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Abstract

Scanning the indices of popular culture textbooks reveals an asymmetry: numerous entries on masculinities but not a single femininities entry. What does this asymmetry say about gender theory and, more specifically, femininity? While feminist theorists have produced important scholarship illuminating femininity as a patriarchal tool wielded through popular culture, these analyses often overlook how various axes of identity intersect with femininity, leaving a sizeable gap in both the conceptualization of femininity and the analysis of popular culture. This article examines how femme theory can help to both highlight and remedy gender theory’s tendency to privilege masculinity and overlook femininity. After providing an overview of femme theory and its core theoretical concepts, this article highlights femme theory’s utility in enriching our interpretations of representation.

Keywords

Critical femininities femininity femme identity femme theory femmephobia

Introduction

Popular culture does more than sell products or keep us entertained; it also plays a vital role in establishing and perpetuating stereotypes. Indeed, popular culture is a fundamental aspect of the modern world, not only reflecting existing social values but also creating them (Hoskin et al., 2019). Thus, analyses of popular culture can provide rich insight into the social world. This important role is reflected in feminist analyses of popular culture and media, with nearly all gender and women’s studies programs offering a course on popular culture. In the current article, we argue that analyses of popular culture have homogenized and occluded femininity in ways that erase femme existence. To mitigate this oversight, we argue for the application of femme theory and demonstrate its ability to enrich our approaches to understanding representations of both femininity and gender.

The homogenization of femininity

Despite offering important analyses of popular culture, many of the foundational concepts utilized in feminist pop culture analyses tend to obscure and/or erase the possibility of femme existence, thereby reproducing femmephobic discourses. (i.e., the devaluation and regulation of femininity; Hoskin, 2017a, 2019). For example, the male gaze (Mulvey, 1975) revolves almost exclusively around the idea that femininity is performed by cisgender heterosexual women for men, leaving little room for alternative understandings of femininity. Further, what Mulvey (1975) calls to-be-looked-at-ness functions to reduce femininity to the sole purpose of visual spectacle for another’s gaze. Here, the problem is not the concept of the male gaze but that it is ubiquitously applied to expressions of femininity. Equally, feminist media literacy has a tendency to scapegoat femininity as universally oppressive without acknowledging how femininity is itself oppressed or, conversely, how femininity can also be political and empowering (Serano, 2007). Neither the male gaze nor feminist media literacy sufficiently engage with the complexities of femininity as a multidimensional construct experienced differently across sexuality, race, gender, assigned sex, or disability (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019).

Exploring media analyses of femme lesbians provides a clear example of how monolithic constructions of femininity fail to consider important intersections of identity (e.g., sexuality, race, gender, etc.). For example, feminine or femme lesbians are often assumed to be a deliberate ‘misrepresentation’ of lesbian sexuality, in which writers and casting directors purposefully ‘feminize’ a lesbian character to maintain appeal to a broader audience. While such decisions may indeed be made, assuming that all portrayals of feminine lesbians are erroneous belies the very real existence and authenticity of femme lesbians. Thus, pop culture analyses that describe feminine lesbians as metaphorically ‘sleeping with the enemy’ (i.e., men or the patriarchy; Albertson, 2018) or which describe them as heteronormative and less authentically lesbian (see Carter 2018) contribute to the continued societal erasure and denigration of femme lesbians (as well as femme queer women more broadly). Importantly, empirical research has debunked the myth that feminine queer women maintain their feminine appearance in service of a desire to remain closeted or due to internalized homophobia. Indeed, levels of closeting and internalized homophobia do not differ significantly between femme, butch, and androgynous sexual minority women (Blair and Hoskin, 2016; Gunn et al., 2021). In other words, femmes are no less “authentic lesbians.” Nevertheless, within these analyses, femininity is reduced to the sole purpose of pleasing the male gaze (i.e., a tool of the patriarchy) and viewed as an expression of heterosexual cisgender women who are either brainwashed into complacency or buy into their own oppression (Hoskin, 2017b; Hoskin and Blair, 2022).

