“Girls Can Kick Ass … Without Being Angry”: Practices of Alignment, Postfeminism, and the Production of Niceness in the Face of Sexism in Work and Family Lives1

Abstract

Scholars and cultural critics have criticized the “women can have it all” slogan of a successful career and family life as an impossible dream. But why do educationally and economically privileged women continue to invest in this myth? Drawing on interviews with 19 upper middle class, highly educated women, this article highlights the fusion of postfeminism and emotion work in what I call, practices of alignment, visible in the ways they talk about gender inequalities without addressing sexism. I argue these women use self‐silencing, individualizing, minimizing, and normalizing strategies to rationalize the realities of sexism and patriarchy in their households and workplaces. These practices of alignment “handle” other people's feelings and their own to reaffirm their identities as “nice” women who can succeed despite blatant and subtle forms of sexism in their lives. In so doing, these women continue to translate the broader social problems of continued gender inequality into individual issues, which masks the ways their economic and social lives are shaped by sexism.