Course:WMST307:Student Pages:Laney McGrew

Post-feminism is the idea that gender equality, usually in a Western context, has been achieved and thus there is no longer a need for feminist activism (McRobbie 255). According to theorist Angela McRobbie, post-feminism refers to "an active process by which feminist gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined" (255). In order for this undoing to effectively occur, feminism must be first acknowledged and then understood as having already fulfilled its goals, marking it is a thing of the past (255). Along with this, there must be present a neoliberal idea of 'choice', suggesting that women are no longer blindly abiding by social constructions of sexuality and femininity but rather are liberated by choosing to engage in hegemonic femininity and heteronormativity (255).

In popular culture, post-feminism is often achieved through media that appears to be actively engaging with and even well-informed about feminism (255). Women that fall under the neoliberal idea of 'success', such as lawyers or doctors, are often portrayed as modern and idealistic, suggesting that these institutions are undertaking efforts of social change and activism (257). The television show Sex and the City, for example, features the successful Carrie Bradshaw as a liberated woman, empowered by her sexuality and femininity. She embodies an acceptable femininity, one that is dis-identified from the unpopular politicized notion of feminism and suggests a more "gentle denunciation of feminism" (257). Post-feminism heavily emphasizes neoliberal thought by stressing female individualism, highlighting the importance of the idea of 'choice'. Consequentially, characters such as Bradshaw are portrayed as having benefited from institutions which have "loosened the ties of tradition and community for women, making it possible for them to be disembedded and re-located to the city to earn an independent living without shame or danger" (261). The emphasis on individuality, modernity and choice allows post-feminism to flourish, suggesting that women no longer need to rely on feminism in order to be successful due to an institutional increase in gender equality (256).

While often discussed within popular culture, the significance of post-feminism within other areas has yet to be heavily explored. The role of post-feminism in shaping education or politics, for example, is crucial to understanding its influences and the way these influences intersect. Additionally, as a more recent topic, its meaning will continually shift, and in a neoliberal society that heavily emphasizes choice and individuality, the role of post-feminism must further be explored.

In addition, there is space to see post-feminism as a radical space of action. The ways in which popular feminisms condemn post-feminism can be seen to parallel the ways in which feminisms can create rigid power structures over the bodies it works to protect. While McRobbie points to a type of post-feminism typically elucidated by uneducated, or even ignorant people, we can turn to bell hooks in her insistence that language is a site of struggle (1989). indeed, post-feminism can be a space and site which refuses to take part in a past and future which ignored trans*folk, queers, women of colour, etc. While post-feminism can be painted in a particular light of historical revisionism, anti-women, and 'ironic', it can also be painted under the rubric of activism, critique, and undoing of a totalizing western colonial feminism.

References

hooks, bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End, 1990. Print.

McRobbie, Angela. "Post: Feminism and Popular Culture". Feminist Media Studies 4.3 (2004): 255-264.