Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis.  Permission is given for 
a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and 
private study only.  The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without 
the permission of the Author. 
 



 
 

i 

 

“SHE GOT THE POWER”:  

THE INTERSECTION OF GENDER, 

FEMINISM AND POP MUSIC  

 
 

 

A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the 

requirements for the degree of Master of Arts  

in  

Sociology  

 

Massey University, Albany,  

New Zealand 

 

 

Ruby Cain 

2021



 
 

ii 

Abstract 
 

Pop music has long contributed to feminist discourse and practice as performers use 

their global platforms to disseminate ideas that combat sexism, gender 

discrimination, gender-based violence, and promote gender equality. The music 

industry’s engagement with feminism occurs at the same time, however, as many 

young women distance themselves from feminism. With this apparent tension in 

mind, this research is concerned with new expressions of feminism in pop music and, 

specifically, how these expressions are perceived by an audience of young women.  

 

To explore this, a feminist research methodology was adopted that centred young 

women’s views, amplified their experiential knowledge and sense-making practices, 

and fostered a space of reflexivity. Multiple integrated qualitative research methods 

(the production of a music portfolio, followed by two focus groups) were used to 

explore how six young women made meaning from pop music they identified as 

concerned with feminism or gender-related issues. A feminist methodology and 

employing multiple methods that placed music and young women’s responses to 

music at the centre of inquiry was valuable for fostering a participant-centred, 

reflexive and generative research space. 

 

Iterative thematic analysis showed that young women have ambivalent subject 

positions regarding feminism, regardless of whether they personally identify as 

feminist. On the one hand, they valued principles of gender equality, but distanced 

themselves from feminist rhetoric they associated with a “radicalised” feminism. On 

the other hand, they valued performers they considered to be radical in their 

subversion of gender norms. Relatedly, participants felt empowered by 

performances they deemed overtly feminist in their contestation of gender norms.  

 

Somewhat paradoxically, analysis also revealed that participants returned to a 

gender binary as they sought to make sense of pop music performances. Participants 

constructed reductionist dichotomies of ‘sensual/sexual’ to describe embodied 

performances they deemed acceptable and unacceptable, respectively. Similarly, 

they constructed an affective dichotomy of ‘vulnerable/aggressive’ that was readily 

mapped onto categories of feminine and masculine, respectively. These dichotomies 

reflect heteronormative constructions of women and women’s bodies.  

 

An ambivalent subject position emerges for young women as they navigate 

progressive feminist discourses that advance women’s bodily autonomy, and a 

return to regressive heteronormative constructions of femininity and masculinity 



 
 

iii 

that rest on the gender binary. As such, the research raises questions about the 

future of contemporary feminism. While ambivalence might appear at first glance as 

uncertainty and therefore of little value or concern for a feminist agenda, I argue that 

such ambivalence can be read as productive and generative, and has the capacity to 

foster societal change.  

 

 

 

  



 
 

iv 

Acknowledgements 
 

It seems a near impossible task to express my appreciation to the incredible whānau 

who supported me through this journey but just like the seeming impossible task of 

producing a master’s thesis, I’ll give it a go! First and foremost, I would like to thank 

my supervisors, Dr Alice Beban and Dr Vicky Walters, whose endless support never 

faltered, even when I took a U-turn and completely changed research topics! Not 

only did they provide me with their depth of knowledge and the right questions to 

get me thinking, they also supported me through the emotional ups and downs of 

producing a thesis. Their passion for the project and support of me was unwavering, 

even in the moments when I felt confused and lost.  

 

A huge thank you to the six young women who generously sacrificed their Saturday 

afternoons to talk with me about gender, feminism and pop music. It was a fun 

experience and your views, insights and ideas are invaluable to this project – quite 

simply, I could not have done it without you.  

 

Particular appreciation must also be expressed to my family. My brother, Josh, saw 

my potential when I couldn’t and insisted I was smart enough to go to university. My 

Dad, Shawn, encouraged and supported me throughout, keeping me stocked up on 

coffee and gin. And special thanks go to my Mum, Dr Trudie Cain. Little did I know 

that all those chats about feminism and gender when I was growing up would lead 

to me proudly following in her sociological footsteps. She has been such an 

inspiration, taking on the role of master’s coach, cheering me on, helping me grapple 

with my ideas over the dinner table and even hiding my phone to keep me focused 

(such a mum thing to do). Thanks to you all.  

 

And finally, a special thank you to my wonderful friends whose support and 

encouragement never faded. Special mention is owed to Lilla and Bex who have 

always been my go-to feminist buddies. And a particular shout out goes to Nicki 

Trueman who in the early days of our postgraduate study shared supervision 

meetings with me but became a good friend along the way. Your good humour, 

encouragement and friendship got me through. To all of you, I am deeply grateful. 

  



 
 

v 

Table of Contents 

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................... II 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. IV 

THESIS AND CHAPTER TITLES – A NOTE ..................................................................................... VII 

LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... VIII 

LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................IX 

CHAPTER 1:  “POWER” - AN INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................1 
INTRODUCING THE FIELD: THE POLITICS OF FEMINISM AND POPULAR CULTURE .....................................................4 
ROADMAP OF THE THESIS ..........................................................................................................................6 

CHAPTER 2:  “COME ON LITTLE LADY, GIVE US A SMILE” - MAPPING THE TERRAIN OF FEMINISM 
AND POPULAR CULTURE ............................................................................................................. 8 

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................8 
RELEVANCE OF FEMINISM IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY ....................................................................................9 
KEY THEMES IN CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM ............................................................................................... 16 

‘Grab ‘em by the patriarchy’: Patriarchy and the oppression of women.................................... 16 
Sexualisation and objectification: Violence, harassment and body autonomy .......................... 17 
Empowerment ............................................................................................................................. 20 

POPULAR CULTURE: ‘PORNS IN THE INDUSTRY’ ........................................................................................... 23 
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 28 

CHAPTER 3:  “I KEEP A RECORD OF THE WRECKAGE IN MY LIFE” - (POP) MUSIC AND 
METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................................ 30 

INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................................... 30 
METHODOLOGY: FEMINIST SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM ................................................................................ 31 
METHOD ............................................................................................................................................. 33 

Recruitment ................................................................................................................................. 33 
Introducing the participants ....................................................................................................... 34 
Music portfolios .......................................................................................................................... 35 
Focus group one .......................................................................................................................... 38 
Focus group two .......................................................................................................................... 41 
Analysing the data ...................................................................................................................... 44 

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ...................................................................................................................... 46 
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 47 

CHAPTER 4:  “ALL THE THINGS YOU TOLD ME NOT TO BE” – AMBIVALENT CONSTRUCTIONS OF 
FEMINISM AND EMPOWERMENT .............................................................................................. 49 

INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................................... 49 
CONSTRUCTIONS OF FEMINISM: IT’S COMPLICATED ..................................................................................... 50 

Personal constructions of feminism ............................................................................................ 50 
Constructing gender and feminism through pop music .............................................................. 56 

EMPOWERMENT AS MANIFESTATION OF FEMINISM ..................................................................................... 64 
Participants’ internal constructions of empowerment ............................................................... 64 
The relationship between music and empowerment.................................................................. 66 

CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 71 

CHAPTER 5:  “I COULD PLAY NICE, OR I COULD BE A BULLY” – A RETURN TO DICHOTOMOUS 
CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDER .................................................................................................... 72 

INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................................... 72 
DICHOTOMY OF SEXUAL AND SENSUAL ...................................................................................................... 73 

Making sense of Little Mix: A “sexual” performance .................................................................. 73 
Making sense of Ariana Grande: From a “sexual” to a “sensual” performance ........................ 78 



 
 

vi 

DICHOTOMY OF FEMININE AND MASCULINE ............................................................................................... 83 
Making sense of Kesha: A “feminine” performance ................................................................... 84 
Making sense of Halsey: Towards an unacceptably masculinised performance ........................ 91 

CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 99 

CHAPTER 6:  “I WISH YOU FAREWELL” - CONCLUSION ............................................................... 101 

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 101 
AMBIVALENCE – A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ......................................................................................... 102 
AMBIVALENT FEMINIST RESEARCHER SUBJECT POSITIONS ............................................................................ 103 
AMBIVALENT PARTICIPANT SUBJECT POSITIONS ......................................................................................... 106 
THE (AMBIVALENT) FUTURE OF FEMINISM................................................................................................ 110 

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 113 

APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................... 137 

APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT ADVERTISEMENT POSTER ................................................................................. 137 
APPENDIX B: EMAIL TEMPLATE TO POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS ....................................................................... 138 
APPENDIX C: INFORMATION SHEET ........................................................................................................ 139 
APPENDIX D: MUSIC PORTFOLIO INSTRUCTIONS ....................................................................................... 141 
APPENDIX E: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM ............................................................................................. 143 
APPENDIX F: FOCUS GROUP (1) INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 144 
APPENDIX G: FOCUS GROUP (2) INTERVIEW GUIDE ................................................................................... 146 

 
 

  



 
 

vii 

Thesis and chapter titles – A note 
 

The thesis and chapter titles include a title or lyric from a song examined in this 

research. When used for a chapter, the lyrics or song title reflect the theme of the 

chapter ahead. A description of each title is reported below (Table 1).  

