Shelley Cobb

Is this what a feminist looks like? Male celebrity feminists and the postfeminist politics of equality

In some of the early feminist critiques of postfeminism, scholars pointed out young women’s ubiquitous use of the phrase ‘I’m not a feminist but ...’ to signal their affinity with feminist principles while eschewing the stereotype of the overly politicised ‘man-hater’. In the midst of what some commentators – not unproblematically – are calling a Fourth Wave of Feminism (its distinction from previous waves resting largely on the growth in feminist discourse and online activity through blogs and other social media) there has recently been a rise in celebrities claiming the term and calling themselves feminists, from Beyoncé to Emma Watson to Laverne Cox, some of whom are discussed by others in this forum. Nearly every time it happens, a fierce debate ensues among the online commentariat over whether or not the celebrity lives up to feminist ideals and politics. The exceptions to this rule, largely, have one thing in common – their gender. They are the male celebrity feminists (MCFs). Garnering much media space as 2014 wore on, the MCF is a signifier of the adaptability and continuing discursive power of postfeminist cultural logic, which eschews political action for the sake of positive images, even as discourses of feminist politics and identity have acquired a resurgent visibility in the media. Recently, British politicians have been asked to perform the role of the MCF, and their varying responses highlight the combined power of postfeminist discourse and celebrity culture to both sideline women from and neuter the politics of feminism. There has been a recent burst of male celebrities – from John Legend to Daniel Radcliffe – either calling themselves feminists or being labelled as such by the media. They have become popular subjects for various publications, from the Huffington Post to Cosmopolitan and, as such, their visibility exhibits postfeminist media culture’s ‘representational concerns for a more attractive and sellable image’ (Genz and Brabon 2009, 38). This rise of the MCF must be understood in relation to the increase in young women’s voices on the Internet, the digital ‘Fourth Wave’, and the female fan bases of male celebrities. Ryan Gosling, possibly the original MCF, epitomises this: the Tumblr site ‘Feminist Ryan Gosling’ (feministryangosling.tumblr.com) and book of the same name (Henderson 2012) were created by a women’s studies student; and although she states that she does not find him attractive, it is widely understood that he has a possessive female fan base which does, and is active on social media. The appeal of the MCF (other examples beyond Gosling include Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Hiddleston) is, arguably, a combination of their attractiveness, their decidedly un-macho heterosexuality, and their (often vague) statements about equality for men and women. The value of a ‘feminist’ identity for the MCF, then, is the way it

Breast cancer, breast surgery and the makeover metaphor

This paper discusses cosmetic breast surgery in relation to reconstructive surgery of the mastectomized breast. We will show how both kinds of surgery participate in what we are calling “the makeover metaphor,” because both can be seen as an aesthetic practice. We are interested in tracing some of the ways that women undergoing both procedures experience a disconnect between the rhetoric and the experience. We argue that the makeover metaphor overshadows the difficult decisions and bodily experiences of surgery – both for breast cancer and cosmetic purposes. We explore the rigidity and hypocrisy of the metaphor as it structures both of these forms of surgery, and argue that it produces contradictory and incommensurate effects.

Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers

A lively discussion of costume dramas to womens films, Shelley Cobb investigates the practice of adaptation in contemporary films made by women. The figure of the woman author comes to the fore as a key site for the representation of womens agency and the authority of the woman filmmaker.

What Would Jane Do? Postfeminist Media Uses of Austen and the Austen Reader

In The Jane Austen Book Club,1 an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Karen Jay Fowler, one plot climax (of several in this ensemble film) occurs when Prudie, a high-school French teacher, is about to cross a street to meet a male student for a sexual tryst. As she looks up to see the signal change from the red DONT WALK to the green WALK, the boy arrives on his motorcycle. They give each other a small wave and then Prudie glances at the signal again, which is framed in a medium shot. Instead of flashing WALK, the signal flashes the words, one after the other, WHAT – WOULD – JANE – DO, twice, and then, in a sudden close-up, repeatedly flashes in red DONT WALK. The result of this surreal moment in a generally straightforward romantic comedy is that Prudie abandons the idea of having an affair and reconciles with her husband by reading Persuasion (the novel the book club was meant to discuss that day) aloud with him. After Prudie’s encounter with the crosswalk signal, all the other destined heterosexual couplings come together in the next five minutes of film time: characters make Austenesque moves, such as reading aloud, reading recommended books and writing confessional love letters, to reconnect with the one they truly love. On a meta level, the crossing signal functions as a symbol of the popular understanding of Austen as a romance novelist: that she and her novels can act as some kind of life guide in finding true love, evidenced by the advice books on the subject that invoke her name.2

‘The 90s are officially over’: Generation X celebrity break-ups.

