Pecking into Popular Culture

Post Feminism

L.S. Kim’s article Sex and the Single Girl in Post Feminism defines post feminism as the era after second wave feminism and the backlash against feminism. It is a time where women begin to feel that there is no more need for feminism because equality has been achieved. Kim gauges the status of women by examining the ways in which female desire and female pleasure are regulated and controlled.

One way in which female desire and pleasure are regulated and controlled is through post feminist discourse. Kim observes that “the representation of the independent women in the U.S. network television at the turn of the millennium is problematically post feminist/antifeminist as seen in such programs as Ally McBeal.” Rendering feminism acceptable in a new post feminist era has required a transformation of feminism into post feminism, the switch from Murphy Brown to Ally McBeal.

Murphy Brown, for example, shows independent women challenged by their independence while Ally McBeal shows independent women who are unhappy because of their independence. The public interprets that the unhappy independent women in Ally McBeal are miserable because they are too liberated. According to Kim’s article, these discourses are “used to condemn feminism’s achievements and to suggest a halt to continuing feminist struggle.”