 
Table 1: Thesis and chapter titles 

Thesis or chapter title Artist and song title Format 

“She got the power”: The 

intersection of gender, feminism 

and pop music 

Miley Cyrus - ‘Mother’s 

Daughter’ 

Song lyric 

Chapter One: “Power” – An 

introduction 

Little Mix - ‘Power’ Song title 

Chapter Two: “Come on little lady, 

give us a smile” – Mapping the 

terrain of feminism and popular 

culture 

Halsey - ‘Nightmare’ Song lyric 

Chapter Three: “I keep a record of 

the wreckage in my life” – (Pop) 

Music and methodology 

Halsey - ‘Nightmare’ Song lyric 

Chapter Four: “All the things you 

told me not to be” – Ambivalent 

constructions of feminism and 

empowerment 

Ariana Grande - ‘God is a 

Woman’ 

Song lyric 

Chapter Five: “I could play nice, or I 

could be a bully” – A return to 

dichotomous constructions of 

gender 

Halsey - ‘Nightmare’ Song lyric 

Chapter Six: “I wish you farewell” – 

Conclusion 

Kesha - ‘Praying’ Song lyric 

 

  



 
 

viii 

List of tables 
 
Table 1: Thesis and chapter titles .............................................................................. vii 
Table 2: Contributing participants ............................................................................. 35 
Table 3: Artists and songs included in music portfolios............................................. 37 
Table 4: Song choices used in the first focus group ................................................... 38 
Table 5: Song choices used in the second focus group.............................................. 42 

  



 
 

ix 

List of figures 
 
Figure 1: Stills from 'Blurred Lines' – Depictions of the male gaze ............................ 25 
Figure 2: Examples of music portfolios – Holly and Rory........................................... 36 
Figure 3: Beyoncé at the VMA awards ....................................................................... 50 
Figure 4: Rose's writing exercise on feminism ........................................................... 54 
Figure 5: Stills from ‘Mother’s Daughter’ – Fat woman on chaise longue; person in 
wheelchair .................................................................................................................. 57 
Figure 6: Stills from ‘Mother’s Daughter’ – Breastfeeding menstruation, 
menstruation and scars.............................................................................................. 57 
Figure 7: Still from ‘Mother’s Daughter’ – Vagina dentata ........................................ 58 
Figure 8: Stills from ‘Mother’s Daughter’ – Text as protest....................................... 58 
Figure 9: Images from Ariana Grande's Instagram page to illustrate Elizabeth’s point
 .................................................................................................................................... 70 
Figure 10: Stills from ‘Woman Like Me’ – Compliance .............................................. 74 
Figure 11: Stills from ‘Woman Like Me’ – Contestation ............................................ 74 
Figure 12: Still from ‘Woman like Me’ –  'Chairography' dancing ............................. 75 
Figure 13: Stills from ‘Woman like Me’ – Group being measured, walking along a 
scale; group dancing in the balanced scales .............................................................. 75 
Figure 14: Stills from ‘God is a Woman’ – Women-only recreation of Michelangelo's 
‘The Creation of Adam’ .............................................................................................. 79 
Figure 15: Stills from ‘God is a Woman’ – Breaking the glass ceiling and legs spread
 .................................................................................................................................... 79 
Figure 16: Still from ‘God is a Woman’ – Grande having insults thrown at her by 
physically small men .................................................................................................. 80 
Figure 17: Still from ‘God is a Woman’ – Grande swimming in purple water ........... 81 
Figure 18: Stills from ‘Praying’ – Religion themes ..................................................... 85 
Figure 19: Stills from ‘Praying’ – “Ugly” pigs' heads chasing Kesha; Televisions with 
societal messages ....................................................................................................... 86 
Figure 20: Stills from ‘Nightmare’ – Aggression, blood and female fight club .......... 91 
Figure 21: Stills from ‘Nightmare’ – Beauty standards .............................................. 92 
Figure 22: Still from ‘Nightmare’ – Bloodied teeth .................................................... 93 
Figure 23: Stills from ‘Nightmare’ – Halsey grabbing her crotch ............................... 96 

 



 
 

1 

Chapter 1: 

 

“Power” - An introduction  
 
 

Introduction  
 

In July 2019, I attended a feminist performance called ‘POWER’ with a friend. It was 

described as a tribute to pop group ‘Little Mix’ and featured four young women (just 

like ‘Little Mix’) dancing to Little Mix’ songs and sharing their gendered experiences 

and “emotional feminist rants” with the audience (Basement, 2019, n.p.). After the 

performance, I wrote about my experience of being there. Below is an excerpt from 

my writing: 

 

I feel great after watching that performance! I’d never really been a big fan of 

Little Mix, but because of my interest in feminism and pop music, they were 

on my radar. The songs were awesome, the music was loud and uplifting, and 

the dances were great too. Little Mix’s soundtrack was all about girl power, 

empowerment and lifting other women up and I felt really positive and 

confident afterwards, so clearly it worked! The group performed 

synchronised dance routines too. They weren’t professional dances, more 

like well-choreographed home-made dance moves. They were just up there 

having a great time, dancing to music that made them feel happy and 

connected to being a woman. They reminded me of the dances I made up 

with my friends when I was a kid. Back then, we didn’t care what we looked 

like, it was just fun. We didn’t feel embarrassed that we weren’t any good or 

wondered what those watching would think of us. But then patriarchy got in 

the way. We grew up and patriarchy kicked in and we grew up to reject our 

bodies, fear the threat of judgement from the outside world (especially from 

a man) and we grew out of the days when we’d dance like nobody’s watching. 

The patriarchy does that to us and makes us think little and therefore become 

little.  

 

One of the songs was about stripping and a fifth woman came on stage and 

danced very provocatively with the four main performers, eventually 

stripping down to her undies. My main worry was ‘holy shit, there was an old 

guy in the audience, what is he gonna say, is he gonna be creepy?’ I found 



 
 

2 

myself almost not wanting to look, thinking I was being creepy for watching. 

I kept looking away or at the other dancers instead and I remember thinking, 

‘why are they dancing so provocatively? Why is that necessary? Are they 

being ironic?’ As I reflect on my responses, first about a man watching this 

performance and then about myself watching the performance, I realise how 

much patriarchy is at play. My default assumption about a man watching a 

sexual performance of a woman is that he would be creepy and not able to 

control his sexual urges. As for myself, I felt ashamed and uncomfortable 

watching the performance and was confused about its purpose. But the 

women had every right to perform on that stage in whatever way they 

wanted. By the end, I was so into it, it was really empowering!  

 

It’s funny cause even though I felt so empowered watching them all in what 

felt like such a safe space for women, I kept reflecting on how I’d organised 

to talk to my boyfriend the next morning and how terrified I was of what he 

would say - would he leave me? Think I was too hard to deal with? So, even 

though this performance was empowering for me in this moment, it was 

fleeting. I was still very aware that although this was a safe space, I still had 

to go back out into the patriarchy when I left the room. I found myself wanting 

to stay in that moment, not wanting it to end …   

 

I wanted to start my thesis with this self-reflective piece to locate myself in this 

project and to locate my experience in the broader social context of gendered 

dynamics, popular culture and patriarchy. Although this reflection is deeply personal, 

it raises significant issues about feminism in contemporary society. First, it highlights 

the power of popular culture, and pop music in particular, to draw attention to social 

and political issues. The performance, and my experience and reflections of it, also 

raises ideas – and questions – about what it means to be empowered. This echoes a 

debate in current feminist scholarship that critically examines what empowerment 

looks like, how meaningful it is, and what impact it might have (see hooks, 2010; 

Whippman, 2016). Is empowerment about an intense, yet fleeting moment, as it was 

for me during the performance, or can it be sustained over time, potentially 

generating individual and structural change? Chapter Four will explore this question 

in further depth.  

My reflections also critique patriarchy, the male gaze and my own ambivalent subject 

position in that moment. The performance was constructed as a safe space for 

women, but for me it remained located within a patriarchal system. My writing 

speaks to the importance of women’s spaces and the value of coming together in 

solidarity to share experientially based stories of being strong, smart and powerful 

without undue focus on men. Central to my reflection is the performance of women’s 



 
 

3 

bodies and bodily autonomy: who has the power to decide how and under what 

circumstances women can perform? This question is underpinned by current debates 

among feminists about the politics of gendered sexual practices, in particular, 

between ‘sex positive’ feminists who attempt to challenge discriminatory slut 

shaming practices against women and reframe women’s sexual choices as positive 

(Sollee, 2017) and anti-pornography feminists who argue the case for the abolition 

of the sex industry (Bindel, 2019). This debate, often described as the “contemporary 

feminist sex wars” (Showden, 2016, p. 1), is suggestive of a dichotomous construction 

of these issues with clear oppositional positions about the best way forward. At the 

performance, however, my ambivalence was laid bare as I embodied these 

competing normative ideas about feminism, women and their bodies. I explore these 

debates as they relate to participants further in Chapter Five.  

 

These reflections, and the ambivalent subject position it produced for me, reflect the 

foundation of this thesis. It is here at the intersection of feminism, popular culture, 

and young women that this thesis is located. While some might argue that popular 

culture is somewhat frivolous in the context of so many serious issues faced by 

society today, the role of popular culture should not be underestimated. As discussed 

below, and further in Chapter Two, pop music has the capacity to shape people’s 

lives. We become heavily invested in the artists and music we listen to and grow to 

love, and they have the capacity to shape how we think about the world (Lazar, 

2007). This thesis is concerned with new expressions of feminism in pop music and, 

specifically, how these expressions are perceived by an audience of young women: 

how do young women make sense of self-identified feminist artists and the music 

videos produced by those artists? The research explores the following research 

questions: 

 

• To what extent are young women shaped by pop artists’ engagement with 

feminism and depictions of gendered concerns?1  

• How do popular feminist artists contribute to young women’s understandings 

of feminism and empowerment? 

• How do popular feminist artists contribute to young women’s subjectivities 

as women?  

 
  

 
1 A distinction is made throughout the thesis between ‘feminism’ and ‘gendered concerns’ in 
recognition that not all artists identify as feminist nor are they necessarily viewed as such by 
participants. Indeed, the goal of this project is to bring nuance to young women’s understanding of 
pop music as feminist or not.  



 
 

4 

Introducing the field: The politics of feminism and popular culture 
 

This research brings together two fields: the politics of popular culture, and 

feminism. Many young cisgender heterosexual women do not align themselves with 

feminist ideals, shying away from using or identifying with the term feminism 

(Scharff, 2016; McRobbie, 2009). This is despite high levels of engagement with 

feminist issues and politics (Zucker, 2004). For example, a poll of more than 4000 

women in the United Kingdom (U.K.) found that fewer than one-fifth identified as 

feminist, despite 80 percent of all participants agreeing that sexism is still an issue, 

and that women and men should achieve equality (Fawcett Society, 2016). 

