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Women's Magazines and Feminist Politics

Fang-chih Yang

International Studies Association
March 1998

Women's magazines are forums where feminist ideas have been adapted and appropriated for popular feminism. Therefore, they have functioned as a site of contention for feminist discourses. Positioned at the intersection of culture and economy, women's magazines on the one hand, reflect and at the same time shape women's sense of femininity; on the other hand, they function as advertisers' forums to sell products through tailoring and reconfiguring the notion of femininity. Hence, feminists have invested an enormous amount of energy into the study of femininity, desire, and pleasure presented on women's magazines, and their relationships to patriarchy, capitalism, and feminism. However, the heterogeneity of feminist discourses and their mutual antagonism or alignments with each other on the analyses of women's magazines reveal more about the divisions within feminisms caused by their institutional affiliations than an attempt to work through the contradictions embedded in women's lives. I will start this paper by talking about the divisions between academic feminisms and their relationships to different strands of "popular" feminism, then I will discuss their divergence and convergence through the notion of agency, and finally, I will discuss the politics of such divergence and convergence.

P.G. Knight traces the trope of conspiracy in popular feminisms, and argues that the trope of conspiracy functions not so much as a pre-given divide between academic feminism and popular feminism, but "the site and the very structure of a series of shifting exclusions, silences, and moments of rhetorical crises through which a division between a vulgar and a sophisticated feminism is effected." (knight, 1997:59) By popular feminism, Knight refers to the tradition of feminism exemplified by writers such Betty Friedan and Naomi Wolf. By academic feminism, Knight refers to cultural studies feminist who have much sympathy for popular culture, such as Mica Nava. Knight examines the works by Friedan and Wolf, and point out the trope of conspiracy in the organization of their theoretical formulations. The trope of conspiracy is used not only to organize the question of blame, responsibility, and agency but also to link women's personal experiences with the "political," in this case, the capitalist and patriarchal structures that put women in the private sphere.

For example, in Friedan's seminal work, the Feminine Mystique, Friedan trashes media, especially women's magazines, for constructing and perpetuating the feminine mystique which helps to consign women in the home. In the picture Friedan framed, women are constructed as brainless and innocent victims who are manipulated by external forces which can be labeled as patriarchy and capitalism: The manipulators and clients in American business can hardly accused of creating the feminine mystique. But they are the most powerful perpetuators; it is their millions which blanket the land with persuasive images, flattering the American housewives, diverting her guilt and disguising and growing sense of emptiness. They have done this so successfully, employing the techniques and concepts of modern social science, and transposing them into those deceptively simple, clever, outrageous ads and commercials, that an observer of the American scene today accepts as fact that the great majority of American women have no ambition other than housewives. If they are not responsible for sending women home, they are surely responsible for keeping them there... they have seared the feminine mystique deep into every woman's mind... they have made it part of the fabric of her daily life." (Friedan, 197?:228)

Women here are constructed as cultural dupes. They have no agency, no resistance to the manipulation of the cultural industries. In contrast to this strand of feminism which coalesce with male theorists (such as those from Frankfurt school) and see women as the brainless victims, recent academic feminists since the 1980s (mostly coming from a particular trend of cultural studies) began to engage with issues of agency, resistance. For them, taking women's agency, desire, resistance seriously becomes a tool to empower women who have been deprived of their agency in the male discourse. The discourse of a passive woman not only further legitimates men's power to control women in the name of "protection," but also legitimates the intellectuals' institutional position in speaking for women/mass as intellectuals.

Therefore, Mica Nava notes: "current theories of culture and subjectivity must take seriously notion of personal agency, discrimination, and resistance, as well as the contradictory and fragmented nature of fantasy and desire.... This new, more nuanced understanding of subjectivity is crucial to the recent critical refutations of the notion that the media and advertising have the power to manipulate in a coherent and unfractured fashion and represent a move away from the notion of mass man and woman as duped and passive recipients of conspiratorial messages designed to inhibit true consciousness." (Nava, quote in Knight, 57)

