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Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
Sarah CE Riley and Christina Scharff Feminism & Psychology published online 27 August 2012 DOI: 10.1177/0959353512454615 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fap.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/24/0959353512454615 A more recent version of this article was published on - Apr 25, 2013
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Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
Sarah CE Riley
Aberystwyth University, UK
Christina Scharff
Kings College London, UK
Abstract This article analyses the findings from a cooperative inquiry study with seven feminist identified women based in the UK. It explores the tensions participants experienced in negotiating their feminist identification on the one hand and engagements in normative beauty practices on the other. A discourse analysis of participants talk identified an ideological dilemma of feminism versus femininity, a contemporary re-working of longstanding constructions of feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive. In exploring how this dilemma was negotiated, the article supports existing arguments that femininity is increasingly constructed as a bodily practice. The article also examines the consequences of employing the feminist versus femininity dilemma which included the use of anti-feminist and homophobic constructions. Strategies to resist the dilemma involved postfeminist individual choice arguments or refusal to participate in practices that were critiqued. These strategies were individualist, only partially successful, and failed to engage with the classed and racialised aspects of contemporary beauty ideals. Keywords cooperative inquiry, femininity, feminism, ideological dilemmas, neoliberalism, postfeminism The terrain of contemporary femininities in the UK and many other western societies is marked by tensions and contradictions that create dilemmas for feminist identied women. One dilemma is how to negotiate a cultural construction that
Corresponding author: Sarah Riley, Psychology Department, Penbryn 5, Aberystwyth University, Ceredigion SY23 3UX, UK. Email: scr2@aber.ac.uk
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positions feminism and normative femininity in opposition, a dilemma that we call feminism versus femininity. This construction of feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive is an old one (Pugh, 2000) that continues to be reproduced in contemporary media (Hinds and Stacy, 2001), academic feminism (Hesford, 2005), young womens talk (Schar, 2011a), and popular culture (Hollows, 2000), often in relation to womens engagement in beauty practices. Feminist research has noted that the oppositional construction of feminism and femininity may be one factor in young women dis-identifying from feminism (Schar, 2011a; Skeggs, 1997). But little research has focused on how women who identify as feminist and feminine negotiate the cultural discourses that construct their identities as contradictory. In this article we address this gap through an analysis of how the dilemma of feminism versus femininity structured the way a group of feminist identied women made sense of their appearance concerns. In analysing how these women reproduced, resisted, or otherwise negotiated this dilemma we seek to contribute to feminist theorising on feminist identication within the context of postfeminism.
Negotiating femininity within a postfeminist context

There is a vibrant eld of research on how women in contemporary industrialised nations are negotiating their femininity within a postfeminist context. Such research foregrounds the aftermath of feminism (McRobbie, 2009); the existence of competing discourses of female success and failure (Aapola et al., 2005; Gonick, 2004; Harris, 2004); the intersections of gender with race, class, and sexuality (Ryan-Flood, 2011; Tate, 2007; Tyler, 2008; Walkerdine et al., 2001); and the impact of neoliberal forms of governance and associated social trends of individualisation, entrepreneurialism, and consumerism (Baker, 2010; Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2008b; Malson et al., 2011; Schar, 2011b; Walkerdine, 2003; Whitehead and Kurz, 2009). In this eld of research, postfeminism has come to denote a theoretical perspective, a movement of third wave feminists, an anti-feminist backlash against women, a sentiment of contemporary culture, and an era (Evans et al., 2010). Here, we draw on Gill and McRobbie to focus on two aspects of postfeminism: the role of the body in the production of femininity and a stance towards feminism that both draws on and repudiates feminism (Gill, 2008b; McRobbie, 2009). In relation to the body, Gill (2007; 2008b) understands postfeminism as a sensibility that involves a number of reoccurring features that include understanding femininity as a bodily practice, a shift from sexual objectication to sexual subjectication, and a focus on self-regulation, surveillance, and improvement made sense of through neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, in this context, refers to a form of governance that constitutes the ideal self as an autonomous citizen who makes free and rational choices in order to survey and improve herself/himself (Rose, 1990). Neoliberalism dominates British politics and common sense notions of subjectivity and, combined with an unprecedented media scrutiny of British womens bodies, has created a climate in which British women have learnt to continuously scrutinise themselves and engage in
