How Popular Fiction Reflects Debates About Gender and Sexuality: Feminism

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For the last few decades it is argued to what extent popular fiction reflects such things as social changes in our society and topical debates. In this paper I will discuss to what extent popular fiction reflects debates about gender and sexuality. Moreover, I will look at the difference between postfeminism and third-wave feminism, afterwards I will more closely look at Candace Bushnell's book Sex and the City (1996) and relate the book's ideas about woman and woman's sexuality to postfeminism and third-wave feminism ideas. I will also look at cyber-feminism in relation to another chick lit - Helen Fielding's book Bridget Jones's Diary (1996).
In my opinion, popular fiction reflects almost everything what happens in the contemporary society or in the minds of people who are living in this society. Those could be debates about living on Mars, about specific crime or woman's role in society and her responsibilities. As it is not the high-quality literature, it can be written while the topic is still actual and that makes this literature genre so significant. To my mind, popular fiction also reflects debates about gender and sexuality to a great extent. Nevertheless, it can be seen more clearly in some specific Popular fiction genres than in others. McCracken (1998: p.6) argues: “Popular fiction, we might say, mediates social conflict. In other words, it acts as a medium between reader and world through which the social contradictions of modernity can be played out.” Chick lit as a genre emerged in the mid-1990s when Helen Fielding's book Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (1996) which turned out to being a great success. In mid-1990s a great number of women all over the world were paying attention...

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...dget Jones's diary. New York: Picador.
3. Flanagan, M., and Booth, A. (eds.) (2002) Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Cambridge: MIT Press
4. Genz, S. and Brabon, B. (2009) Postfeminism cultural texts and theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
5. Kember, S. (2000) Cyber-feminism. In: Code, Lorraine (ed.) Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp.124
6. Krolokke, C. and Sorensen, A. (2006) Gender communication theories & analyses from silence to performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
7. McCracken, S. (1998) PULP:Reading popular fiction. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
8. Starr, C. (2000) Third-wave feminism. In: Code, Lorraine (ed.) Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp.474
9. Whelehan, I. (2002) Bridget Jones’s Diary: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum.

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