Core post #4 - Living in a Post-World and I am a Post-Girl

Post-feminist, post-colonial, post-structural, post-racial – sometimes our world seems so post-everything, I am not sure what this means for the current politics of identity scholarship. I also found it fascinating how dated these articles feel even though they were written within the last decade. Change has been brewing, and the #metoo and #timesup movements are reshaping our cultural landscape. Broadly, when reading these articles, I felt a sense of anxiety that current “post-feminsts” have neglected and ignored past struggles - as if, women have always had agency and are “leaning in” because they want to – not because they are now able to. And while I agree with Butler, Banet-Weiser, and McRobbie’s assessments, specifically in regard to media representations like Bridget Jones or Sex and the City, I am not entirely sure if this was reflected in non-mediated culture. I think the media and consumer culture of Girl Power was more aspirational than actual. As a non-scientific example/ anecdote, I was taking a Super Shuttle home from the airport yesterday. The driver dictated where we should sit based on the order of our drop-offs. The way the seating arrangement worked, in the back row there was a 50 some-year-old man tightly sandwiched between two USC undergrad girls. One of the girls said, “I don’t know if there is room, but I guess we will make it work.” The man replied, to the shuttle at large, “Its okay by me! I’m in a tight squeeze between two young ladies!” If this happened a couple of years ago, I would have laughed it off. In a postfeminist mentality I would have decided he was just being funny and didn’t mean anything by it. Now, because of our current culture, I turned around, looked him in the eye and said “really?!” in a shameful manner. I wanted to say more, but also didn’t want to start a quarrel in the Super Shuttle. If I had been one of the girls sitting next to him, I would have been asked to be moved. The point is, I don’t think we were ever postfeminist, but perhaps we wanted to be, or wished we were. McRobbie explains how “riualistic denunciation occurs when feminism is acknowledged but in a trivialized fashion, shelved as something that may have been useful in the past but is clearly out of date in today’s world” (as cited in Banet-Weiser, p. 207).  I agree with the readings, in that feminism was not out of date, just wistfully ignored.

The notion of race in regard to postfemism is an interesting theme throughout the readings. In true intersectional fashion, we cannot separate gender inequality from racial inequality, as the two are constantly reaffirming each other. However, in a consumer environment, Banet-Weiser explains how “these two identity categories – race as a “flava” and girl power- function together in the current media environment to produce categories of identity that are defined by ambiguity rather than specificity, ambivalence rather than political certainty” (Banet-Weiser, p. 203).  It is as though race is present but not fully explored. This feels to me like quintessential cultural appropriation – taking and profiting off of marginalized cultures without giving full homage to its origins.  I am wondering what the goal should be and what it should look like? If “relations of power are indeed made and re-made within texts of enjoyment and rituals of relaxation and abandonment” (McRobbie, p. 262), is there a way to rewrite this? Will there always be this kind of power dynamic regarding race and gender in our media representations? McRobbie and Banet-Weiser’s discussion speaks in conversation with Bulter. She states that, “the versatility of postfeminism functions as a double-edged sword with regard to women of color: on the one hand, it allows nonwhite women to participate in its deployment and enjoy its rewards, albeit in narrowly circumscribed ways; on the other, it works to conceal the underlying power relations that reproduce hegemonic ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and class” (Butler). I think this quotation is a strong example of the issue at hand, and one, that even in this post-postfeminist/ #metoo period, is still problematic. And while I enjoyed Butler’s piece, I did take issue with the fact that she specifically wanted to employ and intersectional lens, but framed her work in terms of Foucault and never once cited Patricia Hill Collins. This demonstrates how even in media critique, we are subject to hegemonic power structures that render race and gender (specifically the intersection of both) invisible.

I am interested to see what television will be growing out of our current #metoo era. Banet-Weiser states that, “Nickelodeon is widely lauded for its efforts to champion girls in what has been a historically male-dominated landscape” (Banet-Weiser, p. 202). Only a few days ago I read about the Clarissa Explains it All reboot, where Melissa Joan Heart will be playing the mom. How will this reboot embrace gender representations and racial identities?