Spectacular Femininity: the unattainable standards of postfeminism | Coffee break research at LSE

Postfeminism is an upbeat, celebratory cultural address to women, and promise, that they are past or post- the need for feminism, that they are already individually empowered and can ‘have it all’, ‘do it all’. Drawing on her book, Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, Simidele Dosekun will tell the stories of women she interviewed in Lagos, Nigeria, who practise a spectacularly feminine style and what their lives and attitudes tell us about postfeminism in Africa. She discovers that the postfeminist emphasis on happy affects and choice and ‘can do’ leave little imaginative and emotional space for complaint, critique or resistance. Its encouragement to women to work on themselves, to work on their attitudes and their confidence, to ‘lean in’, obscures the material conditions that it requires.

Simidele Dosekun is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.

This event was part of the LSE Research Showcase summer series. These 30 minute coffee-break sessions are open to the LSE community so that you can find out about some of the fascinating research taking place at LSE.

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The woman who applied the red lipstick to her coworker showed that she believed in her coworker. That is much more powerful than the lipstick

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The time, money, and energy spent on the spectacularly feminine upkeep- what could be done with those instead? Is it a fear of agency that keeps women from spending these resources on something less transient?