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beauty-work to facilitate their appearance (Evans et al., 2010; Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008). Normative expectations regarding what is appropriate beauty work have also risen signicantly, in part facilitated by the proliferation of consumer products and beauty services available. For example, one well-known make-up brand recommends using eight products for colouring the lips alone (prime lip conditioner, two lip pencils, two lipsticks, tinted lip conditioner, and at least one lip brush as an applicator). Consuming and learning to use such products requires signicant investment of nances, time, and skill development (for example, short videos are provided for how to use these products, the cost of which was, at time of writing, 97 (http://www.maccosmetics.co.uk/, accessed 2 May 2012). Despite the work and expense of participating in such beauty practices, they are often made sense of through discourses of autonomy, choice, and pleasure (as with the LOreals strap line because Im worth it). These discourses are arguably appropriated from feminism (Gill, 2007, 2008b) and feminist responses to this appropriation of feminist rhetoric have been multiple. Third wave feminists, for example, have celebrated the pleasures women experience in participating in postfeminist practices that rework traditional associations of femininity with beauty and heterosexual sexual attractiveness. For Girlie girls, femininity is not opposed to feminism, but is positioned as central to a politics of agency, condence, and resistance (Munford, 2007: 274). Similarly, Baumgardner and Richards (2004) argue that contemporary young women have the condence and position in the world to be able to enjoy girlie practices in a way that second wave feminists did not. And, drawing on the feminism versus feminist dilemma, they accuse second wave feminists of making young women feel fraudulent for not being real feminists because of their pleasurable participation in a consumer oriented beauty culture. There have also been more critical feminist stances towards contemporary beauty practices and the sense making that underpins them. For example, McRobbie (2009) argues that postfeminist discourses of autonomy and choice used to make sense of beauty practices both draw on and repudiate feminism because the logic of postfeminism is that women now have the freedom second wave feminists called for, and so no longer need a feminist movement. McRobbie argues that this logic masks the disciplinary nature of postfeminist beauty ideals and reduces womens ability to understand their participation in beauty practices as political. A separate critical standpoint has come from feminist work that identies a tightening cultural association between femininity and appearance concerns (Gill, 2007, 2008b; Riley et al., 2008). Such analyses highlight and problematise what they see as an increasingly normative requirement for women to engage in the constant self-surveillance and regulation associated with neoliberal and postfeminist disciplinary regimes (Carey et al., 2011; Evans and Riley, 2012; Gill, 2007). A third critique has focused on how postfeminist discourses of empowerment through autonomous consumer choice are individualistic and mask the classed, sexualised, racialised, and embodied aspects of contemporary beauty ideals that marginalise those who are not white, slim, middle-class, and heterosexual (Craig,
2007; Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2011a; Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008; Skeggs, 1997; Tate, 2007). For example, Tates (2007) research on Black identity highlighted the inuence of whiteness as a yardstick for beauty, privileging white/light skin, straight hair, and what are seen to be European facial features. Similarly, white working-class womens beauty practices are informed by their positioning as outside middle-class norms of respectable femininity (Ringrose and Walkerdine, 2008; Skeggs, 1997). And when considering sexuality, contemporary beauty ideals have been critiqued as strongly heterosexualised, evident, for example, in the common and enduring claims that lesbians are unattractive, unfeminine, and mannish (Newton, 1984; Schar, 2011b). But, analyses of intersectionality have not been solely critical. Instead some have complicated the debates by highlighting both the limitations of postfeminist subjectivities and how they have opened up opportunities for resistance, parody, play, and pleasure (Craig, 2007; Evans et al., 2010; Tate, 2007). Although they recognise aspects of pleasure and choice in postfeminist practices, these critics dier from third wave feminists in their analysis of how postfeminist discourses both open up and shut down possibilities for women, which leads them to focus on the multiple and contradictory nature of postfeminist sense making (Evans et