Perhaps symptomatic of reducing femininity to the male gaze, monolithic constructions of femininity are also present when femininity is seen as ubiquitously anti-feminist or complacent with the patriarchy, treated as vapid, vacuous, and worthy of mockery, or falls more heavily under scrutiny by neoliberal and postfeminist critiques than its masculine counterparts (see Hoskin, 2017b). Positioning femininity as anti-feminist and as inherently the expression of cisgender, heterosexual, white, able-bodied women is a failure of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) that leaves a sizeable gap in the theorization of both femininity and popular culture. What can be made of this tendency to reduce femininity to a performance used by women to attract men’s sexual attention? More pressingly, what does it mean that these sentiments are echoed within feminist theories and culture (Hoskin, 2017b; Mishali, 2014; Scott, 2022)?

The occlusion of femininity

Alongside gender and feminist theory’s tendency to paint femininity with sweeping strokes that gloss over intersectionality, there is also a tendency to exclude, displace, or overlook femininity (Hoskin and Blair, 2022; Paechter, 2018; Schippers, 2007). Take, for instance, the familiarity with which most gender and sexuality scholars invoke Connell’s masculinities (e.g., hegemonic masculinity, subordinate masculinity, marginalized masculinity; Connell, 1987, 1995, 2005) and yet have seemingly forgotten about the important role of emphasized femininity within gender hegemony (see Messerschmidt, 2020). To this end, there has been an observable growth of masculinities scholarship, including the development of nuanced approaches to gender via masculine epistemologies, yet femininity seemingly remains stagnant, forgotten, and monolithic.¹ While this privileging of masculinities or the masculine epistemological centre has been noted as a general phenomenon within gender theory (Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin and Blair, 2022; Schwartz, 2018), it is also prevalent within pop culture analyses and pedagogies more specifically.

To illustrate our point, we examined and compared the indexes of a few widely used pop culture textbooks. Comparing indexed keywords, Haslam’s Thinking Popular Culture (2016) lists eight types of masculinity² without a single indexed item for femininity. Similarly, O’Brien and Szeman’s Pop Culture: A User’s Guide (2010) indexes hegemonic masculinity but offers no indexed item for femininity – even though Connell (1987) theorized hegemonic masculinity in tandem with emphasized femininity (Messerschmidt, 2020). These ommissions of femininity are epistemic and pedagogical injustices, both of which function to reproduce the status quo of masculine ascendency and reaffirm the masculine epistemological centre.

If popular culture represents shared understanding and meaning within a given social system, what does this epistemic occlusion and erasure of femininity say about our shared understandings of femininity? Indeed, if femininity’s most idealized form is one that is absent and invisible (Solnit, 2021), then it should be unsurprising to find it omitted from the indices of popular culture textbooks. Likewise, it should be equally unsurprising to find masculinity at the centre of how we analyze dominant (patriarchal) society. For those who wish to see a societal shift in the meaning and valuing of femininity, it becomes necessary to consider the role that pop culture theory and pedagogy play in proliferating prejudices and assumptions about femininity. Femme theorists argue that both the occlusion and homogenization of femininity are symptomatic of femininity remaining singularly associated with heterosexual cisgender women alongside the subsequent failure to recognize feminine multiplicity, diversity, and intersectionality (Hoskin and Blair, 2022). This results in failing to see the complexity of femininty, rendering it a ‘simple’ self-explainable construct requiring little in the way of deep study or consideration (Taylor and Hoskin, 2023). Approaching femininity in this singular way obscures its theoretical and political potential, thereby serving the patriarchy (Barton and Huebner, 2022; Hoskin and Taylor, 2019).

What tools and frameworks exist to begin moving beyond this myopic understanding of femininity and remedy the epistemic injustice that has shrouded the importance of theorizing femininity deeply (Taylor and Hoskin, 2023)? To address the “femininities gap,” many in the field of critical femininities have turned to femme theory (Dahl, 2012; Hoskin and Blair, 2022; McCann, 2018), which brings femininities to the forefront. This novel theoretical framework not only encourages scholars to pay attention to femininity but also offers an alternative reading of femininity that is cognizant of shifting and intersectional power relations (Hoskin, 2024). Simultaneously, femme theory holds the capacity to shift the femmephobic discourses that maintain the rigid bounds of patriarchal femininity (i.e., the intersectional norms and power structures associated with femininity; Hoskin, 2017a; Hoskin, 2024).

