The Sex Wars Continue: Hung's Postfeminist Debate

Abstract

HBO's series Hung is a compelling program about a high school teacher surviving the recession as a male prostitute. Characters Lenore and Tanya are central to the program and represent the struggle between the belief that sexual power is not political and the postfeminist assertion that sex is a reflection of female power and agency. On the basis of a textual analysis of the first season, this study examines competing approaches to female sexuality and explores how such understandings extend past sexuality to ideas about consumerism, agency, and what it means to be a woman in 21st-century America.