The Feminine Art of Failure: queering feminist spectatorship

Abstract

This paper asks: in post-postfeminist times constitutes a feminist reading of the popular, and in particular potential futures are implied by the current ‘return’ to canonical feminist practices of reading, and how might these apparently utopian futures work to silence certain critical voices emanating from within the sphere of the popular – particularly queer and feminine voices? In answer to this question, it proposes a re-examining of contemporary ‘abject’ images of femininity in order propose a re-framing of feminist analysis of visual culture. By reading fashion imagery alongside selfie culture and popular feminist narratives of the visual, it argues that the melancholy nature of the popular representation of femininity precisely dramatizes the impossibly divided position of female femininity in a masculinist world.