Shifting Gender Identities in Popular Culture: Essays on Representation Since 2010

by Laura J. Getty (Editor), Josef Vice (Editor)

Overview

From films, television shows, and young adult literature to beauty pageants, stand-up comedy, and role-playing games, pop culture influences our views of gender. This collection of 12 essays brings together a diverse selection of scholars to examine how various groups are represented in these narratives.

A mirror that allows us to see who and what we are, pop culture also has, in John Podhoretz's words, the "ability to alter, destroy, or praise" how we see and define ourselves, and shapes how we understand our own and others' actions, values, and beliefs. These essays investigate the ways in which popular culture helps us understand the rapid and often dramatic societal changes occurring around gender roles and identity. They address the question of truth in representation of women and gender minorities, highlighting the tension between the best and the worst that popular culture can offer to these debates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476694566
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	04/30/2025
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.58(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Laura J. Getty is Professor of English at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, where she has contributed to and edited several online anthologies for the UNG Press. Josef Vice is Professor of English and Rhetoric at Purdue University Global, where he also is the faculty advisor for the PG Pride Student Organization. He is also a co-author for a forthcoming study of faculty attitudes towards teaching LGBTQIA2S+ students.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice
Introduction
Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice
Section One: Autonomous Identities
For Your Viewing Pleasure: Women’s Gazes/Female Gaze(s) in Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Laura J. Getty
Good Asian Girls Gone Bad: The Model Minoritization and Sexualization of Asian American Teen Girls in the Netflix Originals To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), Never Have I Ever (2020), and Dash & Lily (2020)
Talitha Angelica Acaylar Trazo
A Singular Woman: Gender and Power Dynamics in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Josef Vice and Alaina M. Doten
Feeling Like a Woman: Manipulation by White Men and the Use of the Erotic in Pose
Alexis Ciccone
Section Two: Deceptive Identities
Get Out’s Rose Armitage: The Mother of Tomorrow, a “Normal” White Woman
Julia Reade
Straightening China: The Outlawed Effeminate Men and Queer Utopianism in Idol Producer (2018)
Chelsea Wenzhu Xu
­­­Neo-Beauty Pageants: Representations of the Female Body in Hong Kong
Emily S.m. Chow-Quesada
“I identify as … tired”: The Evolution of the Comic Personae in the Comedy of Hannah Gadsby and Cameron Esposito
Amanda E. Salmon
Section Three: Transgressive Identities
­­­Co-Opting Trans Culture: Ryan Murphy, Janet Mock, and the Cultural Legitimacy of Pose
Paige Macintosh
Desire and the Body: Surveillance, Sexuality, and Power in The Handmaid’s Tale
Reut Odinak
Women in Kurtuluş Son Durak: From Victims to Rebels
Fatma Fulya Tepe
XConfessions: Erika Lust’s ­­­Pleasure-Affirmative Feminist Porn and the Popular Culture of Erotic Desire
Maria Emilia Barbosa and Lily Martinez
About the Contributors
Index