Abstract
Feminist analyses of postfeminism too often abject femininity, rendering spectacular femininity as a masquerade that endears women to heterosexual men. Moving into the era of popular feminism, feminist analyses have yet to renegotiate this abjection of femininity, often eclipsing the potential for resistance in favor of highlighting the pernicious effects of capitalism. Analyzing vignettes from The Bold Type (2017–2021), this research draws on femme theory to map an analytical framework that reinterprets spectacular femininity, developing strategies for critical analyses that can recognize fem(me)inine resistance within a landscape that commodifies femininity and feminism.
Feminist scholars such as Angela McRobbie (2008) and Rosalind Gill (2007) noted a shift in popular culture during the 1990s toward a postfeminist sensibility that assumed feminism was no longer necessary and offered seemingly already empowered women endless choices to express their individual empowerment—by buying the right products, wearing the right clothes, climbing corporate ladders, working out, and so. Specifically describing the glamorous and sparkling displays of femininity in women’s magazines and on Sex and the City as “spectacular femininity,” McRobbie (2008: 541–542) argued that such displays are masquerades that capitulate by working to endear women to heterosexual men. This positions spectacular femininity as a patriarchal construction—one that adheres to sexist gender norms and is achieved through practices of consumption within a neoliberal marketplace. Responding to this scholarship, Mary Celeste Kearney (2015: 270) noted that it largely framed femininity as “oppressive,” reading girls’ and women’s “spectacular bodily displays” as “junior versions” of “pageant queens and porn stars” and thus positioning women as the “dupes of patriarchy.” Instead of such “moral panic,” Kearney (2015: 270) urged scholars to adopt a queer lens, making space to interpret spectacular femininity as resistant: as femme, and/or as feminist camp performances.
Analyzing recent events such as Beyoncé’s FEMINST performance at the 2014 VMAs and Benedict Cumberbatch’s “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt activism, feminist scholars have noted a shift from the postfeminist sensibilities of the 1990s and 2000s. Feminism has now “become popular culture” (Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer, 2017: 884). Describing this new sensibility as “popular feminism,” Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer (2017) noted how this move commodifies feminism. Far from being a set of “values, ethics and politics,” feminism now largely operates as a yardstick by which consumers measure “whether or not a product is worthy of consumption” (Zeisler, 2016: 32). More insidiously, consumerism itself is framed as feminist—substituting “seeing or purchasing feminism” for “changing patriarchal structures” (Banet-Weiser, 2018: 4). Here, the “purchase of feminist goods is framed specifically as a way of getting involved” in resistance (Repo, 2020: 216).
Moreover, the version of girlhood and womanhood produced by popular feminism is commodified, and here, Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer (2017: 884) link these expressions of commodified girlhood and womanhood to spectacular femininity, noting that the type of feminisms that are currently “popular” are those that fit most easily into “neoliberal consumer culture.” As such, popular feminism is theorized as repackaging the empowerment of spectacular femininity and welding it with consumer versions of visible activism such as “this is what a feminist looks like” and “smash the patriarchy” t-shirts (Dosekun, 2015; Gill, 2016: 621). Rather than responding to Kearney (2015) and renegotiating the abjection of femininity, these theorizations of popular feminism have little interpretive space to recognize resistant fem(me)ininities.
We see a clear need to revisit critical interpretations of “spectacular” femininity, especially as popular feminism renegotiates the terms of femininity and resistance in popular culture. As such, responding to Kearney’s call (2015: 270), we develop a framework for femme analyses of popular feminism. The goal is to develop strategies for critical analyses that—rather than abjecting femininity—can recognize spectacular fem(me)inine resistance within popular feminism’s commodified landscape.
