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Twenty-something girls v. thirty-something Sex And The City women: paving the way for ‘post? feminism’?

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 11:40 authored by Meredith NashMeredith Nash, Ruby GrantRuby Grant
Lena Dunham’s cable television series Girls is a candid and comical look at the lives of four young women living in Brooklyn, New York. Following in the footsteps of the earlier post-feminist, womancentred television series, Sex and the City (SATC), Girls explores numerous feminist themes centring on an exploration of what it is like to be a young white woman in contemporary US society. Yet what kind of post-feminist narrative is being constructed in Girls? How is post-feminism deployed in the show? In a comparative analysis of Girls (Seasons 1–2) and SATC (Seasons 1–6), we argue that although both shows certainly exemplify post-feminist culture, they are inflected differently in relation to the representation of sexualities, reproductive “choice,” and feminine embodiment. Compared to SATC, we argue that Girls represents a novel approach to representing young US women’s lives on television, re-articulating and re-mobilising existing conceptualisations of postfeminism. To conclude, we propose that the term “post? feminism” may be used to describe Dunham’s version of post-feminism for a millennial generation

History

Publication title

Feminist Media Studies

Volume

15

Issue

6

Pagination

976-991

ISSN

1471-5902

Department/School

School of Social Sciences

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Place of publication

London

Rights statement

Copyright 2015 Taylor & Francis

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in human society

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