Hence, a "bizarre" situation arise. Academic feminists displayed a sympathetic reading to popular culture texts while at the same time showed their scorn or antipathy to popular feminists' conspiracy theories. It is within such a context that Wolf and Falaudi, though operating within the parameter of conspiracy theory, refute their alignments with such a theory. (Knight, 1997) This contradiction, Knight argues, is an attempt by popular feminists to align themselves with academic feminists in order to be taken seriously. This division between popular feminists and academic feminists effected along the trope of conspiracy reveals a power struggle in which different strands of feminists compete to claim their legitimacy. Academic feminists, because of their institutional legitimacy in the field of knowledge production, become the arbitrator of legitimate/illegitimate or sophisticated/simple feminism. To do the "right" kind of feminism, feminists must be affiliated with this dominant, hence, legitimate academic feminism. Popular feminism here functions as academic feminism's other. Academic feminisms' legitimacy depends on their negation and exclusion of the popular other. However, as Derrida and other poststructuralists have painstakingly demonstrate, this other, like the spector, will always come back to haunt the center, the dominant, because it is the other that constitutes the existence/legitimacy of the center. (Hence, the notion of the constitutive other as Laclau and Mouffe term it). Academic feminism, because of its institutional constraints which make it "unpopular," is always in need of constructing a popular other in order to legitimize and maintain its position in the field of knowledge production.

This other takes on different forms. The repudiation of popular feminism by academic feminists is not only limited to the strand of writings by Friedan, Wolf, and Falaudi. It is most evident in the notion of commodity feminism. The academic feminism's other now becomes the popular feminism presented on women's magazines. Goldman, Heath, and Smith define this strand of popular feminism as commodity feminism, expressed through the notion of possessive individualism and freedom of choice.

Goldman, Heath, and Smith point out that, in this postmodern world of fragmentation and differentiation driven by market segmentation, product differentiation is needed for different segments of the market. This logic of the market drives advertisers to "generate permutations of the look that correspond to every possible packaging of the essence of femininity with the praxis of feminism." The contradictions between femininity and feminism were contained or resolved by a process of aestheticization of feminism. Popular feminism as (re)presented on women's magazines are now made into style, a choice, and an expression of personal identity. Individual autonomy can be expressed through women's purchase of consuming goods to configure their style and freedom of choice can be ascertained by their willingness to become the object of male gaze.

This strand of "aesthetic" feminism, according to these authors, is commodity feminism/fetishism: We've chosen the pun, commodity feminism, because commodity relations turn the relations of acting subjects into relations between objects. Turning feminism into a commodity value fetishes feminism. When appropriated by advertisers and editors, feminism has been cooked to distill out a residue( an object: a look, a style. Women's discourses are relocated and respoken by these named objects. Such sign-objects are thus made to stand for (or made equivalent to) feminist goals of independence and professional success. Personality can be expressed, and relationships achieved, through personal consumer choices. (1991:336) Calling commodity feminism as fetishism indicates that there is the kind of real feminism that has been fetishized. For Goldman, Heath, and Smith, commodity feminism turns real feminism into objects, i.e., sign values, which can only be manipulated to the advertisers' benefits. This commercial blend of feminism is closely affiliated with postfeminism. Invoking Stacey, these authors define postfeminism as "a new generation of women who took for granted the victories secured by their elders, presuming their right to equitable treatment both in the workplace and at home, while shunning the label of feminism." Postfeminism "ascribes the simultaneous incorporation, revision, and depoliticization of many of the central goals of second wave feminism" (Stacey, quote in Goldman et al. 1991:334. Italics mine) Hence, the goal of Goldman et. al. is "repoliticize the depoliticized, bringing back into the picture the social and economic relations that are absent in the ads [the commodity feminism]." (1991:333) In other words, they are to reveal the fetishized nature of commodity- and post- feminisms and demonstrate to the readers the right kind of feminism. But what is this "real" feminism that they want to show us? It is the second wave feminism that (necessarily) deals with the social and economic relations that are embedded in the commodity forms.

I am not to argue the invalidity of their arguments for they do point out an important aspect of why feminism has become a hot style in the world of fashion. My purpose here is to point out the division between academic feminism and popular feminism and the academic feminism's antagonism toward popular feminism and its attempt to demarcate the boundaries of good and bad feminism. This antagonism is less clear in some cultural studies feminists work on women's magazines, however, the attempt to delineate right and wrong feminism and the desire for academic feminists to position themselves on the right side of feminism is still deeply embedded in their rhetoric.

