Abstract
ABSTRACT Emma Watson’s photoshoot for Vanity Fair’s April 2017 edition, in which the actress partially revealed her cleavage under a designer jacket, sparked heated debates on social media. Journalists, feminists, and the public tweeted back and forth to determine whether Watson was a hypocrite who championed feminism while appealing to the male gaze or an empowered feminist celebrity who expressed her sexuality artistically and freely. This study examined mainstream media coverage of this controversy to interrogate how celebrity, media, and popular culture intertwined to construct a normative sexual politics around the public presentation of female bodies. We found that articles used conflict to illuminate and debate the relationship between feminism and the role of the body and sexuality. Additionally, this incident revealed the ways feminism is connected to the female celebrity, particularly young, white, cisgender, and affluent women associated with the “good girl” archetype. Finally, the news coverage of the controversy conflated feminist sexuality with art, enterprise, and discourses of choice, as well as illuminated divides between “old” and “new” feminisms.
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