them by existing
class relations’ (Germain 2011: 67). The ‘consumption of, or engagement with,
cultural products and artefacts provides an escape from the constraints of the
market economy’ (ibid.).
Neogramscians and other Marxists have also, as Best and Paterson suggest,
invoked the notion of hegemony in global politics, ‘opening up some space to talk
about the cultural conditions of capitalism’ (2010: 5). Scholars of ‘cultural econ-
omy’, the authors assert, share ‘a belief in the crucial significance of economic life
in determining differential life chances of people across the globe’ and ‘a rejection
of the ability of orthodox models of economic life to fully capture the nature and
dynamics of the economy’ (ibid.: 3). In counterpoint to those that view culture as
determined by the mode of production, Best and Paterson go on to note that
scholars of cultural economy view culture, in its broadest sense as ‘the meanings
we give social life and material objects’, as determining of ‘concrete economic
forms of life’ (ibid.: 3). Such a focus highlights how ‘cultural forms constitute what
the economy is’ and ‘how cultural forms shape the operation of the economy in
a number of concrete way’ (ibid.: 4). Best and Paterson point to McDowell’s
38 Analysing popular culture

(1997) analysis of the gendered character of financial markets or the evolving

character of the ‘work ethic’ (as per Heelas’ 2002 writing). A continued emphasis
on class, however, ‘has tended to reduce the question of culture to one of the
means by which capitalist domination is reproduced and resisted’ (ibid.: 5).
Lipschutz, for example, in his 2010 monograph, Political Economy, Capitalism
and Popular Culture, suggests a fairly limited definition of popular culture, as essentially
‘movies and novels’, which are the products of a single ‘capitalism’ (2010: 2).
While attentive to popular culture as reproductive of ‘the tenets, principles, and
practices that support existing social arrangements’ (ibid.), Lipschutz’s analysis is
not specifically interested in the contested and complex nature of the meanings
produced and consumed in and through popular culture (his analysis is deliberately
organized around the insights popular culture might bring to both economics and
political economy). For Lipschutz, a society’s cultural products are not only reflec-
tive of the economic organization of that society, they are determined by it (that
is, society’s relations of production and reproduction). While economic practices
and relations may, however, ‘determine the distribution of practices and com-
modities’, to argue that ‘they determine which meanings circulate and which do
not’ (Grossberg 1995: 76) is a stretch. Articulating culture as a variable to the
(pre-given) market economy, and class relations as fixed, is also problematic
because it assumes, first, that social relations are fixed and predictable and, second,
that there is some kind of neutrality to ‘cultural products’ wherein they are (re)
produced separately to social relations and are simple vessels of pleasure. Material
interests seemingly exist a priori to cultural products, which entertain rather than
make and communicate meaning.
As Storey suggests, while almost ‘everything we buy helps reproduce the capi-
talist system economically’, everything we buy ‘does not necessarily help us secure
us as “subjects” of capitalist ideology’ (2012). Lipschutz ultimately argues that
popular culture is not ‘a source of, or incitement to, revolutionary social action or
transformation’ (2010: 164). While, initially, I may have agreed with this proposi-
tion, I have found while writing this book that ‘the capitalist system’ is far too
riddled with contradiction (as Marx so famously articulated) for the relationship
between production, text and consumption to be so simple (and so bleak).
IPE needs to take ‘more seriously than previously’, argues Germain, culture
as ‘a cardinal aspect of political economy’ (2011: 62). A ‘cultural political econ-
omy’ (CPE) approach takes ‘the cultural turn seriously, highlighting the complex
relations between meaning and practices’, argue Jessop and Oosterlynck, while
remaining attentive to the ‘conjoint impact’ of ‘semiotic and extra-semiotic
processes’ on ‘the constitution and dynamic of capitalist formations’ (2008:
1156). As Best and Paterson argue, political economy, ‘as conventionally under-
stood, whether in neoclassical, public choice, institutionalist, statist or Marxist
terms’, is abstracted ‘from its cultural constitution’ (2010: 2). Orthodox political
economy tends, Jessop and Oosterlynck suggest, to ‘naturalize or reify its theo-
retical objects (such as land, machines, the division of labour, production,
money, commodities, the information economy’, while offering ‘thin accounts,
 Analysing popular culture 39

at most, of how subjects and subjectivities are formed and how different modes
of calculation emerge, come to be institutionalised, and get modified’ (2008:
1156–7). A move to incorporate culture, on the other hand, will likely ‘trans-
form our understanding of what political economy is’ (Best and Paterson 2010:
2, emphasis in the original).

Culture is too often [in IPE] a residual category of ideas that are simply
apprehended and used in an instrumental manner, as ideological categories
that rationalize particular decisions taken in the interests of more organic and
somehow prior commitments. Culture, in this sense, confirms the modalities
of world order, rather than shapes or undermines them.
(Germain 2011: 62)

Not all political economists, of course, argue that capitalism is a monolithic system
and not all want to run screaming at the suggestion that cultural emancipation may
be possible through ‘“hitherto uncongenial economic mechanisms”’ (Willis 1990,
quoted in Storey 2012: 234). As Davies articulates, the ‘cultural turn has provided
some important innovations in recent studies of political economy’, helping in
particular ‘to bring into question the conceptual and methodological dualism of
culture versus economy’ (2010: 49). While it is true that feminists have long
‘recognized the importance of cultural struggle within the contested landscape of
popular culture’ (Storey 2012: 11), Gramscian and poststructural political econo-
mists also take seriously ‘the contradictory mix of different cultural forces’, the
interactions ‘between the discourses of the text and the discourses of the reader’ and
the ‘political constructions of the people’ that have animated cultural studies debates
(see Storey 2012: 11).

Post-Marxist hegemony theory at its best insists that there is always a dialogue
between the processes of production and the activities of consumption. The
consumer always confronts a text or practice in its material existence as a
result of determinate conditions of production. But in the same way, the text
or practice is confronted by a consumer who in effect produces in use the range
of possible meaning(s) – these cannot just be read off from the materiality of
the text or practice, or the means or relations of its production.
(Storey 2012: 239)

Walker, however, argues that ‘it is futile to expect the imminent arrival of a
cultural political economy in any cohesive or integrated sense’ (2010: 226).
Since each of these terms, he suggests, already include each other, any strategy
of inclusion is already thwarted and ‘it is not so difficult to make any one of the
terms do the work of the other two’ (ibid.: 229). The term ‘cultural political
economy’ also, Walker suggests, implies claims about value ‘that are in profound
contradiction with one another’, with each part of the term, although already
included in the others, working simultaneously to ‘affirm autonomy from the others’
40 Analysing popular culture

(ibid.: 227). Thus culture, for Walker, as ‘the value of identities and differences
structured between potentially autonomous subject-nations and potentially collective
communities’ may be incompatible with politics as ‘the value of a sovereign
authority split between the sovereign state, the system of sovereign states and the
sovereign subject-people’, which may then compete with economy as ‘the value
established by property and the market’ (ibid.: 230).
As someone who finds ideas about culture, politics and economy interesting
and who thinks they are connected, I would prefer (and hope) to leave this book,
semiotically and semantically, open in this regard. I rather like Vincent Mosco’s
definition of political economy (perhaps inserting a ‘meaning’ after ‘consumption’),
which leaves ‘the discipline’ relatively uncluttered by territorial claims. ‘Political
economy’, suggests Mosco, ‘is the study of the social relations, particularly the
power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and con-
sumption of resources’ (2009: 2).
Storey adopts a Gramscian perspective to suggest that ‘the cultural field is
marked by a struggle to articulate, disarticulate, and rearticulate particular mean-
ings, particular ideologies, particular politics’ (2003: xi). He is wary both of
‘economic reductionisim’ (which sees meaning as determined by mode of produc-
tion) and ‘textual essentialism’ (where meaning is an inherent property of things)
and seeks to centre his approach more firmly on the activities and agencies that go
into the making of meaning and, therefore, the ‘politics of culture’ (ibid.). Storey
is concerned about ‘the idea of popular culture’ and how this is entangled ‘with
questions of social power’ (2003: xii). Following Storey, this research starts from
the assumption that ‘meaning is not something fixed and guaranteed in nature’ and
‘is always the result of particular ways of representing nature in culture’ (2003: x).
My argument here is not, contra a certain amount of political economy scholar-
ship, that class relations are the key causal force in world politics. I do not view
‘culture’ as necessarily something produced and/or consumed according to class
relations (although I certainly concede that cultural artefacts may indeed be more
readily available to/consumed according to resources, social relations and inequal-
ities in these). Rather, as per Aitken’s analysis, I am more interested in the ways
that ‘culture’ is ‘key to “economy” and to the ways in which “economy” could
be (re)shaped’ (2010: 68).
There may be aspects of cultural studies that are overly celebratory of popular
culture (as per Garnham’s critique), and it may be the case that a ‘fear of econo-
mic reductionism’ has led some in cultural studies, as per Hall’s critique, to imply
that the economic ‘does not exist at all’ (1996, cited in Storey 2012: 238).
Attention to the ‘conditions of existence’ that generate cultural commodities and
social relations still seems (at least to my untrained cultural studies eye) pervasive
across cultural studies.

[D]ominant ways of making the world meaningful, produced by those with

the power to make their ways of articulating meaning circulate discursively
in the world, generate the ‘hegemonic truths’ which seek to assume an
 Analysing popular culture 41

authority over the ways in which we think and act; that is, they invite us to
take up ‘subject positions’ from which meanings can be made and actions
carried out. It is this conflict – the relations between culture and power –
which is the core interest of cultural studies.
(Storey 2003: x–xi)

This research is most interested in the popular cultural form of feminism, and how
this might shape (or not) operations of the economy, noting the activities and
agencies that go into making feminism (or antifeminism) meaningful. Several
cultural studies ideas and innovations thus inform this book and I draw on these
to provide a fuller picture of what I think are valid political economy questions,
including how feminism (or antifeminism) are rendered meaningful across popular
culture sites and how this might, as per Storey’s argument, be entangled with
questions of social power. Such ideas and innovations are various.
First, cultural studies places emphasis on the media as symbolic institutions, that is,
as institutions whose products signify and in which language, practice and imagery
convey messages, create narratives and construct meaning. Second, cultural studies
underlines the significance of questions of articulation. Articulation is ‘the principle
way in which the relations between production, consumption, politics, and ideol-
ogy are theorized in cultural studies’ (Grossberg 1995: 73). Third, cultural studies
focuses on questions of identity, engaging with important questions of emergent identi-
ties, which is significant for this book as people find new outlets for themselves
through social media, and the relationship between identities, emergent and exist-
ent. Fourth, cultural studies highlights ideas around textuality, interpretation and
difference to think both about the ‘self-production’ and social reproduction of cul-
ture, placing local practices in ‘the wider context of the social structures of power’
(Grossberg 1995: 73). Fifth, cultural studies underscores the complex and contradictory
nature, not only of culture, but of the relationships between people, culture and
power. Lastly, cultural studies is perhaps most significant to this research for empha-
sizing the extent to which culture (and its products) create and communicate
meaning and is therefore, in and of itself, meaningful.

Consumer culture, consumerism and popular culture

Popular culture, including its processes, practices and products, is more than
simply the commodities it produces and while we can argue to a certain extent
the existence of mass media and communications, defining popular culture
according to a notion of mass-produced commercial culture is, as I have argued
previously, problematic. Certainly, popular culture, as per Storey’s analysis the
cultural practices of ‘ordinary’ people, will draw from the practices of consumer
culture, and consumer culture borrows and deploys the representations of popu-
lar culture, but they are worth distinguishing. This is not only due to crucial
historical and technological changes in the processes of production and availa-
bility but, relatedly, because, as outlined above, both popular and commercial
42 Analysing popular culture

culture are dynamic and their features subject to losing currency according to
place, time and context.
Popular culture is rarely, today, wholly and systematically attributed to corpo-
rate and/or commercial interests. Popular culture can, and does, support and
reproduce capitalist assumptions, but this is not a uniform process and must be
analysed, not assumed. Both contemporary popular and consumer culture support
and endorse ‘material culture’, which points, as Lury describes, ‘to the significance
of stuff, of things in everyday practices’ but indicates also that ‘this attention to the
materials of everyday life is combined with a concern with the cultural, with
norms, values and practices’ (2011: 9, emphasis in the original). The rise of com-
mercialism is more clearly, however, ‘an artefact of the growth of corporate
power’ (Ruskin and Schor 2009, in Turow and McAllister 2009: 410).
It should also be highlighted that studies of consumption are not the same as,
and ought not to be confused with, studies of ‘consumer culture’. Australia,
New Zealand, the UK and the USA can clearly be classified as ‘consumer societies’,
for example, but their popular cultures are not equivocal, despite frequent intersec-
tions. As Miller articulates, it is true that ‘the vast array of things that people buy in
London are produced by some variant of the market or capitalism. So it is not surpris-
ing that we see the shopper as the end point of that system’ (2012: 54). The shopper
in London is not however, Miller suggests, merely the mannequin wearing the
clothes that ensure the fashion industry (for example) remains profitable (Miller is sum-
marizing Baudrillard here). In many instances ‘the shopper has a quite extraordinarily
precise idea of themselves in relation to the vast array of consumer goods’ (ibid.).
Consumption is, of course, more than simply shopping, involving, as Lury
notes, the consumption of things other than commodities, including gifts, self-
produced objects, freely given services, and so on (2011: 12). As Miller articulates,
consumption also entails the (social, not just individual) ways we transform the
goods that we purchase, which is a ‘much more active process’ than shopping
alone, ‘shifting goods from alienable to inalienable’ (2012: 64). The strong sense
of identity that shopping imparts on the shopper is important, though, because it
supports and reproduces the political identification of freedom with individual
choice that is endemic to consumer culture (Lury 2011: 5–6). On ‘owning’ a
thing, it no longer signifies the initial shop environment, and the chain of produc-
tion that this entails, since the thing becomes the shopper’s: it becomes ‘a clear
signal of [the] specific taste, personality and presence in the world [of the shopper
in question]’ (Miller 2012: 55). Clearly this process of self-identification in the face
of a system (capitalism) that is otherwise alienating is partly a conceit of market
ideology, but the various points up to which the shopper has achieved a precise
sense of themselves are not explicable in reference to consumer culture alone.
Consumer culture, Lury notes, consists of a true diversity ‘of things, processes,
values, norms and practices’ (2011: 5–6). It involves a variety of processes, some-
times ‘pulling in different directions’, based in some degree on forms of economic
organization and divisions of labour (and driven by the pursuit of profit) but also
dependent on relationships between different systems of exchange, regimes of
 Analysing popular culture 43

value, consumer politics and state action, ‘expertise’ and ‘subcultures’ and the
‘political identification of freedom with individual choice’ (ibid.). Consumer cul-
ture is as fundamental to our processes of identity formation as popular culture,
and popular culture depends on consumption, but I would argue here that popu-
lar and consumer culture are worth separating, at least analytically. I borrow Lury’s
words to suggest that consumer culture is ‘the use or appropriation of objects or
things’ in which ‘the consumer emerges as an identity’ in and of itself (2011: 9).
Popular culture, of course, uses and appropriates objects and things and popular
culture can, and often does, support the reproduction of ‘the consumer’ as master
identity category (although the consumer as ‘master category of identity’ does not
always reside at its core). Importantly, popular culture is consumed in the sense of
being bought and sold, and while everyday cultural meanings, including those
circulating in popular culture, are important in understanding the ways in which
consumer goods can, and often do, become an expressive instrument from which
people create their lives, and their identities, popular culture also often eludes the
profit motive of market capitalism. While popular culture is not, then, reducible
to commercialism, we ignore at our peril the commercial imperatives that propel
the production of cultural artefacts. As McRobbie articulates, these are particularly
significant when we consider how feminists must, today, navigate the ways in
which commercial imperatives might disarm feminist critique by reproducing a
myth of choice, freedom and objection; a myth that is always pre-empted with
irony in contemporary postmodern, consumer culture, since women (and men)
are apparently free to choose how they are objectified (2009: 17).
Understanding the relationship, however, between popular culture as a site of
meaning and the consumption of certain ideas about feminism demands consid-
eration of the multiplication of identities that popular culture supports, only part
of which can be accounted for by contemporary consumer culture. A limited
commercial definition of popular culture may assume, for example, that profitability
and marketability have taken ‘precedence over quality, artistry, integrity and
intellectual challenge’ (Strinati 2004: 3). This assumption is flawed, however,
because it does little more than describe consumers as the passive endpoints of
economic activity, rather than being capable of actively transforming the world
and being transformed by it. As Storey notes, we communicate ‘through what we
consume’ and consumption is often ‘the most visible way in which we stage and
perform the drama of self-formation’ (2003: 78). Consumption is also, then, a
form of production. The kinds of books we read, the films we watch, the music
we listen to: these are questions both of consumption and cultural identity and
thus both are inextricably linked. Culture is not reducible to the products we
consume, and I do not want to argue this here, but the relationship between
consumption and cultural identity remains significant.
Using my investigation of the relationship between feminism and popular
culture as a hypothetical, the relationship between popular and consumer culture is
important. Commercial success can be measured in reference to the successful dis-
tribution, exchange and consumption of certain stuff, and this research is specifically
44 Analysing popular culture

interested in examining whether feminism (or antifeminism) can be argued to be

commercially viable in the sense that they generate tangible profit for cultural
producers. This research is also interested in asking whether feminism (or antifem-
inism) can be argued to be successful in the popular culture domain, which is not
necessarily dependent on their commercial prowess but on their popularity, that is,
the ways in which they generate support, debate and ‘air time’ and/or are more
frequently represented in a positive light. This is difficult to measure (although
easier to visualize) and is complicated by the ways in which people’s sense of them-
selves (their processes of self-identification) in contemporary material culture have
been inflected with the knowingness that comes with advanced information tech-
nologies. Popular culture, as a site of meaning-making, may enable the reproduction
of certain conditions in which feminism is disparaged or dismissed. It may not do
this uniformly and across artefacts, but a certain flourishing of antifeminism may
take hold in particular (perhaps dominant) areas of popular culture, such as across
network television programming, or in Hollywood film production. Depending on
how extensive this reproduction of antifeminist meaning, consumer culture may
also draw upon popular culture’s representations and narratives of antifeminism to
generate profit, supporting the production of antifeminist cultural products which
are perceived as more commercially viable (that is, likely to generate profit), given
prevailing popular culture trends. It is neither popular nor consumer culture alone
that are individually responsible for sustaining and endorsing antifeminism, yet both
may contribute to the perpetuation of a hostile environment for feminism. The
more entrenched antifeminism becomes across dominant cultural sites, the more
apparently normal and commonsensical antifeminism is and the more critical the
feminist mass against such a hostile environment needs to be. The same might also
be said of the militarization, sexualization, racialization, and so on, of popular and
consumer culture. The social and cultural processes by which cultural artefacts
are disseminated and reproduced are not a side issue to understanding politics, they
are absolutely central to it.

Commercial viability and (cultural) popularity

As noted above, commercial success and popularity are not necessarily conflatable,
nor should we assume either implies the other. Those movies and television
programming considered ‘cult classics’ enjoy this status precisely because they are
observed not to have experienced the commercial successes of big budget,
Hollywood products. Very often, despite limited commercial success upon release,
films, TV series, books, video games and so on become popular, perhaps explicitly
because of their ‘niche’ status (Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Maude, Clerks, Little
Britain, The Office (UK), Community). Some films and television series, especially
within the science fiction and horror genres, have been produced specifically to
achieve cult status (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Brazil, Pink Flamingos, Repo Man,
The Evil Dead films, Twin Peaks). In some instances, initial commercial failures
yield to much bigger successes as artefacts gain popular momentum through video
 Analysing popular culture 45

and DVD distribution (Fantasia, The Shawshank Redemption, This is Spinal Tap, The
Rocky Horror Picture Show, Firefly, Futurama, the video games Eternal Darkness and
Shadow Warrior). Actor Bruce Campbell (of the much-loved and eminently
‘cultish’ Evil Dead films) once defined the difference between ‘mainstream’ and
‘cult’ by defining the former as ‘a film that 1,000 people watch 100 times’ and the
latter as ‘a film that 100 people watch 1,000 times’. Many ‘cult’ artefacts do, of
course, also simultaneously attract both a particular subgroup of fans and a mass
audience (Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, in particular The Dark Knight, and
the Harry Potter franchise are noteworthy here). While many film buffs would
argue that a film cannot truly occupy ‘cult’ status when consumed by a mass audience,
the relationship, and distinctions, between commercial success and cult following
are difficult always to maintain.

Global/local contexts as platforms for success

As Waisbord argues, ‘television is filled with national variations of programs
designed by companies from numerous countries’ and, for decades, ‘formats of
‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ programming have been produced and sold in international
markets’ (Moran 1998, cited in Waisbord 2004: 359). ‘Format television’ has
become one of, if not the, preeminent forms of commercial television, and its commer-
cial successes are enormous. More than just another trend ‘in an industry perennially
hungry for hit shows and eager to follow them’, the popularity of formats
‘reveals two developments in contemporary television’ (Waisbord 2004: 360).
First, ‘the globalization of the business model of television’ is clearly evident here.
Second, ‘the efforts of international and domestic companies to deal with
the resilience of national cultures’ (ibid.). Analysis of both these developments,
Waisbord argues, enables a reexamination of how ‘economics and culture are
related in the process of media globalization’, with television becoming, in effect,
‘an increasingly integrated’ and singular business, ‘governed by similar practices
and goals’ across locations (ibid.). While we might see this integration as a form
of ‘cultural homogenization’, with a dozen media companies ‘able to do business
worldwide by selling the same idea’ and audiences ‘watching national variations of
the same show’, Waisbord prefers, however, to note how much formats ‘attest to
the fact that television still remains tied to local and national cultures’ (ibid.).
Television is ‘both global and national’, shaped both ‘by the globalization of media
economics and the pull of local and national cultures’ (2004: 360).
This simultaneity applies to most forms of popular culture more broadly and
the interplay of local and global contexts renders most arguments concerning cul-
tural homogenization (normally read as Americanization) difficult to sustain.
Privatization, liberalization, and deregulation of the airwaves have certainly
‘opened television systems to flows of capital and programming’, which has
resulted in ‘the increasing homogenization of systems on the principles of private
ownership and profit goals’ (Waisbord 2004: 360). While changes in the structure of
television systems have, however, connected television systems that once functioned
46 Analysing popular culture

in relative isolation (ibid.), the cultural ‘icons’ produced by and in popular culture
may not be universally known or recognized (Hollywood and Bollywood stars, for
example, branded products renamed across location, national figures and symbols
universally known but understood completely differently depending upon location).
Cultural icons celebrated locally may have no popular reach beyond context and
location but hold great popular sway in context. Countries may erect particular
barriers to the availability of non-national products (France’s Toubon Law mandating
the French language and quota regulations enforcing 40 per cent French-language
broadcast music spring to mind).
A cultural homogenization argument does not also, of course, account for the
level of state control of the media experienced in countries such as Syria, China,
Russia, Egypt and North Korea (which also themselves vary in terms of state
intervention in and control of the media). It does not consider various media
system models, as for example in Hallin and Mancini’s famous analysis of the three
media system models common to the Atlantic, northern Europe and southern
Europe. Hallin and Mancini argue that the relative dominance of market mecha-
nisms of commercial media is evident only in the ‘Liberal Model’ prevalent across
Britain, Ireland and North America (2004: 11). The ‘Democratic Corporatist’
model evident in Northern Europe, they argue, is characterized by a historical
coexistence of ‘commercial media and media tied to organized social and political
groups’ and ‘by a relatively active but legally limited role of the state’, while the
‘Polarized Pluralist’ model of southern (Mediterranean) Europe is characterized by
the ‘integration of the media into party politics’, the ‘weaker historical develop-
ment of commercial media’ and ‘a strong role of the state’ (2004: 11). Even these
relatively specific models, the authors suggest, can only be characterized as ‘ideal
types’ that the media systems of individual countries fit ‘only roughly’ (2004: 11).
In many instances, countries within models differ substantially (the UK to North
America, for example, or Spain to Italy).
The diversity of media production outlets enabled by globalized capital and
programming flows is also worth considering. The rise of multichannel, all-day,
any-time programming has impacted media systems and their potential reach.
Hollywood companies, Waisbord argues, enjoyed an early advantage, with
‘extensive libraries, well-established distribution networks, and an unparalleled
marketing machine’, but as ‘the principles of commercial television became
standardized and industries matured, other domestic industries could also produce
and export programming, particularly if they catered to niche audiences’ (2004: 361).
In Britain, the successes of Pearson (the originator of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire),
in Holland of Endemol (Big Brother) and in Sweden of Strix television (Survivor)
are evidence, Waisborg suggests, ‘that the pool of producers is no longer limited
to traditional Hollywood companies’ (2004: 361).
Inequalities remain in the global trade of audiovisual products, as Waisbord notes,
and, despite the successes of third world producers, ‘Western domination of the
global television market remains undisputed in terms of program sales’ (2004: 362).
Television programming has become diversified and more complex, but Hollywood
 Analysing popular culture 47

studios continue to report huge profits. Despite no longer accounting for 71 per cent
of the total world traffic in television material, as in the late 1980s, ‘the six major
Hollywood studios raked in $4.5 billion to $5 billion in 2001, more than the rest of
the world combined’ (Purcell 2001, cited in Waisbord 2004: 362).

The popularity of television formats is at the crossroads of global and local

dynamics of the cultural economy of television. Contemporary television is
a Janus-faced industry that in the name of profitability needs to commodify
real and imagined nations while being open to global flows of ideas and
money. The global circulation of formats responds to programming strategies
to bridge transnational economic interests and national sentiments of
belonging. Such strategies neither follow patriotic concerns nor suggest that
television dutifully respects the diversity of national cultures. Rather, they
result from the intention to maximize profits while ‘the national’ continues
to articulate cultural identities. In turn, television programming recreates and
perpetuates national sentiments.
(Waisbord 2004: 367–8)

The advantage of format shows is that they allow successful programs to be adapted
to national cultures without running into the cultural incompatabilities that many
foreign shows experience (Waisbord 2004: 368). Similarly, cable networks like
MTV and ESPN have realized that programming in local languages can be more
profitable than monolingual, English language broadcasts. General trends also
suggest that the influence of internet access is increasingly influential in determin-
ing the consumption of media. In 2009, one-third of all internet traffic was video,
a figure that rose to 40 per cent in 2010, and projections (Kerwin 2010) suggested
that this figure would be at 91 per cent by 2014. Some of the highest consumers of
video content, often through mobile communications technology, are found in the
Global South, in countries such as Brazil, India and Mexico.
Commercial media (television, news media, magazines, print journalism) are
designed to make a profit by delivering information and entertainment to indi-
vidual (paying) consumers at the same time as they deliver the attention of these
consumers to (paying) advertisers. The most successful Hollywood studios gener-
ate their profit (and pay for the countless flops) by finding ways to ‘monetize the
ancillary stream’ (by, for example, selling pay-TV and overseas rights, creating
tie-in video games, amusement-park rides, toys and other merchandise, and so on)
(Davidson 2012). ‘Worldwide spend on filmed entertainment is around $65 billion
a year, of which the distributors’ share is about $35 billion’ and total ‘revenues are
split almost equally between the Domestic (North American) market and the Rest
of the World’ (Ritchie 2013). A film need not actually be terribly popular at the
cinema in terms of bottoms on seats to be successful, if studios get their marketing
stratgeies right, with theatrical (that is, cinema) revenues accounting for approxi-
mately 25 per cent only of the spend on filmed entertainment, while video
(including DVD) takes around 40 per cent, television 28 per cent and ancillary
48 Analysing popular culture

revenues the final 7 per cent (ibid.). Studios regularly spend upwards of $50
million covering ‘negative costs’ (the costs incurred producing and shooting a
film, but excluding distribution and promotion costs) and a further $30 million
on marketing (up from approximately $8m and $3m respectively in 1980).
While growth in the movie industry is projected to be fairly stable over the
next few years, with predictions suggesting that growth will sit at around 0.6
per cent, growth in the television industry, with its ability to experiment with
‘different models, distribution methods and ways of telling stories’ is expected to be
significant (Davidson 2012).

The importance of social media

Not-obviously-for-profit social media cannot necessarily be considered commer-
cially successful in the same ways. While venture capitalism has very often
providing the source funding for social media sites to overcome initially overbear-
ing operational costs, this capital was forthcoming on the assumption that such
social media sites would generate a method of ‘monetarizing’ their own success.
Also, social media sites are often designed not to make a profit by delivering infor-
mation and entertainment to individual consumers and by generating attention
towards commercial advertisers. The more popular a website, the more money,
generally speaking, it will be able to generate through advertising. In 2013,
Twitter’s annual expected global revenue from advertising was estimated at
US$629 million, its projected 2014 revenue US$1.08 billion (Sydney Morning
Herald 2013: 9). Social networking site Facebook has 1.15 billion active users and
access to this enormous user base is highly valuable. Thus, ‘advertisers might be
willing to pay more for an ad on Facebook than for a comparable ad on a smaller
social networking site’ (Strickland 2009: 1). As Strickland notes, social media sites
may also choose to charge a membership fee to users, which is a relatively less
common but occasionally highly successful strategy (ibid.). Online dating sites are
a good example of this, with many withholding key features from users until they
choose to upgrade to a premium account. You might, for example, ‘be allowed
to browse for a potential match on a dating service, but you’d have to upgrade if
you wanted to send your soul-mate-to-be a message’ (ibid.).
‘Developer fees’ for social networking sites that incorporate applications and
services into the community can also help generate revenue. Facebook, although
it allows developers ‘to create applications and incorporate them into Facebook for
free’, also has ‘an optional verification program that requires developers to pay a
fee to participate’ (Strickland 2009: 1).

For $375, Facebook will evaluate a developer’s application. If the application

meets Facebook’s standards, Facebook will list it as a verified application.This
means Facebook will feature the application prominently over apps that
haven’t been verified.
(Strickland 2009: 1)
 Analysing popular culture 49

There are other potential options also, such as the establishment of special
premium accounts for businesses, which would enable the businesses to lever-
age the social networking site as an advertising platform (Strickland 2009).
The founders of Twitter have, for example, ‘discussed a business model that
would require companies to pay a verification fee to have an official company
Twitter account’ (ibid.: 1).
It is currently impossible to tell whether any link can be drawn between adver-
tising spaces on social media site and the feminist (or otherwise) tone of user-driven
content. Facebook has an ‘advertising platform’ that enables brands to build their
digital assets on Facebook and drive traffic to their websites (Rodriguez 2013).
The more the advertisers pay, the more frequently their advertisements appear on
Facebook. Marketers generate ‘leads’ by posting Facebook advertisements that are
directly linked to forms programmed on the Facebook domain. These forms col-
lect a user’s contact and personal information from users, including their personal
data, interests, location, and the pages on which they click the ‘like’ button
(known as ‘psychographic content’). I, for example, only seem to attract sponsored
advertising links to weight loss, fitness, jewellery, household and beauty products.
This is presumably because marketers have made particular assumptions about my
gender, lifestyle and habits, rather than my ‘liking’ certain weight loss, fitness,
jewellery, household and beauty products, which I have never done. I have often
wondered what, had I frequently posted psychographic content celebrating sexist,
pornographic and/or sexualized content, my sponsored advertisements would
look like. If I were male and heterosexual, might I expect to see more ads for
Playboy? Despite, however, ‘liking’ and commenting on a number of feminist
pages, I have seen little on my user page to reflect these tastes.
As Lyons notes, Facebook promised to ‘reinvent media and advertising’ and its
‘grandiose promise’ was that it ‘could deliver targeted ads with pinpoint accuracy,
delivering ads that were perfectly aligned with people’s interests’. As Mark
Zuckerberg famously intoned in 2007, ‘Once every hundred years, media changes’’
(Lyons, 2013). If this is the case, Lyons asks,

how come it’s now 2013 and my Facebook homepage is littered with ads
that remind me of the cheap one-column ads you used to see in the back
pages of ‘men’s magazines,’ back in the day? Why am I getting all these crappy,
annoying ads featuring women with enormous breasts urging me to learn a
second language or buy solar panels? [Figure 2.2] It’s not just me. My buddy
Lonn Johnston yesterday posted a copy of one of these obnoxious big-boob
ads, because apparently they’re popping up in his feed too.
(Lyons 2013)

I (white, 35 years old, female, Australian resident), on the other hand, am more
likely it seems to encounter the ads in Figure 2.3.
Most social media sites, including Facebook, will generally fail to police sexist
content. When complaints are made, offending material is usually removed (either
FIGURE 2.2 Advertisement on Facebook.
Source: Lyons 2013.

FIGURE 2.3 Author’s Facebook newsfeed, 8:14am, October 2013.

Source: Author screenshot.
 Analysing popular culture 51

FIGURE 2.4 ‘Airbag by Porsche’ (advertisement).

Source: People Against Sexist Advertising 2010.

by the user who posted the content or by Facebook itself ), but this relies on
Facebook users themselves to monitor content. Facebook can be a site to contest,
and share opinions against, sexism (as in, for example, the pages ‘People Against
Sexist Advertising’ (Figure 2.4), the various ‘Slutwalk’ pages, ‘Feminist Frequency’
and so on), or it can be a source of (perhaps inadvertent) sexist and derogatory
speech, innuendo and discrimination.
Figure 2.5 shows the Facebook page of a motorbike group of over 4,500
members in Sydney, and is (meant to be) dedicated to the art of motorcycling.
The group is a private group, requiring administrator permission to participate
and administrator moderation. At this point in the day, I had already waded
through at least five or six hilarious naked-women-draped-on-motorbike style
pictures, which is not unusual for a group page this size and one dominated by
male members. I was interested to know what reaction I would generate if I
complained here. Although I generally ignore this kind of sexist content on social
media, disregarding posts that I find stupid or offensive (there are simply so
many), in person I would always make my views known. I thought that an
experiment was in order. I reported the above picture and it was removed almost
immediately, by the group member who originally posted it. Although I am
probably now despised by at least five male motorcyclists in Sydney, I did receive
the following from another male rider (all the comments shown in Figure 2.5 are
from male members of the group).
FIGURE 2.5 ‘Sydney Riders’ Facebook Page, 17 July 2013.
Source: Author screenshot.
 Analysing popular culture 53

I saw your comment regarding that picture/post on Sydney Riders. Just

want to say I wholeheartedly agree with you that women should be
respected – not treated and viewed [as] sexist objects. I suppose comments
like these are thrown about every day. What matters is that it doesn’t go
unnoticed! Safe riding!
(Sydney Riders’ Facebook group page member, 2013)

Notes
1 Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge, I’m trying not to lose my head, It’s like a
jungle sometimes, It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.
2 According to Apple (2005), ‘sombitch’ is a variant of ‘son of a bitch’, ‘used mostly by white
male Southern Americans over the age of forty, in the process of getting killed during a War
event on the popular Korean game Ragnarok Online. Sombitch is usually pronounced in
an ear-splitting pitch that can be heard across the trailer park: ‘YOU SOMBITCH! FUCK
FUCK THESE FUCKING FUCKERS!’ (real-life quote).
3 Distributor: Weinstein Company. Box office (US): $44,671,682. Theatres: 1756.
4 Distributor: Warner Bros. Box office (US): $37,662,162. Theatres: 3030.
5 Distributor: Weinstein Company. Box office: $38,180,928. Theatres: 3314
6 I should note that OzTAM, the ratings provider for Australian television, calculates ratings
from 3,500 panel homes in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth and 1,413
homes nationally for subscription television.
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3
POPULAR CULTURE, PRODUCED,
REPRESENTED AND CONSUMED

In understanding the ways in which popular culture and feminist discourse support
and contest each other, three discursive processes, in particular, are central. These
are processes of production, representation and consumption. It is the interaction
of these three processes that constructs, Milestone and Meyer argue, ‘what we
commonly identify as gender identities’ (2012: 1). As Rowley asserts, however
contested the relative importance of the themes of production, representation and
consumption, ‘we cannot account for the complex ways in which gender and
popular culture matter in global politics without considering all three’ (2009: 313).
Understanding the power of popular culture texts by engaging with who produces
popular culture, its representative, symbolic authority (and how visual and linguistic
representations produce meaning) and the practices of consumption that drive
and reproduce popular culture permits us a closer mapping of the relations of
power, gendered forces, hierarchies and myths through which popular culture
enables us to make sense of the world.
The production, representation and consumption of the visual consists of a
sequence of processes and the simultaneous emersion of viewer-knowers in the
world. As Carver notes, politicians and spokespeople across democracies and author-
itarian regimes do not by happenstance deploy or make reference to allusions,
quotations and ‘lessons’ from television and Hollywood: they do this because rulers
must share the common language of the ruled (and vice versa), ‘not just verbally, but
in terms of symbolic references through which meaning is necessarily communi-
cated’ (Carver 2010: 427). Failing to communicate in popular terms would, in fact,
render presidents, prime ministers and political figures less authoritative, at least in
terms of their communication skills.
56 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

Production
The ‘very notion and practice of production are’, Grossberg argues, ‘themselves
culturally produced’ (1995: 74). Grossberg notes that ‘the relations between pro-
duction and consumption’ are complex and, often, unstable. Analysis that separates
production and consumption is thus ‘problematic’, as is ‘the reduction of produc-
tion to waged labour’ (which ignores what Marx himself had argued, which is ‘the
production involved in consumption/reproduction’) (ibid.).
If the relations between production and consumption are complex and unsta-
ble, how then are we to understand the processes of who makes what, for whom,
and where in the contemporary global political economy and how is analysis of
the production of cultural products best approached? How might we position
questions about gender identity and feminism in the production of popular cul-
ture, including television, cinema, music and social media? Asking apparently
simple questions about who produces what, for whom and where requires more
complex considerations of relations of cultural power than might at first seem
obvious. We cannot assume that what is produced is what is consumed, but
analysis that rigorously separates production and consumption is, for Grossberg and
many cultural theorists, questionable.
Milestone and Meyer note how, although a good deal of attention has been paid
by scholars to ‘how culture is represented and consumed’, production as a funda-
mental element of the processes of popular culture has ‘often been overlooked’
(2012: 6). More recently, they suggest, scholarly work has begun to engage more
substantially with cultural production, particularly with the arrival of new cultural
and media industries and technological and cultural shifts in working and produc-
tion. The ‘production of culture’ remains however, Milestone and Meyer suggest,
‘very different to other forms of production’ (ibid.). ‘Culture’ is arguably not made
on a production line and is generally held to be ‘connected with the realms of the
symbolic, identity and aesthetics’ (ibid.). Issues of ownership and control remain,
however, significant (and some would argue that there is evident across cultural
production a ‘production line’ ethos in capitalist societies).
Asking what kinds of structures enable the production of Hollywood’s cultural
artefacts, for example, necessitates taking seriously the existing patterns, processes
and systems through which Hollywood executives make sense of success and prof-
itability. According to an Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
(part of the University of Southern California) study on the representation of
women in film, ‘Gender Inequality in 500 Popular Films’, both onscreen and
behind the camera over the course of five years, a discouraging picture of women’s
presence and representation emerges. The study notes that females are less likely
to be represented on screen and are even less likely to appear behind the camera.
When they appear on screen, they are more likely to appear in ‘sexy attire’ or
partially naked. Worryingly, compared to females between 21 to 39 years of age,
‘in 2012, females 13 to 20 years of age are more likely to be shown in sexualized
attire and partially naked’ (Smith et al. 2013: 1).
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 57

This, according to Hunter (2013), is not, however, necessarily about sexism; or

at least it is not only about sexism. Although Hollywood is sexist, Hunter asserts,
the sexism Hollywood reproduces is reflective of its profit motive, not the dismissal
of women per se. Sexism in Hollywood is the result of structural factors, such as
‘talent disinterest, industry laziness and the slow nature of societal change’ (ibid.).

Does sexism occur on a daily basis in Hollywood? Has Hollywood been

one big boys’ club since the very beginning? Are there still too few
women making big (and small) movies? Yes, yes and yes. Is sexism the
singular reason? Not even close. Profit is and always will be the main
deciding factor.
(Hunter 2013)

Producing a film is betting on its success, notes Hunter, ‘and it makes sense that a
business would try to ensure the best results by attaching known quantities to their
biggest projects’ (2013). Hollywood does best what it did before and, ‘when studio
decisions are working, as they did in 2012 to the tune of the highest domestic
box-office tally in history, the industry is given no convincing reason to change
their ways’ (ibid.).
The Annenberg study examined the top one hundred grossing films from 2007,
2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. No reason is provided for ignoring 2011, which,
Hunter notes, included such ‘female-friendly films’ as Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows 2, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 1, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Help and
Bridesmaids.

The past decade has seen only 41 women make films that landed in the
year-end top 100 lists. Put simply: the male-to-female ratio among studio
filmmakers is 15.24:1. The stats are about as bleak for female screenwriters,
so there’s your first problem – there aren’t enough women given opportuni-
ties to create complex roles for women, and most male screenwriters and
directors are either afraid to write good roles for women or bad at it.
(Bailey 2013)

Hunter argues that it is movie studios’ ‘profit agenda’ that leads them to hand ‘very
few big budget films’ to inexperienced directors (2013). Studios instead choose
names that evoke either a proven track record or at least a temporarily high profile
(such as Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, who had produced only a series of
eye-catching, scifi-themed commercials). ‘Only ten (non-animated features) of
2012’s top 100 films were helmed by first-time feature directors’ (ibid.). A director
‘builds up’ to directing a big action film, with ‘an interest and aptitude in the film’s
more blockbustery elements’ (that is, action and/or CGI) just as important and
necessary as experience (ibid.). It is, Hunter suggests, ‘not hard to imagine that a
higher percentage of males show enthusiasm towards making movies loaded with
cartoon violence and lackluster scripts’ (ibid.).
58 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

What Hunter does not consider is that, if even a handful of studio executives
also thought like this, it is not hard to imagine an environment in which no female
is considered viable for a ‘big action film’. It is also, then, not hard to see how
women in film become more ‘naturally’ associated with independent cinema, as
shown in a recent report sponsored by the Sundance Institute and put together by
the USC Annenberg team that produced the ‘Gender Inequality’ report. This
study, ‘Exploring the Barriers and Opportunities for Independent Women
Filmmakers’ (Smith et al. 2013), found a much higher percentage of female film-
makers (29.8 per cent) working in independent cinema (more specifically, films
selected for the Sundance Film Festival between 2002 and 2012).
Hunter suggests that the report’s ‘presumed conclusion’, that women make
smaller films because they are unable to get ‘the jobs in big Hollywood’ may be
false and that it could ‘also be that many women are simply drawn to the more
personal, intimate and smarter stories best served by smaller films’ (2013). Hunter
points to Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow’s success as an example of how women
in Hollywood count themselves out before they have even got close to the industry.
He quotes Bigelow herself to suggest that ‘many female filmmakers simply don’t
think they can be a movie director’ (either through ‘fear of big, sexist Hollywood’
or ‘a lack of self conviction or personal interest’).

If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to

ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I
refuse to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie,
the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There
should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that
it’s really possible. It is.
(Bigelow 1990)

Given that women generally, in Hollywood and independent cinema, fare poorly
in comparison to men, whether Hunter’s feelings about women’s preference for
small and independent f ilmmaking are true or not seem somewhat beside the
point. As the Center for the Study of Women in Film in Television notes, wom-
en’s presence in domestic US cinema production (women as directors, executive
producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors) decreased in 2013
by two percentage points from 2012 (Lauzen 2014). The Center also notes that
practices of film criticism are themselves gendered, with ‘popular film criticism’
remaining a ‘predominantly male activity’ and ‘films with male directors and writ-
ers’ receiving ‘greater exposure as male critics are more likely to review these films
than films with female directors and writers’ (Lauzen 2013: 2). Bigelow, who in
1990 had just released the film Blue Steel, starring Jamie-Lee Curtis, does not deny
that there is ‘specific resistance to women making movies’ and notes only that she
was able (or lucky enough) to ignore it.
The Sundance report points to five key areas in which women’s career devel-
opment in film is hampered. First, women face particular gendered financial
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 59

barriers. Second, they face male-dominated industry networking. Third, they face
stereotyping on set. Fourth, they struggle with work and family balance. Fifth,
they face exclusionary hiring decisions (Sundance Institute 2013). The report
argues that mentoring and encouragement for early career women, improving
their access to finance and raising awareness of the problem would improve
women’s film prospects. Hunter suggests that we need to wait for the slow crawl
of social change to disable the male-dominated production ‘wheel’ and that
female-led cinema success is ‘a game of dominoes or connect the dots’ (2013). The
‘sexist’ line is both too reductive and too simple and it remains difficult ‘to engen-
der change of any kind when the status quo is so damned profitable’ (ibid.). Such
change might include the end of audiences ‘turning big, dumb movies that objec-
tify women into box office hits’, instead going out of their way ‘to find and
support films that not only understand the Bechdel Test but pass it, too’ (ibid.).

Barring moviegoers making their collective voices heard, the change will
need to come voluntarily from within. A quota system is out of the question
so spontaneous effort is required from people in positions of power currently
reaping the benefits and bonuses from unprecedented box office success.
Good luck with that.
(Hunter 2013)

Gendered disparities in television, radio and news media are slightly less shocking
than those in film, although the numbers remain heavily skewed and (white) men
predominate. According to statistics published by Media Report to Women (MRW),
national public radio in the US shows a relatively high representation of female
hosts. Reports from the fourth Global Media Monitoring Day (2009), in which
observers in 130 countries monitored major media outlets, found that ‘24 per cent
of the people interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and
print news were female’, which represented a ‘significant change from 1995, when
only 17 per cent of the people in the news were women’ (MRW 2012). MRW
notes that near parity now exists between women and men ‘in the category of
people providing popular opinion’, although ‘women are persistently underrepre-
sented as experts and authorities’ in the news (ibid.).
In US broadcast news reporting, while in 1987, ‘men reported 73 per cent of
stories’, by 2007, ‘men reported 48 per cent and women, 40 per cent’ (the remain-
ing 12 per cent were team efforts featuring reporters of each gender) (MRW
2012). In US newsrooms, however, ‘women’s participation has remained static, at
roughly 36.5 per cent, since 1999’ and white men remain responsible for 80 per cent
of all major op-eds (ibid.). Women working full-time in daily newspapers total
approximately 36.92 per cent in the USA, with minority women accounting ‘for
19.3 per cent of female newsroom staffers’. Sports journalist jobs remain ‘over-
whelmingly white and male’ (ibid.). In 2011, female TV news directors totalled
28.3 per cent and female radio news directors only 10.7 per cent. Female journal-
ism and mass communication bachelor’s degree graduates, however, fare better in
60 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

the job market than their male peers, since women ‘disproportionately specialize
in advertising and public relations, which have higher levels of full-time employ-
ment for their graduates than do other parts of the field’ (ibid.).
The news media industry’s structures of production of content and the industry
itself remain heavily segregated between ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ collar areas. In the USA,
according to Chemaly,1 ‘men outnumbered women in front-page byline coverage
of the 2012 presidential elections at top newspapers by an almost 3 to 1 margin’
(2014). On Sunday morning talk shows, ‘one survey found that only 25 per cent
of guests were female’ and another concluded that ‘only 14 percent of those inter-
viewed and 29 percent of roundtable guests’ were women (ibid.). Women remain
‘concentrated in ‘pink collar’ areas in both new and old guard media’, including
‘food, family, furniture and fashion’.

[A] review of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal shows that just
one-half of one per cent of op-eds were written by Latinos; for The
Washington Post, that number was 0 per cent. Among those publications,
Asian Americans wrote an average of 2 per cent; African Americans
roughly 5 per cent.
(Chemaly 2014)

The television industry remains similarly gender-segregated. In network televi-

sion, ‘male directors outnumbered females 4 to 1 in a review of 3,100 episodes
of prime-time television’ (broadcast and cable) (Chemaly 2014). In the 2010 to
2011 prime-time television season in the USA, ‘women accounted for 25 per
cent of all creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors,
and directors of photography working on situation comedies, dramas, and reality
programs airing on the broadcast networks’ (MRW 2012). In the same season,
while they made up 37 per cent of producers, women also constituted only 4 per
cent of directors of photography (ibid.).

Representation
Put simply, engaging with (and understanding) the politics of representation means
negotiating the symbolic references through which meaning is made and com-
municated. The above discussion of the production of sources of popular culture
tells us that there are particular and obvious inequalities across the media industries
in terms of who produces what, where and by what means. It might be the case
that a lack of female directors, for example, of Hollywood action movies leads to
a poverty of representations of women in action movies, but to make this argu-
ment, we would need to assume that the gender of a director relates directly to
their ability to create meaningful representations. This is a somewhat tenuous and
essentialist argument that assumes that men cannot write women, and vice versa
(or, for example, that male directors cannot produce decent female characters and
that female directors create better representations of women on celluloid).
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 61

While there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that female writers and
directors create more and better female characters,2 this line of argument does not
necessarily take us far in understanding how a set of desired attributes reproduced
in representations of women and men across popular culture makes sense. To
understand the social and cultural logics, and thus impacts, of gendered representa-
tions, we need to ask further, and different, questions, about the types of verbal
and visual messages that content generated from such inequalities might yield. We
need, for example, to understand the broader social settings by which it makes
sense to people that certain, desirable, attributes of a male character in a movie or
television show, for example, are likely, when expressed by a female/gay/non-
white male, to incite condemnation.
Understanding the practices of representation through which our popular
culture artefacts make sense to us requires interrogating the visual and verbal mes-
sages that are reproduced across popular culture. Practices of representation and
structures of production are intimately entwined because the activities and agen-
cies that go into making certain representations meaningful are, as per Storey’s
argument (2003, 2012), entangled with questions of social power. Producers,
directors, script writers, editors, executives, and so on, are always situated cultur-
ally. They are located within networks of social mores and assumptions and their
productions are readable in terms of the logics to which they speak. If women
are understood, within a particular cultural and temporal location, to be more
persuasively ‘realistic’ when represented by a ‘damsel in distress’ persona, this is a
reflection of the embedded cultural biases of processes of production, representa-
tion and consumption, while the reproduction of these stereotypes also legitimates
the further reproduction of these biases. Understanding, as per Grossberg’s analy-
sis, our notions and practices of production, representation and consumption as
‘culturally produced’ requires that we take seriously how popular culture is both
conditioned by wider cultural practices and, in turn, conditions these. Popular
culture’s verbal and visual messages may tend, for example, to portray women as
subservient and men as dominating; or, to stand out, to gain attention, they may
do the opposite, which is radical and noticeable precisely where submissiveness is
coded ‘feminine’.
While writing this book I have often wondered whether scepticism towards
visual analysis in IR and IPE derives of the various physicalities of visual and tex-
tual form. While both visual and linguistic culture are the subject of contestation,
and both are as open to interpretation as each other, a written text may appear
uniformly the same in its presentation across readerships, while imagery might
more readily be assumed to be potentially deceptive, changing or too unstill.
Perhaps it is this assumed potential for deception that makes many scholars
uncomfortable, insecure even, in engaging visual language. Carver notes that vis-
ual communication has frequently been coded as ‘insufficiently determinate’ an
academic source for serious study, which means that it requires ‘too much inter-
pretation’ (and does not therefore constitute a reasonable source of knowledge)
(2010: 424). Texts, on the other hand, give scholars a sense of confidence that
62 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

what they know, or what they ‘are allowed to know’, can be limited to what they
can say ‘that can be written down’, repetitiously referring ‘text to text, words to
words’ to create ‘a certainty in sameness’ (ibid.).