Femme theory

Femme theory was developed out of narrative-based works and autobiographical accounts of femme-identified people (Brightwell and Taylor, 2021; Hoskin, 2024). Tracing back to 1940s lesbian bar cultures and butch/femme couples specifically, the term femme was originally used to describe a feminine lesbian (Kennedy and Davis, 1993; Levitt et al., 2003; see Hoskin, 2024 for a history of femme identities and femme theory). Since the 1940s, femme has proliferated as a queer identity, encompassing diverse feminine genders and sexualities (Blair and Hoskin, 2015; Rose and Camilleri, 2002; Volcano and Dahl, 2008). Many femme theorists argue that while femme now has contemporary definitions, expressions, and invocations, such diverse notions of femme are held together by their steadfast rejection of patriarchal femininity. In other words, while the differences between femmes and femme invocations are many, what they share is the failure to abide by patriarchal norms of femininity that seek to maintain femininity as the domain of powerless and passive cisgender heterosexual white women (to name a few axes of power/identity).

Patriarchal femininity functions to flatten and homogenize differences (Hoskin, 2024; Hoskin and Taylor, 2019). In contrast, femmes do not abide by the rules of patriarchal femininity and thus function as both patriarchal femininity’s antithesis and antidote. For example, femmes challenge patriarchal feminine power structures by valuing and widely celebrating parts of femininity that have been deemed inferior by patriarchy (e.g., softness and vulnerability; Dahl, 2017; Hoskin and Whiley, 2023a; Schwartz, 2020). Further, femmes’ genders, sexes, and/or sexualities do not adhere to patriarchal femininity’s essentialist and heteronormative imperatives. For example, femmes “fail” to abide by what femme theory terms the masculine right of access (Hoskin, 2017a). Masculine right of access refers to the assumptions that femininity exists and is expressed for the sole purpose of attracting men’s sexual attention and that visible femininity (whether by men, women, or nonbinary people) signals sexual interest in men (Hoskin, 2017a). These parallel assumptions can be connected to rape culture and rape myths, such as the idea that makeup or the length of someone’s skirt can be interpreted as a woman “asking for it.” However, through their “failure” to abide by the rules, femmes rewrite and disrupt patriarchal femininity, breaking apart the monolithic construction of femininity and forcing femininity to be considered a more complex and intersectional expression (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019).

While femme identities and femme theory are intimately linked, they are not one and the same. Femme theory is a community-driven framework that draws on the life histories, experiences, and perspectives of femmes in order to generate an outward-turned perspective to analyze the treatment of femininity within society and the functioning of society itself (Hoskin, 2024). The applications of femme theory, therefore, extend well beyond the lives of femmes themselves, creating a femme ‘standpoint’ that encourages us to re-examine the placement and function of femininity across contexts and identities (Harding, 1991; Hoskin, 2021).

Femme theory offers a variety of analytical tools and concepts to understand femininity and its treatment. Chief among them is the concept of femmephobia, which refers to the way society devalues, denigrates, and regulates femininity in line with patriarchal femininity (Hoskin 2017a, 2019, 2020). This process of devaluation and regulation is enacted across genders, sexes, sexualities, race, and embodiments (Hoskin, 2017a, 2019, 2020; Hoskin et al., 2023, 2024; Hoskin and Serafini, 2023). Femmephobia can be difficult to conceptually disentangle from misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. To help make these differences salient, femme theory also disentangles femininity from women. The separation of femininity from woman stems from the capacity of women to be feminine, masculine, or androgynous. This delineation resounded clearly within butch/femme communities and was emphasized by masculine and feminine women within such communities, who bucked the assumptions that all women are feminine, and that femininity serves the male gaze. Thus, disentangling “femininity” from “women” honours and canonizes femme epistemologies (Hoskin, 2024).

Historical femme epistemologies are the foundation on which femininity can be distinguished from women and, in turn, femmephobia disentangled from other forms of gender-based prejudices (e.g., misogyny). Extending the “butch/femme logic” that femininity is not specific to women opens conceptual space to consider how men and nonbinary people can also be feminine and, thus, targeted by femmephobia. Therefore, while sexism and misogyny target people on the basis of sex/gender (i.e., female or woman), femmephobia targets people on the basis of perceived, assigned, or actual femininity – an experience that cuts across all genders, sexes, sexualities, and identities (Hoskin and Serafini, 2023).

Femme theory also offers conceptual frameworks to begin challenging femmephobia. A primary way that femme theorists challenge femmephobia is by simply naming it. Because femmephobia is conflated with other types of gender-based prejudices, and the treatment of femininity as inherently subordinate is naturalized, femme theorists argue that naming femmephobia holds the capacity to catalyze broader change surrounding femininity (Hoskin and Serafini, 2023).

A second way that femme theorists challenge femmephobia is by revaluing femininity and challenging femininity’s subordinated status. Some earlier femme writings attempted to revalue femininity by rejecting its association with characteristics such as fragile, vulnerable, or soft, arguing instead that femininity can be tough, brazen, and “hard” (see Hoskin, 2024; Schwartz, 2020). Rejecting femininity as soft and celebrating its capacity for toughness marked an important trajectory in femme studies. Such celebrations began to shift the conceptual boundaries around what femininity could mean while also empowering femmes and feminine people to claim parts of themselves that had been otherwise off-limits or impossible. At the same time, solely valuing femininity by rejecting certain feminized characteristics has faced criticism from contemporary femme theorists for revaluing femininity via masculine standards (Galewski, 2005; Schwartz, 2020). These contemporary critiques argue that rejecting femininity as “soft” and only valuing femininity when it is “hard” reinforces femmephobia and masculine value systems. In turn, there has been a shift to value the feminine traits typically denigrated in society that have been overlooked by previous attempts to revalue femininity.

Through this theoretical progression, femme theory offers the recuperative framework and the acceptance framework (Scott, 2022). The recuperative framework challenges femininity’s association with stereotyped characteristics (e.g., femininity is not vulnerable). The acceptance framework embraces stereotyped characteristics and challenges their subordinated designation (e.g., vulnerability is not bad; Scott, 2022). Femme theorists argue that both approaches are needed if we are to challenge the complex nature of femmephobia (Hoskin, 2024).

A third way that femme theory helps to address femmephobia is by challenging dominant discourses that maintain femininity as a monolithic construct. Theoretical approaches to femininity that rely on monolithic constructs limit cultural acceptance of feminine diversity by perpetuating assumptions about who can express femininity (or for what purpose) and furthering attitudes that seek to regulate femininity (i.e., femmephobia). Thus, by centring feminine multiplicity, femme theory dislodges the normative assumptions about femininity that underlie feminine regulation, thereby aiding in challenging femmephobia. This is done through a two-pronged approach to studying femininity that explores how gender is constructed “between femininities” (e.g., multiple femininities; Dahl, 2012; Dahl and Sunden, 2018) as well as “across the gender binary” (e.g., femininity in relation to masculinity; Hoskin and Blair, 2022). The complexity and nuance offered by examining femininity as it relates to masculinity, as well as femininity as a multidimensional and intersectional construct, makes it impossible to default to patriarchal femininity (i.e., assuming the monolithic construct of patriarchal femininity to be universal).

