The thesis explores current debates ,around postfeminism and neoliberalism, and young women's articulations of femininity within the context of young women's excessive drinking practices. Alcohol plays a key ro le in UK culture today, and for young people, getting drunk is an accepted, expected and indeed normalised part of a night out in the current 'culture of intoxication'. It is also a space for enacting highly visible displays of gender, femininities and class, and one that represents an important 'space of attention' for exploring contemporary subjectivity. As such this space provides a productive source for carrying out in-depth analysis of how young women negotiate and manage 21st century femininities in the UK. Data is provided in the form of white working-class women's accounts of excessive drinking in various drinking venues within the county of Hampshire, England. Thirty-three women, aged between 18 and 24 years, took part in several phases of data collection, and these include individual interviews, friendship group discussions, and ethnographic methods. I employed a version of Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify key themes and discourses in the young women's talk, and note how young women use excessive alcohol for confidence within what has become a drinking culture of hyper-sexuality, where the emphasis is on the traditional male gaze, but also and possibly even more powerfully, the postfeminist female gaze. The young women draw on a number of discourses to construct drunkenness as a routine part of going out, and how the female gaze plays an important role in 'mirroring' and/or 'othering' women in terms of their feminine recognition. Furthermore, the women draw on postfeminist discourses to emphasise how painful and hard it is becoming a young female subject today.

This essay examines the sadomasochistic relationship between the main characters of the Twilight Saga from a psychoanalytic perspective, and looks at the family and gender roles in the Saga from a post-feministic view. Aspects also considered are the portrayal of female sexuality as something dangerous and negative, recreational sex as something perverted, and the pro-marriage and anti-abortion propaganda in the last two novels. The purpose of the essay is to reveal how the author’s personal, and to some extent religious, beliefs and values are validated through the storyline; how the relationship between the main characters, as well as their personal psychological and physical health, change after matrimony and parenthood.

This thesis is a textual analysis of stories in online celebrity news articles about celebrity women and their use of Twitter. It adds to the burgeoning discussion about gendered and racialized bodies online using scholarship from critical feminist, surveillance, and digital media studies. Throughout, my work attends to notions of authenticity and surveillance, examining how what I term a "call to authenticity"--the use of technologies of self-surveillance to verify "authentic" displays of the self--serves to animate contradictory post-feminist paradigms of femininity which function together to discipline and subjugate femininity. I ask: How do post-feminist questions of empowerment and responsibility become articulated when individuals operate the technologies that functionally surveil them? What are the particular implications of surveillance for gendered and racialized bodies when thought about in the context of a post-feminist culture? What might a focus on the relationship between surveillance and post-feminist logic uncover?

This project combines elements of textual analysis, feminist criticism, and media reception studies to examine wedding-themed reality television programming. Drawing on feminist media studies, television studies, and new media studies, this project investigates identity construction through wedding-themed reality television in three case studies: the renegotiation of icons of traditional femininity on Say Yes to the Dress, the policing of female behavior and perceived unruliness through Bridezillas, and the depiction of female labor in celebrity culture through three weddings featured on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. These three case studies deal with unique yet ultimately interconnected themes of gender identity construction and management. I argue that post-feminist ideologies are instrumental in shaping the way that identity is constructed through advocating specific behaviors and shaming others in three key areas: hyper-consumerism, the pursuit of pseudo-celebrity status, and the reinforcement of traditional gender norms. These themes appear in varied forms and function in different ways across the three case studies. In addition, shaming is enacted in the programs and displayed in the audience response to those programs via social media in three ways: subtle discouragement, containment, and pseudo-resistance. This study begins with a close reading of the three television programs, followed by a reception study of the related conversations taking place on the social media platform Twitter to examine how the textual themes are being understood and discussed by viewers.

When Amy comes to work at the Festival on the Grand, she enters a world in which feminism has disappeared. Without a way to access feminism, the Festival staff: Judith, Poppy, James, Lisa, and Amy endure the patriarchal rule of Artistic Director, Nick Noble. Tempo captures the Festival in the week leading up to its prestigious 40th anniversary opening night: the Berlioz Requiem and concludes by asking the audience to consider our current treatment of feminism. The afterword that accompanies the script is part personal reflection, part critical analysis. The reflection includes the process of developing, writing, and workshopping the script as well as how the play conveys feminism in form, content, and inspiration. The analysis considers the notion of post-feminism and the dangers of blindly embracing it. This project aims to encourage an audience to be critical of post-feminism and revive feminism in creative and useful ways.

Despite the detrimental effects of aggression, Reality Television is replete with portrayals of female direct and indirect aggression for the sake of entertainment. Direct, physical and verbal aggression may be easy to identify but indirect aggression can be circuitous and subtle such as gossiping and exclusion from the group. Victims of indirect aggression can experience long-term psychological repercussions such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and self-abusive behaviour. Exposure to indirect relational aggression on Reality Television has also been shown to increase physical aggression in its viewers. Combining three theoretical frameworks this study draws on social cognitive theory, cultivation theory as well as feminist frameworks. Female adults were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews discussing their perceptions and influence of Reality Television clips portraying female aggression.

