TY - JOUR
T1 - Immaculate consumption: negotiating the sex symbol in postfeminist celebrity culture
AU - Evans, Adrienne
AU - Riley, Sarah Christine
N1 - Evans, A., Riley, S. C. (2012). Immaculate consumption: negotiating the sex symbol in postfeminist celebrity culture. Journal of Gender Studies, 22 (3), 268-281.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Contemporary female celebrity is produced within a context of postfeminism, sexualised culture, consumerism and neoliberalism. Feminist analyses often argue that such celebrity figures commodify female sexuality and depoliticise feminist issues regarding autonomy and sexual agency; although some celebrate contemporary celebrity as a site for producing less conventional sexual identities. In this paper we contribute to these debates with analysis of focus group and interview data from 28 white heterosexual women aged between 23 and 58 living in the UK. For the women in our study, female celebrities were figures of successful neoliberal entrepreneurial selves, with the capacity to make money from their bodies. This capacity was associated with continuous work on the bodies, rather than a natural beauty; and while there was often admiration for the work that went into this self-transformation, a consequence for the participants of equating beauty with normatively unattainable levels of body work was that they came to understand themselves as falling short of even ‘achievable’ attractiveness. We conclude that these participants made sense of celebrity sexiness through neoliberal rhetoric of ‘choice’, entitlement and pleasure, which worked to constantly underscore the ‘ordinary’ woman's inability to measure up.
AB - Contemporary female celebrity is produced within a context of postfeminism, sexualised culture, consumerism and neoliberalism. Feminist analyses often argue that such celebrity figures commodify female sexuality and depoliticise feminist issues regarding autonomy and sexual agency; although some celebrate contemporary celebrity as a site for producing less conventional sexual identities. In this paper we contribute to these debates with analysis of focus group and interview data from 28 white heterosexual women aged between 23 and 58 living in the UK. For the women in our study, female celebrities were figures of successful neoliberal entrepreneurial selves, with the capacity to make money from their bodies. This capacity was associated with continuous work on the bodies, rather than a natural beauty; and while there was often admiration for the work that went into this self-transformation, a consequence for the participants of equating beauty with normatively unattainable levels of body work was that they came to understand themselves as falling short of even ‘achievable’ attractiveness. We conclude that these participants made sense of celebrity sexiness through neoliberal rhetoric of ‘choice’, entitlement and pleasure, which worked to constantly underscore the ‘ordinary’ woman's inability to measure up.
KW - celebrity culture
KW - sexualisation of culture
KW - postfeminism
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/41727
U2 - 10.1080/09589236.2012.658145
DO - 10.1080/09589236.2012.658145
M3 - Article
SN - 0958-9236
VL - 22
SP - 268
EP - 281
JO - Journal of Gender Studies
JF - Journal of Gender Studies
IS - 3
ER -