Femme Theory & Popular Culture
Sexualities
Editors: Rhea Ashley Hoskin & Karen Blair
Abstract: Scanning the indices of popular culture textbooks reveals an asymmetry: numerous entries on masculinities but not a single femininities entry. What does this asymmetry say about gender theory and, more specifically, femininity? While feminist theorists have produced important scholarship illuminating femininity as a patriarchal tool wielded through popular culture, these analyses often overlook how various axes of identity intersect with femininity, leaving a sizeable gap in both the conceptualization of femininity and the analysis of popular culture. This article examines how femme theory can help to both highlight and remedy gender theory’s tendency to privilege masculinity and overlook femininity. After providing an overview of femme theory and its core theoretical concepts, this article highlights femme theory’s utility in enriching our interpretations of representation.
Authors: Rhea Ashley Hoskin & Karen Blair
Abstract: The Spice Girls were a unique pop phenomenon, promoting feminist ideology while being dismissed as proponents of postfeminism and positioned as collaborators with the patriarchy. Drawing on music videos the band released during 1997, this article suggests that the band’s queer choices, regarding the spice personas the band adopted, were overlooked. This article explores the spice personas presentation of femme embodiments using drag: subverting notions of femininity as natural and monolithic, and resisting femininity as ubiquitously disempowering. By highlighting the heterosexual bias and anti-sex undertones in postfeminism, this analysis generates a multifaceted reading of popular femme performances as female-to-femme drag.
Author: Maayan Padan
Abstract: Feminist analyses of postfeminism too often abject femininity, rendering spectacular femininity as a masquerade that endears women to heterosexual men. Moving into the era of popular feminism, feminist analyses have yet to renegotiate this abjection of femininity, often eclipsing the potential for resistance in favor of highlighting the pernicious effects of capitalism. Analyzing vignettes from The Bold Type (2017–2021), this research draws on femme theory to map an analytical framework that reinterprets spectacular femininity, developing strategies for critical analyses that can recognize fem(me)inine resistance within a landscape that commodifies femininity and feminism.
Authors: Sarah Kornfield and Chloe Long
Abstract: Using a case study of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde (2001), I assert that sorority communities are a prime example of the powerful impact of femmephobia in popular culture. Drawn from qualitative interview data with sorority women as well as media analysis and autoethnographic reflection, I use femme theory (Hoskin, 2017) and “girling” (Ahmed, 2017) to analyze a trend within my data that I label the “Elle Woods Effect.” Ultimately, I assert that the femmephobic dualistic tensions of the “Elle Woods Effect” demonstrate the off-screen impact of popular culture for femininized people and communities.
Author: Jocelyne Bartram Scott
Abstract: Contemporary and mainstream representations of gender and sexual minorities within pop culture provide an opportunity for marginalized narratives and stories to reach audiences otherwise excluded. As gay adolescent youth narratives become normalized within mainstream representations, ideas of coming out, the invisibilization of gay femininities, and the privileging of gender normativity within gay young adulthood percolate in film and media. This article presents an interpretive analysis of the regulation of femininity—femmephobia—within Love, Simon through depictions of Simon (the main gay adolescent character) and Ethan (Simon’s feminine gay peer). Using femme theory and “fag discourses,” this article problematizes femmephobic depictions of gay adolescence. Moreover, this article argues that Ethan's position as a “femme failure,” and thus an exemplar of femme resistance, offers opportunities for challenging femmephobic gender relations amongst gay adolescence in media and pop culture.
Author: Adam Davies
Abstract: This article challenges conventions of normative femininity and popular feminism by examining the television show Fleabag (2016–2019) and the destabilizing tendencies of its unnamed protagonist (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who insistently breaks the fourth wall, implying a form of narrative agency. However, her refusal and/or inability to conform to expectations around public decency, feminine norms, and heterosexual romance also betray a lack of narrative control. The show’s unruly framing and its dysfunctional narrator open a dynamic space for explorations of “bad feminism” (Gay, 2014), “fem (me)inine failure” (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019), and “toxic femininity” (McCann, 2020), while foregrounding a kind of femme resistance.
Author: Aviva Dove-Viebahn
Abstract: In 2001, the film Legally Blonde was released into a pop cultural landscape saturated with the Spice Girls’ brand of feminism-lite and postfeminist media texts like Sex and the City (1998–2004). With its firm hold on “girlie” feminism, Legally Blonde is postfeminist — but not post-femme. I extend the claim that femme theory can be located in low-cultural spaces and texts to understand the “chick flick” as another possible site of femme theory. I argue that Legally Blonde demonstrates that femme resistance can be located in the success of femininity, rather than only in its failure.
Author: Andi Schwartz
Abstract: Carrie Bradshaw, heroine of HBO’s Sex and the City, remains a talking point of pop culture. Tutued flâneuse, Bradshaw succeeds a long line of unconventional, feminist pathfinders, of whom Maeve Brennan’s Long-Winded Lady is arguably an early archetype. In her New Yorker dispatches, Brennan’s semi-autobiographical ‘dandette’ enacts a repudiation of the patriarchy by staking a claim to the public space of the city. This paper traces the resistant legacy of femme failure from Brennan to Bradshaw as single, non-reproductive women. Drawing on recent femme scholarship, it further explores the concept of paradoxical visibility in the lives of these fem(me)inine icons.
Author: Edward O’Rourke
Abstract: Women-led revenge films are often lauded for feminist narratives and cathartic reversals of heteropatriarchal hegemony. However, many texts reify femmephobic systems of gender and power by construing violence and revenge as masculine, thus requiring heroines to adopt masculine tactics and weapons. Promising Young Woman (2020) breaks with genre conventions by constructing a world and protagonist that exemplify femme norms, values, and covert ways of operating. Drawing on queer and femme theoretical frameworks, I situate Promising Young Woman in a femme enclave of psychological thriller, positing it as an example of femme worldbuilding that explores how femme subjects assert power over their narratives.
Author: Tamar Westphal