We begin by deriving critical tenets from femme theory. Then we use these critical tenets to analyze vignettes from The Bold Type (2017–2021), a hit program on Walt Disney Television’s young adult network, Freeform (Andreeva, 2019). We selected this program for analysis because of the clarity with which it embraces—and commodifies—popular feminism: it stars spectacularly feminine, self-proclaimed feminist protagonists, and its storylines explore lesbian sexuality, sex positivity, and female empowerment. Moreover, the series centers a “woke” women’s magazine, clearly paying homage to Cosmo by featuring former editor-in-chief Joanna Coles as an executive producer (Tolentino, 2019). As such, both the series and its storyworld are designed for profitability and concerned with advertising and commodities. In many ways, The Bold Type functions as a popular feminist version of Sex and the City: it foregrounds young professional women in New York City, and emphasizes friendship, spectacular femininity, and empowerment—but The Bold Type’s protagonists are proud feminists. Ultimately, this article applies femme theory to demonstrate how a femme analysis can foreground feminine subjectivity and resistance within a critical interrogation of popular culture.
From Femme theory to Femme analysis
Four tenets of femme analysis.
First, femme theory theorizes femmephobia. Hoskin (2019: 687) defines femmephobia through the dual functions of: (1) systematically devaluing femininity and (2) regulating “normative feminine ideals,” or what culture considers normal and acceptable versions of femininity. For example, denigrating the color pink as “girly” devalues femininity, reinforces pink as “normally” feminine, and reinforces femininity as something “for” women and girls. Here, Hoskin (2013) and Blair and Hoskin (2016) specifically note that femmephobia is broader than misogyny. Where misogyny targets “those of the female sex,” femmephobia can be directed “at someone who is perceived to identify, embody or express femininely and toward people or objects gendered femininely” (Blair and Hoskin 2016: 102). Femmephobia, then, is about policing gender; it denigrates and regulates femininity—which is a broader category than women. Often, femmephobia targets people who are perceived as having deviated from culturally sanctioned performances of femininity (Hoskin, 2017a: 101). For example, femmephobic bullies might target a boy who wears pink, which is taken to mean that he is gay.
Theorizing how femmephobia is structured by racism, classism, homophobia, cissexism, ableism, ageism, and so on, femme theory specifically identifies how femmephobia regulates femininity as white and heterosexual by disappearing femmes of color. Even as white femmes’ queerness is often erased by heterosexual norms that equate femininity with sexual availability to men (Hoskin, 2019: 693), femmes of color, experience a larger erasure from history and public discourse (Woodson, 2017). Quoting Audre Lorde, Woodson (Woodson, 2017: 466) notes that Black queer women’s lives are often reduced to “less than a vapor” (see also Hooks, 1986; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Lorde, 1997). Patriarchal logics not only erase queerness from femmes of color, but also interpret their femininity through white supremacy—which creates a simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility of bodies of color (Story, 2017). For instance, writing specifically about Black bodies, Wilderson III (Wilderson, 2010: 312) describes a paradoxical status of “(non-)being,” where Black bodies are polarized between the “subject status of the body” and the “object status of the Slave.” Femmephobia is inherently white supremacist: the devaluation and regulation of femininity engages in the devaluation of people of color and the regulation of race. By transfixing femininity as white and heterosexual, societies construct and reinforce a host of interlocking oppressions. Thus, we develop the first tenet of our analytical framework: femme analyses resist the interlocking forces of femmephobia and white supremacy.
Second, femme theory charts the ways in which femme and femmephobia operate within a capitalist landscape. Femininity is sold and policed (through fashion and makeup, etc.) within a masculine marketplace (Banet-Weiser, 2015). This marketplace extends beyond classic domains of commerce and retail. For example, Story (2017: 414) describes how capitalist logic ensures that academic curricula remain colonized—erasing queerness and rendering Black personhood hypervisible/invisible. Indeed, the knowledge and experiences of femmes of color all but disappear within academic curricula even as academic institutions value, reward, and resource majors (such as Business, Marketing, and STEM) that often lack critical thinking components and produce laborers for a capitalist marketplace (Glover, 2017).
Indeed, Glover (2017: 160) highlights this capitalist context by demonstrating how capitalist-driven “multicultural” and “diversity” campaigns within colleges and universities exploit queer, Black, and Brown students and faculty for recruitment and brand-management purposes. Meanwhile, the administration, curricula, and social norms at academic institutions serve white comfort by excluding and extinguishing Black feminists. These marketing campaigns capitalize on hypervisibility—consumable images of Blackness and white queerness—while perpetuating the invisibility and erasure of femme and feminist identities of color. Femme theory, then, consistently attends to capitalist forces and the social and political roles of consumerism and economic logic. Here, we develop the second tenet of our analytical framework: femme analyses foreground society’s economized system, paying attention to the role that capitalist logic plays in structuring femmephobia and how femme identities navigate and resist this economic landscape.
Finally, femme theory maps the ways in which femmephobia reduces femininity to a commercial “object,” denying feminine persons their own “bodily sovereignty” through violence and harassment (Hoskin, 2019: 701). For instance, violence can keep feminine persons—and those read as feminine—off “the streets at night” and “passive and modest” at home, at work, and in public (Rich, 2007: 8). Indeed, Rich (2007: 8) notes that feminine persons are punished for “behaving as though they were free.” This is the denial of bodily sovereignty—the freedom to move and act as a subject. Femmephobia works to reduce the feminine into an object controlled by others.
Rejecting femmephobia’s objectification, femme theory insists that the feminine is a subject. For instance, normative fashion regulates and objectifies femininity through “articles of clothing that flatter and minimize unruly bodies” (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019: 288). This shames feminine bodies for not conforming to patriarchal feminine ideals and tames bodies by hiding their unruliness. In contrast, femme fashion resists—celebrating differences and drawing attention to femininity that fails at patriarchal femininity. Essentially, femmes’ femininity is not for patriarchal consumption—femme is not an object. As such, femmes fail at patriarchal or normative femininity by retaining their subjectness (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019).
Here, Story (2017: 411) further clarifies subjectivity—demonstrating its radical potential—as she writes about Black femme embodiments, arguing that “living a femme of color identity” is more than a “penchant for lipstick and heels.” Story’s (2017: 411) theory-building highlights the radical nature of choice: Black femme is more than choosing “lipstick and heels” because choice itself is resistance. Indeed, Story (2017: 413) describes her choices to embody Black femme as constructing a resistive femininity that ultimately challenges white supremacist, heterosexist ideas of “femininity and queerness as White.” Femme theory, then, rejects the objectification of femininity and instead charts the radical potential of femmes (and femininity) as subjects who resist through choice.
Similarly, Lewis (2016) recommends a paradigm shift toward choice and subjectivity. Rejecting the marketplace logic that reduces feminine persons to “objects with rising and falling values” depending on their heterosexual attractiveness, biological genitals, submissive behavior, and so on, Lewis (2016: 98) positions feminine persons as “purchasers with cash in hand.” Lewis explicitly advocates for the politics of radical choice: through choice (regardless of the choice) feminine persons occupy the subject positions of a consumer rather than the object position of a commodity.
Drawing on these arguments, we develop the last two tenets of our analytical framework. The third tenet is that femme analyses resist patriarchy by situating feminine expressions as subject positions—not objectifications. The final tenet maintains that femme analyses reject categorizations of choices as more or less feminist, right or wrong, legitimate or illegitimate, powerful or powerless, demonstrating instead the radical potential of choice itself as resistance within a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (Hooks, 2015; Hoskin and Taylor, 2019; Lewis, 2016; Scott, 2021). Applying these four tenets to vignettes from The Bold Type, we demonstrate how femme theory informs criticism, developing a femme analysis that can recognize resistance and (spectacularly) feminine subjectivity while critiquing patriarchy, heterosexism, white supremacy, and capitalism.
Femme analysis: Applying the tenets
Freeform used the vocabulary of popular feminism to promote The Bold Type. For instance, its showrunner, Amanda Lasher, touted how the series “tackled tough topics” such as “women’s health and sexuality” and “sexual harassment and assault” before the #MeToo movement, claiming that these themes were “ingrained in the show’s DNA” (Turchiano, 2018). Similarly, the series’ music supervisor, Rob Lowry, noted that the series was “about strong women, diversity, identity, empowering yourself, and feeling comfortable in your skin” (Roth, 2019). Thus, the soundtracks almost exclusively featured music by women and gender diverse artists (Roth, 2019).