Femme theory’s concept of femme failure also ensures that analyses do not default to patriarchal femininity. As noted, some femme theorists argue that what femmes have in common is their failure to abide by the rules of patriarchal femininity. In femmes’ failures, femmes expand the defaulted homogenous conceptualization of patriarchal femininity into a diverse and multifaceted understanding of femininity (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019). That is, femme failure challenges the idea that femininity is the exclusive domain of cisgender heterosexual white women who are able-bodied, perfectly thin and curvy, and who are capable of balancing the Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

Through femmes’ diversity and failure, femme theory generates analyses of femininity at the intersections of gender (Hoskin and Serafini, 2023), race (Keeling, 2007; Lewis, 2012; Story, 2017), sexuality (Davies, 2020; Davies et al., 2023; García-Gómez, 2022), assigned sex (Serano, 2007; Shelton, 2018), class (Skeggs, 2001), disability (Erickson, 2007; Hoskin, 2022; Kattari and Beltran, 2019; Samuels, 2003), body size (Taylor, 2018; Taylor and Hoskin, 2023), and ageing (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019; McFarland and Taylor, 2021; Walker, 2012). The prejudice of femmephobia is, in part, a response to femme failure and subsequent diversity, operating as a containment strategy that enforces and maintains the boundaries of patriarchal femininity (Hoskin, 2019). Thus, when femmes’ femininity is ubiquitously assumed as complacency or erased as normalcy, the capacity to expose feminine diversity and resist patriarchal femininity is lost. For example, consider the masculine right of access. While femmes are frequently assumed to be appeasing the male gaze, femmes are, in fact, resisting the masculine right of access. By assuming complacency with the male gaze via monolithic constructs of femininity, the capacity of femmes to challenge femmephobia and patriarchal femininity is overlooked. Likewise, pop culture analyses that assume a universal patriarchal femininity function to maintain its boundaries and perpetuate femmephobia.

Femme-inizing pop culture

Some argue that the true test of any theory is whether it stays confined to the “movement in which it originated” or whether it “leaks out and permeates the way [we see and] interact with the world” (Doyle, 2017, n. p.). Femme theory has not remained in its community of origin. Rather, epistemologies from the feminine margins (Hooks, 2000) have permeated the way scholars approach a variety of scholarly pursuits, including military behaviour (Bonnes, 2022, 2023), policing (Simon, 2024), health and body image (Hoskin et al., 2020; Oswald and Matsick, 2021; Scott, 2021; Wiklund et al., 2018), sports (Breitwieser and Scott, 2021; Knoppers and Spaaij, 2022), methods (Hoskin 2021; Hoskin and Whiley, 2023b), identity development (Messerschmidt and Bridges, 2022), the workplace and organizational studies (Davies and Neustifter, 2021; Hoskin and Whiley, 2023a), incel research (Menzie, 2022; Thorburn, 2023), gender-based violence (Kumar, 2021; Türkoğlu and Sayilan, 2022), family science (Hoskin and Serafini, 2023), relationships (Blair et al., 2024; Pollitt et al., 2022; Taylor, 2022), sexuality (García-Gómez, 2022), prejudice (Hoskin, 2020), public displays of affection (Matheson et al., 2021), division of labour (Ansloos et al., in press), migrant youth (Wojnicka and Nowicka, 2024), care work (Davies and Hoskin, 2022; Davies and Neustifter, 2022), pedagogy and early childhood education (Bimm and Feldman, 2020; Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin 2017b)– to name a few.

While there has been an observable growth in terms of femme being used as a theoretical framework, there are only a few notable examples of femme theory being used to analyze pop culture (e.g., Cheng, 2021; Dove-Viebahn, 2021; Fung, 2021; Tinsley, 2018, 2022). Given the identified gaps in gender theory, as well as within pop culture analyses and pedagogy, additional theorizing at the intersection of pop culture and femme theory is needed. Broadly, these applications of femme theory to the analysis of pop culture ought to include: 1. Writing femme into the places where it has been overlooked; 2. Reworking existing frameworks to include femme perspectives; 3. Treating femininity as inherently multifaceted; 4. Challenging assumptions about femininity; and 5. Naming femmephobia. By exploring pop culture through the lens of femme theory, this edited collection not only begins the task of remedying existing epistemic gaps that favour masculinities and homogenize/occlude femininities, but it also illustrates the utility of femme theory in providing alternate readings of cultural texts.