Historically, young women often distanced themselves from feminism due to the 

“overwhelmingly negative” (Zucker, 2004, p. 425) portrayal of feminists in the media. 

Not only were feminists presented as “extreme”, there was also a false conflation of 

feminism with lesbians, thus producing a “perceived threat to heterosexuality” 

(Zucker, 2004, p. 425). This reluctance is still prevalent today. 

 

Research points to several reasons why people might not identify as feminist, in what 

some theorists term feminism’s fourth wave (Curtis, 2018). First, many prominent 

forms of contemporary feminism have become aligned with white, straight, middle-

class women and, as such, fail to speak to working class women and/or women of 

colour (Gen Forward, 2018). Arguably, the perceived exclusionary nature of some 

strands of feminism leads to reticence about identifying with the term and the 

movement. Negative stereotypes of feminists also lead young women to disassociate 

with the term. Curtis (2018) argues that feminists are commonly represented as 

rejecting ‘feminine’ qualities by not wearing make-up, not shaving their legs and 

underarms, and hating men. These sentiments echo findings by Scharff (2016) who 

interviewed 40 young women in Germany and Britain about feminism and found that 

feminists were understood to be “unfeminine, man-hating and lesbian women” (p. 

69). Scharff’s participants expressed fear that if they identified as feminist, they 

would also be viewed in this way. But, as Judith Butler (1992) argues, even in the very 

moment that feminism is being rejected, discourses of gender and sexuality are being 

negotiated, which can bring about societal change. The tension between 

engagement and disengagement in feminist politics is central to this thesis.  

 

Despite these common criticisms of feminism from young women, the feminist 

movement has received a resurgence of interest since the #MeToo movement (Sayej, 

2017). The hashtag went viral in 2017 when actor Alyssa Milano urged her Twitter 

followers to reply ‘me too’ if they had also been sexually assaulted. #MeToo quickly 

became a global hashtag movement drawing attention to violence against women, 

changing the narrative of victim-blaming and criminalising perpetrators of gender-

based violence (Hebert, 2018; Zacharek et al., 2017). In the first 24 hours alone, the 



 
 

5 

hashtag was tweeted more than 500,000 times and posted on Facebook by more 

than 4.7 million people, including numerous celebrities (Hebert, 2018). The 

movement highlighted the particularly fraught sexist industries of film, television and 

music as high-profile and powerful men, including Harvey Weinstein, were 

criminalised for sexual harassment (BBC, 2020). Issues of gender-based violence, 

sexual assault and harassment, and sex-based discrimination could no longer be 

ignored. One of the reasons for the groundswell of attention #MeToo received was 

its use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter. New digital spaces (and 

hashtag feminism) have a long reach, making feminist issues more accessible to a 

broader audience of (young) women. It is in the context of feminism’s engagement 

with digital and social media platforms, alongside the celebrity culture that lends 

weight to the movement, that this research takes place.  

 

Understanding popular culture is important for understanding society, because 

“culture is the constant process of producing meanings of and from our social 

experience, and such meanings necessarily produce a social identity for the people 

involved” (Fiske, 2006, p. 118). Pop artists and their music are an important subset 

of popular culture. An appreciation of a particular genre of music can distinguish us 

from others and provide a contextual category for consumers to “structure their 

tastes, preferences, and identities” (Askin & Mauskapf, 2018, p. 4: see also Bourdieu, 

1993). But pop music can also serve a political agenda, offering a powerful 

commentary on the “connection between music, society and power” (Winters, 2016, 

p. 112). Numerous contemporary pop music artists, including Beyoncé, Halsey and 

Little Mix, for example, aim to advance a feminist cause through their music, placing 

feminism at the centre of their artist brand by identifying as feminist in live 

performances, music videos and on social media.  

 

This embrace of feminism amongst pop musicians is part of a broader “popular 

feminist appropriation” (McRobbie, 2008, p. 533) in television, magazines and 

consumer culture. Some have argued that pop music celebrities have simply 

harnessed, or indeed leveraged, feminism in response to its increasing popularity. 

Hamad and Taylor (2015), for example, argue that pop artists do not advance a 

feminist cause, but instead simply offer a “glib celebrity appropriation of the term” 

(p. 124). Despite such criticisms, the intersection of feminism and popular culture has 

undoubtedly contributed to its broadening appeal, producing a more palatable form 

of feminism (see Benedictis et al., 2019). Indeed, this heightened accessibility has 

meant that people’s voices can be shared, listened to and celebrated in new and 

widespread ways. This trend raises questions as to how young women make sense 

of feminism in the context of the pop music they are exposed to, especially given that 

the “audience plays an active role in accepting, negotiating, or opposing the 



 
 

6 

intended/dominant meanings of cultural products, such as artists, songs, and videos” 

(Lieb, 2018, p. 24). 

 

The impact of feminism’s heightened accessibility is important to explore in relation 

to young women. Although some artists might intend to portray a feminist message 

of empowerment, women’s autonomy over their bodies, and positive messages of 

sexuality, it is less clear how these messages are received and embraced. As 

discussed above, young women often eschew the label ‘feminist’, the term giving rise 

to “negative, affect-laden” responses (Scharff, 2016, p.1). This presents a paradox: at 

the same time as feminist ideas have become more visible in young women’s 

everyday worlds, there is reluctance to embrace the label ‘feminist’. This research 

seeks to address the resulting tension and critically examine the complexity of the 

contemporary feminist movement as young women grapple with its meaning. To 

explore these questions, I carried out qualitative research with six Auckland-based 

women aged between 19 and 26, examining their negotiation of feminism, gender 

and pop music. Participants created reflexive music portfolios and took part in two 

focus groups to reflect on the subjective meanings they held about the music that 

they identified as feminist in orientation or to have engaged in gendered concerns. 

The research methodology is discussed in detail in Chapter Three. 

 

Roadmap of the thesis 
 

This introductory chapter has sought to outline the genesis of the project, including 

my positionality as a young woman carrying out research in this field. It has outlined 

the broad aims of the research and located these aims within feminism and popular 

culture, with a particular emphasis on pop music. The following chapter (Chapter 

Two) offers a review of the scholarship and examines these fields more closely. It 

begins with an historical review of feminism, before turning to the feminist literature, 

centring on three key themes: patriarchy and the oppression of women; 

objectification and sexualisation of women; and empowerment. The second part of 

the chapter critically examines the role of popular culture with a particular focus on 

pop music and its relationship with gender, feminism and young women. 

 

Chapter Three outlines the methodology and methods employed in this research. 

The chapter is divided into two parts. The first discusses the feminist methodological 

approach adopted in the study, while the second describes how the research was 

carried out. Two distinct methods, a participant-created ‘music portfolio’, and a 

series of focus groups, are outlined, each designed to reveal how participants make 

meaning from the pop music they are exposed to and, more specifically, how they 

connect with feminism and concerns about gender and gender equality as they are 

performed in contemporary pop music. The chapter describes how various sources 



 
 

7 

of data were analysed before concluding with a discussion of the ethical challenges 

that were negotiated throughout the project.  

 

Chapters Four and Five comprise the findings chapters. Chapter Four specifically 

explores participants’ understandings of contemporary feminism vis à vis the music 

industry. The chapter argues that participants’ perceptions of feminism are complex 

and often result in ambivalent subject positions. Their views of empowerment are 

especially nuanced. While empowerment is a primary way that feminism materialises 

for participants, it was largely experienced as an internal and affective, emotionally 

laden response to the music videos we watched rather than an external, politically 

oriented stance capable of creating social change. 

 

Chapter Five argues that young women rely on dichotomous constructions of gender, 

especially when trying to make sense of the performance of women’s bodies in pop 

music videos. Two dichotomies were constructed by participants. First, participants 

constructed a moral code underpinned by their perception of what they think of as 

(unacceptably) sexual and (acceptably) sensual performances, revealing their 

ambivalence about performers being overtly sexual. A second dichotomy reveals a 

tension between vulnerability and aggression, characteristics that have long been 

aligned with femininity and masculinity, respectively. While ‘vulnerable’ 

performances were deemed acceptable expressions of femininity and feminism, 

‘aggressive’ performances were not. Again, these ideas were underpinned by a moral 

code that reflected normative and binary constructions of gender.  

 

Chapter Six provides concluding comments to the research. The chapter begins by 

briefly summarising the project and highlighting its key contributions to feminist 

scholarship before homing in on the ambivalent subjectivities revealed in this 

research. I begin with my own ambivalent subject position as a young feminist 

researcher, before turning to participants’ subjectivity as they make sense of 

feminism in a contemporary context. The chapter finishes by considering the 

ambivalent future of feminism as a result of this research.  



 
 

8 

Chapter 2: 

 

“Come on little lady, give us a smile” - 

Mapping the terrain of feminism and 

popular culture  
 
 

Introduction 
 

Since the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017, women are increasingly protesting 

gender-based injustices and speaking out about gendered inequalities; feminism is 

on the rise. Debate and analysis of feminist and gender issues appears to have more 

media coverage than ever before, and feminist texts such as Clementine Ford’s 

(2016) ‘Fight Like a Girl’ and Roxanne Gay’s (2014a) ‘Bad Feminist’ have found 

popular success. Texts such as these have helped to develop new language for 

discussing feminist issues, calling out sexism and gender-based discrimination, and 

have introduced feminism to a broader young audience. Celebrity culture has also 

played an important role in the rise of contemporary feminism with many pop artists 

embracing feminist discourse in their song lyrics, feminist representation in their 

music videos and identifying as feminist in public interviews. The intersection of 

feminism and popular culture is certainly not new (see, for example, Hollows & 

Moseley, 2005). Girl bands such as the Spice Girls, and individual artists such as Helen 

Reddy in the 1970s, and Cyndi Lauper and Madonna in the 1980s and 1990s, have all 

advanced a woman-centred, if not feminist, message through their music. But the 

current feminist social milieu creates new articulations of feminism through digital 

and social media, which has amplified the reach and celebrity of popular artists.   

