Introduction: feminism and contemporary celebrity culture

‘It’s what Emmeline Pankhurst would have wanted’:Celebrity Big Brother: Year of the Woman(2018, UK) and negotiations of popular feminism(s)

“…In the vignettes which introduced the women, only Rachel Johnson and Ashley James openly identified as feminist, whilst others, such as Anne Widdecombe, made clear that they did not (and this range of perspectives was also mirrored in the introduction of the male celebrities). In this regard, and unlike the 'selfprofessed' feminist celebrities analysed in other academic studies (Hamad and Taylor, 2015), the participants did not all claim to identify as feminist, either prior to entering the house, or during the series run. Rather, in drawing upon the well-established reality TV practice of casting clashing personalities (Kavka, 2012), CBB offered a space which was set up to debate and explore issues of gender, from which discussions of 'feminism' could (and would) emerge.…”

“…In January 2018, the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) (2001-, UK) was launched as the 'Year of the Woman', and it began its run with 8 female contestants and an all-female studio audience. The programme claimed to hinge its theme on the 100 th anniversary of (some) i women getting the right to vote, although it was clearly also responding to a media landscape in which feminism had achieved a 'new luminosity' (Gill, 2016: 614) -especially in terms of its intersections with celebrity culture (Hamad and Taylor, 2015). Referred to variously as a 'zeitgeist' (Gill, 2016), a fourth wave (Rivers, 2017) or a 'remarkable… surge… in popular feminism' (Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer, 2017: 884), what appears to be the increased visibility of popular feminism has attracted both scholarly and popular attention, although there is a question here about whether the contours of this debate are fundamentally 'new'.…”

The righteous outrage of post-truth anti-feminism: An analysis of TubeCrush and feminist research in and of public space

“…Thus, popular feminism makes feminism visible in particular ways while obscuring others. In popular feminism, one way that feminism is made visible is through celebrity culture, for example, in feminist 'icons' such as Emma Watson and Beyoncé (Hamad and Taylor, 2015;Keller and Ringrose, 2015). Such celebrity feminists are, in turn, made visible in particular ways, underscored by racialised logics.…”

Relinquishing control in focus groups: the use of activities in feminist research with young people to improve moderator performance

“…September 2014 saw Emma Watson give a speech on feminism to the United Nations, and in December, she featured on the front cover of the 'feminism edition' of ELLE Magazine in the UK, which also featured a photo shoot with various male celebrities and politicians wearing 'This is what a feminist looks like' t-shirts. The word 'feminism' was so prevalent in celebrity culture that it even made it onto TIME magazine's annual 'word banishment poll' of the most overused words of the year, alongside the likes of 'OMG', 'obvi' and 'yaaassss' (Hamad and Taylor, 2015: 124).…”