Hannah McCann, "Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation" (Routledge, 2019)
In\xa0Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation\xa0(Routledge, 2019),\xa0Hannah McCann asks, \u201chow can we consider femininity in a way that best attends to people\u2019s experiences of, and attachment to, feminine styles?\u201d McCann takes readers through popular and scholarly feminist commentary to understand, and critique, how embodied feminine styles are comprehended as effects of an oppressive system which also plays a significant role in upholding and perpetuating this system. Instead of positing that femininity is necessarily empowering or essentially good, McCann insists that femininity is neither inherently disempowering, nor it is necessarily bad. McCann contests the idea that those who appear, embody or perform femininity are not \u201ccultural dupes labouring under false-consciousness\u201d but are agentic in their own right as they navigate life and negotiate with power structures and navigate life and their own becoming in it. There is acknowledgement in the book about the messiness of gender and recognition of the fact that masculinity and femininity are rarely coherent and uniformly expressed or articulated.\nMcCann uses the term \u201cfemininity\u201d to illustrate \u201cstyle of the body\u201d or appearance, which is a \u201cnon-inevitable normative descriptor\u201d that demands attention to more complexity than what is accrued to norms and descriptions. It considers how femininity as a \u201cbodily property\u201d has been conceived of in feminist discourse and how such conception figures in the lives of those who inhabit such styles and the identities that accompany them. It does not dismiss femininity as irrelevant, and does not reject its embodies styles, even as it does not place emphasis on representation as exclusively having the power to bring about political transformation. McCann enquires, \u201cWhat can the body as feminine do? And What might utopian femininity\u201d look like, while prefacing it with the statement that these questions can be asked instead of feminine embodiments being rendered intelligible only as oppressed. McCann explores queer femininity with attention to her conviction that \u201cfeminine styles and accoutrements deserve attention outside of evaluations of their presumed representational significance.\u201d\nDr. Hannah McCann is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research in critical femininity studies explores feminist discourse on femininity, queer femme LGBTQ+ communities, beauty culture, and queer fangirls. She has published in various journals including\xa0European Journal of Women\u2019s Studies, Women\u2019s Studies Quarterly,\xa0and\xa0Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her monograph\xa0Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation\xa0was published with Routledge in 2018, and her co-authored textbook\xa0Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures\xa0with Red Globe Press in 2020.\nSohini Chatterjee is PhD Student in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women\u2019s Studies at Western University. She works on queer cultural studies, trans and queer activism, and resistance movements.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies