This research investigates the ways in which Unilever's LUX soap has repositioned their brand away from their historical association with beauty pageants. This research aims to unpack the ways in which Instagram is utilised by LUX soap to effectively communicate a distinct brand personality. This research identifies that the repositioning of the brand on Instagram was achieved through a strategy that integrated social media influencers and brand events, whilst incorporating social marketing. Not only does this research focus on LUX's branding on Instagram, it critically engages with the content from a postfeminist perspective. This is the secondary theoretical engagement of this work. The paper highlights the ways in which the content is postfeminist in nature and how this was incorporated into the branding messages. The main focus of this dissertation is the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore LUX soap campaigns. Through a mixed methodology of interviews, content analysis, and survey the paper focuses on the ways in which LUX created a relationship with their customers on Instagram and effectively repositioned the brand. The research suggests that three key techniques were repeated on Instagram to effectively create new associations with the LUX brand during the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore extension campaign. The paper, furthermore, suggests that the LUX soap campaign employs postfeminist rhetoric in their Instagram strategy. This dissertation argues that the development of a strategy consisting of branded events, social media influencers, and social marketing content allowed LUX soap to reposition their brand.

The thesis explores current debates about postfeminism, social class and new forms of femininity within the context of young women’s social drinking practices. A pervasive culture of intoxication has emerged amongst contemporary young drinkers where drunkenness is constructed as integral to a good night out. This is played out in highly visible public displays where gender, femininities and class are performed, positioned and reconfigured. The culture of intoxication therefore provides a productive arena to undertake an in depth analysis of how postfeminism works and how different social groups of young women navigate gender relations, new formations of femininity and class within this terrain. Data are in the form of middle-class and working-class young women’s accounts of their social drinking in bars and clubs within a relatively small city in the South West of England. The data was collected through 2 phases of semi-structured focus groups with 6 friendship groups of 24 women between 19-24 years of age. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was employed to identify key discourses in young women’s talk, focusing on the intersection between postfeminism and the culture of intoxication. These young women are called on to occupy positions of excess through drinking practices and display a hyper-sexualised form of femininity. This produces an impossible dilemma for young women. The young women drew on four discourses to construct drunkenness as a cultural norm. Within these discourses a particular level of drunkenness was constituted as highly desirable but also as a precarious risky state. Femininity was defined around a ‘right’ look and a ‘wrong’ look within two interlinking discourses and the young women drew on discourses that re-inscribed the gendered politics of drinking. The working-class and middle-class young women drew on different discourses to articulate class differentiation and class was reproduced through highly coded terms. There was an absence of feminist discourse throughout the young women’s accounts and this was involved with re-producing the sexual double standard and with constructing classed postfeminist subjectivities. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of a new classed femininity within an absence of feminist discourse in the context of postfeminism.

This dissertation develops the theoretical framework of “trainwreck feminism.” Forwarded by contemporary women in comedy like Mindy Kaling, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and Amy Schumer, trainwreck feminists adopt the trope of the trainwreck—excessive in need, sex, and madness—to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of growing up in postfeminist culture that both insists women are finally liberated and continues to police their choices. Engaging ongoing debates about whether postfeminism is over since feminism is becoming a status symbol for celebrities and public figures, I argue that postfeminism remains a powerful cultural force, and women in comedy are some of its most vocal critics. Trainwreck feminism exposes the misogyny at the core of postfeminist culture, while arguing that feminist activism is still needed. Trainwreck feminism is reflective of a larger rejection of postfeminist culture, a contradictory moment that celebrates feminism’s achievements while insisting the movement is outdated. Trainwreck feminism represents a larger re-politicization of feminism in pop culture. Each chapter examines a different comic and the specific branch of postfeminism they undermine: Mindy Kaling and the postfeminist life cycle, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer and commodity feminism, and Amy Schumer and choice feminism. Ultimately, these women imbue the trainwreck with true feminist potential, pointing a finger at postfeminist culture as a source of women’s madness. Because they are cautionary tales, trainwrecks can highlight the unspoken rules and expectations of femininity. While comedy can have a fairly nasty, depoliticizing relationship with feminism, often turning feminism into a lifestyle or label devoid of political activism, I argue that some contemporary comic texts are actively politicized, inspiring viewers to critique and change the world around them. They do so by appropriating particular vernacular rhetorics that appeal to younger, millennial audiences and using it to demonstrate how postfeminism has failed women. That is, each comic I examine leverages postfeminist sensibilities in order to critique and undermine them, engaging in a trainwreck feminism that highlights the contradictions, absurdities, and misogyny at the heart of postfeminist culture.

