Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Details
Description
x, 222 pages; 23 cm
Summary
"From Mean Girls to BFF, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood explores female sociality in postfeminist popular culture. Focusing on a range of media forms, including film, magazines, conduct books, TV and digital networking sites, Alison Winch reveals the ways in which friendships are increasingly encouraged to be strategic. Girlfriendship is examined as an affective social relation where slut-shamers, frenemies and bridezillas bond by controlling each other's body image through a 'girlfriend gaze'. Through a combination of psychosociological theory and media analysis, this book offers a complex understanding of patriarchy, by looking at how neoliberalism penetrates the intimate relations between women."--Publisher's website.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-214).
Processing Action (note)
committed to retain
Contents
Informative cruelties: Mean Girls -- Who cares about letting go? Heat magazine -- Gynaeopticon -- 'How I went from fat to fit': Erotic capital -- School girls to cougars -- Misogyny: Trinny and Susannah -- Health: Skinny Bitch -- How to be a girl: Fearne and Holly -- 'I have been the same weight since I was fourteen' -- Frenemies -- Girlfriend reflexivity: Sex and the City -- Social capital -- Carrie Bradshaw as self-brand -- Plastic women: Lipstick Jungle -- 'I'm hiding testicles under my skirt!': The masquerade -- Exclusive sisterhoods: Cashmere Mafia -- 'Friendship is just another word for foreplay': The L Word -- Fandom and co-producing media brands -- The girlfriend flick -- Competition: In Her Shoes and Baby Mama -- Bridezillas: Bride Wars and Sex and the City 1 -- Intergenerational: The Devil Wears Prada and The Women -- Imperfect: Bridesmaids and Your Sister's Sister -- The Mammy: The Help and Sex and the City 1 -- Orientalism: Sex and the City 2 -- White feminism: 2 Broke Girls -- Deconstructing girlfriendship: Girls -- Branded sociality: The Hills -- Rivalry: Paris Hilton -- Slut-shaming: Sorority Girls -- Surveillance, comparison and the self-brand -- The contact zone: What Not to Wear -- Loving meanness: Cook Yourself Thin -- The other woman: Wife Swap -- Here comes the brand -- Celebrity brands -- Weight loss convergence -- Facebook friends.