Postfeminist Celebrity and Motherhood: Brand Mom / Edition 1

by Jorie Lagerwey

Overview

This book analyzes the intersections of celebrity, self-branding, and "mommy" culture. It examines how images of celebrity moms playing versions of themselves on reality television, social media, gossip sites, and self-branded retail outlets negotiate the complex demands of postfeminism and the current fashion for heroic, labor intensive parenting. The cultural regime of "new momism" insists that women be expert in both affective and economic labor, producing loving families, self-brands based on emotional connections with consumers, and lucrative saleable commodities. Successfully creating all three: a self-brand, a style of motherhood, and lucrative product sales, is represented as the only path to fulfilled adult womanhood and citizenship. The book interrogates the classed and racialized privilege inherent in those success stories and looks for ways that the versions of branded motherhood represented as failures might open a space for a more inclusive emergent feminism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367877385
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Series:	Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jorie Lagerwey is a lecturer in television studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research interests include gender, celebrity, genre, and religion on television and other digital media. Her work has appeared in Cinema Journal, Studies in Popular Culture, Spectator, Flowtv.org and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Brand Mom: Celebrity, Branding, and Postfeminist Mommy Culture

1. Branding Baby: Incorporating Conception and Pregnancy into the Self-Brand

2. Bravo Brand Motherhood: Negotiating the Impossibilities of Postfeminism

3. From Honest to GOOP: Lifestyle Brands and Celebrity Motherhood

4. TLC’s Religious Moms: Branding Motherhood with Faith

5. Looking Forward: Cracks in the Foundation of Postfeminism and Mommy Culture