Following televisual norms (Mittell, 2015: 56), The Bold Type’s pilot introduced its central tensions. Namely, the storyworld is set in New York City at Scarlet Magazine, a fictitious feminist women’s magazine. The pilot launches three intertwining storylines that feature: (1) Sutton Brady navigating a secret relationship with Richard Hunter; (2) Jane Sloan as she starts her dream job as Scarlet’s newest investigative journalist; and (3) Kat Edison—Scarlet’s social media director—as she begins an on-again/off-again relationship with Adena El-Amina, a self-proclaimed “proud Muslim lesbian” photographer from the Middle East (“Pilot,” 2017).
These central tensions provided the first criteria through which we narrowed our selection of vignettes for analysis: we focused on storylines that featured these central tensions for Sutton, Jane, and Kat. Second, we limited our selection to episodes that were directed and written by the series’ executive producers and showrunners, ensuring that we were selecting episodes and storylines developed by the “major creative force” animating this dramedy (Mittell, 2010: 22). Third, we narrowed our selection to season premieres of The Bold Type. Season premieres typically work to excite existing viewers while bringing new viewers into the series. Moreover, season premieres for episodic serials, such as The Bold Type, typically focus on “evolving emotional relationships,” building character arcs, and driving the narrative forward (Baym and Gottert, 2013: 162–163). As such, we analyze three vignettes—one for each protagonist—drawn from the second season’s two-part premiere, “Feminist Army” and “Rose Colored Glasses” (which aired on the same evening), and the third season premiere, “The New Normal.”
All three protagonists embody spectacular femininity. Their fashion and bodily displays are feminine, striking, and glamorous. Kat is a biracial (Black/white) queer woman with a femme expression; Sutton and Jane are straight white women. As such, this analysis applies the tenets of femme theory to both femme and heterosexual femininity. In what follows, we present vignettes, drawing attention to how femme theory guides our analysis through the application of the four tenets.
Vignette one: Gambling on your white femininity
Sutton Brady and Richard Hunter are in love—a situation complicated by a 15-year age gap, Richard’s position on Scarlet’s board of trustees, and Scarlet’s policy that prohibits employees of different ranks from dating. Thus, they have a secret relationship. Scarlet revises its policy in the second season premiere, and Richard asks Sutton to sign Human Resources’ new consensual relationship contract. Instead, Sutton breaks up with him. Sutton recently landed a position in Scarlet’s fashion department and her new colleagues (while oblivious to her sexual relationship with Richard) are gossiping that she is sleeping her way into success. After a Scarlet gala, Sutton finds Richard and says, Sutton: Richard, you’re a board member. You’re fifteen years older than me. I’m an assistant. I make in a year what you take home in a week. You know what people will say. Richard: Which is why we have legal protection. Sutton: A contract cannot protect a reputation. Richard: You’re walking away from someone who loves you. Who wants to build something with you—because some assistant is gossiping about you. Sutton: It’s a gamble. All of it. But I’m putting my money down on my career.
In this scene, Sutton’s blonde hair is gently pulled back into a soft updo and her white skin and slender figure is offset by a dusty rose gown, whereas Richard is wearing a dark suit. The couple is sitting at a low cocktail table in a skyscraper, where they witness the city’s lights twinkling from the massive windows. After an establishing shot frames them against the skyline, the camerawork creates an intimate tone, using medium close-ups (from the waist up) and reverse-shots from over their shoulders as they speak. When Sutton states, “It’s a gamble. All of it. But I’m putting my money down on my career,” the camera frames her in a close-up, as the music gently swells (“Feminist Army,” 2018).
Sutton’s presentation epitomizes normative expectations for spectacular femininity; she is white, straight, slender, normatively beautiful, consummately feminine, and utterly glamorous. Guided by the second tenet, we attend to how capitalist logic structures femmephobia. Sutton’s career trajectory is in feminine fashion, and her embodiment appears normatively feminine yet her behavior rejects patriarchal scripts for femininity. That is, Sutton not only rejects a heterosexual coupling that would provide her with financial security—she rejects love and leaves Richard heartbroken.