By contrast, pictures do not tell us much that is instantly determinate, unless

they have captions, simply because they do not put their meaning into words.
And moving images – when analysed for meaning – are often conflated in
works of interpretation with screenplays, where the on-screen words can
appear in written form in a book or transcription.
(Carver 2010: 424)

In counterpoint to those who might claim that analysis of popular and/or visual
culture is not serious academic business, I would suggest that, to engage in any
meaningful way with how we formulate knowledge about the world, and what
therefore we know (or do not know) about the world, we need to consider the
political processes of representation by which knowledge, reality and identity are
selected, organized and transformed. Not only texts but images are central to our
representations: in some contexts perhaps, images are today more central than texts
in representing the world, in others, as Benjamin predicted, word and image are
increasingly inter-dependent (1972, cited in Evans and Hall 1999: 7). By failing to
consider the power visual language might wield, and the relations of power from
which it emanates, we fail also to understand a crucial part of how people ‘know’
the world and how they then choose (or are able) to act within it.
Bleiker and Hutchison (2008) stress the ‘influence that representations of emotion
exert on political dynamics’ in the realm of visual culture (quoting Bronfen 2005: 131),
noting that:

A growing body of literature examines how in the age of globalization vari-

ous senses interact with the visual and how the latter has come to be seen as
a particularly ‘reliable,’ even ‘authentic’ way of knowing the world. Some go
as far as stressing that the real political battles today are being fought precisely
within these visual and seeming imaginary fields of media representations,
where ‘affectively charged images’ shape our understanding of political
phenomena more so than the actual phenomena themselves.
(Ibid.)

As Bleiker argues, referring to Guy Debord’s influential work on ‘spectacle’, ‘every-

thing directly lived becomes distanced through representation’ (2009: 7).
Representation becomes part of ‘spectacle’, which is a social relationship between
people ‘mediated by images’ (Debord 1992, in ibid.). Even the most thorough
empirical analysis ‘cannot depict its object of enquiry in an authentic way’ and, as
Bleiker notes, any representation of ‘the real’, visual or textual, remains a form of
interpretation, reflecting angles and framing, colour choices or brush strokes (ibid: 7).
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 63

‘Reading’ the image

Importantly, all forms and practices of representation convey messages. Messages,
because they depend inherently upon the interpretation of the observer, can be
read, in the sense that they can be received and made sense of, although ‘reading’
itself has come to symbolize a fairly static and linear process based on the written
form. A more expansive definition, and understanding, of ‘reading’ might instead
focus on the ways in which it involves all sorts of human faculties, including
perception, reception, study and utterance.
Perhaps the most well-known account of ‘reading’ the image is supplied by
French literary theorist Roland Barthes. Images, in Barthes’ analysis, deploy signs
and values, each of which requires a general cultural knowledge to yield particular
messages. Barthes was concerned for three types of message in particular: the
linguistic message; the (coded) iconic message; and the ‘non-coded iconic’, or
literal, message (1999 [1964]: 34–6). The ‘overall structure of the image’, Barthes
suggested, is the ‘final inter-relationship of the three messages’ (ibid.: 36). Images
‘given without words’ are, Barthes argued, rare and the linking of text and image
is a frequent occurrence (ibid.).
Among contemporary sites of popular culture, this is very clearly the case
with print and broadcast media, wherein, although these sources deploy both
images and language, language remains the more privileged system of represen-
tation. Images rarely appear, across the internet and in the blogosphere,
unmoored from linguistic representations (through taglines, descriptions or
other written devices) and visual news media, documentary film-making and
factual media outlets will usually ground their reporting in some form of spoken
monologue or dialogue.

Today, at the level of mass communications, it appears that the linguistic

message is indeed present in every image: as title, caption, accompanying
press article, film dialogue, comic strip balloon. […] What are the functions
of the linguistic message with regard to the (twofold) iconic message? There
appear to be two: anchorage and relay.
(Barthes 1999 [1964]: 37, emphasis in the original)

All images, Barthes argues, are polysemous (that is, they are capable of carrying
multiple meanings). The image’s polysemy is potentially disorientating to the
observer, and the presence of the text fixes, to a certain extent, the image’s possible
meaning(s). This helps the observer ‘to choose the correct level of perception’ (ibid.,
emphasis in the original). In terms of the symbolic message, the linguistic message
guides not so much identification as interpretation, ‘constituting a kind of vice
which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating’ (ibid.). Anchorage may also
be ideological, directing the reader ‘through the signifieds of the image’, remote
controlling the reading ‘towards a meaning chosen in advance’ (ibid.: 37–8).
64 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

In all these cases of anchorage, language clearly has a function of elucidation,

but this elucidation is selective, a metalanguage applied not to the totality of
the iconic message but only to certain of its signs. The text is indeed the
creator’s (and hence society’s) right of inspection over the image; anchorage
is a control, bearing a responsibility – in the face of the projective power of
pictures – for the use of the message. With respect to the liberty of the signi-
fieds of the image, the text has thus a repressive value and we can see that it is
at this level that the morality and ideology of a society are above all invested.
(Barthes 1999: 38)

The function of ‘relay’ is less common, argues Barthes, but significant in under-
standing the juxtaposition of text and image where images are not fixed, as in, for
example, film. Herein, dialogue functions ‘not simply as elucidation but really does
advance the action by setting out, in the sequence of messages, meanings that are
not to be found in the image itself’ (ibid.).
We never encounter a literal image in ‘a pure state’, whether images appear to
us as coded or uncoded. Whereas, for Barthes, drawings are coded messages (since
they are reproductions and lack an ‘essential nature’), photographs would seem to
constitute messages without codes (since they appear as recordings, not transfor-
mations). A photograph, ‘although it can choose its subject, its point of view and
its angle, cannot intervene within the object (except by trick effects)’ (ibid.: 39). In
a photograph ‘the absence of a code clearly reinforces the myth of photographic
“naturalness’’ and the mechanical that captures the scene is a guarantee of ‘objectivity’
(ibid.: 39–40). A photograph, as Sontag argues, is ‘not only an image’ but ‘a trace’;
it is something ‘directly stencilled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask’
(Sontag 1999 [1978]: 80–1). Whatever humans may do to photographs, there is a
sense in which this is preceded by a ‘brute’ photograph, establishing in humans
‘not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing’, but ‘an awareness of its having-
been-there’ and ‘the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message’, making
innocent the ‘semantic artifice of connotation’ (Barthes 1999 [1964]: 40). The
more ‘technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images),
the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the
appearance of the given meaning’ (ibid.: 40).
‘Reality has always been interpreted through the reports given by images’,
argues Sontag (1999 [1978]: 80). ‘Philosophers since Plato have tried to loosen our
dependence on images by evoking the standard of an image-free way of apprehend-
ing the real’ (ibid.: 80). Sontag argues that our allegiance to the written word over
the image goes back a significant way in history to Plato’s suspicion of the image as
something of a ‘sham’ (ibid.: 80–1). This ‘naïve realism’ equated the image with
mere appearance; as ‘no more than a resemblance’ of the thing depicted and not
the thing itself (ibid.: 81). Despite advances in humanistic and scientific thinking,
which were anticipated to weaken the allegiance on images, images have become,
however, and more than ever, substitutes for reality. Although, as Sontag notes,
reality ‘has always been interpreted through the reports given by images’, images
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 65

are, today, in effect, ‘coveted substitutes for firsthand experience’ that have become
‘indispensable to the health of the economy, the stability of the polity, and the
pursuit of private happiness’ (ibid.: 80). For Sontag, the photograph revives the
primitive equation of the image with the thing itself, wherein images and real things
are simply two manifestations of the same energy or spirit.
Reading an image ‘politically’ involves abandoning the pretence that there is a
thing itself, an authentic truth or reality, being represented. Rather, the point is to
deconstruct the image as an interpretation, as per Bleiker’s critique, of the real and
a part of our social and cultural relationships. This necessitates, I suggest, adopting
something of a poststructuralist understanding of the act of ‘reading’, in the style
of Jacques Derrida, as an act of meaning-creation in itself. Scanning the eyes across
a visual projection or a written page does not, as Derrida might have argued, allow
us to decipher the ‘given meaning’ of a ‘text’ (text here is used in the loosest sense
to refer to a physical representation of verbal or visual form),3 rather, that act is
itself ‘part of creating’ the meaning of the text (Zehfuss 2009: 138–9).
Abandoning Plato’s suspicion of the image as ‘mere appearance’ and assuming
that images and the visual world convey as much meaning as (if not more than)
written sources allows us to open the visual world to the practices of deconstruc-
tion and to ‘decode’ the messages present across sources of visual culture.
Deconstruction, for Derrida, was less a method than a ‘critical sharpness’ on the
part of the researcher that could be applied to contextualizing, historicizing and
seeking out the ambiguities and ambivalences in a given source. Derrida was
highly sceptical of describing deconstruction as explicitly either method or tool of
analysis, refusing any separation of text and exterior application of method, and
advocating, rather, that deconstruction be considered always internal to the text.
The point, for a deconstructive approach, is that the text always carries within
itself its own undoing: the task of the analyst is simply to highlight the incoheren-
cies, inconsistencies and problematic assumptions the text has otherwise rendered
indiscernible (Griffin 2013a).
An audience is never left entirely to their own devices in decoding visual dis-
course and their relationship to hegemonic discourses, negotiated understandings
and oppositional meanings is thus impacted heavily by cultural context, the
choices of political elites and the methods of media professionals. The production
of popular, visual, culture, the ‘shooting and editing processes’, as Carver terms
them, through which visual language is constructed (these might be movies, news
broadcasting, television, sports reporting, performances, photos, and so on), enable
‘viewer-knowers‘ to engage in everyday practices of interpretation (2010: 426).
Specifically visual elements, as Rowley notes, code characters in different ways’
(2009: 316). Such elements, present across all forms of visual representation, are
given ‘layers of meaning’ including, for example, certain props, costumes and
other symbols (gestures, stylization, dressing, camera angles).
Stuart Hall discusses three hypothetical positions from which ‘decodings’ of
televisual discourse can be constructed (Hall 1999: 515). The first position is that
of the ‘dominant-hegemonic’ position, where the viewer is operating within the
66 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

dominant code, that is, taking meaning as it was intended from a television news-
cast (or other televisual product). ‘This is the ideal-typical case of “perfectly
transparent communication”’, or ‘as close as we are likely to come to it’ (Hall
1999: 515). Within this, there may be a professional code at work, by which
broadcasters encode messages that have already been signified in a hegemonic
manner and assume that the audience is decoding a message within the dominant-
hegemonic position. Broadcasting professionals are able both to operate relatively
autonomously, but also to reproduce (sometimes in a contradictory way) ‘the
hegemonic signification of events’ (ibid.: 516).
Hegemonic viewpoints are such because they define ‘the mental horizon, the
universe, of possible meanings of a whole sector of relations in a society or cul-
ture’, carrying the ‘tamp of legitimacy’ to make their representations seem ‘natural,
‘inevitable’ or common-sensical (Hall 1999: 516). Hall suggests that hegemonic
interpretations are often generated by political and military elites (particularly as in
the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ as reported throughout the UK in the 1980s and
1990s, or the Chilean coup, the Industrial Relations Bill, and so on). It is possible
to argue that, today, WikiLeaks has destabilized these elites’ ability to dictate pres-
entational formats, the selection of personnel, choice of images, staging of debates,
and so on. I would argue, however, that news media reporting of asylum seekers
in Australia falls largely into this dominant-hegemonic position. As Hall notes,
conflicts and contradictions arise regularly between the dominant and the profes-
sional significations and their signifying agencies (ibid.).
The second position is the ‘negotiated code’. Here, most audiences will under-
stand adequately what has been dominantly defined and/or professionally signified
(Hall 1999: 516). While they understand the (abstract) grand significations, how-
ever, they make their associations and applications based on situational context and
local conditions. This may result in what ‘defining elites’ and professionals identify
as a ‘failure in communications’, since local, context-driven associations may not
always flatter broader-based and power-laden hegemonic discourses (of, for exam-
ple, the ‘national interest’ or liberal economic policy-making).
The third position from which televisual discourse can be decoded is, Hall
argues, the oppositional code, where viewers understand perfectly the literal and con-
notative inflections of a discourse but decode the message contrarily (1999: 517).
This deliberate contrariness is a ‘significant political moment’, signalling perhaps a
crisis point for a broadcasting organization and highlights the importance, as Hall
terms it, of the ‘politics of signification’ (ibid.).
As Milestone and Meyer note, although Hall’s model of multiple reading posi-
tions is more sophisticated than other grand theories of media audiences, ‘it
simplifies the complex process of audience responses and meaning production’,
condensing these processes ‘into three reactions of agreement (preferred reading),
disagreement (oppositional reading) and negotiation (negotiated reading)’ (2012:
161). Hall’s encoding/decoding model may work better for analysing factual
media with strong ideological and political messages, but, Milestone and Meyer
argue, performs poorly for fictional media, ‘which may not contain any particular
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 67

messages’ (ibid.: 159). It is harder to find direct, connected, overall messages in

sports programmes, reality television and talent contest shows, for example (ibid.:
160). Although they may contain strong narratives about, say, normative mascu-
linity, how they are interpreted by certain audiences may vary enormously.

Gendered representations
Militant feminists, I take my hat off to them. They don’t like that.
(Milton Jones, quoted in Mullinger 2012)
The young feminists who are spearheading this new activism clearly have
enormous energy, ambition and idealism, and in many cases are doing
brilliant work. But the question of where the movement goes next, of what
its prime focus should be, remains to be answered.
(Cochrane 2010)

Popular culture and the successes, or otherwise, of feminism and antifeminism

connect through various and powerful relations of representation. As Hollows
and Moseley note, ideas about examining feminism and popular culture often
presume ‘that a “real” and “authentic” feminism exists outside popular culture’,
offering ‘a position from which to judge and measure feminism’s success or failure
in making it into the mainstream’ (2006: 1). A more useful approach, the authors
argue, might be to consider how, by examining feminism in popular culture, our
ideas about what feminism is or might be about have been formed ‘through the
popular’ (ibid.).
Popular culture texts are central sites of meaning-making. More than simply the
by-products of a society or culture, they constitute how we know ourselves and how
we believe ourselves to be valid. Examining, for example, how contemporary
Hollywood films create and depict women, or how TV shows reproduce ideas about
the ‘wife’, the ‘mother’, tells us something about the struggles over the meaning(s) of
gender identities that have actively shaped, and constrained, people lives. Popular
culture texts may corroborate existing, and highly regulative, social narratives and
assumptions, they may be tools of ideology and state, elite or group interest, but they
might also offer important and subversive critiques of certain social narratives and
assumptions. Popular culture, and its processes of production, representation and
consumption, are saturated, at every level ‘with ideas about how men and women
should behave and what they have the right to do’ (Milestone and Meyer 2012: 211).
Rather than seeking to show how popular culture provides another source for
scholars, say of IR or IPE, to add to the list in formulating their analyses, this book
argues that popular culture resides at heart of understanding relations of power in
global politics. It would be careless scholarship not to take seriously how our lives,
behaviours, assumptions and possibilities are formed within the popular.
‘Gender’, as Milestone and Meyer articulate, is ‘a deeply political, contentious
and complex subject’ (2012: 6). As a process of communication, the represen-
tational practices of popular culture depict and describe the meanings of
68 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

masculinity, femininity, maleness and femaleness that circulate through every

society. Representation is so important ‘because it is an active process of creating
meanings’ and how we represent a group of people or an event (through the
words we choose or the images we use) shapes ‘the meanings of these people
and events’ (ibid.: 7).
As a brief example, the United Nations Convention to Eliminate Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) links ‘stereotypes about women’ directly to ‘prejudice
based on gender’ (Liggett 2012). CEDAW sees a direct correlation between rep-
resentations of women, femininity and femaleness in society and the prevalence of
discrimination against women’s bodies. Liggett proposes that ‘sexist advertising
harms women through objectification and diminishing of self-image’, because
‘through visual and verbal messages women are portrayed as subservient to men’
(2012). The reproduction of this subservience, including women’s portrayal as sex
objects rather than, say, rounded human beings, only further legitimizes violence
against women, harms ‘women’s self-image by portraying an ideal stylized body’
and impacts negatively on men ‘through stereotyped images of masculinity’ (ibid.).
Representations of women and men across popular culture that may seem more
innocuous are no less imbued with powerful gender prerogatives. A history of
representing women, for example, as concerned with and in need of heterosexual
relationships has created powerful forces for defining women in the West as pre-
dominantly heterosexual and fulfilled only by the presence of (heterosexual)
romantic attachments. Similarly, defining men as romantic leaders, or as sexually
non-committal and avaricious, is similarly constraining while being highly produc-
tive of powerful narratives about what men in the West are meant to be.

[F]emales are depicted in domestic settings far more than males (especially in
toy advertising), implying that they can do little outside the home; female
characters in films and TV shows aimed at boys are rarely afforded the oppor-
tunity to be hero; female characters talk about and worry over their looks far
more than male characters; a female’s looks are, depending on the program,
commented on by male characters and sometimes quite rudely […]. Such
images lay the groundwork for a boy’s future attitudes about females, especially
if these attitudes are reinforced by peers and ignored in the home environment.
(The Achilles Effect 2010)

Sontag’s discussion of the importance of acquisition in our relationship with

images is a central point in understanding the power wielded by the visual. In
many instances, we claim to know, and we claim knowledge, because we have
seen. As Rowley articulates, although we live in a world that depends upon visual
communication and communication through the visual, ‘we are rarely explicitly
taught how to read visual images’ (2009, citing Howells 2003: 311, emphasis in
the original). While reading a visual image may come naturally to most, decoding
our ‘coded’ messages relies, as per Barthes argument, upon the cultural ‘tool kits’
we have at our disposal.
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 69

As feminists have shown, these tool kits may or may not draw upon feminism (Hall
and Rodriguez 2003: 885). They do, however, draw upon and thus reproduce cultural
and social assumptions about people’s bodies, what people can, ought and will do and
how they will behave. The relationship between gender codes and prevailing norms
in and of visual culture is crucial to feminism, but feminism is perhaps not crucial to
the reproduction of the codes that, for example, define the ‘modern woman’ as a
digitally in-touch, corporate pioneering ‘canteen-helping, fundraising, muffin-making,
party-going, yoga lover’ (Kia ‘Woman of Now’ advertisement, Australia, YouTube
2013d); the ‘modern man’ as ‘free-range, free-spirited, free-willed, but on a leash’ (Kia
‘Man of Now’ advertisement, Australia, YouTube 2013c); sexuality as who and how
many we choose to sleep with and; material consumption as natural.

Sarah Palin responded to her depiction on the cover of Newsweek (Figure 3.1)
by saying that, when it comes to ‘Sarah Palin’, ‘this “news” magazine has
relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. […] The out-of-
context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now’ (Sarah Palin
Facebook page, quoted in Huffington Post 2010).

FIGURE 3.1 Newsweek cover, 23 November 2009.

Source: The Telegraph 2009.
70 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

It is important not to misplace human agency in reading the visual. As

Benjamin has so famously noted, people have a critical facility with visual and
verbal communication that should not be forgotten (1972, cited in Evans and Hall
1999: 7). It is exactly the dangers of assuming a mimetic relationship between
representation and represented that render our critical facilities so crucial and so
potentially vulnerable. When we see women and men posed provocatively and
sometimes abusively in advertisements, we may not actually believe that these
images ‘represent’ what women and men are, should or could be. The quality of
the representations of women and men that we are surrounded by in popular
culture certainly do, nonetheless, have a direct impact on our sense of self, our
sense of others and our expectations of both. The dangers of mimesis are often
easily masked by powerful (and potentially damaging) representations of bodies,
norms and ideas in popular culture. Photographic images, as Sontag describes,
allow us to possess something we may have no experience of: they are so impor-
tant, so powerful, because they furnish us with knowledge disassociated from and
independent of experience (1999: 81). When an image is produced, photo-
graphed, circulated and acquired, in the sense that it enters our experiences, it
becomes, as Sontag describes, ‘part of a system of information, fitted into schemes
of classification and storage’ (1999: 82). Images give control: control to the
observer to redefine their knowledge and experience and control over the thing
being recorded, scrutinized and surveilled.
As Skrzydlewska notes, a noticeable tendency ‘to present provocatively dressed
women, in sexual poses’ and for the lyrics of songs for young people to contain
‘sexually suggestive content’ marks many contemporary television programmes,
computer games and musical video clips (2012: 4). This, I would argue, makes it
much harder, when children are bombarded with images of their pop star idols as
sexualized and sexually competent, to argue that the message equating preternatu-
rally early sexual bravado with maturity and success has not, somewhere, been
absorbed. This is not to disregard children’s own critical facilities but to suggest that
the casual observer would do well not to underestimate the processes of self-
identification through which children associate their own lives and ambitions with
those of their idols. Similarly, the prevalence of images of only women cleaning in
advertisements for household cleaning products, while only men drive luxury car
models, may prove effective because they corroborate, and then further repro-
duce, cultural assumptions that equate women with domesticity and men with
superior motor skills and spatial awareness.

Consumption
While consumption is certainly related to acts of purchase and the reproduction of
consumer capitalism, which will be considered below, it is also worth noting that
a thorough understanding of ‘consumption’ necessitates broader engagement with
not just the ‘objects of consumption’, but ‘the organization of objects in envi-
ronments, object worlds and spaces of consumer experiences’ (Lury 2011: 10).
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 71

‘Immaterial culture’ needs also to be considered, which is not the world of ideas
but the products and services ‘whose important characteristics are the outcome of
intellectual – or immaterial – labour’ (ibid.). Consumer culture, Lury argues,
depends on systems of trade, imperialism, the impact of various social groups, the
state, other systems of exchange (such as the household and family), cultural inter-
mediaries and subcultures (ibid.). Depending on the perspective, ‘consumption’
itself is largely understood as ‘consumption as buying’, ‘consumption as having’,
‘consumption as being’ and ‘consumption as doing’ (ibid.: 11).
Investigating consumption as crucial in and to popular culture thus involves
thinking specifically about how people acquire, possess, process and respond to
popular culture. In relationship to understanding feminism within (and thus repro-
duced by) popular culture, this also necessitates thinking about consumption as
gendered. Understanding consumption as (potentially) gendered means engaging
with how the consumption of popular culture might depend on and (re)produce
particular gender identities, entrench or reconfigure traditional gender categories
or affect (even rewrite) how we perform our gender identities.
In understanding how feminism and antifeminism are consumed, it is worth, I
suggest, considering four key points. First, it is important to reflect on the role of the
‘commodity’ in contemporary capitalist societies. The commercial viability of a
commodity depends on its successful distribution, exchange and consumption. This
research interrogates whether sufficient evidence can be marshalled to argue that
antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable (at least, that is,
more so than feminism). This depends on understanding how antifeminism is dis-
tributed, exchanged and consumed. In the pages following, research here focuses on
feminism and antifeminism in popular form, taking care to follow Hollows and
Moseley’s advice to examine feminism in popular culture and, therefore, as some-
thing shaped and understood through the popular (rather than presuming a ‘real’ or
‘authentic’ feminism existing somewhere outside popular culture).
Second, analysis of consumption and gender might consider how women and
men consume media and popular culture texts and how this varies (or not).
Culture might be consumed privately and domestically, or it might be consumed
more publically.
Third, as Rowley notes, considerations of cultural consumption have reflected
particularly on audience reception and the interpretive processes through which
audiences consume popular culture (2009: 318). As she also notes, the ‘methodo-
logical obstacles to accessing audiences’ interpretations are not insignificant’ (ibid.).
This research is limited in how much it can, and should, say about how people
‘make sense of and respond to media texts’ (Milestone and Meyer 2012: 149).
Analysis here of audience interpretations of feminism, and antifeminism, is very
firmly restricted only to the direct experiences and interpretations cited by survey
respondents to feminism, antifeminism, sexism and popular culture. Accessing and
drawing conclusions from wider audience perceptions of popular culture was not a
methodological goal of this research and it would be irresponsible of me to hazard
what would be, at best, a sequence of guesses around interpretation and reception.
72 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

Fourth, as Milestone and Meyer discuss, analysis of popular culture and con-
sumption might also reflect upon spaces of public consumption and how people are
able, or not, to access public spaces, whether they are able to be ‘active consumers’
and cultural producers and what kinds of power struggles over consumption infuse
public spaces (2012: 149).

The commodity in capitalist culture

Commodities exist as things that can be bought, sold or exchanged through a
market. They are often, but need not be, physical objects, their core purpose being
not the manifestation of themselves but of profit. ‘Objects are everywhere in
capitalism’ ( Jhally 2009: 416) and an immense collection of commodities must be
sold for capitalism to sustain itself. Thus capitalism needs constantly to innovate
and commodify (including ideational or physical objects) in order to increase its
market base and, once produced, ‘commodities must go through the circuit of
distribution, exchange and consumption, so that profit can be returned to the
owners of capital and value can be “realised” again in a money form’ (ibid.).

If the circuit is not completed the system would [slip] into stagnation and
depression. Capitalism therefore has to ensure the sale of commodities on
pain of death. In that sense the problem of capitalism is not mass production
(which has been solved) but is instead the problem of consumption. […] So central
is consumption to its survival and growth that at the end of the 19th century
industrial capitalism invented a unique new institution – the advertising
industry – to ensure that the ‘immense accumulation of commodities’ are
converted back into a money form.
( Jhally, in Turow and McAllister 2009: 417, emphasis in the original)

Whether contemporary commodity capitalism renders gender, sexuality and

the body (and its images) as objects of capitalist consumerism is open to debate,
but I would argue that the body is today, in Western society, entirely open to
commodification.
For Marx, although labour power ultimately resides in workers’ bodies, the
alienation of labour inherent in capitalist society meant that labour was always
somehow external to the body of the worker, a commodity that the worker sold
and that capitalists consumed. The worker themselves was thus estranged from the
objects of their production. In post-Fordist capitalist societies, however, processes
of industrialization and post-industrialization demand what Antonio Gramsci
referred to (in Americanismo e Fordismo, written between 1929 and 1932 and
published in 1949) as a new ‘psycho-physical nexus’, which requires different
forms of participation, intelligence and attitude from the worker. Workers are
specialists in flexibilized production systems, with their ‘value’ dependent on cer-
tain representations of their individuality and their minds and identities far more crucial
to the commodities capitalism produces than ever before. In contemporary
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 73

post-Fordist societies, it is arguably the case that every aspect of human life has
been rendered, in essence, a commodity, with workers’ own bodies (and thus their
identities) shaped to yield tangible profit or success. While for Marx, capitalists
purchased commodified labour power and, ultimately, consumed workers’ bodies,
in post-Fordist societies, the worker’s very body, rather than simply their alienated
labour, is for sale.
In a goods-driven society, the objects produced by capitalist modes of produc-
tion carry meaning in and of themselves. Goods themselves have become, as
Miller agues, ‘highly expressive of relationships and culture’ and ‘extremely
nuanced’ (2012: 112). What consumer societies produce matters not because pro-
duction and consumption are the result of need, but because demand reflects
desire, which is quite far beyond the purview of economic rationalism to predict
and justify. Successful advertising promotes the desirability of objects as much as,
if not more than, the need for them. Value is not, therefore, objectively produced
but is socially practised and subjectively sustained (or lost). The beauty, leisure and
fashion industries do not, for example, succeed according to how much we need
them but according to how much cultural value is placed on their products.
Bodies are also readily manipulated to create their own appendage commodities,
for example, through the diet and exercise industries and their representations of
the need for constant bodily enhancement. The value placed on physical advance-
ment cannot be understood objectively and ‘rationally’: it is, rather, a question of
how and where the body is appropriated by capitalist prerogatives within particular
cultural and social standards.
Strinati questions whether the emergence of culture in commodity forms
allows ‘the criteria of profitability and marketability’ to take ‘precedence over
quality, artistry, integrity and intellectual challenge’ (2004: 3). Profitability is
certainly a central criterion by which the longevity of culture in commodity form
is sustained. The music and network television industries are, in many ways,
shaped by their ability to generate sales, as is Hollywood. Successful social
networking and blog sites are also beholden, in crucial respects, to the advertising
revenue they can generate. Feminism and antifeminism exist in commodity form
in the sense that they, or at least symbols and narratives associated with feminism
and antifeminism, can be said to generate or compromise the production of
profit. This depends on how feminism and antifeminism are distributed and
exchanged in commodity form.
It can be argued, for example, that the producers of the third season of Veronica
Mars clearly supported the notion that associating the lead actor with an overtly
feminist politics would be damaging to the character’s credibility and the show’s
success and thus chose openly to disparage and ridicule feminist activism. The
same could also be argued of the film Legally Blonde and the television show
Cagney and Lacey (which are discussed further in Chapter 5). What cannot be
known, however, is whether these examples would have been more or less profit-
able if different writing, production and representational decisions had been made.
The highly popular US television show Girls frequently references feminism
74 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

positively and the show’s lead character, Hannah, frequently self-articulates as

feminist. Feminism is clearly a part of the writing and production team’s modus
operandi but it is not clear how successful the show would have been without a
feminist narrative. Certainly, it would not have been the same kind of show with-
out this and it may even have failed to speak to young, independent women as
successfully as it has done, in which case it may be possible to argue that feminism
is a crucial component of the show’s commercial success.
As Hollows and Moseley note, the seemingly ‘uneasy’ relationship between
feminism and popular culture has often been approached in terms of understand-
ing ‘the ways in which feminist ideas’ are incorporated in popular culture sources
‘in order to enable women to be addressed as consumers’ (2006: 10). This is
particularly true of discussions of Sex and the City, which have frequently focused
on how the show constructs the feminine citizen as ‘a shopping citizen’ (ibid.).
Here, feminist symbols and narratives are understood as manipulated in the service
of consumer culture and feminism is, in every sense, a commodity to advance
certain capitalist interests. Studies of the commodification of feminism within the
popular ‘have noted how modes of popular feminism are frequently centred
around white, middle class femininities’, cementing the idea that ‘feminism is a
movement for the privileged who can “have it all”’ (ibid.: 7).
Understanding popular culture as it represents feminism, feminist ideas and
feminist agendas in particular and selective ways is important in understanding
feminism within the popular, but it is not all that we need to know. Studies that
keep feminism somehow beyond the popular, as a separate authority figure from
which producers of popular culture would do well to take heed, reproduce ‘the
idea that the feminist has good sense and therefore the moral authority to legislate
on gendered relations’, while perpetuating ‘hierarchical power relations between
“the feminist” situated outside the popular and “the ordinary woman” located
within it’ (Hollows and Moseley 2006: 11).

Women, men and the consumption of popular culture

The rise of digital consumption involves important considerations in analysing the
power of media representations. The increase in the consumption of non-traditional
media outlets allows consumers greater power and variety in the choices they make
over which media channels and sources they consume. Consumers who are already
adept at ‘multi-tasking’ between media outlets may be highly unlikely to devote
attention to media that does not engage and stimulate them.
The amount of time, for example, that Australians spend online, in addition to
the other sources of media they consume, is substantial and likely, according to
recent research, only to increase (see Figure 3.2, which shows that in 2010
Australians spent just under 22 hours per week online). Brittain suggests that the
‘Australian public want to be engaged and stimulated by the media they consume,
and this is proven with a 58 per cent increase in online media consumption and a
staggering 106 per cent increase in video consumption between 2007–2010’ (2013).
 25 58%

20 21.7
2007 2010
13%
106%
15
4%
15.0
13.7 13.3 13.2
10 39%

Hours per week

9.9 10.3
10%
−5%
5 6.4 6.4
4.6
3.1 3.4
2.2 2.1

Internet Televisiona Videob Traditional Newspapers Magazines Video games

Radio

FIGURE 3.2 Average hours per week spent consuming media by online Australians aged 16 and over, 2007–10 (N = 5,886). Not all media types
or activities are shown.
a Broadcast TV (not online); excludes time-shifted TV and Internet Protocol TV.
b Includes PC, video and DVD; excludes video using mobile devices.
Source: Nielsen 2011.
76 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

Traditional advertising and marketing tools are just not, he argues, ‘as effective or
cost effective as they used to be’ (ibid.). Magazines, in particular, are not only strug-
gling, their readership and consumption is in decline, although the costs of
advertisements in magazines with readerships in decline continue to rise (ibid.).
Kerwin examines a 2010 white paper, Global Media Habits 2010, by Greg
Lindsay, to look at how media are being consumed around the world, ‘divorced
from business considerations’ (2010). She summarizes ten trends that are particu-
larly interesting in shaping media consumption in traditional and emerging media
market economies. No information here is gender disaggregated. As will be shown
below, data on media consumption, where it is gender disaggregated, is patchy and
over-estimates so-called significant differences (perhaps because 20 minutes’ view-
ing time means more to an advertiser paying for time than a social scientist. A
woman’s daily 22 minutes on a seventh-generation console is ‘significantly’ differ-
ent to a man’s 48 minutes but in practical terms, this difference is less obvious).
The first key trend demonstrates that television has become a ‘necessity’ across
the world, even in relatively poor populations. Kerwin notes that in 2010, ‘nearly
half of Indian households’ had TV, ‘up from less than one-third in 2001’ (2010).
In urban areas, however , ‘that figure jumps to 96 per cent’ (ibid., summarizing
Lindsay 2010).

In Kenya, the TV-penetration rate rose from roughly 60 per cent to 70 per cent
from 2005 to 2009, even as the number of households measured increased
by nearly half. Even in the slums of Sao Paulo, TVs are the top seller of
Brazilian retail chain Casas Bahia, despite the fact that residents tend not to
have electricity or running water.
(Kerwin 2010)

The second trend indicates that, despite the internet, more television, not less, is
being consumed across the world. In the USA, the ‘average American watched
280 minutes of TV each day in 2009’, notes the white paper, which is ‘more than
four-and-a-half-hours worth and a three-minute increase compared to the year
before’ (Lindsay, summarized in Kerwin 2010). A similar rise can be seen across
the globe, with ‘the average human being’ consuming three hours and twelve
minutes of television a day (ibid.). Deloitte research reports that, for 63 per cent
of Australian respondents, television remains the preferred form of entertainment
across all age groups (Deloitte 2012). According to Nielsen, in 2010 more online
consumers reported watching video content on TV (90 per cent) than on a computer
(86 per cent) in a month-long period (2012). In 2011 more than 80 per cent of
internet respondents in 56 countries reported watching video content at home on
a computer (84 per cent) or on TV (83 per cent) at least once a month (ibid.).
The third trend Kerwin discusses relates to the type of programming most
commonly or frequently watched, which is sports, reality TV and soap operas.
The most watched event in TV history was the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which
was ‘broadcast in every country (including North Korea) and garnering an average
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 77

audience of 400 million viewers per match’ (Kerwin 2010). More than a third of
Afghanistan tunes into Afghan Star, the country’s version of American Idol. Brazil’s
Globo network has broadcast locally produced soap operas since the 1970s, many
of which regularly reach 80 million viewers (ibid.).
The fourth trend concerns the reduction in newspaper circulation in the USA
and Western Europe, while the rest of the world apparently experiences a ‘news-
papers boom’ (Kerwin 2010). ‘In both number of titles and circulation, Asia,
Africa and Latin America are climbing at an annual double-digit pace’ (ibid.).
China and India house almost half of the world’s top 100 daily newspapers, where
the average newspaper boasts a circulation of 109,000 or more (ibid.). In India,
the number of paid dailies has increased since 2005 by 44 per cent, accounting for
more than one-fifth of all newspaper titles on the planet (2,700 titles) (ibid.).
The fifth trend relates to Facebook’s monopoly of the social media market
(although more recent research has also suggested that Facebook’s time might be
numbered, see, e.g., Frizell 2014). Facebook, with a user base of 517 million peo-
ple, 70 per cent of whom live outside the USA in 2010, occupied six hours of
users time (per month) ‘versus less than half that time for every other site in the
top 10’ (Kerwin 2010). According to a study of 1,642 international Facebook
users, the average user is 31 years old and follows nine brands, with three-quarters
(76 per cent) of these pressing ‘like’ to signal that they are a fan of a brand (ibid.).
In 2010, Facebook’s share of total minutes spent on the internet was a substantial
15.8 per cent (Smith 2014). According to Smith (2014), 30 per cent of Americans
get their news from Facebook, which relates also to British studies that have found
that, although time spent consuming media is increasing, few consumers seem will-
ing to pay for their access (Wray 2010). A KPMG Media and Entertainment
Barometer, for example, notes that 88 per cent of consumers polled in March said
they got their online news free, which represented an increase from 84 per cent
in September 2009 (ibid.).
The sixth trend concerns the importance of cyber cafes, which have helped
spread internet use across emerging market populations. In South Korea, people
can rent broadband access for roughly 80 cents an hour, eliminating the need for
costly monthly subscriptions, and leading to Koreans’ embrace of social network-
ing and multiplayer online gaming, Kerwin notes (2010). Cyber cafes, or
‘warnets’, are also popular in Indonesia, where only 5 per cent of homes have a
PC, and Brazil, where the cafes are known as ‘LAN houses’ and run at hourly
rates as low as $1 (ibid.).
The seventh trend concerns online video consumption. According to the
report, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and also Indonesia) have
the most avid consumers of online video. Internet users in China and Indonesia,
for example, ‘were 26 per cent more likely than the average user globally to watch
online video, while Indian viewers were 21 per cent more likely and both
Russians and Brazilians were 11 per cent more likely’ (Kerwin 2010). In 2009,
one-third of all internet traffic was video, rising in 2010 to 40 per cent. Projections
by Cisco suggest this figure will be at 91 per cent by 2014. Although, as Lindsay’s
78 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

white paper argues, PC ownership varies according to location, a 2012 Nielsen

report found that ‘watching video content on computers has become just as com-
mon as watching video content on television among online consumers’ (Nielsen
2012. This report used survey data collated in 2011 from 56 countries in the Asia-
Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and North America).
Although Nielsen suggests that in-home TVs and computers remain the most
popular devices with which to watch video content, ‘usage and growth in online
and mobile technologies is making a sustained impact’ (ibid.). The report also sup-
ports Lindsay’s Global Media Habits 2010 report in noting that, in certain locations,
mobile phones replace the internet, with mobile video particularly prominent in
Asia-Pacific and Middle East/African regions, ‘where 74 and 72 per cent of online
consumers, respectively, report watching video on mobile phones at least once a
month’ and ‘almost 40 per cent (38 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively) say they
do so at least once a day’ (ibid.). While mobile video is less prominent in North
America than in other parts of the world, North America ‘is seeing the highest
growth rates in mobile phone video consumption’ (ibid.).

The convenience of mobile connectivity has revolutionized how people are

engaging with digital content and each other around the world,’ said Dounia
Turrill, SVP, Client Insights, Nielsen. ‘With the growth of smartphones,
mobile video consumption is on the rise for entertainment content, particu-
larly in emerging markets where many consumers leapfrog home internet
altogether in favor of the all-in-one smartphone.
(Nielsen 2012)

The eighth trend relates to the differences in access costs between the internet and
mobile phones in developing countries, with 81 million Indians (7 per cent of the
population) using the internet, but six times as many (507 million) having mobile
phones (Kerwin 2010). This pattern is repeated worldwide, with PC and mobile pen-
etration rates for China at 20 per cent and 57 per cent, for India at 4 per cent and 41
per cent, Brazil at 32 per cent and 86 per cent and Indonesia at 5 per cent and 66 per
cent respectively (Kerwin 2010).
The ninth trend includes the proliferation of new screens, netbooks, e-readers
and tablets, which ‘is expected to quadruple global IP traffic by 2014’ (Kerwin
2010, noting predictions by Cisco). By 2014, it is suggested, the equivalent of
12 billion DVDs will be circulating online on a monthly basis. ‘The biggest
growth driver’, Kerwin notes, ‘is video’, meaning ‘data-rich 3D and HD streams’
delivered directly to computers, TV sets and phones. The white paper estimates
that this will lead ‘global mobile traffic to double every year for the foreseeable
future’ (Kerwin 2010, summarizing Lindsay 2010). The proliferation of ‘new
screens’ represents some interesting information in terms of how people consume
with their various electronic devices. According to a 2012 Motorola Media
Engagement Barometer, residents in Mexico, the UAE and Sweden are most
likely to consume media in tablet or mobile form in the bedroom, while Sweden,
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 79

the UK and Australia are the most likely to watch broadcast television (in the liv-
ing room) (Guardian 2012). In Australia, a 2012 Deloitte ‘State of the Media
Democracy’ survey of Australian media usage and preferences found that respond-
ents (aged 14–75) tend ‘to use all their screens and devices at once’ (Deloitte
2012). According to Deloitte Media Partner Clare Harding, Australians are ‘digital
omnivores’ and more than a quarter (28 per cent) of Australians own a laptop, a
tablet and a smartphone and 71 per cent of Australians ‘multi-task’ while watching
live TV (cited in ibid.).
Last, but not least, Kerwin summarizes the overall global media landscape as
one defined by ‘more’ (2010). Time spent on and with computers has tripled,
she notes, over the past decade among children aged between 8 and 18 (ibid.).
Most of this group’s time is spent on social media, followed by games, video
sites and instant messaging, with the average child managing to fit a total of
10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into seven-and-a-half hours
of media exposure per day (ibid.). A British survey conducted with over-six-
teens in late 2009 through early 2010 noted similar results, with time spent
consuming media (watching television, reading news, playing video games,
updating social networking profiles and using video on demand services)
‘ballooning’ (Wray 2010),
A number of reports have suggested that women and girls use social media
more than their male counterparts (see, e.g., Macale 2011). Media Report to
Women (MRW) notes that, in the online environment, females slightly outnum-
bered males in 2010 (at 51.8 per cent to 48.3 per cent) (2012, citing Williamson
2008). The same research also found that men, however, visited more sites and
stayed longer there per visit than women (ibid.). ‘Men are more likely to use
social networking for business’, declares MRW, while women use social
networking ‘to build personal relationships’, preferring video streams of TV
programs ‘while men prefer user-generated content sites such as YouTube’
(MRW 2012, citing Kwik 2009). The Guardian argues that women ‘now rule the
web’. Women ‘are 73 per cent more likely than men to have watched a full-
length TV show online’ and are ‘40 per cent more likely to play games on
Facebook’ (Guardian 2012). Eight out of the 10 Twitter users ‘to have mustered
10 million or more followers are women’ (ibid.).
Nielsen surveys have also indicated that women watch ‘significantly’ more
television than men (by 40 minutes per day), although men spend slightly longer
per day on connected (seventh-generation) gaming consoles, such as the Xbox
(48 minutes, compared with women’s 22 minutes each day) (Lunden 2012). There
are also, of course, notable differences in terms of the gendered consumption of
certain media products (The Economist, for example, and as will be discussed below,
has a much higher male readership, as do, unsurprisingly, magazines such as GQ,
Esquire and Zoo). Hollywood executives assume that their core market for action,
science-fiction and horror films is teenage boys, but this is not necessarily born out
in viewer statistics. In 2010, for example, the Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA) noted that women and men go to the movies in equal numbers
80 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

(Silverstein 2011). Similarly, video games designed specifically with a male player
in mind are almost as often played by a female, although game producers and
designers continue to assume a particular (white, male) audience.
In sum, gendered differences in terms of digital and online consumption, how-
ever, are difficult to establish, often conjectural and frequently concentrated on
analysing small sectors of the US population. There is little sustained and reliable
research that points to identifiable gender differences in the consumption of media,
across age groups and locations. Gender differences may affect the ways in which
people consume media, but no empirical evidence currently exists to prove this
assertion. Men and women may use cultural texts to construct their masculine and
feminine identities (Miletsone and Meyer 2012: 183), but assuming that they
consume those texts differently based on whether they are male or female is
dangerously essentialist, over-estimating unprovable differences and missing impor-
tant other factors that affect consumption.

Audience reception and interpretation in and of

popular culture
Understanding consumption as interpretation involves negotiating the interpretive
processes through which audiences consume popular culture. This necessitates
examining users’ experiences of media and lends itself to audience participation
and observation methods of research into what people do when they consume
popular culture (for example by watching TV and films, playing video games,
writing blogs, updating their social media accounts, and so on). Do, for example,
video gamers think consciously and reflectively about cultural models of the world
as they play, and do people make gendered meanings out of the games that they
play? Rowley notes that little research ‘has engaged in a sustained way’ with these
questions (2009: 321).
Establishing how consumers respond to the messages and images circulated
across media has thus far been the task of media audience, or media reception,
research (Milestone and Meyer 2012: 152). Such research ‘has shown time and
time again that consumers are neither uniform nor passive in their responses’ to
media and that women are, for example, often highly critical of the ways in which
media products represent women (ibid.: 153).
Survey respondents in this research4 tended to agree that we need ‘more
positive representations of feminism in contemporary popular culture’ (Survey
Question 33, see Appendix A) and that contemporary ‘popular culture is heavily
sexualised’ (Survey Question 42). When asked if they could recall any examples
of positive or adverse representations of femininity or masculinity in popular
culture (Survey Question 37), respondents found much to fault. Their responses
here were illuminating and wide-ranging, targeting: ‘traditional representations
of femininity’ (Australian male, 65 plus); myths of beauty reproduced through
the fashion and modelling industries (Australian female, 45–54); the equation
of nudity with liberation across the music industry (Australian female, 25–34);
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 81

Hollywood films that construct women as powerless, dependent on men or per-

manently in need of rescue (Australian female, 25–34); troubling representations
of femininity reproduced through the advertising industry (multiple female
respondents, 25–54); endless news media ‘stories’ about cheating footballers, their
‘hapless’ wives and the manipulative women they cheat with (British female,
35–44); television shows such as Ladette to Lady and The Farmer Wants a Wife,
which reproduce a core essence to femininity as constantly needful of marriage
and babies (Australian female, 35–44); the prevalence of see-through blouses on
Australian newsreaders (Australian female, 45–54); the reliance on sexualized
violence in TV crime dramas and the reproduction of gay male stereotypes in TV
comedies (Australian female, 35–44); in Australia, the media tirade against Julia
Gillard (Australian female, 45–54), and; the rise of pink, ditsy, cute and fluffy ‘girliness’
across consumer and popular culture and the (growing) differentiation of boys’ and
girls’ playthings (British female, 55–64).
On the other hand, survey respondents lauded and were quick to point out
where popular culture produces representations of men and women, of diverse
sexualities, displaying complexity, depth and courage. Respondents specified char-
acters such as Omar and Griggs in The Wire, Spike in Buffy, Rick in The Walking
Dead, Peggy in Mad Men and media coverage of Aung Sung Suu Kyi and Michelle
Obama as notable in this regard. Not all respondents were able to offer concrete
examples of what were, for them, positive or adverse representations of men,
women, femininities and masculinities in popular culture (which is not surprising
given that we each respond differently and in our own ways and time frames to
media messages), but many displayed a high level of active engagement with the
quality of popular culture representations. As Milestone and Meyer note, research
on the influence of media has left behind a ‘direct-effects’ model that assumes that
audiences directly, uncritically and passively absorb media messages, conceptual-
izing media effects ‘in much more open, complex and sophisticated ways’
(2012: 153). Audiences are more likely today to be described as active partici-
pants in processes of media consumption, ‘actively involved in the process of
meaning production’, such that ‘meaning’ is always the outcome of both the
media and the audience (ibid.: 154). The polysemy of cultural texts means that
different interpretations are always possible, whether a cultural producer intends a
particular meaning or not (ibid.: 154–5). It is then the semiotic elements of a text
that become particularly interesting and that may seek to ‘anchor’, as Barthes
(1999 [1964]) notes, a particular meaning to a text over another (by, for example,
distancing a male character in a television show from something traditionally
conceived of as a female task and a mundane chore). Ultimately, the audience
may continue to make sense of the cultural text in ways other than producers
intended, anchorage or no.
Conceptualizing the audience as active in the meaning-making process also, as
Milestone and Meyer discuss, envisages audiences as active and critical in how they
think about cultural texts and engage in ‘interpretive resistance’ (2012: 155).
Interpretive resistance is evident at individual and collective levels, as audiences
82 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

deconstruct and subvert media messages (guerilla feminist campaigns are a good
example of this subversion in terms of direct action, although subversion may
produce no forms of material resistance). It is also important ‘not to make a simple
equation between media messages as bad, manipulative, wrong and regressive and
resistance to media messages as good, right and progressive’ (ibid.: 156).
Audiences respond to media texts variously and intimately, and the meanings
they may promote at any given time depend on ‘socio-individual factors’, such as
gender, class, age, knowledge, experience, politics, identity, and so on (Milestone
and Meyer 2012: 160). As noted above, it is hard to prove that gender, for exam-
ple, plays a role in affecting the ways in which people consume media, but since
discourses of gender are so central to our forms of self-identification it seems self-
evident to argue that they would have some role in shaping our interpretations of
media. Yet social factors combine and analysis should be wary of privileging
gender as ‘more important than other social factors’ in responses to media messages
(ibid.: 161). Several survey respondents, for example, noted how wedding and
marriage reality television programming depends on the reproduction and repre-
sentation of certain ideas about ‘traditional’ femininity as home-bound and
husband/baby-seeking. Whether, however, this is considered an ‘adverse’ repre-
sentation of femininity in contemporary popular culture (Survey Question 37)
depends entirely on the social and political context of the respondent. ‘Adverse to
whom?’, as one respondent notes, would be a pertinent question here.
It is also worth thinking about how, as per Milestone and Meyer’s discussion,
consumers may be entirely inattentive to media messages according to the differ-
ent modes of consumption that exist across audiences and media. A cinema
environment, for example, may promote a more focused form of viewing, while
a domestic living room ‘may encourage intermittent, diffuse and inattentive
viewing’, the point being that a film studies’ model of the cinema viewer cannot
be considered a transferable model for all types of media consumption (Milestone
and Meyer 2012: 162–3).

