Singled Out: Postfeminism's “New Woman” and the Dilemma of Having It All

The One with the Feminist Critique: Revisiting Millennial Postfeminism with Friends

“…(See for example Genz 2009Genz , 2010Taylor 2011, 89-90) In feminist media studies our go-to reference points for this figure have tended to be found in the aforementioned central characters of Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) from millennial US television series Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, as well of course as the titular Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) of Bridget Jones's Diary, both the novel (Fielding 1996) and the film adaptation of the same name (Sharon Maguire, 2001). But there is an equally vividly and arguably even more extremely drawn iteration of this cultural figure in Friends in the character of Monica.…”

Neoliberalism Goes Pop and Purple: Postfeminist Empowerment from Beyoncé to Mad Max

“…Their sacrifices and willingness to cope have been simultaneously flattered and normalized by a constantly modernized and purple—washed “postfeminist neoliberal mystique” (Martínez‐Jiménez 656), which has served as a source of inspiration in the process toward a supposedly autonomous and self‐made female identity. In this sense, in the words of Stéphanie Genz, “the differing incarnations of the ‘new woman’ are bound up with the socially and historically specific politics of identity that circumscribe and delineate the conditions of female subjectivity and agency” (“Singled Out” 97). These identity politics have been manipulated by the ambivalence of neoliberal governmentality, for which, as Eva Chen has explained, the neoliberal feminine subject is “actually immanent to power and enabled by it.” She is “both conditioned and constrained as ‘free’” (450)—rather than a severely disciplined, passive, or essentialist subject (444).…”

“…Indeed, as Gill and Scharff, among many other scholars in the field of feminist media studies (e.g., Adriaens and Van Bauwel 179), have pointed out, media and popular culture have been central in the development, diffusion, and success of the postfeminist neoliberal mystique or “the new postfeminist woman” (Genz, “Singled Out” 98). As Genz has stated, “the media has been instrumental in the construction and marketing of female subjectivities and it has urged women to leave behind their ‘old’ self and change into the ‘new woman’ of the moment” (“Singled Out” 97). This mainstream meaning of postfeminist neoliberal identities and their ideology is summarized by the “postfeminist neoliberal (popular) culture” (Negra and Tasker, Gendering 25).…”

“…The ambiguity and perversion with which the popular culture of neoliberal postfeminism promotes a “self‐absorbed feminism” (Genz, “Singled Out” 101), trendified as a lifestyle, does not only betray the radical collective political commitment of other feminisms and their historical activism, as Chen has explained, but even fails to pursue the correction of gender inequalities (442). This makes it, on the one hand, suspicious of “postfeminist retreatism” (Negra and Tasker, Gendering 7; Fien Adriaens and Sofie Van Bauwel 186) or of some sort of glamorous neotraditionalism, permeating the postfeminist neoliberal mystique and its celebration of freedom of choice, pleasure, and personal motivations.…”

“…in Ellison). According to these statements, Beyoncé seemed to sympathize in some degree with the “do‐me feminism,” a kind of “prowoman but antifeminist” discourse that “repackages” women's rights and feminist matters into “feminine issues” (Genz, “Singled Out” 107). Beyoncé's was also a very personal and postfeminist version of what it means to be a feminist, strongly traversed by her vindication of sexuality as a source of expression and freedom: “I'm just a woman and I love being a woman.…”