Synopsis:
“For Western Girls Only?: Post-Feminism as Transnational Culture” by Simidele Dosekun calls attention to how feminism and post-feminism manifest within the modern, transnational world, and how modern academic and political media on the topic overly focuses on the Western world and its issues. Because of this, Dosekun argues that post-feminism is drastically under “imagined, theorized, or empirically researched” in non-Western cultural contexts (Dosekun 960). The author argues for the benefits of a shift in this Western dominance to a truly transnational framework- and in order to do so ‘post-feminism’ must be divorced from ‘neoliberal feminism’ ‘consumer feminism’ and ‘cosmopolitan feminism’ that hierarchically reinforces colonial understandings of what culture consists of and what cultures are deemed ‘valid’ (972).
Rationale:
“For Western Girls Only” is important because it addresses the hegemonic, colonial hierarchies that still permeate Western feminism and academia today. By focusing largely on the West, post-feminism scholars privilege the cultures of middle/upper class, white, heterosexual, able-bodied women. Judith Butler critiques post-feminist scholars for assuming that culture excludes “Western women of color constitutively and/or representationally” (961). White Western women should not be the only ones able to be considered to live post-feminist-ly. The author argues that failure to recognize this causes failure to recognize transnational culture.
In context with transnational feminism, by expanding this scholarship the definition of ‘post-feminist’ can become more coherent as it is inherently hegemonic as it is understood now (with a connection to media and consumer circuits). Dosekun additionally connects femininity and popularized feminine subjects to those who “have the material, discursive, and imaginative capital to access and buy into it” (966). This journal article articulates problems within post-feminism and makes suggestions as to how it can be applied transnationally.
Keywords: feminism, post-feminism, culture, Western, class, transnationalism
Author: Kaelin Blanchard
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