Negotiations Of Femininity Research Articles

A tale of two generations: Indian and Pakistani immigrant women’s negotiation of femininity.

A tale of two generations: Indian and Pakistani immigrant women’s negotiation of femininity.

Supplemental Material for A Tale of Two Generations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrant Women’s Negotiation of Femininity

Supplemental Material for A Tale of Two Generations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrant Women’s Negotiation of Femininity

Being a princess: young children's negotiation of femininities in a Kindergarten classroom in Indonesia

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to explore young children’s construction of femininities in a kindergarten in Indonesia. Using a postdevelopmentalist and postcolonial approach, this paper seeks to understand how young children in the school develop, negotiate and resist existing gender construction. This paper is based on an ethnography research conducted in 2010 for eight months. Findings of this study reveal that discourse of femininities in the school is situated in the discourse of a princess. This paper argues that there are multiple meanings attached to the discourse of a princess. It does not only become a signifier for femininity, but it also acts as a signifier for social class. The findings also suggest that the discourse perpetuates the legacy of colonisation in the school. It is, then, recommended that, in order for kindergarten teachers to be able to disrupt the construction of femininities, they need to be able to understand multiple meaning of femininities as well as power relation embodied in the construction.

Elizabeth Taylor and Illness as a Negotiation of Femininity in Fan Magazines, 1960-1965

Fan magazines, primarily aimed at female audiences, provide a lens through which to analyze attitudes about female sexuality. In the 1960s, Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most popular stars in fan magazines. While coverage of her often focused on issues related to her marriages and children, another narrative about her health dominated headlines in the early part of the decade. Speculation about Taylor’s illnesses stood in for a larger discourse about female appetites, ambition, and containment. This illness discourse gave fans graphic access to Taylor’s body in ways that were gruesome rather than erotic as descriptions of her physical maladies reached ecstatic proportions. Public discourse about Taylor’s health functioned in complex ways that affirmed and challenged ideologically conservative constructions of femininity and motherhood. This essay explores Taylor’s appearances in fan magazines during the period 1960-1965 to examine the relationship between the star and notions of ambition, illness, and domesticity.

Flirting With the Judges: Bikini Fitness Competitors’ Negotiations of Femininity in Bodybuilding Competitions

Women’s bodybuilding manifestly challenges hegemonic understandings of the female body as weak, fragile, and limited. Because it has acquired characteristics that are traditionally deemed masculine, the muscular woman is thought to be in need of having her femininity “restored”. Perhaps for this reason, in bodybuilding competitions, female competitors are required to display femininity and implied heterosexuality on stage through their attitude, gestures, posing, make-up, hairstyle, and adornments. The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of competitors in the Bikini category to understand the ways in which they perceive and negotiate the expectations of idealized femininity within bodybuilding competitions. Semi-structured interviews, supplemented with ethnographic fieldwork, were conducted with nine female bodybuilding competitors. The data gathered indicated the contradictory views that some female bodybuilders hold of female muscularity and of femininity. The participants were able to negotiate the judging criteria, albeit at times reluctantly and with frequent expressions of criticism and disapproval.

Negotiation of Femininity inThe Roaring Girl— Moll’s Cross-dressing, Mobility, and Marriage Choice

(2016). Negotiation of Femininity in The Roaring Girl — Moll’s Cross-dressing, Mobility, and Marriage Choice. Comparative Literature: East & West: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 129-140.

Escaping femininity, claiming respectability: Culture, class and young women in Turkey

Synopsis Drawing on interview-based ethnographic research in Ankara, this article studies formations of femininity across social classes in urban Turkey. It centers on four young women, who have unequal access to economic resources and different cultural meanings. Through their biographies, this paper examines the effects of social class on experiences of gender and negotiations of femininity, on the one hand. And on the other, it demonstrates common narratives that young women employ in negotiating gender. While they commonly escape certain forms of femininity, which they frequently describe as traditional, backward, or submissive, they also employ alternative narratives such as independence, career success, moderation, chastity, and religiosity to attest self-value and respectability. Studying young women's experiences of gender and their negotiations of power provides fertile ground for further exploration of the construction of gender and class in relational terms.

