Retallack, H; Ringrose, JL; Lawrence, E; (2016) “Fuck Your Body Image”: Teen Girls’ Twitter and Instagram Feminism in and Around School. In: coffey, J and Budgeon, S and Cahill, H, (eds.) Learning Bodies The Body in Youth and Childhood Studies. (pp. 85-103). Springer

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Abstract

In this chapter we interrogate some of the core ideas of postfeminism as theorized by feminist media scholars (see McRobbie, All about the girl. Routledge, London, 2004a; McRobbie, Fem Med Stud 4:255–264, 2004b and Gill, Gender and the media. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006) that feminism is in its ‘aftermath’, and largely refuted and disidentified with by girls and young women (Scharff, Repudiating feminism: young women in a neoliberal world. Ashgate, Farnham, 2012). Considering the current rise of fourth wave social media feminisms as pedagogical platforms for challenging everyday sexism, we explore the complex dynamics through which girls are taking up, negotiating and performing on and offline feminism in and around school. We focus on a teen feminist group in a London ‘theatre’ school, exploring how social media feminisms presented a platform for challenging what Angela McRobbie identifies as dominant trends of postfeminist pathologies of femininity including psychological dissafection and bodily malaise. Drawing on theories of networked affect, we document how this feminist group used social media to oppose their distinctly neo-liberalized and marketized school environment where bodily regulation, perfection and sell-ability reign supreme.

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