al., 2010; Weekes, 2004). Womens engagement in contemporary beauty practices then is located within multiple discourses that evoke notions of discipline and freedom, inclusion and exclusion, and feminism and anti-feminism. Femininities are circumscribed in ways that are racialised and classed and relate to appearance and the enforcement of heterosexual conventions; while current social formations, such as postfeminism and neoliberalism, foreclose a critical engagement with these regulatory norms. But while the feminist academy has concerned itself with how features of postfeminism may produce feminist dis-identication, little work has focused on the dilemmas of women who identify as feminists and who continue to identify, even if in a troubled way, with normative femininity. Notable exceptions include Adams et al.s (2007) discussion of the diculties in coming out as feminists in a feministhostile society and negotiating the expectation that as real feminists they should reject heteronormative expectations in relation to their sexuality and physical appearance. Similarly, Throsby and Gimlin (2010) oer a reexive piece regarding their positions as both feminist researchers critical of the thin ideal and women who are part of a culture that values the slim body. In this article we contribute to research on feminist identication with an analysis of a cooperative inquiry study of a group of feminist identied white, middleclass, academic women working in UK universities, the majority of whom were heterosexual. We asked: Do they encounter particular dilemmas in being feminist women? And if so, what are these dilemmas and how are they negotiated?
Method
Participants were seven women, including the authors of this article. They were in their 20s and 30s, were white, self-identied feminists, working in British
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universities (PhD students to lecturers). One research participant identied as lesbian, one as bisexual, and ve as heterosexual. Members of the group originated from a range of countries, including Italy, South Africa, Germany, and Britain. The group met as a form of cooperative inquiry eight times, for all-day meetings held monthly, constituting 56 hours of discussion. The project obtained ethical approval from the University ethics committee where the rst author worked. Cooperative inquiry is a small group action research method with its roots in humanist and liberationist thinking (Reason and Riley, 2008). Groups hold regular meetings in which participants explore together their experiences of an issue through cycles of reection and experimentation with understanding and behaviour. Ideal groups are relatively homogenous because participants need to generate shared issues to focus on and in this study we were similar in terms of gender, race, age, location, and able-bodiedness. However, some dierences in experience or sense making are useful in the inquiry process and our dierences oriented around sexuality, nationalities, personal histories, understandings of feminism, levels of participation in beauty practices, and motherhood. A core principle of cooperative inquiry is that participants are equal collaborators in terms of developing ground rules, decision-making, commitment, and ownership of the data; but they may take on dierent roles within the project. In our project three participants set up the group, identifying a focus (gendered experiences), securing funding, and inviting the other participants. One member was an experienced action research facilitator and so led the early sessions while mentoring other members to take a lead as the project progressed. Facilitation techniques are used to help participants engage in cycles of action and reection. Action-reection cycles involve participants reecting on their lives (reection), considering ways to change thinking or behaviour in relation to these issues (actions), and evaluating the outcomes of these changes (reection), so enabling the next cycle of reection and action (Reason and Riley, 2008). An example from our inquiry was the use of a learning pathways grid (Rudolph, et al., 2001), a structured process to explore desired and actual experiences. This process led one member to realise that she was carrying a belief that she was inherently selsh because she was an only child. From this reection activity she then experimented with thinking dierently, creating the action aspect of the cycle. Cooperative inquiry designs are participatory and emergent, which means that participants generate and explore issues that are relevant to them, and through this exploration specic issues emerge to become the focus of the inquiry. The focus of the inquiry may therefore not be apparent at the beginning of the project. Instead, groups start with a broad question, such as what are the gender issues for a group of female academics?, which over time becomes more focused (e.g. how do feminist identied women negotiate the apparent contradictions between identifying as (feminine) women and as feminists). As participants engage in the process of action-reection they are also encouraged to consider an extended epistemology, forms of knowing that are based on the following typology: experiential (a sense of knowing through living, which may