‘I am a mother’: young women’s negotiation of femininity and risk in the transition to adulthood

In studies of sexual risk behaviour among youth, the role of dominant conceptions of masculinity and femininity has received increasing attention. However, where research has sought to explore femininity, it has predominantly focused on adolescent girls. This paper departs from previous research by offering insights into how young women negotiate their femininity as they transition from adolescence to adulthood and encounter changing social contexts. Drawing on data from ethnographic enquiry, it argues that as young women transition out of school and into emerging adulthood, their options for negotiating different types of femininity become constrained, with consequences for engagement in sexual risk behaviours. This may to some extent explain why in some South African contexts older young women are more vulnerable to HIV infection than adolescent girls. The paper offer insights into future prospects for youth development programming seeking to reduce young women’s vulnerability to risk.

Jennifer Lawrence, remixed: approaching celebrity through DIY digital culture

This article seeks to interrogate the relationship between two gendered aspects of celebrity: the way in which female celebrities are used to determine normative femininity in a postfeminist regulatory environment, and the way their audiences are primarily imagined as young and female. I aim to consider the intersections of this relationship by conducting an analysis of the discursive and affective practices of a feminine digital public where displays of digitally remixed culture are used to enact identity. Consisting of the circulation of self-representative ‘GIF reaction’ blogs authored by young women on blogging social network Tumblr, I analyse how popular young actress Jennifer Lawrence is discursively and affectively sampled and remixed by these bloggers. These blogs match GIF (or .gif) images excerpted from film, television and other popular culture with self-authored captions to construct narratives of youthful femininity documenting feelings and reactions to quotidian situations. I draw together celebrity studies work and the work of feminist scholars of online identity to ask how young women, as subjects who are addressed by celebrity as a vehicle for broader, postfeminist narratives, use Lawrence’s gendered, affective labour in their own identity work in a social, digital environment. Here, the blogs reuse and reconstruct Lawrence’s skilful affective navigation of postfeminist demands and her celebrity signification of carefree and fun authenticity in narrating the bloggers’ own negotiations of femininity.

Girls’ “New Femininity” Refusals and “Good Girl” Recuperations in Soap Talk

The “new femininities” produced in postfeminist media confront girls with complex and challenging subjectivities that reach into the spaces where girls engage in their own productions of self. Feminist scholarship has interrogated and critiqued the “girl” produced in postfeminist popular culture texts, highlighting her internal contradictions and often problematic re/production within the heterosexual matrix. Yet, despite an intensified focus on girls featured in popular culture, the ways that girls themselves make sense of the “girl” in contemporary femininity texts has been relatively neglected. Viewing girls' sense-making of femininity in popular culture texts as crucial in the process of their subjectivity or self-production, in this paper we examine pre-teen girls' negotiations of femininity through their talk about Scarlett, a main teen girl character in a New Zealand soap drama. Our analyses and discussion focus on girls' management of the contradictory and regulatory productions of femininity in the text, in particular the often classed conditions under which girls recuperate the “good girl” discourse to refuse the regulatory femininities inside the heterosexual matrix. We suggest that an absence of empowering discourses outside of postfeminism's sexual empowerment limits girls' resources for critiquing and challenging regulatory femininities, “new” and “traditional.”

