Girl power's last chance? Tavi Gevinson, feminism, and popular media culture

Abstract

This paper focuses on Tavi Gevinson, the teenage fashion blogger-turned-editor in chief of the online magazine Rookie, as a case study with which to interrogate the production and circulation of feminist politics within a ‘post-girl power’ era. Drawing on theories of performativity, I employ a discursive and ideological textual analysis of Gevinson's self-produced media and media coverage to map how she uses the opportunities afforded by digital media to rearticulate narratives of ‘girl power’ and perform a feminist girlhood subjectivity that makes feminism accessible to her many readers. While I argue that Gevinson's ability to do so is positive and demonstrates the porous nature of postfeminist media culture, I also suggest that we must be critical of the ways in which her feminism functions as part of her self brand that reproduces feminism as white, middle-class, and ‘hip’. Thus, I conclude by questioning a larger cultural trend towards the branding of feminism and advocating the need for an intersectional approach to understanding the resurgence of feminism within contemporary popular media culture.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Amy Dobson and Anita Harris for their guidance and suggestions for improving this paper. I am also grateful for the helpful comments and encouragement from Morgan Blue, Jessica Ringrose and Alison Harvey, who read early drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Despite being appropriated into commercial popular culture in the late 1990s, it is necessary to recognize the term ‘girl power’ as originating within riot grrrl. I also want to emphasize the contested nature of riot grrrl as a movement that defies easy categorization and suggest that my analysis is not intended to be a comprehensive discussion of the subculture.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessalynn Keller

Jessalynn Keller is a Lecturer in New Media at Middlesex University London, having completed her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. Her book, Girls’ Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age is an ethnographic study of US-based feminist girl bloggers and is forthcoming from Routledge in late 2015. Jessalynn has also published work in Feminist Media Studies; Information, Communication, and Society; Women's Studies International Forum, and in several edited collections. Her newest project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), examines how digital feminist activism is challenging rape culture across online and offline spaces.