 

The purpose of this chapter is to bring together two fields: feminist scholarship and 

popular culture studies. The chapter begins with an historical account of feminism to 

better understand the relevance of feminism in a contemporary context, including 

the points of commonality with and departure from earlier articulations of feminism. 

Three key feminist issues are discussed: patriarchy and oppression; sexualisation and 

objectification of women; and notions of empowerment. The chapter then explores 

music as a form of popular culture with a particular focus on the intersection of music 

and feminism. Here, I offer critical commentary on common representations of 

women in the industry and raise questions about the capacity of pop music to 



 
 

9 

embrace and advance a feminist agenda. I also respond to a gap in the current 

scholarship by considering how feminist popular culture shapes young women’s 

understandings of feminism.   

 

Relevance of feminism in contemporary society 
 
To aid understanding of the relevance of feminism in the contemporary context, it is 

useful to consider its historical development. It has been argued that there are four 

distinct waves of feminism (Wrye, 2009), which can be a helpful way to categorise 

discrete historical feminist moments as well as understand the “relationships and 

competing tensions between different feminist ideologies” (Evans, 2016, p. 412). It 

should be noted, however, that some scholars are less enamoured with the wave 

metaphor, arguing that it falsely suggests that each wave represents a discrete 

period of time (Rivers, 2017; Offen, 2000). These critics argue that the metaphor fails 

to capture overlapping feminist themes that have emerged across time and 

reinforces the idea that little feminist work took place between those waves (Offen, 

2000). Recognising this critique, I add nuance to the broad picture I paint of the 

‘waves’ of feminism by then offering a thematic account of these periods, moving 

beyond temporal distinctions to better capture the way these themes sometimes lay 

dormant and sometimes erupt at different moments (Offen, 2000). Undoubtedly, 

feminism is a contentious movement with a complex history. 

 

“A king is always a king—and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, 

ever stand between them and rational converse” (Wollstonecraft, 1792). So wrote 

Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792, drawing critical attention to the assumed natural 

authority and superiority of men over women. However, the first wave of feminism 

did not emerge until the 19th century, largely through the suffragette movement that 

campaigned for women’s right to vote (Wrye, 2009). But Wollstonecraft’s writing on 

the importance of women’s right to be educated, able to support herself financially, 

and be viewed as fully human, was influential in shaping the rise of this first wave. 

Demands for women’s economic autonomy was certainly a feature, arising from the 

dependence of middle-class women on their male partners (or other male family 

members). Another concern, although of less prominence, was access to higher 

education for women and a focus on familial issues, such as the “legal position of 

married women [and] marital violence” (Hannam, 2012, p. 19). These issues also 

played out in the local context with Kate Shephard and Meri Mangakāhia, among 

others, campaigning for women's suffrage in New Zealand (Coleman, 2020). 

 

Betty Friedman’s ground-breaking book, ‘The Feminine Mystique’ (1963) is widely 

credited with initiating second-wave feminism. Her work sheds light on suburban 

domestic life, and the false idea that women’s role in society is to serve men as 



 
 

10 

(house)wives and mothers. The central catchcry of second wave feminism, ‘the 

personal is political’ (Millett, 1970), articulated the position that personal 

experiences, including what happens within the private sphere of the home, is always 

a reflection of larger social and political structures. There was increased emphasis on 

family life at this time (distribution of labour, domestic violence, marital rape and 

reproductive rights, for example) alongside questioning the limited value placed on 

women and women’s role in society. Women were valued primarily for their 

reproductive and mothering roles, roles that made women reliant on the men they 

loved (Firestone, 1970) and rendered them “eunuchs”, devoid of personal or political 

power (Greer, 1971, book title). As de Beauvoir wrote in her 1949 seminal text ‘The 

Second Sex’ (1974), a “woman has ovaries, a uterus; these peculiarities imprison her 

in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature” (p. xvii). 

Second wave feminists’ critique of the way society was organised led to a “major 

restructuring of institutions worldwide” (Nicholson, 1997, p. 1), including the 

workplace and the family, in order to challenge gender discrimination and 

oppression.  

 

So far, I have been using the word gender unproblematically, but it was during this 

period in feminism’s history that an important distinction was made between sex as 

biology and gender as a position of the mind (Money, 1955). In other words, it was 

assumed that sex was biologically determined while gender was self-ascribed and 

could therefore differ from sex at birth (Stoller, 1968; see also Fausto-Sterling, 2000). 

This work reflects a gender binary in which two discrete categories of sex - female 

and male - are assumed to exist. This was and is problematic in that first, it assumes 

that every individual “clearly, easily, and permanently” (Lips, 2019, p. 16) fits into one 

or other pole of the binary, and second, that the binary can readily be mapped onto 

discrete social constructions of femininity and masculinity thus failing to account for 

the “fluidity and multiplicity” of gender (Joel et al, 2014, p. 291).   

 

One of the primary ways that we are socialised into gender and gender roles is 

through the performance of gender in everyday life – how we ‘do’ gender (West & 

Zimmerman, 1987) in ways the reflect “culturally mediated expectations and roles 

associated with masculinity and femininity” (Lips, 2019, p. 2). The sex/gender 

distinction has been critiqued further, with Judith Butler (1990), for example, arguing 

that both sex and gender are performative in so far as one gives rise to the other. 

Indeed, Butler (1988) argues that gender is “constituted through time … through a 

stylized repetition of acts”: the “mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, 

and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self” 

(p. 519, my emphasis). As Lips (2019) argues, sex and gender are never truly distinct 

but are “intertwined” (p. 2). These challenges result in new terms for conceptualising 

gender in ways that better account for a gender spectrum such as “genderfluid, 



 
 

11 

gender nonconforming, gender-queer, agender, bi-gender, and pangender” (Lips, 

2019, p. 15). 

 

These debates were important to third wave feminism, which took place in the 1980s 

and 1990s and fought for women to ‘have it all’— a career, sexual freedom and 

motherhood (Wrye, 2009). It responded to an ever-changing “economic, political and 

cultural” (Budgeon, 2011, p. 279) landscape that impacted gendered subjectivities, 

roles and norms, including the rejection of “the category of women”, debates 

initiated by feminists of colour that shattered the idea of a shared women's 

experience or identity (Snyder, 2008, p. 183; see also Butler, 1990). The body became 

a key theme of third wave feminism, with attention paid to women’s sexuality and 

desire, including the call that women should use “our tits and hips and lips [as] power 

tools” (Karp & Stoller, 1999, p. 7; see also Mann & Huffman, 2005; Coleman, 2009), 

and a site for identity expression. While some rallied around women’s sexuality, 

feminist punk bands emerged with the ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement (Monem, 2007), which 

saw women performing in ways that challenged traditional gender stereotypes 

(Wrye, 2009; Wald & Gottlieb, 1994; see also Nguyen, 2012 for a postcolonial analysis 

of the movement). It was during the third wave of feminism that “theories of 

postcoloniality, queer sexuality, transgenderism and transsexuality, and disability 

activism” became part of feminist discourse (Wrye, 2009, p. 185), as well as increased 

awareness of the ways marginalised categories of difference intersect to amplify 

oppression (Crenshaw, 1991). The movement, however, remained largely white and 

faced considerable critique for its exclusion of women of colour (hooks, 1984).  

 

Indeed, first, second and third waves of feminism were all critiqued for being 

exclusionary. First and second waves of feminism, in particular, were charged with 

essentialising women’s experiences (hooks, 1984; Davies, 2018) and privileging the 

lived realities and interests of “white, middle class, heterosexual women” (Gamble, 

2001, pp. 32-33; see also Linder, 2011; Thompson, 2001; Hannam, 2012). At the end 

of the nineteenth century, some women advocated against women of colour having 

access to the ballot box in order for white women to receive the right to vote (Allen 

& Allen, 1974; Newman, 1999), whilst others used racially based arguments of 

eugenics to minimise the number of women of colour who could reproduce (Roberts, 

1998; Silliman et al., 2004). And in the 1970s, black feminist Audre Lorde (1979) was 

one of many who called out the privileging of white women’s experiences at the time 

(see also hooks, 1984; Breines, 2002), charging radical feminist Mary Daly with 

essentialising women’s experience and positioning women of colour as ‘Other’ in her 

influential book ‘Gyn/Ecology’ (Daly, 1978). This is not to say that women of colour 

didn’t mobilise to politically advance their gender, class and race-based rights. 

However, the successes of women of colour during this time have often been 

disregarded or minimised in the telling of feminist history, denying racism in the 



 
 

12 

feminist movement and therefore laying a “foundation for continued exclusion in 

mainstream feminism” (Linder, 2011, p. 5), including the exclusion of sexual 

minorities (Kulick, 2008). Although third wave feminism intended to create a 

“positively difference-inclusive project” (Davies, 2018, p. 46), it also demonstrated 

numerous exclusionary practices. Women of colour were expected to speak to only 

one identity, their gender, and thus separate their racial identity from their gendered 

identity. This expectation failed to account for the ways in which race, class and 

gender intersect to compound experiences of discrimination and oppression (see 

Crenshaw, 1991 for a discussion of intersectionality; see also Hurtado, 1989) and 

placed the burden of responsibility on women of colour to ensure appropriate 

representation that was often deemed tokenistic. Women of colour were expected 

to be the voice of the collective, ignoring the multiplicity of human experience and 

homogenising marginalised experience, leading to further marginalisation of women 

of colour (McDonald, 2003; Kim, 2001; Linder, 2011). At the centre of this critique is 

a failure of the feminist movement to appropriately interrogate power and privilege, 

both within society and the movement itself, leading to a long history of “exclusion 

and isolation” (Linder, 2011, p. 6).  

