Feminism and Post Feminism in Media

Reading Reactions
One of the interesting surprises about “The Latina Domestic” was that focus on Lupe Ontiveros who played a maid character approximately 300 times in film and television in her career. What was interesting about this, however, was not the fact that she could only really work basically within the confines of this stereotype but rather that she devoted herself to each one of these roles with a real passion because, in her words, she “gave her heart and soul every time she played the maid, as that is a job that many have to hold for a lifetime. She wanted dignity in hat character” (93)—and in the documentary Maid in America, she had the opportunity to set the record straight about the reality of Latinas in America.
The problem of Latinas in the mainstream media, however, is that the media often makes the Latina into a fetish and Latinas like Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan help to perpetuate the stereotype. Additionally, the Latina is seen as a threat—a sexual threat to men and women, in that she is viewed or represented as fiery, seductive, sultry, and exotic. In my experiences, these representations are not very realistic and are based on shallow interpretations of types of characters that viewers are already familiar with—and the media not being one to routinely think outside the box is perfectly content to revive these stereotypes at will whenever they are in need of a character to stuff into a ridiculous plot that has already been produced a hundred times before on the big and small screens. Media houses tend to play it safe and in playing it safe they perpetuate stereotypes that are outdated and should be made extinct.
In the article by Nash and Grant on Lena Dunham’s Girls, the concept of post-feminism is explored and discussed in relation to Dunham’s hit series, which explores the relationships and lives of thirty-somethings. The show resembles Sex and the City in some ways but is clearly produced for the millennial generation whereas Sex and the City had more of an appeal for the Generation X audience. Dunham’s girls, in this sense, represent a post-feminist foray into the world of adulthood from a female perspective, where 21st century issues of identity, gender, sex, and relationships are encountered and portrayed with an eye to candor and realism.
The aim of Dunham’s series is to be realistic about where women are today and not to try to couch those experiences within a paradigm but rather to examine the experiences and let them be what they are. These experiences as they are portrayed in the media can serve as a meaningful representation of theoretical approaches applied to the concept of comedy, drama and art—but at some level they also bring into the picture the idea of a post-feminist culture, where the old notions of feminism of the 20th century no longer seem to apply in a meaningful way. Post-feminism redirects the ideas of womanhood towards a new goal, which is not equality but rather power.
The power structure that can be seen in a show like Girls implies that women are focused on achieving power over their own lives, careers, relationships, and stories; the comedy arises as these obstacles are frustrated or achieved, and what the successes and the failures mean for the characters involved in the narratives. This allows the show to explore post-feminist concepts in a way that Millennials can identify with. Personally, I find that it has its moments of candor that are refreshingly realistic but at the same time disappointing in the sense that I wonder whether we actually have to experience our lives this way. Is Girls really where we want to be as a society? It may be realistic, but at some point I feel we may be missing out on a better ideal.
Works Cited
Nash, Meredith, and Ruby Grant. "Twenty-Something Girls v. Thirty-Something Sex
And The City Women: Paving the way for “post? feminism”." Feminist Media Studies 15.6 (2015): 976-991.