The Board has discussed, since her death in 2016, a fitting way of recognizing the contribution made by Janet Blackman to the journal and the wider world of justice and feminism. We have settled on The Janet Blackman Prize which will be given annually to an author whose work particularly addresses Janet’s broad interests and passions. Janet was a long-time feminist academic, founding editor of Social History, a political and union activist, much respected and much missed. An announcement of the 2018 winner will be made on the website shortly.
In this issue, Becoming fit to be a mother, Eli and Lavis assess the UK reality television programmes Supersize vs Superskinny and Supersize vs Superskinny: Kids. Pairing participants defined as underweight with others defined as morbidly obese, the programmes use a ‘diet swap’ in which the subjects consume each other’s meals. Analysis reveals that food consumption is corrected: from inadequate working-class feeding, which jeopardizes women’s and children’s bodies, to superior middle-class food-work that gives rise to well-being. At the heart of this is found a directive for women’s moral citizenship.
In (Un)twisted: talking back to media representations of eating disorders, Holmes examines reports about the rise in the diagnoses of eating disorders often blamed on image-driven social media. Such coverage constructs those with eating disorders as ‘especially vulnerable’ to media images. In exploring the results of semi-structured interviews with people who have experienced an eating disorder, this article analyses the responses in the context of media engagement, working against the gendered pathologizing which has persisted.
In Beneath the surface, Rocha explores the relationship between the masculine self and the male body in Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story ‘Green Tea’ (1872). Focusing on the demon and Jennings (characters in the narrative), Rocha illuminates how the former’s manifestation results from the latter’s nonconformity to the masculine self. The story acts to highlight Victorian society’s rigid gender norms and the penalization of bodies that undermine those ideals.
In Are same-sex relationships anti-family?, Adeagbo looks at the lives of interracial gay partners, living in the Johannesburg suburbs, to interrogate the idea that same-sex partnerships are somehow unstable. The author finds that communication, trust and equity are the main foundations of the partnerships studied, demonstrating a desire for stable bonds and households. This contradicts further the questionable stereotypes that gay men are inherently either anti-family or averse to monogamy.
In Rethinking the political: Ottoman women as feminist subjects, Yıldız studies Muslim Ottoman women’s journals to draw attention to this feminist public activity. The journals established a community of intellectual women writers and readers who overtly promoted a feminist agenda. Contrary to the conventional narrative of Turkish feminism that identifies its origin with the Republican period, it is argued here that it was the work of these Ottoman women thinkers that laid the groundwork for future feminists.
In Gender, ethnicity and feminism, Sang reports how those women academics committed to social justice (namely feminists) are navigating increasing managerialism. This paper adopts an intersectional approach to understanding the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in academia. The data reveal concerns about hampered career progression as a consequence of being female and openly feminist. Some ethnic minority academics felt that they were forced to choose between a feminist identity and that of their ethnic background. This paper advances understanding of multiple identities at work, though consideration of the accumulation of both advantage as well as disadvantage.
In A bit of a dirty word, McKnight considers an intergenerational group of contemporary Australian female teachers and their online conversations around feminism. The study struggles to find a shared language in a community committed to the critical study of media and so impediments to the feminist study of girls’ media quickly emerge. The gender studies work that teachers do in schools is potentially whole population work, worthy of keen attention in the gender studies academic mainstream.
In ‘Whether you are gay or straight, I don’t like to see effeminate dancing’, Richardson discusses recent responses to same-sex male ballroom dancing in order to consider the differences between homophobia and effeminophobia. Given that the world of performance-level ballroom dancing is a gay-friendly environment, this article will argue that a discourse of effeminophobia, rather than homophobia, has been perpetuated. Ballroom dance is often read as camp because it represents exaggerated gender roles and because its technique requires that the male enacts codes of masculinity and femininity. What protects the male dancer from being labelled effeminate is that he is paired with a female dancer performing excessive femininity. Without the hyper-feminine female partner, the same-sex couple draws attention to the fact that the male dancer is not dancing as a man but in accordance with ballroom’s queer construction of masculinity.
In Spornosexual, Hakim looks at the rise in young British men sharing images of their worked-out bodies on social media platforms. Drawing on interviews with men who engage in this practice, this article argues that as young men’s breadwinning capacities are eroded in a post-financial crisis economy, increasing numbers of them are turning to sharing images of their bodies as a way of feeling valuable.
December 2017