Uppsatsens syfte är att analysera och problematisera Netflix kategori ”Serier med en stark kvinnlig huvudkaraktär” utifrån valda begrepp inom feministisk medieteori. Det valda teoretiska ramverket och tidigare forskningen låg som grund för hur problemformulering skapats. Den valda metoden var kritisk diskursanalys baserat på den formulerad av Norman Fairclough och genomfördes med hjälp av dennes verktyg den tredimensionella modellen, som undersöker diskursiv praktik och text i relation till den sociala praktiken. Detta kombinerades även med en innehållsanalys för att ge en bredare förståelse för materialet, samt verktyg för att kunna nå en mer övergripande konklusion över kategorins struktur och dess innebörd. Resultatet visade både på en historisk utveckling, men även på en komplex reproduktion av maktförhållanden inom medieproduktion.

In 2016, Disney animation studios released their newest princess film Moana. The film follows a seemingly feminist plot line of a young female heroine who saves the world from destruction. This study examines Moana (2016) in relation to the views on feminism in the U.S. Disney’s large social and economic influence provides rich grounds for this research. Using an ideological rhetorical criticism, I uncovered the presented and suggested elements of the film. These elements combined with research on U.S. feminist ideology allowed three ideological themes to emerge: ecofeminism, power feminism, and post-feminism. The three themes are threaded to create a seemingly feminist patchwork ideology. I argue that the patchwork ideology that is created is a result of the political and economic conditions present around the production of Moana. Furthermore, I argue that this patchwork ideology is ultimately harmful to current feminist ideology in the U.S. This study adds insight into how feminist ideology is used in popular media.

Det finns mycket tidigare forskning kring könsrepresentation i media, dock är det inte alla medie-genrer som uppmärksammas och mode har ofta en marginaliserad roll i genusforskning. I denna uppsats undersöks hur den franska modetidningen Vogue Paris representerar ”la Parisienne” – den parisiska kvinnan – utifrån de två motsägande vetenskapsteorierna feminism och post-feminism. Syftet med denna uppsats är att bidra till den feministiska debatten kring mode och könsrepresentation i media och ge ny insikt kring hur modetidningen representerar kvinnan. Genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av olika modefotografi ur två nutida nummer av modetidningen som representerar ”la Parisienne”, med Roland Barthes semiotiska modell som metod, besvaras frågorna: hur representerar Vogue Paris ”la Parisienne” genom modefotografi; på vilket sätt (re)konstrueras myten om ”la Parisienne”, samt vad innefattar denna myt; hur kan denna representation/konstruktion uppfattas utifrån feminism respektive post-feminism; och slutligen, hur förhåller sig denna myt till den dominerande ideologin om kvinnlighet? I min undersökning kommer jag fram till att Vogue Paris konstruerar en motsägelsefull och kontrastfylld myt om ”la Parisienne”, som innefattar en innebörd som både feminin och sexuell men även naturlig och maskulin. ”La Parisienne” är en mångtydig representation och genom en feministisk kontra post-feministisk läsning av bilderna belyses två olika sidor av denna, både ideologiska men även njutningsfulla och uppskattade, identitet. Denna representation och myt går emot flera tidigare feministiska synpunkter kring medierepresentationen av kvinnan och flera av de opponerande feministiska ståndpunkterna angående mode – min uppsats belyser att mode inte alltid har en sexuell eller förtryckande natur. Representationen av kvinnan i form av ”la Parisienne” går främst emot den dominerande ideologin om kvinnlighet, som naturaliserar kvinnans roll som fru, hemmafru, mamma och sexuellt tillgängligt objekt. Parisiskan representeras dock ofta som sexuell, men framförallt som en aktiv, självständig, bestämd, icke-traditionell och fri kvinna.

This thesis investigates the rise of lads’ mags and the wider sexualisation of British popular culture, with a specific focus on the ways in which gender and sexuality are socially constructed and how such constructions work to inform a broader ideology of patriarchy. As a consequence of this, postfeminism and new sexism are critically analysed and it is argued that they hinder progress towards gender equality and serve to justify sexism. Body theory, feminist theory, Foucauldian theory and a Foucauldian Feminist approach underpin the theoretical framework of this research and are used to examine how the body is politicised in lads’ mags and wider popular culture. Notions of gender, sexuality and identity are analysed and revealed as naturalising gender divisions. The methodological framework this research draws upon includes semi-structured interviews, an online survey, content analysis and critical discourse analysis, which collectively contribute an in-depth exploration of people’s perceptions of lads’ mags and the content of the magazines. Ten men and ten women were interviewed, complementing this research with respondents’ observations, assessments and experiences from a broad range of ages. Further to this, an online survey provides over 2,000 responses on public perceptions of lads’ mags and is thus the largest piece of empirical research on this topic to have been conducted. This thesis studies the female body as a site of social and political contestation and concludes that the representation of women in lads’ mags reflects a conflict about sexuality and identity which feeds into the normalisation of patriarchy in British society. How we come to embody the discourses prescribed to us by popular culture is examined through drawing upon empirical data, public debate and wider research on sexualisation. This thesis subsequently argues that the way in which we embody discourses becomes a part of our reality and lads’ mags thus exist as part of a wider cultural story that upholds patriarchy as both normal and desirable.