Power and spaces of consumption

Power and gendered use of space are important factors in understanding the con-
stitution, interpretation and effects of popular culture. Analysis of popular culture
and consumption would do well, then, to reflect upon spaces of public consump-
tion and how people are able, or not, to access public spaces (Milestone and Meyer
2012: 149). Cultural and social norms may encourage or discourage access to
certain spaces through forms of regulation and self-regulation that, for example,
dictate that men should feel uncomfortable in a lingerie shop, or women in a bar
on their own (ibid.: 184).
Milestone and Meyer discuss how the majority of spaces that we inhabit have
been designed by men (urban planning and the modern city, for example) (2012:
184–92). The ramifications for women’s access include the construction of the city
as a natural space for men with restrictions to women’s access and assumptions
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 83

about their ‘natural’ domesticity. ‘Victorian hang-ups about women “without a

purpose” in public space’ have lingered throughout the twentieth century and
research on youth subcultures has often fetishized male experience and participa-
tion (ibid.: 192–6). In contemporary urban spaces, the success of the ‘gay village’,
representing ‘the colonization of a geographical space by a marginalized group’,
has been dominantly defined by male homosexuality and has represented the mar-
ginalization of lesbians in those spaces (ibid.: 202–4). ‘While women are no longer
absent from the city’, as they once were, Milestone and Meyer argue, ‘they are not
yet free to exist in the city in the same ways as men’ (ibid.: 209).
In terms of virtual spaces, which Milestone and Meyer do not discuss, I have
found geek feminist discussions of sexualized environments striking on the point of
the colonization of space and women’s presence/absence in certain spaces of activity.
Geek feminists have criticized sexualized environments across ‘geek settings’
(which are usually computer-based) for many reasons, but particularly as exclusion-
ist spaces. Sexualized environments, as a method for heterosexual men to ‘bond’,
are intrinsically ‘othering’, not only to women but to anyone who is not a hetero-
sexual man (GeekFeminismWiki). This point is also returned to in Chapter 4.
The privatization of public space, and its effects, under the expansiveness of
various Western neoliberal projects, would also be worth considering here in
terms of how bodies are regulated in and able, or not, to access certain spaces. The
contemporary urban space, for example, is frequently associated ‘with opportuni-
ties for wealth generation’, as noted by UN-Habitat in its report State of Women
in Cities, 2012–2013 (2013: 86). The creation of spaces designated as public but
privately controlled and managed for private purposes has become one of the key
symbols of modern neoliberalism, a ‘stimulation of consumption’ (Christopherson
1994: 418–19) that allows for the marketization of all areas of social life. This
stimulation also, importantly, enables the regulation of bodies within the spaces
designated private/public according, for example, to dominant ideas about the
flexibilization of labour or, as Harvey terms them, the ‘coercive laws of competition’
forcing ‘the continuous implementation of new technologies and organizational
forms’ that so characterize the contemporary urban space (2008: 24). Our urban
areas, Harvey argues, are increasingly ‘divided and conflict-prone’, with the
neoliberal turn having ‘restored class power to rich elites’, stagnating the incomes
of the urban poor and etching the results of stagnation and degeneration ‘on the
spatial forms of our cities, which increasingly consist of fortified fragments,
gated communities and privatized public spaces kept under constant surveillance’
(ibid.: 32). For Harvey, the city is characterized more by a daily fight for survival
than a sense of community or urban identity and privatized redistribution ‘through
criminal activity threatens individual security at every turn, prompting popular
demands for police suppression’ (ibid.: 32–33).
As Chant and McIlwaine note, gender and urban development are intimately
interrelated and have long been recognized as such in feminist analyses of
the urban environment (2013). For example, concomitant to the idea that the
contemporary city is marked by ‘opportunities for wealth generation’ is the idea
84 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

that ‘urban women supposedly enjoy greater social, economic, political opportu-
nities and freedoms than their rural counterparts’ (UN-Habitat 2013: 86). Chant
and McIlwaine note that, demographically, the urban future is likely to be domi-
nated demographically by women, yet ‘social, economic and political gains lag
behind’ and, as the cityscape expands, especially across the Global South, ‘barriers
to female “empowerment” remain widespread, especially among the urban poor
and/or those who reside in slums’ (ibid.). Such barriers are evidenced, as
UN-Habitat discusses, by ‘notable gender gaps’ in ‘labour and employment,
decent work, pay, tenure rights, access to and accumulation of assets, personal
security and safety and representation in formal structures of urban governance’,
which demonstrate that ‘women are often the last to benefit from the prosperity
of cities with expanded economic, social and political opportunities’ (2013: viii).
Women living in peri-urban slums, which are often entirely devoid of services and
infrastructure and constituted by low-quality shelter, are even more constrained,
Chant and McIlwaine note, ‘in their ability to connect with the rest of the city’
and ‘may be more challenged than their counterparts living in similarly marginalized
but more centrally-situated neighbourhoods’ (2013, citing Khosla 2009).

The importance of advertising in popular culture

[A]s I remember being told by my first marketing director, ‘[marketing, sales
and advertising] is a people business’. ‘Like cannibalism’, he added after a
short pause.
(O’Sullivan 2007)
Advertisers use three main strategies to lure folks into buying their products:
sexism, boobs and sexism.
(Gamble 2009)

Advertising has sold smoking to women as a source of their empowerment (see

Symon 2011). It has succeeded in asking us to use two Alka Seltzers when only
one is required. It has made us take a ‘coffee’ break (rather than, say, just a break).
It has normalized the idea of ordering bigger food, because selling small and cheap
does not counter ‘the social stigma in being seen ordering extra portions of any-
thing’ (Smallwood et al. 2012).
Advertising ‘is pervasive in mediated messages’ and ‘has the power to influence
social attitudes’ (Liggett 2012). Importantly, advertising constitutes (and is consti-
tuted by) the simultaneous production, representation and consumption of
culture. A marker and a creator of social mores, advertising mixes visual and verbal
messages to shape and redefine the consumption of objects within cultural spaces
(see Figure 3.3). These objects invariably include human bodies.

Adverts occupy more public space than ever before in history. […] In 2009 the
UK became the first major economy where advertisers spend more on inter-
net advertising than on television advertising. Through such dominance, ads
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 85

FIGURE 3.3 ‘How to Synergize’.

Source: Meyer 2011.

contribute to attitudes and values. Due to their power to influence attitudes

within a society, serious attention should be paid to the content of advertising.
(Liggett 2012, citing Sweeney 2009)

Whether advertisements possess ‘any more influence than news or entertainment

programming’ remains open to some debate (see Liggett 2012). Technology
enables viewers to eliminate advertisements from program content and, over-
loaded with ‘messages of all kinds’, we may effectively ‘learn to screen out and
limit their reception of information’ (ibid.). Advertising, of course, includes ‘a
variety of body types, cultures, and ages’ and can, if it chooses, ‘define beauty
outside traditional stereotypes’ (ibid.). Advertising may also portray women in
roles of power and success. Nevertheless, if I search for an advertisement for
cleaning, beauty, anti-ageing, diet or cosmetic enhancement, the chances are,
women will feature heavily (Figure 3.4).
86 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

FIGURE 3.4 Advertisement for Cif Cream cleaner.The tagline reads: ‘Always a Beautiful
Ending’.
Source: Cif 2014.

Arguments about advertising’s influence notwithstanding, advertising is significant

in terms of popular culture’s processes of production, representation and con-
sumption because it has so effectively blurred the lines between these processes. As
well as being commodity-orientated, the production and dissemination of adver-
tisements is also aesthetics-based and dependent upon certain ideas, and values, of
artistic integrity (Box 3.1). Deploying linguistic and visual, coded and uncoded
messages, advertisements are often extremely specific in cultural terms while
adhering to universal demands for increasing profits. Successful advertisements
have also become cultural icons in and of themselves, more representative of a
social zeitgeist than of the products they are meant to be selling.

BOX 3.1 HOW DO ADVERTS GET MADE?

The creative process

Preparation
The creative team needs to absorb the brief given to them by their client. They
will research and investigate the product, its marketplace, and their client’s
intended audience in order to become fully familiar with the issues involved.
The team will then accumulate a multitude of rough ideas through brain-
storming sessions and free association thinking.

Incubation
Once the preparation has been done and initial ideas generated, it is
not unusual to reach a blocking point. At this stage it is often found best
to switch off from the problem, and let the conscious mind give way to
the subconscious.
 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed 87

Illumination
Often the flash of inspiration will come when creatives are away from the office
environment. Suddenly the jigsaw comes together, the pieces fall into place
and an innovative idea has emerged.

Verification
After the initial excitement of having an amazing idea, creatives need to be
objective about their thoughts and check if the brainwave fits the brief. This
verification process is one that will be ongoing, gradually whittling the wide
variety of ideas down into a smaller and smaller group until a manageable
number emerge as the strongest to take forward to the client.

Getting the message across

There are a wide variety of ways to advertise and while creative agencies will
often try to invent (or re-invent) new ways all the time, the majority of adver-
tising uses established techniques. The choice of which technique to use is an
important one. Get it right, and the message will get through to the target
audience, get it wrong and it could miss the audience altogether.

Content
x Informational – focusing on the facts.
x Emotional – plays on our emotions to develop an interest in the product.
x Image – tries to link the product to desirable qualities such as a certain
lifestyle.

Approach
x Hard sell – tackles the sales issue head on and attempts to persuade the
audience that this product is the one for them.
x Soft sell – a very much more subtle approach avoiding the sales issue and
presenting an aspirational image.

Format
x Factual – puts forward the information in a simple and straightforward
way, e.g. business-to-business advertising.
x Demonstration – an advert that focuses on showing how the product works.
x Comparisons – the advertised product is compared favourably against the
competition.

(Continued)
88 Popular culture, produced, represented and consumed

(Continued)

x Direct approach – the actor speaks directly into camera.

x Indirect approach – the advertiser infers a view about the product but with-
out directly speaking to the audience. Drama is often used.
x Comedy – an attempt to give an audience a positive emotional response
to the product by linking it with laughter.
x Problem solving – the product answers a problem, for example, how to
remove a stain on the carpet.
x Endorsement – a well-known figure directly endorses a product or does so
indirectly by appearing within the advert.

(Source: Open University 2006)

Appendix B notes a number of other advertisements that proved quite

instructive to the early stages of this research. These images uncritically celebrate
sexual violence, women and gay men’s promiscuity and sexual availability and
asymmetrical relations of power and authority.

Notes
1 Chemaly cites here the Women’s Media Center ‘2013 Status of Women in Media
Report’, the Fourth Estate Project, The Op-Ed Project, American University’s
Women and Politics Institute, Media Matters for America, the Columbia Journalism
Review and Vida.
2 This is much debated, but there are some interesting examples of female directors choosing
projects that include and focus more intently on well-developed female characters,
including Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own (1992), Jane Campion’s The Piano
(1993), Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999),
Patty Jenkins’ Monster (2003), Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003), Lynn Shelton’s Your
Sister’s Sister (2011) and Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere (2012). 2013 was a good year
for female-helmed films, with the release of Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, Lake
Bell’s In a World …, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell and Haifaa al-Mansour’s Wadjda (see Mirk
2014). Frozen (2013) was co-directed by Jennifer Lee, who was brought into the project
initially for her writing skills, and seems generally considered the most feminist of
Disney’s blockbusters. According to a fellow co-director on Fandango, Chris Buck, Lee
helped ‘[create] some of the best female characters we’ve ever done, the most fully realized,
the most three-dimensional’ (Amaya 2013).
3 For Derrida, the text was always much more than simply words on a page, such that it might
be a theory, an image, a performance, a structure, an organization, event or artefact, and so on.
4 The only source of ethnographic participant observation data was that generated by the
survey, which was limited to a small number of respondents. Most, but not all, survey
respondents were located in Australia. This was a small sample of people (169 in total),
answering questions designed to access respondent’s immersion in and active engagement
with representations of feminism, femininity and masculinity in and of popular culture.
4
FEMINISM(S), FEMINISTS
AND THE (ENDURING)
‘POPULARITY GAP’

I’m not a feminist – I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and
beer, and bars and muscle cars . . .
(Lady Gaga, quoted in Keller 2010)
I think of myself as a humanist because I think it’s less alienating of people who think
of feminism as a load of strident bitches.
(Susan Sarandon, quoted in Marie Claire, April 2014)
A [feminist is a] person […] who, while pushing for equality intellectually, […] puts
one group on a ‘more equal’ footing by hindering another’s progress through law.
(Survey respondent, Japanese male, age 18–24)

Feminism implies many things to different people and I don’t agree with them all.
Some extreme forms of feminism can be characterised by the bra burning, hate
men [stereo]type. However I think this is becoming less relevant […]. I think real
feminism is [about] accentuating the brilliant qualities that women possess and
taking full advantage of them. I think that it’s wrong to try to imitate men and
women will only do themselves a disservice by doing so. Feminism is about bringing
to the fore the best qualities of women.
(Survey respondent, Australian female, age 18–24)

This chapter provides a background to beginning to understand where we might

locate feminism within the popular today. Whereas Chapter 5 offers an examina-
tion specifically of examples of feminism and antifeminism within popular culture,
this chapter contextualizes this discussion by considering feminist ‘identity’ in
Western societies, such as Australia, the USA and the UK, in an era noted for the
‘death of feminism’ and the rise of so-called ‘postfeminism’. During the 1990s and
beyond, discussions around the nature of postfeminism point to an enduring
ambivalence concerning feminism’s place within the popular. Marked by reports
90 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

of its demise within the popular in tandem with its ascension in governance forms,
feminism is at once debilitated and eminently powerful. Feminism’s (contested)
relationship with the neoliberal project suggests a need to look more closely at
the resistances, popular or otherwise, that make complex our understandings of the
relationship between feminism and popular culture.
Although frequently represented in singular form, varying social contexts for
and of types of feminism are always worth considering and point to the impossibil-
ity of offering either a uniform or universal definition of ‘feminism’. My hope over
the following pages is to try to capture some of the diversities, and dissonances,
within ‘feminism’ as it manifests in popular culture. Young women who have not,
for example, grown up with the same 1970s/1980s, radical feminist/liberationist
sources will not identify with feminism in the same way as someone who grew up
responding to, say, Spare Rib magazine. Similarly, second-wave feminists may find
little to recognize in the glorification of commercialism and sexual objectification
characterizing the ‘postfeminist’ era.

Feminist ‘successes’: How feminists have changed things

Feminism is not dead. This is not a postfeminist era. Feminism is still vibrant,
despite declarations that it is over. Feminism is a success, although many
gender inequalities remain. Feminism is taking powerful new forms, which
make it unrecognizable to some.
(Walby 2011: 1)
Over the past four decades feminism has experienced unprecedented growth.
In the words of Sonia Alvarez, ‘The sites where women, who declare them-
selves feminists, act or may act have multiplied. It is no longer only in the
streets, in autonomous or consciousness-raising groups, in workshops for
popular education, and so on. Although feminists continue to be in those
spaces today, they are also in a wide range of other cultural, social, and political
arenas: the corridors of the United Nations, the academy, state institutions,
media, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among others.’
(Alvarez 1998, cited in Hawkesworth 2004: 961)

Hawkesworth goes on to list the prevalence of feminist activities: in official

institutions of state in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and North
America, through gender mainstreaming projects and the creation of ‘national
machinery’ for women, gender equity efforts in major foreign policy initiatives,
femocrats working within public agencies, four UN-sponsored world conferences
on women, a Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW), the proliferation of feminist non-governmental and civil
society organizations (2004: 961–2).
Feminist ideas have been mainstreamed across the world in various governmental
and non-governmental programmes, institutions, agencies, policy units, social
formations, grassroot collectives, alliances, coalitions, crossing the broadest possible
spectrum of engagements (environmental, military, welfare, health, development,
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 91

pedagogy, juridical, employment, trafficking and justice based, among other things).
Feminist campaigning has focused on securing equal pay, equal education and
opportunities, access to (free) contraception and abortion, securing child-care
provision (for women and men), women’s legal and financial independence,
ensuring women live free from intimidation and violence, an end to discrimination
against same sex couples, equal representation, an end to the burden of poverty on
women, access to resources, health-care provision, awareness of the practices and
effects of armed conflict, protection of the human rights of women, fighting the
stereotyping of women and challenging inequality in women’s access to and
participation in communication systems. The list goes on.

The feminist movement has had an immense effect on American culture,

laws, education and social relationships. […] [F]eminism is the prevailing
dogma on university campuses and in the book industry. The feminists are
powerful enough in the media, in schools and colleges, and in politics and
government to intimidate most of their opposition, especially men.
(The Eagle Forum 2002)

Governance feminism (what I term ‘The Feminist Project’, which represents the
liberal governance ambitions of certain, often US-based, feminist campaigners, and
what Eisenstein refers to as ‘hegemonic, mainstream feminism’, 2009: ix), accord-
ing to Halley, and as will be discussed in more depth below, has achieved great
and widespread success. In national governments, international governance, and
through inter- and non-governmental organizations, ‘feminist justice projects have
moved off the street and into the state’ (Halley 2006: 20). This has been in large
part, Halley suggests, because of the successes of family law, sexual harassment,
domestic violence victories and highly effective feminist activism aimed at the ad
hoc criminal courts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. ‘By positing themselves
as experts on women, sexuality, motherhood, and so on’, Halley argues, ‘feminists
walk the halls of power’ (ibid.: 21).

In some important senses, then, feminism rules. Governance feminism. Not

only that, it wants to rule. It has a will to power. And not only that, it has a
will to power – and it has actual power – that extends from the White House
and the corporate boardroom through to the minute power dynamics that
Foucault included in his theory of the governance of the self. Feminism may
face powers greater than its own in its constant involvement with its oppo-
nents; but it deals with them in the very terms of power.
(Halley 2006: 22, emphasis in the original)

Feminism and neoliberalism

The successes of feminism in institutions and mechanisms of governance has
not, however, been without criticism, not only from such antifeminists as Phyllis
Schlafly and The Eagle Forum, but from within the feminist canon itself. In particular,
92 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

the proximity between the neoliberal project and feminism has been examined
at some length in various feminist analyses. Whereas the feminist absorption of
neoliberalism has caused no small amount of concern, the neoliberal absorption
of feminist ideas has been a quieter, and perhaps smoother, process, with neolib-
eral institutions and practices co-opting market-friendly feminist discourse and
making good use of liberal feminism’s sympathy for individualism.
Feminism has certainly been changed by virtue of its relationship with the
influence of neoliberalism on political landscapes since the early 1990s. More
particularly, feminism has been changed by virtue of the ways the development of
neoliberal social relations have reconfigured people’s (particularly young people’s)
assumptions of self-worth, social value and inequality. Neoliberal projects in the
twentieth century have overseen (perhaps heralded, some would argue) broad
shifts in social justice activism away, as Harris notes, from collective, hierarchical,
state-oriented phenomena ‘towards transitory engagements, heterogeneous move-
ments and personal activities’ (2010: 475). The rise of neoliberalism has given
precedence to ideas about the market as the key, indeed the only, distributor of
scarce resources, it has centred the power of private capital and has rendered
increasingly fragile the links between economic security and prosperity.
Within this environment, the importance, and potential impacts, of ‘the
uneven and multiple significations of media imaging of feminism’ (Hinds and
Stacey 2001: 155) should not be underestimated. We should not then, perhaps,
be surprised if young people place greater value on individual ‘lifestyle choice’
than, say, challenging sexual objectification. Harris argues that young women
‘continue to pursue a feminist agenda through and around narratives of choice
and individualisation, conditions of de-collectivisation and globalisation, a perva-
sive media culture and the emergence of new information and communication
technologies’ (2010: 477). Dismissing young people for their lack of ‘activism’
only obscures the private or less public activisms that are taking place, activisms
that take better account of the ‘encroachment of the culture industry’ into every
aspect of our lives (ibid.: 478).
The extent to which feminism has both legitimated and challenged neoliberalism
is not clear, and feminists are not unified in their approach to understanding
the dominance of social organization based on market mechanisms. Some femi-
nists see feminism and neoliberalism as complementary and mutually reinforcing;
some fear the incorporation of feminism into neoliberalism, or the neoliberalization
of feminism, warning that neoliberalism, in its reproduction of economic inequal-
ity and de-democratization, is always intrinsically incompatible with, hostile even
to, feminism (Walby 2011: 21). Eisenstein is critical, for example, of what she
refers to as ‘hegemonic, mainstream feminism’ (2009: ix), which is the sort of
feminism used by people with power in the name of the extension of ‘capitalist
democracy’. Halley’s articulation of ‘governance feminism’, as will be discussed in
more depth below, is intrinsically critical of the exclusions reproduced in the
institutionalization of feminist justice projects, which lie at the heart of state-based
organizations (including international organizations). Elias has found, in her analysis
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 93

of governance discourse, as espoused by organizations such as the World Economic

Forum (WEF), that gender analysis is often disconnected ‘from more critical
feminist perspectives such as those that elucidate how gender inequalities function
within contemporary processes of capitalist expansion’ (2013: 154). The neolib-
eralization of gender within and emanating from governance organizations is
based, she argues, on ‘deeply essentializing understandings of gender that stress
women’s shared and innate skills and characteristics’, while it also ignores ‘the
divisions of race, class, and nationality that serve to grant certain groups of
women (such as those participating in Davos meetings) privileged status in the
current global order’ (ibid.).

It is certainly no bad thing that an organization such as the WEF has placed
gender prominently on its issue agenda. Such practices do serve to legitimate
a focus on gender issues within state and nonstate arenas and within inter-
national organizations. But there is an inevitability about the way in which
gender issues are instrumentalized in order to link women’s empowerment
and gender equality straightforwardly to economic growth and competitive-
ness. […] By disappearing feminism in favor of technical measurement and
celebrity humanitarianism, the resulting Davos feminism reflects the domi-
nance of postfeminist visions of gender whereby gender equality and
women’s empowerment are only understood in relation to [their] ability to
serve the market economy.
(Elias 2013: 166–7)

Arguing that ‘the movement for women’s liberation has become entangled in a
dangerous liaison with neoliberal efforts to build a free-market society’, Fraser has
suggested that feminism has become capitalism’s ‘handmaiden’ (2013). ‘Neoliberal’
capitalism, she argues, has made of feminism an individualist, and individualizing,
discourse that has eschewed its former commitment to social solidarity, care and
interdependence to instead yoke ‘the dream of women’s emancipation to the
engine of capital accumulation’ (ibid.).
Feminism, Walby suggests, ‘has been opposed and misrepresented within
neoliberalism’ (2011: 23). Walby is particularly critical of what she describes as the
‘hostile context’ produced for feminism by neoliberalism. Feminism, Walby
argues, ‘thrives in conditions of democratization’, but neoliberal tendencies are
towards de-democratization, the use of private money to fund ‘public’ services
and the post-9/11 securitization and reduction of civil liberties, all of which
‘reduce the political opportunities for feminism’ (ibid.: 158). Walby suggests,
however, that there are ‘alternative futures’, of which social democracy is one pos-
sibility. She notes that ‘neither the intensification of neoliberalism nor its replacement
by xenophobic protectionism or by state capitalism is inevitable’ (ibid.).

While feminism in increasing in strength, the wider context is becoming

increasingly hostile to the practical achievements of feminist goals. There are
94 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

new as well as old threats to feminism from hostile forces. The neoliberal
turn, with its concomitant features of increasing inequality, de-democratisation,
financialisation, securitisation and environmental crisis, poses a challenge to
feminism and to the achievement of gender equality.
(Walby 2011: 157)

The environment produced by the global financial crisis has been particularly
adverse for feminism, Walby argues, ‘because the recession blocks economic
expansion and rapid reductions in government budget deficits lead to cuts in
jobs and public services disproportionately used by women’, which directly
exacerbates existent gender inequality(ies) (2011: 157–8). Though the crisis
has, arguably, created space for a resurgent social democratic politics (across
the West but also evidenced in the Middle East and North African social
uprisings), it has also, however, enabled the creation and reproduction of a
discourse of state failure, overseeing the policing of the modern state as a
bureaucratic (rather than a democratic) entity. ‘Corrupt’, lethargic and ineffec-
tive states, such as Greece, Cyprus and Italy, are used in neoliberal discourse
to re-entrench neoliberalism’s advocacy of the market, not state, as deliverer
of economic salvation, growth and individual choice.
As Prügl articulates (2011), something will always happen to feminist knowledge
when it enters mainstream organizational contexts. There can be no such thing ‘as
pure feminist goals outside the mainstream’, ‘untouched by the workings of power’
(2011: 73). ‘Governance feminism’ can be read simply as the ‘governmentalization’
of types of feminist knowledge, where feminist knowledges have been co-opted
and adapted to serve the purposes of governance, which produces ‘a particular kind
of knowledge’ (feminist legal expertise, expertise on how to mainstream gender or
manage diversity, and so on) (ibid.: 72). Although it has become symbolic of The
Feminist Project’s claim to power, we choose whether we understand the sum total
of feminism as it relates to its governance incarnations.

Janet Halley and feminists with blood on their hands

In her 2006 book Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism
Janet Halley goes one step further than most critical feminist analyses, arguing
that we should relinquish our allegiance to ‘feminism’ precisely because femi-
nism, or The Feminist Project, has become so ingrained a part of everyday,
neoliberal, institutional life. Feminism, she argues, ‘is running things’ (in the
USA, Canada, the EU, the human rights establishment, the World Bank) and
feminists themselves ‘walk the halls of power’ (2006: 20–1). In becoming a cen-
tral part of everyday institutional life, she argues, feminists and feminist scholarship
have blood on their hands, having (consciously) overlooked both the power
they wield and the damaging effects of the policy-making they have formalized.
Whether Halley’s argument is entirely sustainable remains, in my mind, doubtful,
but her analysis has been, however, at least for myself and this research, both
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 95

provocative and inspiring. Halley captures something about The Feminist Project
and governance feminism that has been, and is, troubling, that deserves attention
and that is reflected perhaps in the uncertain ambiguity that many feel in response
to questions about whether they would self-describe as feminist, or what they
think feminism is. In a time of ‘post’ and ‘hybrid’ (socialist, antiracist, postcolonial)
feminisms, taking a break from a Feminist Project that fails to see the wider social
injuries that surround us (that is, as Halley articulates, those not related to femi-
nism as cataloguing women’s injuries) is not necessarily undesirable. Certainly,
advertising and popular culture objectify men and their bodies too, which Halley
would argue is a ‘not feminist’ point, and which my survey respondents found
troubling and disempowering.
Halley reads feminism’s power in the governance of sex harassment, child sexual
abuse, pornography, sexual violence, antiprostitution and anti-trafficking, and pros-
ecutable marriage rape laws. ‘In family law alone’, she argues, ‘feminism has scored
numerous victories that prefer the wife to the husband and the mother to the
father’, including ‘the presumption that young children must spend substantial time
with their mothers’, ‘the rise of alimony’, ‘the shift in common-law-property states
to equitable division of property upon divorce’, and so on (Halley 2006: 20–21).

It would be a mistake to think that governance issues only from that com-
bination of courts, legislatures, and police which constitutes the everyday
image of ‘the state’. Employers, schools, healthcare institutions, and a whole
range of entities, often formally ‘private,’ govern too – and feminism has
substantial parts of them under its control.
(Halley 2006: 21)

Halley suggests that employers and schools in the USA put a ‘tremendous’ effort
into regulating sexual conduct at work and sexual harassment and that feminist
policy campaigns have had considerable effect within state and non-state entities
beyond the sex/gender binary, elevating, for example, child sexual abuse as ‘a seri-
ous enforcement priority’ (2006: 21). She argues, however, that because feminist
rape activism has focused so wilfully on child sexual abuse, it has forced ‘other
kinds of child neglect and abuse, other kinds of adult/adult interpersonal violence’
into the background, because they ‘lack the charisma of the sexual offences’ (ibid.).
This, Halley contends, is ‘an effect of governance feminism’ (ibid). Because, then,
governance feminism represents itself as perpetual underdog, it fails to take respon-
sibility for its pernicious effects, making it hard ‘for feminists to see around the
corners of their own construction’ (2006: 33).

Unless [feminism] Takes a Break from itself, it can’t see injury to men. It can’t
see injury to men by women. It can’t see other interests, other forms of
power, other justice projects. It insists that all justice projects will track a
subordination model.
(Halley 2006: 3)
96 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

I initially found myself quite hostile to Halley’s claims, and determined to debunk
her view of feminism as a power-hungry, power-wielding, governance success story.
I think much of this, though, has to do with not having grown up and lived in the
USA. Australia, certainly, is not the bastion of feminist power that Halley articulates
the USA to be. Although she attempts to talk more widely about feminism in rela-
tion to international governance projects, her discussion of feminism is bounded by
US culture and politics. Whether the cultural specificity of her own (and US femi-
nism’s) circumstances renders her argument particular only to the US context is
debateable. How much power feminists actually have wielded in the name of chal-
lenging patriarchal oppression beyond US politics is not certain. Certainly, the
justice project successes that Halley notes for governance feminism in the USA are
more widespread than the USA alone. Recent protests in Delhi are perhaps a good
example of the strength with which women and men will fight for a justice project
they believe in.1 A quick glance at Australian politics, however, suggests that, despite
a history of feminist activism and various feminist campaigning and project-
building, feminists rarely walk the halls of power in Australian government.
Having also researched, at some length, development organizations, particularly
the World Bank, I do not, then, share Halley’s confidence in feminism’s seat at
the table of power. Certainly, in interviews I conducted at the World Bank in 2005,
gender unit staff noted their ‘tokenism’ and relative invisibility.

The (premature) burial of feminism

A strange phenomenon has accompanied the unprecedented growth of
feminist activism around the globe: the recurrent pronouncement of femi-
nism’s death. From the 1970s through the new millennium, journalists,
academics, and even some feminist scholars have declared the demise of
feminism and hailed the advent of the postfeminist age.
(Hawkesworth 2004: 962)
A late 1990s cover of Time magazine with the caption ‘Is feminism dead?’
featured photos of prominent feminist activists, including one of the flighty
television lawyer character, Ally McBeal (Bellafante 1998). Such media
pronouncements of the ‘death’ of feminism rest on widespread presumptions
that young women do not appreciate gains made by the women’s movement,
are not concerned about discrimination, and do not support feminism.These
suppositions have rarely been tested.
(Aronson 2003: 903)

Perhaps Halley’s most significant critique, especially in terms of how feminism is

stereotyped and represented today (true or otherwise), lies, however, in the ways in
which the Feminist Project has played on a certain marginalization lament. Halley
argues that contemporary feminism self-represents (falsely) as the underdog.
She suggests that feminism in the 1990s displayed a penchant for self-representation
as abandoned and powerless.This resulted in a huge body of feminist literature from
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 97

the 1990s ‘laced with anger, pain, mourning, resentment, and fear’ (Halley 2006: 31–2).
The ‘diagnoses of feminist paralysis, live burial, and so on were exactly wrong’,
however, and feminism ‘experienced itself as paralyzed (etc.), but it wasn’t’ (ibid.: 106,
emphasis in the original). Instead, the 1990s was ‘the decade par excellence of the
emergence of governance feminism’ (ibid.). ‘If anything needs to be diagnosed
here,’ argues Halley, ‘it is the profound rupture between the actual, real-world and
theoretical power that feminism was exercising, and its experience of theoretic and
institutional powerlessness’ (ibid.: 32).
Feminism and feminists, thankfully, do not seem to have pursued lamenting
their marginalization beyond the 1990s. During the 1990s, however, the English
language media certainly wasted no time declaring the death of feminism (see, for
example, Thornton 2013; Time 1998). In growth and activity, feminism was not,
and as Halley and Hawkesworth both identify, paralysed, but the speed of the
media’s uptake of feminism’s demise was unprecedented. As Hawkesworth writes,
between 1989 and 2001, ‘during a period in which the number of feminist organi-
zations grew exponentially, a Lexis-Nexis search of English-language newspapers
turned up eighty-six articles referring to the death of feminism and an additional
seventy-four articles referring to the postfeminist era’ (2004: 962–3).
Given ‘the vibrancy and the variety of proliferating forms of feminist theory
and practice’, why, Hawkesworth asks, ‘the premature burial of feminism’ (2004:
963)? The obituaries for feminism first emerged in 1976, with the November
publication of Harper’s cover story ‘Requiem for the Women’s Movement’ (Geng
1976), ‘the first of many media pronouncements that “second-wave” feminism
was dead’ (Hawkesworth 2001: 963). Nothing had happened in 1976: the
Harper’s journalist, Geng, had simply decided that feminism was dead. As
Hawkesworth notes, this account of feminism’s demise, and the many others that
have followed it, are noteworthy for their location of feminism’s internal combus-
tion. In 1976, the women’s movement, had, apparently, ‘lost its bearings, cut itself
off from American women, and abandoned its original purpose’ (ibid., citing Geng
1976: 964). Similarly, in 2012, we were witnessing the ‘death of the feminist
dream’ (Kinchen 2012, writing in The Times) because women cannot keep up
with ‘the feminist concept of “having it all”’ (ibid.).
The ‘feminist’ concept of ‘having it all’ is, of course, a myth, much as the death
of feminism is a myth, created and sustained by the reproduction, often through
the mainstream media, of (untested) presumptions that women think that feminism
is concerned with ‘having it all’. I have yet to find a feminist who has actually said
that women can ‘have it all’, but this appears largely irrelevant to many ‘popular’
discussions of feminism. It is a useful device, and has been repeated so often,
because it offers what Hawkesworth describes as ‘a narrative of dissolution’ that
allows us ‘not only to imagine feminism dead but to understand that its demise was
caused by processes internal to feminism’ (2004: 964–5).

Feminism, of course, has been dead for decades. But like most progressive ideology,
it continues a zombie-like existence, stumbling around the universities, popular
98 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

culture, and the media, devouring the brains of the stupid or badly educated.
[…] The feminism that has burrowed into the women’s studies caves in colleges
and universities is something else: a species of progressive identity politics
predicated on perpetual victimhood as a means for extorting more social and
political clout. […] [L]ike most cults, it is humorless, intolerant, conformist,
illiberal, and lustful for the power needed to indulge the totalitarian impulse to
silence the infidels and impose orthodoxy. In their gospel, the only ‘choices’
women have are to abort babies, hate men, despise conservative or religious
women, and incessantly bite the liberal-capitalist hand that feeds them.
(Thornton 2013)

In such stories, there has been no foul play, no external intervention; feminism’s
time was simply ‘up’. Hawkesworth detects in these narratives of the ‘death’ of
feminism a moral code that is vital in understanding representations of feminism
today in the popular media. As feminism has expanded and gained traction across
multiple sites, in various ways and with numerous projects, it has decentred white,
middle-class Western women. To cultivate an inclusive international feminism,
Hawkesworth argues, feminism has had to learn to embrace ‘the priorities of
women of color and women of the global South’, ‘fighting racism, homophobia,
heteronormativity, and cultural imperialism’. Such a dose of difference becomes,
to many media commentators, a lethal dose and a ‘familiar frame for the demise
of feminism’ emerges (2004: 965).

Feminism in a postfeminist era

[Y]oung women get the message loud and clear that the absolute last thing
they should embrace is feminism. Indeed, as one reviews the media land-
scape of the past 15 years, one is struck by how effectively feminism – a
social movement that has done so much for women, and for men, for that
matter – has been so vilified in the media that many young women regard
it as the ideological equivalent of anthrax.
(Douglas 2011)
Whether located in putative popular revolts against feminism, academic
criticism, women’s consciousness in postindustrial society, or contemporary
culture, postfeminism involves a mapping of social space that renders femi-
nism homeless and groundless. The boundaries of the viable are redrawn to
exclude any feminist presence. Within the narrative frame of evolutionary
extinction, postfeminism is a marker of time as well as space, implying a tem-
poral sequence in which feminism has been transcended, occluded, overcome.
Invocations of postfeminism, then, could be read as banishments, command-
ing us to imagine gender relations, higher education, individual psyches, and
contemporary culture at large as spatial and temporal zones in which femi-
nism has been eclipsed. Much like the obituaries in the popular media,
assertions about postfeminism proclaim that feminism is gone, departed, dead.
(Hawkesworth 2004: 969)
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 99

Although, as Hawkesworth notes, the death knell for feminism had been sounded
as early as 1976 (2004: 963–4), the media began to label women in their teens
and twenties as ‘postfeminist’ in the early 1980s, with The New York Times
publishing ‘Voices from the Post-Feminist Generation’ (Bolotin 1982). It was the
1990s that would be, however, the era of postfeminism par excellence, with
Ebeling publishing ‘The Failure of Feminism’ (1990), Kaminer’s suggestion that
feminism is suffering an ‘identity crisis’ (1993) and Hogeland’s proposal of a
mass-scale ‘fear of feminism’ (1994). Today, postfeminism has become, Aronson
suggests, the most frequently used depiction of the current cycle and stage of the
women’s movement (2003: 905).
The meaning of postfeminism, however, is unclear and subject to some
contestation. It remains a term celebrated by some (e.g. Davidson 1988, Brooks
1997) and treated with suspicion (sometimes outright hostility) by others (e.g.
Hawkesworth 2004; McRobbie 2009; Walby 2011). Positioned as a rejection of
the victim-centred feminism of the second wave, the ‘celebration of individual
agency in general and raunch culture in particular’ (sometimes invoking ‘girl
power’ or ‘grrrl style’) has achieved widespread popularity, but has not been
uncontested (Walby 2011: 19–20).
Often considered representative of a form of feminism ‘entirely mainstreamed’
and with ‘its political content removed or marginalised’ (Harris 2010: 475), post-
feminism has been argued to be the “‘simultaneous incorporation, revision and
depoliticisation” of feminism’ that indicates that women’s worldviews may today
‘include more feminist principles while being less explicitly feminist’ (Aronson
2003, quoting Stacey 1987: 906). While ‘third wave’ has been a label attached to
the contemporary feminism of young women (Walby 2011: 19), it is not clear
whether ‘third wave’ and ‘post’ feminisms are interchangeable terms or are, indeed,
even commensurate entities. Third-wave feminism is considered ‘to explicitly
embrace hybridity, contradiction, and multiple identities’ (Aronson 2003: 905),
offering perhaps a more reflective sense of intellectual purpose than the much-
criticized term ‘postfeminism’, and all its associations with vacuity, commercialism
and individualism. While the notion of a third wave, however, ‘seemed to hold
hopes for a new surge in imaginative and diverse but linked-up feminist practice
purportedly less driven by the perceived ideological alliances of previous waves’,
the third wave’s ‘little sisters’, Harris suggests, especially ‘those young women now
in their teens and 20s’, have seemed ‘less able to cash this out’ (2010: 475).
What is perhaps most clear about postfeminism is that it has often been
attributed with deciding, and then proclaiming, the ‘death’ of feminism (see, e.g.
Davidson 1988). Hall and Rodriguez locate four key claims to the postfeminist
argument (2003: 879). First, they highlight the (postfeminist) claim that support
for the women’s movement has decreased over the 1980 to 1990 period. Second,
they note that postfeminism is associated with the claim that antifeminism has
increased among ‘pockets’ of young women, women of colour and full-time
homemakers. Third, they emphasize that postfeminism has claimed that feminism
has lost support because it has become ‘irrelevant’, and, fourth, they highlight
the development of a ‘no, but …’ type of feminism, with women reluctant to
100 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

self-define as feminists but approving of equal pay, economic independence,

sexual freedom, reproductive choice, and so on (ibid.).
As Hall and Rodriguez also stress, however, there exists little actual evidence
to support the, postfeminist, claim ‘that young women are less likely to support
the women’s movement than are older women’ (2003: 888). While there was a
short-lived decline in support for the women’s movement/feminism in 1992, this
was followed by an increase in support through the late 1990s (ibid.: 895). Aronson
observes that since the mid-1980s, 30–40 per cent of women (in the USA) have
called themselves feminist, which is the same percentage of people who label
themselves Republican or Democrat (2003: 904). Women coming of age in the
1990s ‘are more likely to support feminist goals and are more politically active in
achieving these goals than women who came of age in the 1980s’ (ibid.: 905).
Feminism, it would seem, is not in decline, it is not unpopular and it is not unsup-
ported. Studies have also linked feminist self-identification with self-esteem
(Fischer and Good, 1994), self-efficacy (Foss and Slaney, 1986) and academic
achievement (Valenzuela, 1993) (cited in Fischer et al. 2000: 15).2
Where there is more evidence to support a claim for feminism losing ground,
however, rests in examining the media’s relationship with feminism. Young
women’s development of a feminist perspective and identity ‘is tied closely with
institutions that support and nurture such a perspective’ (Aronson 2003: 919).
Aronson notes the availability of women’s studies programs, in particular, but such
institutions could feasibly consist of all the social and educative institutions young
women submit themselves, and are submitted, to. ‘Any survey of media’s coverage
of contemporary feminism over four decades’, argue Hall and Rodriguez, ‘reveals
a persistent pattern of negative portrayals: women’s lib, man hater, bra burner,
unfeminine, lesbian and/or sexually deviant, feminazi (ugly, unable to catch a
man, dyke), and whining victims’ (2003: 880).

If the ideology of postfeminism prevails, the women’s movement will cease

to exist because people perceive women to be equal. If feminism prevails, the
women’s movement will build on previous progress to address the remaining
structural forms of gender inequity. Our research shows that postfeminism is a
myth; women continue to support feminism and find it relevant in their lives.
However, the emphasis on postfeminism in the popular media may create a
future reality in which collective struggle is deemed unnecessary. This
possibility is the ultimate danger of the postfeminist argument.
(Hall and Rodriguez 2003: 899, emphasis added)

Postfeminism as the ‘new feminist’ backlash

We don’t need to be feminists in my generation.
(Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, quoted in Marie Claire, April 2014)
The feminist movement, like the civil rights movement, is one that almost
everyone is afraid to criticize. If you attack feminism, you’re obviously a sexist,
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 101

misogynistic male who wishes that women would just stay home and cook, clean
and raise children. The issues I have with feminism have nothing to do with the
idea of equality between men and women; I just feel that women can and will
succeed without the now largely irrelevant feminist movement ‘supporting’ them.
(Enerson 2007)

If some have celebrated ‘new’, or post, feminism, despite or indeed because of its
embrace of commercialism and materialism (see, e.g. Walter 1999; Moran 2012),
perhaps more have shared Hall and Rodriguez’s concern for the possible dangers
represented by the postfeminist celebration of individualism and its apparent snub
to collective struggle. While ‘postfeminism’, Walby contends, can be argued to
form a ‘more indirect’ opposition to feminism than other attacks have assumed, in
opposition it remains (2011: 19). Walby suggests that postfeminism, in declaring
the world postpatriarchal and postfeminist, seeks to ‘transform the feminist chal-
lenge to inegalitarian forms of sexual practice into an embrace of commercialized
forms of sexuality’ (ibid.). Herein, the ‘substantive focus’ of debates has centred on
sexuality and popular culture, ‘in particular raunch culture’ (ibid.). The question,
for Walby, is then ‘whether these sexual and cultural practices are an extension of
forms of feminism, or merely a variant of sexist culture’ (ibid.).
For most feminists, it seems, the glorification of commercialism and sexual
objectification is not feminist. A ‘pervasive culture of post-feminism’ has relegated
previous women’s movement politics to the past, constructing feminist work as
‘complete’ (Harris 2010: 476). Whelehan argues that ‘new feminism’ (such as that
espoused in Natasha Walter’s 1999 book of the same name) ‘too casually claims
that clear victories have been won’ for young women, and ‘that the way forward
is in the form of lifestyle choices and self-definition’ (2000: 11). As such, ‘new’ (or
post) feminism, she suggests, ‘misrepresents its scope, its political energy and its
ability to learn from mistakes, as well as suggesting that the purview of ‘new’
feminism is much more inclusive than it actually is’ (Whelehan 2000: 11).
Commercialism, McRobbie argues, simply allows women (and men) the freedom
to choose how they are objectified (2009: 17). McRobbie’s particular concern is
that ‘postfeminism’ has supervised conscious and overt attempts to ‘enact sexism’,
partly as a way of telling feminism off, but also made complicated by moves to
dismiss feminism as a thing of the past.
The rise of postfeminism in the 1990s is different to the backlash against femi-
nist gains that took place in the 1970s and 1980s (perhaps most famously articulated
in Susan Faludi’s book of the same name). It is more complex, less obviously
aggressive, to the point where, McRobbie argues, antifeminism is able to mimic
the appearance of feminist solidarity, and enjoys the power afforded by the diver-
sities of communication embodied in contemporary forms of popular culture
(2009). As Mascia-Lees and Sharpe argue, ‘postfeminism’ can be used to describe
a cultural context ‘in which the feminism of the 1970s is problematized, splintered’
and ‘considered suspect’ (2000: 3). In this new, and perhaps trickier to trace, backlash,
feminism is appropriated by the current social and cultural landscape into a highly
102 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

individualistic discourse, rendered yet more hostile to ideologies of collective

struggle by the prevalence of the ‘self-help ideology’ in popular culture that col-
lapses the political into the therapeutic (ibid.: 93). ‘Old feminism’ is thus presented
in media and popular culture as outdated, ‘curdled’ even, and, as Whelehan sug-
gests, ‘as having signally failed to speak to the majority of women’ (2000: 11).
‘Modern’ ideas about women are instead aggressively disseminated, McRobbie
argues, ‘so as to ensure that a new women’s movement will not re-emerge’ (2009: 1).
‘[T]hrough an array of machinations, elements of contemporary popular culture
are perniciously effective in regard to this undoing of feminism, while simultaneously
appearing to be engaging in a well-informed and even well-intended response
to feminism’ (ibid.: 11).
While the media continue to run a background pastiche of feminism as
humourless, unoriginal, unexciting and inaccurate, McRobbie suggests, young
women are ‘rewarded’ for abandoning feminism with a highly individualized, and
individualizing, discourse that promises freedom and independence through par-
ticular ‘lifestyle choices’. The advocacy of a ‘postfeminist’ landscape across popular
culture teaches young women, McRobbie argues, not to embrace feminism but
commercialism as freedom within ‘a hyper-culture of commercial sexuality, one
aspect of which is the repudiation of a feminism which is invoked only to be
summarily dismissed’ (2009: 18). The rise of so-called ‘raunch culture’ is, as Levy
articulates, a key component of this individualizing, commercialist discourse of
postfeminist ‘empowerment’: ‘a new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of
feminism [but] was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved.
We’d earned the right to look at Playboy; we were empowered enough to get
Brazilian bikini waxes’ (2006: 3–4, emphasis in the original).
Levy is particularly critical of the emergence of the ‘tawdry, tarty, cartoonlike
version of female sexuality’ that has ‘become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems
particular’ (2006: 5). ‘What’, she argues, ‘we once regarded as a kind of sexual
expression we now view as sexuality’ (ibid., emphasis in the original). As Walby
notes, feminism ‘in all its waves has supported innovation and experimentation in
forms of intimacy’ (2011: 20). The rise of raunch culture, however, ‘depoliticises
exploitation and inequality’, and ‘the sexualisation of women limits options for
women rather than providing them with sexually liberating choices’ (ibid.).
While others have suggested that, in an age of hypercommercialism, we might
celebrate the range of women’s attitudes to feminism, McRobbie remains fiercely
critical of attempts to pursue a defence of women’s capacities to turn around or
subvert the world of consumer culture in which they were invested. Locating her
attack on feminist cultural studies in this regard, she argues that,

[A] concern to understand dynamics of power and constraint [has given]

way to celebratory connections with the ordinary woman, or indeed girls,
who created their own, now seemingly autonomous, pleasures and rituals of
enjoying femininity from the goods made available by consumer culture
(e.g. television programmes like Sex and the City). If this could be done with
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 103

what capitalism made available, then there seemed to be no real reason to

challenge the principles upon which capitalism was based.
(McRobbie 2009: 2–3)

Stereotype threat (‘I’m not a feminist, but …’ )

Saddest of all is that the girls are just as likely as the boys to roll their eyes. I
have thought long and hard about why this is, and the only answer I can
muster is that the girls need to remain appealing to their male classmates, and
a feminist is, well, just not date-able I guess. She is a threat. A threat to the
status quo, a weirdo, an outsider. She won’t let the boys be boys, or men, or
whatever it is they are trying to be to impress these girls they chase.
(Being Feminist 2012)
[A] mind that is struggling with negative stereotypes and anxious thoughts
is not in a psychologically optimal state for doing taxing intellectual tasks.
(Fine 2010: 34)
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am a feminist; that can come off as a negative
connotation. But I am a strong female.
(Carrie Underwood, quoted in Huffington Post 2013)

Harris notes that there is considerable complexity in what young women say about
feminism, and ‘a focus on young women’s attitudes has overshadowed a more
productive investigation into contemporary young feminist practice, including its
continuities with the past’ (2010: 475). She suggests that a lack of a coherent feminist
agenda or a singular movement has confused young women, and asks that the focus
be less on what women say about being feminists than on what they actually do (ibid.:
480). We need, Harris states, to pay better attention to the complexity of women’s
attitudes towards feminism ‘and the social conditions in which these are forged in
order to identify the range of vibrant feminist practices in which they engage’ (ibid.).
Harris argues that ‘a considerable amount of feminist research’ reveals ‘young
women’s (lack of) identification with the label “feminist”’ (2010: 476). In the
research with young women about feminism that Harris cites, she notes three broad
findings that are worrying: first, that young women today are not inclined to call
themselves feminists; second, that young women believe that, to a large extent, the
women’s movement is a thing of the past; and last, that young women privilege the
narrative of individual choice (ibid.). As she notes, this research has not demonstrated
that young women today do not espouse notions of equality and choice, but that
young women distance themselves from the label of ‘big f ’ feminism (ibid.). Harris
suggests that calling oneself a feminist and supporting ‘feminist goals’ might not go
hand in hand: while young women might appreciate what feminism has thus far
achieved, they tend not to identify themselves as ‘feminist’ (ibid.: 476).
Survey findings from this research support a certain ambivalence around
engagement with ‘big f ’ feminism: 67 per cent of women (of all ages) agreed with
104 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

the statement that ‘feminism is accessible to young women in the 21st century’
(Survey Question 16), while 69 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds (male and female)
agreed; 63 per cent of women agreed that ‘feminism is accessible to women of all
ages in the 21st century’ (Survey Question 18), while 62 per cent of 18- to
24-year-olds (male and female) agreed.