 

Contemporary feminism, sometimes described as fourth wave feminism, emerged in 

the 21st century (Wyre, 2009). There is considerable disagreement on whether the 

current climate does in fact represent a different feminist epoch (Shiva & Kharazmi, 

2019), given shared features with earlier waves such as autonomy/choice and agency 

(Rivers, 2017). The current feminist period is set apart, however, for several reasons. 

First, female empowerment and the assertion that women should be able to make 

their own choices “outside the constraints of an overtly patriarchal society” (Rivers, 

2017, p. 25) has emerged as a central tenet of feminism, materialising as a woman’s 

choice to determine how she should look, who she can love, including who she can 

sleep with, and how she makes her money. Second, fourth wave feminism leverages 

new digital spaces to extend its reach to new audiences, normalising, disseminating, 

and making feminist discourse more accessible (Hebert, 2018; Baer, 2016; Looft, 

2017). “Social media-based feminist activism” (Rivers, 2017, p, 4), for example, gave 

rise to hashtag feminism and the global #MeToo movement, centring issues of 

gender-based (sexual) violence and demanding a seismic shift in the treatment of 

women and negotiations of consent (see Friedman & Valenti, 2008). 

 

The sex positivity movement has also provided new articulations of women’s desire 

and sexuality (Ford, 2016) as well as new negotiations of consent (Friedman & 

Valenti, 2008). This movement seeks to address and correct damaging and shaming 

practices towards women and girls that position them as ‘less-than’. As pointed out 

by Adichie (2019):   

 



 
 

13 

We make [girls] feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of 

something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot see they have 

desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to 

be women who cannot say what they truly think, and they grow up -- and this 

is the worst thing we did to girls -- they grow up to be women who have 

turned pretence into an art form. (n.p.) 

 

Inclusive spaces that better account for queer and trans communities, as well as 

celebrating body diversity (different body shapes, sizes, and abilities, for example) 

(Sollee, 2015) is the third feature of fourth wave feminism. This has given rise to the 

fat acceptance movement (Friedman et., 2019) and the ‘body-positivity’ movement, 

which advocates the acceptance of all bodies regardless of physical ability, size, 

gender, race, or appearance (Taylor, 2018).  

 

Popular culture has manifested as a key platform for the contemporary feminist 

agenda (Farris & Rottenberg, 2017). Celebrities have carved out a space in feminist 

discourse as music ‘megastars’ such as Beyoncé, Little Mix and Miley Cyrus 

incorporate feminist issues into their music and use their public platforms to advance 

feminist issues. Popular television series tackle feminist issues directly such as ‘The 

Handmaid’s Tale’, and the film ‘Suffragette’. In the context of populist politics, the 

feminist agenda has also become a political tool with which many liberal politicians 

seek to align themselves; for example, former U.S. President, Barack Obama, 

declared himself feminist in a 2016 speech when he stated: “this is an extraordinary 

time to be a woman … And I say that not just as President but also as a feminist” 

(Obama, 2016, n.p.). Popular feminist text also has considerable weight in 

contemporary feminism. “Media literate” feminist, Roxanne Gay (2014a, p. 79) 

stresses the importance of popular culture for understanding gender and feminism. 

In reflecting on the connection between the depiction of female characters in 

television and women in real life, Gay (2014a) points out that women are always 

“call[ed] upon to perform their gender, whether through how they present 

themselves and their sexuality, how they behave, and how they conform (or don’t) 

to society’s expectations for women” (p. 81; see also Butler, 1990).  

 

Exclusionary politics remain, however, in this contemporary feminist moment. 

Although the (relative) accessibility of online digital spaces makes the movement 

largely inclusive, as well as its popularisation through celebrity platform, it has faced 

considerable critique for its elite and individualist orientation (Rivers, 2017; hooks, 

2010). By promoting the “achievements” and “lifestyles” of successful women, the 

movement perpetuates narrow and normative constructions of womanhood, 

promoting the idea that women must adhere to, or at least aspire to, an 

“individualized, neoliberal, and capitalist vision of ‘success’” (Rivers, 2017, p. 25). 



 
 

14 

Feminism and neoliberal capitalism is an uneasy marriage, elevating “consumption 

as a strategy” to cure gendered social issues (Tasker & Negra, 2007, p. 2). This 

discourse feeds into a “personal responsibility” narrative of feminism (Rivers, 2017, 

p. 25) which dilutes the collective and activist nature of feminism and limits its 

transformative capacity, resulting in a “toothless” deradicalised feminism (Crispin, 

2017b, n.p.). Indeed, pop artists as feminist icons can be viewed as problematic and 

hindering advances towards gender equality because the male-dominated music 

industry thrives on and leverages a “youthful and highly sexualized image of 

femininity” (Rivers, 2017, p. 25). Contemporary expressions of feminism raise 

questions, including whether feminism is even necessary in the contemporary 

context.  

 

Postfeminism advances the idea that feminism is no longer necessary (Banet-Weiser 

et al., 2019; McRobbie, 2007) because the larger structural goals of equality have 

(arguably) already been achieved. This proposition leads to a logical, but I would 

argue, specious conclusion that if inequalities do exist still, they are not due to 

unequal gendered relations, but “natural differences and/or women’s own choices” 

(Banet-Weiser et el., 2019, p. 5); women must simply overcome what once held them 

back – “passivity, silence, physical weakness, sexual objectification [and] poor body 

image” (James, 2017, p. 29; see also Whitefield-Madrano, 2016). Postfeminism is less 

concerned with overcoming the structures that produce inequalities for women, and 

more concerned with an individualised, neoliberal agenda that places the work of 

equality in women’s hands. But the term postfeminism is far from clear-cut. 

 

Hall and Rodriguez (2003) identified four themes that they argue gave rise to the 

postfeminist period since its emergence in the 1980s and 1990s. First, there was 

decreased public support for feminism during these decades; second, “Antifeminist” 

discourse (p. 879) became increasingly common; third, feminism was thought to 

have lost its relevance as young women felt the goals of feminism had been achieved, 

at the same time as older feminists felt they had yet to see equality; and fourth, a 

“no, but” rhetoric emerged whereby young women in particular, disassociated from 

the feminist label whilst still supporting broadly feminist goals, such as gender 

inequality and reproductive rights.  

 

There is some disagreement, however, about what postfeminism is (Gill, 2007a), 

whether we are in a postfeminist era (Gill, 2016), and whether it is an “historical 

period in feminist thought and action as well as an epistemological break or backlash 

against certain feminist ideas and politics” (Riley, et al, 2017, p. 2). Rosalind Gill 

(2007a) put forward a conceptualisation of postfeminism that has proved fruitful. 

She suggested that postfeminism is a sensibility that is:  

 



 
 

15 

made up of a number of interrelated themes. These include the notion that 

femininity is a bodily property; the shift from objectification to 

subjectification; an emphasis upon self-surveillance, monitoring in self-

discipline; a focus on individualism, choice and empowerment; the 

dominance of a makeover paradigm; and a resurgence of ideas about natural 

sexual difference. (p. 147; see also Gill, 2007b) 

 

Riley et al. (2017) describe a postfeminist sensibility as a “noncoherent set of ideas 

about femininity, embodiment and empowerment” (Riley et al., 2017, p. 1), 

necessarily noncoherent to reflect the shift away from “a fixed ideology and towards 

a more fluid, less coherent, affective set of ideas about feminism” (p. 3). Rather than 

being critical of the complexity and contradiction that a postfeminist sensibility 

raises, Riley et al. (2017) argue that these features enable its applicability to a range 

of disciplines that is useful for analysing contradictory subjectivities. That said, the 

authors have further interrogated Gill’s framework, considering digital 

transformations and new technologies that have generated new ways of thinking 

about feminism, as well as updating some of Gill’s conceptualisations for the 

contemporary context. For example, Riley et al. (2017) reframe women’s self-

sexualisation as an agentic practice; consider the ways that bodily modification is 

“psychologised” (p. 6), paying attention to the role of the mind in shaping the way 

the body is worked on; reconsider the make-over paradigm as potentially 

celebratory, empowering and liberating; and consider the role of consumption 

practices in reinvigorating traditional femininities. A postfeminist sensibility 

produces feminine subject positions that encourages women to work on themselves, 

in order to be rewarded and “rendered intelligible” through their alignment with the 

norms of “ideal femininity” (Riley et al., 2017, p. 3). The authors also draw attention 

to new feminist activist practices, as well as highlighting the importance of 

intersectional and transnational understandings of postfeminism, points that they 

argue are under-developed in Gills’ original treatise. Consideration of these 

subjectivities is important to ensure the ongoing relevance and capacity of 

postfeminism for illuminating contemporary feminism in a diversity of contexts.  

 

Popular culture occupies an ambivalent space in postfeminism. While postfeminism 

posits that feminism is no longer necessary, women are constructed as “self-made, 

savvy, empowered consumers” (Riley et al., 2017, p. 3), using ‘girl power’ rhetoric to 

draw attention to the way that women have taken back control of their bodies and 

constructed new expressions of femininity. In their discussion of postfeminism, Riley 

et al. (2019a), for example, discuss the impact of 1990s girl pop band, the ‘Spice Girls’, 

who exemplified a “self-assured and self-determined femininity – one that was girly 

and assertive” (p. 2), simultaneously claiming a feminine sexuality at the same time 

as asserting what they ‘really really want’. Such portrayals were markedly different 



 
 

16 

from earlier iterations of feminist discourse: “the globe seemed transformed with 

women unprecedentedly sexually agentic, confident and publicly active” (Riley, 

2019a, p. 2). But these shifts in feminist discourse are underpinned by capitalism with 

notions of ‘girlhood’, girl power and empowerment being used to sell goods to young 

girls and women (McRobbie, 2008). Businesses peddle the belief that “freedom [for 

women] has now been won [so the] politics of feminist struggles are no longer 

needed” as gender equality has been attained (McRobbie, 2008, p. 533).  

 

Key themes in contemporary feminism 
 

This section examines three key themes that emerge within and across these various 

waves of feminism: patriarchy and oppression; sexualisation and objectification of 

women; and empowerment.  

