![]() | The Vulnerable Empowered Woman: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Women''s Health Winner of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender 2013 Outstanding Book Award The Vulnerable Empowered Woman assesses the state of women's healthcare today by analyzing popular media representations--television, print newspapers, websites, advertisements, blogs, and memoirs--in order to understand the ways in which breast cancer, postpartum depression, and cervical cancer are discussed in American public life. From narratives about prophylactic mastectomies to young girls receiving a vaccine for sexually transmitted disease, the representations of women's health today form a single restrictive identity: the vulnerable empowered woman. This identity defuses feminist notions of collective empowerment and social change by drawing from both postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies. The woman is vulnerable because of her very femininity and is empowered not to change the world, but to choose from among a limited set of medical treatments. TASHA N. DUBRIWNY is an assistant professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program and the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. |
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