[W]hether or not young women call themselves feminists, they support

feminist goals. In fact, the young women I interviewed were more support-
ive of feminism than had been found in past research, and none expressed
antifeminist sentiments.
(Aronson 2003: 919)

Although there is little evidence to support the (postfeminist) claim that young
women are less likely to support the women’s movement than are older women,
as the survey for this research also noted, what does seem apparent is that young
women have been taught to fear and reject, unsurprisingly, negative representa-
tions of the women’s movement in the popular media, as Hall and Rodriguez
argue (2003: 888–95). Feminism in the 1990s, and beyond, McRobbie suggests,
became associated, especially among young Western women, with a ‘seemingly
tyrannical regime of feminist puritanism’ (2009: 17; see also Figure 4.1). In their
2003 study, Hall and Rodriguez note how the battle for women’s equality is
repeatedly, according to media sources, declared ‘already won’ (ibid.: 884–5). ‘By
uncritically declaring that gender equality exists in the 1990s’, the backlash against
‘old feminism’ that took place in the 1990s ‘cast the women’s movement as irrel-
evant’ (ibid.: 880). Hall and Rodriguez highlight a 1996 study by Bushman and
Lenart, which classified one-third of the sample’s women as postfeminist, because
the women sampled believed that the women’s movement had ‘virtually elimi-
nated discrimination’ (ibid.: 884–5). According to Bushman and Lenart, young
women in the 1990s were ‘redefining feminism’ to privilege self-definition and
choice, such that ‘postfeminist’ women cited ‘individual efforts’ as ‘the key to
women’s advancement’ (ibid.).

I am not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women.

(Katy Perry, quoted in Marie Claire, April 2014)

‘Stereotype threat’ is the ‘“real-time threat of being judged and treated poorly in
settings where a negative stereotype about one’s group applies”’ (Steele, Spencer
and Aronson 2002, quoted in Fine 2010: 30). Stereotype threat induces, according
to Fine, characteristically threatened psychological behaviour: jittery, anxious,
stressed, angry or defensive responses that are characteristic of a ‘mind under
threat’ (ibid.: 34). Whether there exists a threat in being associated with a fusty,
out of date and puritanical ideology (such as feminism) has not been proven, but
the prolific media stereotyping of feminists as man-hating, feminazi whiners would
seem a good incentive for young women to disavow feminism.
FIGURE 4.1 ‘The Big Feminist But’.
Source: O’Leary and Reilly 2012.
106 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

For me, feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It’s very unglamourous.

(Geri Halliwell, quoted in Marie Claire, April 2014)

As Aronson found, young women tend to be depoliticized and individualistic and

many are heavily influenced by the media, which has supported the antifeminist back-
lash (Aronson 2003: 905). Among the postfeminist generation, concepts such as
choice, power and independence have been heavily individualized, and these women
show ambiguity in their responses to feminism (ibid.: 918). ‘No, but…’ feminism
offers a new version of feminism that allows women to resist being labelled or labelling
themselves as feminist, but still endorse feminist objectives of gender equity (Hall and
Rodriguez 2003: 883–4). In this sense, it provides young women with an escape from
the threat of the ‘big f ’ stereotype, enabling them to redefine feminism in their own
ways without fear of public ridicule. On the other hand, the ‘I’m not a feminist,
but …’ phenomenon, while suggesting that ‘a new version of feminism is finding
credence among some women’, encourages women to disidentify as feminist and
disavow feminism itself and may, Hall and Rodriguez suggest, lead to a situation ‘that
could reduce support for the women’s movement in the future’ (ibid.: 898). Privileging
self-definition and choice may also require closing down options for collective struggle
and identification, further depoliticizing the women’s movement. This is particularly
worrying if these same women believe that the women’s movement has already
eliminated discrimination and needs no further support.

Australia and ‘men in blue ties’

If it’s true … that men have more power generally speaking than women, is
that a bad thing?
(Tony Abbott, then-Leader of the Opposition, 1998)

Australia, my home, and (possibly) the world’s most sexist ‘egalitarian’ country, is
an interesting example of the antagonisms that characterize the contemporary
feminist landscape and the popular culture representations that define, in multiple
ways, the limits of feminist ambitions in Western societies.
On 11 June 2013, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a speech at
the launch of her ‘Women for Gillard’ campaign in Sydney. She warned that the 2013
election would be a decision that would determine whether ‘we will banish women’s
voices from our political life’ (Gillard, quoted in AustralianPolitics.com 2013):

I invite you to imagine it. A prime minister – a man in a blue tie – who goes
on holidays to be replaced by a man in a blue tie. A treasurer, who delivers a
budget wearing a blue tie, to be supported by a finance minister – another
man in a blue tie. Women once again banished from the centre of Australia’s
political life. […] [W]e know nothing worth fighting for ever came easy.
Look at the suffragettes and what they faced. Look at the garment workers
who went on strike, the feminists of the 1970s. Women’s equality has always
been hard-fought for, and we’re entering a hard fight again.
(Gillard 2013)
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 107

Very few females in Australian politics have been able to use the ‘f ’ word and
maintain their credibility, or their careers. Before her famous ‘misogyny’ speech
of 10 October 2012, Gillard’s refusal to push an explicitly feminist agenda was
well-commented upon. While feminist justice projects have, arguably, gained
considerable traction in the USA, Gillard’s references to feminism have been a
risky strategy in an Australian political environment entirely dominated by White
Men With Grudges. In July 2013 Gillard was unceremoniously deposed as Leader
of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and therefore as Prime Minister (many would
suggest by the ‘faceless men’ who have long pulled the strings in the ALP).

Before last week [and Julia Gillard’s famous ‘misogyny’ speech] I bet there
were millions of Australians who’d never even heard the word misogyny, let
alone knew what it meant, but it was suddenly on the front page of news-
papers and being mispronounced by TV hosts whose usual high-water mark
is mastering the ‘gangnam style’ dance.
(De Brito 2012a)

As De Brito notes, although in Australia attitudes ‘about women, race, religion,

violence, family, fatherhood and homosexuality’ have shifted and continue to
shift, traditional male roles have often been characterized by a ‘spine of cruelty and
dispassion’ (De Brito 2012b). Within such an environment Julia Gillard’s attack on
sexism was risky but powerful, making international headlines as ‘the first time an
Australian leader’, and ‘possibly any world leader’, had delivered ‘such a forthright
attack on misogyny in public life’ (Rourke 2012):

Gillard cited Abbott’s past description of abortion as ‘the easy way out’; his
characterisation of Australian women as housewives who did the ironing; and
his suggestion that men were better adapted than women to exercise author-
ity and issue commands. […] ‘It’s incredibly significant to have a prime
minister powerfully state that she has experienced sexism. […] That the sex-
ism which is so deeply embedded in the Australian body politic was named
may give some women licence to express and seek to counter the sexism
they have experienced in their working lives’.
(Rourke 2012, citing Professor Barbara Pini, Griffith University in
Queensland)

In Australia, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission, one in five

Australian women has experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. In this
research, the statistics proved even more disconcerting, with an enormous 80 per
cent of the survey respondents who answered the question, ‘I am a woman who
has experienced sexism’ (Survey Question 25) agreeing that they had, indeed,
experienced sexism.3 My own personal sentiments and experiences on this topic
echo the following respondent, who notes that ‘[Sexism has involved for me] too
many instances to discuss actually. Overall, [it has left me with] a great sense of
powerlessness and lack of self worth’ (Australian female, age 45–54).
108 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

Women in Australia constitute less than one-third (30.1 per cent) of all parlia-
mentarians in Australia’s parliaments (Parliament of Australia 2012). Eight per cent
of board members in Australia’s top 200 listed companies are female, although
more than half of those companies have no female directors at all (in Britain three-
quarters of the FTSE 350 companies have at least one female board director; in
the USA in 2010, women held 16 per cent of board seats at Fortune 500 compa-
nies and more than 50 per cent of companies had at least two women board
directors) (Catalyst 2010). The gender gap in wages in Australia has changed little
in two decades (remaining steady at between 16 and 17 per cent). A recent study
by Monash University in Melbourne noted that 57 per cent of women who
worked in the media had experienced sexual harassment. Women, it argued, were
badly under-represented in the top levels of media management, holding 10 per cent
of positions, compared with an international average of 27 per cent. ‘The report’s
author’, Rourke notes, suggests that her findings ‘might go some way to explain-
ing why much of Australia’s mainstream media (much against the tone of social
media commentary) concluded that Gillard’s speech was a political disaster’ (2012).
As Lewis and Woods articulate (see Table 4.1), women of all age groups in
Australia believe that sexism has worsened.

For all the progress of the last 20 years – vastly improved educational out-
comes for girls, increased numbers of female university graduates, more
women in senior corporate and political positions, the freedom to delay
getting married and having children – Gillard’s speech tapped into a despair
that women are still judged by their looks, weight, age, clothes, sexual
behaviour, and relationships with men.
(Lewis and Woods 2012)

Prior to his success at the 2013 election, Tony Abbott, Charlesworth argues,
had established ‘a very combative atmosphere’ in which he ‘explicitly used
sexist and misogynist language’ towards Julia Gillard (cited in Rourke 2012).
Invoking ‘a deep suspicion of successful women, which resides in Australian

TABLE 4.1 Do you think women face more or less pressure over their behaviour and
appearance than they did 20 years ago?

Women Total Aged Aged Aged Aged Aged Aged

women 18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65+

Total more 58 68 58 50 59 62 58
Total less 25 15 28 29 23 24 22
About the same 14 8 10 16 16 13 20
Don’t know 3 9 5 5 1 2 –

Source: Lewis and Woods (2012). Responses were gathered in October 2012 to questions in a weekly
‘Essential Report’, produced by Essential Media Communications.
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 109

culture generally’, Abbott attempted to cast Gillard as ‘untrustworthy’, attack-

ing her on policy but also repeatedly focusing on her gender (ibid.). Abbott’s
misogyny (and the media’s reproduction of this misogyny) means that ‘women
in the workforce are constantly having to fight the sense that they are not
legitimate’ (Charlesworth, cited in ibid.).4

To have our first female Prime Minister share her deep offense at being
described as a man’s bitch provided a powerful point of connection for
women, many of whom may now have access to the trappings of equality
yet still feel trapped by the straightjacket of society’s judgement.
(Lewis and Woods 2012)

As many scholars and activists have noted, Australian feminism has been respon-
sible for one of the earliest achievements of women’s suffrage.5 It has significantly
undermined legal and social barriers and has sought to eliminate discriminatory
practices and discrimination against women. Women from non-English speaking
backgrounds in Australia, however, ‘remain one of the most marginalised
groups’ (Seibert and Roslaniec 1998), suffering higher levels of unemployment
than any other group except for Aborigines and people with disabilities (the
levels of discrimination these two groups experience puts every so-called
‘advanced’ liberal democracy to shame). They ‘have poorer mental health rela-
tive to other women in Australia’, ‘they often suffer alienation and isolation’ and
they remain ‘largely unrepresented in government bodies and in other sectors of
the public sphere’ (ibid.). Seibert and Rosianec attribute this state of affairs, in
part, to certain feminist failures:

[F]eminism, despite its claims, never fought for the rights of all women. The
feminist movement has been largely a middle class pursuit, and while women
all over the world have been fighting for rights, somehow western middle class
Anglo-Saxon feminism gained supremacy over other women’s movements.
(Seibert and Roslaniec 1998)

The sexualization of popular culture and the

recentralization of feminist concerns
In her 2011 study of why young British women sought involvement in feminist
activism, Mackay notes that the ‘sexual objectification of women in popular cul-
ture’ triggered activism and feminist consciousness ‘even above experiences of
male violence, which the majority had been affected by’ (Mackay 2011: 173).
Many of these young women, Mackay suggests, understood male violence to
include pornography and prostitution, in a connection with second wave, radical,
feminisms that the media have long proclaimed dead and buried:
110 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

[T]he women’s liberation movement appeals to these young women today

for many of the same reasons it appealed to their predecessors forty years ago.
Experiences of sexism in mixed social movements, the impact of male vio-
lence and a resentment of the demeaning portrayal of their sex in the media
and wider society, all gradually turned to an anger and political consciousness
which led them to feminism as a form of resistance and protest.
(Mackay 2011: 173)

The sexualization of popular culture remains a provocative and controversial

topic: 97 per cent of survey respondents in this research agreed (with most agree-
ing strongly) that ‘contemporary popular culture is heavily sexualised’ (Survey
Question 42). Popular culture, and its many and varied artefacts, are at the fore-
front both of women’s experiences of sexism and their resistance of these. The
impossibility of extrapolating subjugation and resistance in understanding the
impact and reproduction of feminist ethics in contemporary societies is striking
and makes for confusing times. At the same time, magazines, advertisers, studios,
networks and media producers everywhere continue, apparently, to labour under
the assumption that sexism is commercially viable. The imperative to reproduce
impossible standards, unrealistic behaviours and derogatory stereotypes for and of
female bodies alongside the apparent ‘celebration’ of female voices across maga-
zines, music, television and cinema makes, I believe, popular culture the most
important arena in which we can examine properly the complexities of modern
feminisms, their impact and their significance. As vigorous and dynamic as feminist
debate is, and, however ‘smart’ and informed our discussions, the power of cor-
porate-sponsored sexism and misogyny remains pervasive and the constant
sexualization of popular culture and advertising products continues.

Blurred lines
I have a mom who’s a feminist, she’s an English professor, an intellectual.
She really gave me the equipment to understand that you can celebrate
yourself without putting yourself down or needing to apologize for the
way you look.
(Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, who appears semi-naked for most
of the video to the song ‘Blurred Lines’, responding to criticisms that
the song promotes ‘rape culture’, quoted in Ayers 2013)

The release of Robin Thicke’s pop song ‘Blurred Lines’ (which was nominated
for a Grammy in 2014) in March 2013 sparked some high profile debates, even
‘smart debates’ (Ayers 2013), in the popular media and on social networking sites
around suggestions that the video was sexist and promoted ‘rape culture’. The
music video, directed by Diane Martel and depicting Thicke and his collaborators,
T.I. and Pharrell Williams, cavorting with models in various states of undress, was
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 111

released in two versions, the first depicting the models topless, the second showing
them covered. The topless version of the video was removed from YouTube
on 30 March 2013 for violating the site’s terms of service regarding nudity, but
was later restored.

I don’t [think the ‘Blurred Lines’ video clip is sexist]. I really appreciate the
people who watch out for that stuff, and I’m sensitive to those sorts of things.
On the surface level, the naked women dancing, I understand that can be
perceived that way. But we’re directed to have a sort of confidence, a sarcas-
tic attitude about the whole situation. That eye contact and that attitude
really puts us in a power situation. The director, Diane Martel, is a woman,
and so is the DP. We really worked on that and tried to convey that in the
video. The way we are annoying them, being playful and having a good time
with our body – it’s something very important for young women today to
have that confidence. I think it’s actually celebrating women and their bodies.
(Emily Ratajkowski, in Ayers 2013)

In her Daily Beast column, Romano criticizes the video’s creators for engineering
‘a fake controversy by making an unrated version’ of the video ‘featuring strutting,
mostly naked supermodels’ (2013). She notes that:

The nudity might be fine if the song was called, ‘Let’s All Have Some Fun,’
but it’s called ‘Blurred Lines’, and the subject itself is enough to make some
female music fans uncomfortable. The song is about how a girl really wants
crazy wild sex but doesn’t say it – positing that age-old problem where men
think no means yes into a catchy, hummable song.
(Romano 2013)

The video’s director, Diane Martel, has defended the ‘Blurred Lines’ video project
as ‘more pro-woman than misogynist’ (Ayers 2013). The suggestion, however,
that the song, together with the music video, trivialize sexual consent (and thus
can be argued to promote rape culture) is an important one. As Lisa Huyne
describes, the phrase ‘I know you want it’ hardly encompasses ‘the notion of
consent in sexual activity’ (quoted in Romano 2013).
In response to criticism, the song’s principal performer, Robin Thicke, report-
edly told music channel VH1 that ‘for me, nudity is the least offensive thing in the
whole world. Guns, violence, war? That’s offensive’ (quoted in Romano 2013).
The video’s lead female, Emily Ratajkowski, in an interview with Esquire maga-
zine in July 2013, defended the video against criticisms of sexism. She was more
equivocal on the subject of the representation of women’s bodies across popular
media sources, arguing that she ‘loved’ this kind of conversation about sexism,
finding it ‘so important now’. ‘We see’, she argues, ‘so many images of nude
women because of the internet. I think it’s very important to make that distinction
112 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

[between ‘super-gangster’ sexism and celebrating women’s bodies]. I think the

video is a great way to do that’ (quoted in Ayers 2013).
The survey conducted for this research produced mixed results in terms of
responses to questions related to the objectification of women and the sexu-
alization of popular culture. The strongest response received was to the
statement that ‘contemporary popular culture is heavily sexualised’ (Survey
Question 42), where an overwhelming 97 per cent agreed and none disagreed
(3 per cent of respondents were ‘neutral’ in their response here). The state-
ment that ‘the objectification of women is unacceptable in the 21st century’
(Survey Question 40) received a more mixed response, with 76 per cent of
respondents agreeing, but 12 per cent actively disagreeing (only 14 per cent of
those who agreed were male); 72 per cent of respondents agreed that they felt
‘uncomfortable’ seeing sex ‘being used to sell products that are not related to
sex’ (Survey Question 43); and only 68 per cent of respondents agreed that the
‘sexualisation of commercial products that are not related to sex is unacceptable’
(Survey Question 44), with 14 per cent of respondents actively disagreeing
with this statement.
A concern, then, that popular culture is sexualized is not accurately mirrored
in this research in respondents’ concerns for commercial culture. Expectations that
commercial culture is more likely to be sexualized may be more prevalent here.
How intimately Westerners have absorbed the idea that ‘sex sells’ is unclear, but
they are certainly rarely surprised by the scope of advertisements that, in some
way, play on a clichéd, provocative, heterosexist and male-directed picture of
female sexuality. Understandings of and relationships to sexual objectification are,
today, intricately entwined with commercial objectification: the term ‘empower-
ment’ itself maintains an association with economic independence that has made
it easily malleable to the purposes of corporate exploitation. It clearly matters to
survey respondents in this research how and where sex and sexuality are used in
processes of production, representation and consumption. What is less clear is how
we might articulate our own identities within circuits of popular culture that
reproduce domination, subordination and resistance in unclear ways. It remains
difficult for many, and understandably so, to articulate the desirability of women
allowing themselves, choosing even, to be objectified, or submitting to objectifica-
tion, as an expression of their empowerment, even power over men, even if their
freedom also encompasses their sexual freedom.

Embracing the inner slut, and the effects of the sexualization

of popular culture
The so-called ‘Feminist Sex Wars’ of the 1980s oversaw, in part, a battle by
sex-positive feminists to overcome increasingly radical, no-men-allowed, all-sex-
is-rape narratives to empower and enable women to embrace and represent their
sexuality. This was a response to the kinds of structuralist, male-domination-
based theorizing that offered women little to no meaningful agency, since male
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 113

domination structured (in a power-over sense) not only sexuality, but, as Halley
articulates, ‘our very terms for apprehending social life, for having desires, for
experiencing ourselves as embodied’ (2006: 58). This feminism had described a
system so heavily loaded, ‘so permeated by male domination’, that all its elements
(from law, to education to the very fundamentals of social existence) could never
be used against it (ibid.).
By the 1990s, so keenly had commercial machinery embraced women express-
ing their sexuality, that the pendulum had swung firmly in the favour of a
knowing self-objectification. In this new, ‘bimbo’ feminism, accepting, and
expressing, one’s inner ‘slut’ (in a commodified context) became a goal, not a
hindrance, and criticizing the sexualization of an environment merely reinforced
the moral taboos that had maintained women, and their sexuality, in a position of
oppression (see Figure 4.1).

Now we have bimbo feminism, giving intellectual pretensions to a world

where the highest ideal is to acknowledge your inner slut. I am woman, see
me strip. Instead of peaceful havens of girl things and boy things, we have
a society where women of all ages are striving to become self-actualized
sex kittens.
(Dowd 1997)

To critique the sexualization of popular culture within an environment of aspirational

exploitation appeared puritanical and the suggestion that we should each hide our
sexual expressiveness, our desires, our needs and urges clearly repressive. Sexual
freedom became the ability to laugh (apparently ironically) at sexually provocative,
objectifying and unedifying imagery and representational practices. The increasing
sexualization of popular culture was defended as an opportunity for women’s self-
expression and freedom of speech, which also entitled magazines to adorn themselves
with half-naked, white and superhumanly lean women. Popular media conspired,
rather successfully, to reproduce circuits of commercial production, representation
and consumption wherein those who complain about the needless sexualization of
media products are easily cast as old-fashioned (and probably sex-starved) puritans
intent on censoring imagination and crushing creativity. Such tropes will be explored
in subsequent sections examining the gendered narratives of popular culture that
reproduce feminism and antifeminism.
Serious concerns for the effects of the sexualization of popular culture and
commercial artefacts have, however, emerged in recent years. Particularly in the
guise of child protection, the fight against sexual objectification has become some-
thing of a force to be reckoned with, emboldened by successful and widespread
social media campaigning and support.
A 2012 proposal from the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s
Rights and Gender Equality (CWRGE) for a ‘Motion for a European Parliament
Resolution on the Sexualisation of Girls’ (2012/2047(INI) declares sexualization
to consist of:
114 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

[A]n instrumental approach to a person by perceiving that person as an

object for sexual use disregarding the person’s dignity and personality traits,
with the person’s worth being measured in terms of the level of sexual
attractiveness; sexualisation also involves the imposition of the sexuality of
adult persons on girls, who are emotionally, psychologically and physically
unprepared for this at their particular stage of development; sexualisation not
being the normal, healthy, biological development of the sexuality of a
person, conditioned by the individual process of development and taking
place at the appropriate time for each particular individual.
(Skrzydlewska 2012: 4–5)

The report goes on to state that the manifold consequences of the sexualization
of girls (focusing on girls from ages six to thirteen years) include their inhibited
‘psychophysical development’, reduced self-esteem, ‘psychologically based
eating disorders’, ‘self-objectification’, the restriction of ‘choice of professional
aspirations’ and the increased ‘probability of aggressive behaviour towards
[other] girls’ (ibid.: 4).

[B]esides the eroticised imagery of women used in advertising, an increase

in the number of sexually charged images of children in that industry has
been noted. […] [T]he transformation of teenage stars into sex symbols in
order to increase their chance of success in show business leads to establish-
ing a conviction among girls that being sexually attractive causes others to
perceive such a person as being more mature. […] [D]egrading the value of
women and presenting their image in a manner derogatory to their dignity,
being a manifestation of sexualisation, contributes to an increase in violence
against women, and to the intensification of sexist attitudes and outlooks,
which in the long term lead to discrimination against women as employees,
sexual harassment and to undervaluing their work and achievements.
(Skrzydlewska 2012: 4)

The European Parliament report is focused exclusively on girls and does not state
what the effects of sexualization on boys might be. Other research has, however,
suggested that if it is true ‘that our girls are being sexualized, then it is also true of
our boys’ and that we have ‘created a society in which men and boys believe it is
acceptable and normal to exert violence against women’.

‘A five-year-old boy can buy a lad mag and learn that women are only sex
objects and he has entitlement to their bodies. If he logs on to Zoo maga-
zine’s website, he can watch videos of girls stripping and lap-dancing, one
set up as if the woman is being stalked and secretly filmed in her bedroom
while she strips, another of a “ridiculously hot” girl being so frightened,
she is screaming and crying uncontrollably in a ball. This is not just about
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 115

sexualisation. Sexual harassment is being eroticised.’ Boys are being violated

and warped as they grow into men, and leaving the problem and the con-
sequences of the problem in their hands is unfair, and unrealistic. We are
not doing women any favours by ignoring this issue as it relates to boys.
‘Boys who are not enthusiastic about (sexualised culture), or speak out
against it, run the risk of being ignored or ridiculed, of being labeled “gay”,
“unmanly” or not liking sex. Boys and young men are under pressure to
act out a model of masculinity in which power and control over women,
and men, is normal. In which violence is normal.’
(Salvation Army n.d., citing Bell 2007)

As the Geek Feminism Wiki articulates, the sexualization of an environment

(media or otherwise) is not just of concern for its impact on children. Women
today ‘are stigmatised as well as celebrated for being too sexual’, which ‘traps
women into a double-bind when responding to sexualized environments,
because even by getting the joke they may reveal themselves as too sexual’
(2014). Across ‘geek settings’ (usually computer-based), geek feminists criticize
sexualized environments for many reasons. As a way for heterosexual men ‘to
bond over their common attraction to women’, sexualized environments are
‘othering for anyone who is not a heterosexual man, including, obviously,
women’, which also contributes to women’s ‘invisibility’ (ibid.). Within a geek
environment, this ‘sensation of exclusion is very visceral when in a small
minority, as women can be in geek settings’ (ibid.). A ‘long tradition of sexual
images, suggestions and approaches’ have been used ‘to shame, scare, harrass or
brutalise women’ (ibid.). These are common enough for ‘most women’ to have
had personal experience of them and ‘unknown men seeking to make a situation
sexual’ can make women ‘feel mentally uncomfortable at best and physically
intimidated often’ (ibid.). Body image concerns are played on when ‘sexy
imagery’ manipulates ‘mainstream attraction stereotypes’ and, for geek feminists,
the ‘feminist idea of sexual freedom’, where ‘all parties freely consent to sexual
situations’ means that an ethics of consent should be implicit when ‘talking
about sex or displaying images of it’, regardless of whether legal consent is
required (ibid.).
Geek feminists articulate other concerns that speak directly to, and might
trouble, the supporters of sexualized environments across popular culture. Sites
and arenas that seek to welcome members of cultures ‘with different standards
of expressing sexuality in public’ may find a sexualized environment ‘offputting’
to people of various backgrounds (GeekFeminismWiki). Environments ‘where
participants are expected to bond over sexual ideas’ are a concern for the pres-
ence of children and families (ibid.). Sexualized environments or sexualized
behaviour in the workplace ‘are commonly considered unprofessional’ and
sexualized environments ‘may damage the reputation’ and poison the environ-
ment of professional geek events, such as technical conferences (which are, geek
116 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’

feminists argue, ‘inappropriately sexualised’ through the presence of, for exam-
ple, ‘booth babes’ or sexualized presentations) (ibid.). Of all geek environments,
gaming is perhaps the most heavily sexualized, with ‘advertisements, avatars, and
communications between gamers’ often highly sexualized (ibid.). The overlap-
ping work and play spaces of geek technical and task-oriented communities can
also reproduce and exacerbate sexual innuendo and intimidation and here the
sexualization of an environment is a key impactor on women’s ability to par-
ticipate (ibid.) (see Figure 4.2).

FIGURE 4.2 Mouse pad with wrist support.

Source: guNjap 2010.

Notes
1 Mass-scale protests gripped India following the horrific gang rape and murder of a
23-year-old female medical student on a Delhi bus on 16 December 2012 (her male
companion was also seriously injured). Viji Sundaram asks, in her piece on the protests,
whether the widespread outrage throughout the country at the attack is a sign that India
is ‘on the verge of a Feminist Spring’ (Sundaram 2012). India’s parliament has since passed
‘sweeping’ new laws to protect women against sexual violence, making stalking, voyeurism
and sexual harassment a crime, providing for the death penalty for repeat offenders or for
rape attacks that lead to the victim’s death and making it a crime for police officers to
refuse to open cases when they receive complaints of sexual attacks. India’s poor record of
law enforcement remains a concern for feminist groups, including an insensitive police
force and overburdened judiciary (Nessman 2013).
2 Disparity in assessment methods makes comparisons across studies of feminist tendencies
difficult.
 Feminism(s), feminists and the (enduring) ‘popularity gap’ 117

3 Of the men who answered ‘I am a man who has experienced sexism’, 50 per cent agreed
that they have experienced sexism.
4 ‘As Gillard was neither married nor a mother (a conservative MP once described her as
being “deliberately barren”), she challenged the norm of what was accepted as appropriate
femininity in Australian society’ (Charlesworth, in Rourke 2012).
5 New Zealand was the first country to grant women the vote at a national level, while
Finland, as well as some American states, gave women voting rights at a state level before
Australian women obtained that right across the nation. Aboriginal women were not
able to vote in Australia until 1967 (Seibert and Roslaniec 1998).
This page intentionally left blank
5
IN POPULAR FORM
(FEMINISM AND ANTIFEMINISM
IN POPULAR CULTURE)

Asking what popular culture can tell us about feminism, rather than what feminism,
or the feminist, can tell us about popular culture (Hollows and Moseley 2006: 1)
allows for an understanding of the creation of feminism within popular culture,
more than simply popular culture’s reflection of existing feminist concerns.
Engaging with how feminism is formed within the popular is important, not least
because it tells us something about both the unevenness of feminist narratives and
the complexities of popular representations. While it would be (relatively) easy to
construct a narrative that charts a linear catalogue of feminism’s incorporation into
the mainstream, from ‘monstrous outsiders’ of the 1960s and 1970s to the incorpo-
rated Ms of the 1990s, ‘such a linear account of the move towards reconciliation
leaves little room for the uneven and multiple significations of media imaging of
feminism during this time’ (Hinds and Stacey 2001: 155).
This research examines feminism, in popular culture form, in order to under-
stand how representative practices have come to constitute and shape feminism,
our responses to feminism and feminism’s popular success. The following pages
thus cover what I consider to be some of the key gender tropes in popular culture.
These tropes provide the parameters around how popular culture engages with
feminism and feminism’s concerns. Gendered popular culture tropes represent, I
argue, our cultural tool kits for appropriating feminism (that is, the cultural mech-
anisms by which feminism is filtered through our everyday lives).
The following pages examine feminism as it is produced, represented and con-
sumed in popular form, including how and where it is appropriated and/or practised
across various popular culture sites. Popular culture deploys and disparages feminism
in many and various ways. The embodiments of feminism that we encounter across
popular culture sites are so important because of their relationship with how they
make it possible, and acceptable, to self-articulate as feminist and articulate a feminist
politics. The embodiments of antifeminism are equally important for the many
120 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

channels they offer through which to encourage derogatory, violent and demeaning
narratives of engagement and to dismiss feminism and feminist gains.

For me, a definable thread runs through the language of culture, politics and
the mass media that is quite simply anti-feminist and anti-equality. Anti-
feminist arguments, contrary to popular belief, do not just affect self-defined
feminists; they act as a powerful rejection of all women’s autonomy.
(Whelehan 2000: 3–4, emphasis in the original)

This chapter examines four key elements of popular culture and gender by looking
at examples of overt antifeminism, tacit antifeminism, overt feminism and tacit feminism.
These elements are filtered through multiple popular culture channels, and the
following considers a selection of sources from film, television, news media, music,
magazines, comics, video games, the internet and blogosphere and social media.
Some elements (overt feminism) are widespread politically and across social media
but remain marginal across popular culture sources, others (overt and tacit
antifeminism) are widely visible across mainstream media, film and television
programming but more likely to be criticized in social media and the blogosphere.
Most elements, at various times and according to media type, vary in their visibility
in mainstream popular culture.

Overt antifeminism (1): Why the development of decent

female movie characters is not encouraged
The real reason, I was informed, to put women in a script was to reveal things
about the men. Any other purpose I assigned to the women was secondary at
best, but I could do what I wanted there as long as the women’s purposes
never threatened to distract the audience from the purposes of the men.
(Kesler 2008a)
[Ben Stiller] needs all [his] versatility for Walter Mitty, a huge risk for studio
and star, because it’s a big-budget, special effects production that has to appeal
to mainstream Hollywood audiences (teenage boys) with themes that are
more suited to mature and female audiences.
(Tulloch 2013)
[W]hile I am personally drawn to the presence of a female action hero, it is
currently a tough sell with the less than stellar way Sucker Punch was
received. Ultimately, while I don’t think [Legend of the Red Reaper] is for
Legendary, I think the property has potential.
(E-mail sent by a Legendary Pictures representative to Tara Cardinal,
script writer of Legend of the Red Reaper, quoted in Pahle 2013)

Kesler, in her account of her time at film school, argues that film and TV production
processes have long assumed, and continue to assume, that Hollywood’s target
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 121

audience is composed solely of white, straight, insecure boys (2008a). This means,
in the eyes of production houses and studio executives, that the lead character
must be a white, straight male. Studios have decided that audiences pay more to
see men in lead roles, but because studios believe that the male lead is more prof-
itable, they create more films with male leads and films with female leads become
anomalies. Actresses who find themselves in the unfortunate position of leading a
big budget failure find themselves on Hollywood’s discard pile much sooner than
their male peers in similar positions. As Holmes surmises,

In many, many parts of the [USA] right now, if you want to go to see a movie
in the theater and see a current movie about a woman – any story about any
woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon – you can’t.You cannot. There
are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take
your daughter to one. […] Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space,
dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny,
dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes
getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes
glowering at each other. [...] They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up
Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-
thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by ‘we’, I do not just
mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right
to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah.You can apparently make
an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says ‘win
some, lose some’ and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like
every ‘surprise success’ about women is an anomaly and every failure is an
abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.
(Holmes 2013)

Such rationalizations only further, of course, legitimize, the only-male-leads-are-

generally-successful logic the studios themselves invented. The vicious cycle
mentality is clear. The film industry, Kesler argues, ‘has set women up to fail by
giving them mostly crap shows and films to lead on those rare occasions they get
lead roles, and then rationalizing successful examples of women leads into failures
of epic proportions’ (2008a).
Although Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ demonstrated how profitable ‘leading
ladies’ could be, the modern-day Hollywood studio has learned to rationalize male
leads in supposedly economic terms but for reasons that are, it can be argued,
purely sexist. Studios and networks have established a system ‘based exclusively on
promoting male leads’, and despite, as Kesler notes, Business Week and the Wall
Street Journal having reported consistently ‘for a decade that women are a far more
profitable audience’ (2008a). One of the main reasons ‘why 99 per cent of female
characters’, and female actresses, are sacrificed ‘is to prop up the men’ (ibid.).
Kesler was told that there were a high number of filmmakers who wanted to
see the changes that she hoped for, she just needed to do ‘what it took to get into
122 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

the industry and accrue some power’ and she then could start ‘pushing the enve-
lope’ to see if ‘maybe, just maybe, change would finally happen’ (2008b). On
writing scripts with multiple women, with names, talking to each other, about
subjects other than men, Kesler found, however, the industry less encouraging. An
industry professional finally imparted ‘one blessedly telling explanation’.

‘The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about

whatever it is women talk about’. ‘Not even if it advances the story?’ I asked.
That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from
watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another
chunk of the story and keep it moving. He just looked embarrassed and said,
‘I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it’.
(Kesler 2008b emphasis in the original)

Blaming the audience is an obvious excuse, but the belief in Hollywood that ‘if
two women came on screen and started talking, the target male audience’s
brain would glaze over and assume the women were talking about nail polish
or shoes or something that didn’t pertain to the story’ remains prolific (Kesler
2008b). There are, of course, still men in this world who would glaze over
when women talk, but, shockingly, there are also men who love romance
movies and women who prefer action/adventure, thriller and sci-fi genres to
romantic comedies.

Much to the frustration of those who campaign for greater visibility of

women on screen, every successful venture from Thelma and Louise (1991) to
Bridesmaids (2011) is hailed as marking a turning point. A turning point that
never eventuates. ‘Every time there’s a movie starring women, the media is
very excited to say, “Well, this changes everything”’, Geena Davies told
media organisation NPR earlier this year. ‘That’s what happened with
Thelma and Louise … and nothing changed’.
(Le Marquand, citing Geena Davies, 2013)

It is unclear exactly why Hollywood assumes that its target audience is teenage
boys. Lyttelton argues that some evidence has backed the assumption that 13- to
24-year-old males are the biggest money-spinners, ‘with superheroes and effects-
driven tentpoles being consistently the biggest moneymakers’ over the last 35 years
(2012). Yet history’s biggest grossing films, Gone with the Wind and Titanic, obviously
fail to fit this mould, and 40 per cent of The Avengers opening weekend audience
was female. In 2010, women bought 50 per cent of movie theatre tickets, which is
slightly less than they did in 2009, when they bought 55 per cent of movie theatre
tickets (Silverstein 2011).
Observers have suggested that Hollywood perhaps courts teenage boys for their
association with ‘fandom’. It has only recently ‘“surprised a lot of people” that girls
are fans too’ ( Jeff Katz, former Fox movie executive, cited in Rogers 2009). Only
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 123

boys seem to be associated with ‘geek’ and fan culture in the minds of Hollywood
executives and the success of ‘geek-appealing’ franchises such as X-Men, The Lord
of the Rings and Transformers has sedimented Hollywood’s view of its ‘core’ audience
for blockbusters as nerdy 13- to 24-year-old males; ‘not just teen boys, but teen
boys at their pimpliest, stutteringest and downright geekiest’ (Rogers, citing the
Washington Post, 2009). ‘Characters and a sweeping plot’, more heavily associated
with ‘female-friendly’ movie-making, are ‘something that Hollywood has been
turning away from, instead focusing on effects and production and big named stars’
(Rogers 2009). As statistical reporting continues to suggest that boys are saving
their movie-going pennies for games and DVDs, heading only to theatres for
specific genre films and not generic action movies, Hollywood is seeing the profit
generated by the Twilight franchise and acknowledging that women may be willing
to spend more money than boys ‘if the film is done with the right mix of romance
and drama and suspense’ (Lori Joffs, co-owner of ‘The Twilight Lexicon’ website,
quoted in Rogers 2009).
Lyttelton argues that, by July 2012, only three of that year’s top fifteen grossing
(non-R rated) films thus far (The Avengers, Men in Black 3 and Wrath of the Titans)
were targeted directly to the teenage boy demographic (2012). MIB3 was an
underperforming disappointment and Titans made half its predecessor’s profit.
‘The way-above-expectations’ opening of Magic Mike ‘is only the latest in a series
of examples of female audiences’, particularly older female audiences, arguably
being ‘more reliable than young men in terms of actually turning out at the box
office’ (ibid.). In 2011, two of the three original films in the US domestic box
office top twenty (The Help and Bridesmaids, each of which grossed over $170 million)
were aimed at women (2012). Brave, Snow White and the Huntsman, Prometheus
and The Hunger Games, four of 2012 biggest action-adventure films, featured
‘strong, impressive female leads’ (ibid.). Each of these films also passes the Bechdel
Test. As Lyttelton notes, it would be nice, of course, ‘if a single one of the female-
driven hits was actually directed by a woman’ (Brave lost its co-helm Brenda
Chapman half way through the shoot after she was fired) (ibid.).
The reverse side of Hollywood taking greater notice of female-driven profits
is, however, a sense that Hollywood may seek to cut corners with film-making
targeted at girls and women, turning a bigger profit by producing less high-quality
films for female fans (something that the B-grade effects in the Twilight movies
may attest to).

The trend that I see coming is studios spending as little on ‘female’ movies as
possible to take advantage of the huge profit. I guess it’s within Hollywood’s
right to do so, but I think it reveals a condescending attitude towards female
viewers. […] Meanwhile Hollywood is tripping over itself at Comic-Con to
make sure the tiniest details meet male-fan approval. ‘Is this Iron-Man suit
okay? You like?? Please don’t trash us online!!’ So Iron Man’s suit is going to
look amazing, but I don’t think the studio behind Twilight is working as hard
to make the werewolves look cool in New Moon. And I think it’s because they
124 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

believe girls only care about how Taylor Lautner looks without his shirt on.
Decent CGI is ‘guy stuff.’ Maybe I’m wrong though. I hope I am. We’ll see.
(Actor Mark McMillian, quoted in Rogers 2009)

In 2012, women accounted for a paltry 28 per cent of the characters in the year’s top-
earning films, although women also accounted for 51 per cent of the year’s
movie-going audience (Le Marquand 2013). A 2012 report by the British Film
Institute showed that, while independent film fares better in employing female
talent, women’s numbers continue to remain low (with 11 per cent of independent
films released in the UK between 2010 and 2012 directed by women, and
16 per cent written by women) (ibid.). As Prof. Stacy Smith notes, given that
‘females go the movies as much as males’, any ‘lack of change’ in the representa-
tion of women in film ‘is likely due to entrenched ways of thinking and doing
business’ (cited in ibid.).

[A]ccording to a study by the Annenberg School for Communication and

Journalism, women made up only 29.9 per cent of the speaking roles in
2007’s top movies. In the same year, Warner Bros CEO Jeff Robinov
reportedly said that the studio would not develop any more movies with
female leads after the latest Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman vehicles
underperformed.1 [This] doesn’t make sense – when John Carter and
Battleship flopped, they didn’t stop making movies with men; they stopped
making movies with Taylor Kitsch.
(Sargent 2012)

Films, TV shows, books, and so on, for, by or about women have, however, all
produced substantial profit. So, the question remains, why discriminate if it does
not actually generate profit? One answer lies in audience/market perception, or,
more importantly, what this is believed to be (rightly or wrongly). Sigourney
Weaver’s famously accidental casting as Ripley, for example, in the Alien tetralogy
betrays a wider perception that one might expect the pilots of spacecraft to be
male. The ‘shock value’ of Ripley being female rather than male, and not only
male but tough and resourceful, is perhaps more symbolic of sexist assumptions
than any sign of Hollywood getting radical. The more recent, and much praised,
Gravity (directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Sandra Bullock) has also been
criticized for offering yet another tired representation of femininity that ‘reduces
the feminine to mere birth imagery and motherly yearning’ (GenderBender 2013).
As Sargent notes, even movies with strong female characters often do not pass the
Bechdel Test2 (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Tomb
Raider, Underworld, even movies aimed mostly at women, such as When Harry Met
Sally, (500) Days of Summer and Kate and Leopold) (2012). Zero Dark Thirty is one
of very few ‘action movie’ exceptions in recent years to carry a female lead, pass
the Bechdel Test and be directed by a woman (it was also widely snubbed at the
2013 Oscars for being too ambiguous a recounting of the CIA’s use of torture,
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 125

with the sugar-coated, much less demanding, and male-led, Argo taking the best
picture prize).
Kesler argues that ego and laziness have created the conditions for Hollywood
to ignore the fact that movies for, by or about women are profitable (2008b). Film
professionals have been conditioned, and have too much ego invested, in believing
that movies/TV shows by, for or about women that are successful are exceptions
to the rule, because ‘it was really the alien/Terminator/Hannibal Lechter people
wanted to see, not the Ripley, Connor or Starling’ (Kesler 2008b). If, however,
these professionals were to acknowledge, en masse, that female-biased films really
can be and are successful, ‘suddenly everyone needs remedial classes’ (Kesler 2008c).
The work that would have to be put in, Kesler argues, to undoing the learned flaws
in many studios’ rationality looks enormous and threatens the status quo.

Honestly, you write women [in films and TV shows] pretty much like you
write men. But [film professionals] think it would mean learning something
new, and to be fair, for many of them it would mean learning to write cred-
ible voices belonging to a group of people they associate with little more
than high school rejection, being told to clean up their room, divorce and
child support checks. It would also, for many of them, mean noticing some-
one who has never before existed to their eyes: women who don’t fit the
‘hot chick’ profile.
(Kesler 2008c, emphasis in the original)

Those producing shows and films discriminate, even though it does not profit them
to do so, because they believe, and want to believe, that heterosexual, white mascu-
linity will sell. Studios and networks have made a decision that male leads produce
greater success, and they produce films and shows that support this decision, with
male leads. Some of these films achieve great success, thereby prompting further
support for films and shows with male leads. Ideas about what is profitable are not
the same as what is actually profitable, but they matter more.

I had to understand [on starting film classes at UCLA] that the audience only
wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the
white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking
characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color,
etc.) – as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they
really paid their money to see.
(Kesler 2008b emphasis in the original)

Overt antifeminism (2): Why women are in refrigerators

In [superhero comics], men can fly and fight and do heroic things and meet
girls and have a secret identity – you know, all the stuff men secretly want to
do.Women … not so much. In fact, outside of comic books specifically written
126 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

for women, female characters in superhero books have a pretty tough time of
it. And by ‘tough time’, I mean horrible, horrible things happen to them.
(Bricken 2008)

The popular culture trope ‘Women in Refrigerators’, giving rise to ‘Women in

Refrigerators Syndrome’, has generated some heated discussion around sexism,
the comic-book and film industries. The verb ‘to fridge’ refers to the concept of
killing off a female character ‘solely for the purpose of giving the story’s main male
hero a reason to angst’, as Gadzooks! notes (2010). The name of this trope origi-
nates in a storyline in Green Lantern ‘in which the villain Major Force leaves the
corpse of Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, literally stuffed into a
refrigerator’ for Rayner to find (TV Tropes 2013a). Popularized by comic book
writer Gail Simone, her website, Women in Refrigerators, is dedicated to the
‘superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the
refrigerator’ (2013). Simone realized that most of her favourite female comic book
characters had ‘met untimely and often icky ends’ and set herself to compiling a
list of instances of female comic book characters who were killed off as a plot
device (ibid.). Simone’s intention, she claims, was simply to point out to comic
book creators that ‘if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls
won’t read comics’, but the site has become a trope in and of itself for feminist
popular culture critique. The term has, however, come to be used more broadly,
referring, over time, ‘to any character who is killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated,
de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of motivating another character’
(TV Tropes 2013a).
That director Christopher Nolan has a ‘woman problem’ has been variously
commented upon by a number of bloggers and reviewers (see, for example,
Belinkie 2010; Quigley 2010; Black Cat Reviews 2012; Kessler 2012). As Kessler
argues, ‘Nolan is a great analyst of the human soul and the forces that drive men
to go to the extremes of either horror or grandeur’ (2012). His engagement with
male characters’ psychology has probably made him one of the most respected
directors working in Hollywood today. Nolan’s male characters ‘are always
complex, tortured, torn between good and evil, frantically mad or in a breathless
search for justice. The subtleties and intricacies of their many layers can only be
commended’ (ibid.).
Nolan’s female characters, on the other hand, are either dead or are ‘one-sided,
one-dimensional, archetypal roles, with often no other purpose than to push the
male hero in one direction or the other’ (Kessler 2012). These women fit the
Women in Refrigerators trope to a ‘t’.
The Dark Knight trilogy, with a production budget of over US$585 million, was
a hugely successful franchise, producing three of the biggest films of 2005, 2009
and 2012 and grossing over US$2 billion worldwide (Table 5.1). Unlike many of
Hollywood’s big budget, special-effects monsters, however, The Dark Knight was
almost universally celebrated for its so-called viscerality, the grittiness of its context
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 127

TABLE 5.1 The Dark Knight trilogy

Batman Begins The Dark Knight The Dark Knight Rises

Rated (US): PG13 PG13 PG13

Distributor: Warner Bros.a Warner Bros. Warner Bros.
Production budget: $150 million $185 million $250 million
US domestic gross: $206,852,432 $534,858,444 $448,139,099
Foreign box office: $167,366,24 $469,700,000 $632,902,188
Worldwide total: $374,218,673 $1,004,558,444 $1,081,041,287

Domestic summary

Opening weekend: $48,745,440 $158,411,483 $160,887,295

(No. 1 rank, (No. 1 rank, (No. 1 rank,
3,858 theatres, 4,366 theatres, 4,404 theatres,
$12,634 average) $36,283 average) $36,532 average)
Close date: 30 October 2005 5 March 2009 13 December 2012
In release: 142 days 231 days 147 days
(20.3 weeks) (33 weeks) (21 weeks)

Note:
a
As of 10 January 2013, Warner Bros. had 14.3 per cent of total market share (Box Office Mojo 2013).

and its apparently more complexly and realistically drawn characters. The films
rose almost immediately to the top of IMDB’s (user-derived) top films of all time.
British Director Nolan, director of the much praised ‘cult’ film Memento, was
chosen by Warner Bros. to refresh a franchise that had descended in to what was
considered schlock campiness. Taking the ‘realistic texture’ of 1979’s Superman,
Nolan states that he ‘wanted to make the Batman epic you expected to have been
made in 1979’ (quoted in Pulver 2005). The origin story ‘was the bit that had
never been told’ and Nolan ‘wanted to try to do it in a more realistic fashion’ than
had been tried in a superhero film before (Nolan, quoted in Pulver 2005). Thus
Batman Begins, the first of the trilogy, ‘deals with its central figure as a study in
psychological damage’ (Pulver 2005).

