Eileen DiPofi Minor Post (Lewis started a trend with this name) #4 (including group post)

Reading this week’s texts on post-feminism, I felt some dissonance between figures like Ally McBeal, Bridget Jones, and the other white ladies of postfeminist television, and what seems to me to be one of their immediate descendants, the Girlboss-Gone-Wrong. Whereas McRobbie describes the ironic stance postfeminism takes towards feminism, I feel like now we are in a moment where Gen Z and Gen Z-adjacent millennials now view postfeminism with a similar degree of irony. The use of the term “girl boss” in online circles exemplifies this skepticism towards the neoliberal, individualist, rise-and-grind, meal prep, I-get-up-at-4am-to-run-10-miles-and-meditate-before-my-kids-wake-up, multi-level marketing scheme vision of the modern woman. But this skepticism towards postfeminism has seemed merely to spawn new forms of content that commodify this criticism. Shows like The Dropout or Inventing Anna revel in the deception and moral vacuity of the girl boss and the postfeminist, neoliberal hellscape that produces her. My question is, is criticism of postfeminism still relevant? Or has that criticism already been co-opted and commodified?