Feel-Bad Postfeminism by Catherine McDermott explores the impact of empowerment postfeminism on girlhood coming-of-age narratives, revealing a cultural turn from pleasure to rage and resentment. It also highlights contemporary genres that construct girls as resiliently overcoming and adapting to social conditions, offering an affective vocabulary and framework for further exploration.

Format: Hardback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Feel-Bad Postfeminism: Catherine McDermott's Insight into Growing Up during Empowerment Postfeminism
Catherine McDermott's book Feel-Bad Postfeminism provides a crucial insight into what it feels like to grow up during the empowerment postfeminism era and outlines the continuing postfeminist legacy of resilience in girlhood coming-of-age narratives. McDermott's analysis of Gone Girl (2012), Girls (2012–2017), and Appropriate Behavior (2012) reveals a major cultural turn in which the pleasures of postfeminist empowerment curdle into a profound sense of rage and resentment. By contrast, close examination of The Hunger Games (2008–2010), Girlhood (2014), and Catch Me Daddy (2014) reveals that contemporary genres are increasingly constructing girls as uniquely capable of resiliently overcoming and adapting to unforgiving social conditions. McDermott develops an affective vocabulary to better understand contemporary modes of defiant, transformative, and relational resilience, as well as a framework through which to expand on further modes that are specific to the genres they emerge within. Overall, the book suggests that exploration of the affective dimensions of girls and women's culture can offer new insights into how coming-of-age, girlhood, and femininity are culturally produced in the aftermath of postfeminism.

Feel-Bad Postfeminism: Catherine McDermott's Insight into Growing Up during Empowerment Postfeminism

Catherine McDermott's book Feel-Bad Postfeminism provides a crucial insight into what it feels like to grow up during the empowerment postfeminism era and outlines the continuing postfeminist legacy of resilience in girlhood coming-of-age narratives. McDermott's analysis of Gone Girl (2012), Girls (2012–2017), and Appropriate Behavior (2012) reveals a major cultural turn in which the pleasures of postfeminist empowerment curdle into a profound sense of rage and resentment. By contrast, close examination of The Hunger Games (2008–2010), Girlhood (2014), and Catch Me Daddy (2014) reveals that contemporary genres are increasingly constructing girls as uniquely capable of resiliently overcoming and adapting to unforgiving social conditions. McDermott develops an affective vocabulary to better understand contemporary modes of defiant, transformative, and relational resilience, as well as a framework through which to expand on further modes that are specific to the genres they emerge within. Overall, the book suggests that exploration of the affective dimensions of girls and women's culture can offer new insights into how coming-of-age, girlhood, and femininity are culturally produced in the aftermath of postfeminism.

Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350224988