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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN (RE)PRESENTING GENDER
SERIES EDITOR: EMMA REES
Series Editor
Emma Rees
Institute of Gender Studies
University of Chester
Chester, UK
he focus of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender is on gender and
T
representation. The ‘arts’ in their broadest sense – TV, music, film, dance,
and performance – and media re-present (where ‘to represent’ is taken in
its literal sense of ‘to present again’, or ‘to give back’) gender globally.
How this re-presentation might be understood is core to the series.
In re-presenting gendered bodies, the contributing authors can shift
the spotlight to focus on marginalised individuals’ negotiations of gender
and identity. In this way, minority genders, subcultural genders, and
gender inscribed on, in, and by queer bodies, take centre stage. When the
‘self’ must participate in and interact with the world through the body,
how that body’s gender is talked about – and side-lined or embraced by
hegemonic forces – becomes paramount. These processes of representa-
tion – how cultures ‘give back’ gender to the individual – are at the heart
of this series.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Joel Gwynne and Crescencia Chay
v
vi Contents
Part II Anglo-America 97
Index235
Notes on Contributors
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Fig. 2.1 Chinese model He Sui (third on the right) at VS show, 2018 25
Fig. 2.2 Elsa Hosk is wrapped in a dragon at VS show, 2016 28
Fig. 6.1 The runway is constructed with flora and fauna as a female
utopia104
Fig. 9.1 NatWest Processions promotional poster 177
Fig. 10.1 Look like a star article. Plástica e Beleza (issue 134, 2013) 200
Fig. 10.2 Double-page spread from cover story featuring Luiza
Valdetaro. (Plástica e Beleza, issue 136, 2013) 201
Fig. 10.3 Cover of Raça magazine edition 186 (Alcântara, Fernanda.
“A Bela Da Bahia.” Raça, ed. 186. 2014, 36–41) 205
Fig. 10.4 Header image from Facebook group “Rinoplastia Nariz
Negroide” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/
1274432482580750/permalink/3229610923729553)
(currently offline) 206
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
J. Gwynne (*)
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: joel.gwynne@nie.edu.sg
C. Chay
Independent Scholar, Singapore, Singapore
Complementing the chapters by Jia, Jo and Liu, the next chapter in the
section analyses several advertisements from mainland China within a
range of genres, rather than focusing on one specifically. Yan Wu analyses
the marketing of sports, skincare, sanitary and financial services products,
in order to investigate how feminism is employed to serve the global mar-
ket and local political culture. She asks the following questions: What is
the typology of feminist subjectivity as represented in these advertise-
ments? In what ways have local political and cultural values shaped the
global brands’ femversiting campaigns? The chapter argues that the ideo-
logical mechanics of China’s state feminism provide endorsement for
female empowerment through marketing certain aspects of gender equal-
ity in civic life, yet without fundamentally challenging the patriarchal
political and cultural system. Wu demonstrates how femvertising practices
in China focus on a set of codes surrounding relational female liberation,
which in turn represent a compromised effort of individual empowerment
mediated by local political and cultural traditions. In doing so, the chapter
highlights how the global influence of feminist ideas is shown to be in
negotiation with local political culture via state endorsement of traditional
cultural values such as familial harmony, filial piety, self-cultivation, dili-
gence, and perseverance.
Moving away from East Asia, the next section in the book focuses on
femvertising in Anglo-American contexts, and begins with Jane Lian and
Joel Gwynne’s chapter on the fashion and cosmetics brand Fenty. Sharing
Xintong Jia’s interest in the purported inclusive politics invoked by global
brands, Lian and Gwynne appraise the successes and failures of Fenty’s
‘femvertising’ strategy and the authenticity of the brand by analysing the
performance of the Savage x Fenty fashion show. Lian and Gwynne argue
that the choreography of the show is in concert with feminist ideals of
female solidarity, and that the diverse cast of models and the aesthetics of
performance function to minimize – even if they cannot entirely negate –
the objectification that is typified in more conventional fashion shows.
Ultimately, the chapter concludes that in its operation within a heteronor-
mative media landscape, the Savage x Fenty show represents a bold diver-
sion in its portrayal of a diversified female empowerment that is not
contingent upon the presentation of a svelte, white femininity and com-
pulsory sexiness.
The next chapter in the section investigates the femvertising of breast
cancer awareness in Australia, and is the first chapter in the book to con-
sider how feminist ideology is infused into a non-fashion/beauty context:
10 J. GWYNNE AND C. CHAY
Notes
1. Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune, Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism
Today. (London: Zed Books, 2013), p. 176.