be hard to put into words); presentational (representing an understanding in some way to others); propositional (conceptualising or theorising ideas) and practical (applying this knowledge to everyday life; and ideally entering back into another cycle of action and reection by exploring the impact of this new practice). During the early stages of a project the aim is to focus on cycling between experiential and presentational levels to ground participants understanding in experience and to facilitate new ways of thinking about that experience in order to produce quality in future propositional and practical forms of knowing. In our group we initially had a tendency to focus on the propositional, perhaps because thinking theoretically is comfortable for academics. However, it was when we shifted from talking about concepts to our own lived experiences that we reached a deeper level of critical inquiry. An example of talking about our own experiences was when we took turns to describe the various beauty practices in which we engaged, starting with our heads and working down to our toes. Despite diering in what we did and how often (some members, for example, wore make-up daily, others infrequently), we could all describe engaging in beauty practices for most parts of our body. As we shared what we did (eye brow plucking, hair dying, waxing, shaving etc.) a palpable sense of embarrassment seemed to invade the room. In reecting on this embarrassment, both during that meeting and in other meetings, our group discussed our concerns around participating in beauty practices. In these reections we started to explore the dilemma of feminism versus femininity, which seemed to be structuring our sense making and experiences of ourselves, particularly in relation to our engagement with beauty practices and our body image concerns. We returned to this theme at dierent points across the workshops, either as part of deliberate planning or because it emerged out of other discussions. As with memory work, cooperative inquiry is a collective co-researching process, and in this context we were inquiring into our gendered experiences. But in recording these discussions, we also aimed to generate data that could be subject to academic analysis. At the end of our eight meetings the group outlined dierent aspects of our work that we wanted to explore further academically and anyone interested in working on these signed up. We agreed that we would show subsequent work to group members for their comments and that disagreement would be allowed and noted in the published work. All members have had the opportunity to comment on this article and were in agreement with it. In this article we present an ideological dilemma informed discourse analysis on the transcripts of our meetings. The ideological dilemmas approach conceptualises private thought as produced through public discourse, and argues that public discourse reects culturally available ideologies that are contradictory because within any culture there is more than one ideal world and associated relationships of power, value, and interest (Billig et al., 1988). When people try to make sense of their world to themselves or others, their arguing and thinking reects the contradictions in common sense making and are thus dilemmatic. Ideological dilemmas structure how people come to understand themselves through the discursive resources they have available to them. It is therefore a useful method to explore
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issues of identity, and particularly appropriate for our study, as evidence of a dilemmatic nature of feminist identication was strong in both the literature and in our data. Ideological dilemmas research employs discourse analysis to analyse peoples talk. In our study, transcripts of the meetings were anonymised using pseudonyms and analysed with a form of discourse analysis that draws together interpretative repertoire and Foucauldian discourse analysis. There is a body of work that supports synthesising forms of discourse analysis (e.g. Edley and Wetherell, 2001; Riley, 2002). Advantages include being able to identify the common sense ways of talking about objects and events in the world and locating such talk in wider socio-historically specic institutional discourses, such as government policy. Our conception of subjectivity is that people draw on a set of (multiple, contradictory, and culturally specic) repertoires from which to make sense of their world. These repertoires gain their explanatory power by being located in wider discourses and through the specic ways in which they are deployed in interaction. Thematic coding was used to identify interpretative repertoires. Through cyclical coding we explored these repertoires, considering their construction and function in talk and how they tted within broader discourses based on our reading of relevant literatures. A key pattern in our data, which we describe below, was the negotiation of what were experienced as contradictory demands from our feminist and our feminine identications, particularly in relation to our participation in beauty practices, which we dene as practices that allowed us to participate in feminine beauty norms.
