In recent years there has been rising popular discourse around 'toxic masculinity', and the problems of a hegemonic gender structure that facilitates male violence and misogyny. In the public debate ...over whether toxic masculinity is fact or fiction, 'toxic femininity' is often raised by men's rights activists and others as an anti-feminist retort, to suggest that women can be 'toxic' too. This paper provides a sketch of how the term has been used so far, in tandem with an overview of the limitations of the more extensively discussed idea of 'toxic masculinity'. This paper suggests that rather than deploying 'toxic femininity', it is more useful to consider what might be 'toxic' about some approaches to femininity. Drawing on existing theories of femininity, including emphasised, hegemonic, normative, patriarchal femininity, pariah femininities, and femmephobia, this paper offers the notion of 'rigid femininities' to explain the structures that keep us locked into a 'toxic' gender system. This paper utilises the term toxic femininity as a jumping-off point for theorising femininity broadly. In theorising femininity, this paper offers a conceptualisation of the 'toxic' attachments that reinforce the gendered power structure/essentialized gender.
El texto se centra en la comprensión de los cánones de belleza femenina registrados y publicitados por la revista Cromos, publicación colombiana de circulación nacional que fomentó ideales estéticos ...sobre el cuerpo de las mujeres para resaltar su feminidad. El artículo se adscribe al campo de la historia cultural que permite caracterizar expresiones y representaciones, en este caso, centrado en el reconocimiento de los significados de belleza y elegancia, donde la belleza es un atributo que se consigue conjugando armonía y normalidad, que además se convierte en un bien de consumo; la belleza durante este periodo (1916-1929) se asocia con un aspecto juvenil: cutis blanco, piel tersa y cabellos sin canas. Mientras que la elegancia se refleja en la expresión del rostro y en la figura esbelta, que se relaciona con la apariencia de una mujer moderna, es decir, la mujer que debe enfrentarse a roles laborales y educativos.
This work intends to understand the theme of femininity in the first publications of Melanie Klein. We start from the idea that the author, even more radically than Freud, reversed the classical ...logic of the subjective constitution of the Western world: that the phallus/male would be the starting point for sexual differentiation. In this sense, the Kleinian notion of femininity would base his mother's own design that has become prominent in her theorizing plan and therefore the possibility of revisions on the Oedipus complex and the proposition of new concepts.
In The Made-Up State, Benjamin Hegarty contends that warias, who compose one of Indonesia's trans feminine populations, have cultivated a distinctive way of captivating the affective, material, and ...spatial experiences of belonging to a modern public sphere. Combining historical and ethnographic research, Hegarty traces the participation of warias in visual and bodily technologies, ranging from psychiatry and medical transsexuality to photography and feminine beauty. The concept of development deployed by the modern Indonesian state relies on naturalizing the binary of "male" and "female." As historical brokers between gender as a technological system of classifying human difference and state citizenship, warias shaped the contours of modern selfhood even while being positioned as nonconforming within it. The Made-Up State illuminates warias as part of the social and technological format of state rule, which has given rise to new possibilities for seeing and being seen as a citizen in postcolonial Indonesia.
El presente artículo se adentra en la representación fílmica de la heroína histórica en Juana la Loca (Vicente Aranda, 2001), estableciendo un análisis comparativo con su antecedente cinematográfico, ...Locura de amor (Juan de Orduña, 1948). A lo largo del artículo se destacan las diferentes formas que reviste la figura política de Juana I de Castilla y la representación de su locura como síntoma de su feminidad. Paralelamente, el análisis plantea la problemática actualización de la noción de una identidad nacional unificada en la que la figura de Juana juega un papel controvertido, al representar una feminidad hispánica y conservadora que acaba situándose como un discurso que histeriza la sexualidad femenina y la maternidad.
Using femme theory, Foucault, and queer failure as analytical frameworks, the current paper demonstrates the role of feminine failure in resisting and subverting systems of oppression, subsequently ...providing the minute shifts in power necessary to expand the terms of patriarchal femininity. More specifically, the current paper draws on contemporary modes of art and aesthetics to examine the productive potential of failing to embody patriarchal femininity, positing this failure as a form of femme resistance. By hijacking cultural signifiers of adornment, femme and feminine failure celebrate that which is culturally shamed (queer, fat, disabled, variant, poor, and racially minoritised bodies), expose systems of erasure, challenge binary systems of meaning, and promote feminine growth. Examining each of these themes in turn, the current paper argues that feminine failure challenges the pillars of patriarchal femininity and discursive systems of normativity. To this end, femme as a theoretical framework demonstrates the freedom of failure by exposing the heterogeneous multiplicities of femininity, and offering possibilities that normativity never could. This critical discursive essay contributes to the emergent application of femme as a theoretical framework.
This thesis is an attempt to fill the gap in research present in contemporary South Korean (hereafter Korean) cinema studies in regards to the on-screen representations of modern Korean femininity. ...In particular, it focuses on the niche character of New Korean Woman, who is depicted as a reflection of the impending cultural and technological transformations of the country in the early 2000s and their influence on women. The figure avoids polarised representations of "good" and "bad" femininity - often present in contemporary Korean cinema partly due to the neo-Confucian legacy of the nation - and instead explores the concept of an individual choice as a decisive factor in a woman's actions and societal role. The analysed case studies have been chosen from the filmography of accomplished and domestically recognised singer and actor Uhm Jung-hwa, who is here considered the pioneer and originator of the imagery associated with this particular type of cinematic heroine. Uhm and her film works have arguably been an important part of the last two decades of Korean film history. They raise issues crucial to modern women, especially those who seemingly reject the primary roles of wives, mothers and care takers imposed on them by society. The thesis additionally argues that the figure of New Korean Woman has been greatly conditioned by Uhm and her professional persona, first established prior to year 2000 on the music scene. Rather than erasing the existence of her celebrity experience, the thesis asserts that the examination of her film career through the context of her public image maintained outside the cinematic industry can significantly influence and enrich the audience's perception of the protagonists represented by Uhm on the screen. On the other hand, Uhm's establishing of such on- and off-screen 'authenticity' ensures the perception of her image as both familiar and extraordinary to the audiences following her career.
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