The Masque Of Femininity

This innovative and wide-ranging book explores the construction of femininity in Western society. Drawing on an extraordinary range of theory, empirical sources and original research, Efrat Tseelon examines the role of the visual - of fashion, the body and personal appearance - in defining the female self. The Masque of Femininity will be essential reading for students and academics in women's studies, cultural studies and social psychology.

Hannah Arendt was famously resistant to both psychoanalysis and feminism. Nonetheless, psychoanalytic feminist theory can offer a new interpretive strategy for deconstructing her equally famous opposition between the social and the political. Supplementing critical readings of Arendt's most significant texts (including The Human Condition, On Revolution, Rahel Varnhagen, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Life of the Mind) with the insights of contemporary psychoanalytic, feminist, and social theorists, Norma Claire Moruzzi reconstitutes the relationship in Arendt's texts between constructed social identity and political agency. Moruzzi uses Julia Kristeva's writings on abjection to clarify the textual dynamic in Arendt's work that constructs the social as a natural threat; Joan Riviere's and Mary Ann Doane's work on feminine masquerade amplify the theoretical possibilities implicit in Arendt's own discussion of the public, political mask. In a bold interdisciplinary synthesis, Moruzzi develops the social applications of a concept (the mask) Arendt had described as limited to the strictly political realm: a new conception of (political) agency as (social) masquerade, traced through the marginal but emblematic textual figures who themselves enact the politics of social identity.

In this accessible introductory guide, the author identifies key feminist approaches to popular culture from the 1960s to the present and demonstrates how the relationship between feminism, femininity and popular culture has often been a troubled one. The book introduces the central ideas of both second-wave feminism and feminist cultural studies and demonstrates how they inform feminist debates about a range of popular forms and practices through a series of case studies: the woman's film; romantic fiction; soap opera; consumption and material culture; fashion and beauty practices; and youth culture and popular music.

Helen Garner's The First Stone (1995), a 'non-fictional' book about a sexual harassment case at a University of Melbourne residential college, captured and maintained the Australian media's attention in an unprecedented way. Its publication sparked extensive media commentary regarding an alleged generational war within Australian feminism. While talkback radio, current affairs television, and cultural events such as literary festivals and forums all took part in this heated public contest over the meanings of feminism, this book reconsiders how the debate played out in the Australian print media. Analysing texts as diverse as feature articles and opinion pieces, non-fiction by young feminists, letters to the editor, celebrity feminist profiles and articles, as well as The First Stone itself, this book offers the first in-depth analysis of this debate as a 'media event'. Refusing to adopt either a condemnatory or celebratory approach to the complex relationship between feminism and media culture, it argues that the First Stone media event is indicative of the limitations and the opportunities proffered by the mediatisation of contemporary feminism. Mediating Australian Feminism provides insights that will be valuable to scholars interested in feminism, journalism and news culture, literary reception, and the politics of media representation.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. The present volume offers inter-disciplinary discussions on the interconnectedness of concepts such as evil and femininity. The authors comment on issues such as abjection, murder, gender stereotypes, revenge, menstruation and demonisation of women across cultures and historical periods.

This book examines feminist art of the 1970s through contemporary art made by women. In a series of readings of artworks by, amongst others, Tracey Emin, Vanessa Beecroft, Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneemann the reader is taken on a journey through maternal desire, fantasies of escape and failed femininity.

Drawing on interviews with women and queer tattoo artists from across the US, UK and Australia, this book explores their experiences in what has historically been a male-dominated industry to reveal how tattooing has undergone a ‘gender turn’ and a subsequent shift in gender relations.