Shifting Gender Identities in Popular Culture

From films, television shows, and young adult literature to beauty pageants, stand-up comedy, and role-playing games, pop culture influences our views of gender. This collection of 12 essays brings together a diverse selection of scholars to examine how various groups are represented in these narratives.
A mirror that allows us to see who and what we are, pop culture also has, in John Podhoretz’s words, the “ability to alter, destroy, or praise” how we see and define ourselves, and shapes how we understand our own and others’ actions, values, and beliefs. These essays investigate the ways in which popular culture helps us understand the rapid and often dramatic societal changes occurring around gender roles and identity. They address the question of truth in representation of women and gender minorities, highlighting the tension between the best and the worst that popular culture can offer to these debates.

Laura J. Getty is Professor of English at the University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, where she has contributed to and edited several online anthologies for the UNG Press. Josef Vice is Professor of English and Rhetoric at Purdue University Global, where he also is the faculty advisor for the PG Pride Student Organization. He is also a co-author for a forthcoming study of faculty attitudes towards teaching LGBTQIA2S+ students.

Edited by Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 286
Bibliographic Info: 30 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9456-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5502-4
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments       v
Preface       Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice       1
Introduction       Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice       3

Section One: Autonomous Identities
For Your Viewing Pleasure: Women’s Gazes/Female Gaze(s) in Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn       Laura J. Getty       21
Good Asian Girls Gone Bad: The Model Minoritization and Sexualization of Asian American Teen Girls in the Netflix Originals To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), Never Have I Ever (2020), and Dash & Lily (2020)       Talitha Angelica Acaylar Trazo       37
A Singular Woman: Gender and Power Dynamics in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet       Josef Vice and Alaina M. Doten       56
Feeling Like a Woman: Manipulation by White Men and the Use of the Erotic in Pose       Alexis Ciccone       80

Section Two: Deceptive Identities
Get Out’s Rose Armitage: The Mother of Tomorrow, a “Normal” White Woman       Julia Reade       99
Straightening China: The Outlawed Effeminate Men and Queer Utopianism in Idol Producer (2018)       Chelsea Wenzhu Xu       125
­­­Neo-Beauty Pageants: Representations of the Female Body in Hong Kong       Emily S.m. Chow-Quesada       147
“I identify as … tired”: The Evolution of the Comic Personae in the Comedy of Hannah Gadsby and Cameron Esposito       Amanda E. Salmon       167

Section Three: Transgressive Identities
­­­Co-Opting Trans Culture: Ryan Murphy, Janet Mock, and the Cultural Legitimacy of Pose       Paige Macintosh       185
Desire and the Body: Surveillance, Sexuality, and Power in The Handmaid’s Tale       Reut Odinak       208
Women in Kurtuluş Son Durak: From Victims to Rebels       Fatma Fulya Tepe       229
XConfessions: Erika Lust’s ­­­Pleasure-Affirmative Feminist Porn and the Popular Culture of Erotic Desire       Maria Emilia Barbosa and Lily Martinez       252

About the Contributors       271
Index       275