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek
mythology.There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms.
For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He’s not
from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is
essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he’s a human being, very
flawed, and bridges the divide.
(Christopher Nolan, quoted in Pulver 2005)

Yet it is not clear, reading The Dark Knight with any hint of gender sensitivity,
exactly what divide Batman does bridge. The universe that The Dark Knight
represents is entirely dominated by competing models of masculinity, much as
was that of Superman in 1979, but without the humour (and humility) of Richard
128 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Donner’s direction and Christopher Reeve’s performance (especially the actor’s

surprisingly convincing portrayal of a Clark Kent so diffident and respectful it is
impossible to imagine him even remotely considering cavorting with naked
strippers à la Bruce Wayne).3 As commentators have noted, the Nolan Batman
franchise is an interesting, and troubling, example of Hollywood’s penchant
either for avoiding decent female characters altogether, or for actively writing
them out of movies (see Black Cat Reviews 2012).
Given that The Dark Knight’s director was looking in part to find 1979’s
Superman in his Batman trilogy, it is not clear why he created a series of vapid,
ineffective female characters almost 30 years later. As Black Cat Reviews notes,
canon female characters in the Dark Knight trilogy make up approximately 35 to
40 minutes screen time of their own accord, per film (2012). Of course filmmakers
take liberties with their material, and not all canon male characters appeared in
The Dark Knight trilogy. The slim pickings offered, however, by female characters
Rachel Dawes, Martha Wayne, Holly Robinson, Catwoman/Selena Kyle and
Talia/Miranda Tate compare tellingly to the ‘fully realized canon male characters
featured in the films’ (from Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker, to relatively unknown
characters such as Bane and Ra’s al Ghul) (ibid.). ‘As far as canon female characters
go’, there is, Black Cate Reviews notes, ‘a difference between not using everyone,
and barely using anyone’ (ibid., emphasis in the original). Moreover, ‘not only
were there plenty of opportunities to feature canon female characters’ through-
out the Dark Knight trilogy, ‘there were moments in the films where to do
otherwise required the filmmakers to diverge from established canon, and they
did so anyway’ (ibid.).
The Dark Knight’s Rachel Dawes serves well as a hinging plot device, rather
than, say, a realized characterization, throughout the first two films. As Pistelli
points out at Dissident Voice, ‘she spends her brief screen time torn between two
men [Batman and Harvey Dent], before being brutally dispatched in a glaring
instance of the “women in refrigerators syndrome”’ (2008). A more arse-kicking
Dark Knight female is Anne Hathaway’s wily and manipulative Catwoman, who is
‘always seductive’ while remaining ‘a little more relatable than other renditions of
the character’ (ibid.), despite wearing a black spandex bodysuit and four-inch
spiked heels for most of the final Batman instalment, The Dark Knight Rises.

Female action heroes are still accessed mainly as an object of sexuality, even
if you can probably look past the Catwoman character [in The Dark Knight
Rises] a little bit more (though mostly because she is supposed to act like a
feline, which are famously sinuous and flexible creatures).
(Not Another Wave 2012)

Not Another Wave points to a scene in The Dark Knight Rises that is particularly
telling of the conventional gender tropes Nolan’s Dark Knight relies so heavily
upon. Here, Selena Kyle shifts from easy murderer to terrified screaming witness
at a shoot-out, begging for help, then quickly reverting, again, to her killer
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 129

identity. This scene, ‘embodies the two reactions you see for female characters
in that situation’ (Not Another Wave 2012). Female characters are either ‘partici-
pating in and enjoying the killing, or they’re so completely terrified that they
just scream’ (ibid.).
Women are not, of course, the only sex to fare badly in the superhero universe,
and the ‘Men are the Expendable Gender’ trope is worth noting here. This trope
is, TV Tropes suggests, a result of the ‘double standard between male and female
roles in the media’, such that female characters apparently ‘start with automatic
audience sympathy’ because women are (meant to be) seen as ‘moral, innocent,
beautiful or simply because they have sexual value’ (2013b). Male characters, on
the other hand, ‘must earn audience sympathy by acting appropriately manly and
heroic, which, more often than not, involves saving the Damsel in Distress’ (ibid.).
Women, therefore, do not lose (as much) audience sympathy as men ‘for being
helpless, incompetent or abandoning men to their fates in order to save them-
selves’ (ibid.). The consequences of this are several. In the first instance, if stories
require random anonymous characters to die, they will likely be male (ibid.).
Female villains are more likely to be redeemed, and are also ‘less likely to be taken
seriously in their villainy’ than male villains (ibid.). Male characters suffer more
explicit and brutal deaths and male villains who target female characters ‘are
portrayed as more evil than those who target men’ (ibid.).

Overt antifeminism (3): Why games with female

characters don’t sell
Anita Sarkeesian began her ‘Tropes vs. Women in Video Games’ project in 2012,
seeking ‘to examine the plot devices and patterns most often associated with
female characters in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective’ (Feminist
Frequency 2013). The project was funded solely through internet ‘backers’ donat-
ing through the ‘Kickstarter’ crowdfunding platform (6,968 people pledged
upwards of $1 for Sarkeesian to fund production costs, equipment, games and
downloadable content).

The Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project aims to examine the plot
devices and patterns most often associated with female characters in gaming
from a systemic, big picture perspective. This series will include critical
analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both
possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being
critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.
(Sarkeesian 2012)

In an effort to highlight the inherent sexism of gaming, which, perhaps even more
so than Hollywood’s big-budget cinematic efforts, is aimed at teenage and young
men, Sarkeesian’s project highlighted five particular tropes common across a variety of
games. These tropes are: the Damsel in Distress (Video No. 1); the Fighting F#@k Toy
130 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

(Video No. 2); the Sexy Sidekick (Video No. 3); the Sexy Villainess (Video No. 4); and
Background Decoration (Video No. 5). The project also looked at other tropes in
gaming, including Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress (Feministfrequency Video No.6);
Women as Reward (Video No. 7); Mrs. Male Character (Video No. 8); Unattractive
Equals Evil (Video No. 9); Man with Boobs (Video No. 10); and some Positive Female
Characters (Video No. 11).
Some of the comments posted online in response to Sarkeesian’s project (over a
two-hour period in 2012), before her videos had even been made, are particularly
telling:

She needs a good dicking, good luck finding it though.

Why do you put on makeup, if everything is sexism? Why don’t you shave
your head bald, stop wearing makeup and stop wearing huge slut earrings.
You are a fucking hypocrite slut.
1940 – WE WANT TO BE EQUAL
2012 – WE ARE SUPERIOR!
Yep … tits or gtfo.
Yeah, I can’t wait for the day we get to play ‘ugly feminist ham planet: the
game’. That would sell millions of units.
(Quoted by Feminist Frequency 2012)

Sarkeesian responds to these comments with equanimity, referring to them as ‘the

types of silencing tactics often used against women on the internet who dare to speak
up’ (Feminist Frequency 2012), but the misogyny here remains astounding, not least
given that Sarkeesian’s modest aims to explore gendered representations in video
games make no claim to seek to disable the traditional gaming industry.
Kuchera describes video games as a world in which ‘male developers create
games with male only heroes for an often overwhelmingly male audience’
(2012). Not only this, but the games feature white male heroes, generally ‘with
a little bit of facial hair’ (ibid.), in the assumption that they are for a white male
audience. Citing EEDAR data (a research and data collection company working
on video games), Kuchera finds ‘almost no games with exclusively female
heroes’ (2012). The idea ‘of a female-led game seems so toxic to publishers and
marketing that there is barely enough examples from which to draw conclusions’
(Kuchera 2012).
Having spent more of my adult life battling through Zelda (Twilight Princess) than
I should probably admit to, I have long been sceptical of publishers’ claims that the
female audience for video games is insignificant. Estimates for 2008 suggested that
between 38 and 40 per cent of the video gaming population was female; by 2012
this number had risen to 47 per cent (cf. the Entertainment Software Association).
Sarkeesian’s project also points to the number of women who do actually play
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 131

video games. As Reisinger notes, people often seem surprised ‘that women really
do play games and have a very real interest in the industry’ (2008).
Kuchera looks at EEDAR data from 2012 to suggest that games ‘that allow you
to choose your gender are reviewed better than games that offer male-only heroes’,
but, ‘games with male only heroes sold better’ (2012, emphasis in the original). ‘If
you’re finding a large-budget game and you see these numbers, you see that you
lose sales by adding the capability to choose a female hero, and you lose significant
sales by releasing a game with a female hero’ (ibid., emphasis in the original). This
is generally true except for the Nintendo DS console, where it is not often noted
that female-optional games sell better than male-only games.
As Kuchera points out, however, this kind of conclusion is easily drawn by
publishers, but fails to consider an important element of the gaming industry,
which is marketing. Advertising (Sydney has been in 2013 awash with buses
advertising Grand Theft Auto 5 and its three male protagonists)4 and shelf space
in-store can dictate the ways in which a game will sell. Kuchera discovered that
games ‘with only female heroes are given half the marketing budget as games with male
heroes’ (2012, emphasis in the original). It would appear that publishers ‘send
female-lead games out to die without proper support’ (ibid.) The Tomb Raider and
Portal series remain possibly the only example of large-budget, well-marketed
games with a female hero and, although perhaps their successes speak for them-
selves, there are so few examples of such well-supported, female-led games that
conclusions are virtually impossible to draw (ibid.).
The sexism of the gaming industry itself is also worth considering here, since a
perceived hostility to female gamers and industry professionals may be all it takes
to maintain a discouraging stronghold for sexism over the gaming industry. As
Liutongco argues, sexism in video games is hotly debated, but much of the con-
troversy centres ‘not on the question of whether sexism in video games exists, but
rather if the industry should change to address it’ (2013). Evidence that sexism in
the gaming industry is actually ingrained and abounds is also, sadly, ample.
Women represent only 12 per cent of the gaming industry in terms of personnel
and both male and female professionals have named the gaming industry as ‘an
overall hostile environment for women’, citing ‘lower wages and a decreased
occupational mobility for female employees’, as well as ‘a lack of respectful female
representation in games’ (ibid.). Given the outright, and abusive, hostility that
Sarkeesian encountered throughout her ‘Tropes’ video project, the incentives
against producing female-centred games for those, few, industry professionals who
are female may be substantial.

According to CNN, ‘More than 60 percent of female students enrolled in

game design programs at The Art Institutes said they believed male dominance
in the industry is a deterrent to women pursuing a career in gaming, according
to a survey commissioned by SOE’.
(Reisinger 2008)
132 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Overt antifeminism (4): Why men are entitled to sex but

(independent) female sexuality is unacceptable
A spokesman for Michigan Speaker James Bolger said in a statement that
[Michigan State Rep. Lisa] Brown would not be allowed to give her opinion
on a school employee retirement bill Thursday because she had ‘failed to
maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives.’
[…]
‘What she [Brown] said was offensive,’ [Republican Rep. Mike] Callton told
The Detroit News. ‘It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of
women. I would not say that in mixed company.’
[…]
‘If I can’t say the word vagina, why are we legislating vaginas? What language
should I use?’
[…]
Democratic Rep. Barb Byrum was also blocked from addressing the
Republican-controlled legislature Thursday. The House forbid Byrum from
introducing her amendment to the abortion bill, which would have banned
men from getting a vasectomy unless they could provide proof that it was a
medical emergency. ‘If we truly want to make sure children are born, we
would regulate vasectomies,’ Byrum said Thursday.
(Quoted in Roberts 2012)

The double standard that depicts the ‘naturalness’ of men’s entitlement to sex
against women’s independent sexuality as unacceptable relates partly to the often-
used trope of ‘Damsel in Distress’ across popular culture sources. Herein, since
women are in constant need of rescuing, men must be characterized as assertive
and able, with their sexuality depending on women needing them rather than, say,
being able to rescue themselves. The double standard also, however, has strong
links to nastier, ‘rape culture’, elements (even sensible, smart girls/women just
really want a good-looking psycho to bend them over the table). Examples here
are so plentiful it is hardly worth listing them, but a few, for me, stand out.
Outrageously promiscuous male characters in popular culture, such as Don
Draper (Mad Men) or Christian Troy (Nip/Tuck), gain prestige from their woman-
izing. Equally promiscuous female characters, however, usually end up humiliated,
mutilated, diseased or dead, or they are ‘daddyless’, without appropriate father
figures, and clearly in need of psychological intervention (Deborah Morgan in
Dexter, Samantha Jones in Sex and the City, Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct,
Alexandra Forrest in Fatal Attraction, Mavis Gary in Young Adult, any slasher movie
and most female characters in Bond movies, especially the ‘evil seductress’ types,
and so on). The Walking Dead’s Andrea, perhaps one of the show’s least popular
characters,5 is also one the show’s two examples of a female character seeking
sexual fulfilment without implied monogamy. The other character, Lori Grimes
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 133

(the protagonist Rick Grimes’ wife) sleeps with another man (thinking, not
unreasonably, that her husband is dead) and meets a particularly grisly death by
caesarean section in Season Three. Andrea, promiscuous for this show having had
non-monogamous sex at least twice, dies by her own hand having been set upon
by a friend-turned-walker in Season Three. Taught that they are entitled to sex,
men are ‘trained from birth to see women as decoration’, argues Wong (2012).
Women are meaningful only in terms of their (hetero)sexuality and, even then,
men are persistently told that they ought to be feeling frustrated, humiliated and
powerless in the face of any assertion of this sexuality (ibid.).
As Sargent notes, US cinema censors seem much more likely ‘to give a movie
an NC-17 rating for sexual content (the most restrictively a film can be rated in
the States) when the woman is shown enjoying herself a little too much’ (2011,
emphasis in the original). The former X-rating was threatened at Boys Don’t Cry
for a scene depicting a lengthy female orgasm, while Scary Movie received a no-
quibbles R rating, ‘despite a woman being plastered to the ceiling by a blast of
semen’ (ibid.). Long entrenched in slasher folklore, the trope that no woman who
survives to the end of a movie will have been shown having had sex (the ‘Final
Girl’ trope) remains, largely, unblemished. ‘The MPAA [the Motion Picture
Association of America] is under the impression that for moviegoers, the subject
of female sexuality, even if it’s just depicting women being too into sex, is scary
and weird’ (Sargent 2011, emphasis in the original).
Related to men’s entitlement to sex versus women’s sluttishness is the ‘Sexist
Jerk Who Scores’ character. This is a common trope in popular culture repre-
sentations, a result, Kesler suggests, of heterosexual male screenwriters’ failures
to ‘pick up’ women in bars and their ensuing rationalization that ‘women really
should be putting out for him and not the other guy’ but are not, because ‘he
is a super nice guy, and the guy who can get women into bed is a jerk, and
there’s something wrong with those women that they prefer a jerk to a nice
guy’ (2008c, emphasis in the original).

The thing about this writing trope is that it puts the men exclusively in the
position of power. It depicts women as helpless things that need the con-
stancy of relationships but sometimes get tricked into casual sex. It assumes
women who have their own reasons for having casual sex are damaged
goods. It assumes men are by nature sex seekers and women are by nature
sex awarders, thereby stripping women of any power in the scenario, other
than the power to award sex to the dull and/or obnoxious who are being
framed as the ‘right’ choice.
(Kesler 2008c)

The ‘Sexist Jerk Who Scores’ character also, importantly, serves as a warning note
to ‘promiscuous’ women, since he is ‘a punishment and warning to all those great-
looking girls who turn down dull, boring and ugly guys in favor of attractive guys’
(Kesler 2008c). While men ‘are allowed to be incredibly shallow about women’s
looks’, women who think like this will be punished (ibid.).
134 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Even when male ‘sexuality’ is actually just a violent form of brutality that
happens to resemble sex superficially, that important force must not be locked
up. It must be allowed to roam free at any costs [...]. No, men mustn’t pause to
examine themselves, their motives or the likely consequences of their actions,
ever, for if they do, it might distract them or even dissuade them from the quest
society has handed them: the mindless screwing of everything in sight.
(Kesler 2011)

That female characters exist only to promote male leads for network profits, in many
studio executives and television professionals’ eyes, makes it even less likely that
women’s sexuality will be explored fully and independently in films where male
actors take the lead roles. Films produced to be dominated by female leads can, and
do, allow for a greater exploration of independent female sexuality (Boys Don’t Cry,
Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene, Thirteen, The Color Purple, Fried Green Tomatoes, The
Help, The Hours, and so on), but, as Holmes pointed out, anyone popping to a movie
multiplex throughout the year will be lucky if they find a film in which women play
more than a supporting role or are more than padding for an ensemble primarily
focused on men (Holmes 2013).

Overt antifeminism (5): Why stupid girls are more

profitable
We’re constantly being distracted from women’s accomplishments with
sexist fluff. Who cares about the accomplishments of the First Lady when
black women are tearing out each others’ weaves on Basketball Wives?
(Sánchez 2012)

Since 1990, Joyner suggests, scripted shows, ‘with continuous stories and character
development that require teams of writers and set designers’, have been increas-
ingly pushed for space in television scheduling by the rise of so-called ‘reality
television’ (2010). Wedding-hungry brides and toddlers in talent shows generate,
Joyner argues, high-revenue returns and depend upon simple production values.
Although they are not necessarily cheap shows to produce, with a 30-minute
reality show, for example, costing between US$100,000 and $500,000 per epi-
sode (E! Online, cited in ibid.), they are certainly cheaper to produce than quality
scripted shows. Each episode of Mad Men, for example, has a budget of between
$2 and $2.5 million, while Breaking Bad, possibly the most critically celebrated
scripted television show of the last ten years, reportedly cost $3 million per episode
to produce.
In the reality TV universe, networks spend less on writers and less on ‘stars’ to
populate their shows, which means also that smaller and emerging networks find
reality shows particularly attractive. This is not to say that reality TV is ‘unscripted’,
since it is heavily edited and particular scenarios clearly scripted for certain outcomes.
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 135

Joyner notes that product placement is much easier ‘to digest’ in reality televi-
sion, generating advertising revenue for both the show and the network and the
‘in-show placement’ (for example, for Ford Motors in American Idol, or Snickers
and Doritos in Survivor) that accompanies regular commercial breaks increases
the value of paid advertising for reality show sponsors (2010). Even DVD sales of
reality shows (including, for example, The Simple Life, The Amazing Race and
America’s Next Top Model ) have unexpectedly outsold network dramas, despite
studios’ initial concerns (syndication revenue and retail DVD sales generate sig-
nificant post-season profits for networks). Reality shows can be used to deliver
new content to networks (and thus generate more advertising money) while
networks’ more expensive scripted shows are ‘off-season’.

By filling the majority of a calendar year with ‘new’ episodes of a show,

networks and cable channels can capitalize on ad revenue for a longer
time span – and there’s little fear that a union strike will cease production
in the meantime.
( Joyner 2010)

‘The more profitable so-called unscripted programming grows’, argues Pozner,

‘the more poisonous its representations of women become’ (2004). Viewers con-
tinue to tune in to reality television shows ‘because these shows frame their
narratives in ways that both reflect and reinforce deeply ingrained societal biases
about women, men, love, beauty, class and race’ (ibid.). Realty TV exists, as Who
Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire producer, Married by America and Joe Millionaire
creator Mike Darnell has said, to provoke an audience reaction of ‘Oh, my god!
…What’s wrong with you?’ (quoted in Pozner 2004). The ‘realities’ that these
shows represent are, however, manufactured, with reality TV show participants
edited, coaxed, goaded and prompted in various ways and to reveal various
‘truths’. Women are represented as gold-digging, money-grubbing sluts in an
appeal to the basest, and most sexist, assumptions about women, but in buying into
these representations, audiences only further reproduce the conditions wherein
women are expected to value beauty, thinness and a rich spouse over intelligence,
independence and professional accomplishment.
In recent years, a specific strain of reality TV has emerged that particularly
troubles a number of feminists. Alexander notes that her search through Wikipedia
for ’Wedding Television Shows’ yielded an impressive 32 results, while US televi-
sion currently hosts six ‘different television shows about teen moms’ (2013).
Australian television currently airs at least nine wedding-based reality TV shows at
any one time (I Found the Gown, Something Borrowed, Something New, Don’t Tell the
Bride, Say Yes to the Dress, Mother of the Bride, Brides of Beverley Hills, Bridezillas,
Whose Wedding is it Anyway?, Four Weddings), plus Deadly Women (which deals
largely in money-hungry, marriage-obsessed women whose superficial charms
conceal murderous impulses towards their unsuspecting spouses) and the Real
Housewives franchise. A number of these shows are US- and Canada-based, but not
136 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

all, and in 2014 Australian audiences gained the dubious pleasure of The Real
Housewives of Melbourne (produced by the network channel Arena). Both wedding
and housewife reality shows have become ubiquitous; unique in the world of reality
TV for their unwaveringly unflattering portrayals of the everyday woman.
Added to North America’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, The
Bachelor, Beauty and the Geek, Wife Swap, Say Yes to the Dress, America’s Next Top
Model and any of the Real Housewives franchise (among others reality shows), these
shows teach women, feminists have argued, that they can be fulfilled only through
finding a husband, that they should aspire solely to a life of leisure, that they are
valuable as decorative props for advertisers, that they are bad wives and mothers
if they pursue professional or political interests outside the home and, as in VH1’s
Flavor of Love, that they (‘especially women of color’) are ‘ignorant, violent, gold-
digging’ and promiscuous (Pozner 2010). As Sánchez notes, the Real Housewives
franchise depicts middle-aged women as ‘shallow, catty, greedy, and idle’ (2012).
These women’s ‘success’ and identity ‘are entirely dependent on the men they
marry’, and ‘nearly every episode shows these women ripping each other to
shreds over some frivolous transgression. It not only encourages pettiness, but
also teaches girls that women can’t be friends’ (ibid.). While the Kardashian
family themselves may not be unintelligent, ‘what they are manufacturing and
perpetuating is stupidity’ (ibid.).
Pozner is interested in why it is that reality TV (or, more accurately, the net-
works, editors and writers behind reality TV) choose to present women as
marriage-obsessed bimbos (2010). Beginning to monitor unscripted programming
when The Bachelor debuted in 2002, Pozner sensed ‘a new resurgence of a classic
antifeminist media meme’ (ibid.). ‘Since then’, she argues, ‘reality television has
emerged as America’s most vivid example of pop cultural backlash against
women’s rights and social progress’ (ibid.). ‘Compare the accomplishments and
experiences of American women over the past decade with their depictions
through the unscripted looking glass, and a systemic pattern emerges’ (ibid.).
Pozner names this pattern a backlash against feminism, where, ‘in the unscripted
(but carefully crafted) world of dating, marriage and lifestyle shows’ women should
not be concerned ‘with politics, law, athletics, activism or even careers in general’
(unless, Pozner argues, they are ‘competing for the supermodel/starlet/rock star
gigs that populate ten-year-olds’ daydreams, or have schoolteacher/flight atten-
dant/professional cheerleader jobs that were acceptable in the pre-feminist 1950s’).
Rather, ‘reality TV producers, casting directors, editors and their product place-
ment sponsors have collaborated to paint American women as romantically
desperate, matrimonially obsessed and hypertraditionalist in their views about the
“proper” role for wives and mothers, husbands and fathers’ (ibid.).
Similarly, Sánchez bemoans the affected ‘dumb girl voice’ that characterizes
US teenagers, but asks why she is actually surprised by the over-use of this voice,
since ‘women have always been encouraged to play dumb’ (2012). The ‘dumb
girl trope is deeply ingrained in American culture and history’, she argues, and
women have been explicitly advised to ‘play dumb’ to catch a man (ibid.). SMS,
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 137

or Silly Me Syndrome, is ‘a common female affliction’, suggests Fernandes

(2013). ‘There is a dearth of quality men around and these women know that if
they play smart, they will not have as many men as they would like. Hence, they
are willing to compromise’ (Varkha Chulani, clinical psychologist and counse-
lor, quoted in Fernandes 2013). According to Chulani, women in the dating
world thus not only cut themselves short personally, but in their careers also,
ceding to men the ‘upper hand’ just in case the male ego is too fragile to handle
the ‘threat’ of an intelligent woman (ibid.). Women may, in their earlier dating
experiences, have been told ‘that the man is intimidated’ by a woman with
knowledge and position, and family members will, according to Chulani, ‘pres-
surise women into not showing their smart side just to impress a potential “good
catch”’ (ibid.).
Scripted television has, of course, not been entirely usurped by reality TV. In
particular, children’s and teenagers’ television programming remains hugely popular,
and widespread, with the increasing reach of television channels such as Disney and
Nickelodeon. These channels, Sánchez argues, ‘have the power to dictate and even
create teen and tween culture in the United States’ (2012). US teenagers number
33 million, the largest generation of teens in American history, and in 2011 spent
$100 billion (‘while influencing their parents’ spending by $50 billion’) (ibid., in
reference to Nielsen data). ‘The ‘huge cultural and economic influence’ of the
teenage programming market ‘allows media to manufacture anti-feminist ideologies
that are targeted to young girls’ (ibid.). Sánchez points to shows such as JESSIE
and Shake it Up as reproductive of tropes of young women as ditsy, shallow and
vain, but always ‘cute’ (ibid.).

Glorifying stupidity in girls is highly profitable because it means that these

young consumers will focus their attention on their appearance. They will
never be the most popular girl in school if they don’t have the latest doodad
or lip gloss. Insecurity is lucrative.
(Sánchez 2012)

Kang notes the example of a Cartoon Network show, Tower Prep, which was
cancelled because network executives (its writer, Paul Dini, believes) were openly
hostile to young females watching the show. The executives claimed that girls do
not buy merchandise produced for cartoon TV shows. In a discussion with direc-
tor Kevin Smith, Dini describes how cable network executives ‘urged him to
focus his storylines on his male characters’ and to situate his female characters
‘always “one step behind the boys”’, to make them ‘not as smart as the boys’ and
certainly ‘not as interesting as the boys’ (quoted in Kang 2013). Dini proceeded
to create fully realized female characters regardless, even giving them developed
back stories, and the Cartoon Network axed the show (ibid.). ‘We don’t want
the girls because the girls won’t buy toys’, the executives told Dini. While boys
‘buy the little spinny tops, they buy the action figures’, girls ‘buy princesses’ and
the network is ‘not selling princesses’ (ibid.).
138 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Why would young women ‘want to be smart when they only see sexiness
being rewarded’ (Sánchez 2012)? Why would they strive for professional, political
or personal achievement, when they lack interesting, intelligent female characters
to engage with and look up to, or when these characters are persistently denied
fulfilment or happiness because they need to be punished for their complexity?
Teenage girls are not only watching shows aimed at teens, they are also watching,
and absorbing, the lessons of reality television, and its persistent glorification of
women’s value according to their physical appearance. As Pozner articulates, the
concern with reality television relates less to its impact on its participants, than ‘the
millions of viewers, scores of whom are young girls’, who absorb ‘these misogy-
nistic spectacles uncritically, learning that only the most stereotypically beautiful,
least independent women with the lowest-carb diets will be rewarded with love,
financial security and the ultimate prize of male validation’ (2004). Reality televi-
sion’s obsession with money- and marriage-obsessed ‘bimbos’ only interacts,
from a wider cultural vantage, with the absence of representations of nuanced,
intelligent and independent women in other arenas. This only discourages girls
‘from having the audacity to be unapologetically intelligent’ (Sánchez 2012),
while robbing them of the confidence to interrogate patriarchal assumptions and
discriminations as adults.
Beyond reality television, when networks do manage to create a scripted female
character that is intelligent, strong and capable, this woman is often, as Dockterman
describes, inexplicably incapable of making good choices ‘when the man of her
affection enters the picture’ (2013). An old-style sexism pervades choices to disarm
women before the men they admire, to render them powerless before male char-
acters they are consumed by or to crumble them in the face of their male-centred
obsessions. Recent shows such as Scandal, Revenge, Homeland, The Newsroom, even
Game of Thrones, establish complex and important female characters, only to have
them stumble before the objects of their affection. The trend to present female
characters as derailed by men is so prevalent, Dockterman argues, that there exist
few examples of a strong female protagonist on a popular TV show who does not
make a poor decision because of a man at one point or another.

Joan and Peggy on Mad Men are two of the only women not completely
flustered by the opposite sex. And these women live in the 1960s, where a
doctor tries to shame Joan out of using birth control and Peggy gets locked
out of copywriter meetings simply because she’s a woman. [This is] not to
say that Joan and Peggy are not flawed; both characters have major pitfalls.
It’s just that their flaws are not men-centric.
(Dockterman 2013)

Unlike male characters, who knowingly walk into disastrous situations to ‘save’ their
girlfriends, wives, sisters or mothers, and whose ‘seemingly idiotic actions are meant
to be heartwarming and heroic’, women blinded by love on television are reminded
consistently that their decisions are destructive and selfish, yet they continue with
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 139

them regardless (Dockterman 2013). They are not set up to be seen as sacrifices for
the greater good and these women’s decisions invariably entail significant costs,
robbing them of audience sympathy and rendering the characters trivial.
Perhaps there is so little complaint at the media-circulated assumption that
stupid women are more successful at finding love, marriage and eternal happi-
ness because the movies and television shows written today to target younger
generations are written for people who have, in a sense, grown up beyond
feminism. Young people today have often grown up around women doing eve-
rything and there is, therefore, nothing surprising in women doing what, once
upon a time, would have been the preserve only of men. Many of this genera-
tion ‘would need it explained to them why Cagney and Lacey was revolutionary,
because many of their moms had worked in fields once dominated by men’
(Kesler 2008b). Too young to remember the second wave, even why we might
have needed it, a generation that has grown up with Ellen Ripley and Sarah
Connor as action heroes finds themselves in ‘a media climate hostile to female
characters and audiences’ (Kang 2013). In this regard, young women are likely
less aware of the dangers of self-representing as ‘perpetually dumb’ because they
are not fighting the same gender battles as previous generations, while being
surrounded by representations of women and girls as secondary, dependent and/
or appearance-obsessed.

Overt antifeminism (6): Why feminists can only be

characterized negatively in popular culture
‘Feminism’ means so many different things that it appears to mean very lit-
tle. Its theoretical advocates constantly contradict each other and themselves.
In casting off feminine reserve and modesty they seem to have learned
intellectual shamelessness as well. […] Antifeminism is thus nothing more
than the rejection of one of the narrow and destructive fantasies of an age
in which such things have been responsible for destruction and murder on
an unprecedented scale. It is opening oneself to the reality of things.
(Kalb 2004)
I consider the term ‘Feminazis’ to be a fairly accurate description of members
of what is now undoubtedly a hate movement.
(MasculistFeminist 2013)

Stereotypes about and of feminists are everywhere in popular culture. Very few, if
any, are flattering (Figure 5.1). According to such media representations, feminists
are ‘Feminazis’, childless, gay, hysterical, aggressive, anti-men, angry, unattractive,
whiny, anti-sex, sex-starved, bra-burners, averse to shaving, disrespectful of stay-
at-home mothers, lacking a sense of humour, defensive, mentally (or emotionally)
unstable and female.
Sarkeesian refers to the media and Hollywood’s construction of certain tropes
about feminists, or common and/or recognizable patterns and attributes to feminist
140 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

FIGURE 5.1 Searches related to ‘feminists are’ at www.google.com.au.

Source: Author screenshot.

characters, as the creation of ‘Straw Feminists’. Feminist characters, she argues, do

not often make it through the production process and when they do, Hollywood
offers only a ‘distorted and warped version of feminism which [bears] little resem-
blance to actual feminist movements’ (Feminist Frequency 2011).
The Straw Feminist works ‘by deliberately creating an exaggerated caricature
of a feminist’, which writers then fill with various ‘oversimplifications, misrepre-
sentations and stereotypes to try to make it easy to discredit or delegitimize
feminism’ (Feminist Frequency 2011). Sarkeesian points to the third season of
Veronica Mars, a show that had previously seemed to take some care to establish an
independent, feisty and sympathetic leading female character. A group of Straw
Feminists here become the ‘villains’ of the piece, spouting anti-male rhetoric and
staging a ‘fake rape’ to incriminate a fraternity. ‘Characters like these’, Sarkeesian
argues, ‘serve to undermine and discredit feminist movements’, but they also serve
‘to separate female leads which are smart, strong and witty, in this case, Veronica,
from any association with feminism’ (ibid.).

The Straw Feminist character is part of a fictional post-feminist world that

only exists in Hollywood: the trope is a tool that’s used to promote the
fallacy that everyone is already equal. What’s exceptionally frustrating is
that these characters often bring up legitimate feminist concerns about
women’s rights and women’s equality but those concerns are quickly
undermined by the writers making the characters seem over the top, crazy,
and extremist.
(Feminist Frequency 2011)

Rush Limbaugh’s frequent tirades against ‘Feminazis’ aside, we need only scratch
the surface of popular culture to reveal the ‘current of white-hot rage’ that flows
beneath. Wong argues that popular culture supports an environment in which
modern men are ‘made to feel that their manhood has, at some point, been stolen
from them’ (2012) (Figure 5.2). Wong points to the front pages of male discussion
sites, such as Reddit.com, and the speed with which one can find ‘several thousand
men bemoaning how all women are gold diggers (7,500 upvotes) and how crazy
and irrational women are (9,659 upvotes) and how horrible and gross and fat
women are (4,000 upvotes)’ (ibid.). ‘A once-great world of heroes and strength
and warriors and cigars and crude jokes has been replaced by this world of grumpy
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 141

FIGURE 5.2 ‘Rush Vs Feminism’.

Source: Piascik 2012.

female supervisors looming over our cubicle to hand us a memo about sending
off-color jokes via email’ (ibid.).

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I hear the word [‘feminist’], I think
of an episode of Family Guy where there is a female lawyer named Gloria
Ironbox who wears pantsuits and teaches sexual harassment classes, represent-
ing to men all that is ‘wrong’ about feminism to the show’s male adolescent
target audience. At the end of the episode, she tells Lois Griffin that she is
fighting so that women like her can be ‘more than just a housewife,’ ending
with Lois defending her housewife status in a catfight striptease. I think that
people need to see through the stereotype [of] self-righteous tomboys who
hate men and any woman who isn’t CEO of Ms. Magazine or an OBGYN. Every
feminist is different just like every woman is different and [has] a diverse range
of opinions and beliefs that fall within the feminist spectrum. I wouldn’t call
Lois Griffin a great feminist, but I wouldn’t say that Gloria Ironbox represents
all feminists either.
(SavvyRed 2010)

Tacit antifeminism (1): Why ‘strong female characters’

have become boring
For a long time, my favourite fictional character in popular culture was Brenda
Chenowith, from Six Feet Under (whose creator, Alan Ball, has since gone on to
142 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

create my next favourite television character, True Blood’s Lafayette). Brenda is

highly intelligent but volatile, difficult and clearly flawed. Reactive and often
emotionally disjointed, she is wry, sarcastic and often rather cold. She is perhaps
not, on paper, an obvious role model for young women. Thinking about Brenda
and reflecting on the power of popular culture representations of women in my
own life, I have recently been pondering my discomfort at the lead female char-
acter in a new Fox show, Sleepy Hollow, which, despite its innate daftness, has
become something of a so-called ‘breakout’ success for Fox.
Sleepy Hollow, very loosely based on the Washington Irving short story ‘The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, began airing in September 2013, with a second season
commissioned for 2014. On paper, the show’s lead, Lieutenant Abbie Mills, is an
excellent example of a strong female character. She is smart, competent and
focused. Not motivated in the slightest (at least so far) by romance, Abbie acts as
an anchor for all the otherwise bizarre supernatural goings on, maintaining her
credibility by seeking only to get her job done. She is ‘a relatable and capable
narrator’ and, Gennis argues, ‘a fully realized hero’, displaying vulnerability,
strength and rationality, which is ‘a pleasantly shocking change of pace compared
to the often reductive women of network TV’ (2013). Actor Tom Mison, who
plays Abbie’s partner Ichabod Crane, has said he was particularly attracted to the
show because the two female leads are not ‘defined by a man’ (referring also to his
character’s wife, Katrina Crane) (quoted in Gennis 2013).

[Y]ou don’t see [independent female characters] enough. All too often ... the
women are the girlfriend or the daughter and they have very little to do
other than support the male characters’ stories. [But with Sleepy Hollow],
from the start and throughout, the female characters have been rounded and
clear and individual.
(Mison, quoted in Gennis 2013)

The ‘Strong Female Character’ (SFC) has, according to some commentators,

however, become an over-used and tiresome trope in popular culture, a ‘cheap,
insincere nod toward equality’ that replaces the important struggles women face
with a glib evocation of perpetual toughness (Silverstein and Kang 2013). SFCs
may, they argue, have been useful ‘a few years ago when there was a dearth of
women on film and most were so rubber-limbed, glass-ankled, or prone to faint-
ing spells they literally needed to be carried out of danger by a man’ (ibid.). Great
female protagonists were, for a long while, always ‘the exceptions’ and films ‘with
strong female characters were anomalies, not the pattern’ (ibid.). Today,

Hollywood has taken our love of strong female characters and converted it
into something dully literal. Strong female characters have become Strong
Female Characters, a mutant sub-genus that has less to do with actual
women than T-Rexes: physically intimidating, but mentally nonthreatening.
(Silverstein and Kang 2013)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 143

Strength, the authors argue, has become a substitute for personality where female
characters are concerned. For McDougall, the SFC is one who displays a penchant
for violence over dialogue because she always starts with an ‘underlying deficit of
respect’, which she is then ‘required to overcome by whatever desperate, over-
the-top, cartoonish means’ spring to hand (2013).

That a female character is allowed to get away with behaviour that, in a male
character, would rightly be seen as abusive (or outright murderous) may
seem […] an unfair imbalance in her favour. [But the Strong Female
Character is] in a hole, and acts that would be hair-raising in a male charac-
ter just barely bring her up to their level. […] The Strong Female Character
has something to prove. She’s on the defensive before she even starts.
(McDougall 2013)

What would vastly improve women’s representation in popular culture is not more
SFCs, Silverstein and Kang argue, but rather the creation of women and girls with agency
(Silverstein and Kang 2013). Popular culture needs less women on celluloid to
whom things happen, even if they kick ass when events overtake them, than female
characters that actively drive plots forward (ibid.). Studios, networks, writers direc-
tors and producers need, McDougall argues, to ‘get away from the idea that sexism
in fiction can be tackled’ by relying on depicting ‘a single personality type’, in the
belief that ‘you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve
done enough’ (2013). Stories with a single SFC per script, surrounded only by and
speaking only to men (as per The Avengers, Salt, Shrek, Iron Man, Inception, Captain
America, Thor, and so on), do not a mountain of sexism in Hollywood overcome.
Rather, a ‘wealth of complex female protagonists’ is required, each with the free-
dom to be ‘strong or weak or both or neither’, tough but also ‘interesting’, women
who can be ‘shy and quiet and do, sometimes, put up with others’ shit because in
real life there’s often no practical alternative’ (ibid.). Heroines are still needed, but
so too are female characters ‘in as many and varied secondary and character roles as
men’, including ‘female sidekicks, mentors, comic relief, rivals, villains’ (ibid.).

If a director or screenwriter is interested in meeting the bare minimum of

feminist standards, a female character should have the wits and a big enough
part in the story to propel and shape the plot significantly on her own
accord. We all enjoy seeing women kicking ass, but we’d enjoy even more
watching a woman whose decisions are important and taken seriously by the
characters around her.
(Silverstein and Kang 2013)

Sleepy Hollow’s Abbie Mills has been well received critically and popularly, as has the
show, and seems to be perceived generally as ‘a strong, resilient and courageous’
person (see Martinez 2013). Yet I have not quite bought into her character and
something to me seems a little off-kilter about her. At the moment, Abbie exhibits
144 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

symptoms of being something of a caricature of what an SFC consists of. While her
male partner, Ichabod Crane, is given extensive background (and also opportunity
for emotional vulnerability) in each episode, with ample opportunity to ponder his
life, and grieve his past life, the space allowed Abbie for self-reflection is relatively
tiny. She remains continually, and reliably, unflappable, powering through any
obstacles in ways that give little sign of any emotional response, rendering her, at the
moment, a little dull. Where Six Feet Under’s Brenda Chenowith is given a good
deal of room to explore herself, and is allowed to be persistently flawed and disagree-
able (simultaneously strong, weak and neither), Abbie enjoys no such freedom.
Abbie’s (thus far) rather one-dimensional toughness may exist partly because, as
an African American woman, the character is also bound by reference to stereo-
types that white characters never need face. Martinez suggests that Abbie’s traits of
resilience and strength may ‘possibly trap her character into the “strong black
woman” stereotype’ and asks whether Abbie, and her sister Jenny, are ‘too strong’,
‘too independent’ and not ‘vulnerable enough’ (2013).
This is also a good example, however, of the ‘damned if you do and damned if
you don’t’ in writing female characters. Male characters currently outnumber
female characters on screen by five to one (Silverstein and Kang 2013). If Abbie
were visibly emotional in every episode, her ability to carry the mantle of saviour
of the world would likely be questionable. If she needed to be protected, rescued
and saved, her character would be another pretty girl ‘under too much stress’ who
needs to be shielded from the world, a ‘damsel in distress’ and ‘a white man’s “side-
piece”’ (Martinez 2013). As Martinez notes, the series’ writers have avoided
pushing Abbie’s character into ‘sassy black woman’ territory and she certainly
embodies the kind of agency that other television shows disallow their female leads.
Perhaps I am simply uncomfortable with Abbie because I am uncomfortable with
all the ways that female characters cannot appear vulnerable without appearing
weak, while ‘toughness’ in women still appears to require the routing out of any
hint of emotion. Representations of women on television simply do not enjoy the
freedom of multiplicity that male representations revel in. As McDougall notes,
‘Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical,
brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude,
a polymath genius’ (McDougall 2013). Female characters get to be supportive,
sexy, dispensible, mad or dead. Or now, ‘Strong’.

Tacit antifeminism (2): Why Hollywood is not good at

‘girl power’
Gravity is nominated for best film. It’s the story of how George Clooney
would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with
a woman his own age.
(Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Opening Monologue,
Golden Globes 2014, 13 January)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 145

In a deceptively light-hearted article in Cracked, author Liang examines a number

of examples, in recent cinema history, of Hollywood’s attempts to represent
women favourably. Not only, she argues, are these ‘positive’ representations, upon
further investigation, not terribly favourable but they also highlight a deeply
rooted ‘woman problem’ in Hollywood, a problem that movie studios are keen to
disguise with attempts at so-called ‘girl power’ (2008).
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Return of the King were 2002 and
2003’s biggest movie releases. Both films are also rather short on decent female
characters. As McDougall notes, the movies are so short, in fact, on SFCs that the
screenwriters of The Lord of the Rings sought fit to, rather clumsily, expand Arwen’s
role from the books by having her ‘wander on screen, put a sword to her boyfriend’s
throat and boast about how she’d sneaked up on him’ (2013). Actress Liv Tyler is
later reported to have commented that ‘you don’t have to put a sword in [Arwen’s]
hand to make her strong’ (quoted in ibid.).
The trilogy’s Eowyn is probably the movies’ closest approximation of an SFC.
On the face of things, she is fairly tough, with a thirst for battle and an unwaver-
ing confidence in her fighting abilities. Introduced in the second film as a
noblewoman of Rohan, ‘an able ruler, and a trained warrior’, Eowyn is, however,
‘told to stay behind and help protect the women and children of Rohan while all
the men go off to ride horses and stab things’ (Liang 2008). Eowyn rebels and,
disguising herself as a man, abandons her responsibilities to fight with Aragorn
(who she is also in love with. He, however, is betrothed, which he fails to mention
to the mooning, lovestruck Eowyn).
In Return of the King, Eowyn disguises herself as a man and travels with the
Riders of Rohan to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. It is during this battle that
she, as per Tolkien’s original book, confronts the Witch-King of Angmar, who,
believing that she is a man, attacks her, since ‘no living man’ can hinder him.
Eowyn, of course, is a woman, as she informs the Witch-King shortly before he
meets his demise and, her thirst for battle apparently sated, she hangs up her shield,
marries Faramir and lives, we assume, happily ever after. ‘The lesson here, impres-
sionable young girls, is that playing soldier is all well and good in emergencies, but
you’re not really complete until you land a husband. Any husband’ (Liang 2008).
As Liang notes, ‘take that, patriarchy!’ (ibid.).
Padme, of the Star Wars prequels (two of which sit in the highest-grossing films
of all time, not adjusting for inflation), is also a potentially strong, inspiring vision
of intelligence and steely fighting spirit. That is, as Liang notes, until she gets
pregnant: ‘As everyone in Hollywood knows, a uterus makes women do crazy
things’ (2008). In movies, pregnancy (generally) turns ‘a heroine into a useless,
whining, fragile creature’ (ibid.) and the pregnant Padme spends the rest of her
time on screen ‘crying and wondering when Anakin will come home’ (ibid.).

After confronting her baby daddy about his experimentation with the Dark
Side, she’s injured and goes into labor. While giving birth to future ass kickers
Leia and Luke, Padme decides to die. […] [T]he movie makes it pretty clear:
146 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

she just gives up. No serious injury, no difficult birth, no blood spurting onto
the table. What about the two children she has to live for? Nope. She’ll have
none of that. The uterus will not allow it.
(Liang 2008)

Joss Whedon has been infinitely and tirelessly held up as possibly the only writer/
director/producer in Hollywood able to consistently produce decent female
characters. Unashamed to admit, publicly and in private, that he finds women
inspiring, Whedon has said (on creating perhaps his most enduringly loved female
character, Buffy) that he ‘wanted to create a female icon’ but that he also ‘wanted
to be very careful to surround her with men who not only had no problem with
the idea of a female leader, but were in fact, engaged and even attracted to the
idea’ (part of Whedon’s 2006 ‘Equality Now’ speech, transcribed in film ick
(2006)). While Whedon’s television shows and movies are littered with strong,
smart and interesting female characters, and it is clear that Whedon sits somewhat
against the grain of Hollywood’s woman problem, were Buffy not also sur-
rounded by interesting and developed female characters, she would very easily fit
into the token SFC. Under close examination, very few of Whedon’s produc-
tions actually offer a true wealth of complex female protagonists and one of his
most commercially successful ventures, The Avengers, is a classic example of the
SFC that so troubles a number of feminist commentators. With Joss Whedon’s
work, it has often been assumed, argues Liang, ‘that all the female characters will
be ground breaking paragons of feminist virtue’ (2008). This may be because
‘Whedon genuinely respects strong female characters’, or it may be because he is
‘intimidated by a cult fanbase that demands every show of his have another Buffy
in it’ (ibid.).
Whedon’s Firefly, the television series, was cancelled by Fox before its first season
had finished airing, but gained a cult following and impressive DVD sales. Serenity,
Firefly’s spin-off theatrical release, opened in the US domestic box office at number
two, but failed to make back its budget until its home media release. Both the televi-
sion series and the movie constitute Whedon’s homage to the genre of the Hollywood
western (with a sci-fi twist). Herein, men are captains and leaders, women are (gener-
ally, if not always) whores, subordinates or mothers. In the form of ‘River’, the genius
sister of Serenity’s (also the name of the ship) doctor, Simon, the women are, Liang
notes, ‘barking mad’ (2008). In River’s case, the reason for this is that she has been
tortured and reprogrammed to be an assassin, with psychic abilities.
River’s fighting prowess is certainly stunning and she saves the day (and the
men) on a few notable occasions, rendering her a seemingly perfect fit for a
(nutty) Buffy Part II. Herein, however, lies the problem with Firefly/Serenity,
Liang argues (2008). River is so clearly superior in all forms of warfare that the
fact she uses her gifts to the benefit of the crew so rarely is troubling. Instead,
the character, ‘driven insane by her experiences’, ends up spending ‘most of her
time saying crazy things and throwing up in her brother’s bed’ (ibid.). Thus,
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 147

‘protecting River’ constitutes ‘the backbone of no less than five out of thirteen
episodes’ of Firefly, ‘plus the theatrical movie’ (ibid.). This is, Liang notes, ‘an
awful lot’ of needing to be rescued for a feminist hero (ibid.). Fans have reacted
fiercely to Firefly/Serenity and Whedon’s apparent diminution of women, with
some even suggesting that Whedon has stripped his female characters of their
integrity and takes pleasure in displaying potentially powerful women as cowed,
‘gleefully’ demonizing female power and selfhood (fan Livejournal comments,
cited in Liang 2008).
A brief note, here, on Hollywood award ceremonies is worth making. 2014
marked the second year that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the Golden
Globes, taking over from the acerbic Ricky Gervais, who had hosted for the
previous three years. Award shows in Hollywood are almost never hosted by
women (Whoopi Goldberg and Ellen Degeneres are the only women to have
hosted, solo, Oscar award ceremonies) and Fey and Poehler’s MC-ing was ‘widely
acclaimed as a breath of fresh air in the stuffy, awkward world of awards-show
hosting’ when they took to the stage in 2013 (Pulver 2013). Not long followed
by Seth MacFarlane’s crude, crass and blatantly sexist opener to the 2013 Oscars
(held on 17 February), including the ‘song’ ‘We Saw Your Boobs’, it has not taken
the Hollywood machine too long to start the backlash, with the New York Post’s
Kyle Smith claiming that we might as well have referred to 2014’s Golden Globes
as ‘Girls’ (see Smith 2014). The night was, Smith suggests, ‘a deep dive into a pool
of estrogen’ (2014). Fey and Poehler, ‘in accordance with the tiresome defense
mechanism of female nightclub comics’, made it all about ‘gender’, before their
hecklers could get going (ibid.). Berating the duo’s Gravity inspired joke, Smith
complains that ‘Bullock had ten times as much screen time as her co-star’, with
‘Clooney being reduced to playing her coach’ (ibid.).
If, in terms of its representations of women, Hollywood is not good at ‘girl
power’, in its actual use of female talents, it is considerably worse. An ‘excess of
estrogen’ is not, as Chemaly notes, a problem that Hollywood suffers from. Citing
data generated by Women and Hollywood, The Geena Davis Institute on Gender
in Media, the Writers Guild of America, the Representation Project and USC’s
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s Gender Equality in 500
Popular Films’ study, Chemaly notes that in 2012, men were 95.6 per cent of
directors, 91.8 per cent of writers and 80 per cent of producers in Hollywood (a
behind the screen ratio of five men to every one woman behind the camera)
(2014). Of the 4,475 speaking characters on screen in 2012, only 28.4 per cent
were female and only 6 per cent of the top-grossing films in 2012 featured a bal-
anced cast (ibid.). Two of the ten Golden Globe ‘best picture nominees had stories
primarily about women and almost all failed the Bechdel Test’ (ibid.). In televi-
sion, ‘women made up only 18.6 per cent of executive producers for television
shows’ between 2011 and 2012, while ‘men of all ethnic/racial backgrounds
combined’ constituted 81.4 per cent (ibid.). Only 24 per cent of TV pipeline pilots
for 2012 had at least one female writer (ibid.).
148 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Tacit antifeminism (3): Why women shouldn’t read The

Economist
Leader writers [in news media] are generally white, middle-aged men and
they have no perception of gender bias. They don’t want to acknowledge that
it happens within their newsrooms, and they certainly wouldn’t be open to
challenging some of those positions and changing the public discourse either.
(North, cited in Rourke 2012)

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication.

