Core Post 3: TV & Post Feminism.

It is a beautiful coincidence to write about TV & post-feminism on March 8th, the International women’s day. There is no holiday break in the US for Women’s day, but believe it or not, my mom was taking a day off yesterday because it was an official holiday for women in China.  And of course, all the guys have to show up for work. In the context of post-feminism, I should argue that this kind of holiday break is problematic. ( But I won’t… Love holiday~)

In Jess Butler’s article “For White Girls Only? Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion” she argued that the post-feminism is not a term that simply steps on the previous feminism movements and goes into a straight pattern. She argued that post-feminism is “a kind of substitute for or displacement of feminism as a radical political movement in which earlier feminist demands for equal rights, collective activism, and the eradication of gender inequality are taken into account and then displaces by the postfeminist ideals of individualism, choice, and empowerment.” (44) In another word, post-feminism should be things people taken granted.

 "Mona Lisa Smile" 

While the third-wave feminism had a primary goal of “reinvigorate feminism by bringing young women back to the movement, and to allow women to define feminism in their terms.” (42) The problem with the earlier feminist movement is that there was an unspoken assumption that feminism was for a white, western, and heterosexual woman.  This reflects on contemporary movies and televisions that featured female powers and feminism. But post-feminism includes nonwhite and non-heterosexual females, and people may not be fully aware.  Writers for "Sex and City" certainly did not realize either, and nor did other writers for the feminist movies during the late 90s and early 2000s. Both Sarah Banet-Weiser and Butler's articles addressed this absence of race in the feminist movement.

Butler ends her article back to Nicki Minaj’s case, commenting how her “being herself” was not accepted as postfeminist discourse because of her race. And people assaulted her when she appropriation of Barbie. It reminds me of the recent Barbie commercial that features the collection of new Barbie dolls of different races, body size and styles.  When the current Barbie fans grow up, hopefully, they will not attack the next Minaj’s appropriation of Barbie.