Blockbuster the Feminist Celebrity

Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster ANTHEA TAYLOR Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster Anthea Taylor Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster Anthea Taylor Department of Gender and Cultural Studies University of Sydney Sydney, Australia ISBN 978-1-137-37333-5 ISBN 978-1-137-37334-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-37334-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956393 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © GeorgePeters / Getty Images Cover design by Fatima Jamadar Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom For Amelie Sara Taylor ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Much primary material for this book was found in archives, especially in the US. The Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe’s Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University and the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College were invaluable resources and I thank the staff at both institutions for their support. The School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Sydney provided funding for that research trip. At the University of Melbourne, archivist Katrina Dean and her team helped me to navigate the relatively newly acquired Germaine Greer archive. Material upon which some of these chapters are based has been previously published, including in Feminist Media Studies and Celebrity Studies: ‘“Blockbuster” celebrity feminism’, Celebrity Studies, (2014) 5:1–2, 75–78, Hamad, H., Taylor, A. (2015); ‘Feminism and contemporary celebrity culture’, Celebrity Studies, 6(1), 124–127; ‘Germaine Greer’s adaptable celebrity: Feminism, unruliness, and humour on the British small screen’ (2014) Feminist Media Studies, 14.5: 759–774. I also drew upon material from Single Women in Popular Culture (2012, also published by Palgrave Macmillan) for the chapter on Helen Gurley Brown. I thank the editors of these journals, as well as Palgrave Macmillan, for their permission to draw upon that material here. I also wish to thank all those involved in the ‘Intervening Media’ work- shop at RMIT in Barcelona in 2015 for their thoughtful feedback in the final stages of this project: Mark Andrejevic, Jack Bratich, Nick Couldry, Olivier Driessens, Tania Lewis, Graeme Turner, and Zala Volcic. Big thanks also to Alifa Bandali and Kate O’Halloran, who both generously offered to read chapter drafts and provided valuable comments; I look vii viii Acknowledgements forward to returning the favour. I am also grateful to Marg Henderson for her astute feedback in the final stages of drafting. Thanks must go to Felicity Plester, Commissioning Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of my work not just for this book but for my previous one too. Thanks also to Sophie Auld for her assistance during the production phase. This book was contracted while I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Accordingly, I wish to offer thanks to my former col- leagues for their encouragement, friendship, and the community we all formed not just in the Forgan Smith Tower but beyond. And especially to Graeme Turner for always being such a generous mentor and friend. For his unwavering support, intellectual engagement and guidance over many years, and specifically for providing insightful feedback on drafts of each of the following chapters, I am truly grateful. My heartfelt thanks go to my extraordinarily supportive partner, Eoin O’Sullivan, for all the love and laughter. And to my family, Owen, Kirsty, Isabella, Olivia, and Amelie, and especially to my parents, Rose and Maurice, who have always unconditionally supported and believed in me and this book has been no exception. My youngest niece had not entered this world when I dedicated an earlier book to her sisters so this one is for you, Millie. CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 ‘Blockbuster’ Feminism and Celebrification 25 Part I The 1960s/1970s Blockbuster and Ongoing Feminist Stardom 59 3 Helen Gurley Brown: Prototypical Celebrity Feminism, Cultural Intermediaries, and Agency 63 4 Betty Friedan: The ‘Mother’ of Feminism, Self-fashioning, and the Celebrity Mystique 93 5 Germaine Greer: ‘The Star Feminism Had to Have’, Unruliness, and Adaptable Celebrity 127 ix x Contents Part II The New Bestsellers, Online Media, and Branding Feminism in the Twenty-first Century 161 6 Naomi Wolf: Twitter and the Transformation of a ‘Third wave’ Celebrity 165 7 Sheryl Sandberg and Roxane Gay: The Limits and Possibilities of Contemporary Blockbuster Feminism 197 8 Amy Poehler and Lena Dunham: Celebrity Memoirs, Comedy, and Digital Activism 235 9 Conclusion: The Future of Celebrity Feminism— Contemporary Celebrity Culture, the Blockbuster, and Feminist Star Studies 271 Index 301 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Feminism has always had its celebrities, a situation that has historically caused much anxiety. Within the women’s liberation movement, the making, and marketing, of ‘media stars’ was, as Martha Shelley’s comments suggest, believed to be thoroughly inconsistent with the goals and anti- hierarchical principles of second wave feminism: ‘These media stars, care- fully coiffed and lathered with foundation makeup, claim to represent all women. In actuality, they are ripping all women off … If large numbers of women are going to passively depend on a few stars to liberate them, instead of getting themselves together to do it, the movement will surely fail’ (cited in Gever 2003, p. 84). Such women, in their commodifica- tion of feminism, were routinely dismissed as ‘selling out’ the movement, selfishly privileging the individual over the collective, and, as Shelley argued, potentially jeopardizing the success of the women’s movement itself. During feminism’s second wave, such charges were most commonly levelled against the author of bestselling feminist non-fiction, who was implicated in mainstream commercial publishing ventures (as opposed to ostensibly more politically sound feminist presses).1 In 1971, Germaine Greer, long known for her own work in artfully cultivating a star feminist persona, made clear the role of the ‘feminist blockbuster’ in the celebrification of certain women over others: Now that Women’s Liberation has become a subject upon which each publishing house must bring forth its book … the struggle for the liberation of women is being mistaken for yet another battle of the books. Each © The Author(s) 2016 1 A. Taylor, Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-37334-2_1 2 A. TAYLOR publishing house backs its own expertise to identify the eventual bible of the women’s movement, characterizing it as a religious cult in which one publisher will corner the credibility market, sending the world’s women rushing like lemmings after a book. The hapless authoresses of the books in question find themselves projected into the roles of cult leaders, gurus of helpless mewing multitudes … (in Murray 2004, p. 179, my emphasis) One of the biggest problems with Greer’s statement above, apart from its positioning of readers as ‘lemmings’, is its characterization of fame as something done to reluctant, passive feminist authors. Greer, however, is not alone in making this somewhat disingenuous assumption, which is predicated on the disavowal of feminist agency in the celebrification pro- cess, and which underestimates the power of bestselling feminist works of non-fiction, such as her own, in reaching large audiences of women who may not have otherwise engaged with feminism. ‘Blockbuster’ feminist authors like Greer, and Helen Gurley Brown and Betty Friedan before her, and Naomi Wolf, Roxane Gay, Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Poehler, and Lena Dunham after her, are all women who have actively worked to shape our understandings of Western feminism, in some cases over many decades. With the assistance of various cultural intermediaries, they have all laboured to establish and maintain a public feminist persona, as well as putting their celebrity capital to what could be broadly considered ‘feminist’ uses. As the public embodiment of feminism, such women have come to mediate what this complex social movement means in the popular imagi- nary. Celebrity feminism, as I have previously argued, is itself an inter- nally variegated phenomenon but it appears that, historically, the most visible form of celebrity feminist has been the popular non-fiction author (Tuchman 1978; Taylor 2008, 2010). For Shane Rowlands and Margaret Henderson (1996), a ‘feminist blockbuster’ is a bestselling, skilfully mar- keted, often contentious popular feminist book, with a heavily celebri- fied author; and to this I would add that the blockbuster is a text that endures.

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