Course:WMST307:Student Pages:Ashley Teja

   Post feminism is a term that can have many definitions, and some scholars refute the term all together. The term was first used as a reaction against second wave feminism, and implies that the goals of feminism have been fulfilled and it is no longer needed. Angela McRobbie argues that post-feminism “positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasizes that it is no longer needed, it is a spent force” (McRobbie, 255). When feminism is mentioned in popular culture, it is often only invoked in order to prove that it is no longer necessary. The discourse surrounding post-feminism implies that there is no longer a need for collective action to further improve the status of marginalized groups, as the implication is that we are all equals.
 
  Because feminism’s goals have supposedly been met, men and women are free to engage in a sort of retro sexism that exists under the guise of irony. Sexist advertisements can be seen as an example of this. These ads are not considered blatantly sexist as there is an illusion of “choice” in regards to the woman who decides to be objectified. Furthermore, a sense of irony is invoked in order to offset protests of sexism.   In these cases, “objectification is pre-empted with irony... and feminism is invoked so that it can be undone” (McRobbie, 259). Therefore, anyone who would have a problem with this sort of retro sexism is made to laugh along with the rest, they should “get” that it is only a joke. 

  Another aspect of post-feminism is the focus on individuality as opposed to collective action. The idea of “choice” is central to this narrative, because women can have the lives they desire if they know how to make the correct choices. This rhetoric plays very well into the hand of neoliberal capitalist discourse. In postfeminist, Sex and the City –esque forms of media, women are “empowered” not only by being able to be blatantly sexual, but by buying the right things. Susan Faludi discusses this idea in the 2006 preface of her book Backlash: The Undelcared War Against American Women. She argues that women often stop to “gather glittery trinkets from an apparent admirer. The admirer is the marketplace, and the trinkets are the bounty of a commercial culture, which has deployed the language of liberation as a new and powerful tool of subjugation” (Faludi,xiv ). Due to the fact that independence and empowerment for women is being sold as simply being able to purchase the right things and make the right life choices for oneself, it has become easier for women to buy into this notion than to focus on actual feminist politics that could potentially bring change to the current heteronormative, patriarchal, structures that hold restrict them.  

Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown Publishers. 2006. Print.

McRobbie, Angela. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture”. Feminist Media Studies.4(3).(2004): 255-264.Web.12 Sep 2012.