Teaching the Conflicts: (Re)Engaging Students with Feminism in a Postfeminist World

What happened to the dreams of a girl president
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent
They travel in packs of two or three
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees
Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?

Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back
Porno Paparazzi girl, I don't wanna be a stupid girl
Baby if I act like that, flipping my blond hair back
Push up my bra like that, I don't wanna be a stupid girl

—Pink, "Stupid Girls"

If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture.

—Peggy Phelan, Unmarked

There is no question that the work of feminists has benefited the daily lives, health, and financial status of many American women. In fact, some women's lives have been so improved that today's younger generation of women may not even know that "we've come a long way, baby" and, perhaps even more importantly, that we still have a long way to go. Even pop culture icons themselves, such as the musician Pink, recognize the current state of gender politics, lamenting the fact that young women today are more concerned with what they need to do and buy to maintain their image than they are with the positions of power they could someday hold.

Pink, an artist we will discuss at some length in this essay, is searching for "Outcasts and girls with ambition," because despite the fact that there are "Disasters all around" and a "World despaired, their only concern [is]: Will they fuck up my hair?" Certainly, Pink is prone to hyperbole, but her questions resonate: do young women still dream of being world leaders, or have their ambitions been curtailed in lieu of the smaller achievements they can make with their buying power? Peggy Phelan makes a similar point above, noting that "almost-naked young white women" are given great visibility in our culture, especially in advertisements, television, and film; yet it would be preposterous to suggest that their visibility instantly translates into power. Phelan continues to suggest that when women or anyone else who is "othered" in Western culture (including women and men of color, gays, lesbians and transsexuals; basically anyone who is not a white, heterosexual male) are given visibility, this visibility is often accompanied by surveillance, voyeurism, and the desire to possess another (6–7). Thus, for this project, questions about whether a group is in some way made visible or represented in popular culture may be more productively framed as follows: What is the difference between an assumed image of empowerment and a "real" image of empowerment? And as feminist educators, how do we help students to tell the difference? Furthermore, what do the discourses of current third-wave feminism and postfeminism teach women about representation, empowerment, and their place in the realm of social action?

To explore these questions, we discuss three products of mass media—the musician Pink, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, and the film The Devil Wears Prada. In an attempt to better understand the relationship between young women and men and their own ability to effect change, we turn to these images of "strong" and "empowered" women. The depiction of women in each of these texts creates an interval where the relationship between personal empowerment and visibility via consumerism can be interrogated. Moreover, what we regard as a consumerism/activism split actually epitomizes the tension that manifests when the discourses of postfeminism and third-wave feminism become conflated. We suggest that teaching to the ideological conflicts that manifest within this convergence can serve to (re)engage students with the tenets and arguments of feminism.

Moving Past the Second/Third Divide

In order to ground our inquiry, we turn to an example from the classroom. Recently, Brenda had a conversation with a young woman minoring in women's studies. This self-identified "third-wave feminist," who also works in the women's center and volunteers at a...