Take a random woman in her mid-twenties, with a crazy mother, a lousy job and no sex life, add some insecurity and a lot of alcohol and wrap her up in pink, and congratulations, you have just created your own chick lit heroine.The question is whether a chick lit heroine is this simplistic, or if she carries an important message to the readers. The most important traits in a chick lit novel are the complicated mother-daughter relationship, the career and the love life.Thus, this essay will outline to what extent the postfeminist features are depicted in theidentity of Bridget Jones, as an epitome of later chick lit heroines.

Released in the era of third-wave feminism, postfeminism and “girl power,” HSM causes such a sensation, especially among the girl audience. Girls in HSM complicate the traditional understanding of femininity and what it means to be a girl. This thesis focuses on the gender representations in the High School Musical trilogy, explores Disney’s ideologies of representing girl characters through different sites like romantic relationship, intellectual ability and fashion style, and analyzes the influence of postfeminism and consumerism on the construction of girls’ identity and femininity. / text

This dissertation refutes the notion that contemporary girls are uninterested in feminism by exploring how teenage girls are engaging in feminist activism as bloggers. Using a feminist cultural studies approach I analyze how girl bloggers produce feminist identities and practices that challenge hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal cultural politics. I employ feminist ethnographic methods, including a series of in-depth interviews with U.S. -based girl feminist bloggers and an online collaborative focus group, as well as a discursive and ideological textual analysis of girl-produced feminist blogs. Using these methods, I privilege girls' voices while proposing a model for conducting feminist ethnography online. In doing so, I demonstrate how girls' feminist blogging functions as an activist practice through networked counterpublics, intervening in mainstream and sometimes even commercial public space. I position this activism within a lengthy tradition of American feminism, analyzing how my participants remain in conversation with feminist history while simultaneously responding to their unique cultural climate. Finally, I argue that we must recognize the political importance of girls' feminist blogging by theorizing it as an emergent citizenship practice that makes feminism an accessible discourse to contemporary teenage girls. / text

In 2006, the merger of the WB and UPN broadcast networks created a new network, the CW. As the fifth major broadcast network, the CW occupies an interesting, hybrid space within the television industry. The CW behaves like a cable channel, yet it usually receives the coverage of a broadcast network. Its target audience is women ages 18 to 34, an extremely small target demographic by any standards. Despite its unique status with the television industry, the CW remains woefully under-studied. This project aims first to provide a context for the CW moment and compare the network's trajectory with that of its predecessors in order to illuminate the myriad of changes that have occurred in the media industries. This project considers how the CW's branding strategies shape perceptions of the network, how the CW brand is produced and how the network's branding practices demonstrate an investment in postfeminism. In order to analyze the CW's branding, this paper examines the network's promotional materials and other paratexts, focusing primarily on print ads, since they are the most circulated. This project also asks how the CW constructs its audience in this age of postfeminism. In order to expose the contradictions and assumptions that underpin the network's project of audience construction, this paper considers both statements from network executives and the network's penchant for reviving 1990s programs with nostalgic appeal. Finally, this paper considers how the category of the "CW show" functions as a genre, and, through textual and narrative analysis, how that genre works to limit the possibilities for female representation on the network. This analysis draws attention to the complicated ways that postfeminist ideas are integrated into young women's programming today, and how conversations about female audiences have changed in the last twenty years. This project draws attention to an as-yet-unstudied site dominated by what Rosalind Gill calls the "postfeminist sensibility" (148). / text

This thesis examines the two literary genres of romance and chick lit with regards to the treatment of relationships, career, sexuality, consumerist culture and beauty industry as represented in Lynne Graham’s An Arabian Courtship, Eve Gladstone’s Between two Moons, Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada and Marian Keyes’s Sushi for Beginners. Lynne Graham (b. 1956) is a popular Northern Irish author of over sixty romance novels. After the first unsuccessful attempt to be a writer Lynne Graham got married to a man she had loved since her teens. When their first daughter was born Graham began writing again, this time with success. The novel An Arabian Courtship is about a young female protagonist, Polly, who is arranged to marry an Arab prince Raschid. Eve Gladstone’s Between Two Moons is a Harlequin romance written by two authors, Joyce Gleit and Herma Werner. Both Gleit and Werner are married and worked in the fashion industry before becoming romance writers. Eve Gladstone is the name of their writing team. The novel is about a young and successful career woman, Kelly, in charge of a big store Lambs. Suddenly she realizes that her store has been sold to Tony Campbell, a handsome, charming and enigmatic man. Lauren Weisberger (b. 1977) is the writer of the contemporary new woman’s fiction (called as chick lit genre). Her first job as the assistant to the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, influenced her to write The Devil Wears Prada. This novel was her first book... [to full text] / Šiame baigiamajame magistriniame darbe nagrinėjami du literatūros žanrai – tradicinis meilės romanas ir šiuolaikinis moterų romanas. Lynne Graham „An Arabian Courtship“ ir Eve Gladstone „Between Two Moons“ yra tradiciniai meilės romanai, o Lauren Weisberger „The Devil Wears Prada“ ir Marian Keyes „Sushi for Beginners“ yra šiuolaikiniai moterų romanai. Šie romanai yra analizuojami norint atskleisti jau minėtų žanrų panašumus ir skirtumus atsižvelgiant į pagrindinių herojų tarpusavio santykius, karjera, lytiškumą, jų santykį su vartotojiška kultūra ir grožio pramone. Romano „Between Two Moons“ autoriai – Joyce Gleit ir Herma Werner. „Eve Gladstone“ buvo pasirinkta slapyvardžiu. Abu rašytojai yra sutuoktiniai, kurį laiką dirbę mados industrijoje, vėliau nusprendę rimtai atsiduoti rašytojo karjerai. Romanas „Between Two Moons“ pasakoja apie jauną, sėkmingą, karjeros siekiančią moterį, kuri vadovauja prekybos centrui „Lambs“. Staiga ji suvokia, kad parduotuvė parduota pasiturinčiam ir žavingam anglui vardu Tonny Campbell. Lynne Graham (1956) yra populiari Šiaurės Airijos autorė, išleidusi daugiau kaip šešiasdešimt romanų. Pirmasis bandymas tapti rašytoja buvo nesėkmingas, todėl Lynne Graham panėrė į šeimyninį gyvenimą: ištekėjo už vyro kurį mylėjo nuo pat paauglystės, susilaukė dukros. Pabandžiusi rašyti dar kartą Graham sulaukė sėkmės. Jos romanas „An Arabian Courtship“ atskleidžia jaunos merginos vardu Polly istoriją. Ši netikėtai sužino, jog yra pažadėta Jungtinių Arabų Emyratų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Denna uppsats undersöker hur kvinnor visualiseras och representeras på omslagen av Veckorevyn. Materialet består av 23 omslag av Veckorevyn från perioden 2014 till 2015. Syftet är att analysera kvinnor i mediala sammanhang som subjekt. med fokus på kamerapositioner, poser, passivt eller aktivt kroppsspråk, uttryck och blickar. Metoden för arbetet är en visuell bildanalys genom ett postfeministiskt perspektiv. Perspektivet tolkar sexuella uttryck och kvinnligt kodade grejer som ett sätt att få makt och uttrycka sin sexuella identitet. Undersökningen utförs i två delar där två exempel först demonstreras i en mer djupgående analys där bildens olika aspekter analyseras utifrån teori. I andra delen analyseras resterande omslagen och diskuteras de koder som indikerar på sexualisering, stereotyper och maktpositioner utifrån postfeministisk teori. Analysen visar att omslagsmodellerna avbildas på olika sätt där manlig och kvinnlig porträttering kombineras. Posering visar ett yttrande av kvinnlig frihet och makt. / This essay analyses how women are visualized and represented on the covers of Veckorevyn. The material consists of 23 magazine covers, randomly chosen from the period between 2014 and 2018. The purpose of this essay is to analyze women in medial contexts as subject. The method for this essay is visual image analysis through a postfeminist perspective. The perspective interprets sexual expressions and feminine coded material to gain power and express a sexual identity. The analysis is divided into two parts. First, a deeper analysis is shown on two covers where different aspects are analyzed through theory. In the second part, the other covers are analyzed and the codes that indicate on sexualizing, stereotypes and power positions discussed through a postfeminist perspective. The analyze shows that the women are portrait in ways that are more common for both women and men. The posing shows a statement of women’s rights and power.

Although research on the genre of the soap opera is some of the earliest research present in mass communications scholarship, and despite the considerable amount of existing scholarship on the genre of the telenovela, the subgenre of the teen telenovela, as present in Mexico and other Latin American countries, has been mostly overlooked. It is undeniable that this subgenre is worth researching, however, if not because of the quality of its content, which has been called into question many times, then due to the significant number of people who consume it. At a time when Mexican telenovelas are struggling, it is the teenage public that continues to give Televisa, Mexico’s largest network, its highest ratings. This study focuses on one particular text in the genre, the teen telenovela Rebelde (Damián, 2004). Rebelde is an important telenovela to study for several reasons: its place in time, its target audience, its deviations from the genre, its massive popularity, and the fact that most of the existing scholarship on Mexican telenovelas focuses on texts which are much older. This dissertation uses textual analysis as a methodology in order to analyze six common themes of the teen telenovela: friendship, romance, childhood, school, rebellion and music. The purpose of this dissertation is to look at how these themes are represented in Rebelde, and at the way in which they draw elements from the genre of the traditional telenovela as well as from teenage content popular in other countries. The study also aims to analyze how this has allowed Rebelde to promote ideologies such as postfeminism, while still engaging with the more traditional ideology of the telenovela genre.