Her decision is influenced by patriarchal slut-shaming—as she notes, her reputation is at stake. Guided by the fourth tenet, we do not attempt to parse the extent to which her choice resists patriarchal expectations or caves to patriarchal slut-shaming. Instead, we identify how Sutton makes a decision and the radical potential of her decision-making. For example, operating within a no-win situation, Sutton bets on herself and on her ability to make her own happiness. Moreover—guided by both the second and third tenets—we note that Sutton’s dialogue makes the economic ramifications of her decision especially visible. She is aware of the way economic hierarchies work to objectify her—to make her an object within an economic system—and yet she gambles on herself. Choosing to leave Richard, along with his wealth, connections, and security, Sutton reclaims her sense of self as a subject rather than being pushed by an economic system. Here, we explicitly refuse to read Sutton as patriarchy’s dupe or as having capitulated to neoliberalism’s false equivocation of individual responsibility and empowerment. Instead, we reserve space for resistance, focusing on Sutton’s reclamation of herself as a subject who chooses instead of an object that is moved by others.
In the second part of this season’s premiere, slut-shaming rumors incapacitate Sutton at a fashion photo shoot until Scarlet’s editor-in-chief Jacqueline Carlyle offers Sutton encouragement. Feeling confident once more, Sutton confronts her colleague Mitzi—an Asian woman—stating, So, this slut-shaming thing you’re doing. It’s got to stop …. We don’t tear each other down! Not as women—and definitely not as women of Scarlet. If you want some competition, I’m totally up for that. But it has to be based on merit and talent, not petty gossip. Got it? (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018)
Mitzi agrees to stop spreading rumors and Sutton returns to her confident, happy, sexually agentic self. Analyzing this slut-shaming storyline, we employ the first and second tenets, attending to how interlocking oppressions structure femmephobia within an economized landscape. Slut-shaming objectifies Sutton, reducing her purported value, while the privileges of white supremacy enable Sutton’s recovery. That is, this storyline pits Sutton against a lying Asian woman—activating the associations of whiteness and innocence and the anti-Asian stereotype of the Dragon Lady, which is used to describe Asian women as deceitful and controlling villains. Indeed, Mitzi is portrayed by actor Katharine King So (2021) who identifies as a queer, mixed Asian woman. Her character is exclusively written for this slut-shaming storyline: she only appears in three episodes. Further, unlike Sutton, Mitzi is not mentored by Jacqueline Carlyle and, therefore, lacks meaningful connections and resources for success at Scarlet Magazine.
Moreover, Sutton’s rebuke is worded explicitly in terms of “merit,” accusing Mitzi of trying to get ahead without merit, without earning a place in the hierarchy. The “myth of meritocracy” (Reay, 2018: 326) is routinely used to prop up inequitable systems—such as workplaces in which white people are mentored toward career success and people of color are not. As such, we read Sutton’s statement as a leveraging of white privilege against a woman of color, employing the vocabulary of “merit” to erase or obscure the structures of white privilege. Additionally, Sutton’s behavior embodies normative or patriarchal femininity. She approaches Mitzi in private and issues a gently worded reprimand that stresses their supposedly mutual support and sisterhood (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). Her conversation with Mitzi regulates femininity by modeling an impeccably kind and gracious approach to conflict while tapping into the longstanding racist associations among white femininity, grace, and gentility.
Vignette two: Masculinizing a feminist army
Season two opens with a career change for journalist Jane Sloan as she moves from Scarlet to Incite, a politically liberal magazine where she is given a prestigious column. Jane names her column “Feminist Army” and plans to “showcase millennial women who are changing the world” (“Feminist Army,” 2018). Jane is explicitly mentored by Jacqueline Carlyle throughout this series, and she has Jacqueline’s support for this career shift.
Unlike Scarlet’s offices, which are bright, feature pink and red colors, and are primarily staffed by feminine people, Incite’s offices are decidedly less feminine. As the camera pans across Incite’s main workspace, it lingers on employees—most of whom are men—wearing murky colors, oversized shirts, hoodies, beanies, and a lot of plaid. By contrast, Jane’s femininity is even more spectacular. On her first day, she wears a black blouse dotted with eye-catchingly red strawberries that is sheer in the back, a black bra, a large silky bow at her neck, a short black skirt with a diagonal hemline, sheer black pantyhose, and black stiletto booties. The camera uses slow motion to feature her walking confidently into Incite as she carries a pink laptop case. The contrast between Jane’s spectacular femininity and Incite’s masculine aesthetic is clear. When Jane makes her first column pitch, her new editor, Victoria Johnson, is not impressed.
