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Title Tracing Female Sexualisation and Subjectification in Gilbert’s City of Girls and Weisberger’s Chasing Harry Winston: A Post-Feminist Analysis

Author(s) SARAH FATIMA

Abstract The role of postfeminism in creating empowered female subjecthood has been assessed in this research, by analyzing two chick lit novels: Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, 2019 and Lauren Weisberger’s Chasing Harry Winston, 2008. In this context, postfeminism is defined through Rosalind Gill’s concept presented in European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2007, termed as Postfeminist Sensibility, which is a “distinct” sensibility, neither feminist nor anti-feminist, and posits several intersecting themes: subjectification (eroticization of female lifestyle and representation of women as dominant subjects), individualism (choice and empowerment), sexualisation of culture (increase in discourses about sex and sexuality, erotic presentation of girls), and femininity as a bodily property (female body as the source of identity, power and worth) (Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture” 147). The Textual Analysis method by Alan McKee has been used to analyze the data while carrying out a qualitative research paradigm. Through the lens of these themes, the research has found that City of Girls and Chasing Harry Winston attempt to portray women as entirely free agents who choose to please themselves and acquire a unique identity that measures their worth and grants them autonomy over their lives. Yet, this agency and unique feminine identity are sourced solely in the female body, conditioned on the women producing themselves as sexually alluring subjects. Therefore, these postfeminist characters, under the guise of autonomy, have been found to be subservient to societal norms of sexuality, beauty, and consumer spending in order to conform to an attractive, sensual, and feminine model of a woman. Therefore, the agent of power and the assertive postfeminist subject is not entirely free in her choices, after all. The notion of femininity, with its relation to subjectivity and individualism, shows us the internalization of patriarchal and neoliberal standards under the guise of subjectified, postfeminist depiction of women in chick lit.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-10-17

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