Postfeminist World: Girl Power- Humanities & Social Work- Essay Writing Assignment

Internal Code: TV750

Essay Writing Assignment:

Major Essay (2,000 words) due Monday 29 January 2018, at 23:55. Write an essay that provides a well-argued response to following topic:- 1)Critically discuss the ‘Girl Power’ phenomenon. Topic Eight: Postfeminism Introduction Introduction Since around the 1990s, there has been the belief that we are in a postfeminist world as gender equality has been substantially achieved. This is reflected in the talk about ‘Girl Power’ – which advocates and asserts that young women today ‘have it all’ – they are empowered, independent and confident. It is a strong theme in popular culture – Beyoncé’s single ‘Run the World (Girls)’ claiming that girls/young women ‘now have ultimate control – outspending, outsmarting, and outshining their male counterparts ... [and therefore] beyond the need for collective political action’ (Pomerantz et al. 2013, 186). More critically, postfeminism is taken to mean ‘that feminism, particularly second wave feminism, is dead and that we’ve moved into a mode in which want the benefits that came with feminism, but still dress, act and do as they please even if it replicated patriarchal gender norms’ (McHugh 2007, 101). However, postfeminism also connects with so-called third-wave feminism – ‘feminism’s ‘coming of age’, its maturity into a confident body of theory and politics, representing pluralism and difference and reflecting on its position in relation to other philosophical and political movements similarly demanding change’ (McHugh 2007, 101). Either way, postfeminism or third-wave feminism, are attributed to new generation of women – the granddaughters of second-wave feminists – living in a different world. In parallel with these developments in and around feminism, there are debates over the sexualisation of society and culture. What does sexualisation entail? How do debates over sexualisation connect to debates over new feminisms?