Jane proceeds with her idea and writes a nuanced story about Emma Cox, the CEO of a company that makes menstrual cups. Victoria, however, changes the article into a smear piece and tells Jane that her “voice” is only valuable when it “aligns with Incite’s brand” (“Feminist Army,” 2018; “Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). Jane apologizes to Emma for the article. After the media discovers that Incite substantively changed Jane’s article, Victoria sends Jane to a live TV interview to shore up Incite’s brand. This storyline explicitly reveals Jane’s objectification within an economic system. Victoria stipulates that the interview is to preserve Incite’s brand, not Jane’s journalistic reputation, stating, “this is not about Jane Sloan. It’s about preserving the integrity of Incite” (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). Victoria further explains that Jane will explain her apology to Emma by stating that she is “new to Incite and hard-hitting journalism” and that she “got too personally invested” (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). Victoria closes the meeting by stating, “And Jane, your style. You’re gonna have to lose all of that [gestures at Jane’s body and outfit] for the interview” (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018).
The first tenet focuses our attention on mapping and resisting femmephobia and its interlocking oppressions. We argue that Victoria and the larger Incite brand is situated as femmephobic. Femmephobia both devalues femininity and regulates what is considered “normal” for femininity. Incite devalues spectacular femininity as weak and artificial, positioning it as the antithesis of “hard-hitting journalism” and directly attempting to regulate—and reduce—Jane’s femininity both through her fashion and by shaming her for being personally and emotionally invested in her work. Jane largely resists this devaluation of spectacular femininity and the narrative positions Incite’s femmephobic atmosphere as villainous.
However, this narrative simultaneously engages in its own regulation of femininity. Incite’s editor, Victoria, presents as both feminine and fat. Aligning with fat feminine hypervisibility (Gibson, 2021), Victoria is the only fat woman in this storyline and one of the only fat women in the entire series. We read this positioning of villainous fat femininity as a femmephobic move that regulates femininity—reinscribing (proper) femininity as slender. Specifically, Victoria’s femininity is portrayed as “tainted” by fatness. By “failing” at “proper” femininity, her performance can be read as femme (Hoskin and Taylor, 2019; Gibson, 2021: 3). Here, the narrative polices gender by distinguishing proper (slender) femininity from failed femininities and punishing femme by rendering it villainous.
Jane arrives at her live TV interview with her hair in a tight, low ponytail and a harsh middle part. She wears a black undershirt with a loose red and black plaid shirt over it and large framed glasses. At first, Jane parrots Victoria’s talking points about “hard-hitting journalism” and becoming “too personally invested” (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). When the news anchor thanks her for “setting the record straight,” however, Jane explains the more nuanced situation, concluding that the “story gets lost” when we “sensationalize people for the purpose of getting more eyes on a story” (“Rose Colored Glasses,” 2018). Victoria then fires Jane.
Guided by the first tenet, we map Incite’s role in policing gender, noting that this storyline resists as it condemns Incite for devaluing and regulating Jane’s femininity and for shaming her feminine style and emotional nuance. Drawing on the second and third tenets, we further note that although Jane originally folds under this pressure, she reclaims her subjectivity as she chooses to speak her mind and offers her original, nuanced analysis. Moreover, this storyline demonstrates the patriarchal economic landscape as Jane is fired—largely for being too feminine—and this thrusts her into financial peril. At the same time, the narrative also regulates gender, insisting that proper femininity is slender as it vilifies femininities “tainted” by fatness.
Vignette three: Selling black femme
The second season opened with two-episode storylines that furthered Sutton’s and Jane’s core narratives: Sutton’s relationship with Richard and Jane’s career in journalism. However, this was not the case for Kat, whose storylines were discrete, focusing on her insecurity going down on Adena in “Feminist Army” and her decision to describe herself as Scarlet’s “first Black female department head” in “Rose Colored Glasses.” This separates Kat’s queerness from her Blackness, rendering Black femme invisible or at least unarticulated. Our final vignette, then, features a Kat-centric storyline from the season three premiere, “The New Normal” (2019), which draws together several of Kat’s central narratives.