The dilemma of beauty

Our beauty practices included armpit and eyebrow hair removal; dying, straightening, or curling head hair; bleaching unwanted facial hair; various forms of pubic hair management; food restriction and exercise for weight loss; nger and toenail painting; and wearing make-up. All of us participated at some level in these kinds of beauty practices; all of us associated these beauty practices with regulatory and normative forms of femininity. We also drew on an understanding even if to be interrogated that feminism critiqued these forms of feminine beauty practices. Our engagement in beauty practices thus produced an ideological dilemma between identifying as a feminist and identifying as feminine. This led to talk of betraying feminism, labelling ourselves as bad feminists, or questioning how other feminists might judge us. We argue that such talk constructs a rigid feminism that reects common and hostile constructions of feminism as dogmatic and anti-femininity (Whelehan, 2000) and did not account for ongoing debates that seek to navigate the terrain of femininity and feminism in dierent ways (Craig, 2007; Davis, 1995; Munford, 2007). Our discussions showed that even though we identied as feminists and were critical of anti-feminist discourse, we still oriented to, and indeed reiterated, this anti-feminist discourse in the (re)production of our feminist identities. Such meaning making thus created a dilemma of beauty in which our participation in
normative feminine beauty practices, which provoked both feelings of pleasure and shame, contradicted our identications as feminists. All of us articulated the dilemma of beauty although we negotiated it in dierent ways, locating our aesthetic preferences along a troubled pendulum from individual agency to cultural dupe. In the extract below, Amelias talk acts as an example of an individual agency account:
I dont have issues with feminists should look a particular way or its, you know, its not right to wear make-up . . . cause I know I dont t the bill for a lot of feminists, and I remember a friend saying: I always thought that feminists shouldnt wear makeup and Im thinking: Well Im not doing it for any man if thats what youre thinking, I am doing this for me. (Extract 1, Amelia, May meeting)
Amelia positions herself as a feminist who wears make-up. In this case, the dilemma between feminism and engaging in normative feminine practices, such as wearing make-up, is solved through an individualist argument that evokes postfeminist discourses of choice and autonomy. But Amelias claim that she is not wearing make-up for any man forecloses critical engagement with why she wears make-up for herself, highlighting the ambivalences of postfeminist discourses of autonomy (Amy-Chinn, 2006) and closing down the opportunity to discuss the social, cultural, and structural forces that promote specic looks or which allow make-up to be used in resistant ways to these forces. Thus, while Amelia discussed structural constraints at other times, this extract is representative of the use of individualist arguments in the groups discussions. In the extract below, Jennifer too uses an individual preferences argument in regard to the dilemma of beauty, although she complicates it by rst rejecting it from a feminist standpoint:
Yeah, I guess, my dilemmas more to do with my weight and sort of how I manage that as a feminist, yes sort of dieting and stu and, you know, when I was a teenager I had anorexia so I have like mad willpower and I do still feel like quite a strong pull towards it although I sort of made a, you know, feminist decision not to, you know, not to kind of indulge that because, you know, I think there was no possible way of justifying it or going Well, its not a cultural thing. Clearly I am just doing this for myself, you know, its obviously bollocks. But I do aesthetically prefer my body when its more like that and I take more sort of pleasure in it when its more like that, and I feel more comfortable kind of, you know, walking around with it, but then at the same time it makes me feel like mentally not happy so I sort of . . . I feel Im in this constant thing where I either feel happy with my body or I feel happy kind of in my mind but not, you know, I nd it very hard to bring the two together so that . . . I mean thats yeah I guess thats not kind of a resolved kind of struggle thats just something I sit in the middle of. (Extract 2, Jennifer, May meeting)
Here, Jennifer sets up a relationship between feminist identication and embodied identity, since managing her weight is done through a feminist identity.