2. Robert Goldman, Deborah Heath, and Sharon L. Smith ‘Commodity
Feminism’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8 (1991), p. 336.
3. Redfern and Aune, p. 8.
4. Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays on Representation and
Sexuality. (Abingdon: Routledge, 1985), p. 8.
12 J. GWYNNE AND C. CHAY
26. Lisa A. Daily. (2019). ‘“We bleed for female empowerment”: mediated
ethics, commodity feminism, and the contradictions of feminist politics’.
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 16(2), p. 144, https://
doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2019.1634276
27. Kate Hoad-Reddick, 2017. ‘Pitching the Feminist Voice: A Critique of
Contemporary Consumer Feminism’. (PhD Thesis, University of Western
Ontario) https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5093
28. Goldman, Heath, and Smith, 1991, p. 337
29. Ibid, p. 336.
30. Goldman, Heath, and Smith, p. 338.
31. Daily, p. 142.
32. Fei Qiao & Ye Wang (2019): ‘The myths of beauty, age, and marriage:
femvertising by masstige cosmetic brands in the Chinese market’. Social
Semiotics, p. 2. 10.1080/10350330.2019.1682279
33. Ibid.
34. Glossier [@glossier]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Retrieved November
18, 2020 from https://www.instagram.com/glossier/?hl=en
35. Ibid.
36. Glossier. “What Is Glossier – about us.” Glossier. Accessed November 14,
2021. https://www.glossier.com/about
37. Emma Hinchcliffe (2020), ‘Exclusive: Ex–Glossier employees describe a
company that failed to support Black workers—even as it donated $1 mil-
lion to racial justice causes’, Fortune, Accessed November 14, 2021,
https://fortune.com/2020/08/18/glossier-black-workers-donation-
support-black-lives-ceo-emily-weiss/
38. Ibid.
39. Christine Jean-Baptiste, (n.d), ‘Glossier Brown’s Instagram community
pushes for true diversity in beauty’, Nylon, Accessed November 22, 2021,
https://www.nylon.com/beauty/glossier-brown-instagram
40. Daily, p. 147.
41. Francesca Sobande (2020), ‘Woke-washing: “intersectional” femvertising
and branding “woke” bravery’, European Journal of Marketing, 54(11),
2723–2745. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-02-2019-0134
42. Daily, p. 148.
43. Ibid, p. 150.
44. Ibid, p. 152.
45. Ibid, p. 150.
46. Neema Varghese and Navin Kumar (2020), ‘Femvertising as a media strat-
egy to increase self-esteem of adolescents: An experiment in India’,
Children and Youth Services Review, 113 (2020).
47. Ibid, p. 5.
PART I
East Asia
CHAPTER 2
Xintong Jia
X. Jia (*)
City, University of London, London, UK
e-mail: xintong.jia@city.ac.uk
Fig. 2.1 Chinese model He Sui (third on the right) at VS show, 2018
from diverse racial and national backgrounds are all positioned in ‘a for-
mation of homogenous individuality’ and are attached to identical aspira-
tions and dreams – being confident and sexy.58 It might be argued that this
is simply what fashion shows do – creating a fantasy of femininity. But it is
the racialised and ethno-nationalist specificities that VS offers that are so
striking.
Representations of race and gender function as a form of ‘cultural capi-
tal’ as well as a mode of consumption aligning with the twofold ‘postrace’
and postfeminist media culture.59 Banet-Weiser delineates that in the con-
temporary American media culture where there is a trend to incorporate
non-white narratives in advertising and merchandise, since representations
of race and ethnicity are marketed by media industries as ‘cool, authentic,
and urban’.60 Race and gender have similarly been crafted as commodities.
More importantly, lingerie models in VS, with diverse racial and cultural
backgrounds, are all simultaneously constrained by the femvertising mar-
ket constraints and benefited from the ‘postfeminist sexual contract’.61
Here we ask: has the sexually empowered female subjectivity become a
globalised identity? Whether the commodification of female sexiness has
been globalised? Within the discourse of ‘commodification of otherness’,
authentic national culture becomes a spice used to liven up the dull dish
that is mainstream white culture.62 Regardless of whether its lingerie
design inspiration is Eastern or Western in origin, the commodification of
difference is becoming globalised and consistent. More seriously, inspired
by Gill and Kanai,63 the inclusiveness of racial and cultural difference in
femvertising moves the critique beyond simple notions of visibility/invis-
ibility, since difference has been depoliticised to be represented.
