Mobilizing postfeminism: Young Australian women discuss Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives

Abstract

In this paper I mobilize postfeminism as a framework for exploring the connections between popular culture and young women's lives. Postfeminism is developed and deployed as a critical tool for analysing the way feminist discourses are embedded within mainstream popular culture and for generating insights into the postfeminist cultural climate. Interviews with young Australian women are integrated with an analysis of two very popular television series, Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, in order to reveal how popular representations of gender and sexuality parallel some of the postfeminist pressures and anxieties being experienced by young women. This article proposes that postfeminism be considered a valuable analytical instrument and finds that not only are postfeminist themes entangled in these television series, but also that young women draw upon feminist discourses when engaging with the texts and when discussing their own concerns and aspirations.

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