Celebrity Feminism and Transitions in the 21st Century

This thesis explores a recently emerging foregrounded celebrity feminism that is mediated in Western contemporary popular culture between 2001-2020, represented by three young female celebrities (Kristen Stewart, Emma Watson, and Ariana Grande) who extended their celebrity status from girlhood to womanhood, and claiming a feminist identity as at the centre of their adulthood. With a logically rigorous analysis across traditional and digital platforms, the thesis unpacks distinct celebrity feminist sensibilities and the possibilities of celebrity feminism. The thesis puts forward three lines of inquiry concerning the feminist potential and limitations of mediated celebrity: what I term ‘adapted tomboyism’, ‘professional celebrity feminist’ as a class privilege, and whiteness as a slippery ethnicity. The thesis argues that celebrity feminism is characterised by ambivalence and that celebrity feminists present ambiguous queer, class, and race identities while making attempts to contribute to resistance against systemic inequality and injustice and movements promoting racial justice while failing to escape from the essence of their contemporary celebrity identities – being commodified – or distancing themselves from their privileges of being white, traditionally beautiful, and wealthy. The thesis contributes to feminist media, celebrity, and girlhood studies regarding celebrity culture’s role in mediating shifting feminist politics in the West. It reveals highly visible moments of growing up to be mediated sites for young female celebrity personas to show resistance to systemic inequality and injustice and sheds light on the dramatically shifting feminism and gender politics, particularly since the #MeToo movement in 2017/18. Generational differences among feminists are considered, and the term ‘teen wokeness’ is conceptualised to examine the potential for younger generation feminists to lead movements for radical social changes. This thesis contributes methodologically by conducting a logically rigorous multi-modal analysis across nineteen years through an empirical collection of flashpoints for celebrities, which are spectacular moments of constructing their feminist identities.