Likewise, Chinese model He Sui also shared her opinion about sexiness:
Sexiness is more like an attitude. Sexiness is what real life looks like. Why
should I be perfect? It’s good not to be perfect. I’m getting used to accept-
ing my imperfections – this attitude is sexy. Of course, I don’t want wrinkles.
But when I have wrinkles, they are the trace of time – that’s sexy.
These femvertising texts demonstrate progress in the way that the pres-
sure to be beautiful is challenged by women and the ‘realm of fantasised
perfection’ is abandoned.64 However, femvertising images demonstrate
little change from the cult of perfection era. If the audio track is removed
from the video, the visual track can be applied to any advertising pro-
moting the old-fashioned ideals of female beauty. Besides, postfeminist
contradictions are also reflected in the femvertising strategy. Within a
postfeminist sensibility, appeal to feminist politics has been muted and
then transmuted into a more individual and sex-positive version. Female
empowerment has been depoliticised and then closely connected to
women’s personal choices and the ability to consume, not to social or
cultural structures. Femvertising has updated the notion of women’s
self-surveillance from the physical level to psychological regulation.
Femvertising narratives offer women and girls a postfeminist mantra of
how to think, feel, and live, with a particular focus on the issue of ethi-
cal standard. In an advertisement about diet and shape control, being
on diet is tied to discourses of self-discipline and positively controlling
one’s life, while refusal to lose weight is encoded with self-abandon-
ment and degradation.
2 VICTORIA’S SECRET GOES TO CHINA: FEMVERTISING AND THE FAILED… 31
Conclusion
In this chapter, Victoria’s Secret’s most recent femvertising strategies have
been examined while capturing the Chinese market via a specific construc-
tion of gendered, racialised, and nationally located femininity. Models of
Chinese ethnicity and traditional Chinese cultural symbols were applied to
contribute to apparent racial and cultural diversity. Victoria’s Secret used
relatively restricted ideas of Chineseness to be inclusive and compatible.
This in turn was criticised as Orientalist interpretation and cultural appro-
priation deficient in contextual and historical knowledge. Besides, the shift
towards hyper-white imagery marks a racialised modernisation of feminin-
ity. More recently, Victoria’s Secret enlarges the potential scope of female
sexiness and redefines sexiness as a form of positive, confident, and self-
assured attitude. Femvertising by Victoria’s Secret has transformed female
sexiness into a commodity that is available only to those able to consume
it. This shift has updated the neoliberal governmentality from disciplining
women’s bodies to regulating women’s psychological life.
Situating femvertising into the postfeminist media culture, I have
argued that discourses of women’s empowerment and liberation are
32 X. JIA
Notes
1. Althea A. Fung, ‘The Untold Truth of Victoria’s Secret’, The List (April
18, 2017). Accessed October 16, 2020, https://www.thelist.com/38724/
untold-truth-victorias-secret/
2. Silver-Greenberg Jessica, Rosman Katherine, Maheshwari Sapna, and
Stewart James, ‘“Angels” in Hell: The Culture of Misogyny Inside
Victoria’s Secret’, New York Times. (February 1, 2020). Accessed October
16, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/business/victorias-
secret-razek-harassment.html
3. Nina Åkestam, Sara Rosengren, and Micael Dahlen, ‘Advertising “Like a
Girl”: Towards a Better Understanding of ‘Femvertising’ and Its Effects’,
Psychology and Marketing 34, no.8 (2017): 795–806.
Sara Champlin, Yvette Sterbenk, Kasey Windels, and Maddison Poteet,
‘How brand-cause fit shapes real world advertising messages: a qualitative
exploration of “femvertising”’, International Journal of Advertising 38,
no. 8 (2019): 1240–1263.
Yang Feng, Huan Chen, and Li He, ‘Consumer Responses to
Femvertising: A Data-mining Case of Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’
on YouTube’, Journal of Advertising 48 (2019): 292–301.
Rosalind Gill and Ana Sofia Elias, ‘“Awaken your incredible”: Love your
body discourses and postfeminist contradictions’, International Journal of
Media and Cultural Politics 10, no.2 (2014): 179–188.
Fei Qiao and Ye Wang, ‘The myths of beauty, age, and marriage: femver-
tising by masstige cosmetic brands in the Chinese market’, Social Semiotics
(2019): 1–23.
4. Rosalind Gill, “From sexual objectification to sexual subjectification,”
Feminist Media Studies 3, no.1 (2003).
Brian McNair, Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of
Desire (London: Routledge, 2002).
Brian McNair, Porno? Chic! How pornography changed the world and
made it a better place (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).
5. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018): 21.
