This article introduces the concept of postfeminism and highlights its value for research in language and gender studies. After discussing theoretical, historical and backlash perspectives, we advance an understanding of postfeminism as a sensibilitya patterned-yet-contradictory phenomenon intimately connected to neoliberalism. We consider elements widely theorised as constituting the postfeminist sensibility, alongside concerns shared by those who take postfeminism as their object of critical inquiry, in addition to an analytic category for cultural critique. The article then illustrates how the postfeminist sensibility may operate empirically, in the context of the doing and undoing of gender equality policies in workplaces. The article responds to calls for the field of language and gender to reinvigorate its political impetus, and to engage with feminist scholarship on postfeminism, particularly as recently developed in media and cultural studies.
This paper offers a production-based study of online consumer magazines for-and largely bymillennial women, with a particular focus on sex and relationship content. Adopting a feminist discourse analytic approach and a solidary-critical position, I examine 62 interviews conducted with producers, mainly writers and editors, from 12 publications based in the UK and Spain. The analysis maps how notions of intimacy penetrate different dimensions of the magazine, along with networks of influence for the development of content about sex and relationships, marked by a perceived shift from 'experts' to 'real life'. The ways in which producers describe the particularities of woman's magazine online journalism and dis/articulate a range of critiques are also explored. The paper highlights the increasing importance of ideas about authenticity for these media, making connections to online cultures, a reinvigorated interest in feminism, and contemporary branding strategies. Ultimately, I argue that journalists at women's magazines simultaneously (re) produce, suffer and contest sexist media, deserving further feminist scholarly attention, and our solidarity as well as critique.
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