Describing itself as a newspaper rather than a magazine,6 the publication is half-
owned by the British Financial Times and is edited and produced in London. In 2013,
The Economist enjoyed a circulation of 1,546,511 (representing a year-to-year growth
of 5.63 per cent) and an online readership of 7,712,831, with 31,778,106 page views
during August 2013 (The Economist Group 2013). It describes itself as the ‘web’s
most trusted source of global news analysis’ (The Economist 2014a).
As Hooper notes, The Economist has historically targeted itself at ‘an interna-
tional readership largely composed of elite men’ and is a publication ‘saturated
with images of masculinity’ (2001: 117). Currently, only 13 per cent of its readers
are female (Hess 2011). The remaining 87 per cent, as Hooper also notes, are not
just normal men, they are the financial and business elite (ibid.). ‘Worldwide, the
average reader’s personal income is $175,000. His average net worth is $1,688,000’
(Hess 2011). Forty-six per cent of readers are employed as senior managers in their
companies and a quarter of these hold Chief-level (‘C-level’) positions (ibid.).
These are the ‘accomplished, influential people’ the Economist is marketed at.
The Economist’s readers receive the same editorial matter, regardless of location,
except perhaps for varied section running order and, occasionally, different covers
(The Economist 2014b). The advertisements featured in the magazine differ consist-
ently, however, according to geographical location, which is particularly important
in understanding how significant media sources, such as The Economist, are in repro-
ducing the iconography and symbolism of the wider cultures in which they are
produced, as Hooper shows (2001). Images within the magazine are carefully chosen
to convey a sense of elitism, luxury and masculinity, fixing ‘the overall meaning in
favour of masculine corporate power’ (ibid.: 127). The 9 January 2014 cover, for
example, which is the same across the print versions produced for Latin America,
North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the UK, pushes the ben-
efits of government-backed privatization, and clearly locates the task of unburdening
governments with potential lucrative assets on the shoulders of a male subject (whose
legs are seen struggling beneath various boxes of state-owned goodies).
In November 2011, The Economist, having commissioned two studies that
found that women, although increasingly obvious in the business world, repre-
sented only a small percentage of the magazine’s market share, ran an advertisement
for a select demographic of potential (North American) subscribers. ‘Why should
women read The Economist?’ a circular attached to the magazine asked (Figure 5.3).
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 149

FIGURE 5.3 The Economist, slip-cover.

Source: Odell 2011.

‘They shouldn’t’. Folded inside the pamphlet was the tagline: ‘Accomplished,
influential people should read us. People like you’.
The Economist, Hess notes, responded cynically ‘to the new imperative to sell
itself to women’ by asserting that ‘appealing to women is unnecessary’: if an over-
whelming majority of the accomplished, influential people it wants reading its
pages happen to be men, the newspaper seems to be suggesting, ‘perhaps it is
because they have simply accomplished more’ (2011). The newspaper offers no
bylines, is presented in a monolithic editorial voice and argues ‘that what is written
is more important than who writes it’ (The Economist 2014c). Anonymity keeps
the editor ‘not the master but the servant of something far greater than himself’
(former editor Geoffrey Crowther, quoted in ibid.).
This hint at the dominance of the (anonymous) masculine voice is not
random. We know, for example, that none of The Economist’s editors has been
female and less than a quarter of its editors, writers, and bureau chiefs are women
(Hess 2011). The mask of anonymity is, however, a trope common to the disci-
pline of Western economics more broadly, a ‘scientific’ framing of current events
that allows what might otherwise be viewed as subjective journalist commentary
to be represented as factual knowledge (rather than, say, conjecture). By refusing
to put names to ideas, The Economist can more easily obscure the context and
partiality of those ideas, while also concealing where and from whom they came.
Opinions can thus be stated as though they are ‘bald facts or commanding imperatives’
(Hooper 2001: 133).
150 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

The magazine’s style, or ‘tone of voice’ has remained distinctive throughout its
time in publication. Developed by Crowther, it, as Hooper describes, is a ‘terse,
urgent style with short, punchy sentences’ intended to convey object truth to
articles’ content (2001: 133). ‘In Economese, as it is called, “the aim is to squeeze
out un-necessary metaphors, adjectives and other argument obscuring figures of
speech so that the … point is got across clearly and economically”’ (The Economist
22 December 1990, cited in Hooper 2001: 133).
The ways in which the magazine flattens its perspective by anonymizing its
writing and obscuring any diversity of perspective is significant, Hess argues,
because it allows the magazine to ‘elude the gendered criticisms that often haunt
any feminine byline’ (2011). The Economist claims that ‘what is written is more
important than who writes it’, but it is ‘unclear how veiling the identity of the
magazine’s writers mitigates the masthead’s surplus of male perspective’ (ibid.).

[With the ‘women shouldn’t read The Economist’ advertising campaign], the
magazine has attempted to claim [its] masculine perspective as a human one.
The difference is that women are now administered explicit invitations to
the club, so long as they think like the ‘accomplished, influential’ men who
have produced and consumed this ‘universal’ worldview since 1843. Why
should women read The Economist, again?
(Hess 2011)

While it may be the case, however, that the magazine has not upped its female
audience (the offending advertisement was dropped soon after it ran), The
Economist remains a strong market performer (and one of the biggest-selling
upmarket ‘digitals’ in the UK and USA). ‘Thoroughly saturated with the signifiers
of masculinity, in its self-promotions, its content, layout, house style, use of lan-
guage, and advertising’ (Hooper 2001: 146), The Economist has sought to encourage
women into its ranks, while being unable to offer women a clear vision for their
stable positioning within the business world. Clearly not sure what ‘to do’ with
women and their otherness, The Economist’s efforts at inclusion are not extensive.
While the magazine does not shy away from discussing such ‘women’s issues’ as
corporate boards, female breadwinners, gender gaps and female labour power, its
pages remain saturated with the visual symbols of elite masculine power (images
of men in power, men holding the power, men with expensive gadgets, men in
major corporations, and so on). Examining the ‘upmarket’ The Economist also hints
at the sexisms (and phobias) inherent in the genre of ‘men’s lifestyle’, as will be
discussed further below.

I’m no woman, and I am not one of those ‘C-level’ professionals who feasts
on Economist fare. But I [tend to] think that a lot of accomplished women
will respond simply to the ‘shouldn’t’ part of this pitch and continue to steer
clear of The Economist.
(Wemple 2011)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 151

Tacit antifeminism (4): Why men’s lifestyle magazines reflect

sexual paranoia
The price of female self-determination and steady strides towards formal
equality, rather than being pictured as a pair of scales, is more like a see-saw:
if women go up, men must hit rock bottom.
(Whelehan 2000: 113)

The relationship between femininity, masculinity and consumption is a particu-

larly good example of the unevenness and multiplicity of the media’s ‘imaging’ of
feminism, which is important to consider in any account of feminism and popular
culture. Historically, a long-established association between masculinity and pro-
duction has given rise to femininity’s supposedly strong connections with
consumption. This resulted, Gill argues, in a certain ‘lavender whiff ’ to early
twentieth century commodity culture (2007). Although consumption-based mas-
culinities had actually been rather powerful in the West during the late nineteenth
century (ibid. 205–6), by the post-war period (and a significant commercial
boom), efforts were required to remasculinize consumption and the advertising
and media and new service industries went into overdrive with efforts to present
‘an easy natural masculine character’ to modern consumption (Osgerby 2003,
quoted in ibid.: 206). As the advertising industry, media and new service sector
rapidly expanded in the post-war consumer boom, the relationship between mas-
culinity and consumption deepened, which also increased the ‘proliferation and
fragmentation of representations of masculinity’ (ibid.). By the 1980s, ‘the tem-
plates of masculinity on offer were increasingly diverse’ (ibid.: 207). ‘Perhaps what
we are currently witnessing at the start of the 21st century is nothing less than the
emergence of a more fluid, bricolage masculinity, the result of “channel hopping”
across versions of “the masculine”’ (Beynon 2002, quoted in ibid.: 207).
The magazine industry has ‘discovered men’, declared The New York Times in
the spring of 1990 (Draper 2012: 45). So-called ‘liberated men’ (who now appar-
ently embraced their feelings and domestic responsibilities) were suddenly faced with
‘an onslaught of new titles that went beyond the special-interest topics traditionally
used to appeal to these readers’ (that is, sports, sex, cars, or the outdoors) (ibid.).
Fashion, grooming, relationships, politics, careers, cooking, entertainment, and
health became serious men’s topics and, despite a major economic recession, a
flurry of men’s lifestyle magazines were launched (and then often folded).
Although the magazine industry first announced that it was taking serious, public,
notice of men in 1990, the industry had actually been targeting men as a particular
demographic since the 1930s, with the launch of Esquire in 1933 ‘the magazine
industry’s first attempt to organize an audience around men specifically as a gendered
demographic’ (Draper 2012: 46). What is particularly important here, Draper argues,
in charting the rise of men’s lifestyle as a targeted genre of the magazine (and thus
advertising) industry is ‘the disavowal of homosexuality’ that ‘has been the most
integral rhetorical strategy in the development of the industry’ (ibid.: 47). Editors
and publishers needing to gain support from advertisers have historically been
152 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

exceptionally wary ‘of having their products associated with potentially gay audi-
ences’, seeking instead to ‘convince heterosexual male audiences that their
masculinity would not be undermined if they read magazines targeting them
through fashion and other lifestyle-based consumption’ (ibid.). Esquire in the 1930s
thus attempted ‘to manage the potentially feminizing threat of fashion-based con-
sumption’ by emphasizing the utility of its clothing, rather than its style and
aesthetics, ‘boasting that the magazine features “men’s clothes that are men’s clothes –
not fashions”’ (New York Times 1933, cited in ibid.: 50). Esquire’s first editor, Arnold
Gingrich, carefully crafted style-oriented consumption as a ‘masculine’ practice ‘by
including not only fashion content but also pin-up girls, lewd cartoons, literary sto-
ries by the likes of Ernest Hemingway that excluded or sexualized women, articles
and imagery that emphasized rugged activities such as sports and hunting’ (ibid.: 51).
In the same ways as The Economist today impersonates the abstract, masculine tones
of global finance in its efforts to exert an authoritative voice, the editorial voice
chosen by Esquire in the 1930s and 1940s imitated ‘barroom banter between tough
guys’ throughout the magazine’s efforts to self-portray as the choice of rugged, red-
blooded manliness (Pendergast, cited in ibid.).
Significantly, misogyny was central to the magazine’s character, with aspects of
domesticity otherwise fatally associated with housewifery reappropriated as manly
pursuits. Women were thus depicted ‘as lacking taste and skills in home décor’, or
men as better drink-mixers and cooks (Draper 2012: 52). ‘This editorial strategy
established Esquire as a space of “appropriate” heterosexual masculinity rooted in
misogyny as well as homophobia, giving permission to straight readers to freely
conceive of themselves as tasteful consumers’ (ibid.).
The arrival of Playboy in the 1950s further sedimented the heteronormativity of
the genre of men’s lifestyle. Using ‘sexualized images of the female form and other
heterosexual signifiers to protect its readers against accusations of homosexuality’
(Draper 2012: 54), Playboy also promoted a more hedonistic model of masculinity
that frequently sought to challenge the staticness of the breadwinning ethos that had
‘found new footing in the postwar emergence of a new middle class’ (ibid.: 55).
Hugh Hefner’s editorial skills sought to cast the playboy ‘as an embodiment of
masculinity marked by individualism, youthful consumption, and the appreciation
of women’, escaping the shackles of domestic slavery through escapades represented
as virulently heterosexual (should the observer mistakenly think the Playboy man
was escaping marriage because he was a little bit ‘queer’) (ibid.).
During the 1980s, feminist advances and industrial changes that enabled the
growing influence of the consumer sphere engaged, Draper suggests, a ‘gendered
media script’ in the UK and USA that postulated men as ‘more attentive to
women, fatherly, narcissistic, stylish, and consumption-driven’ (2012: 60). As
increasing numbers of women entered the workforce, men were told they needed
to keep up to look as good. The ‘New Man’ was created as ‘a particular coding of
masculinity’ to draw men into consumer culture, while also counteracting the
‘female threat’ that was disadvantaging men in the style and beauty stakes (ibid.:
61). Men needed help to navigate the changes caused by second-wave feminism
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 153

and a ‘man’s interest in fashion was no longer an indication that he was gay’, rather
that ‘it had become a necessity for him in order to remain competitive in the
corporate world’ (ibid.: 62).
Since the industry assumed that gay men would read men’s magazines no
matter who they were marketed at, very little attention was paid to gay audiences
in the 1980s. The threat of the lavender whiff has not, of course, been vanquished,
and anxieties about how to address heterosexual men without losing the appeal of
gay audiences have exercised the advertising industry. A concern that the 1980s
‘New Man’, with his emotional availability and domestic capacity, was a wimpy,
feminized incarnation that emasculated ‘real’ men emerged in the 1990s.
‘Anxieties about how to address heterosexual men’ at this point were resolved,
Gill argues, ‘in two ways’ (Gill 2007: 207). First, through the adoption of a ‘laddish’
tone, male editors and journalists were able to address readers as ‘mates’, while,
second, ‘an almost hysterical emphasis on women’s bodies and heterosexual sex’,
when ‘juxtaposed alongside avowedly homoerotic photographs’, supposedly
‘allowed magazines to appeal directly to a gay audience, while still defensively
asserting the heterosexuality of their text’ (ibid.).
The ‘New Lad’ phenomenon, embodied perhaps most clearly in magazines
such as Loaded (1994–), FHM (1995–), Maxim (1995–2009) and Stuff (1996–),
responded specifically, and dismissively, to the supposedly fashionable, vain and
sensitive-to-women ‘New Man’ of the 1980s with the gendered script of ‘a more
boorish, misogynistic man less invested in attending to his appearance than in
“authentically” male interests such as cars, sports, beer, and electronic gadgets’
(Draper 2012: 79). Thus, although the style press has, in the twentieth century,
pioneered ‘radically new ways of representing masculinity’, according both to Gill
(2007) and Draper (2012), homophobic anxieties remain pronounced.
Feminism’s role herein is clearly rarely conceived of as positive as far as the
media’s script for masculinity has developed in the late twentieth century and
beyond, particularly in relation to the rise of ‘lad culture’. Rather, feminism has
become an important player in the media’s reflection (and, in many instances,
creation) of anxiety around heterosexual masculinity and, in the late twentieth
century and beyond, the media finds itself frequently reflecting on feminism’s
impact(s) on men. As Whelehan argues, a classic ‘explanation’ offered for increas-
ing reports of male depression and dispossession has been ‘that changes in women’s
lives and aspirations over the past thirty years have offered new identities for
women, but precious little for men’ (2000: 113). What such claims conceal, thinly,
is that women’s economic productivity is threatening: to men’s breadwinner status
and economic supremacy, but also to the media industry’s male-dominated canons
of power. In conjunction with constant characterizations of feminists as whiney,
bra-burning, man-haters (as noted above), ‘politically correct’ feminist concerns
have been easily derided, and dismissed, with the explosion of lad culture. Reliant
on postmodern ‘irony’, the use of naked or nearly naked women as adornments,
crass humour and a juvenile tone, lad culture has contributed ample ammunition
to the antifeminist canon.
154 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Interestingly, lad’s magazines became, to a certain extent, victims of their own

success: although upscale men’s magazines (such as GQ and Esquire) could not
compete in terms of sales, ‘low brow’ lad’s magazines (such as Maxim, which labels
itself ‘the ultimate guy’s guide’) found themselves unable to attract the same type
of fashion advertising and certainly could not command the same advertising rates
(Draper 2012: 83). Luxury advertisers ‘considered the lad readerships to be lowbrow’,
or ‘nobrow’, and ‘thus undesirable’, seeking instead a classier, more intellectual
and demanding ‘psychographic’ (ibid.). In 2003, Wal-Mart banned sales of Maxim,
Stuff and FHM, under pressure from Christian and some consumer groups to stop
carrying the magazines. The effect, Draper argues, ‘was more symbolic of the
slowing enthusiasm for lad magazines’ than an economic breaking point, since
‘lad’ titles were already experiencing a downward trend (ibid.).
While magazines, generally, have struggled to gain the sales in the twenty-first
century they experienced in their 1980s/early 1990s heyday, we should be wary
of dismissing the magazine as a thing of the past. Guardian writer Reynolds notes
that The Economist and men’s upmarket lifestyle magazines as GQ and Esquire ‘are
among those titles leading the digital charge’, according to figures released by the
Professional Publishers Association (PPA) (Reynolds 2013). Men’s Health comes in
third with digital sales of 12,081 in the UK, down 1 per cent in 2013, while GQ,
‘which sold a monthly average of 12,231 copies digitally’, is up 27 per cent on the
year. In the UK, The Economist (which we know prefers to call itself a newspaper)
performs strongly digitally; its sales rose a substantial 43 per cent in 2013 (ibid.).
Concerns that men are in a constant state of potential emasculation remain,
however, clearly evident across contemporary popular culture sites, so much so, it
seems, that in Australia a Liberal Member of Parliament deemed it acceptable to
publically proclaim that the mining industry is being ‘pussy whipped’ by former
Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The post-2003 re-emergence of an upscale, fashion-
focused character to men’s lifestyle magazines, the rise of ‘metrosexuality’ and the
high visibility of gay culture from the 1990s onwards has resulted in ‘a general shift
away from overt homophobia particularly since the middle of the 1990s’ (Draper
2012: 86). This is less the case, however, for sexism, where the eroticized display
of the nearly (or actually naked) female form remains routine throughout men’s
magazines. In GQ, for example, semi-naked women jostle for space among the
high-end designer ads, a ‘Beach Bag Grooming Essentials’ section and a brief
survey of the pros and cons of Victoria’s Secret versus Agent Provocateur models
(see GQ 2014). Agent Provocateur models win because they are ‘naughtier’.
‘There’s something seductively confident about a woman reliving her favourite
Sharon Stone moments from Basic Instinct’, suggests GQ.

Tacit antifeminism (5): Why the media promotes

‘enlightened sexism’
Feminism has had many attempts made on her life, but the latest is to shove
the hoary old dame into retirement by telling her she’s been so successful,
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 155

her services are no longer required. Apparently, women have achieved such
completely equal status, it’s safe to go back to celebrating our ‘femininity’
and our sexiness, source of the new empowerment.
(Souter 2010: 23)
Thank God girls and women can now turn their backs on stick-in-the-
mud, curdled feminism and act dumb in string bikinis to attract guys. In fact,
now that women allegedly have the same sexual freedom as men, they actually
prefer to be sex objects because it’s liberating. According to enlightened sex-
ism, women today have a choice between feminism and antifeminism, and
they just naturally and happily choose the latter because, well, antifeminism
has become cool, even hip. Rejecting feminism and buying into enlightened
sexism allows young women in particular to be ‘one of the guys.’ Indeed,
enlightened sexism is meant to be making patriarchy pleasurable for women.
(Douglas 2010: 12)

Douglas’s 2010 book, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism, documents how, since the
early 1990s, the ‘postfeminist’ media has been selling women the lie that their (and
feminism’s) battles have been won. Douglas argues that the media has created
‘fantasies of power’ for women to which their actual lives barely correspond but
that are powerful enough to reproduce the false assumption that there remains no
urgency to feminist politics (2010: 1–9).
Douglas probably would not argue that enlightened sexism is tacit antifeminism,
since, for her, enlightened sexism is an outright repudiation of feminism, the kind
of ‘good, old-fashioned, grade-A sexism that reinforces good, old-fashioned,
A-grade patriarchy’, but with a slightly better disguise (Manolo Blahniks and an
Ipex bra) (2010: 10), but I position her argument here, as a form of tacit antifem-
inism, for the ways in which it is possible for popular culture and media artefacts
to be superficially empowering while promoting an antifeminist agenda.
On the one hand, Douglas argues, ‘embedded feminism’ has become a cultural
force to be reckoned with. ‘Feminism is no longer “outside” of the media as it was
in 1970’ and ‘feminist gains, attitudes, and achievements are woven into our cultural
fabric’ (2010: 9). On the other, enlightened sexism responds to ‘the perceived
threat of a new gender regime’ (in which women stand up for themselves and may
even occupy positions of greater power than men) by insisting ‘that women have
made plenty of progress because of feminism’ so that it is now okay, ‘even amusing,
to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women’ (ibid.). Moreover,

[E]nlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s

calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they
gain and enjoy true power – power that is fun, that men will not resent, and
indeed will embrace. True power here has nothing to do with economic
independence or professional achievement: it has to do with getting men to
lust after you and women to envy you.
(Douglas 2010: 9–10)
156 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Hence, Douglas argues, the popularity of the Pussycat Dolls, or TV shows such as
The Bachelor, or Kate Moss on all fours of the January/February 2014, 60th anni-
versary edition of Playboy. ‘Because women are now “equal” and the battle is over
and won’, Douglas argues, ‘we are now free to embrace things we used to see as
sexist, including hypergirliness. In fact, this is supposed to be a relief’ (2010: 12).
The components of enlightened sexism, Douglas argues, are produced week in
and week out by the media, and include ‘anxiety about female achievement’, a
‘renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies and faces’, the
‘dual exploitation and punishment of female sexuality’, the ‘dividing of women
against each other by age, race, and class’ and ‘rampant branding and consumerism’
(2010: 10). Importantly, enlightened sexism is ‘feminist in its outward appearance’,
telling women that they have the power to be anything they want, acting dumb
in string bikinis to attract men because this is their choice (ibid.: 10). It is, however,
‘sexist in its intent’, ‘making patriarchy pleasurable for women’ and supporting
women’s equality, but making sure no feminist goals are pushed (ibid.). Since
equality might lead to ‘sameness’, girls and women need to be constantly reminded
that they ‘are still fundamentally female, and so must be emphatically feminine’
and so ‘enlightened sexism takes the gains of the women’s movement as a given’
and uses them ‘as permission to resurrect retrograde images of girls and women as
sex objects, bimbos, and hootchie mamas still defined by their appearance and
their biological destiny’ (ibid.: 10).

Today, we once again have what Betty Friedan famously called ‘a problem
with no name.’ Millions of young women – the girl power generation – have
been told that they can do or be anything, yet they also believe their most
important task is to be slim, ‘hot,’ and non-threatening to men. Once they
get out in the work force, though, they learn that there still is pay discrimina-
tion, inflexible work places, women slotted into low paying, dead end jobs
more often than men and a glass ceiling in so many lines of work.
(Douglas 2011)

Overt feminism (1): Young women are interested in

and actually practice feminism
If inequality between men and women is structural, a web of discrimination
in which the dearth of women in politics intersects with the portrayal of
women in pornography, which intersects with the tendency for women to
be paid less than men, the depiction of women as obsessed with shoes, the
likelihood that female plaintiffs will be disbelieved in rape cases, the attempts
to undermine women’s abortion rights; if the situation of women in Britain has
an impact on women in France, the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, then which threads do we pull to make the most impact in
bringing the whole web down?
(Cochrane 2010)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 157

Cochrane notes how, when scholar Catherine Redfern started the feminist website
The F Word (in 2001), she felt that ‘there was a general perception that young
women weren’t interested, and that the movement was therefore gasping its last’
(quoted in 2010). In terms of my own academic environment and practices, I found
when I began my career teaching in Australian universities a lack of overtly feminist
students. Between 2007 and 2012, there seemed among my student cohort a
pronounced disinterest in, even active hostility towards, feminism. This was one of
the reasons that I began this book. I could not understand why young Australians
were not more engaged. Even the more obviously feminist responses to the survey
conducted for this research maintain a certain critical distance between the respond-
ent and ‘feminism’.

[What comes to mind when I think of a feminist?] In a stereotypical way,

initial images are of the feminists who engaged in protests of the 60s and 70s,
but deeper thought brings to mind women who truly excel at what they do
and portray the best of the female gender.
(Survey respondent, Australian female, age 18–24)
[When I think of a feminist], I think of a whole bunch of different women –
stay at home mums, businesswomen, female students. Just ordinary people.
(Survey respondent, British male, age 45–54)
[I think of a feminist as someone who is] strong-willed [and] ambitious.
(Survey respondent, Australian female, age 18–24)

Despite, however, teaching the same courses in the same Australian university,
the last couple of years of teaching have, strangely, offered different sorts of
students engagements with feminism. I have not been able to put my finger
exactly on it, but I have noticed a sea change in qualitative student engagement
with feminism in the areas in which I teach, International Political Economy and
International Relations. Students have been more vociferous in voicing their
horror at, for example, women dying in Bangladeshi sweat shops in ways they
were not a couple of years ago.
My students’ more open embrace of feminism might have been a result of
Julia Gillard’s tenure as Prime Minister of Australia, and the active, heavily
mediated and often heated discussions around sexism in Australian politics (and
culture) that followed her famous ‘misogyny speech’ (made to Parliament on 9
October 2012). These discussions have revealed an anger, among a wide cohort
(of female and male students), at the ways in which Australian politics remains
invariably dependent on unimaginative gender and sexual stereotypes, inequali-
ties and patterns of discrimination and exploitation. Gillard’s speech made global
headlines and the spotlight it shone on the obstacles Australian women continue
to face, in public, professional and personal life, was acute. My female and male
students were, reasonably enough, upset that this should be the image of their
country that the world beheld and doubtless felt frustrated that a reality not of
158 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

their own making had commandeered so much public attention. Beyond the
unease that students may have felt personally, the debates that flourished in the
wake of Gillard’s speech were also surprisingly intelligent in a media landscape
more often dominated by polarized reporting. Informed journalism was mixed
with intellectual commentary in a way that allowed the public in Australia to
engage meaningfully with questions that had not really been on the agenda for
some time, relatively unencumbered by the usual tabloid nonsense (although
there was, of course, plenty of this).
Young Australian women have been active in the women’s movement for
as long as feminism has been alive and kicking in Australia and young Australian
women’s activism remains dynamic (for example, in indigenous politics, health
and social protection, human rights, refugee, LGBTI, peace and democracy
regimes, among others). As Maddison describes, however, this activism has
been ‘less visible to the general public than the feminist activism of previous
generations’ (2004: 236). During the 1990s, media attention on the ‘I’m not a
feminist, but …’ of young women’s self-articulations overshadowed the ‘pres-
ence and visibility’ of the Australian women’s movement (ibid.: 243). While
young women continue to work to maintain a political space for feminist activ-
ism in Australia (ibid.: 249), the Australian media has chosen (largely) to ignore
them and their efforts.
My survey asked all respondents (female and male)7 to state whether they agreed
or disagreed that feminism is accessible to young women in the twenty-first century
(Survey Question 16. For the full content of the survey, see Appendix A); 67 per cent
of female respondents agreed, while 54 per cent of male respondents agreed.
Allowances for age, however, reveal interesting differences in response here.
The only age group of respondents more convinced of feminism’s accessibility
than the survey’s youngest respondent group was the ‘65 or older’ group (Table 5.2).
The most cynical group of the survey’s respondents were from my own age group
(at the time), the 25–34-year-old group (which covers those born between 1976 and
1985). Residency appeared to have little impact on respondents’ views here, with
between 64 and 67 per cent of Australian, British and US residents agreeing that
feminism is accessible to young women in the twenty-first century and 71 per cent
of those who classified as ‘other’ in terms of residency agreeing.

TABLE 5.2 Survey Question 16, ‘Feminism is Accessible to Young Women in the 21st
Century’ (age)

Age Percentage agree

18–24 69
25–34 58
35–44 67
45–54 63
55–64 69
65 or older 88
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 159

Perhaps the most interesting diversity of opinion in Question 16 appeared

when adjusting for level of education, with every level of education agreeing in
the majority that feminism is accessible to young women in the twenty-first century,
except those with doctoral degrees (Table 5.3).
In a response to a 2011 article by Jayson in USA Today, which argued that, for
‘a movement so vocal when it began’, feminism remains ‘largely under the radar
of most younger Americans today, except maybe from gender studies classes or
history books’ ( Jayson 2011), young feminist activists Herold and Knox write:

Contrary to the article’s claims, we know our movement’s history, and we are
carrying it into the future. We don’t just identify with feminism; we live it
day to day. We fight for reproductive, economic, racial and social justice
online, in the streets, and side by side with our friends and family members.
We’re questioning, bending and breaking down social norms, including
sexuality, gender, age, class and race. We are abortion clinic escorts, online
organizers, rape crisis center volunteers, radical journalists and sometimes
even presidents of NOW [National Organization for Women] chapters.
(Herold and Knox 2011, quoted in USA Today 2011)

Authors such as Walby, Hawkesworth, Valenti, Power, Walter, Aune and Redfern
are convinced of feminism’s vibrancy among young women. They are also able to
offer evidence for their arguments, including young women’s involvement in politi-
cal and legal battles over reproductive rights, sexuality, sexual violence, gender gaps,
and so on. Feminism is, Aune and Redfern argue, as relevant as ever and ‘growing
exponentially’ (2010: ix). Mackay argues that ‘a so-called “resurgence” of feminist
activism in the UK is currently being reported by journalists, commentators and aca-
demics, with young women seemingly at the fore’ (2011: 152). New organizations,
festivals, websites and networking groups are constantly emerging, but people are not
hearing about them, the authors argue; in part because of constant comparisons to a
‘golden age’ of feminism in the 1970s but also because ‘established feminists’ are not
recognizing or are dismissing younger feminists’ work (Aune and Redfern 2010:
10–11). It does not help, Aune and Redfern argue, that the ‘mainstream media’ is so
prone to pronouncements of feminism’s ‘death’ or that ‘pro-feminist commentators’
seem to accept the ‘idea of feminism’s decline unquestioningly’ (ibid.: 1–2).

TABLE 5.3 Survey Question 16, ‘Feminism is Accessible to Young Women in the 21st
Century’ (education)

Education Percentage agree

High school 74
Diploma/certificate 86
Bachelor’s 59
Postgraduate degree 82
Doctoral degree 49
Other 50
160 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Despite, as noted in Chapter 4, the prevalence of ‘stereotype threat’ and the

ambivalence that people show in their engagements with ‘big f ’ feminism, in
the survey for this research, 41 per cent answered the question ‘I would
describe myself as a feminist’ in the affirmative (Survey Question 7). ‘Considering
all the negative publicity feminism gets’, it is ‘incredibly encouraging’ that a
quarter of British women are happy to describe themselves as feminists, Aune
and Redfern contend (2010: 5). Surveys show ‘consistently’ that ‘most people
have feminist attitudes’ in the UK, whether they would describe themselves as
‘feminists’ or not (ibid.: 4). I would certainly argue that, although it is worth
noting the extent to which people feel comfortable in adopting the ‘big f ’
moniker, the type of politics that people espouse is at least as interesting as their
use of the self-description ‘feminist’.

What’s heartening is that feminism [seems] to be reaching beyond the ivory

towers of academe to a broad range of women. Redfern points out that there
have recently been feminist articles in Elle and Company magazines, while
Walter says she was surprised to see pieces debating the importance of
feminism in The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph this year [2010]. Power
says that, even just a year and a half ago, when she wrote One Dimensional
Woman ‘the situation didn’t seem remotely as optimistic, but so much has
been happening, and there just seems to be a mainstream acceptance that
feminism’s still around, that it’s not finished, it’s not uncool, and it’s not
depressing. It suddenly has a contemporary sheen that makes it exciting,
which wasn’t really true in the 80s or 90s at all.’
(Cochrane 2010)

This ‘suddenly’ exciting sheen to feminism has been paralleled in media reports that
have declared that ‘2013 was when feminism hit the mainstream’ (Turner 2014).
Overt discussions of feminism have been quite prevalent, I would argue, across
media outlets since the 1970s, particularly throughout the ‘death of feminism’
heyday of the 1990s. Over the last couple of years, however, these discussions have
assumed a more reflective and sympathetic tone, perhaps propelled by a blogosphere
unafraid to root out sexism and misogynist injustice. In 2013, Turner argues, challe-
nges to ‘media images’, ‘retrograde attitudes’, and ‘the thoughtless words of men’
were not limited to only ‘a few voices’ and a ‘handful of columnists’; these challenges
numbered in their ‘thousands’ (ibid.).

The shrugged indifference into which lads’ mags were launched two decades
ago – hey, they’re harmless fun – was over.Women [in 2013] were emboldened
and angry. And not just harridans like me, who recall the women’s groups and
feminist campaigns of the early ’80s. […] In 2010, I talked to a group of
educated, thoughtful, hip young women; not one called herself a feminist.
Puh-lease! That was something your mum used to be. Not any more.
(Turner 2014)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 161

Turner suggests that the tide changed with the publication of Caitlin Moran’s
book, How to be a Woman, a ‘feminist work that wasn’t academic or self-consciously
clever but warm, inclusive’ and ‘welcoming, even to men’ (Turner 2014). For
Turner, Moran ‘helped redefine feminism for a generation who didn’t want it to
preclude fun or fashion or having a boyfriend’ (ibid.). This perhaps credits Moran
with too much effect. 2013, in Australia at least, was a year of woeful political com-
mentary and backsliding, a post-‘Misogyny Speech’ landscape in which it was no
longer acceptable for a future Prime Minister to bluster his way through an
election describing female candidates as having ‘sex appeal’. As Turner also points
out, Ariel Castor’s imprisonment and torture of three women in Cleveland, Ohio,
the gang rape and murder on a New Delhi bus in December 2012 of Jyoti Singh8
and the sexual abuse scandals that have tarnished once golden British and
Australian household names have fuelled young (as well as older) women’s anger
and emboldened these women to speak up (ibid.). US comedian and talk show
host Jon Stewart’s obvious awe in the presence of Malala Yousafzai was well-
publicized and the media keen to relay her message to educate girls despite the
repressions of political regimes. Lena Dunham’s Girls, despite openly and non-
ironically making various references to the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’, has
been enormously successful and Dunham’s overtly feminist profile has been high
across popular culture sources. Miley Cyrus has stated that ‘most music is sexist’
and Beyoncé has sampled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech on feminism. In
2013 the BBC released The Fall, featuring a female lead both careerist and likable
in Stella Gibson, a woman who is impressive, complex and capable of actively
advancing the careers of her female colleagues. Importantly, Stella never appears
overcome, pathetic or unstable in the face of her romantic entanglements.

Women saying ‘I’m not a feminist’ is my greatest pet peeve. Do you believe
that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you
believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that
women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you’re a feminist.
People think there is something taboo about speaking up for feminism. I
know for a long time that I was embarrassed to call out misogyny because I
was then going to be that complaining girl who can’t let it go. But the fact
is, we can’t let it go – not until we feel like we have been heard.
(Lena Dunham, quoted in Mulkerrins 2013)

When Joseph Gordon-Levitt, without any apparent hint of self-consciousness,

asked ‘who wouldn’t be a feminist?’ on Ellen in January 2014 the blogosphere,
twitter and Facebook erupted in universal applause.
The shame and stigma young women, and men, have felt self-articulating as openly
feminist seems, at this moment in time, less tangible (see also Figure 5.4). This is not
to say that the scales will not once again tip towards the backlash that, every now and
then, insists on rearing its ugly head, or that feminist campaigning has won in, to bor-
row Turner’s words, ‘a narcissistic age of selfies and hyper-grooming’. Women who
162 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

FIGURE 5.4 ‘What is Feminism?’

Source: RainbowWish 2008.

put their voices, and faces, to public campaigns continue to risk a gamut of misogynist
abuse and threats of violence.9 The Feminine Mystique (first published in 1963) and The
Female Eunuch (1970) remain, I would argue, as relevant today in their chastisement of
sexist repression and hierarchy as ever. It has become somewhat ‘fashionable’ again to
campaign (and to be seen campaigning), perhaps because of the financial crisis, the
visibility of popular protest and the public vilification of government-led ‘austerity’.
Social media is, these days, so ‘swift and limber’ that it has the capacity to immediately
and publically challenge any perceived outrage. ‘Stalled in the trenches for a decade’,
feminism has, Turner argues, ‘moved forward, reclaiming long-lost public space and
political ground’ (2014). ‘The idea of feminism is completely natural’, suggests singer
Lorde: it ‘shouldn’t even be something that people find mildly surprising. It’s just part
of being a girl’ (2014, speaking to Rookie Magazine).
Given that there is, then, a relatively strong argument for the existent, perhaps
increasing, vibrancy of feminism, it is worth asking what feminism’s strongest
variants might currently be.

Overt feminism (2): The enduring strength(s) of

liberal feminism(s)
Halley’s mind is, for one, settled on the question of what feminism’s strongest
variants might, at the moment, be. For Halley, ‘every currently articulable feminist
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 163

position is liberal in some way’, although ‘some aspire more than others to a
critical relationship to their own inevitable importation of liberal tenets’ (2006: 79).
Fudge, in a piece for Bitch Magazine, argues this point also, describing liberal
feminism as what everyone else would call ‘just plain feminism’ (2005).
I would argue that Halley and Fudge are probably right in terms of the praxes
of feminism, and that movements for equality and social rights across the globe
(varying according to locality and regional content) form the mainstay of most, if
not all, contemporary feminist activism. Theoretically, however, the case is less
clear. Radical, socialist, ‘third wave’, antiracist and postcolonial feminisms are far
less attached to liberal precepts and, across the academy at least, feminist commit-
ments are more varied and variable than Halley articulates (Box 5.1).

BOX 5.1 ‘MY FEMINISM’

My feminism doesn’t judge women based on how many men, or women,

they’ve slept with.
My feminism doesn’t judge women based on how many men, or women,
they’ve dated.
My feminism doesn’t judge women based on whether they choose to have
sex, abstain from sex, or dislike sex entirely.
My feminism doesn’t attack a woman who has chosen stereotypical ‘femi-
nine’ career.
My feminism doesn’t tell women they’re wrong if they like to be treated like
a princess.
My feminism doesn’t tell anyone that their sexual practices are ‘humiliating’
or ‘misogynistic’. If you like the kind of sex you’re having, and it’s consensual,
my feminism supports it.
My feminism doesn’t berate women for acting feminine. It doesn’t tell
women they have to act masculine or independent in order to be a feminist.
My feminism laughs in the face of misandry, and tells men to accept what’s
coming to them for once.
My feminism doesn’t tell anyone that it’s wrong or right to shave your legs,
arms, pits, face, or anything else.
My feminism is the belief that women should be treated as equals, and
should be able to do what they want.
My feminism doesn’t care if you choose to be feminine or masculine, as long
as it is your choice, and no one else.

(This post applies to all women. Cis, trans*, and everything else. If you identify
as female, even partially, even temporarily, this post is for you, and I love you. j)
MY feminism.
(Navi Dean 2010)
164 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Liberal feminism remains feminism’s most obviously powerful embodiment

because it has arguably had the most impact (on hearts, minds and bodies), due
largely to its relationship with the mechanisms and practices of national and inter-
national governance. Liberal feminist tenets are pivotal in understanding the
power of ‘governance feminism’ and feminism has been implemented widely in
national governments, international governance and through inter and non-
governmental organizations (as noted in Chapter 4).
In terms of ideas about women, society and human relationships, liberal femi-
nism has perhaps been most significant for its focus on several key tropes. These
form the foundation of a number of feminist networks, organizations, campaigns
and activities, including campaigns and organizations (across the globe) for social
justice, bodily integrity, political rights and representation, reproductive rights,
rights to equal education, to working opportunities and to contraception. These
tropes are: equality; freedom of choice and expression; self-ownership; independ-
ence; empowerment; feminine subordination; justice; and social transformation
(specifically through policy reform projects designed to remedy women’s disad-
vantage). The centrality of (private) ownership within liberalism, and thus its
philosophical derivatives, lends liberal feminism its focus on rights and property,
both of which are particularly important in understanding liberal feminism’s con-
ceptualization of the female body and the sanctity of a woman’s capacity to exert
control over that body. The focus on equality, wherein debates of course exist
around whether the state is indeed an appropriate vehicle for promoting the best
life for women, has produced a faith in the centrality of public policy, specifically
policy reforms that negate women’s disadvantage.

The idea of being a feminist–so many women have come to this idea of it
being anti-male and not able to connect with the opposite sex–but what
feminism is about is equality and human rights. For me that is just an
essential part of my identity. I hope [Girls] contributes to a continuance of
feminist dialogue.
(Lena Dunham, quoted in Ruiz 2013)

For a number of feminists the proximity between feminism and liberal mecha-
nisms of governance has become increasingly problematic, for feminist projects
themselves and also for the different types of women, and men, who are excluded
from participating in contemporary hierarchies of power and governance.
Feminism is not only evident, Halley argues, in the formal mechanisms of state
and legislature, but in everyday processes and practices, including from employers,
‘schools, healthcare institutions, and a whole range of entities, often formally
“private”’ (2006: 21). Feminism’s reach, she argues, is substantial, and feminism,
Halley goes so far to say, has ‘substantial parts’ of everyday processes and practices
‘under its control’ (ibid.). Halley notes that particularly across (domestic) US
policy regimes, liberal feminism dictates the governance of areas such as child
sexual abuse, pornography, sexual harassment, sexual violence and family law
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 165

(Halley 2006: 21). Fraser worries that the ‘dream of women’s emancipation’ has
been yoked ‘to the engine of capital accumulation’ (2013). Elias offers an analysis
of what may get erased from the agenda when feminism is ‘neoliberalized’ and
gender equality rendered compatible with market-led forms of economic growth
(2013) (see Chapter 4).
For some feminists, this is to be expected. The Feminist Project that has
become powerful in contemporary domestic and world politics cannot but be
touched by the hierarchies of power and authority it works with and for in the
name of legislating rights and equalities. As Prügl argues, successful governance
feminism strategies have had to make gender available for governmental ends in
ways that advance feminist agendas ambiguously (2011: 84).
In terms of the media as message and messenger, then, liberal feminism remains
the predominant form of feminism in popular culture today. ‘Celebrity feminism’,
however, constitutes possibly the most prevalent of feminism’s popular embodi-
ments, making it, in some sense, liberal feminism’s vessel of choice. Feminists use
social media to offer a variety of campaigns based, at some level, on the protection
and promulgation of rights-based discourse. The visual power of celebrity endorse-
ments of feminism, on top of the hive of activity that is feminism within social
media, is considerable. The reproduction of celebrity imagery and the credibility that
celebrity endorsements bring to feminism have come, I argue, to constitute and
shape many of our responses to feminism. Celebrity feminism is, in many ways,
feminism today, with the principles of liberal feminism at its core.

Overt feminism (3): The (increasing) popularity of

celebrity feminism
I do call myself a feminist, absolutely. It’s worth paying attention to the roles
that are dictated to us and [realizing] that we don’t have to fit into those roles,
we can be anybody we want to be.
( Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen, 9 January 2014)
I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. It’s
always shocking when people question whether [Girls is] a feminist show.
How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isn’t
a dirty word. It’s not like we’re a deranged group who think women should
take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from
the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have.
(Lena Dunham, speaking to Playboy magazine, quoted in Beck 2013)
I’m a feminist because I believe in women […]. It’s a heavy word, feminism,
but it’s not one I think we should run from. I’m proud to be a feminist.
(Sheryl Sandberg, quoted in Ruiz 2013)

The term ‘celebrity feminsm’ refers to a ‘welter of contradictory discourses related

to corporate populism, promotional culture, the cult of the celebrity, commodity
feminism, postfordism, corporeal discipline, and individualism’, each of which
166 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

address women, Cole and Hribar argue, as consumers (1995, summarized in

MacKay 2005: 83). Celebrity feminism has been much criticized by feminist social
commentators and maligned for its identification with accumulation (particularly the
conspicuous consumption of material goods). Sharing features with liberal femi-
nism’s prioritization of ownership and property rights, celebrity feminism often
specifically invokes the romanticization of consumption and material accumula-
tion. As such, celebrity feminism (as in, for example, Sex in the City and its
obsession with the mantra of shopping-maketh-the-self ) is seen to constitute a
commercialized form of feminism, which offers a seductive, but problematic,
feminist (or what some may term ‘postfeminist’) narrative.
Celebrity feminism’s commercial, celebrity-endorsed narratives have, Levy
argues, offered not ‘the egalitarianism and satisfaction that was feminism’s initial
promise’ but have summoned ‘many of the corruptions of feminism’, including a
‘sexual marketplace’ that prioritizes endless self-questioning, acquisition and com-
modity fetishization (2006: 174–5). Based on representing the modern woman’s
self-worth through the commercial and consumption choices that she makes, this
kind of feminism tells women to seek empowerment through the freedom to
shop, which is for Levy and for McRobbie (2009), among others, clearly and
simply commercialism (and all its machinations, mechanisms and glossy advertising
strategies) reproducing itself.
Celebrity feminism (such as that espoused by Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres,
Geena Davis, Patrick Stewart, Joss Whedon et al.) is often viewed by its critics as
frivolous and ‘the ideologically suspect “other” of academic feminism’ (Hollows
2000, citing Wicke 1994: 199). Celebrity feminism’s critics, Hollows argues, have,
however, failed to recognize that ‘the energies of the celebrity imaginary are fuel-
ling feminist discourse and political activity as never before’ (ibid.). Oprah, for
example, although not promoted as a ‘feminist’ show, was inherently woman-
centred and often addressed the injustices at the heart of much feminist
campaigning (job discrimination, male violence, sexual abuse, and so on), creating
not only ‘a televisual space for a form of popular feminism, but one defined by
black feminism’ (Squire 1997 in ibid.).
The power of the celebrity voice and the importance of the interplay between
popular culture and celebrity figures should not be underestimated. The not
inconsiderable furore over BIC’s attempt to launch a pen ‘for her’ in 2012 shows,
for example, how quickly and widely feminist ideas and concerns can be articu-
lated and heard across mainstream media (BIC n.d.). The offending pens ‘escaped
notice for a while’, that is ‘until Margaret Hartmann from Jezebel heard about them
from a reader’ (Vinjamuri 2012). This lead to a number of women and men
contributing (some rather witty) reviews on Amazon.

FINALLY!
Someone has answered my gentle prayers and FINALLY designed a pen that
I can use all month long! I use it when I’m swimming, riding a horse,
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 167

walking on the beach and doing yoga. It’s comfortable, leak-proof, non-slip
and it makes me feel so feminine and pretty! Since I’ve begun using these
pens, men have found me more attractive and approachable. It has given me
soft skin and manageable hair and it has really given me the self-esteem I
needed to start a book club and flirt with the bag-boy at my local market.
My drawings of kittens and ponies have improved, and now that I’m writing
my last name hyphenated with Robert Pattinson’s last name, I really believe
he may someday marry me! I’m positively giddy. Those smart men in mar-
keting have come up with a pen that my lady parts can really identify with.
Where has this pen been all my life?
(Amazon Reviewer, cited in Lang 2013)

The popularity of the viral campaign was then captured by Ellen Degeneres on
her daily show, Ellen, in October 2012:

Women, we’ve made a lot of progress towards equality. We’re allowed to vote,
I think since 1982 now. We can wear pants, we can drive at night, all those
things have happened. And then I saw something that makes me think we
still have a ways to go. Well, it’s a new product from BIC, the pen company,
and they have a new line of pens called ‘BIC for Her’, and, this is totally real,
they’re pens just for ladies (I know you’re thinking ‘it’s about damn time,
where have our pens been?’). Can you believe this, we’ve been using man
pens all these years? Eughhh. And they come in both lady colours, pink and
purple, and they’re just like regular pens except they’re pink, so they cost
twice as much (that is absolutely true as well). The worst part is, they don’t
come with any instructions, so how do they expect us to learn to write with
them, you know? I was reading the back of the pack (well, I had a man read
the back of the package to me) and it said it’s designed to fit a woman’s hand
(this is all true, I’m not making any of this up). ‘Designed to fit a woman’s
hand’. What does that mean? So, when we’re taking down dictation for our
bosses we’ll feel comfortable and we’ll forget we’re not getting paid as much?
I mean, just think over the last 20 years, companies have spent millions of
dollars making pills that grow men’s hair and fix men’s sex lives, and now
ladies have a pen. We have, we’ve come a long way baby.
(Ellen, The Ellen Degeneres Show, October 2012, Warner Bros. Television)

Against the grain of mainstream media programming, famous, and popular, female
voices have achieved success promoting a feminist agenda, generally (but not only)
by being funny. The appeal of figures such as Ellen Degeneres, Amy Poehler,
Margaret Cho and Tina Fey has inveigled feminism into the mainstream quietly
but effectively in recent years. Lena Dunham’s Girls, although criticized for its lack
of ethnic diversity or class consciousness, has been much praised for its angsty,
honest view of young (white) women in Brooklyn, New York. Girls is a ‘superior
work of fictionalized anthropology’, according to Stuever in The Washington Post
168 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

(2012), that is ‘raw, audacious, nuanced and richly, often excruciatingly funny’,
according to Poniewozik in Time (2012).
One of my favourite plays on (and with) ‘celebrity feminism’ is the ‘Hey Girl’,
Feminist Ryan Gosling meme, which began as a blog by Danielle Henderson.
Henderson was, then, a ‘newly minted, academically frustrated graduate student
looking for an outlet’ (Henderson 2012). As she points out, there is ‘no way to tell
if Ryan Gosling is actually a feminist’: he has simply said a few nice things about his
mum and ex-girlfriends. Henderson was, however, overwhelmed with the response
to the website, which was ‘overwhelmingly positive’, especially from those ‘new to
feminism or feminist theory’ (ibid.). That Gosling has never publically disavowed his
supposed feminism, or the meme, is encouraging.
While researching types of feminism prevalent across popular culture, I have
been particularly struck by arguments around whether Buffy and The Hunger
Games’ Katniss are better role models to teenage girls than the, enormously popular,
Bella of the Twilight series. At the time, only the first Hunger Games movie had been
released and, although the first instalment set opening records in the USA, the
Twilight series had scaled such significant financial heights during its existence
(2008–12) that it was hard to measure the relative success of The Hunger Games.
Katniss, although popular, was perhaps not quite as widely adored as Bella. The
Hunger Games’ second instalment, Catching Fire, has since then opened to enormous
financial success (a domestic opening weekend of over US$158 million, compared
with Breaking Dawn: Part I’s $138 million).
In an article in The Atlantic, Berlatsky asks ‘if Bella fought Katniss, who would
win?’ and argues that commentators have overwhelmingly decided on the ‘stereo-
typically girly’ Bella getting stomped (2011a). This, Berlatsky argues, is because
‘even women and feminists (especially women and feminists?)’ are nervous about
being associated with anything ‘girly’ (ibid.). According to this logic, negative
reactions to Bella reveal a ‘relative discomfort with Bella’ that reflects ‘a larger
discomfort with femininity’ (ibid.). On the other hand, Katniss is ‘an extremely
competent, tomboyish young woman who is athletic, focused, responsible, and
able to take care of herself ’: (ibid.). She is ‘politically engaged’, ‘not especially
interested in boys’ and ‘doesn’t have sex, or even really think about sex for almost
the entire series’: Katniss is, in other words, ‘the ideal second-wave feminist
daughter; smart, fierce, independent, and sexually restrained’ (ibid.). While
‘Bella is in many ways stereotypically feminine (passive, focused on romance and
motherhood)’, Katniss ‘is in many ways stereotypically masculine (competent,
deadly, not focused on romance)’ (ibid.).
In comments directed at Berlatsky’s article and ‘popular feminist’ dislike of
Bella, Small notes that ‘a lot of popular feminism’ is not ‘very attentive to the his-
tory of cultural gendering’, wherein certain traits have been gendered ‘female’ and
others ‘male’, with ‘male traits’ generally portrayed as ‘better and more worth-
while’ (cited in Berlatsky 2011b). Preferencing ‘tomboys’ in popular culture shows
simply that the valuing of masculine traits remains prevalent, she argues, although
it is a difficult issue (ibid.). It is hard for most feminists (myself included) to
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 169

preference the clumsy, mopey and indecisive Bella over the much more obviously
self-composed Katniss. Buffy has the perpetual advantage of being well-written.
Small contends that ‘a lot of people seem to think that the point of feminism is
making “masculine” behavior acceptable for women’, or ‘separating the behavior
from the bodies of the people who perform the behavior and not judging women
who prefer those historically masculine traits’ (ibid.).