 

‘Grab ‘em by the patriarchy’: Patriarchy and the oppression of women 
 
Challenging the patriarchal system that oppresses women has been and still is a key 

feminist goal. The patriarchy perpetuates the oppression of women, feeding into a 

system of male supremacy and domination (Thompson, 2001). bell hooks (2010), an 

influential black feminist, defines patriarchy as a: 

 

political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, 

superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and 

endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain 

that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and 

violence. (p. 1) 

 

Ultimately, patriarchy speaks to the overriding masculine structure that oppresses 

women and gender minorities. Feminist theorist Adrienne Rich pays particular focus 

on women’s bodies as a site of patriarchy’s control; “The woman's body is the terrain 

on which patriarchy is erected” (Rich, 1976, p. 55). Although feminism has not always 

explicitly focused on combatting patriarchy and the structures that perpetuate the 

oppression of women, earlier waves attempted to validate women’s place in society 

by highlighting their reproductive roles as well as their (non-paid) domestic labour 

(de Beauvoir, 1974), thus stressing their productive contribution to society. Radical 

feminists of the 1960s and 1970s saw male supremacy as a key symptom of 

patriarchy and a “primary form of social domination” over women (Thompson, 2001, 

p. 4). However, patriarchy has sometimes been seen as a war cry of out-dated, bitter 

and angry feminists who want to take men down (see Benn, 2013), associated with 

“an iron-spined feminist of the old school, or the kind of ossified leftist who 

complained bitterly about the evils of capitalism” (Higgins, 2018, n.p.). While some, 



 
 

17 

such as Higgins (2018) still critique the term as “oversimplifications of a more 

complex reality” (n.p.), the rise of the #MeToo movement has helped the catch cry 

of patriarchy re-emerge in contemporary feminism. 

 

The language of patriarchy has made a resurgence in contemporary feminism; it has 

been re-harnessed, re-politicised and re-popularised. Patriarchy provides a language 

for articulating the individual, social and structural connections between seemingly 

disparate issues including the gendered division of labour and the gendered wage 

gap, domestic violence and a rape culture that is perpetuated by the objectification 

and sexualisation of women. It reveals an:  

 

invisible mechanism that connects a host of seemingly isolated and disparate 

events, intertwining the experience of women of vastly different 

backgrounds, race and culture, and ranging in force from the trivial and 

personal to the serious and geopolitical. (Higgins, 2018. n.p.) 

 

Patriarchy is everywhere. The machinations of patriarchy are embedded within and 

function through the law and the state (Brown, 1992), through the family (Macé, 

2018) and through the paid and unpaid labour market (Davies et al., 2017). But it also 

operates in not so obvious ways. Patriarchy is perpetuated and normalised through 

numerous cultural pillars of society, such as the education system (Marshall et al., 

2017), religion (Giorgi & Palmisano, 2020), literature (Fawole, 2018) and popular 

culture (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Wood, 2019). Patriarchy also possesses shapeshifter 

qualities, constantly recreating its meaning and the ways in which it manifests, so the 

social forces behind it shift across time and in different cultural contexts. Patriarchy 

is normalised and naturalised, such that it is at once hyper-visible and yet erased 

from view. It is a social structure that is almost impossible to reject; it is too easy to 

become complicit and perpetuate its authority. Only the lucky few thrive in a 

patriarchal society. Indeed, as hooks (2010) asserted, patriarchy is good for no-one. 

But while a patriarchal system might not be good for men or women, it is women as 

a group who remain oppressed, marginalised, excluded and discriminated against. 

One of the primary vehicles of women’s oppression is the sexualisation and 

objectification of women.  

 

Sexualisation and objectification: Violence, harassment and body autonomy 
 

The sexualisation and objectification of women is a key feature of patriarchy and an 

important feminist issue (Gill, 2008). The sexual objectification of women refers to 

“women’s bodies [being] treated as objects for the sexual pleasure of men” (Smolak 

& Murnen, 2011, p. 53) and can be seen in film, television and music, as well as 

clothing for young women (Smolak & Murnen, 2011; Levin & Kilbourne, 2008). The 



 
 

18 

ubiquity of material depicting the sexualisation of women makes it difficult to ignore, 

especially as images become more and more overt in their objectification, such as 

depictions of rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence (Moraes et al., 2020). 

Objectification, more specifically, refers to: 

 

the practice of perceiving a person as an object that solely exists to appeal to 

the viewer's sexual desires. This is dehumanizing because a person is looked 

at as an object instead of a complex human being. Sexual objectification 

creates a relationship based upon power. The viewer is fully human. The 

person who is objectified is seen by the viewer as a something, not a 

someone, whose only purpose is pleasing the viewer. The position of the one 

objectified has no power. Usually, a man is thought to be the objectifier, and 

a woman is seen as the object. (Butts, 2019, n.p., my emphasis)  

 

The sexualisation and objectification of women go hand in hand (Smolak & Murnen, 

2011) and are so entrenched they have become social norms (Smolak & Murnen, 

2011). They work to perpetuate the idea that women’s value is solely based on 

physical and sexual appearance (Liss et al., 2011; Barnett et al., 2018; Fredrickson & 

Roberts, 1997; Moradi & Huang, 2008) and they normalise hierarchical gendered 

relations in which men have social control over women and their sexuality (Gill & 

Orgad, 2018). Drawing attention to how sexualisation and objectification works as 

the result of patriarchal oppression and male dominance (Gill, 2008; Mercurio & 

Landry, 2008) is an important feature of contemporary feminism, especially in light 

of the #MeToo movement (Gill & Orgad, 2018).  

 

Sexualising and objectifying practices can lead to women conforming to sexualised 

expectations, with women (wittingly or unwittingly) participating in their own self-

sexualisation and self-objectification (Ramsey & Horan, 2018; Smolak & Murnen, 

2011; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Self-objectification occurs when people “see 

themselves from a third person perspective, value their bodies primarily for how they 

look, and present themselves in a sexualised manner as objects to be used” (Ramsey 

& Horan, 2018, p. 85). It facilitates the idea that women’s engagement in their own 

sexualisation has promises and benefits: first, that they will appeal more to men, 

which can lead to “financial stability and personal safety” (Smolak & Murnen, 2011, 

p. 54); and second, that it will lead to more success in all areas of life. Therefore, 

there are rewards for sexualisation, and relatedly, fewer rewards for women who are 

not complicit in their own sexualisation. 

 

Self-sexualisation is complicated. Contemporary feminist discourse embraces ideas 

of female autonomy and sexuality (Wrye, 2009). In support of this view, many ‘self-

sexualisers’ report that they value or enjoy being sexualised because it affirms their 



 
 

19 

self-worth (Choi & DeLong, 2019). But it is important to note, of course, that this 

occurs “only if their appearance conforms to narrowly defined standards” (Choi & 

DeLong, 2019, p. 1356), suggesting that it is possible that this positive self-view could 

arise from a “sense of false empowerment” (Choi & DeLong, 2019, p. 1356; see also 

Liss et al., 2011). The sense of power attained still feels real, however; while some 

women might participate in their own sexualisation, they understand it as a source 

of power that flips the script on men who assume the upper hand. Haug (1987) 

argues that girls and young women engage in “body projects” in order to present 

themselves in sexualised ways, including shaving, getting one’s hair done, or clothing 

practices. These practices reveal that “women are not only objects of male desire: 

they themselves play a part in their creation as such” (Haug, 1987, p. 131). However, 

I suggest that Haug misses the (feminist) point. It might be true that young women 

engage in practices to appear more sexual, and possibly sexually available, but these 

practices are themselves part of a patriarchal system that socialises girls and young 

women into self-sexualisation. Importantly, what Haug fails to account for is the 

profound negative impact that objectification and sexualisation — including that 

which is self-directed — can have on people, resulting in “shame, depression, 

anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, sexual dysfunction, reduced sexual agency, and 

increased sexual victimisation” (Ramsey & Horan, 2018, p. 86; see also Moradi & 

Huang, 2008). Feminists, such as Benn (2013), argue that the complicity of women in 

their own sexualisation and potential exploitation contributes to the idea that girls’ 

and women’s primary role and goal is to be a sex object for the gratification of men, 

as well as perpetuating a patriarchal system.  

 

The tension between these two positions of women’s self-sexualisation as 

empowering or perpetuating the patriarchal system can lead to a ‘calling out’ of 

those who self-sexualise, especially online. Benn (2013) argues that online platforms 

and social media are not the best site for raising and responding to feminist issues 

because the kinds of response offered often fails to examine the patriarchal 

“structural inequality” (p. 225) that produces sexualisation and oppression in the first 

instance. Specifically, Benn warns that fourth wave feminism must not “sideline the 

intractable problem of structural inequality as a dreary or irrelevant struggle of the 

past or the concern only of the disappointed older woman” (p. 225). Instead, Benn 

argues that we should harness fourth wave feminism’s ability to reignite these ‘age-

old’ feminist issues and create new alliances that make feminism more accessible to 

others, including older, working-class and trans women. This, in turn, could lead to 

the movement’s capacity to tackle a wider range of issues due to the greater diversity 

of voices and representation. These contemporary debates about women’s bodily 

autonomy, and the representation of women’s bodies, including how they are 

represented in popular culture, are central to this thesis, raising questions about 

heteronormative constructions of femininity and the performance of the female 



 
 

20 

body. While popular discourse suggests women are free to wear what they like, do 

what they like and use their bodies as they please, many women also experience 

extreme backlash when they do. An example of this is slut shaming, the “act of 

humiliating a woman based on presumed sexual behaviour and appearance, 

regardless of whether or not she is sexually active” (Papp et al., 2017, p. 240). While 

men can experience slut shaming, it is primarily an insult directed toward women 

and girls as a form of “social and sexual control” (p. 241); being called a ‘slut’ implies 

the “target lacks value and morality” (p. 240). Slut-shaming remains a key symptom 

of a patriarchal society of sexualisation and objectification. 

