Beauty and the breasts: constructions of feminist sexual politics in vanity fair’s 2017 Emma Watson photoshoot

ABSTRACT

Emma Watson’s photoshoot for Vanity Fair’s April 2017 edition, in which the actress partially revealed her cleavage under a designer jacket, sparked heated debates on social media. Journalists, feminists, and the public tweeted back and forth to determine whether Watson was a hypocrite who championed feminism while appealing to the male gaze or an empowered feminist celebrity who expressed her sexuality artistically and freely. This study examined mainstream media coverage of this controversy to interrogate how celebrity, media, and popular culture intertwined to construct a normative sexual politics around the public presentation of female bodies. We found that articles used conflict to illuminate and debate the relationship between feminism and the role of the body and sexuality. Additionally, this incident revealed the ways feminism is connected to the female celebrity, particularly young, white, cisgender, and affluent women associated with the “good girl” archetype. Finally, the news coverage of the controversy conflated feminist sexuality with art, enterprise, and discourses of choice, as well as illuminated divides between “old” and “new” feminisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Postfeminism
• celebrity feminism
• popular media
• women’s sexuality
• Emma Watson

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayleen Cabas-Mijares

Dr. Ayleen Cabas-Mijares is an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette University. Her research interests focus on the critical examination of the relationship between media and social change, specifically the role of media in the constitution and politics of social movements.

Joy Jenkins

Dr. Joy Jenkins is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of Journalism and Electronic Media. Her research uses a sociological approach to examine changing organizational identities and practices in newsrooms, with a particular focus on local journalism and gender and media.