Postfeminist Media Cultures

This entry provides an overview of postfeminism, which has become central in the last two decades not only within feminist cultural discourse but also within neoliberal discourses and popular culture. The dominant attempts to conceptualize postfeminism often bring to the surface approaches that are complex and contradictory in nature. For instance, postfeminism is viewed as a theoretical framework, as a sensibility, as an expansion of feminist theory, or as a rejection of it. The discussion of postfeminism against the backdrop of media productions further highlights its implications for women and gender representation. A look at quintessential postfeminist texts shows, for instance, that postfeminism essentially problematizes contemporary constructions of gender as it simultaneously evokes and rejects basic feminist tenets

Bad Sex and the City? Feminist (Re)Awakenings in HBO’s Girls

This chapter argues that Dunham’s Girls (2012-) makes a deliberate attempt to resuscitate second wave debates about female sexual and reproductive autonomy that ‘postfeminist’ fictions had once appeared to lay to rest. By asking what is at stake in the show’s candid treatment of consent and abortion, this chapter not only investigates the controversies that have arisen over Dunham’s feminism, but also argues that it is by identifying what distinguishes Girls from a previous generation of female-centred fictions that we might better understand the evolving currency of feminism in popular culture