In this piece we consider the intersection of relationships, nostalgia, and generational identities as struc- turing elements in celebrity culture, through a small sample of high-profile Gen X examples.

Friends Reconsidered: Cultural Politics, Intergenerationality, and Afterlives

With the passing in 2014 of the twentieth anniversary of its debut episode, the iconic millennial sitcom Friends retains a rare cultural currency and remains a crucial reference point for understanding the concerns of Generation X. This special issue, therefore, interrogates the contemporary and historical significance of Friends as a popular sitcom that reflected and obfuscated American fin de siècle anxieties at the time, and considers the lasting resonance of its cultural afterlife. Its abiding impact as millennial cultural touchstone can be seen in its persistent ability to find new generations of viewers and its manifest influence on myriad extratextual phenomena.

“I’d Like Y’all to Get a Black Friend”: The Politics of Race in Friends:

When Aisha Taylor joined the Friends cast in as Charlie Wheeler, she crossed a prime-time boundary—the segregation of American television shows by race. At the same time, Charlie had to be co-opted into the show’s gender dynamics. This article argues that Charlie epitomizes the ongoing postracial politics of respectability and hyper-class mobility that construct black women’s limited entry into postfeminist womanhood, as well as into the, still, rarefied white world of the “mainstream” American sitcom. Charlie seems to trouble, if temporarily, these racial limits by being both Ross’s equal in terms of education and employment and by being a temporary part of the group through her relationships with Joey and Ross. Comparing her with Ross’s previous girlfriend Julie, this article will also consider the ways that the problematic representation of Ross’s girlfriends of color structure the postfeminist tropes of fate and retreatism central to Ross and Rachel’s happy ending.

‘I hate to be the feminist here…’: reading the post-epitaph chick flick

Abstract Numerous accounts in recent years have announced (often zealously) the death of the chick flick, a genre whose output has conspicuously slowed since a peak in the 1990s. We analyse here two recent hits from the ‘post-epitaph’ phase in order to understand the kinds of generic updates such films are attempting and how they place women in regard to changing gender norms and the conditions of neoliberal capitalism. We find that in Trainwreck (2015) and The Intern (2015) female protagonists’ affiliation with patriarchal power structures is re-confirmed and both films ultimately retain a commitment to a rigid order unwilling to countenance female sexual agency or envision more flexible economic arrangements.

Authorizing the Mother: Sisterhoods in America

‘Sisterhood’, of course, has long been an important term for feminism, and from the beginning it was meant to be inclusive, reaching across racial, sexual, cultural, and national boundaries between women, despite feminism’s tendencies toward privileging white, middle class women.1 It has been criticized for being ‘an emotional appeal masking the opportunism of manipulative bourgeois white women. It was seen as a cover-up hiding the fact that many women exploit and oppress other women’ (hooks, 1984: 44). Contemporary postfeminist media culture has co-opted ‘sisterhood’ in ways that both evoke its originally intended meaning and undermine it. On the one hand, Hannah Sanders suggests that representations of sisterhood can ‘deny … the postfeminist ethic of individualized feminism’, and consequently, unlike other postfeminist images, ‘feminism is not discredited as an outmoded totalizing academic or activist discourse’ (92). On the other, however, since the always-heterosexual postfeminist subject is ‘white and middle-class by default’, postfeminist representations of sisterhood marginalize ‘women of colour [who] are either absent or are situated in a position of subordination’ (Tasker and Negra, 2007: 2; Winch, 2013: 3). In postfeminist media culture, sisterhood is a popular concept because of its gestures towards solidarity within femininity.

Adapt or Die: The Dangers of Women’s Authorship

To date, Jane Campion is the only woman to have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have won the Best Director Oscar at the Academy Awards. They are two of the best known female directors in English-language cinema, and both have careers that span more than 30 years, a testament to their survival in an industry that, as I noted in the introduction, makes little room for women’s authorship. What they have to say about the status of women in filmmaking is worth taking into account. In a short piece in the Guardian, Campion declares, My advice to young female filmmakers is: please do not play the lady card. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Just do your work and let someone else deal with the politics … But we should mandate that 50% of films produced are made by women. That would be possible with public money. Instantly the culture would change. It can be done. (Wiseman, 2013)