Winship and Stuart both point to the need to learn from the vernacular, the popular feminism as appropriated and adapted by women's magazines. Affirming the value of women's magazines as revealing women's desires and dreams in a world where they are structurally positioned as the disadvantaged, Winship points out that women's magazines offer practical information for women to deal with their everyday life frustration and oppression. However, the information or ideas presented on women's magazines are too "individualistic," too "personal," and therefore, too "depoliticized." The type of knowledge presented on women's magazines can only be called "street-wise." "Feminist ideas are taken up pragmatically, translated into the practical and individual skills of the street-wise... To be street wise isn't to be a feminist, to be street-wise isn't to disapprove of the page 3 pin-ups or slushy and romantic pulp writer..." (19??:40-42)

Unlike the street-wise women's magazines whose commitment to individuality depoliticizes feminism, feminists need to recognize that "[B]ut we ignore most of the time, or simply do not see, is the scope of limitations, especially for women, on what 'individuals' we are allowed to be. It is those limitations on our 'freedom' which a feminist and socialist politics takes issue with." (1987:80) Therefore, concludes Winship, street-wise is not the way to go for feminism even though there is much to learn from it. Feminists must "radically" change the "manifold structures" and not just the "individuals". (1987:81)

Stuart's position on popular feminism is similar to that of Winship's. Critiquing the conformity of the global sisterhood as represented by the white, middle-class feminism, Stuart argues that the reason that women's magazines (Elle) sell is because the image of the New Woman that women's magazines create capture uniqueness and differences. This New Woman does not assume easily that women are all the same, and therefore share the same problems, instead, she stresses differences. She rejects the old authoritarian morality and the rigid puritanism as embodied by the old feminists. Unlike the older generation who rejects media and consumption, this New Woman integrated her feminism into her self-image; she resorts to consumption as her strategy of resistance to fixed images of femininity. (Stuart, 1990:32)

According to Stuart, popular women's magazines sell women's aspirations centered on "having wider options, greater freedom and more autonomy," and their practical approaches to issues of rape and childcare... and all this neatly wrapped up in a seductive cloak of designer difference." Women's magazines capture what real women want, even though there is a disjuncture between what women want and what they can really afford. It is through an understanding of what women desire that feminists can begin to map out the "common ground" for "flexible identifications."

However, for Stuart, popular feminism only functions as a tool to understand what real women desire in order for "real" feminists to map out common ground for political action. Popular feminism is not the right kind of feminism because it failed to "challenge the privatization of social life" and opted for the "individualism of subversive shopping" (41); therefore, "we should not leave the struggle for such issues that most women care to women's magazines." (Italics mine, 41) The strand of popular feminism on women's magazines, again, is demote to bad feminism; and "we," the chic academic feminists should work to claim our territory back.

I have demonstrated the split between academic feminism and popular feminism, and argue against the righteousness embedded in academic feminism. I also point out that the rhetoric of righteousness embedded in academic feminism is a result of the academic feminists' desire for distinction in order to maintain their legitimacy in the field of knowledge production, as manifested in their anxiety to assume the "real" and "right" kind of feminism.

In the beginning of the paper, the reader might assume that the issue of agency is what polarize feminism into these two extremes. Popular feminists like Friedan deny women of their agency, while academic feminists argue for women's agencies in coping with their everyday life oppression. However, when popular feminism is identified with possessive individualism and freedom of choice as embodied in women's magazines, both academic feminists and popular feminists converge in their conceptualization of women as active subjects. This is why Knight claims that cultural feminists are more sympathetic to popular culture texts than to the "old-fashioned" feminists such as Friedan. Both cultural feminists and popular magazine feminists treat women as active subjects who, in their own spaces, manipulate and resist their daily oppression through their own tactics. However, they diverge on the issue of capitalist hegemony. While popular magazine feminists celebrate consumption, cultural feminists warned us of the dangers of consumption.

