Shrill: The new comedy questioning modern female identity

Shrill (BBC Three, 2019-) is an American comedy originally aired on Hulu about a young journalist who is determined to change her life without changing her body. The show is great at showing stereotypes of women and expectations of women in society but then subverts them in a humorous way! I will be looking at in detail today at commodified feminism, which is essentially the type of feminism that has become prominent on social media platforms, predominantly Instagram.

In the episode ‘WA-HAM’ (2.6) of Shrill (BBC Three, 2019-), the struggles of contemporary female identity are explored by the protagonist Annie Easton, when she reports for the Thorn at a ‘women in business’ conference. This episode tackles issues that raised about recent trends of feminism, including postfeminism as a “distinctive kind of gendered neoliberalism” (Gill 2017: 611) The WA-HAM conference is promoting that equality for women can occur by consuming, with a focus on selling feminism rather than making a structural change. In the episode, neoliberalism is taking the disguised form of commodified feminism.

An example of commodified feminism is when Annie interviews Justine, the founder of WA-HAM. Initially, Justine is friendly towards Annie, offering to give her two minutes despite Annie missing her interview slot. Justine is a slim, white upper-middle-class woman, who wears a pink suit, clearly promoting “neoliberal cultural mythologies of girl power” (Dobson & Kanai 2019: 771) However, Justine’s attitude towards Annie changes as she questions “I know that part of WA-HAM’s mission statement is ‘lifting up every woman’ but can you really do that when the price point is so inaccessible?” Use of a reserve over-the-shoulder shot shows how Justine’s demeanour changes which is evident from her feigned expression when this question is asked, dismissively explaining how they offer sponsorships for low-income women, so they can attend free of charge. This is an example of “favouring “cool” feminism (McRobbie 2015) and confident, fun-loving girls, over a feminism driven by anger and uncertainty in relation to social injustice and inequality” (Gill 2016), evident here because Justine overlooks an important question asked by Annie. When Annie asks Justine’s assistant if she could interview the sponsor, he humorously explains that she was unable to attend because she couldn’t get the time off work. Humour is essentially created here because of this ironic type of feminism which is supposedly about empowering all women but overlooks minority groups.

The price of products being inaccessible is an issue that is continued in the following scene, where Annie looks at the different businesses that are being exhibited at the convention. Annie speaks to a woman selling dildos for $150 but this is justified because this product is necessary for “self-care”. This shows how this type of feminism has “the ability to instrumentalise “positive” emotions while downplaying “negative” ones” (Kanai 2017: 775) because it is only suitable for the white upper-middle class. The self-care culture reinforces the neoliberalist principle that by individually improving yourself, change can happen. This defers a problem to an individual rather than society. Lotz explains “that feminist discourse is predominantly found in the comedy genre because of narrative and generic qualities that both introduce and then contain potentially subversive content.” (Lotz 2001) The next stall Annie visits is makeup for women’s legs and Annie asks “Is that a big problem for women?”, the business owner responding “Maybe the biggest!” Annie shows her affective dissonance by her questioning the price and necessity of these products. The humour in this sequence emphasises the “post-feminist masquerade” evident in modern popular culture because of the pressures of maintaining the “beauty standard”. (McRobbie 2009)

To conclude Shrill explores the struggles of contemporary female identity by exposing commodified feminism which is only suitable for the white upper-middle class. The upper-middle-class are represented but then undermined by the protagonist Annie because these representations ignore the working class specifically in this episode. She questions neoliberal ideology revolving around the idea that the image of “an empowered woman is paired with someone who is beautiful, polished, dressed cool, has perfect skin.” The surface-level cosmetic solutions that the fictional conference WA-HAM promotes is in fact about capitalist gain rather than true feminist self-care.

Bibliography

Lotz, Amanda D. 2001.“Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes,” Feminist Media Studies, 1:1

McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage Publications.

Shields Dobson, Amy and Kanai, Akane. 2019. ‘From “can do” girls to insecure and angry: affective dissonances in young women’s post-recessional media’. Feminist Media Studies, 19: 771-786

Vulture. 2020. Why Shrill Took Aim at ‘Sinister’ Empowerment Conferences, <https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/shrill-season-2-waham-conference.html> [accessed 14 February 2020]

Teleography

‘WA-HAM’ (2.6), Shrill, (BBC Three 2019-)

By Harriet Baldwin