6. No VS fashion shows have taken place since 2019, so there is no available
data after 2018.
34 X. JIA
7. The term ‘postfeminism’ was first used in Susan Bolotin’s article ‘Voices
from the Post-feminist Generation’ in New York Times on 17th October
1982. Postfeminism was used to refer to a new kind of politics which was
about feminism but repudiating the anger and resentment associated with
feminism.
8. Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism (London: Sage, 2009).
Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (eds.) Interrogating Postfeminism:
Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2007).
9. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women (Vintage:
London, 1992).
Tasker&Negra, Interrogating Postfeminism, 1.
10. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 12.
11. Rosalind Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’, European Journal of Cultural
Studies 10, no.2 (2007): 147–66.
Michelle M. Lazar. ‘Entitled to consume: postfeminist femininity and a
culture of post-critique’, Discourse and Communication 3, no.4 (2009):
371–400.
McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism.
12. Ednie Kaeh Garrison, ‘U.S. Feminism-Grrrl Style! Youth (Sub)Cultures
and the Technologics of the Third Wave’, Feminist Studies 26, no.1
(Spring, 2000).
13. Anderson, Modern Misogyny.
14. Zaslow, Feminism, Inc, 3.
15. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, Crazy, Stupid, Love (US: Warner Bros.
Picture, 2011), film.
16. Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture’, 147.
17. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg,
‘Postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism? Sarah Banet-
Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in conversation’, Feminist
Theory, 21, no.1 (2020): 5.
18. Tasker&Negra, Interrogating Postfeminism, 3.
19. Joel Gwynne, ‘Japan, postfeminism and the consumption of sexual(ised)
schoolgirls in male-authored contemporary manga’, Feminist Theory 14,
no.3 (2013): 325–343.
20. Simidele Dosekun, ‘For Western Girls Only? Post-feminism as transna-
tional culture’, Feminist Media Studies 15, no.6 (2015): 960, 972.
21. State feminism was initially a Scandinavian creation used for explaining the
cases of state socialism. See Helga M. Hernes, Welfare State and Woman
Power: Essays in State Feminism (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1987).
In this chapter, socialist state feminism refers to the ‘institutionalisation of
feminism in state agencies’ which was promoted by socialist state’s gender
2 VICTORIA’S SECRET GOES TO CHINA: FEMVERTISING AND THE FAILED… 35
policies. See Zheng Wang, Finding Women in the State (Oakland: University
of California Press), 7.
22. Jie Yang, ‘“Re-employment Stars”: Language, Gender and Neoliberal
Re-structuring in China’, in Words and Material Girls: Language, Gender
and Global Economies, ed. Bonnie, S. McElhinny (Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 2007), 72–103.
23. ‘Times have changed – men and women are equal’ is from Mao Zedong’s
speech with the youth in the Ming Tombs Reservoir in June 1964. See
Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Thought (Beijing: Nanjing Military
Command, 1969), 243.
24. Dai Jinhua argues that from a male perspective, the Maoist era was a de-
sexualised era while from a female perspective, it was a masculinised pro-
cess. See Dai Jinhua, Gendering China (Taipei: Erya Press Ltd., 2008), 78.
I use ‘androgynous’ to describe ‘iron girls’ because ‘iron girls’ shared
almost same figures as men on posters. Also, the notion of ‘androgynous’
offers more possibilities for decoding the ‘iron girl’ images.
25. Mayfair Yang, ‘From gender erasure to gender difference: State feminism,
consumer sexuality, and women’s public sphere in China’, in Space of Their
Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China, ed. Mayfair Yang
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 47.
26. Lisa Rofel, Desiring China. Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and
Public Culture (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007).
27. Alicia Stevens and Scott Griffiths, ‘Body Positivity in Everyday Life’, Body
Image 35 (2020): 181–191.
28. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16, no.3
(1975), 17.
29. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan
Sheridan (London: Allen Lane, 1977), 11.
30. Ibid., 136.
31. Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, ‘Doing Gender’, Gender and
Society 1, no.2 (June 1, 1987): 125–51.
32. Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially (London: Routledge, 1992).
33. Toni Ingram, ‘“I feel pretty”: Beauty as an affective-material process’,
Feminist Theory 0, no.0 (2021), 2.
34. Nancy J. Hirshman, ‘Choosing Betrayal’, Perspectives on Politics 8, no.1
(2010), 274.
35. Banet-Weiser, ‘What is your flava?’, 208.
36. Butler, Gender Trouble, viii.
37. Tasker&Negra, Interrogating Postfeminism.
Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape (New York: New York University
Press, 2001).
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