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archetype differed from the Playboy
Playmates of the ’50s in that its ideal
femme also, figuratively and often liter-
ally, kicked ass. Aspirational for women
and titillating to men, this image sold
product.
Chick lit followed single career girls
with disposable income, like Bridget
Jones and “Shopaholic” Becky Bloom-
wood. On TV and in movies, we got the
high- achieving, materialistic women
warriors of Sex and the City, but also Ally
McBeal and Legally Blonde. Teen fare like
Buffy and Bring It On offered a junior ver-
sion of the same— cutthroat high school
girls for whom short skirts and lipstick
were weapons of war. In music, the femi-
nist acts that ruled the early ’90s, from
Salt-N-Pepa to TLC to Bikini Kill, begat
a cadre of sparkly young singers who
existed at the intersection of strength
and sex appeal: Spice Girls, Britney,
Destiny’s Child.
A lot of these stories and characters
were fun. Many served as talismans for
female fans in a sexist society. But the
public response to them was incoherent.
Did we look up to these women because
they were powerful and confident, or
because they were pretty and rich—or
both? Was it O.K. that women were con-
torting themselves to emulate them?
And why did we respond with schaden-
freude when very young, very famous
women like Spears, Amy Winehouse or
Lindsay Lohan revealed themselves to be
less than invincible?
Feminist consciousness and the cul-
tural conversation at large have shifted
since then. Social media has given mar-
ginalized voices a more prominent plat-
form, while intersectionality—the idea
that all aspects of our identities com-
bine to form a matrix of privileges and
oppressions—has moved from academic
discourse to the mainstream. Amid the
anti-rape activism of the early 2010s,
many Black women pointed out that sex-
positive feminism didn’t have the same
connotations for them as it did for their
white counterparts.
But the greatest shift in the conversa-
tion around women in pop culture has
been the increasingly widespread under-
standing that to move past post feminist
“raunch culture,” as journalist Ariel Levy
called it in her 2005 book Female Chau-
vinist Pigs, the entertainment industry
itself needs to change. Could the air of
straight- male fantasy surrounding Buffy
Summers’ heroism, from her low-cut
costumes to her habit of jumping into
bed with adult men (and monsters),
have reflected the influence of the samestraight man now accused of mistreat-
ing those women? Didn’t it matter that
the stylish, hyper sexual and often vapid
female characters of Sex and the City and
its ilk were often crafted by male cre-
ators? Or that aspiring female pop stars
marketed to young girls had no choice
but to run the male-gaze gauntlet of the
music industry?Two decades on, it seems obvious
that an effective way to discourage
women’s self- objectification is to liberate
women’s bodies, stories and personas
from male gatekeepers. Efforts to do so
have taken on a new urgency since the
#MeToo movement’s rise in 2017, which
punctured the postfeminist fantasy
that gender equity and women’s sexual
sovereignty were already the norm
in the entertainment industry, or any
workplace. And over the past decade,
though parity has proved elusive, women
have slowly increased their presence
behind the camera.
It’s worth noting how many of the
most culturally resonant representations
of women during those years were also
shaped by women, from Michaela Coel
to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Female cre-
ators have challenged the idea that rib-
ald humor and sexual content must cater
to patriarchal tastes. Pop has become
the domain of women— Rihanna, Tay-
lor Swift, grownup Beyoncé—who keep
tight control over their images by assum-
ing the roles of director, producer, cura-
tor, actor and entrepreneur.
As for Spears, it’s great that we’re fi-
nally talking about the objectification,
gaslighting and ridicule she’s suffered—
and our complicity in it. But that doesn’t
mean we should pat ourselves on the
back for finally showing her empathy.
Nor should we get too excited about how
far we’ve come since the heyday of Perez
Hilton and Us Weekly. As many veterans
of the movement have noted, the trac-
tion feminism has gained within the cul-
tural realm in the past decade has rarely
extended to politics, where Roe v. Wade
is in peril, rape still goes mostly un-
punished, and a disproportionately high
number of single moms live in poverty.
If we take one lesson from “Framing
Britney Spears,” it should be that what
passes for progress in one era is bound to
look different to the next generation. The gorgeous, stylish and
successful female icons of
the late 1990s and early
2000s. Clockwise from top
left: Britney Spears, the
cast of Sex and the City,
Sarah Michelle Gellar as
Buffy Summers in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and
Destiny’s Child