The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: Third-Wave Feminism, Postfeminism and ‘New’ Femininities

Abstract

In contrast to claims that feminism no longer retains currency in late modernity third-wave feminism asserts that feminism continues to be both possible and necessary.¹ This position proceeds on the basis that the applicability of second-wave feminism to contemporary gender relations and social conditions is limited because the lived experience of femininity has become increasingly complex. Accordingly, third-wave feminism claims to offer a corrective to this situation by allowing women to develop their relationship to feminism in ways that are more relevant to the contradictions which characterize their lives. In reconstituting the subject of feminism for a ‘new generation’, in often ambiguous ways, an interesting challenge to established definitions of feminist values and practices is waged. However, this challenge is not without problems or conceptual inconsistencies. This chapter will consider what third-wave feminism offers to our understanding of new femininities emerging in late modernity and the relationship these emerging subjectivities have to both feminism and postfeminism.