Teaching and Trending Feminismin the 21st Century

Abstract

I s feminism a new trend in popular culture?If so, is this a good or a bad thing?And, besides, what kind of feminism does this entail?Thus, to start, it is appropriate to identify some of the most prominent moments that have helped define "feminism" (understanding the term very generally here, hence the use of the quotation marks) as we know it today, to start exploring and exposing both the feminist and post-feminist characteristics, to think about the renegotiation between the two, and reflect on their influence on children and young adults.It is clear that quite specific images of womanhood/girlhood are being marketed through the media and that they are causing the repackaging of not only girlhood or womanhood but also of feminism itself (see e.g.Becker et al., 2016). 1 However, my aim is not to offer of a typology of contemporary "subforms" or "reformed" kinds of "feminism": there are many of them and elaborating on them would be a somewhat tedious job or, at least, a complicated issue (so I will refrain from doing it) (see also Rottenberg, 2018, p. 166 ff).Let me just name a few of them: "choice feminism", "power feminism", "celebrity feminism", "hashtag feminism", "marketplace feminism" and others, even "lifestyle feminism", "feminism lite" or "gateway feminism". 2No, one of my objectives is to point out that there is something awry with the dominant, media-regulated forms of "feminism", whichThis repackaging also "encourages girls to exchange political power for purchasing power" (Becker et al., 2016(Becker et al., , p. 1218). 2But wait, there is more, such as "tough cookie feminism" (which is Camille Paglia's formulation, quoted in Moi, 2006Moi, , p. 1737)).Still, all this is not to be confused with different contemporary strands of feminist theorizing such as e.g.