Pregnancy, Then It's “Back To Business”

Abstract

This essay theorizes the contours of a post-feminist gender regime that utilizes figures such as Beyoncé in order to hail women as self-governing subjects who make the right choices with respect to career, marriage, motherhood, and the disciplining of their bodies. As a black woman, the narrative about Beyoncé's life and choices has specific implications; it positions professional black women as ideal citizens and mothers and also seeks to reconfigure and normalize representations of the black family. The body, specifically the black female body, plays an important role in attempting to transform and normalize these representations. This essay offers one of the few examinations of black women's relationship to post-feminism. Although post-feminism has been conceptualized in ways that ignore black women, I aim to demonstrate why further consideration of black women's relationship to post-feminism is needed. It is my contention that with successful black women increasingly in the public eye, what they say about feminism and how they relate to feminist politics have important implications for how all women, but especially young black women, engage in types of activism that go beyond placing value on individualism at the expense of the collective.

Keywords::

• post-feminism
• gender performance
• black femininity
• Beyoncé
• popular culture

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dorrine Kondo, and the reviewers for their insightful comments on this essay. The initial ideas for this essay were presented at the 2013 National Communication Association annual meeting.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Beyoncé's pregnancy announcement generated more conversation on Twitter than President Obama's announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the coverage of the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

^2. Celebrity women whose pregnant bodies have been featured prominently in the media include Demi Moore, Paula Patton, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears.

^3. Notable instances in which Beyoncé embraced the label “feminist” include a 2013 interview in Vogue UK where refers to herself as a “modern day feminist” and her 2014 performance at the MTV Video Music Awards where she displayed “Feminist” across a background screen.

^4. Attempts to roll back the legislative gains of feminism in the United States include the 2011 introduction of H.R. 3, or the “No Tax for Abortions Act,” which would have limited abortions to only rape victims who were “forcibly” raped; the stalled Paycheck Fairness Act of 2014, which was created in recognition of the continued pay disparities between men and women; and efforts to strike down mandated insurance coverage in the Affordable Care Act for contraceptives.

^5. Black women in the United States are more likely to earn a college and advanced degrees compared to black men.

^6. At the time of these discussions about the “marriage crisis” facing black women, Steve Harvey's 2009 self-help book Act Like A Lady Think Like A Man was used to situate him as an expert who could provide black women with the necessary strategies to secure a husband.

^7. In October 2011 Nia Long's pregnant body appeared nude on the cover of Ebony Magazine, another publication oriented towards black readers, but these images did not receive the same criticism. This suggests that readers of the Essence Magazine may have been responding primarily to the tone of the headline and the interview.

^8. Material consumption itself is not necessarily problematic; however, in the age of post-feminist and neoliberal discourses the ability to exercise “choice” through consumption is often placed at such a high value that consumerism becomes an inalienable right. Thus, for women, access to the economic means to make decisions about, and take pleasure in, material consumption becomes a form of empowerment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dayna Chatman

Dayna Chatman is a PhD candidate at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Chatman's dissertation research explores how economic, structural, and technological changes within the television industry have shaped the production, distribution, and consumption of programs led by black women characters and personalities. This work extends earlier discussions about the ways industry shifts, media ownership, and audience viewing habits affect the types of programming that are made. E-mail: [email protected]