A lot of the distaste for Bella is genuine distaste for the historically ‘feminine’
categories and behaviors and values and aesthetics, but it’s generally expressed
without even the slightest recognition of how problematic and limiting – and
historically patriarchal – that attitude is. Part of the appeal of characters like
Katniss is that they challenge conventional gender without completely eradicat-
ing it. Part of the appeal of characters like Bella is that they subvert conventional
gender without really challenging it at all. […] Girl power is great – except
when it moves beyond allowing people with female bodies to behave any way
they like and becomes a new set of restrictive, normative, angry, prejudiced
norms that bully people with female bodies into behaving a certain way.
(Small 2011, cited in Berlatsky 2011b)

To be tempted, Small argues, by the seductiveness of ‘masculine’ characteristics and

to thus pretend that a woman’s ‘relationship to authority and strength and power and
violence is transformed’ just because she engages in them is not feminist at all (cited
in Berlatsky 2011b). Nor is ‘perpetuating biases and prejudices against historically
gendered-feminine traits’ desirable (ibid.). ‘A feminism that can’t make room for
Bella is a feminism that’s going to have a lot of trouble getting purchase with women
who like Bella, and that seems like a tremendous mistake to me’ (ibid.).

Overt feminism (4): ‘Riot grrrl’, sextremism and guerilla

feminisms
One of the main goals of riot grrrl within the third wave movement was to
make feminism cool again in the hopes that it would spur young girls to get
involved. By the late 80s feminism had faded from popular culture and been
laid to rest in the mausoleum of academic discourse.The only people still talk-
ing about it were intellectual types [whose] expressions had become far too
complicated and high-minded for the general public to understand or care
about. Riot grrrl brought real, everyday, down-to-earth, issues back into the
feminist spotlight and began to re-involve the people they affected.The punk/
DIY scene was the perfect way to attract young, angry women to an arena
where they could put the angst of teenage-girlhood to positive use in changing
the landscape of gendered culture in their communities and the larger world.
(Freeman 2014)

The riot grrrl movement is possibly most associated with an underground

subculture of punk rock magazines and bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile,
170 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

Huggy Bear and Team Dresch, who sought to create punk music focused on
representing women. Applied, inaccurately, to less political female alternative
rock acts as Babes in Toyland, Hole and PJ Harvey, riot grrrl had splintered by
the mid to late 1990s, with more radical voices concerned that their movement
had been co-opted by Spice Girls’ ‘girl power’ and/or any band with a woman
in it. Riot grrrl’s influences can be seen on performers such as Beth Ditto and
numerous internet fan sites and, infiltrating pop culture, Bagnato argues, ‘with
the creation of strong female characters in TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire
Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess’ (2013).
Riot grrrl’s ‘DIY’ ethic and focus on female empowerment is clearly visible in
the Russian band Pussy Riot (although they have yet to produce an album and
have no set number of members) and the Ukrainian ‘sextremist’ topless protest
group Femen, as is the punk yell-for-the-cause approach to activism. These two
groups have particularly captured global headlines in recent years, although, as
Vitchers notes (2013), many mainstream media commentaries have missed the
point and the context of their activisms, turning Femen, for example, ‘into a
spectacle’ without properly educating audiences ‘on the form of protest the
movement uses’ (ibid.).
Femen’s style of feminist activism is ‘a direct outgrowth of post-Soviet youth
movements’, which focuses on empowering young women ‘to become active
participants in Ukrainian civic society in order to change the status of women’s
rights in Ukraine’ (Vitchers 2013). The group, currently operating from exile in
Paris, has most directly targeted sex tourism, poverty, unequal access to job oppor-
tunities and higher education, and the lack of female participation and leadership
in Ukrainian government, using protest with bare breasts (‘the symbol of their
femaleness’) to ‘highlight their focus on issues affecting Ukrainian women and
culture’ (ibid.). Femen was also the subject of a not-terribly-flattering 2013
documentary, Ukraine is Not a Brothel, which reports that the Femen group was
masterminded in its early years by Victor Svyatski, ‘who supposedly hand-picked
the prettiest girls to front the organisation’ (MacNab 2014). The group’s leader,
23-year-old Inna Shevchenko, declares this an ‘out-of-date’ snapshot of the group,
which has since removed Svyatski (MacNab 2014).
Pussy Riot’s Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were, in December
2013, granted amnesty in what many believe is ‘the Kremlin’s attempt to soothe
criticism of Russia’s human rights record ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi
in February’ (Daily News 2013). Another member of the band, Yekaterina
Samutsevich, was released on a suspended sentence a few months after all three
had been found guilty of ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’ and were
sentenced to two years in prison for their performance at Moscow’s main cathedral
in March 2012 (ibid.).
Guerrilla feminism emerged as an anti-sexism stickering and graffiti campaign
(Figure 5.5) that developed into a Facebook group (https://www.facebook.
com/guerrillafeminism) and which also exhibits something of a punk, ‘hooligan’
FIGURE 5.5 Examples of guerrilla feminism.
Sources: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__0F6ZjAg9LU/TD5FToZMfqI/AAAAAAAAAIM/p_q7qojBZis/
s1600/feminist_revolution.JPG; http://www.wordsoverpixels.com/warning-reflections-in-this-mirror-
may-be-distorte/17226193f6cedc90e1bb046a369a0004.html
172 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

approach to social activism. The group debates sexism, advertising, pornography

and women’s bodies openly and, often, stridently. Guerrilla feminist work is
often witty, inspired and subversive, perhaps with a lighter touch than its feminist
cultural antecedents, such as riot grrrl (which has been frequently described as
‘angry’ and, according to Courtney Love in Spin magazine, October 2005,
doctrinaire and censorious). Guerrilla feminists are no less serious, however, in
their campaigning against sexism. Their Facebook page describes the movement
as ‘a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by
surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines’. Guerrilla feminism, the
group argues, ‘is not about violence’, it is about ‘utilizing the element of surprise’
(https://www.facebook.com/guerrillafeminism).

We paper/graffiti our cities with feminism, unbeknownst to the mainstream

community. This is not a one day activist endeavor – it’s everyday activism,
so that we may seep into the mainstream psyche; little by little. Even if this
never happens, we’re still showing our existence. We’re creating visibility.
(https://www.facebook.com/guerrillafeminism. See also http://
guerrillafeminism.tumblr.com/about)

Tacit feminism: Supportive but not self-professed

Only one type of feminism is discussed here under the ‘tacit’ category, a category
that I found the hardest to populate since being secretly supportive of feminism
necessarily lends itself to secrecy. Anyone, or any project, that does not self-
describe as feminist but that supports ‘feminist’ goals might be included here, as
also those who admire ‘strong’ female characters and role models but who may be
ambivalent about ‘big f ’ feminism or feel that describing themselves as feminist
may be perceived negatively. There are, of course, other reasons for ambivalence
around feminism and important challenges to the whiteness and elitism behind
(some) dominant feminist projects have not, for many, yet been adequately
addressed. In Australia, as feminists questioned women’s roles and began to
campaign for women’s rights, voice and liberation, children of Australian
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families were being forcibly removed from
their families by Australian Federal and State government agencies and church
missions. It would not be much of stretch to imagine how, for some, feminism is
associated with the complicity of the white settler government’s brutalization of the
indigenous population.
The survey conducted for this research counted 8 per cent of responses to the
statement ‘I would describe myself as a feminist’ (Survey Question 7) as ‘not
sure’. This suggests a certain unease with self-identifying as feminist for a number
of survey respondents. One respondent ticked the ‘other’ box to this question,
stating that while they ‘believe in equity for everyone, regardless of gender’, as
an Aboriginal woman, they did not feel ‘that feminism has a place’ for them
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 173

(Australian female, 45–54 years old). Another stated that, while they do not
‘identify as a feminist’, they ‘do agree with some of the more contemporary
feminist theories/politics’ (Australian male, 35–44 years old). Such sentiments
might, I would suggest, create the space for future feminist successes without
labouring under the false impression that ‘woman’ or ‘feminism’ is necessarily a
meaningful or uniform category. As Walter writes, many women ‘who might
not identify with any particular organization are still being moved to take action
when they see something that has an impact on their lives’ (2010: 236).
‘Unplanned’ anger can often produce real social change.

I wouldn’t say [I’m a] feminist, that’s too strong. I think when people hear
‘feminist’, it’s just like, ‘Get out of my way, I don’t need anyone.’ And I think
that’s bad, because actually I don’t believe that’s what the word ‘feminism’
stands for. But that’s how people relate to that word. I love that I’m being
taken care of, and I have a man that’s an actual leader. I’m not a feminist in
that sense … but, when it comes to music, I am a little bit more ballsy, but I
think that’s different.
(Kelly Clarkson, speaking to Time’s Belinda Luscombe, October 2013)

Cagney and Lacey, a US television show that aired from 1982 to 1988 and starred
Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly as the two female detective leads, Christine Cagney
and Mary Beth Lacey, was one of the first ‘adult’ television programmes I remem-
ber watching as a child. I loved this show but I particularly loved the two female
leads, who to me, at the tender age of six, were endlessly funny, smart and confi-
dent. At a period in life where I was desperate to know how women acted,
watching any and all women avidly, Cagney and Lacey left a mark. I still recall
quite clearly Cagney’s wise-cracking and Lacey’s seemingly constant efforts to
balance her family and work.
As D’Acci notes, although Cagney and Lacey stood in many ways for an openly
feminist politics, the show’s feminism was only ambiguous and ‘tacit’, particularly
as it progressed and the producers sought more and more to distance themselves
from the ‘feminist label’ (1994: 161). Coproducer Shelley List and story editor
Kathryn Ford noted that their policy with regard to feminism was to ‘avoid hard-
line statements that would alienate the audience’ (summarized in ibid.). After a
couple of years, the show’s earlier radical politics and focus on women’s solidarity
was eschewed in favour of implicit depictions that might be read by some viewers
as feminist. Indeed, Sharon Gless was the third incarnation of Christine Cagney,
with her predecessor, played by Meg Foster, deemed by CBS ‘too aggressive’, ‘too
harshly women’s lib’ and too likely to be perceived as a lesbian by the audience
(unnamed CBS programmer, quoted in ibid.: 30). Cagney even assumes, at certain
points later in the series, positions that ‘could be called antifeminist’, while remain-
ing ‘associated with actions and behaviours that many would consider independent,
empowered, or liberated’ (ibid.: 162).
174 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture)

‘Tacit feminism’ is thus, in D’Acci’s terms, an invitation to read independ-

ent, spirited and intelligent characters that just happen to be women as feminist,
but without making explicit feminist links on screen. It remains a fairly com-
mon theme across popular culture and is possibly the reason why independent,
spirited and apparently intelligent celebrity figures such as Madonna, Taylor
Swift, Susan Sarandon and Katy Perry shy away from labelling themselves, and
being labelled, as ‘feminist’. The many various cases of young women declaring
‘I’m not a feminist, but …’ before listing a sequence of feminist objectives, an
approach that has so irked feminist commentators (including myself) would also
fit here.
In presenting this research and making arguments about antifeminism, I have
often been asked ‘well, what about [insert strong female character]? Isn’t she evidence
that feminism is alive across popular culture?’. Examples of spirited, ‘gutsy’ female
characters (such as Sydney Bristow in Alias or Samantha Jones in Sex and the City)
abound and are readily accessible across popular culture sources. Much like latter-
day Cagney and Laceys, however, such characters may at certain times be read to
correspond to certain feminist ideals but are rarely able, or allowed, to self-identify
as feminist.
As Hogan describes, the sound of a journalist asking a female celebrity if she
identifies as a feminist is liable to make the best among us cringe. Not because of
the question, which many of us would happily answer, but ‘because of the inevi-
table lose-lose reverberation it creates around the Internet’ (2013). Those women
that demure, and admit to not knowing what feminism might mean, are portrayed
as ‘ignorant disappointments to womankind’ (ibid.). If ‘a female celebrity answers
that she is not a feminist and then follows up with an inaccurate definition of
feminism’ (as in Taylor Swift’s much criticized discussion of feminism as ‘guys
versus girls’) she is ‘a traitor and a moron’ (ibid.). Whereas ‘if a female celebrity
answers that question by saying she is ‘one of the biggest feminists in the world’,
as per Miley Cyrus, or ‘that she is a “modern day feminist”’, as per Beyoncé, ‘of
course we then ask ourselves how often those female celebrities appear in their
underwear in public and allow men to spring boners to their antics’ (ibid.). It
becomes our decision, not theirs, ‘whether or not those male-gaze-mongers can
truly call themselves feminists’ (ibid.), which is, of course, rather hypocritical. The
question ‘Are you a feminist?’ tells us ‘much more about the feminist movement’s
own branding failures than it does the beliefs of the women prompted to respond’,
argues Hogan (ibid.).

The main thing I learned from writing Girldrive is that the question, ‘Are you
a feminist?’ is boring.We asked that question and got some generic-sounding,
bullshit answer. Once we moved on and asked about women’s actual lives,
we learned the real stuff.
(Nona Willis Aronowitz, author of Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America,
Redefining Feminism, cited in Hogan 2013)
 In popular form (feminism and antifeminism in popular culture) 175

Notes
1 According to CBS News, Warner boss Jeff Robinov was reported, on the website
Deadline Hollywood Daily, to have issued a decree stating that, ‘We [Warner Bros.] are
no longer doing movies with women in the lead’ (CBS News 2009). Subsequent failures
of films like Catwoman and Aeon Flux have led to some studio executive types declaring
that ‘any film that was not a rom-com led by a woman was pretty much doomed to
failure’ (Lyttleton 2012).
2 A number of Swedish cinemas have begun implementing their own Bechdel rating (the
‘Test’ itself has been around since 1985 and has become common film parlance). To
receive an ‘A’ rating (for ‘Approved’), a film must: contain at least two female characters;
these two characters must converse, and; they must talk about something other than men
(Greenfield 2013).
3 Having recently had the misfortune to sit through the 2013 ‘reboot’ of Superman,
Superman: Man of Steel, I was particularly struck by how undercooked a heroine 2013’s
Lois Lane appears on celluloid, particularly when compared to 1979’s far sassier and, for
me, interesting Lois (I should note at this point that Margot Kidder’s talkative Lois Lane
was as hated by many as she was loved by others).
4 The only women featured in Grand Theft Auto 5 are peripheral, at best: strippers, hookers,
a particularly whiney daughter, a bored housewife, a female taxi driver, etc.
5 From the Facebook page ‘We Hate Andrea From The Walking Dead’ to endless threads
online hating Andrea, it is not exactly clear why she was so loathed. That her death was
not written into the third season of The Walking Dead until shooting the finale began
suggests that producers were not initially planning to write her out of the show, perhaps
until fan disgust became so pronounced. The reasons for hating her seem to be that
Andrea failed to shoot a gun properly (shooting a friend instead) and then failed to kill
Season Three’s evil nemesis, ‘The Governor’. As Rothwell (2013) writes:

There is a scary amount of Andrea hatred out there. People want that woman dead,
now. I won’t go into the misogyny of the hatred, nope. […] Please, don’t even get
me started on the One African American at a Time rule on that show.

6 I refer here to The Economist as a magazine but note that this is not how the publication
describes itself.
7 No one identified as ether ‘intersex’ or ‘other’ when asked to select their gender (Survey
Question 2).
8 Indian law prohibits the identification of sex crime victims for their protection, but
Singh’s name was released to British newspaper The Sunday People by her father, who
stated that he wanted ‘the world to know her real name.’ ‘My daughter didn’t do anything
wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give
courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from
my daughter’ (quoted in Ralph 2013).
9 Turner recounts how British journalist Caroline Criado-Perez, on beginning a small
campaign to replace Elizabeth Fry, removed by the British government from the £5 note,
with another female figure was sent a rape threat via Twitter, and a female MP and other
female journalists received a bomb threat when Jane Austen was put on the £10 note.
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6
CONCLUSIONS

The trouble with IPE

International Political Economy (IPE) embodies, to my mind at least, a commitment
to political enquiry into economic life in a variety of shapes and forms. IPE scholars,
in the critical tradition, have focused on understanding the historical formation of
social interactions, the dynamics of actors and processes within the international
system and the structures of ‘world order’. While the generation and production
of cultural products, read often in terms of transnational structures of production, is
of interest to many in IPE, critical scholarship tends still to focus on class as the core
unit of analysis, deploying ‘class’ both as context and meaning (to the detriment of,
for example, gender, sexuality, race and disability as key identity categories).
IPE’s use of class as the key (indeed, the only) causal force in society, with
culture relegated to reflections of class interest, is, I argue, limited and limiting.
In counterpoint to those who might claim that analysis of popular and/or visual
culture is not serious academic business, I would suggest that, to engage in any
meaningful way with how we formulate knowledge about the world, and what
therefore we know (or do not know) about the world, we need to consider the
political processes of representation by which knowledge, reality and identity are
selected, organized and transformed. Not only texts but images are central to our
representations. In some contexts, images are more central in representing the
world. By failing to consider the power visual language wields, and the relations
of power from which it emanates, we fail to understand a crucial part of how
people ‘know’ the world and how they then choose (or are able) to act within it.
Popular culture offers sites and sources of meaning-making. More than simply
the by-products of a society or culture, popular culture’s artefacts constitute how
we know ourselves, what we think we are capable of and how we believe ourselves
to be valid. Examining, for example, how contemporary Hollywood films create
178 Conclusions

and depict women, or how TV shows reproduce ideas about the ‘wife’ and the
‘mother’, tells us something about the struggles over the meaning(s) of gender
identities that actively shape, and constrain, people’s lives. Popular culture, and its
processes of production, representation and consumption, are saturated, at every
level ‘with ideas about how men and women should behave and what they have
the right to do’ (Milestone and Meyer 2012: 211). Popular culture artefacts may
corroborate existing, and highly regulative, social narratives and assumptions and
they may be tools of ideology and state, elite or group interest, but they might also
offer important and subversive critiques of social narratives and assumptions.
Rather than seeking to show how popular culture provides another source for
scholars, of, say, International Relations (IR) or IPE, to add to the list in formulat-
ing their analyses, this book has argued that popular culture resides at the heart of
understanding relations of power in global politics. It would be careless scholarship
not to take seriously how our lives, behaviours, assumptions and possibilities are
formed within the popular.
I have hoped with this book to help generate IPE enquiry that is more attentive
to popular culture. As a political economist, I also think that it behoves the analyst
to remember the aspects of ‘the popular’ that are ‘of the people’ and to think care-
fully about popular culture in terms of its accessibility. Popular culture artefacts are
not universal and those who have access to, for example, social media, who go to
the movies, can afford Foxtel, or have broadband powerful enough to download
films, TV shows and music are not ‘everypeople’. The proportion of populations
that are dispossessed and thus are, as Lury argues, ‘excluded from many forms of
commodity consumption’, since they lack ‘access to the economic resources
necessary for participation’ (2011: 11), are an intrinsic component of the global
political economy, and popular culture scholarship, in this vein, would do well not
to forget them. This is not to argue that poverty, in both its relative and absolute
forms, is a determinant of participation in the consumption of commodities, since
it may, in some cases, even incite participation in consumer culture, as Lury notes
(ibid.: 12). IPE scholarship is more attuned than most forms of political enquiry, I
would argue, to the unevenness and inequalities that mark access to resources and
opportunity in the global political economy. We should, however, assume nothing
about those who consume popular culture without first enquiring into the everyday
workings of their lives, routines and social circumstances.

Feminism, gender tropes and popular culture

This book has sought to explore the intimate and varied connections between the
politics of feminism and the cultural practices of modern, Western, consumer
society. It has explored feminism ‘made sensible’ through visual imagery and
popular culture representations, examining feminism’s popular and commercial
value. It has investigated the extent to which popular culture is produced, repre-
sented and consumed to reproduce the conditions in which feminism is valued, or
dismissed. It has asked where and how the sexualization of cultural products is
 Conclusions 179

maintained. It has asked whether sufficient evidence can be marshalled to argue

that antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable.
This research has focused on feminism and antifeminism in popular form,
examining some of the forms of feminism and antifeminism that I have found to
be particularly prevalent and well-represented within popular culture. It has
examined feminism and antifeminism, in popular culture form, in order to
understand how representative practices have come to constitute and shape
feminism, our responses to feminism and feminism’s popular success. I have tried
to heed Hollows and Moseley’s advice and have not presumed any ‘real’ or
‘authentic’ feminism existing somewhere outside popular culture. Instead, this
book has examined feminism within popular culture and, therefore, as something
shaped and understood through the popular. Understanding how feminism, and
antifeminism, are distributed, exchanged and consumed is central to understand-
ing what feminism and antifeminism mean within the popular and understanding
what feminism and antifeminism mean within the popular is central to under-
standing, I argue, how popular culture is such a powerful purveyor of our ideas
about the world.
Popular culture deploys and disparages feminism in many and various ways.
Gender tropes in popular culture, including, for example, why feminists are cast
negatively across popular culture, why stupidity in girls is perceived as more
profitable, or why ‘strong female characters’ have become more dull than inspiring,
are powerful. They represent our cultural tool kits for appropriating feminism and
are the cultural mechanisms by which feminism is filtered through our everyday
lives. These tropes also provide the parameters around how popular culture artefacts
engage with feminism and feminist concerns, which are so important because of
their relationship with how they make it possible, and acceptable, to articulate a
feminist politics or to encourage derogatory, violent and demeaning representations
to dismiss feminism and feminist gains.
The relationship between gender codes and prevailing norms in and of popular
culture is crucial to feminism but this research has, I think, shown that feminism is
perhaps not crucial to the reproduction of these codes. An awful lot of the repre-
sentational politics of popular culture remains galling, alarming and problematic.
When we see female television characters cleaning, berating their hen-pecked
husbands, bemoaning their wrinkles, or, worse, humiliated, objectified or dead, and
when we encounter women and men posed provocatively (sometimes abusively,
but nearly always suggestively) in advertisements, we may not actually believe that
these representations ‘are’ what women and men are, should or could be. Yet the
quality of the representations of women and men reproduced through and within
popular culture certainly do have a direct impact: on our sense of self, our sense of
others and our expectations of both. Popular culture’s representations form the basis
for our identifications with the world. Photographic images allow us, as Sontag has
described, to possess something we may have no experience of (1999: 81). Images
give control: control to the observer to redefine their knowledge and experience
and control over the thing being recorded, scrutinized and surveilled. Images are
180 Conclusions

vital, and so powerful, because they furnish us with knowledge disassociated from
and independent of experience. They allow us to ‘know’, in our own ways and
according to the paths of knowledge, and sources of meaning-making, we have
already available to us.
The extent to which we can, then, expect people to stand apart from prevailing
representations and narratives created and sustained in and through popular culture
is highly debatable. As I hope this book has shown, representations matter. How we
are represented, and how then our cultural products are consumed and recirculated,
sustains our knowledge of the world and conditions how that knowledge organizes
us. The representative practices of contemporary popular culture are more than
simply an aside to feminism’s waning or ascending influence, they have come to
constitute and shape feminism and our responses to feminism.

Is antifeminism more commercially viable than feminism?

If the research for this book has taught me anything, it is that ideas about what is
profitable are not the same as what is actually profitable, but matter more.
Twenty years ago it seemed that what was often called ‘feminism’ had become
code for a particular stereotype of man-hating radicalism that, although not repre-
sentative of the feminist movement, saturated media and popular culture sites. The
backlash against feminist gains that characterized the 1980s (in the USA especially,
but elsewhere also) was further complicated in the 1990s, with, as McRobbie has
argued, an array of ‘machinations’ and ‘elements’ of contemporary popular culture
that were ‘perniciously effective’ in regard to ‘undoing’ feminism, although they
appeared, and were made to appear, ‘to be engaging in a well-informed and even
well-intended response to feminism’ (2009: 11). The 1990s, and the so-called rise
of ‘postfeminism’, fed the myth that women had achieved equality and that femi-
nism was, now, surplus to requirements. Popular culture artefacts, across television,
film, news media, magazines, social media and music sources, have at various times
contributed to representing feminism as outmoded, irrelevant or ‘uncool’. Popular
culture has seemed very much to be reproducing the conditions, as McRobbie,
Whelehan and Levy have argued, in which feminism could be dismissed, with the
rise of ‘raunch culture’ championing the nonsensical idea that commercialism and
mass-scale consumption allow women (and men) the freedom to choose how they
are objectified.
In many ways, contemporary Western societies are more discriminatory,
perhaps even more misogynistic, than they have ever been. 2013 might well have
been ‘The Year of Feminism’ (Turner 2014), but for all ‘big f ’ feminism’s
successes, the persistence of (in many cases, increasing) wage gaps between men
and women in all Western (and most non-Western) countries, the prevalence of
sexual and domestic violence (or ‘family violence’, as it is termed here in Australia)
and the under-representation of women in all aspects of political and public life,
may suggest a lack of infiltration of feminist policy-making. Julia Gillard’s
‘Misogyny Speech’ opened media, including social media, reporting and debate to
 Conclusions 181

a different level of intellectual engagement with prejudice, sexism and opportunity

in Australia. It did not, however, rout this social blight, much as the Tazreen
garment factory fire (November 2012) has not rendered female sweatshop workers
any less expendable in the global political economy. I certainly, in this research,
found it easier to uncover examples of antifeminism, tacit and overt, filtered
through multiple popular culture channels, than I did examples of feminism. Yet
there remains a true vibrancy to underground feminism(s) that is not well served
by mainstream, and often alternative, media and popular culture representations
and engagements.
I have been most struck I think, in this research, by the contradictions involved
in engaging with the representational practices of popular culture. Only a couple
of years ago, I would have argued that young women are not as concerned with
feminism as past generations and that the, now rather clichéd, ‘I’m not a feminist,
but . . .’ refrain was undoing feminism among my student cohort. I do not now
think that this is true, and examining in greater depth popular engagements with
feminism has taught me that people are rarely as naïve in their appreciations of
relations of power as I might once have worried. Positive representations continue
to jostle for space with disappointing caricatures and unflattering stereotypes but,
for every example of a derogatory portrayal of girls, women, feminism or feminists,
a genuine and affirming engagement exists to lift the spirits.
I have been surprised, for example, with the diversity and prevalence of
feminist messages across various social media sites. Yet social media is not, of course,
without its drawbacks and while feminist voices find multiple outlets, and varying
levels of visibility, through the channels afforded by the explosion of social media,
they fight simultaneously for space with some of the worst and most offensive that
the internet has to offer (see Figure 6.1). I have found, as did McRobbie, the
existence of a certain ‘undoing’ of feminism’ (2009), but I have also appreciated
the complexity of how women view their own opportunities and obstacles, how
they perceive and experience gender discrimination and how they identify them-
selves with respect to feminism. In this regard, the survey conducted for this
research was particularly enlightening and the gap between dominant representa-
tions of feminism (such as those found, for example, in the mainstream Australian
news media) and more personal, intimate, engagements with feminist politics has
often been substantial. Representations of feminism as old-hat, irrelevant, fusty
and outdated did not correspond either to popular debates on a variety of feminist
topics or to the importance that respondents ascribed their experiences of sexism
and the sexualization of popular culture and commercial artefacts.
Research for this book has told me that the so-called ‘death of feminism’ is
entirely irrelevant to understanding either the complexity of social relations in
capitalist, liberal societies such as Australia, or the significance of feminist imaginings
within popular culture and popular culture imaginings of feminism. The important
question today is not ‘where has feminism gone?’ but ‘where is feminism embodied?’;
the answer to this is, I suggest, that feminism is vibrant but fragmented and it
is this that makes it, perhaps, an easy target for its detractors. Yet even this very
FIGURE 6.1 The Facebook page of Zoo Weekly1 magazine (Australia), 2012.
Source: Collective Shout 2012.
 Conclusions 183

fragmentation is ambivalent, rendering feminism incomplete to some and vital to

others. Arguing, however, that feminism has many, various, definitions, to different
people, does not make feminism redundant. Proposing that feminism means many
things does not, as per Kalb’s analysis, mean that feminism means nothing at all.
There seem to be cycles of feminism’s stigmatization and, at the moment, we are
in an upswing. This will likely give way to further apathy, criticism and dismissal
at some point in the future, perhaps even by the time this book is published.
Throughout, and despite however many times popular media have heralded, and
will continue to herald, the death of feminism, feminism continues to relate,
in multiple ways, to the different challenges people pose to sexist, hierarchical and
restrictive practices, structures and institutions. People arrive at feminism, or they
do not, for all sorts of reasons. Refusing to police the boundaries of the political
and defining feminism according to its multiplicity constitutes part of the strength,
not the weakness, of our engagements with the term.

Note
1 Zoo Weekly, the magazine that brought us a ‘hottest asylum seeker’ competition, is one of
Australia’s biggest-selling ‘men’s lifestyle’ magazines. Each week the magazine sells 28,000
copies to Australian boys aged between 14 and 17 years. Its circulation is unrestricted
despite pornographic and frequently offensive content and it is ‘conveniently positioned
and priced for young readers to purchase in convenience stores, service stations and Coles
and Woolworths’ (Collective Shout 2012).
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APPENDIX A:
SURVEY QUESTIONS

Part 1: Demographic details

Question no. Question Response type

1 Please select your age group from the list below Select one (8 choices)
2 Please select your gender Select one (4 choices)
3 Please specify your ethnic or cultural background Select one (9 choices)
4 Where do you currently reside? Select one (5 choices)
5 Please select the highest level of education you have Select one (6 choices)
completed
6 Your present occupation Select one (11
choices)

Part 2: The relevance of feminism today

Question no. Question Response type

7 I would describe myself as a feminist Yes/No/Not sure

8 Being a feminist is one of a number of things that 7-point scale
make up my identity
9 Feminism is personally relevant to me 7-point scale
10 Feminism is professionally relevant to me 7-point scale
11 Feminism is relevant to Australian society in the 7-point scale
21st century
12 Feminism is as relevant to men today as it is to 7-point scale
women
13 Feminists largely see men as the enemy 7-point scale
186 Appendix A: Survey questions

Part 3: The popularity and/or accessibility of feminism today

Question no. Question Response type

14 How would you describe feminism? Short answer

15 What comes to mind when you think of a feminist? Short answer
16 Feminism is accessible to young women in the 21st 7-point scale
century
17 Feminism is accessible to young men in the 7-point scale
21st century
18 Feminism is accessible to women of all ages in the 7-point scale
21st century
19 Feminism is accessible to men of all ages in the 7-point scale
21st century
20 I feel that men are sensitive to feminist issues 7-point scale
21 Men often feel uncomfortable engaging with 7-point scale
feminist issues

Part 4: Practices of feminism today

Question no. Question Response type

22 I care very deeply about men and women having 7-point scale
equal opportunities in all respects
23 I don’t think there is one “right” way to be a 7-point scale
feminist
24 Some of the men I know seem more feminist than 7-point scale
some of the women
25 I am a woman who has experienced sexism Yes/No/Not sure
26 I am a man who has experienced sexism Yes/No/Not sure
27 If yes, what was the impact, do you think, of this Short answer
experience?
28 When I think about sexism, my first reaction is 7-point scale
always anger

Part 5: Popular culture and feminism

Question no. Question Response type

29 Feminism is generally represented in a positive light 7-point scale

on television
30 Feminism is generally represented in a positive light 7-point scale
on the Internet
31 Feminism is generally represented in a positive light 7-point scale
in film
32 Feminism is generally represented in a positive light 7-point scale
in newsmedia
33 We need more positive representations of feminism 7-point scale
in contemporary popular culture
34 Can you recall any particular examples of Short answer
representations of feminism in the media in your
lifetime?
 Appendix A: Survey questions 187

35 How would you describe the ways in which Short answer

femininity is represented in contemporary popular
culture?
36 How would you describe the ways in which Short answer
masculinity is represented in contemporary popular
culture?
37 Can you recall any examples of positive and/or Short answer
adverse representations of femininity and/or
masculinity in contemporary popular culture?
38 What does this image say to you, if anything, about Short answer
feminism today?
39 ‘The feminist movement, like the civil rights 7-point scale
movement, is one that almost everyone is afraid to
criticise. If you attack feminism, you’re obviously a
sexist, misogynistic male who wishes that women
would just stay home and cook, clean and raise
children. The issues I have with feminism have
nothing to do with the idea of equality between
men and women; I just feel that women can and
will succeed without the now largely irrelevant
feminist movement “supporting” them’
(Enerson 2007). Do you agree?
40 The objectification of women is unacceptable in 7-point scale
the 21st century
41 The objectification of men is unacceptable in the 7-point scale
21st century
42 Contemporary popular culture is heavily sexualised 7-point scale
43 I feel uncomfortable when I see sex being used to 7-point scale
sell products that are not related to sex
44 The sexualisation of commercial products that are 7-point scale
not related to sex is unacceptable
45 Feminism is important in challenging problematic 7-point scale
representations of men and women and/or
masculinity and femininity in contemporary
popular culture

Check this question list against

This page intentionally left blank
APPENDIX B:
DOLCE AND GABBANA

At the time that research for this book was first taking shape, I had been reflecting
on the relationship between advertising, art and feminism and the many, and
varied, ways in which the sexual objectification of the human body is transmitted
through popular culture artefacts. To give the reader a better idea of the specific
imagery I was reflecting upon, included below are a number of images from Italian
fashion house Dolce and Gabbana, purveyor of high-end fashion and luxury
goods. Dolce and Gabbana (D&G), established in 1985 by Domenico Dolce and
Stefano Gabbana, has been no stranger to controversy and is well known for its
use of stylized eroticism and manipulation of ‘typical’ Western gender roles. Its
advertisements are usually highly sexualized and ‘often depict women as submis-
sive to male supremacy’ (Barbaric Poetries 2012). At the time of their release,
several of these images (particularly Dolce and Gabbana’s ‘gang rape’ and ‘knives’
campaigns) incited extensive social commentary and, in some cases, government
intervention. While Dolce and Gabbana is certainly not a fashion house that seeks
to avoid attracting public scrutiny or controversy, its advertising imagery remains
interesting to this research for its uncritical celebration of sexual violence, women
(and men’s) promiscuity and sexual availability and its consistent reproduction of
asymmetrical relations of power and authority. While Dolce and Gabbana clearly
seek to commission campaigns that are deliberately provocative (and, therefore,
eye-catching), this imagery was made more significant, here, for the designers’
resounding (but perhaps unsurprisingly) public failure to engage with the politicality
of their representational practices, denying both that the advertisements themselves
were anything other than ‘art’ and that ‘art’ could be political.
190 Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana

The March 2006 Esquire campaign

Founded in 1933 in the USA and published (digitally and in hard copy) by the
Hearst Corporation, Esquire magazine numbers a readership of 725,000 and
claims to be the ‘only general-interest lifestyle magazine for sophisticated men’,
defining, reflecting and celebrating ‘what it means to be a man in contemporary
American culture’ (Hearst 2014). The magazine publishes twenty-seven inter-
national editions, including publications specific to, for example, China, the
United Kingdom, Japan, Greece, Colombia, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine
and Thailand.
In 2006, Dolce and Gabbana ran a campaign featuring an image of a woman
being pinned down by one male as four other males looked on (Figure B.1(a)).
Not very long after, the fashion house withdrew the image from both Spanish and
Italian publications to ‘protect their creative liberty’ (Daily Mail 2007), after
authorities in Spain declared the campaign humiliating to women and potentially
‘illegal’, the Italian union CGIL’s textile workers’ division called for a boycott of
Dolce and Gabbana products and human rights group Amnesty International
stated that the advertisement risked ‘excusing violence against women’ (Reuters
2007). The fashion house instead ran a replacement image (Figure B.1(b)), with
four men in suits watching as the same half-dressed female apparently writhes
beneath them. ‘We were looking to recreate a game of seduction in the campaign
and highlight the beauty of our collections’, Dolce and Gabanna have said, adding
that it was never their intention ‘to offend anyone or promote violence against
women’ (quoted in ibid.).

Spain’s Labour and Social Affairs Ministry branded the campaign […]
humiliating to women, saying the woman’s body position had no rela-
tion to the products Dolce and Gabbana were trying to sell. ‘One could
infer from the advertisement that it is acceptable to use force as a way
of imposing oneself on a woman, reinforced by the passive and complicit
manner of the men looking on,’ the Ministry said in a [2007] statement.
(Reuters 2007)

What surprised me most about Dolce and Gabbana choosing this image of gang
rape was less its shock value (clearly the pictures were designed for maximum
provocation, despite the designers’ disingenuous claims to the contrary) but that
the designers would bother choosing to defend the campaign as art and then claim
that art has nothing to do with ‘real life’. In comments originally reported by La
Vanguardia, the designers ask ‘“What has an artistic photo got to do with a real
act?” You would have to burn museums like the Louvre or the paintings of
Caravaggio’ (Reuters 2007). Sadly, no one seemed to have asked Stefano Gabbana
and Domenico Dolce whether the designers intended their ‘artistic photos’ to dirty
themselves with the ‘real act’ of selling things.
 Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana 191

FIGURE B.1 D&G Esquire campaign images.

Sources: (a) Wagner (2008); (b) If It’s Hip, It’s Here (2007).

The October 2006 ‘knives’ campaign

This particular campaign, featuring models in various states of undress brandishing
knives (Figure B.2), was noteworthy in the British media for the criticisms levelled
against it. The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld more than
FIGURE B.2 D&G ‘knives’ campaign images.
Sources: (a) Taylor 2007; (b) Greaves and Mercado 2011.
 Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana 193

150 complaints against Dolce and Gabbana ‘from people concerned that the
pictures glorified and condoned violent crime’ (BBC 2007). The fashion house,
avoiding the substance of the complaints, responded with the claim that the ads
were heavily stylized and mimicked early nineteenth century art: ‘In defence of
the adverts, Dolce and Gabbana claimed they were “highly stylised and intended
to be an iconic representation of the Napoleonic period of art, emphasising the
theatrical effects of that genre”’ (ibid.).
The advertisements themselves were run in the well-read and widely distributed
newspaper The Times and The Daily Telegraph magazine supplement. The ASA’s
adjudication, which was hardly a stinging chastisement, was to remind Dolce and
Gabbana ‘of its duty to prepare ads with a sense of responsibility to consumers and
to society’, telling D&G and The Times ‘to take greater care in the placement of
similar ads in future’ (ASA 2007).

The 2007/08 ‘objectifying men’ campaign

Perhaps attentive to the complaints previously levelled at them, Dolce and
Gabbana launched an autumn/winter campaign in 2007/08 that offered a
sequence of images designed to present the woman as dominatrix (Figure B.3).
Deploying a ‘raunchy aggressive look complete with metal detailing, slicked
back hair and whips’ (Moss 2007), the images, shot by photographer Stephen
Klein, display women accompanied by naked male models in various states of
submission, set against a futuristic backdrop (the futuristic setting perhaps a nod
to the designers’ efforts to turn the tables on past criticism and point to a future
of male, rather than female, objectification). Speaking about the campaign,
Stefano Gabbana said,

Since these images have offended someone, we want to stress that we

wanted to represent a strong and dominatrix woman, as is today’s woman.
It’s the vision of a dream more than reality, where the whip symbolizes
women’s power and where the naked models refer to a classic beauty
inspired by Michelangelo. We wanted to place this artistic reference above
everyday reality, but there was no intent to be vulgar or offend anyone’s
human dignity.
(Stefano Gabbana, quoted in WWD 2007)

Women tend, statistically speaking, to be objectified more than men across mod-
ern sources of popular culture, including advertising, magazines, music videos,
television, cinema, and so on. For women, their sexual objectification has
meant that they are, as Heldman notes, considered ‘less competent and less worthy
of empathy by both men and women’, with repeated exposure to images of
sexually objectified women causing male viewers ‘to be more tolerant of sexual
harassment and rape myths’ (2012).
194 Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana

FIGURE B.3 D&G ‘objectifying men’ campaign images.

Sources: (a) WWD 2007; (b) newemotion 2007.

Pop culture sells women and girls a hurtful fiction that their value lies in
how sexy they appear to others; they learn at a very young age that their
sexuality is for others. At the same time, sexuality is stigmatized in women
but encouraged in men. We learn that men want and women want-to-be-
wanted. The yardstick for women’s value (sexiness) automatically puts them
in a subordinate societal position, regardless of how well they otherwise
measure up. Perfectly sexy women are perfectly subordinate.
(Heldman 2012, emphasis in the original)
 Appendix B: Dolce and Gabbana 195

While sexual objectification is nothing new, simply reversing the trick by

depicting men in sexually humiliating poses does little to subvert the harm in
reducing human bodies to simple objects of desire for the pleasures of others.
The sexual objectification of a body is, in essence, the dehumanization of that
body, female or male, and there is no evidence to suggest that flipping the coin,
and objectifying men rather than women, challenges this dehumanization or
allows women greater agency over their sexual expression. A society that places
value only on the sexualized body, within a culture of widespread sexual objec-
tification, harms men and women. Here, Dolce and Gabbana’s ‘dominatrix’
campaign is shocking, because advertisers so rarely portray women as anything
other than passive, submissive or domesticated, but also conservative, preserving
a space within popular culture for the primary significance of the body as sexually
objectified (and objectifiable).
This page intentionally left blank
GLOSSARY

Abbott, Tony
Abbott is the current Prime Minister of Australia and key target of Julia Gillard’s
famous ‘Misogyny Speech’ of 9 October 2012. Infamous in feminist circles, Tony
Abbott has been quoted as saying: ‘I think it would be folly to expect that women
will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of
areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physi-
ological reasons’; ‘I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and
this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea
that sex is a man’s right to demand, I think they both need to be moderated, so
to speak’; ‘What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the
ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and
their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every
year’, and, on Julia Gillard: ‘Gillard won’t lie down and die’ (What’s the Run
Dude? 2012).

Activism
Activism in this book refers to any effort to advance, instigate or impede social and
political change. Activism may be direct or indirect, visible or otherwise and tar-
geted at instigating change in dramatic or subtle ways. It is not a synonym for
banner waving, although it might involve this, and includes multimedia methods
of organization, communication or protest.

AWOL; jarhead; ground zero

These are military terms that have entered common (civilian usage) due to the
intersections between military and popular culture. This is particularly evident in
198 Glossary

the USA, but also elsewhere, in part, perhaps because of the dominance of US
popular culture artefacts.
‘AWOL’ stands for absent without official leave and is a term that, officially,
indicates the desertion of a military post and dereliction of duty (which is punishable
by law), although in popular usage it has come to symbolize a more general sense of
being missing or absent.
A ‘jarhead’ is a US slang term, sometimes considered derogatory, for a member
of the US Marine Corps. Used in a 2005 film of the same name (directed by Sam
Mendes and based on Anthony Swofford’s 2003 autobiography), the term originated
from, and references, the ‘high and tight’ hair cut that many US Marines display.
Technically with several meanings, the term ‘ground zero’ was popularized
following the Second World War bombings of Japan. In military usage, ‘ground
zero’ refers to the point directly above or below a massive (usually nuclear)
explosion. It also means a centre point of rapid, intense or violent activity and
can be used to refer to the origins, or very beginning, of something. The term
came into widespread usage across North American media reporting of the
World Trade Center bombings, in September 2001. Today, ‘Ground Zero’
(capitalized) is generally understood to refer to the site in Manhattan of the former
World Trade Center.

The Bechdel Test

A movie is said to pass the Bechdel Test when:

1 It has at least two (named) women in it.

2 These women talk to each other.
3 These women talk to each other about something besides a man.

The fifty greatest films to pass the Test, according to Seddon (2014), include Boogie
Nights, Halloween, Donnie Darko, Life of Brian, Goodfellas and The Godfather Part II.
Films that fail, perhaps surprisingly, have included Avatar, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows: Part II, The Lord of the Rings and original Star Wars films and Run
Lola Run.
A full list of movies that both pass and fail the Bechdel Test can be found at
http://bechdeltest.com.

The blogosphere
Literally, the ‘world of blogs’, the blogosphere consists of all blogs and their inter-
connections. A single blog (web-log) is usually a discussion, informational or
autobiographical site published on the internet. It might be single or multi-author
and is textual, art, photo, video, music or audio based. Corporations frequently use
blogs to appeal (sell their brand or products) to the social media masses and
approximately 40 per cent of blog sites are income generating, although quantities
 Glossary 199

vary widely. The traffic passing through blogs is counted by statistical tools such
as Google Analytics and StatCounter. Estimates suggest that a new blog is created
somewhere in the world every half-second and that there exist more than 180
million blogs, although with around a million new blog posts produced every day,
this is difficult to track. According to Nielsen (2011), 6.7 million people publish
blogs on blogging websites, another 12 million write blogs using their social
networks (such as Tumblr and Pinterest) and most bloggers are female (Nielsen
estimates that one in three bloggers are mothers). North America (including the
USA) produces by far the largest number of blog sites, followed by the EU
countries. Before San Francisco-based Pyra Labs created the ‘Blogger’ service for
creating and maintaining personal web spaces in 1999, it is thought that there
were less than one hundred blogs in existence.

Britpop
According to Hann a ‘cultural abomination that set [British] music back’, Britpop
embodied ‘quirky representations of Britishness’ during the early 1990s that
quickly degenerated into ‘a generation of bands and fans who resembled nothing
so much as a parody of the football hooligans of a generation before’ (2014).
Symbolized perhaps most famously by the bands, and their rivalry, Blur and Oasis,
the slogan ‘Cool Britannia’, Noel Gallagher’s Union Jack guitar and support of the
newly elected Labour government (led by a then relatively youthful Tony Blair)
and ending with Oasis’s indulgent and over-hyped ‘Be Here Now’ album, Britpop
was heavily associated with ‘lad’ culture and football (after the release of New
Order’s ‘World in Motion’ for the 1990 World Cup). Unusually it saw women
take a leading role, with female singers such as Sleeper’s Louise Wener, Echobelly’s
Sonya Madan, Catatonia’s Cerys Matthews and Elastica’s Justine Frischmann
featuring prominently. Championed as ‘indie’, by 1997 Britpop had become
‘such a part of the establishment that the Labour party even had its own unofficial
Britpop liaison officer, a man named Darren Kalynuk’ (Hann 2014).

The Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly)

One of the leading antifeminist conservative interest groups in the USA, the Eagle
Forum describes itself as a ‘pro-family movement’ and reports over 80,000 mem-
bers. Its president, Phyllis Schlafly, who also publishes a weekly column on the
Forum’s website (‘The Phyllis Schlafly Report’), has been tireless in her quest to
undo advances in women’s status and rights. As a lawyer and activist, Phyllis
Schlafly was probably best known for her successful 1973 campaign to stop the
passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA. The Forum supports con-
servative issue areas and has worked with the Republican Party on numerous
occasions. It is resoundingly pro-marriage, opposes the legalization of abortion,
opposes international oversight by the UN or ICC, supports English-only educa-
tion in schools, opposes same-sex marriage and resists sex education in schools.
200 Glossary

Schlafly argues, of feminists, that they are robbing women of the choice to be
homemakers rather than paid workers (2012) and have killed the ‘American
nuclear family’ (2014).

Galifianakis, Zach
A US actor and comedian, possibly most famous for his The Hangover movie roles
but probably most celebrated for his cultish ‘Between Two Ferns’ mock-interview
comedy series, hosted by online video channel ‘Funny or Die’. Galifianakis claims
that the shows are improvised and guests are not told what will happen in advance.
Rather, the show is designed to reify ‘inappropriateness’, while making fun of the
‘sycophantic’ way the ‘Hollywood machine runs’ (Galifianakis, speaking to ABC
News 2010).