When season three opens, Scarlet is expanding its digital content and hires Patrick Duchand as the new online editor—and Kat’s new boss. Patrick, a gay white man, plans to increase Scarlet’s visibility, readership, and sensationalism by requiring more personal and vulnerable writing. This transforms feminist “authenticity” into marketability and clickability (Pruchniewska, 2018). Indeed, Patrick’s appropriation and commodification of others is part of his larger character trope: he walks around Scarlet preaching meditation and offering “namaste” as his catchphrase. Patrick is clearly introduced as an antagonist.
At first Patrick praises Kat, especially for coming out online with Adena, her “fabulous Muslim artist girlfriend” (“The New Normal,” 2019). Then Patrick pivots, stating, “But Kat, when I look up your personal social media, it’s really lacking. It’s crickets since Paris Fashion week” (“The New Normal,” 2019). While viewers know that Adena broke up with Kat in Paris during the season two finale, Kat has yet to tell her friends or co-workers. Instead, Kat responds that she is taking a social media cleanse on her personal accounts. Patrick interrupts her, stating, “No, a digital detox for the head of social media! That can’t happen. You’re an extension of Scarlet, right? Your job, your girlfriend, your access to clothes and parties and all things fabulous” (“The New Normal,” 2019). Then, as a gift, he tags her personal accounts in his own post so that she can “get more followers” but warns her that she has to “keep the followership going up” (“The New Normal,” 2019). In an effort to satisfy Patrick, Kat retreats to the fashion closet to post selfies wearing a number of different sunglasses with the caption “Fifty shades of … Me!” (“The New Normal,” 2019). This dialogue-free sequence is set to “Pop” by Kat Capone, highlighting the lyrics as Capone sings, “Buy some lingerie and take a selfie … So turn around and let him watch you walk/And if he deserves/Then show him every curve/Let him touch your body girl” (“The New Normal,” 2019).
Guided by the second tenet, we attend to how this storyline frames Patrick’s commodification of Kat as a problem. Patrick’s insistence that Kat’s personal life and personal media accounts are extensions of the Scarlet brand is exploitative. Moreover, he coerces Kat into commodifying her body, a point that the music underscores—despite Patrick’s gay orientation—with the lines, “show him every curve/Let him touch your body girl.” Likewise, drawing on the first tenet’s clear foregrounding of interlocking oppressions, we pay specific attention to how Patrick makes Kat’s queerness hypervisible as a marketing strategy. Kat is visibly Black on screen and identifies as Black at Scarlet and to her online followers. To some extent, this sequence makes Black femme visible even as it contains and commodifies Kat’s femme resistance. Yet, the storyline does not engage with Kat’s experiences within a racist society, separating femme from Blackness.
Later, Patrick forces Kat to give a speech at a large Scarlet event—only to viciously critique her for not being personal enough. Kat’s speech focused on the theme “it’s a great day to be queer” and discussed “challenging heteronormative ideas,” “fighting the patriarchy,” and “learning how to love one another” (“The New Normal,” 2019). After the speech, Patrick accusingly asks, “Where were you? There was nothing specific in there” (“The New Normal,” 2019). Pushed to her limit, Kat replies, Before I met Adena, I was just a straight girl with commitment issues. Didn’t expect to fall in love with her. But I did. And honestly it was amazing. Until, uh, five weeks ago, when she broke up with me. In Paris. That’s why I stopped posting on all of my personal accounts…. so I really don’t think that I’m the fabulous face of Scarlet as much as I am just a hot mess. Is that specific enough for you? (“The New Normal,” 2019).