“Balancing acts'': Elementary school girls' negotiations of femininity, achievement, and science

AbstractThere is international concern over persistent low rates of participation in postcompulsory science—especially the physical sciences—within which there is a notable underrepresentation of girls/women. This paper draws on data collected from a survey of more than 9,000 10/11‐year‐old pupils and 170 interviews (with 92 children and 78 parents) from a 5‐year study of children's science aspirations and career choice in England, to explore how gender interacts with girls' science aspirations. The research found that even though most children aged 10/11 years enjoy science, the majority already see science careers as “not for me.” Using a feminist poststructuralist theoretical lens, this paper explores the identity work undertaken by the minority of girls who do identify with science and who express science aspirations at this age. It is argued that dominant associations of science with “cleverness” and masculinity pressurize girls to balance their science aspirations with performances of popular heterofemininity to render them “thinkable” (and that this occurs only within narrow parameters, through identity performances as either “feminine scientists” or “bluestocking scientists”). The paper concludes by discussing potential challenges girls may face in sustaining “thinkable” identifications with science and wider implications for encouraging greater female participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 96: 967–989, 2012

'Up for it, mad for it? Women, drug use and participation in club scenes'

In this paper the meanings that participating in contemporary club scenes have for women are analysed in terms of risk and pleasure. The notion that club spaces provide an equal environment where women are free to participate without encountering sexual harassment from men is questioned, as is the assumption that all club spaces are the same. The differences between club spaces are discussed in terms of mainstreams and undergrounds and the implications that these different spaces have an impact on the women who choose a clubbing lifestyle. Previous accounts of women's sexual behaviour have focused on risk and danger. This extended analysis, by putting this behaviour into the context of drug use, risk and pleasure allows for a different reading of women's experiences. An ethnographic study using in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observations was carried out to ascertain how women viewed their own participation on club scenes. The data suggests that women feel more comfortable in underground club spaces as they encounter less sexual harassment there, and that factors such as alcohol use and self esteem are crucial in determining risk taking behaviour. The use of ecstasy itself was not seen as a precursor to risk taking behaviour. The negotiation of femininity and sexuality in club spaces is highlighted as problematic for the women concerned. In constructing identities within club spaces however, a positive femininity can be produced in opposition to traditional, passive images of femininity and sexuality.

Private Girls and Public Worlds: Producing femininities in the primary school

This article draws upon data gathered from a research project entitled 'Children's Relationship Cultures in Years 5 and 6'. The project aims to explore the ways in which primary school age children understand emotional, caring and family relationships. This paper will focus upon the role of friendship in the cultures of girls, aged 9-10, in a primary school classroom. An ethnographic approach is adopted to illustrate the variety of interactions in which friendship is spoken, displayed and enacted within pupil cultures. Analysis of these exchanges suggests that notions of friendship and patterns of friendship are constitutive of sexual-gender identities. The paper argues that being friends/breaking friends is a technique utilised for the regulation and negotiation of femininities and the production of differentiated sex-gender hierarchies. The paper will focus upon the activities of the 'diary group'--a self-styled network of eight girls who met in the school playground to discuss issues that interested and excited them. Recurrent themes in diary group discussions are identified as: puberty/periods; erotic attachments; and imagined futures. The paper suggests that the diary group can be seen as a site for identity production and asks the question: what kind of identities are being produced when these girls meet and talk? Finally, the paper seeks to explore the ways in which members of the diary group create a 'private' space within the public domain of the school and, through talk, produce themselves as feminine subjects.

From the Soap Queen to the Aga-Saga: Different discursive frameworks of familial femininity in contemporary ‘women's genres'

This article draws on recent feminist work in the fields of queer theory, cultural studies and media studies to counter notions of a monolithic or homogeneous femininity. It offers a discursive analysis of two popular ‘women's genres', the Aga-saga and the soap opera, to argue that these offer at least two possible modes of femininity which women can draw on in constructing and reconstructing their feminine identities. However, it then suggests that, whereas both forms offer models which can assist the negotiation of femininity, only the soap opera offers a paradigm which can assist a resistant femininity. An exploration of the fictional female character, the soap queen, reveals both her glamour and her resemblance to the drag queen. Whilst the glamour is posited as a further model for the negotiation of femininity, the similarities to the drag queen are offered as an indication of the possibility of resistance, since this resemblance can suggest the performativity of gender identity.