Gaming culture
Gaming culture, or video game culture, is possibly one of the largest of contem-
porary popular culture’s sub-cultures. Gamers have been said to comprise over 70
per cent of those aged from 6 to 49 in the USA, with most players being in their
twenties and thirties. Online and LAN (local area network) gaming increase the
social aspects, while significantly expanding the scope and scale of gaming culture.
Gaming culture has produced a number of neologisms that have ventured into
everyday usage, such as ‘lol’ (laugh out loud), ‘noob’ (beginner, in a slightly pejo-
rative sense) and ‘gg’ (good game).
Notoriously masculinized and plagued by the sort of sexist, racist and homo-
phobic bigotry that makes a hateful, but noisy, minority seem so abundant across
the internet and social media more broadly, gaming culture has been heavily
criticized over the years for its reification of sexist, violent and exclusionary con-
tent (fighting game culture has been particularly criticized). Female gamers are
ambivalent about the levels of sexism and hostility that exist across the gaming
environment, with some suggesting that ‘the idiots are always vastly outnumbered
by intelligent and respectful people’ (MacDonald 2012), while others note that
they are ‘disappointed in the amount of sexism inherent in the titles that are com-
ing out’ and the ‘bad attitude towards female gamers’ that remains prevalent
(Ballou 2014). Female gamers are no longer, however, the minority of gamers that
they were once (a 2014 UK report suggests that women make up 52 per cent of
the gaming audience in Britain), with women as likely to play games designed
with male players in mind as men, a phenomenon that has been linked to the rise
of the smartphone. This said, most games continue to be designed and produced
with a male gamer in mind and most continue to feature male characters as leads
(as per, for example, huge sellers such as the Grand Theft Auto, XCOM, Assassin’s
Creed, Batman, Call of Duty and Battlefield games. A few games do stand out for
their use of female protagonists, including Tomb Raider, Beyond: Two Souls,
Resident Evil, Alien: Isolation and The Last of Us, which still does not allow the
 Glossary 201

player to play as a female for most of the game, but, as yet, female-led games
remain in the minority).

Geek culture
Once used pejoratively for people considered eccentric and freakish, the term
‘geek’ is now more often used self-referentially and without malice to describe
non-mainstream, often technologically obsessed (although the obsession may also
relate to a hobby or intellectual pursuit) experts or enthusiasts.
Different categories of ‘geekdom’ include science geeks, math(s) geeks, com-
puter geeks, history geeks, gaming geeks, popular culture geeks and so on. While
geeks are assumed to ‘do’ things (that is, use new technologies to achieve certain
ends), ‘nerds’ are assumed to know things and ‘dweebs’ are generally confused
about everything (although on occasion ‘geek’ and ‘nerd’ are still used inter-
changeably). The US TV show The Big Bang Theory, and its enormous popularity,
has been argued to have made ‘geek’ mainstream, although the show remains
controversial across geek culture, with main characters that many geeks perceive
as crude ‘stereotypes’ and a marginalization of female characters that has been
labelled sexist (uzerfriendly 2014).
Geek culture, which is debated in terms of both content and meaning, is argu-
ably becoming pop culture and is everywhere, with an explosion of people
engaging in their hobbies and media with unbridled enthusiasm across the internet
(in Japan, the term otaku is used to described someone obsessed with anime and
manga). Generally considered non-conformist, sometimes hyper-rational, geek
culture tends to embrace all things comic book, especially superhero stories, and
collectable, geek culture also embodies a focus on ‘cultishness’, particularly of
cinema, but of also music, gaming, video, art, photography and so on. ‘Geek chic’
embraces stereotypically geeky clothing and accessories (especially prevalent with
‘hipsters’ wearing geek glasses, messenger bags, cardigans, and so on, although
many would argue that if a geek thinks they are ‘cool’, they are not a true geek).
‘Geek Pride Day’ is celebrated on 25 May.

Gender pay gap

The difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of
male earnings, the gender pay gap (or GPG) is sometimes also known as the gen-
der wage, earnings or income gap. In Australia in 2014, the gender pay gap
exceeded 18 per cent, to sit at a record high of 18.2 per cent (news.com.au 2014).
In the USA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks wage differences, in Europe the
EU aggregates the calculations of its member states and in Australia the Workplace
Gender Equality Agency calculates the national gender pay gap using Australian
Bureau of Statistics’ Average Weekly Full-Time Earnings data. Globally, the
OECD collates and compares national data (this covers OECD member countries,
plus Russia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa).
202 Glossary

Gillard, Julia
Australia’s 27th Prime Minister and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and country’s
first female leader. The first female Deputy Prime Minister of Australia following the
ALP’s victory in the 2007 federal election, Gillard became Prime Minister after former
PM Kevin Rudd lost the support of his party and resigned. On 26 June 2013, Gillard
lost the leadership of the Labor Party to Kevin Rudd, with her resignation as Prime
Minister taking effect the following day. Strongly associated, across the Australian
media landscape, with ‘backstabbing’ Kevin Rudd, Gillard, although a gifted politician
and well known for her strong negotiating and debating skills, was frequently vilified
while in power for her apparent connivances in a highly sexist and derogatory manner.
The Misogyny Speech.
The following is a full transcript of Gillard’s speech, delivered on 9 October
2012 to the House of Representatives (Australia’s lower House) in response to the
Opposition’s motion to have Peter Slipper removed as Speaker over sexist com-
ments he was alleged to have made.

Thank you very much Deputy Speaker and I rise to oppose the motion
moved by the Leader of the Opposition. And in so doing I say to the Leader
of the Opposition I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this
man. I will not. And the Government will not be lectured about sexism and
misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and
who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well I hope the
Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his
resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern
Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he
needs a mirror. That’s what he needs.
Let’s go through the Opposition Leader’s repulsive double standards, repul-
sive double standards when it comes to misogyny and sexism. We are now
supposed to take seriously that the Leader of the Opposition is offended by
Mr Slipper’s text messages, when this is the Leader of the Opposition who
has said, and this was when he was a minister under the last government – not
when he was a student, not when he was in high school – when he was a
minister under the last government.
He has said, and I quote, in a discussion about women being under-
represented in institutions of power in Australia, the interviewer was a man
called Stavros. The Leader of the Opposition says ‘If it’s true, Stavros, that
men have more power generally speaking than women, is that a bad thing?’
And then a discussion ensues, and another person says ‘I want my daughter
to have as much opportunity as my son.’To which the Leader of the Opposition
says ‘Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology or tempera-
ment, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?’
 Glossary 203

Then ensues another discussion about women’s role in modern society, and
the other person participating in the discussion says ‘I think it’s very hard to
deny that there is an underrepresentation of women,’ to which the Leader of
the Opposition says, ‘But now, there’s an assumption that this is a bad thing.’
This is the man from whom we’re supposed to take lectures about sexism.
And then of course it goes on. I was very offended personally when the
Leader of the Opposition, as Minister of Health, said, and I quote, ‘Abortion
is the easy way out.’ I was very personally offended by those comments.You
said that in March 2004, I suggest you check the records.
I was also very offended on behalf of the women of Australia when in the
course of this carbon pricing campaign, the Leader of the Opposition said ‘What
the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing …’
Thank you for that painting of women’s roles in modern Australia.
And then of course, I was offended too by the sexism, by the misogyny
of the Leader of the Opposition catcalling across this table at me as I sit here
as Prime Minister, ‘If the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make
an honest woman of herself …’, something that would never have been said
to any man sitting in this chair. I was offended when the Leader of the
Opposition went outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to a sign
that said ‘Ditch the witch.’
I was offended when the Leader of the Opposition stood next to a sign
that described me as a man’s bitch. I was offended by those things. Misogyny,
sexism, every day from this Leader of the Opposition. Every day in every
way, across the time the Leader of the Opposition has sat in that chair and
I’ve sat in this chair, that is all we have heard from him.
And now, the Leader of the Opposition wants to be taken seriously,
apparently he’s woken up after this track record and all of these statements,
and he’s woken up and he’s gone ‘Oh dear, there’s this thing called sexism,
oh my lords, there’s this thing called misogyny. Now who’s one of them? Oh,
the Speaker must be because that suits my political purpose.’
Doesn’t turn a hair about any of his past statements, doesn’t walk into this
Parliament and apologise to the women of Australia. Doesn’t walk into this
Parliament and apologise to me for the things that have come out of his
mouth. But now seeks to use this as a battering ram against someone else.
Well this kind of hypocrisy must not be tolerated, which is why this
motion from the Leader of the Opposition should not be taken seriously.
And then second, the Leader of the Opposition is always wonderful about
walking into this Parliament and giving me and others a lecture about what
they should take responsibility for.
Always wonderful about that – everything that I should take respon-
sibility for, now apparently including the text messages of the Member
for Fisher. Always keen to say how others should assume responsibility,
particularly me.
204 Glossary

Well can anybody remind me if the Leader of the Opposition has taken
any responsibility for the conduct of the Sydney Young Liberals and the
attendance at this event of members of his frontbench?
Has he taken any responsibility for the conduct of members of his political
party and members of his frontbench who apparently when the most vile
things were being said about my family, raised no voice of objection? Nobody
walked out of the room; no-one walked up to Mr Jones and said that this was
not acceptable.
Instead of course, it was all viewed as good fun until it was run in a
Sunday newspaper and then the Leader of the Opposition and others started
ducking for cover.
Big on lectures of responsibility, very light on accepting responsibility
himself for the vile conduct of members of his political party.
Third, Deputy Speaker, why the Leader of the Opposition should not be
taken seriously on this motion.
The Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition
have come into this place and have talked about the Member for Fisher.Well,
let me remind the Opposition and the Leader of the opposition party about
their track record and association with the Member for Fisher.
I remind them that the National Party preselected the Member for Fisher
for the 1984 election, that the National Party preselected the Member for
Fisher for the 1987 election, that the Liberals preselected Mr Slipper for the
1993 election, then the 1996 election, then the 1998 election, then for the
2001 election, then for the 2004 election, then for the 2007 election and
then for the 2010 election.
And across these elections, Mr Slipper enjoyed the personal support of the
Leader of the Opposition. I remind the Leader of the Opposition that on 28
September 2010, following the last election campaign, when Mr Slipper was
elected as Deputy Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition at that stage said
this, and I quote.
He referred to the Member for Maranoa, who was also elected to a
position at the same time, and then went on as follows: ‘And the Member
for Fisher will serve as a fine complement to the Member for Scullin in
the chair. I believe that the Parliament will be well-served by the team
which will occupy the chair in this chamber. I congratulate the Member
for Fisher, who has been a friend of mine for a very long time, who has
served this Parliament in many capacities with distinction.’
The words of the Leader of the Opposition on record, about his personal
friendship with Mr [Slipper], and on record about his view about Mr
Slipper’s qualities and attributes to be the Speaker.
No walking away from those words, they were the statement of the
Leader of the Opposition then. I remind the Leader of the Opposition, who
now comes in here and speaks about apparently his inability to work with
 Glossary 205

or talk to Mr Slipper. I remind the Leader of the Opposition he attended Mr

Slipper’s wedding.
Did he walk up to Mr Slipper in the middle of the service and say he was
disgusted to be there? Was that the attitude he took? No, he attended that
wedding as a friend.
The Leader of the Opposition, keen to lecture others about what they
ought to know or did know about Mr Slipper. Well with respect, I’d say to
the Leader of the Opposition after a long personal association including
attending Mr Slipper’s wedding, it would be interesting to know whether the
Leader of the Opposition was surprised by these text messages.
He’s certainly in a position to speak more intimately about Mr Slipper
than I am, and many other people in this Parliament, given this long personal
association.
Then of course the Leader of the Opposition comes into this place and
says, and I quote, ‘Every day the Prime Minister stands in this Parliament to
defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this Parliament, another
day of shame for a government which should already have died of shame.’
Well can I indicate to the Leader of the Opposition the Government
is not dying of shame, my father did not die of shame, what the Leader of
the Opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this Parliament
and the sexism he brings with it. Now about the text messages that are on
the public record or reported in the [media]– that’s a direct quote from
the Leader of the Opposition so I suggest those groaning have a word
with him.
On the conduct of Mr Slipper, and on the text messages that are in the
public domain, I have seen the press reports of those text messages. I am offended
by their content. I am offended by their content because I am always offen-
ded by sexism. I am offended by their content because I am always offended
by statements that are anti-women.
I am offended by those things in the same way that I have been offended
by things that the Leader of the Opposition has said, and no doubt will con-
tinue to say in the future. Because if this today was an exhibition of his new
feminine side, well I don’t think we’ve got much to look forward to in terms
of changed conduct.
I am offended by those text messages. But I also believe, in terms of this
Parliament making a decision about the speakership, that this Parliament
should recognise that there is a court case in progress. That the judge has
reserved his decision, that having waited for a number of months for the legal
matters surrounding Mr Slipper to come to a conclusion, that this Parliament
should see that conclusion.
I believe that is the appropriate path forward, and that people will then
have an opportunity to make up their minds with the fullest information
available to them.
206 Glossary

But whenever people make up their minds about those questions, what I
won’t stand for, what I will never stand for is the Leader of the Opposition
coming into this place and peddling a double standard. Peddling a standard
for Mr Slipper he would not set for himself. Peddling a standard for Mr
Slipper he has not set for other members of his frontbench.
Peddling a standard for Mr Slipper that has not been acquitted by the
people who have been sent out to say the vilest and most revolting things
like his former Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Senator Bernardi.
I will not ever see the Leader of the Opposition seek to impose his double
standard on this Parliament. Sexism should always be unacceptable. We
should conduct ourselves as it should always be unacceptable. The Leader of
the Opposition says do something; well he could do something himself if he
wants to deal with sexism in this Parliament.
He could change his behaviour, he could apologise for all his past state-
ments, he could apologise for standing next to signs describing me as a witch
and a bitch, terminology that is now objected to by the frontbench of the
Opposition.
He could change a standard himself if he sought to do so. But we will see
none of that from the Leader of the Opposition because on these questions
he is incapable of change. Capable of double standards, but incapable of
change. His double standards should not rule this Parliament.
Good sense, common sense, proper process is what should rule this
Parliament. That’s what I believe is the path forward for this Parliament, not
the kind of double standards and political game-playing imposed by the
Leader of the Opposition now looking at his watch because apparently a
woman’s spoken too long.
I’ve had him yell at me to shut up in the past, but I will take the remain-
ing seconds of my speaking time to say to the Leader of the Opposition I
think the best course for him is to reflect on the standards he’s exhibited in
public life, on the responsibility he should take for his public statements; on
his close personal connection with Peter Slipper, on the hypocrisy he has
displayed in this House today.
And on that basis, because of the Leader of the Opposition’s motivations,
this Parliament today should reject this motion and the Leader of the
Opposition should think seriously about the role of women in public life and
in Australian society because we are entitled to a better standard than this.
(Sydney Morning Herald 2012)

Global gender gap

A series of reports by the World Economic Forum (WEF) chronicle the national
gender gaps of 136 countries in terms of economic, political, education and
health-based criteria. The WEF provides a ‘Global Gender Gap Index’ (begun in
 Glossary 207

2006). In 2013, Iceland led the rankings, Finland came in at second position,
Norway at third and Sweden in fourth. The Philippines and Nicaragua sat in fifth
and tenth positions respectively, while the UK ranked 18th, the USA 23rd and
Australia 24th.

GTFO
An internet acronym for ‘get the fuck out’, GTFO is usually used to express
exasperation or displeasure at perceived stupidity or incompetence. It is also used
in response to something that is unwelcome.

KPMG
A global accountancy (professional services) firm.

Multitasking (with media)

Especially attributed to younger people, Millennials (Generation Y) and Generation
Z, and students (although probably as common among Gen X), there has been some
debate as to whether multitasking with media devices (for example, ‘watching’ televi-
sion while checking the internet on a mobile device) is bad for us, with recent
studies suggesting that ‘excessive’ media multitasking is linked to ‘cognitive, social and
emotional problems’ and a recent British study linking media multitasking with brain
structure differences (specifically, lower grey matter density in the anterior cingu-
lated cortex of those who often use several media devices at the same time). Previous
research has linked high levels of media-multitasking with depression, anxiety and
poor attention when faced with distractions, although the authors of this research
note that they have established a link, not cause and effect (Medical News Today 2014).

Neoliberalism
Neoliberal discourse is pervasive across institutions and practices of governance
and advocates for the capitalist ‘free market’ as the only reliable distributor of
scarce resources across economic policy-making. Neoliberalism is based on the
assumed centrality of marketization, privatization, deregulation and flexibilization
and expounds the ‘opening up’ (through marketization, liberalization and indus-
trialization) of national economies to world monetary flows. In times of crisis,
neoliberal policy-makers have promoted strategies of so-called economic austerity,
such as cuts in welfare benefits and freezes in public sector wages, which are asso-
ciated with the enforced contraction of the public sector.

New age man

Although the New Age movement emerged in the 1970s as a Western spiritual
movement, ‘new age men’, ‘new age guys’ or the ‘sensitive new age guy (SNAG)’
208 Glossary

emerged most clearly in the 1990s, particularly as a Sex and The City favourite, and
liked to talk about his motivations, feelings and concerns (hence the ‘new age’ aspect).
Some have argued that the first appearance of the (hyper-masculine, sexist, homo-
phobic and consumption-obsessed) ‘lad’ was a reaction to the SNAG, fuelled by
men’s magazines such as Maxim, FHM and Loaded. The 1990s new age man is a little
metrosexual (in the sense of being in touch with his feminine side), but more sensi-
tive, than the ‘average’ man. Dense clusters of SNAGs, can be found, according to
the Urban Dictionary, at women’s rallies. Since SNAGs exhibit such ‘feminine’ char-
acteristics as timidity and sensitivity they have ‘lost the core qualities of Masculine
Man’ because they were ‘raised by emancipated females and a society that told [them]
how important it is to be nice to women’ (Pua Wiki 2014). They are, the Pua Wiki
suggests, essentially ‘nice guys’ or ‘wussies’ (ibid.). Once considered a refreshing
change for those critical of ‘traditional’ manhood and its emotional repressiveness, the
new age man has been subjected to some ridicule and criticism, especially from those
sceptical of men parroting gender equality rhetoric as a tool of seduction.

New media
Chiefly, any media that is internet based or reliant, such as websites, computer
multimedia, video games, DVDs and blogs, is considered ‘new media’. Most of
the technologies described as ‘new media’ are digital and ‘new media’ provide
on-demand, accessible content, often accessed through digital devices such as
smartphones or tablets. User feedback is often immediate and interactive and users
participate in content generation, which means that content is ‘democratic’ and
also often uncensored at the time of generation.

Old media
This refers to the media that existed before the advent of the internet, and includes
broadcast television and radio, newspapers, books, magazines and cinema (although
many of these media now regularly use the internet). Where ‘new media’ have an
intrinsically dynamic quality, ‘old media’ are generally considered more static and
driven ‘from above’.

Pink collar
‘Pink collar’, as opposed to ‘blue’ (skilled or unskilled manual labour) or ‘white’
(office-related) collar, refers to types of employment traditionally associated with
female workers, particularly low-paid jobs and jobs in the service industry, nursing,
primary school education and secretarial work.

Social media
User generated and internet based, social media involves the creation, exchange and
interaction of information and ideas across various virtual spaces. These include
 Glossary 209

social networking sites such as Facebook, professional networking sites such as

Linked In, blogs and microblogs such as Twitter and Tumblr, content communities
such as YouTube, collaborations such as Wikipedia, virtual inspiration ‘boards’ such
as Pinterest, virtual worlds such as Second Life and game worlds such as Borderlands
and Half-Life. Social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies and
differ from traditional media in a number of ways, particularly in terms of the extent
of their reach (and therefore, perhaps, their influence), dynamism, permanence and
regulation.

Women in Refrigerators
This pervasive popular culture trope refers to a popular culture source or artefact’s
penchant for using the abuse, mutilation or murder of a female character as a moti-
vating device for the (male) protagonist. The trope’s name originated in a Green
Lantern comic book storyline, which saw the hero’s girlfriend stuffed, quite literally,
into a refrigerator. It has since been popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone
and her website, Women in Refrigerators, which is dedicated to the ‘superheroines
who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator’
(Women in Refrigerators 2013).
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INDEX

Note: italic page numbers indicate tables; bold indicate figures.

Abbott, T. 106, 108–9, 197 culture 41–4; context and overview

abuse and threats 162 21–2; cultural studies and political
academia: attitude to visual form 61–2; economy 32–6; culture and IPE 36–41;
attitudes to popular culture 4 global/local success 45–8; high/low
access costs 78 binaries of culture 27–31; political
access, to spaces of consumption 82–3 economy 31–2; social media 48–53;
accessibility, of feminism 158–9 visual language and global politics
acquisition 68 22–4; visual language and social
activism 3, 158, 159, 162, 197 practice 25–7
Adorno, T. 9, 31–2, 36–7 anchorage 63–4
advertising: Airbag by Porsche 51; Cif 86; Andersen, N.A. 7
derogatory and violent 13; Dolce and Annenberg study 56–7
Gabbana 189–95; Facebook 49–50, anonymity 149
50; importance of 84–8; influence 85; antifeminism: in commodity form 73;
making adverts 86–8; means of harm 68; consumption 71; cultural sites of 44;
public space 84–5; representations 85–6; growth of 99–100; hate speech 13; overt
visual signage 26–7 see overt antifeminism; power of 101;
aesthetics, and gender violence 1 tacit see tacit antifeminism; viability 2
Aftermath of Feminism,The (McRobbie) Aronowitz, N.W. 174
11–12 Aronson, P. 17, 99, 100, 104, 106
age, and attitudes to feminism 100 articulation 41
agency 70, 99, 112, 143, 144 attendance at events 30–1, 30
Airbag by Porsche 51 attitudes to feminism, complexity 103
Aitken, R. 40 audiences: cinema 121–3; difficulties of
Alexander,V. 135 research 71; The Economist 148, 150;
Alien tetralogy 124 gay men 153; meaning making 81–2;
alienation of labour 72 reception and interpretation 80–2; video
Alvarez, S. 90 games 130–1
Americanization 37 Aune, K. 159–60
analysis of popular culture: commercial Australia: locating feminism 106–9; politics
viability and popularity 44–53; consumer and feminism 161; women from
culture, consumerism and popular non-English speaking backgrounds 109
234 Index

Australian Human Rights Commission 107 capitalist culture, commodities in 72–4

author: experiences of feminism 3–4; cartoons: ‘The Big Feminist But’ 105;
starting point 2 feminist criticism 20; How to Synergize
Avengers,The 146 85; Rush Vs Feminism 141
Ayers, M. 110–11 Carver, T. 7, 24, 55, 61–2, 65
Castor, A. 161
backlash 101–2, 104, 136, 180 Catwoman/ Selena Kyle 128–9
Bagnato, D. 170 celebrities, feminism 174
Bailey, J. 57 celebrity feminism 165–9
Bakhtin, M. 1 Center for the Study of Women in Film in
Barthes, R. 63–4, 81 Television 58
Bechdel Test 123, 124, 198 Chant, S. 83–4
behaviour, gendered hierarchies 11 Chemaly, S. 60, 147
Being Feminist 103 Chenowith, Brenda, Six Feet Under
Bella, Twilight series 168–9 141–2, 144
Benjamin, W. 22, 62, 70 child protection 113
Berlatsky, N. 168 children: effects of sexualization 114–15;
Best, J. 37–9 self-identification 70; television 137–8
Beyoncé 161 choice, enlightened sexism 156
BIC pens 166–7 choices 92
‘Big Feminist But, The’ cartoon 105 Christopherson, S. 83
Bigelow, K. 58 Cif, advertising 86
bimbo feminism 113 cinema: attendance and gender 79–80;
Blair, T. 9 audiences 121–3; barriers to women’s
Bleiker, R. 4, 23, 62, 65 participation 58–9; female characters
blogosphere 198–9 120–5; gender inequality 56;
blogs, antifeminism 13 independent film 124; mass production
Blurred Lines (Thicke) 110–11 28; product quality 123–4; profit-making
bodies: as objects of discourse 8; 47–8, 57; women in ‘superhero’ films
as saleable 73 126–9; women’s presence 58
body image 115 cities, wealth generation 83–4
book: aims 4, 11, 178; approaches taken 6; Clarkson, K. 173
background 3–5; focus of 41; overview 1; class: and feminism 109; as focus of IPE 177
starting point 2; summary and class power 36–7, 83
conclusions 177–83 class relations 40
boundaries 4, 9 Cochrane, K. 156–7, 160
boys and young men, as cinema audience coded messages 63, 64
121–3 codes 25–6, 61, 69
boys, effects of sexualization 114–15 coding 65
BRIC countries, video consumption 77–8 commercial interests 42
Bricken, R. 125–6 commercial viability: antifeminism vs
Britpop 199 feminism 180–3; of feminism 44; and
Brittain, M. 74, 76 popularity 44–53; sexism 110
broadcast news reporting 59 commercialism 101, 102, 166
Bruni-Sarkozy, C. 100 commercialization 28, 101, 112
brutality 134 commodification 29, 74
Buffy 168 commodities: in capitalist culture 72–4;
Butler, J. 10 role of 71
common sense 21
cable networks, local language communication: power and influence 25;
programming 47 shared language 55
Cagney and Lacey 73, 139, 173 communication industry, ownership and
campaigning 91, 162 control 35
capitalism: as context of culture 29; as complexity 41, 103, 181
contradictory 38 conditions of existence 40–1
 Index 235

Connor, Sarah, Terminator 139 death of feminism 96–8, 181

conservativism 9–10 decodings, positions of 65–7
consumer culture, and consumerism 41–4 deconstruction 6–7, 65
consumption 70–88; advertising 84–8; decorum 132
commodities in capitalist culture Degeneres, E. 166–7
72–4; digital 74–5; exclusion from 178; dehumanization 195
feminism/antifeminism 71; and gender Deloitte 76, 79
151; of media 75; nature of 42–3; Democratic Corporatist Model 46
private/public 71; and production 33–4, depoliticization 37, 106
37; and self-worth 166; spaces of 72; Derrida, J. 6–7, 65
spaces of and power 82–4; ways of desirability 73
understanding 71; women and men developer fees 48
74–80; see also production, difference 41
representation and consumption digital consumption 74–5
content monitoring 49, 51 digital technology, proliferation 78–9
contradiction 41 Dini, P. 137
control: of media 46; through images 70 direct-effects model 81
Cool Britannia 9 discourse: power and popular culture 6–10;
corporate interests 42 use of term 8
costs of media 35–6 discourse analysis 7, 8
Crane, Ichabod 142, 144 discourses, functions and effects 8
crime dramas 1 dispossession 35, 178
critical facilities 70 Ditto, B. 170
Crowther, G. 149, 150 Dockterman, E. 138–9
cult classics 44 Dolce and Gabbana 189–95; Esquire
cult status 44–5 campaign 190–1, 191; knives campaign
cultural bias 61 191–3, 192; objectifying men campaign
cultural economy 37–8 193–5, 194
cultural effects 91 dominant-hegemonic position 65–6
cultural gendering 168–9 double bind 115
cultural homogenization 46 Douglas, S.J. 98, 155–6
cultural political economy (CPE) Draper, J. 151, 152–3, 154
38, 39–40 dualism, conceptual and methodological 39
cultural products, determination of 38 Dumb Girl 136–7
cultural rules 8 Dunham, L. 161, 164, 165, 167
cultural specificity 96 During, S. 25, 31
cultural studies, and political economy 32–6 DVD sales 135
cultural turn 23, 39 dynamism, of culture 31
culture: dynamism 31; and economy 40;
high/low binaries 27–31; immaterial 71; Eagle Forum, The 91, 199–200
and International Political Economy economic reductionism 40
(IPE) 36–41; production 56 economics, application of 5
cyber cafes 77 Economist,The 148–50; slip cover 149
cycles, in attitudes to feminism 181 economy, and culture 40
Cyrus, M. 161 Eisenstein, H. 91, 92
Elias, J. 92–3, 165
D’Acci, J. 173–4 elites 24, 35, 83
Damsel in Distress trope 132 elitism 29
Dark Knight trilogy 126–9, 127 embedded feminism 155
data analysis 13, 17–18 embodiment, of feminism 181
dating 137 emotion, representations of 62
Davidson, N. 47–8 empowerment 112
Davies, G. 121–2 Enerson, C. 100–1
Dawes, Rachel 128 enlightened sexism 154–6
De Brito, S. 107 Eowyn, Lord of the Rings 145
236 Index

Esquire 151–2; Dolce and Gabbana flexibilized production systems 72

190–1, 191 format shows, adaptability 47
ethics of consent 115 founding antagonism 32
European Parliament report on fragmentation 181, 183
sexualization 113–14 Fraser, N. 93, 165
European Parliament’s Committee on freedom: sexual 113; urban vs. rural
Women’s Rights and Gender Equality women 84
(CWRGE) 113–14 Freeman, N. 169
Evans, J. 22–3, 32 fridging 126
events, attendance at 30–1, 30 Friedan, B. 156
exclusion 9, 35–6, 83, 178
expenditure 30 Galifianakis, Z. 9, 200
‘Exploring the Barriers and Opportunities Gamble, C. 84
for Independent Women Filmmakers’ gaming: culture 200–1; female characters
58–9 129–31; sexualization 116
gaming consoles, gender and use 79
Facebook 48, 77; advertising platform gaming industry, sexism 131
49–50, 50; Sydney Riders motorbike Garnham, N. 32–5
group 51–3, 52; Zoo Weekly 49 gay men 153
Faludi, S. 101 gay villages 83
Family Guy 141 geek culture 123, 201
fantasy 10 geek feminism 83, 115–16
female characters: gaming 129–31; killing GeekFeminismWiki 115
off 126; strong to boring 141–4 gender: and cinema attendance 79–80; as
Female Eunuch,The (Greer) 162 cohesive 11; and consumption 151;
female movie characters 120–5 and popular culture 10–11;
Femen 170 representation and participation 108;
feminazis 139 taking seriously 10
Feminine Mystique,The (Friedan) 162 gender analysis, as disconnected 93
feminism: accessibility 158–9; ambivalence gender codes 69, 179
towards 13; appropriations of 12; in gender disparities, in media 58–60
commodity form 73–4; as complete 101; gender gaps 84
consumption 71; cultural effects 91; gender inequality, cinema 56–7
death of 96–8; embedded 155; as focus ‘Gender Inequality in 500 Popular
of book 41; geek 83; influence of Films’ 56–7
popular culture 2; institutionalization of gender mainstreaming 90–1
12; locating see locating feminism; and gender pay gap 13, 201
male anxiety 153; as personal 4; second- gender roles 68
wave 90, 97, 99, 109, 139, 152–3, 168; gender stereotypes 26–7
surveys of 17; tropes 139–40; utilization gender tropes 119
of 179; see also overt feminism gendered identities, construction 80
feminist activities 90 gendered representations 67–70
feminist criticism, cartoon 20 geopolitical realisms 24
Feminist Project, The 94–7 Germain, R.D. 36–7, 38, 39
Feminist Sex Wars 112 Gibson, Stella, The Fall 161
feminists are. Google searches 140 Gill, R. 5, 21, 151, 153
Fernandes, R. 136–7 Gillard, J. 106–7, 108–9, 157–8, 180–1, 202;
Fey, T. 147 see also Misogyny Speech
film: audiences 121–3; female characters Gingrich, A. 152
120–5; independent film 124; product girl power 144–7, 170
quality 123–4; women in ‘superhero’ girls: as cinema audience 122–3; effects of
films 126–9 sexualization 114
Final Girl trope 133 Girls 73–4, 161, 167–8
Fine, C. 103, 104 global financial crisis 94
Firefly 146–7 global gender gap 207
 Index 237

global/local, contexts for iconic messages 63, 64

success 45–8 identities: construction 80; emergent 41;
Global Media Habits 2010 multiplication of 43; as performance 36
(Lindsay) 76, 78 identity, questions of 41
Global Media Monitoring Day 59 ideologies, nature of 6
global politics, and visual language 22–4 I’m not a feminist, but . . .’ 13, 103–6, 158,
Golden Globes 147 174, 181
goods, as meaningful 73 imagery: ‘sexy’ 115; use of 1; violent and
Gordon-Levitt, J. 161, 165 sexually explicit 13
Gosling, R. 168 images: and control 70; effects of 8;
governance, and liberal feminism 164–5 learning to read 68–9; political reading
governance feminism 12–13, 91–7, 165 65; reading 63–7; of reality 64–5; as
governmental programmes 90–1 representations 177
GQ 154 immaterial culture 71
Gramsci, A. 36, 40, 72 independent cinema, women in 58
Gravity 124, 144 independent film 124
Green Lantern 126 indigenous peoples 109, 172–3
Griffin, P. 7, 8, 10, 65 individualism 92, 102, 106
Grossberg, L. 33–5, 36, 37, 38, 41, 56, 61 inferiority, of popular culture 28
GTFO 207 inner slut 112–16
guerrilla feminisms 169–72; photos 171 innuendo 13
institutionalization, of feminism 12
Hall, E.J. 99–100, 101, 104, 106 international feminism 98
Hall, S. 10, 22–3, 25–7, 32, 65–7 International Political Economy (IPE) 4–5;
Halley, J. 11–13, 91, 92, 94–7, 113, approaches to culture 32; attitude to
162–3, 164–5 popular culture 23–4; and culture 36–41;
Halliwell, G. 106 problems of 177–8
Hann, M. 199 International Relations (IR) 4–5, 23–4
Harding, C. 79 internet sites: antifeminism 13; and media
Harris, A. 92, 99, 101, 103 consumption 47
Harvey, D. 83 interpretation 41, 80–2
hate speech 13 interpretive methodologies 7
Hathaway, A. 128 interpretive resistance 81–2
Hawkesworth, M. 90, 96, 97–9
Hefner, H. 152 Jessop, B. 38
hegemony 36–7, 65–6 journalism 59–60
Heldman, C. 193–4 Joyner, S. 134–5
Henderson, D. 168
Hess, A. 148, 149, 150 Kalb, J. 139, 181
high/low binaries of culture 27–31 Kang, I. 137, 139, 142, 143
high/low politics 9 Katniss, The Hunger Games 168–9
Hollows, J. 5, 67, 71, 74, 166, 179 Kerwin, A.M. 47, 76–9
Hollywood: Golden Age 121; market Kesler, J. 120–2, 125, 133–4, 139
position 46–7; production 56; sexism Kessler, A. 126
57–8; use of female talent 147 Kia cars, advertising 26–7
Holmes, L. 121, 134 Kinchen, R. 97
Holmes, Sherlock 144 knives campaign 191–3, 192
homophobia 154 knowledge of the world 1–2
Hooper, C. 148, 149–50 Knox, S. 159
Horkheimer, M. 9, 31–2, 36–7 KPMG 77, 207
How to be a Woman (Moran) 161 Kuchera, B. 130, 131
How to Synergize, cartoon 85
humour 167 labelling 103, 106
Hunter, R. 57–8, 59 labour, alienation of 72
Hutchison, E. 62 lads’ magazines 153–4
238 Index

Lady Gaga 89 McRobbie, A. 2, 11–12, 43, 101, 102–3,

language: local 47; as mediator 25; as 104, 166, 180, 181
medium 7; shared 55 meaning: bestowal of 7; creation of 2;
Legally Blonde 73 determination of 35; regulation of 23
Levy, A. 102, 166, 180 meaning creation 65
Lewis, P. 108, 109 meaning-making 24, 40, 44, 67–8, 81–2,
Liang, J. 145–7 177–8
liberal feminism 162–5 meaningfulness 41, 73
Liggett, R. 68, 84–5 media 113; costs of 35–6; feminism in
Limbaugh, R. 140 160–1; feminist analyses 5–6; gender
Lindsay, G. 76, 77–8 disparities 58–60; ideological impact 6;
linguistic messages 63 increasing demand 79; influence 106;
linguistic turn 23 internet sites 47; misogyny 109; ownership
linking, text and image 63 and control 35; paying for 77; portrayal of
Lipschutz, R.D. 38 feminism 100, 104; production
literal messages 63 outlets 46; profit-making 47; state
literature, expenditure 30 control 46; stereotyping 104; as symbolic
local language programming 47 institutions 41; system models 46
locating feminism 181–2, 183; Australia media consumption 75, 76
106–9; context and overview 89–90; Media Report to Women (MRW) 59, 79
death of feminism 96–8; international men: consumption of popular culture 74–80;
feminism 98; Janet Halley 94–7; discussion sites 140–1; entitlement to sex
neoliberalism 91–4; new feminism 132–4; gay 153; magazines for 151–5;
100–3; postfeminism 98–100; objectification 193–5, 194
sexualization 109–16; stereotype threat Men are the Expendable Gender
103–6; successes 90–6 trope 129
Lorde 162 messages 63–4
Love, C. 172 metrosexuality 154
Lunden, I. 79 Meyer, A. 9, 10, 11, 28, 29, 32, 55, 56, 66–7,
Lury, C. 35–6, 42–3, 70, 178 71–2, 80, 81–2, 83, 178
Lyttelton, O. 122, 123 Milestone, K. 9, 10, 11, 21, 28, 29, 32, 55,
56, 66–7, 71–2, 80, 81–3, 178
MacFarlane, S. 147 militarization, and popular culture 23–4
Mackay, F. 109–10, 159 military terms 197–8
magazines 151–5 Miller, D. 42, 73
male domination, as structure 112–13 Mills, Lieut. Abbie, Sleepy Hollow 142,
male roles 107 143–4
male violence, understandings of mimesis, dangers of 70
109–10 misogyny 107, 109, 138, 152
Mancini, P. 46 Misogyny Speech 107, 157, 161, 180–1,
marginalization 96–7 202–7; see also Gillard, J.
marketability 73 Mison, T. 142
marketing, video games 131 Miss Representation 21–2
marketization 83 mobile phones, video consumption 78
Martel, D. 110–11 moments of production 25–6
Marx, K. 72, 73 Moran, C. 161
Marxist critique 31–2 Moseley, R. 5, 67, 71, 74, 179
masculinity 151 ‘Motion for a European Parliament
mass culture 28 Resolution on the Sexualisation of Girls’
material culture 42–4 (2012/2047(INI)) 113–14
material objects 1 Motion Picture Association of America
matrices of power 10 (MPAA) 79–80
McDougall, S. 143, 144, 145 mouse pad, photo 116
McDowell, L. 37–8 multitasking 207
McIlwaine, C. 83–4 myths 43, 97, 100
 Index 239

narratives 10; of dissolution 97–8 Paterson, M. 37–9

negative characterization 139–41 people with disabilities 109
negotiated codes 66 Perry, K. 104
neogramscians 37 photographs 64–5, 70
neoliberalism 37, 83, 91–4, 207 pink collar work 60, 208
neoliberalization, dangers of 165 Plato 64, 65
new age man 207 Playboy 152
new feminism 100–3 Poehler, Amy 147
New Lads 153 political economy: context and overview
New Man 152–3 31–2; and cultural studies 32–6;
new Marxists 37 defining 40
new media 32, 208 ‘Political Economy and Cultural Studies’
new screens 78–9 (Garnham) 32–3
news directors 59 Political Economy, Capitalism and Popular
news media 59–60 Culture (Lipschutz) 38
newspapers, circulation 77 politicians, use of popular culture 9
Newsweek 69 politics: and feminism 161; high/low 9;
niche cultures, attendance at events 31 sexism 107
niche status 44 polysemy 63, 81
Nickelodeon 22 popular culture: academic attitudes to 4;
Nielsen, 76, 78, 79, 199 and complexity of feminism 110; as
‘No, but…’ feminism 106 invented category 29; scope 11
Nolan, C. 126–8 popular culture form, context and overview
non-coded messages 63 119–20
non-governmental programmes 90–1 popularity, and commercial viability 44–53
norms 82–3, 179 popularity gap 89–90
Not Another Wave 128–9 post-Fordism 72–3
nudity 110–12 post-Marxist hegemony theory 37, 39
postfeminism 3, 12, 89, 98–100, 101, 180
Obama, B. 9 poststructuralism 65
objectification 101, 112; Dolce and poverty, and participation 35–6
Gabbana 193–5, 194 power: class power 36–7; communication
old feminism 102, 104 and influence 25; elites 83; explanations
old media 208–9 of 36; of meaning-making 24; or popular
online dating 48 culture 2; and popular culture 6–10;
online media consumption 74–5 representations as 23; social relations 40
Oosterlynck, S. 38 power relations: research sensitivity 8;
oppositional codes 66 understanding 178
Oprah 166 Pozner, J.L. 135, 136, 138
othering 83 pregnancy 145–6
overt antifeminism 120–41; female movie prejudice, and stereotypes 68
characters 120–5; games 129–31; pressures on women 108
negative characterization 139–41; priorities, of young people 92
profitability of female stupidity 134–9; privatization, of public space 83
sex and sexuality 132–4; women in product placement 135
refrigerators 125–9 production: and consumption 33–4,
overt feminism: celebrity feminism 165–9; 37; consumption as 43; as culturally
liberal feminism 162–5; riot grrrl produced 56; of message 25–6
169–72; young women 156–62 production of consent 24
ownership 42, 164 production, representation and
consumption: audience reception and
Padme, Star Wars 145–6 interpretation 80–2; commodity in
Palin, S. 69, 69 capitalist culture 72–4; consumption
participation, and representation 108 70–88; context and overview 55; gender
participation costs 35–6 and consumption 74–80; gendered
240 Index

representations 67–70; importance resistance 9–10, 34, 81–2, 90, 110

of advertising 84–8; production respondents 14; descriptive statistics 14–16
56–60; representations 60–70; spaces of Return of the King, Lord of the Rings 145
consumption and power 82–4 riot grrrl 169–72
profit-making 47 Ripley, Ellen, Alien 124, 139
profitability 73; antifeminism vs feminism Rise of Enlightened Sexism,The (Douglas) 155
180–3; children’s television 137; of Robinow, J. 124
female stupidity 134–9; of male/female Robinson, H. 37
movie leads 121, 125; popular culture for Rodriguez, M.S. 99–100, 101, 104, 106
women 124–5; video games 129–31 role models 138
programmes, governmental/non- Rourke, A. 107, 108
governmental 90–1 Rowley, C. 4, 21, 55, 65, 68, 71, 80
promiscuity 132 rural women 84
Prügl, E. 94, 165 Rush vs Feminism, cartoon 141
psychographic content 49
public radio, women’s presence 59 sales, and cultural levels 29–30
public space: advertising 84–5; privatization 83 Salvation Army 114–15
Pulver, A. 127, 147 Sánchez, E.L. 22, 134, 136–7, 138
punk rock 169–70 Sandberg, S. 165
Pussy Riot 170 Sarandon, S. 89
Sargent, J. 124, 132–4
questions of articulation 41 Sarkeesian, A. 129–31, 139–40
sassy black women 144
Ratajkowski, E. 110–12 SavvyRed 141
raunch culture 99, 102, 180 Schlafly, P. 91, 199–200
reading the image 63–7 second-wave feminism, see feminism
reality: and images 64–5; mediated through self-description 95
language 25 self-help ideology 102
reality television 134–6, 138 self-identification 42, 70, 100, 103–4
reception, and interpretation 80–2 self-objectification 113
Redfern, C. 157, 159–60 self-production 41
Reeve, C. 127–8 self-representation 96–7
regulation, spaces of consumption 82–3 sense-making, regulation of 8
relay 64 sense of self 70, 179
representation, and participation 108 sensitivity, of research 8
representations 60–70; in advertising 85–6; Serenity 146–7
contradictions of 181; gendered 67–70; Sex and the City 74, 166
images and text 177; importance of 1, 21; sexiness, as rewarded 138
as interpretation 62; negative 104; as sexism: commercial viability 110;
power 23; reading the image 63–7; and enlightened 154–6; gaming 129–31;
sense of self 70; see also production, in gaming industry 131; Hollywood
representation and consumption 57–8; means of harm 68; in politics
research: audience participation and 107; prevalence 107; as routine 154;
observation 80; data analysis 13; worsening 108–9
disciplinary base 4; findings 103–4; focus sexist content, monitoring 49, 51
of 41, 179; lessons of 181; questions Sexist Jerk Who Scores trope 133
and concerns 16–17; respondents 14, sextremism 169–72
14–16; sensitivity of 8; sources 11–18; sexual abuse scandals 161
statistically viable relationships 17–18; sexual freedom 113
survey 13–17; survey questions 185–7; sexual harassment 107, 108, 114–15
survey responses 80–1, 110, 112, 157, sexual marketplace 166
158–60, 158–9, 172–3; theoretical sexual objectification 101
framework 5 sexuality: conflicting attitudes to 115,
research strategies 5–6 132–4; male 151–2
researcher effects 7–8 sexualization 2, 70, 109–16
 Index 241

sexualized environments 83, 115–16 Sundance report 58–9

Shakespeare, W. 29–30 Superman 127–8
shame 161 survey: findings 103–4; overview 13–17;
Shapiro, M.J. 7, 9 questions 185–7; responses 80–1, 89,
sharing, of culture 28 110, 112, 157, 158–60, 158–9, 172–3;
Shepherd, L.J. 3 statistically viable relationships 17–18
‘shock and awe’ 9 surveys, of feminism 17
Silly Me Syndrome (SMS) 136–7 Sydney Riders, Facebook page 51–3, 52
Silverstein, M. 80, 122, 142, 143
Simone, G. 126, 209 tacit antifeminism 141–56; The Economist
Singh, Jyoti 161 148–50; enlightened sexism 154–6;
Six Feet Under 141–2, 144 female characters – strong to boring
Skrzydlewska, J.K. 70, 113–14 141–4; gender and consumption 151–5;
Sleepy Hollow 142, 143–4 girl power 144–7
slums 84 tacit feminism 172–4
sluttishness 133 technology: access to 79; and availability of
Small, C. 168, 169 culture 28; cultural effects 4
Smith, C. 56, 58, 77 teenagers, television 137–8
Smith, K. 77, 147 television: for children and teenagers 137–8;
social democratic politics 94 decoding positions 65–7; definition of
social media 77, 181, 208; advertising 50; women 10; DVD sales 135; female-male
campaigning 162; charges 48–9; content relations 138–9; gender and use 79;
monitoring 49, 51; gender and use 79; gendered employment 60; global
importance of 48–53 and national 45; growth forecast 48;
social power, and representation 61 housewife reality shows 135–6; increased
social practice, and visual language 25–7 consumption 76; as international
social relations 32–4, 92, 181 45–6; as leisure activity 21–2; market
Sontag, S. 64–5, 68, 70, 179 dominance 46–7; as necessity 76; power
sources 11–18 of 22; production expenditure 134;
Souter, F. 154–5 programming popularity 76–7; reality
spaces of consumption 72, 82–3 television 134–6; research sources 11;
spectacle 62 viewing figures 30; wedding shows 135–6
Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break texts, as representations 177
from Feminism (Halley) 11–13, 94–6 textual essentialism 40
sports reporting 59 textuality 41
Stacey, J. 92, 99 Thicke, R. 110–11
Star Wars prequels 145–6 third-wave feminism 99, 170–2
state failure 94 Thornton, B. 97–8
stereotype threat 103–6, 159–60 threats and abuse 162
stereotypes 26–7, 68, 110, 180 tomboys 168–9
stigma 161 Tower Prep 137
Storey, J. 6, 27–8, 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, trademark applications 9
40–1, 43, 61 tropes 178–80; Damsel in Distress 132;
stories 10 Dumb Girl 136–7; feminists 139–40;
Straw Feminists 140 Final Girl 133; of liberal feminism 164;
Strickland, J. 48–9 Men are the Expendable Gender 129;
Strinati, D. 28, 43, 73 Sexist Jerk Who Scores 133; Strong
Strong Female Character (SFC) trope Female Character (SFC) 141–4; video
141–4, 174 games 129–31; women in refrigerators
students, and feminism 13, 156–8, 181 125–9; young women 137–8
stupidity 134–9 Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project
subordination 33–5 129–31; responses to project 130
success: of feminism 44, 90–6; social Turner, J. 160, 161–2, 180
media 48 Twitter 48, 49, 79
successful women 108–9 Twilight series 168
242 Index

Ukraine is Not a Brothel 170 of popular culture 74–80; cultural

UN-Habitat 84 definition 10; in independent cinema 58;
Underwood, C. 103 independent sexuality 132–4; from
United Nations Convention to Eliminate non-English speaking backgrounds 109;
Discrimination Against Women objectification 112; perceptions 181;
(CEDAW) 68, 90 portrayed as stupid 134–9; presence in
urban women 84 cinema 58; pressures on 108; on public
USA: cultural specificity 96; popular culture radio 59; reality television 134–6; in
and militarization 23–4 refrigerators 125–9, 209; representation
and participation 108; representations
value 73 in cinema 56; representations of 1;
Veronica Mars 73, 140 successful 108–9; urban vs. rural 84;
video consumption 74–5, 77–8 video games audience/players 122–3
video games 129–31 ‘Women for Gillard’ campaign 106
violence 180 women’s sexuality, conflicting attitudes
virtual spaces 83 to 115
visual form, vs. textual 61–2 Wong, D. 133, 140–1
visual language: discomfort with 61–2; and Woods, J. 108, 109
global politics 22–4; power of 177; and World Bank 96
social practice 25–7 World Economic Forum (WEF) 93
visual signage, advertising 26–7 writing styles, The Economist 150

Waisbord, S. 45, 46–7 young people: priorities 92; television

Walby, S. 90, 92, 93–4, 99, 101, 102 137–8
Walker, R.B.J. 39–40 young women: activism 158; characteristics
Walking Dead 132–3 106; feminist perspective 100; overt
Walter, N. 173 feminism 156–62; perspectives on
Warner Bros. 124 feminism 103–4, 106; portrayal 137–8;
wealth generation, opportunities for 83–4 postfeminism 102; self-identification
Weber, C. 23 103–4; tropes 137–8
Weldes, J. 2, 4, 9, 23, 24 Yousafzai, Malala 161
What is Feminism? photo 162
Whedon, Joss 146–7 Zalewski, M. 4
Whelehan, I. 101, 102, 120, 151, 153, 180 Zehfuss, M. 65
WikiLeaks 66 Zero Dark Thirty 124–5
women: barriers to participation 58–9; Zoo Weekly 182
as cinema audience 123; consumption Zuckerberg, M. 49