Feminismo e Mídia em ERA POST-FEMINISTA

FEMINISM AND MEDIA IN THE

POST-FEMINIST ERA

What to make of the “feminist” in feminist

media studies

Andrea L. Press

I begin this reflection on the history of feminist media studies by considering the

issues raised for feminist scholarship by the recent suicide in the US of 15-year-old Phoebe

Prince in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The New York Times and other news coverage

stressed the role of media technologies in causing this suicide. Stories portrayed Phoebe as a

victim of “cyber-bullying.” Her suicide was treated as evidence of the increasingly harsh teen

culture enabled by social networking. But as noted social networking expert Danah Boyd

has commented, “[t]here are lots of kids hurting badly online . . . [a]nd guess what? They’re

hurting badly offline, too. Because it’s more visible online, people are blaming technology

rather than trying to solve the underlying problems of the kids that are hurting” (New York

Times 2008, p. A28). David Buckingham made the same point when he noted that “[t]he

debate about children and media . . . is really a debate about other things, many of which

have very little to do with the media. It is a debate that invokes deep-seated moral

and political convictions” (Buckingham 2001, pp. 75–76; quoted in Lawrence Grossberg,

Ellen Wartella & D. Chuck Whitney 1998, p. 334). Similarly, an assessment of feminist media

studies must necessarily address our anxieties about women and feminism, as well as those

about media representations of and impact upon women, gender, and sexuality.

Nowhere is this caveat perhaps more true than in the Phoebe Prince case. What the

focus on the role of technology in this case has obscured is the underlying sexual politics of

the incident. Phoebe was a very attractive, middle-class white girl who had recently moved

to the US from Ireland. It has been reported that she had temporarily usurped the place of

other attractive girlfriends of noted high-school athletes. She briefly dated two athletes and

then was subjected to bullying by the athletes themselves (now both charged with statutory

rape) and their former, but since reinstated, girlfriends, who together harassed and

humiliated her. She was taunted and threatened—because of her sexual attractiveness

and activity—with slurs that invoked ethnic hostility based on her new immigrant status and

strong Irish accent. In addition to Phoebe being called variously a “slut,” a “whore,” and an

“Irish whore” online, one girl wrote “Irish bitch is a Cunt” next to Phoebe’s name on the

library sign-up sheet and another yelled “whore,” “close your legs,” and “I hate stupid sluts”

at her in public (Emily Bazelon 2010).1

Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2011

ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/11/010107-113

q 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2011.537039

Nonetheless, the media coverage of this case has repeatedly emphasized the

importance of the media itself, blaming electronic “hazing” and, ultimately, new media for

Phoebe’s death. A deeper reading of the case, however, demonstrates a misogyny that is so

pervasive, so assumed, that even feminist journalists appear to have become largely inured

to it. The misogynistic epithets that Phoebe’s tormenters hurled at her were menacing in

ways that long predate the pervasiveness of Facebook.

As a young girl coming of age in the post-feminist era, Phoebe had the sexual

freedom—and indeed, a certain cultural sanction, even imperative—to have sex with her

boyfriends. As Elizabeth Armstrong, Paula England and Alison Fogarty (2010) have shown,

the feminist movement did increase women’s freedom to engage in sexual activity and at

an ever-younger age (though the jury is still out as to whether this freedom led to increased

sexual satisfaction or pleasure for the women so affected).2 But ironically and paradoxically,

this did not translate into the social freedom to be a girl who had sex. For this she was

punished and policed by both her female peers and the boys who had been involved with

her; the pervasive presence of the new social media only made these punishments more

effective. Our culture provides the envious with a ready arsenal of weapons to discipline

overtly sexual women and curtail their power. These weapons were used against Phoebe

with the most tragic of consequences. If Phoebe’s death is to have any meaning, feminist

media analysts must see beyond the discussion of Facebook harassment, which deflects

attention from this case’s most substantive issue. We must be able to discuss the issue of

how girls living in the post-feminist world and new media environment can negotiate the

pressures posed by each. As Buckingham (2001) notes, analyzing children and media—or in

this