 

‘My body, my choice’ has long been a catchcry of the feminist movement, and a 

women’s right to body autonomy and choice is central to these debates (Walter, 

2008). It is a woman’s right to determine clothing she wants to wear, her sexual 

practices, her reproductive rights, including the right to legal and safe abortion 

(Wrye, 2009), and for her body not to be treated as a sex object. These debates are 

particularly relevant to the pop music industry and will be explored in Chapters Four 

and Five.  

 

Empowerment  
 

Empowerment is another theme that is important to consider in the context of this 

thesis, given it is often described as a feature of contemporary and celebrity 

feminism. There are two competing (but arguably interconnected) ideas, however, 

about the meaning of empowerment, which has shifted over time (Rowland, 1997): 

empowerment as a process of individual change, and empowerment as a process of 

collective radical social change (Segal et al., 1995). Empowerment as individual 

change refers to an internal transformation resulting from improved self-esteem or 

mental health, often as a consequence of individualised self-help work (Peterson et 

al., 2008). This way of thinking about empowerment is problematic, however, in that 

it places responsibility for self-improvement on the individual: “The message is clear: 

If you want to feel empowered, you need to be improved” (Whippman, 2016, n.p.). 

Furthermore, an individualised construction of empowerment, amplifies the idea 

that women must be enhanced, perpetuating an industry which constructs 

impossible beauty standards for women.  

 

Grounding ideas of empowerment in therapeutic discourse has resulted in a 

‘wellness industry’ that exploits individualised understandings of empowerment. 

‘Wellness influencers’, such as Simone Anderson, for example promote health and 

lifestyle journeys (without the advice of healthcare professionals, dieticians, or 

nutritionists) through their social media-based platforms. Their sites are branded as 

pathways to empowerment and “couched in the language of self-celebration [… 



 
 

21 

which] can easily morph into a nasty strain of victim blaming” (Whippman, 2016, 

n.p.). Further, they promote a “continuous scrutiny and work on the self and body to 

meet cultural ideals and the needs of neoliberal economies, while understanding this 

work to be a personal choice” (Riley et al., 2019a, p. 138). Thus, they draw heavily on 

individualising discourses, constructing the individual as a problem to be fixed and 

failing to account for the structural issues that produce those practices in the first 

instance. 

 

The alternative understanding on empowerment is collective action towards social 

change with a view to challenging organisational and social structures (Rowlands, 

1997). By empowering a group of people towards a mutual goal, collective change 

can occur. The 2020 #BlackLivesMatter global movement fighting to challenge 

systematic and institutional racism against Black people is a case in point (Phoenix et 

al., 2020). Feminist scholars have also stressed the importance of working 

collaboratively to empower women as a group, develop resources and generate 

societal change that could not have been possible individually. ‘Law empowerment’ 

(Al-Sharmani, 2010) is a good example, shifting attention away from women’s 

individual circumstances towards women’s legal access to medical care, education 

and employment (Cornwall & Edwards, 2010).  

 

To understand the collective position of empowerment, one must also consider 

power. Rowlands (1997; see also Schutz, 2019) argues that there are three types of 

power. The first is ‘power to do’ or ‘power to’ and includes individuals’ agency to act 

in the advancement, and empowerment, of others. The second type of power is 

‘power with’, which emphasises a collaborative stance, in which people work 

together as “relative equals” (Schutz, 2019, p. 23) to create change. The third type of 

power put forward is ‘power over’, also referred to as a zero-sum game. This posits 

a hierarchical notion of power in which groups and individuals “coerce or force” 

(Schutz, 2019, p. 23) others to follow their commands. This model of power assumes 

a “finite” supply of power (Rowlands, 1997, p. 11); if one person or group has more 

power, another person or group must have less because it “cannot be created” 

(Schutz, 2019, p. 28). This means that to change existing relations of power, those 

without it must take it from another individual or group (Rowlands, 1997). The notion 

that power is a finite resource in the hands of a few is important when thinking about 

the distribution of power between women and men and the possibility that women’s 

empowerment might pose a threat to men. As Batliwala (1993) argues, “women’s 

empowerment, if it is a real success, does mean loss of men's traditional power and 

control over women” (p. 9). Furthermore, Rowlands (1997) highlights that when 

empowerment is constructed as ‘power over’: 

 



 
 

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if women gain power it will be at men’s expense. … Women becoming 

empowered is seen as inherently threatening, … men will not only lose power 

but also face the possibility of having power wielded over them by women. 

Men’s fear of losing control is an obstacle to women’s empowerment. (p. 11) 

 

Although there are distinct debates about empowerment as individual or collective 

feminist action, some scholars have also considered the extent to which these ways 

of thinking about empowerment are sometimes interconnected, involving both 

personal and collective forms. Rogers et al. (1997), for example, argued that 

empowerment is “the connection between a sense of personal competence, [and] a 

desire for and a willingness to take action in the public domain” (p. 1042) and a way 

of “gaining control over one’s life and influencing the organizational and societal 

structure in which one lives” (p. 1042; see also Segal et al., 1995). Others have also 

suggested that “although women can empower themselves by obtaining some 

control over different aspects of their daily lives, empowerment also suggests the 

need to gain some control over power structures, or to change them” (Johnson, 

1992, p. 148). What these definitions have in common is their shared understanding 

that empowerment is about having an internal sense of control and competence in 

order to achieve an overarching goal of creating wider social and structural change. 

Therefore, internal and collective constructions of empowerment work hand in hand; 

we need to change understandings of ourselves as being deserving of power in order 

for collective and structural change to occur (Kabeer, 2012; Rowlands, 1995). 

 

 A number of feminists argue that contemporary ‘empowerment feminism’ only 

serves a soft feminist and neoliberal agenda and, as such, has lost its radicalising 

potential (Crispin, 2017a; hooks, 2010). Walker (1995), for example, argues that 

empowerment feminism is a “cloak for conservatism, consumerism, and even 

sexism" (p. 18). In her polemic, ‘Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto’, 

Jessa Crispin (2017a) argues that feminism has been tamed and has become 

universal. In its attempt to seek equality with men, the movement has lost its radical 

and political way and has led to what one might call an apolitical movement that is 

“as banal, as non-threatening and ineffective as possible” (Crispin, 2017a, p. x). 

Instead, Crispin states that “the feminism I support is a full-on revolution. Where 

women are not simply allowed to participate in the world as it already exists … but 

are actively able to reshape it (Crispin, 2017a, p. xi).  

 

Similarly, others have argued that empowerment feminism has turned contemporary 

feminism into a “feel-good anthem” whereby “empowerment has become the 

sparkly pink consolation prize for the gender that continues to be excluded from 

actual power” (Whippman, 2016, n.p.). The very ideas of empowerment have 

become caricatured, resulting in a soft version of power in which women can be 



 
 

23 

complicit with, rather than challenge, the patriarchal system. The wellness industry 

and the overt sexualisation and objectification of women (perhaps especially in the 

music industry) generates an uneasy marriage between capitalism and feminism. 

Indeed, capitalism is a bedfellow of patriarchy that commercialises overt femininity 

and sells it back to women through the wellness and beauty industries. Instead of 

generating structural change, empowerment feminism takes attention away from 

the need for structural change and leans toward a “social and celebratory” agenda, 

involving women’s marches, fundraisers and matching feminist clothing, such as 

pussy hats (Cox, 2017, n.p.). These new expressions of feminism encourage women 

to think that everything they do is empowering, creating a “ubiquitous vacuousness” 

(Whippman, 2016, n.p.). Arguably, what was once a “dynamic, radical movement has 

dissipated into fragmented, identity-based subgroups” (Whippman, 2016, n.p.), 

offering a “shallow version of political action on personal issues” (Cox, 2017, n.p.) 

that ignores structural issues.  

 

Popular culture: ‘Porns in the industry’  
 

Patriarchy, the sexualisation of women, and empowerment are important in the 

context of this thesis because they each have a part to perform in the “corporate 

machine” (Levande, 2008, p. 314) of the music industry. The industry is embedded 

within a capitalist, patriarchal system in which men, both as performers and as 

producers, hold the greatest power. One of the ways the industry works is through 

(largely male) music executives who “prioritize packaging over talent” (Lieb, 2018, p. 

9). In other words, they privilege the sexual attractiveness of female pop artists 

whose looks and bodies are considered to be their “core asset” (p. 9), over and above 

how they sing. Female performers have long been sexualised and objectified in the 

music industry. Indeed, Levande (2008) goes a step further to suggest that 

representations of women in popular culture have become hypersexualised and 

pornographic. This is important to consider when acknowledging the part played by 

the music industry in constructing normative expectations of women (Frisby & 

Aubrey, 2012).  

 

Music videos have a long history of depicting misogynistic messages and images. 

Although recent years have seen a significant increase in the number and success of 

female artists, the sexualisation and objectification of women in music videos 

continues unabated (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012; Conrad et al., 2009). In support of profit 

margins, the industry perpetually produces “cookie-cutter formulaic” moulds which 

female artists must fit in order to succeed (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012, p. 67; see also 

Strum, 2002). Empirical research shows that 40 to 75 percent of all genres of music 

videos contain sexual images (Arnett, 2002), and more specifically, these sexual 

images include “permissive sexual attitudes, exploitation, objectification, and 



 
 

24 

degradation” of women (Conrad et al, 2009 as cited in Frisby & Aubrey, 2012, p. 68). 

Women are shown playing submissive roles to male characters, as well as being 

presented as sexually submissive to men (Ashby & Rich, 2005; Baxter et al, 1985). 

Additionally, in male performers’ music videos, women do not play an active role like 

their male counterparts, and instead are used as props, decoration (Arnett, 2002) 

and sex objects (Prichard & Tiggermann, 2012). A study of depictions of sexualisation 

in music videos from 1995 to 2016 showed that the sexual objectification continued 

unabated over the 21-year time-period and the severity of sexual depictions 

increased over time, with "ambiguous sexual expression, including sexual gestures, 

sexual poses, and sexual facial expressions” (Karsay et al., 2019, p. 346).  

