Feminism and Popular Culture

Investigating the Postfeminist Mystique

Author: Rebecca Munford
Secondary Author: Melanie Waters
ISBN: 9780813566535

When the term “postfeminism” entered the media lexicon in the 1990s, it was often accompanied by breathless headlines about the “death of feminism.” Those reports of feminism's death may have been greatly exaggerated, and yet contemporary popular culture often conjures up a world in which feminism had never even been born, a fictional universe filled with suburban Stepford wives, maniacal career women, alluring amnesiacs, and other specimens of retro femininity.In Feminism and Popular Culture, Rebecca Munford and Melanie Waters consider why the twenty-first century media landscape is so haunted by the ghosts of these traditional figures that feminism otherwise laid to rest. Why, over fifty years since Betty Friedan's critique, does the feminine mystique exert such a strong spectral presence, and how has it been reimagined to speak to the concerns of a postfeminist audience?To answer these questions, Munford and Waters draw from a rich array of examples from contemporary film, f

Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publish Date: 2014

Subjects: Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Feminism)