However, no matter it's the old-fashioned feminists, the popular magazine feminists, or the cultural feminists (academic feminists), they all take the issue of agency as primordial. For them, feminism starts with conceptualizing women as either passive or active. Lines of division are thus drawn based on which side you choose. Popular magazine feminism, because of their acknowledgment of women as active, become academic feminists' alliances. However, they still can not enter the threshold of "real" feminism, because the "real" feminism can only be exclusive to certain members. This conceptualization of agency as the point of division for different feminist camps elides the issue that agency is constructed. Ortner's analysis on the Grimm's Fairy Tales informs us that female agency has to be unmade; in other words, women have to be made passive. And vice versa. Her analysis tells us that "the forms and distributions of 'agency' are always culturally and politically constructed... At the same time, however, we must assume that 'agency'(defined minimally as a sense that the self is an authorized social being( is part of simply being a human, and thus its absence or denial is as much of a problem as its construction... a failure to recognize the absence of agency and legitimate intentionality must be seen very critically as effects of power. (Ortner, 1996:10) Hence, no matter it's the "old-fashioned" feminists who insist on women's passivity, or the magazine feminists and cultural feminists who assume an active female agency, such an insistence must be seen as "effects of power," especially the institutional power from which such a discourse is produced. I will approach this point by detouring through the popular magazine feminists and the academic feminists' convergence on the notion of an active female agency.

As Carol Stabile warns us, "understanding the homologies between our field, the field of media production, and the larger economic field would give us strategies for recognizing and analyzing what are, in effect, dangerous point of convergence." (Stabile, 1995:418) The homology I am talking about here is the convergence of the rhetoric of a knowing female agent both in the fields of magazine production and academic production. The field, as Bo Ekelund puts it, is "a sociologically semi-autonomous object of study within which the values governing and constituting the field are constantly in the process of being created by and through the struggle over these same values among all the agents operating within the field." (quote in Stabile, 408) In other words, "fields are primarily sites of struggle over specific kinds of power." (Stabile, 408) For example, the field of magazine production is driven by the logic of economics; while the field of academic production is driven by the logic of cultural capital which can also be "cashed in" for economic capital such as paid lectures and tenure. Each field has properties and a logic specific to itself in order to reproduce itself. However, each field is only semi-autonomous from one another. "Homologies... exist between the larger economic and political fields... These homologies 'affirm the existence of structurally equivalent( which does not mean identical( characteristics in different groupings'." (Stabile, 417)

The notion of difference that Stuart points out as the selling point for magazine production also corresponds to the academic feminist's need to be different from their predecessors. What we have here is the logic of distinction, operating in both fields. In the field of magazines, accentuating difference becomes the key to survival in a world where market segmentation fragments the reading population. In the field of academic production, the logic of survival depends upon the theorist's ability to criticize, therefore, to be different from the previous theories. Hence, "distinction is in fact, the name of the academic as well as mass media game, and those struggling for success or popularity in both fields are 'able to unseat the establishment only because the implicit law of the field is distinction in all senses of the word." (Stabile, 1995:409) Therefore, it is not difficult to see why the trope of conspiracy and the notion of difference function as the dividing line between academic feminists and traditional feminists.

However, the homology of an active female agency between the field of media production and academic production arose in the '80s, a time when "double day" became a necessity for women in order to meet the standard of living. To channel women's increasingly frustration, the media appealed to an active knowing female agent who "resists" her oppression through consumption of goods. On the other hand, driven by the logic of distinction within the academic field, cultural feminists granted agency to women in order to distinguish themselves from the "old-fashioned" feminists and the elitist male intellectuals who assumed female passivity. Without theorizing how "agency" is constructed economically and politically within the field of media production and academic production, cultural feminists failed to challenge the logic of economics in structuring and reproducing both fields. Furthermore, with the increasing financial crises that the humanities department faced as a result of the corporatization of universities since the '80s, academic feminists are constantly in need of legitimizing their role within the universities. This economic need to reproduce the field of academic production is expressed in the righteous tone of most academic feminists' work and their constant invocation of the boundary between "right" and "wrong" feminism.

To conclude with a quote from Bourdieu, The thinker is less the subject than the object of his most fundamental rhetorical strategies, those which are activated when, led by the practical dispositions of his habituses, he becomes inhabited, like a medium, so to speak, with the requirements of the social spaces (which are simultaneously mental spaces) which enter into relations through him. (Bourdieu, 1991:105, quote in Stabile, 418). Therefore, in dividing lines of alliances and separation, feminists must also look into their own positions in the field of knowledge production, critically and self-reflexively analyze the effects of power both in media production and academic production.

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