Notes on the Perfect

Abstract

This article argues that at a point in time when feminism (in a variety of its forms) has re-entered political culture and civil society, there is, as though to hold this threat of new feminism at bay, an amplification of control of women, mostly by corporeal means, so as to ensure the maintenance of existing power relations. However the importance of ensuring male dominance is carefully disguised through the dispositif which takes the form of feminine self-regulation. The ‘perfect’ emerges as a horizon of expectation, through which young women are persuaded to seek self-definition. Feminism, at the same time, is made compatible with an individualising project and is also made to fit with the idea of competition. With competition as a key component of contemporary neoliberalism, (pace Foucault) the article construes the violent underpinnings of the perfect, arguing that it acts to stifle the possibility of an expansive feminist movement. It recaptures dissenting voices by legitimating and giving space in popular culture to a relatively manicured and celebrity-driven idea of imperfection or ‘failure’.

Notes

1. Three columns in fact appeared in Mother&Baby magazine. The final third and final one entitled, ‘Being a mum is the best thing in my life’, was published posthumously as a tribute on 8 April 2014. See: <http://www.motherandbaby.co.uk/2014/04/peaches-geldof-1989-2014#.VKYmPSuUcZM>

2. See, for example, the following recent campaigns: The Everyday Sexism Project (http://nomorepage3.org/); Let Toys be Toys (http://www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/about-2/); and No More Page 3 (http://nomorepage3.org/).

3. Sitting on an early morning train from Essex into the City of London I am distracted by the number of young women, I guess heading for jobs as office, retail or personal service workers, who use the time of the journey to apply a full make up which includes a complicated array of brushes, blushers, mascara, eye liner, eye shadow, lipstick, lip gloss, etc. I cannot help myself from looking at the final effect which is usually indeed an impressive TV-style appearance as though the young woman was about to step on stage for Strictly Come Dancing. The feminist in me wonders at this enforcement of gender difference in the space of public transport and the workplace environment which expects or requires such displays of excessive femininity or ‘post-feminist masquerade’.

4. For example on matters of fertility, reproduction and sexuality.

5. In a similar vein to this article Hark very recently sees that feminism in its new guise could be so easily cathected to the purposes of ‘success’ (Hark 2014).

6. Included in this realm of feminine responsibility is the intensive mothering phenomenon.

7. For example, among male and female students alike academics encounter a constant assessment of the worth and value of different universities, to have one university rather than another on the CV can affect the entire ‘human capital’ of the young person or job candidate.

8. The most frequently ‘seen’ couple in this regard are Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi who are regularly pictured as they go about their everyday life including visits to beauty salons etc.

9. See, for example, London (2014).

10. A similar incorporation of imperfection into the slogans and advertisements of ‘women-friendly’ beauty products such as Dove is analysed by Rosalind Gill and Ana Sofia Elias (2014).

11. There is an image circulating on the Internet in which Dunham in the character of Hannah Horvath is pictured with a caption that reads, ‘Any mean thing someone’s gonna think to say about me I’ve probably said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour’. The line is uttered by Hannah in Season One, Episode Nine (‘Leave Me Alone’).

12. Some might see the series itself as a cynical answer to her parents’ demand to earn a living independently, since the programmes promise salacious material, and a cast of young women who are all in the process of exploring their own sexuality, to be presented in an uncensored way.

13. See, for example, Chester and Johnson (2015).

14. In fact, Fraser (2009) is frank in her critique of the ‘cultural turn’ in feminism for its swerve towards complicity.

15. The technicalities of the social or the artistic critique being appropriated by contemporary capitalism is limited in the case of Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) to modern forms of managerialism, and even here we do not quite see the actual modes of implementation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela McRobbie

Angela McRobbie is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Having studied at the CCCS in Birmingham University in the 1970s she is author of many books and articles, including The Aftermath of Feminism (2008) and she is currently completing an analysis of the creative economy titled Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries (Polity Press 2015).