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This book introduces some of the key ideas which have their roots in what has become known as 'second wave feminism', the ideas and practices associated with the women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While it might seem unnecessary to turn back to this period of feminist struggle, there are a number of important reasons for doing so. A major concern of the book is the ways in which popular culture and femininities need to be studied historically. For this reason, it is also necessary to understand feminist identities as the product of specific historical contexts. The book explores some themes in the history of second-wave feminism and has inevitably sacrificed complexity in the interests of brevity by placing greater emphasis on feminisms in the US. It discusses one form of feminism which sees femininity as inferior to masculinity: that is, that equality between men and women might be achieved if women rejected feminine values and behaviour in favour of masculine values and behaviour. The book also demonstrates that understanding of popular culture has been central to many feminists whose work has been informed by cultural studies. One of the main arguments and themes throughout the book is that what it means to be a woman is not something fixed for all time but is subject to transformation, contestation and change.
This chapter introduces some of the main themes in feminist analysis of women's genres by exploring the terms of the debate about the woman's film in film studies. It deals with criticism which looks at 'images of women' and with criticism which focuses on 'woman as image'. The chapter explores the questions of what is meant by 'films for women'. It examines debates about whether the organisation of the film text in the woman's film creates opportunities for female spectatorship. The chapter discusses the pleasures that the woman's film may have offered female audiences. It examines the work of feminist critics who have problematised some of the assumptions in debates about 'images of women', 'woman as image' and 'images for women', critics who highlight how the figure of woman in the cinema, the female spectator, and the woman in the audience have largely been conceptualised as both white and heterosexual.
This chapter explores the movement of feminism into academic life in general and the study of popular culture in particular. It explores main ways in which feminist research into popular culture entered academic life. By the mid-1970s, the study of women and popular culture across a range of disciplines often centered on questions about 'images of women'. Cultural studies have often been dominated by questions of how 'popular culture' has been defined. The ways in which the 'popular' is conceptualised shapes the ways it is studied and analysed, and, in tum, shapes different ideas about cultural politics. The chapter draws on Stuart Hall's discussion of the four different ways in which 'the popular' has been conceptualised, and explores the ways in which each conception of 'the popular' implies a different notion of feminist cultural politics.
This chapter brings together debates about the relationships between feminism and popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s which explored how feminism was envisaged within popular culture. These debates are organised around concepts such as 'backlash', 'post-feminism', 'celebrity feminism' and 'popular feminism'. The chapter reflects on what is at stake in feminism's engagement with popular culture, and on how feminists have made distinctions between the 'good' and the 'bad', the 'progressive' and the 'reactionary'. It examines forms of feminist cultural politics that are premised on an engagement with 'the popular'. The chapter considers forms of 'popular feminism' that, in different ways, question some of the assumptions and authority of 'official' forms of feminism. It explores a couple of studies that demonstrate why women may choose to make alliances with many feminist concerns but refuse the identity 'feminist'.
Romantic fiction is the genre that tends to be most commonly associated with women. This chapter shows that, for feminists, romantic fiction was politically dangerous, a mechanism through which patriarchal culture was reproduced: women were fed fantasies of true love, fantasies which most women were seen to unquestioningly accept. Janice Radway's Reading the Romance demonstrates that in order to understand the meaning and significance of romance, it is necessary to analyse the complex relations between publishing industries, romance texts and romance readers. Approaches to romantic fiction have developed differently to approaches to the woman's film within film studies. The chapter discusses a range of ideas about the characteristics of romantic fiction and romance readers. It explores why romantic fiction has a particular appeal for women, while also considering the particular pleasures of the romance and the often uneasy relationship between feminism, romances and their reader.
Just as romances and their readers have been treated as objects of derision and contempt, so soap operas and their viewers have had a hostile response from cultural critics. Indeed, even the pioneers of cultural studies, such as Raymond Williams, who wished to treat popular culture as worthy of serious analysis, found it easy to dismiss soap opera. The turn to soap operas by feminist critics can be situated within a wider debate about femininity and 'feminine genres' within feminist television criticism. For Brunsdon and Geraghty, soaps have a particular appeal to women because of their concentration on the spheres and skills traditionally aligned with femininity. The study of soaps has not only analysed how texts with 'feminine' characteristics might offer something to women within a patriarchal society, but also the ways in which female audiences make use of these texts to cope with the experience of living under patriarchy.
While popular music has been seen as an important element of youth cultures, the study of pop has become an increasingly dynamic field in its own right. This chapter analyses why many studies of youth and pop have been blind both to questions about gender and to feminist concerns, and examines the work of critics who have made an intervention in these fields. It examines work on youth subcultures within cultural studies. The chapter explores the work of feminist critics (in particular, Angela McRobbie) who have analysed how feminine identities are constructed and negotiated in girls' magazines and the extent to which these magazines have changed since the 1960s. It examines debates about whether pop songs reproduce gender inequalities or whether women's use of pop might be empowering. The chapter also considers the relationships between women's music-making and feminism.
This chapter introduces debates about consumer cultures, shopping, domestic consumption and lifestyle. It explores work which considers how consumption is not simply a process in which commodities are bought but also how they are 'given meaning through their active incorporation in people's lives'. The chapter isolates three debates about gender and consumption in different historical formations of consumer culture: late-nineteenth-century modernity, mid-twentieth-century Fordism, and late-twentieth-century post-Fordism. It explores debates about the department store as a 'feminine space' within the masculine 'public' sphere. The chapter considers how women consumed housing and used consumer goods to create a sense of 'home' and to articulate gendered identities in the post-war period in the UK. It also examines debates about gender, identity and contemporary consumer cultures, and explores how the design of material culture in the 1950s tried to produce a particular form of femininity epitomised by the figure of the rational, scientific housewife.
Although feminist critics have disagreed over the significance of fashion and beauty practices, they all tend to share an interest in the ways in which fashion and beauty practices produce gendered identities. This chapter explores the ways in which fashion and beauty practices should be understood as part of debates about consumption and consumer cultures. It offers an overview of feminist approaches to the relationship between fashion and beauty practices and femininity. The chapter explores feminist cultural criticism which moves beyond the anti-fashion position of second-wave feminism and engages with the contradictions and possibilities of fashion and beauty practices. Feminist criticism has moved from thinking about the possibility of getting outside of fashion and throwing off a feminine 'mask' to thinking about fashion as a site of struggle over the meaning of gendered identities.
This chapter examines how some of the key ideas introduced in this book have their roots in what has become known as 'second-wave feminism', the ideas and practices associated with the women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It aims to give, albeit sketchily, a history of some of the ideas, activities and struggles that informed second-wave feminism. The chapter examines the different ways in which femininity was constituted as a 'problem' in second-wave feminism. For many feminists, feminine values and behaviour were seen as a major cause of women's oppression. In this way, the chapter explores how second-wave feminism, and the identity 'feminist', was predicated on a rejection of femininity. It also explores some themes in the history of second-wave feminism and has inevitably sacrificed complexity in the interests of brevity by placing greater emphasis on feminisms in the US.