'We can have it all': The Girlfriend Flick

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Winch, Alison. 2012. 'We can have it all': The Girlfriend Flick. Feminist Media Studies, 12(1), pp. 69-82. ISSN 1468-0777 [Article]

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Official URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146807...

Abstract or Description

Focusing primarily on films made in 2008 and 2009, this article examines the phenomenon of the girlfriend flick. Films such as Sex and the City, Baby Mama, The Women, and Bride Wars depict female friendship's priority in intimate culture, celebrating supportive and loving relationships over heterosexual romance. Exploring these films through the intersection between feminism and postfeminism, this article asks whether the girlfriend flick transcends limited understandings of sisterhood to include difference and to constructively explore conflict between women. This article argues that these films advocate a retreat into a segregated female sphere; not as radicalisation, but as a space where women monitor each other's drive for physical perfection and/or marriage and motherhood. Ultimately, they depict female friendship as maintaining “representable” femininities and producing sameness.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.558349