Abstract
Genz offers an investigation into the complex interplay of economic insecurity and gender by situating Girls in the context of the cross-nurturing ideologies of postfeminism and neoiberalism. The chapter examines how the HBO series scrutinises and casts doubt on prevailing postfeminist/neoliberal tenets, particularly in relation to compulsory heterosexiness and competitive and acquisitive modes of subjectivity that promote the self-responsible consumer-citizen. Genz argues that despite the series’ conscious criticality, the privileged protagonists of Girls also adhere to a narcissistic individualism that authorises entitlement and self-absorption. This neoliberal logic takes on a specifically gendered, postfeminist form of self-branding that promotes (sexual) authenticity as an affective commodity in a dwindling, recessionary market.
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Notes
- 1.
As Cameron put it at the Conservative Party Spring Conference in March 2013: ‘We are building an Aspiration Nation. A country where it’s not who you know, or where you’re from; but who you are and where you’re determined to go. My dream for Britain is that opportunity is not an accident of birth, but a birthright’ (Cameron, 2013).
- 2.
As Banet-Weiser explains, ‘at its core, narcissism is about total self-importance, an importance that authorizes entitlement, self-absorption, lack of personal accountability, and a whole host of other undesirable qualities. […] [T]he most substantial manifestation of this kind of narcissism is the expectation and assumption of an audience, implying not simply the right to speak but the right to be heard’ (2012, p. 87).
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Genz, S. (2017). ‘I Have Work … I Am Busy … Trying to Become Who I Am’: Neoliberal Girls and Recessionary Postfeminism. In: Nash, M., Whelehan, I. (eds) Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52971-4_2
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