Mediated intimacy and postfeminism: A discourse analytic examination of sex and relationships advice in a women's magazine

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Gill, Rosalind. 2009. Mediated intimacy and postfeminism: A discourse analytic examination of sex and relationships advice in a women's magazine. Discourse & Communication, 3(4), pp. 345-369. ISSN 1750-4813 [Article]

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Official URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/175048130...

Abstract or Description

This article uses a discourse analytic perspective to analyse sex and relationship advice in a best-selling women’s magazine. It identifies three different interpretative repertoires which together structure constructions of sexual relationships: the intimate entrepreneurship repertoire, organized around plans, goals and the scientific management of relationships; men-ology, in which women are instructed in how to learn to please men; and transforming the self, which calls on women to remodel their interior lives in order to construct a desirable subjectivity. The article considers each repertoire in turn, and also looks at how they work together in order to privilege men and heterosexuality. Discussion focuses in particular on the postfeminist nature of the advice, in which pre-feminist, feminist and anti-feminist ideas are entangled in such a way as to make gender ideologies more pernicious and difficult to contest.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481309343870

Additional Information:

Keywords:

discourse, feminism, intimacy, magazines, media, postfeminism

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE)

Dates: