Current debates about representations of female athletes in the media consist mainly of textual analyses research produced by scholars who observe the topic from different theoretical frameworks. To better comprehend the relation between women athletes and media’s representation of them, in particularly advertising, this thesis aims to converse with up-and-coming professional and collegiate sportswomen as a way to examine what kind of correlation, if any, there is between sports commercials’ portrayals of female athletes and their actual reality. As there has been a shift in sports marketing approaches towards women through ‘femvertising’ (which challenges traditional gender stereotypes), a common belief is that gender equality in sport has been achieved. Taken as my case study, I use Nike’s commercials I Feel Pretty (2006) and Dream Crazier (2019) as auxiliary ‘props’ to get the discussion about advertisements’ representations of female athletes off ground in my conversations with several women athletes. Nike stands as one of the most prominent sporting brands in the world, and since the early 90s, the brand has been leading in “female athlete empowerment” advertising. Thus, by conducting a focus group interview in addition to in-depth semi-structured interviews with women athletes from the United States and Europe, the analysis draws on a postfeminist critique as a way to better understand the relation between the representations of sportswomen in sport advertisements versus their real-life experiences. Ultimately, the results of this research work imply that even though sport brands make a good case for the visibility of sportswomen, it does not match the experiences of the female athletes without celebrity status. Finally, this thesis is a contribution to the field of media and communication studies as it privileges the voices of up-and-coming professional and collegiate female athletes. It serves in hope of inspiring other scholars to further investigate sport in relation to gender and media through the lived experiences of the sportswomen about which they theorize.

Après le succès mondial de la série télévisée prolongé par les films, la franchise Sex and the City est devenue un phénomène de masse. Sujet de plusieurs études académiques qui mettent en évidence l’importance du post-féminisme pour le succès de la franchise, Sex and the City se distingue par la relation particulière qui s’instaure entre les spectateurs et les personnages, et qui est l’objet de la présente étude : relation qui passe par la représentation des thèmes et du quotidien féminins et surtout par la construction des personnages, principalement du personnage principal Carrie Bradshaw. De plus, elle est renforcée par des stratégies médiatiques utilisées pour rapprocher le public féminin à partir des processus de reconnaissance et d’identification qui dirigent la réception de masse. / After the worldwide success of the television series extended by films, the Sex and the City franchise has become a mass phenomenon. Subject of several academic studies that highlight the importance of the postfeminist for the success of the franchise, Sex and the City is distinguished by the special relationship that is established between the audience and the characters, and which is the object of this study: relationship that passes by representation of the subjects and the women's daily and especially by the construction of the characters mainly the main character Carrie Bradshaw. In addition, it is reinforced by media strategies used to bring the women's public recognition and identification with the characters.

Après le succès mondial de la série télévisée prolongé par les films, la franchise Sex and the City est devenue un phénomène de masse. Sujet de plusieurs études académiques qui mettent en évidence l’importance du post-féminisme pour le succès de la franchise, Sex and the City se distingue par la relation particulière qui s’instaure entre les spectateurs et les personnages, et qui est l’objet de la présente étude : relation qui passe par la représentation des thèmes et du quotidien féminins et surtout par la construction des personnages, principalement du personnage principal Carrie Bradshaw. De plus, elle est renforcée par des stratégies médiatiques utilisées pour rapprocher le public féminin à partir des processus de reconnaissance et d’identification qui dirigent la réception de masse. / After the worldwide success of the television series extended by films, the Sex and the City franchise has become a mass phenomenon. Subject of several academic studies that highlight the importance of the postfeminist for the success of the franchise, Sex and the City is distinguished by the special relationship that is established between the audience and the characters, and which is the object of this study: relationship that passes by representation of the subjects and the women's daily and especially by the construction of the characters mainly the main character Carrie Bradshaw. In addition, it is reinforced by media strategies used to bring the women's public recognition and identification with the characters.

In 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might help feminist theorists overcome these epistemological impediments. A "postmodern feminism," Nicholson and Fraser claim, would become "the theoretical counterpart of a broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity, the sort of solidarity which is essential for overcoming the oppression of women" (35). Interpreting "Social Criticism" through a feminist cultural studies model in which texts are understood to be simultaneously constituted by and reflective of their own sociopolitical spaces, I argue that the construction of Nicholson and Fraser's "postmodern feminism" is, first and foremost, neither a postmodernist critique nor a means of overcoming the pitfalls of essentialism and foundationalism. Instead, the construction of this theoretical paradigm can be shown to be complicit with postfeminist discourses, wherein an implicitly patriarchal discourse of postmodernism is called upon to repair the deficiencies of feminisms, deficiencies that postmodernisms, in some ways, helped to bring into view. To provide a conceptual backing for these claims, I move toward an examination of mass culture, surveying the similarities between "Social Criticism" and the film What Women Want. Such a comparison, I suggest, facilitates a better understanding of how "Social Criticism" can be shown to be imbedded in a postfeminist narrative structure in which feminisms are relegated to a discursively subordinate gendered position in relation to postmodernisms. Finally, in what I find to be the most important aspect of this thesis' inquiry, I ask what it means to build a "broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity" by disavowing second wave feminisms in favor of postmodernisms. I conclude that, in using postmodernisms as a panacea for feminist theories, Nicholson and Fraser curtail what might have been a rigorous interrogation of and direct engagement with second wave feminist theories that would also attend to the phallogocentric underpinnings of postmodern theories. To underline the potential consequences, I turn to a set of televisual and filmic texts including Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Devil Wears Prada to gauge what their "postmodern feminism" might represent in practice rather than what it entails as philosophy. This juxtaposition of these two differently defined and yet overwhelmingly similar postmodern feminisms, I propose, underscores the potential that Nicholson and Fraser may have instituted a postmodern feminist methodology in which it is possible that feminisms might emerge not as discourses essential for "overcoming the oppression of women" but rather as discourses that can be critiqued into oblivion.

The newest generation, raised and immersed in today's hyper-consumer culture, has learned to define the self within a neoliberal and capitalist framework in which self-branding and ascribing to hegemonic principles appears imperative to one’s personal success.