Femme theory and pop culture

This special issue demonstrates the importance of centring femme and the novel insight femme theory yields when applied to different contexts. First, femme theory helps to avoid overly simplistic analyses of femininity by highlighting feminine multiplicity. For example, Padan (2023) argues that existing postfeminist analyses of the Spice Girls overlook the complexities of their femininities and reduce their femininities to collusion with the patriarchy. Through the lens of femme theory, Padan (2023) analyzes the Spice Girls as drag personas whose multiple femininities challenged pillars of patriarchal femininity, including essentialist notions of femininity as natural. Thus, the Spice Girls break apart the monolithic constraints of patriarchal femininity and invite audiences to consider feminine multiplicity.

Applications of femme theory to pop culture yield nuanced critical engagements with postfeminism (Kornfield and Long, 2023; Padan, 2023). Like Padan (2023), Kornfield and Long (2023) also identify the postfeminist tendency to abject femininity, particularly through overly simplistic analyses that reduce femininity down to the masculine right of access (i.e., femininity done for the purpose of attracting men) which, in turn, nullify possibilities of feminine resistance. Analyzing the television series The Bold Type, they argue that applying femme theory allows for the re-examination of the places from which femininity has been abjected – including both feminism and pop culture.

Overly simplistic approaches to understanding femininity negate the potentiality for feminine resistance (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019; Kornfield and Long, 2023). Mitigating this effect, femme theory helps to identify resistance where complacency was assumed (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019), chiefly through the concept of femme failure. Examining the television series Fleabag, Dove-Viebahn (2023) argues that through femme failure, the unruly protagonist destabilizes, rejects, and betrays the demands of patriarchal femininity. In turn, Dove-Viebahn argues that Fleabag highlights the tensions between toxic femininity (McCann, 2022), femme-ininity, failed femininity, and feminism. Applying femme theory in his analysis of Sex in the City’s Carrie Bradshaw and Maeve Brennan’s Long-Winded Lady, O’Rourke (2023) argues that both protagonists’ failed femininity cultivates space for femininity within masculine-dominant domains. For example, by “failing” to adhere to patriarchal femininity, both characters challenge the relational norms of patriarchal femininity, claim public space as hyper-feminine subjects, and value narratives as feminine ways of knowing.

Patriarchal femininity is premised on intersectional norms as well as feminine subordination and assumed ineptitude. Thus, femme resistance can be found both in femininity’s failure and its success. As depicted in Legally Blonde, femme resistance is not merely “failing” to meet patriarchal expectations of femininity based on intersectional norms, it is also the “failure” to accept femininity’s inherent failure (Serano, 2007) via success and being successful while feminine (Schwartz, 2023). As argued by Schwartz (2023), Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods succeeds by valuing feminine ways of knowing and knowledge production.

Femme theory not only helps to make feminine diversity and resistance visible, but it also helps to name femmephobic structures that may otherwise go unnoticed or naturalized. For example, Davies (2023) applies femme theory to demonstrate how femmephobia and “fag discourse” (Pascoe, 2011) function in Love, Simon in ways that normalize gay masculinity and denigrate gay femininity. Simultaneously, however, Simon’s gay peer Ethan embodies femme failure and thus offers a space of resistance wherein femmephobic gender relations can be challenged. Similarly, Westphal (2024) applies femme theory to expose the masculinist and femmephobic lens through which contemporary revenge films (feminist and women-led included) are constructed. She argues that by requiring protagonists to adopt masculinity in order to successfully enact revenge (i.e., recuperation framework; Scott, 2022), contemporary revenge films uphold masculine and patriarchal gender structures of domination and aggression. By contrast, the film Promising Young Woman offers a hyper-feminine revenge film in which the protagonist does not adopt masculine traits or fall prey to masculine tropes but, instead, offers a femme worldbuilding and rethinking of power in ways that are not masculine.

As noted, femmephobia has been documented across various contexts, ranging from the military and policing to incel communities, feminist pedagogies, and health. Thus, depictions of femmephobia in pop culture are symbiotic, both reflecting and shaping the material world. Illuminating the interdependent relationship between pop culture and its audience, Scott’s (2023) analysis of Legally Blonde demonstrates how femmephobia on screen and the “Elle Woods Effect” more specifically, shapes off-screen sorority communities and the lives of feminine people and communities more broadly. Together, the articles within this special issue demonstrate the utility of femme theory, yet they only begin to scratch the surface of what femme theory can offer to various disparate scholarly domains, including pop culture.