 

Exposure to sexualised and objectified women in music videos has a detrimental 

effect on young women. Research suggests that music videos showing thin and 

attractive women results in higher levels of body dissatisfaction among female 

audiences (Prichard & Tiggermann, 2012, p. 201) as well as women’s own self-

sexualisation and objectification (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012). Furthermore, Black women 

are the most targeted group for sexualisation and objectification in the music 

industry (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012; Prichard & Tiggermann, 2012), which communicates 

broader beliefs about Black women’s sexuality (Stephens, 2007). This is especially the 

case in hip-hop music videos in which Black women are almost twice as likely to be 

depicted wearing provocative clothing compared with any other ethnic group (Frisby 

& Aubrey, 2012). These depictions result in problematic assumptions about the 

heightened sexuality of Black women.  

 

The overly sexualised and often misogynistic messages and images contained in pop 

music videos is the product of the male gaze (Levande, 2008). Laura Mulvey coined 

the term ‘male gaze’ in 1975, to capture the way women are perpetually represented 

in the visual arts from the viewpoint of men. The male gaze is defined as 

“heterosexual men’s visual inspection of women’s bodies or body parts” (Karsay et 

al., 2018, p. 28; see also Glapka, 2018) and more specifically, as “greater attention to 

the body or sexual body parts and less attention to the face” (Karsay et al., 2018, p. 

28). It is almost impossible for women to avoid being subject to the objectifying male 

gaze given its “subtle nature and ubiquity” (Karsay et al., 2018, p. 28). It is certainly 

not difficult to find examples of this viewpoint in pop music videos. Robin Thicke’s 

2013 song ‘Blurred Lines’ (2013; see 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU) featuring Pharrell Williams and 

T.I. presents a perfect example. The music video positions Thicke, Williams and T.I. 

as all-powerful over the female performers. This is achieved in a range of ways: the 

men are dressed in suits while the women are dressed in their underwear or 

sometimes appear to be naked; they are shown dancing provocatively around the 

men but their faces are vacant, expressing boredom and a passive role (see Frisby & 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU


 
 

25 

Aubrey, 2012); the symbolism  of a dice held in the air suggests that women are 

submissive players in a sexual relational game in which men are in control; a 

performer is shown as a doll being groomed; another is led around by her hair as 

though a dog on a lead; and a final scene features the three men standing together 

in front of the camera while the three women are barely visible dancing in the 

background, quite literally erased from view (Figure 1). Together, these scenes 

exemplify Ashby and Rich’s (2005) argument that women’s role in music videos is 

sexually submissive, serving largely as props, decoration and sex objects (see also 

Arnett, 2002; Prichard & Tiggermann, 2012).  

 

 

 
 

 

  
Figure 1: Stills from 'Blurred Lines' – Depictions of the male gaze 

 

Another way the male gaze plays out in music videos is through the performance of 

‘girl-on-girl action’ as a “manufactured lesbian sexuality” (Levande, 2008, p. 304). 

Although Smith (2014) argues that performers such as Nicki Minaj “bait[s] queer 

desire as a mode of empowerment, self-objectification, and fantasy” (p. 360), 

Levande (2008) offers a sound critique of such depictions, arguing that these scenes 

do not reflect genuine intimate relationships between two (or more) women. 

Instead, they are standard “pornographic fare” (p. 296) that manufactures lesbian 

relationships for the purposes of the male gaze. Furthermore, they become 

embedded within the common myth that the sexualisation of women in the music 

industry equals empowerment and the rights to one’s own body. The encounter acts 

as currency to gain access and legitimacy in a male-dominated space (Levande, 2008).  

 
This thesis is not about the depiction of women in pop music in general, but about 

the relationship between how young women make sense of performers and 



 
 

26 

performances that are presented as feminist in orientation. But this raises questions 

as to whether pop artists genuinely identify as feminist and want to advance feminist 

concerns or whether they are harnessing feminism as a brand to serve their own 

interests, as well as those of their management teams. There is no doubt that the 

music industry has historically used the language of feminism to capture audiences 

(Levande, 2008). For example, the term ‘girl power’ was coined by the girl band ‘Spice 

Girls’ in the 1990s (Levande, 2008). More recently, numerous female artists such as 

Miley Cyrus, Little Mix and Ariana Grande (discussed in Chapters Four and Five), 

navigate the feminist music-scape by using their platform in the music industry to 

promote concerns about gender equality. But, importantly, they must do so whilst 

simultaneously operating within an industry where their bodies remain sexualised 

and objectified. 

 

Levande (2008) argues that girl groups and bands are a “petri dish” (p. 300) for 

feminism (see also McDonnell, 2004) and the way this occurs changes in response to 

the feminist agenda. Iddon and Marshall (2014), for example, argue that there has 

been a shift from the “collective action” of second-wave ‘sisterhood’ represented in 

Cindy Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, to a hypersexualised “provocative 

postmodernist individualism” performed by contemporary artists (p. 36). While 

some argue that this “strangely unsettled in-between space” (Iddon & Marshall, 

2014, p. 36) can lead to sexual empowerment (McNair, 2002), others argue that the 

submerging of pop music into the ‘pornosphere’ whereby video performances 

“appropriate the conventions of pornography” (Iddon & Marshall, 2014, p. 36) can 

only be viewed as a return to a misogynistic industry where women are seen as 

nothing more than pawns in the industry.  

 

Levande (2008) argues that the music industry has hijacked the feminist movement 

by harnessing feminism as a brand and using pop stars as products to “sell behaviours 

and attitudes about sexuality” through their music (p. 301). Levande illustrates her 

point with the 2004 Superbowl Pepsi advertisement. In the advertisement, Britney 

Spears, Beyoncé and Pink appear as “scantily clad Roman slaves” (p. 301) for 

‘emperor’, Enrique Iglesias. Before long, however, the women unite, defeating and 

enslaving Iglesias by flipping him into a pit (with the help of a crate of Pepsi). The 

female pop stars/slaves are liberated while a lion secures his eventual fate, alluding 

to feminist themes of women’s revolution. But in this case, revolution is concealed 

under the guise of sexual power through bondage, bare midriffs, and bronze bikinis. 

The depiction perpetuates the myth of the link between “stripping, prostitution, and 

pornographic imagery with power” (Levande, 2008, p. 301). Pepsi’s slogan ‘Dare for 

More’ attempts to represent sexual freedom but the slogan reinforces the message 

that women become “more by wearing less” (Levande, 2008, p. 301); on the surface 

at least, it appears that power is acquired through revealing one’s body. Levande 



 
 

27 

(2008) highlights its failure to account for the transactional negotiation of power 

represented. In this instance, power is ultimately returned to the male consumer in 

the stadium as “justified consumers of sex, all under the pretext of female 

empowerment” (p. 302). The advertisement is not only articulating the notion that 

sex sells, but also a “buy-into notion that demeaning women’s bodies in exchange 

for profit is acceptable” (Levande, 2008, p. 302).  

 

While this section has so far explored the intersection of feminism and popular 

culture, there is little work that seeks to understand how these depictions impact 

young women’s understandings of feminism. Kanai (2019) draws connections 

between how young feminists are educated by, and participate in, feminism through 

popular culture. Her findings show a blurred relationship between the good feminist 

subject and “‘idealized femininity’” (p. 26); participants used celebrity culture 

depicting feminism to classify good and bad feminism through the lens of 

intersectional feminism. The research also found that the feminist identity was 

closely intertwined with “practices of perfecting and disciplining the self” (Kanai, 

2019, p. 25). As they sought an intersectional identity inclusive of minority groups, 

participants reinvoked “middle-class whiteness centred on self-monitoring, self-

actualization and the disavowal of complicity” (p. 25). While Kanai’s research 

provides a foundation for my research with its focus on how women make sense of 

their own feminist identity in the wake of digital and celebrity culture, its focus on 

how women mobilise their feminism is not considered.   

 

A considerable body of work exists in postfeminist literature on young women, 

postfeminism and popular culture (Robinson, 2011; Evans & Riley, 2013). Robinson 

(2011), for example, uses postfeminism as a framework for understanding how 

young Australian women make sense of their lived experiences through exposure to 

popular culture, in this case, the feminist rhetoric depicted in television series ‘Sex 

and the City’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’. She found that young women resonated 

with characters’ lives and thought they embodied (post)feminist ideals, such as 

sexual autonomy, women enjoying sex without being slut-shamed, choosing not to 

have children, and not being economically or sexually dependent on a man – ways of 

life that contest heteronormative ideals of being a woman. Robinson (2011) 

identifies an emergent tension, however, between the normalised neoliberal 

construction of choice depicted in both shows, and the way it obscures the lack of 

choice in their own lives.    

 

Sexual consumption was an important feature of the programmes watched and also 

features in work by Evans and Riley (2013) who examined how young people made 

sense of celebrities, including how those celebrities might influence their own 

subjectivity. They found that young women held paradoxical views: they appreciated 



 
 

28 

female celebrity sex symbols, but they also experienced pressure to conform to those 

same ideals by performing “constant work on the body” (p. 278). This paradox was 

due to young women’s perception that they were “somehow failing” (p. 278) to 

conform to ever-more unrealistic standards of feminine beauty.  

 

The commercialisation of such beauty ideals, as well as notions of “female freedom 

and gender equality” (McRobbie, 2008, p. 532) has a powerful influence on young 

women and girls. Popular culture forms “categories of youthful femininity” (p. 532) 

through the guise of allyship, a system that maliciously advances an individualised 

ideal category of girlhood, one that is far from attainable.   

 

Although McRobbie (2008), Robinson (2011), and Evans and Riley (2013) did not 

specifically consider how depictions of feminist popular culture shape young 

women’s understandings of gender and feminism, their research sheds light on the 

uncertainties faced by many young women as they navigate the intersection of 

gender and popular culture. My research takes such ideas as a starting point to 

consider how popular culture, and pop music in particular, shapes young women and 

their understandings of gender roles, the body, and sexual autonomy. My study seeks 

to extend their work, and o