Terms like “empowerment” have flooded popular culture for quite some time, often in relation to promoting consumerism as well as hypersexual self-presentation. Of late, though, a rather unlikely source employed the word “feminist” to describe herself. Last week, media sensation Miley Cyrus stated: “I’m one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women not to be scared of anything.” ...
... It’s notable, too, since many female celebrities, especially her contemporaries, have distanced themselves from identifying as a feminist. ...
The qualifications ... about employing the word “feminist” reflects a longstanding conversation in feminist scholarship about why feminist has become a label that is fraught with contention. Part of the reason seems to be the history of generational conflict associated with women’s efforts to fulfill feminist aims. Along these lines, women seem to want to assert that their view of feminism is not that of their mothers or grandmothers. They want to own their feminism.
In addition, female celebrities’ ambivalence towards the term “feminist” is perhaps based on the ways in which notions of feminism have been communicated through mass media outlets over almost fifty years. ...
Read more:
Miley's Embrace of the F-Word
No comments:
Post a Comment