The New Backlash: Popular Culture's "Marriage" with Feminism, or Love Is All You Need

Vint, Sherryl

doi:10.3200/jpft.34.4.160-169

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The fear which this image evokes can be linked with what Vint (Vint, 2007) has termed as a new kind of backlash, one which frightens women into accepting the traditional gender roles and convinces them that their lives should be focused around heterosexual marriage and motherhood. In fact, the construction of the "old maid" as a source of collective fears bestows more ideological force to the idealization of the conjugal and maternal bonds, and construes neo-traditional models of the post-nuclear family.…”

Section: Accelerated Agingmentioning

confidence: 95%

The terror of the single old maid: On the insolubility of a cultural category

Lahad

Hazan

2014

Women's Studies International Forum

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Section: Accelerated Agingmentioning

confidence: 95%

The terror of the single old maid: On the insolubility of a cultural category

Lahad

Hazan

2014

Women's Studies International Forum

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“…The new language of choice proliferates in different social locations ranging from images of women whose choice of motherhood is articulated as solely a private choice (Crittenden 2001, Hoerl andCasey 2010) or women who choose to be stay-at-home moms and domestic housewives (Hollows 2003, Vint 2007, McCarver 2011, to others who celebrate choice and their femininity as an entitlement to consume (Lazar 2011) or willingly empower themselves to be caricaturized feminine sexual objects (Levy 2005, Gill 2007. These choices constitute what Elspeth Probyn views as a blend of reactionary and utopic sets of discourses.…”

Section: There Is No Choice But To Choosementioning

confidence: 99%

The Single Woman's Choice as a Zero-Sum Game

Lahad¹

2013

Cultural Studies

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THE SINGLE WOMAN'S CHOICE AS A ZERO-SUM GAMECultural scholars are paying increasing attention to the ways in which choice has become a cultural obligation deeply ingrained in neoliberal, post-feminist, therapeutic and consumerist norms. Drawing insights from this literature, this paper first charts the changing discourse on choice, and then goes on to both examine and challenge the centrality of the rhetoric of choice in contemporary discourses of singlehood and single women. In my analysis, the idea of choice is posited as a multivalent signifier dependent on changing social contexts and denoting shifting aspects of feminine subjectivity and personal relations. It is my aim thereby to problematize notions of choice and singlehood, as well as to question the cultural processes that produce them. To do so, I probe the discursive relations that produce distinctive clusters of meanings, as well as the tensions and contradictions that emerge around them. Such a reading emerges from a contentbased analysis of readers' comments and responses to an online Internet column depicting the various advantages of being 'single-by-choice'. The findings show that while choice can be a discursive force that enables single women to resist traditional family forms and establish their chosen subjectivities, the centrality of choice in the construction of intimate relations today also casts in doubt and paradoxically delegitimizes single women's option of autonomy and individuality. Some of the social interpretations of choice denote that single women are endowed with a partial and incomplete subjectivity, while according to other stances the choice of singlehood signifies a radical option for claiming singlehood as a longterm way of life. However, the aim of the critique proposed here is not merely to deconstruct the discursive mechanism that delegitimizes singlehood, but also to point out some of the potential limitations emerging from the new counterdiscourse of chosen singlehood.

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“…As Dow suggested, “representations of postfeminist women require particular representations of postfeminist men” (2006, p. 127). Postfeminist men are supportive, kind, loving, and while they occasionally make mistakes, they are well‐meaning, good men: Characters such as Don Gallagher from Fatal Attraction , Walter Kresby from the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives , and Darren from the 2005 remake of Bewitched are examples of postfeminist men (Dow, ; Vint, ). With the postfeminist man clearly depicted as an object of desire, postfeminism then traffics in men: As framed within postfeminist narratives, women's only difficulty is finding a good man – not ending patriarchy or counteracting sexism.…”

Section: Dream Of Tonymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the scholarship on postfeminism (Douglas, ; Dow, , ; Genz, ; Gill, ; Inness, ; McRobbie, ; Southard, ; Vint, ) differs in its definitions and theoretical approaches, it consistently points to four rhetorical arguments as the mainstays of postfeminist discourse. Postfeminist entertainment, first, frames feminism as an individualistic activity; second, portrays feminism as unnecessary for individual women; third, embroils feminism in consumerism; and fourth, demonstrates that men have already attained feminist enlightenment.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The E-man-ci-pation of Jeannie: Feminist Doppelgangers on U.S. Television

Kornfield

2012

Communication, Culture & Critique

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“The Americanization of Jeannie” (1965), an early episode of I Dream of Jeannie, directly represents the women's liberation movement as Jeannie attempts emancipation. Through a close reading, I argue that not only does “The Americanization of Jeannie” use the same rhetorical strategies that are currently categorized as postfeminist, but this rhetoric is better understood as a doppelganger than a backlash. “The Americanization of Jeannie” presents a caricature – a feminist doppelganger – that depicts feminism as illogical, apolitical, and ultimately comedic, thereby functioning to contain the cultural representations of feminism in the public forum.

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The New Backlash: Popular Culture's "Marriage" with Feminism, or Love Is All You Need

Cited by 19 publications

References 2 publications

The terror of the single old maid: On the insolubility of a cultural category

The terror of the single old maid: On the insolubility of a cultural category

The Single Woman's Choice as a Zero-Sum Game

The E-man-ci-pation of Jeannie: Feminist Doppelgangers on U.S. Television

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