Postfeminism and Body Image is a groundbreaking work that provides a poststructuralist and psychosocial analysis of key issues at the intersections of body image, psychology and media. The book outlines the theoretical framework through the work of renowned philosophers, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, and their use in feminist scholarship, to address body-image issues and challenges in the context of a postfeminist sensibility. The authors rethink body image, calling into question assumptions and obligations that affect recent issues related to social-media use, body positivity, the transformation imperative, body shaming and muscular masculinity. The analysis shows the advantage of seeing body image as a form of non-linear warfare, structured by contradiction, confusion and critique, where attempts to challenge oppressive body image practices are appropriated under the guise of positive alternatives to maintain that oppression. Through real-world examples, these nuanced concepts are made relatable and comprehensible to the readers. The book also offers a number of affirmative and hopeful ways forward. This is an indispensable resource for students and professionals of Gender studies, Health Psychology, Social Psychology and Media and Cultural Studies. It is also ideal for anyone exploring body image, self-image, postfeminism and poststructualism.

Drawing together literature from sociology, gender studies and psychology, this text offers a broad discussion of the topic in the context of socio-cultural change, gender politics and self-identity.

This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using “postfeminist” as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on—as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the AgeofPostfeminism interrogate “the possible” screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.

Are scientific 'facts' about body image enough to define conceptions of normality? Reassessing Experimental Psychology from a critical perspective, Sylvia Blood demonstrates how its research into Body Image can be misused and prone to misuse. Classifying women who experience distress and anxiety with food, eating and body size as suffering 'body image disturbance' or 'body image dissatisfaction', it can reproduce dominant assumptions about language, meaning and subjectivity. Experimental psychology's discourse about body image has recently become more widely influential, becoming popularised through domains such as women’s magazines, in which psychological experts provide 'facts' about women's 'body image problems', and offer advice and psychological treatments. With acute cross-disciplinary awareness Body Work: The Social Construction of Women's Body Image exposes the assumptions at work in the methods and status of experimental approaches. Penetrating beyond the usual dichotomy between experimental and popular psychology, this book illuminates some of the ways in which women's magazines have embraced experimental psychology's treatment of the issue. Drawing on her experience in Clinical Psychology, Sylvia Blood highlights the damaging effects of uncritically experimental views of body image. She goes on to elaborate not only an alternative model of discursive construction but also the implications of such a theory for clinical practice. Merging theory and clinical experience, Sylvia Blood exposes the fallacies about women’s bodies that underpin experimental psychology's body image research. She demonstrates the dangerous consequences of these fallacies being accepted as truths in popular texts and in the talk of 'everyday' women.

DIVFeminist essays examining postfeminism in American and British popular culture./div

Ranging across contemporary culture from the academy to shopping malls, this book offers engaged cultural criticism in a postfeminist context.

From Mean Girl to BFF, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood explores female sociality in postfeminist popular culture. Focusing on a range of media forms, Alison Winch reveals how women are increasingly encouraged to strategically bond by controlling each other's body image through 'the girlfriend gaze'.