In response, Patrick states, “that should have been your speech. People don’t want perfection, Kat. They want [he gestures at her whole body] this. They want honesty” (“The New Normal,” 2019). While we read this statement as an unsympathetic response that continues to commodify Kat and continues to disassociate Kat’s queerness from her Blackness, the episode’s conclusion reframes Patrick’s role. Kat takes his statements about “honesty” as advice. She films herself in the bathroom mirror without makeup, her face and torso framed by her long braids, explaining that she is heartbroken from Adena’s breakup and that she wants to be more real. She posts the video to her personal social media accounts with the hashtag #BeReal. Her video generates a significant response with followers adding their own #BeReal posts and Jane encourages her by noting “how many people [she’s] inspiring” even as Kat exclaims, “feels good to be honest!” (“The New Normal,” 2019). This conclusion celebrates Kat’s (hyper)visibility—turning her personal life into a platform, but not a political platform.
Indeed, guided by the second tenet, we suggest that Kat’s #BeReal campaign commodifies Kat and the popular feminist sensibility that equates authenticity or “honesty” and activism. Moreover, Kat’s #BeReal campaign marks the difference between tangible and intangible visibility politics. Feminist activists regularly use digital media to affect real-world, political change. Campaigns such as #YesAllWomen, #MeToo, and #DistractinglySexy not only raise awareness, but they also spur legal action, launch nonprofit organizations, and change HR policies (Rivers, 2017). Kat’s #BeReal campaign, however, is all visibility with no politics. Kat is fully subsumed into Scarlet, hypervisible because of her commodified queerness—which remains disassociated from her Blackness. Kat’s lack of political agency is in direct contrast to Jane’s experiences as a straight white woman at Scarlet. For example, in this same episode, Jane’s activism forces the board to expand Scarlet’s healthcare policies so people can have their eggs frozen as part of cancer management treatments.
Analyzing this episode, we note how it originally pushes against Patrick’s commodification of Kat as he exploits her femme identity, subsuming it into his capitalist agenda. This clearly demonstrates the economic pressures Black femmes can experience as they are made hypervisible. Yet, we read Kat’s #BeReal campaign as a clear re-inscription of femmephobic white supremacy. Kat’s activism creates visibility that subsumes her into Scarlet while Jane’s activism changes health insurance policies. This analysis highlights the difference in how straight white women and femmes of color are positioned in capitalist economies. Jane takes back her reproductive power from Scarlet, but Kat is subsumed into Scarlet in ways that market her queerness for corporate profit while disassociating queerness from Blackness.
Conclusion
Femme theory offers significant insights for critical analysis. Guided by the four tenets developed from femme theory—first, resist the interlocking forces of femmephobia and white supremacy; second, foreground society’s economized system; third, situate feminine performances as subject-positions; and fourth, demonstrate the radical potential of choice itself—this analysis of these vignettes from The Bold Type highlight resistance and feminine subjectivity without losing its critical insight. Embracing femininity, spectacular bodily displays, and feminine subjectivity, our analysis simultaneously calls attention to how patriarchal and capitalist pressures work to devalue and regulate femininity and to commodify and objectify fem(me)inine people. At the same time, our analysis demonstrates how Sutton’s and Jane’s slender white femininity is weaponized against women of color and fat women while Kat’s Black femme embodiment is largely contained as a commodity. As such, this femme analysis resists patriarchy and its interlocking oppressions without positioning women, femmes, or spectacular femininity as patriarchy’s dupes.
Broadly speaking, criticism reveals how power works, identifying trends to make sense of how current realities are constructed through relations of power. Moreover, critical practice “interrogates and challenges” those “relations of power” (Banet-Weiser, 2013: 230). In so doing, criticism offers or models a resistant way of being in the world. Developing a critical framework for femme analysis, we not only resist but develop tools that can help others recognize and celebrate resistance while simultaneously addressing the powers that regulate femininity, sexuality, and race within popular feminism’s economized landscape. Without such tools, it is too easy for feminist critical analyses to ignore femme and abject femininity while critiquing patriarchy. Ultimately, by foregrounding femme theory in the analysis of popular feminist media narratives regarding femininity, spectacular bodily displays, feminism, race, and queer sexuality, this work foregrounds the importance of critical tools that can recognize the power of resistance, femininity, and femme.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is supported by Women’s & Gender Studies Research Development Grant, Hope College.
