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colluding with neo-liberalism: post-feminist subjectivities, whiteness and expressions of entitlement

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Feminist Review

Abstract

This discussion contributes to the ongoing debates regarding the (re)sexualisation of female bodies in popular and visual culture. Visual texts display the upper middle-class white female as the carrier of mainstream neo-liberal values in Western societies, and the success of this approach is the twinning of the culture of individualism, self-interest and market values with feminist vocabularies; namely, choice, freedom and independence. Drawing on a broad feminist scholarship that includes discussions on the influence of the HBO series Sex and the City, semiotic analysis is combined with intersectionality to gain an understanding of how gender, class and sexuality shape and reinforce whiteness as entitled to luxury in an advertising campaign for Michael Kors luxury goods. Contemporary representations have expanded to include representations of affluent women who appear to have it all. These new post-feminist subjectivities promote an aesthetic of wealth, to display privileged whiteness, heterosexuality, normative Western beauty ideals and individualism. An intersectional approach reveals the apparent neutrality of neo-liberal values as being an expression of whiteness, specifically in representations of white women as economically independent neo-liberal subjects who display their status through the conspicuous consumption of luxury brands.

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Notes

  1. Images of the Michael Kors Spring 2015 campaign can be accessed via this link: http://destinationkors.michaelkors.com/runway/ad-campaigns/spring-2015-4/ [last accessed 30 March 2015].

  2. In Season 4, in the episode Just Say Yes, Carrie Bradshaw realises that she has spent US$40, 000 on designer shoes. In that episode she asks herself ‘whether she might actually become “the old woman who lives in her shoes” ’ (Gennaro, 2007, p. 255).

  3. In Sex and the City I (2008), the African American actor and singer Jennifer Hudson was cast as Carrie Bradshaw’s personal assistant. Although casting Hudson in the film was a welcomed departure from an all-white cast, her character Louise was still on the margins of the plot.

  4. The Vagenda website can be accessed via this link: http://vagendamagazine.com/ [last accessed 29 March 2015].

  5. What Not to Wear (BBC Television) was presented by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, 10 Years Younger (Channel 4) was presented by Nicki Hambleton-Jones and Cook Yourself Thin (Channel 4) was presented by Gizzi Erskine.

  6. The Office for National Statistics’ data on lone parents with dependent children can be accessed via this link: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/family-demography/families-and-households/2011/sum-lone-parents.html [last accessed 30 March 2015].

  7. See Brockes (2013) for an interview with Sheryl Sandberg.

  8. For example, ‘it is estimated that 300,000 care workers are on zero-hours contracts’ (Campbell, 2013, p. 9).

  9. Reviews for the film I Don’t Know How She Does It can be accessed via this link: http://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/143372/i-don-t-know-how-she-does-it [last accessed 10 March 2015].

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Wilkes, K. colluding with neo-liberalism: post-feminist subjectivities, whiteness and expressions of entitlement. Fem Rev 110, 18–33 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.19

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