Conclusion

Somewhat ironically, the field of pop culture should be much more familiar with society’s denigration and regulation of femininity than it appears to be. The field itself is, in many ways, subjected to femmephobic judgments and evaluations: pop culture is notoriously described as a bird course, and its scholarship is seen as fluffy, trivial, frivolous, or otherwise less scholarly than the more ‘serious’ academic pursuits. As any pop culture theorist will understand, the importance and scholarly depth of pop culture analyses are not always immediately understood or appreciated. To spend one’s time watching films and TV shows is seen as an unserious and frivolous approach to academic discourse - perhaps one that could even be described as feminine! And yet, it is through such analyses that we have come to better understand the role that media consumption has on behaviour, attitudes, and beliefs. For example, by giving serious consideration to pop culture, we have learned that, despite its anti-feminist reputation, boys and girls who engage in Princess Culture have better body image and self-esteem, more progressive views on gender, and reduced toxic masculinity (Coyne et al., 2021). Indeed, perhaps the field’s rejection of femininities stems in part from a defensive desire to prove its own value and credibility – arguably, a scholarly version of “I’m not like other girls” (Rosida et al., 2022). Leaning into femininity is rarely the path chosen when credibility is the desired outcome (Hoskin et al., 2023), but would this still ring true in a world that revalued femininity? As demonstrated by the articles within this special issue, the analysis of popular culture offers several avenues for embarking on the process of revaluing femininity through the consideration of femme perspectives.

Why should pop culture analysis centre femme perspectives? The answer rests upon the prevalence of two norms within the practice of pop culture analysis and gender theory: Feminine Occlusion and the Homogenization of Femininity. Occlusion creates the femininities gap, wherein traditional analyses have centred masculinities and ignored femininities, particularly invocations of femininity that extend beyond the patriarchal norm. The resulting homogenization of femininity overlooks femme perspectives and feminine multiplicity, representing a failure of intersectionality and a partial perspective (Crenshaw, 1991; Haraway, 1988; Hoskin, 2021). By introducing the ‘Femme Factor’ into pop culture analysis, we challenge these norms and call for a critical reevaluation - and revaluation - of femininity’s representation in media and the tools used to interrogate such representations. Failing to do so will perpetuate femmephobia and obscure femininity’s political, social, and theoretical potential. In closing, we invite readers of this special issue to apply femme theory to their future analyses of popular culture and beyond, not only to discern its implications on the silver screen but to recognize its relevance to the very fabric of their day-to-day worlds. As commonly observed among pop culture students, applying theory to the media’s portrayal of society often catalyzes the integration of new theoretical perspectives into their worldview. Through the articles in this special issue, we hope to influence readers similarly and extend Femme Theory to a broader audience.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Kerri Mozessohn and Jenny Truong for their editorial assistance.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author was supported by the AMTD Global Talent Program and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral award. (01/23, 09/2020)

ORCID iD

Rhea Ashley Hoskin

Notes

Dr. Rhea Ashley Hoskin is SSHRC postdoctoral fellow and an AMTD Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo and St. Jerome’s University, where she is cross-appointed to the departments of Sociology & Legal Studies, and Sexuality, Marriage, & Family Studies. Her work focuses on Critical Femininities, Femme Theory, and femmephobia. More specifically, her work examines perceptions of femininity and sources of gender-based violence rooted in the devaluation or regulation of femininity, as well as strategies for revaluing and rethinking femininity. She is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Femininities.

Dr. Karen L. Blair is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Trent University. She is the director of the KLB Research Lab and the Trent University Social Relations, Attitudes, and Diversity Lab. Her research focuses on LGBTQ psychology, social support, relationships and health, prejudice, femmephobia, hate crimes, and Holocaust education.

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The femme factor: Transforming pop culture analyses through femme theory

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The homogenization of femininity

The occlusion of femininity

Femme theory

Femme-inizing pop culture

Femme theory and pop culture

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References