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But this relationship is a troubled one, because it does not free her from culturally normative aesthetic preferences. Feminism is described as powerful in three ways: First, she was able to use it to free herself from anorexia (since moving away from anorexic thinking and behaviour was a feminist decision); second, it allowed her to resist anorexias strong pull; and third, feminism provided her with the ability to critique postfeminist individualist arguments (summarised as obviously bollocks). But feminism was not powerful enough to aect her aesthetic preferences, a statement reinforced through her three part list associated with a thin/food restricted body: she prefers it, takes more pleasure in it, and feels more comfortable walking around with it. Her feminist critique of the thin ideal and her desire for a thin body thus becomes an unresolved struggle, echoing Throsbys and Gimlins (2010) discussion of being a researcher critical of the thin ideal while also subject to its discourse. In the rst half of Jennifers extract she articulates two sets of dilemmas: her anorexic thinking competes with her feminist thinking, and her feminist structural critique competes with her account of individual preferences. To these she adds a third dilemma that when she fulls culturally valued forms of embodiment and is thin and happy with her body, she is mentally unhappy. Resonating with the notion of ideological dilemmas, Jennifer understands herself through competing discourses around feminism, femininity, structural constraints, and individual choices. Such complexity was further complicated when participants discussed their sexuality. For example, Jackie stated:
I feel Ive always had this fear that Im going to turn into what I think is like a stereotypical older lesbian woman which is someone who is . . . like just let themselves go or doesnt care about how they look or wears dungarees or you know all those stereotypes . . . [a little later in the transcript] . . . I feel like Im constantly sort of worrying about things that women worry about in general like my weight and stu like that but then also worrying about this other like little club and whether or not I want to look like that and how important is it for me to be able to pass if I want to, in that, in that club I suppose . . . and I think also cause sometimes theres the added expectation that if youre gay or if youre a bit of a right on lesbian you shouldnt worry about your looks at all. Sort of even more so than with just . . . sort of, I guess, heterosexual women. So thats my dilemma. (Extract 3, Jackie, May meeting)
Jackies extract describes a set of dilemmas that relate to gender, sexuality, and embodiment. She evokes the idea of a stereotypical older lesbian woman who, problematically from her perspective, has no appearance concerns (let themselves go or doesnt care about how they look). In doing so she draws on prevalent discourses of lesbians as unfeminine (see Welshs [2010] discussion of the persistence of the ugly lesbian stereotype, and Schar, 2011b). In Jackies extract this ugly lesbian stereotype is constructed as a constant spectre in her life (I feel Ive always had this fear), creating a sense of continuous anxiety. In the second part of her statement, Jackie develops her analysis to construct a dilemma between being lesbian and feminine. She makes an association between
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being a woman and worrying about weight, so that her appearance worries are constructed as a normative female anxiety (Im constantly sort of worrying about things that women worry about in general like my weight and stu like that). Jackie also describes anxieties produced through lesbian identication, the other club, and her concerns about passing and belonging there. In contrast to normative femininity, membership to this club involves not worry[ing] about your looks. Jackies talk evokes the feminist versus femininity dilemma but with an intersecting layer in which sexuality, as a right on lesbian, also maps onto feminist identication. She describes two sets of contradictory identities: rst, she is a woman with appearance concerns and a lesbian (feminist) woman without appearance concerns, and second, she must both avoid the culturally devalued stereotype of ugly lesbian while also enacting a form of lesbianism that involves not having appearance concerns. These dilemmas map onto constructions of feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive and are indicative of a wider cultural context where both feminism and lesbianism are associated with deviant forms of femininity (see Clarke and Turner [2007] on appearance concerns and sexuality). The above analysis shows how everyday sense making between identifying as feminist and as feminine became constructed as mutually exclusive, creating the dilemma of beauty that could only be (partially) resolved through individual preference arguments. In our discussions the dilemma of beauty mainly focused on the intersections between feminism and femininity and, to a lesser extent, feminism, femininity, and sexuality. What was absent from our talk is any notion of race; an absence that contrasts sharply with Tates observation from her research on Black identity where beauty and recognition as both Black and beautiful, occupied such a central place at every stage of the life course of Black mixed race women (2007: 310; emphasis in original). Our analysis of our experiences of beauty as a gendered, rather than a racialised experience is indicative of the normative, privileged, and therefore unmarked status of our whiteness (Dyer, 1997). And the absence of discussions of white privilege and the ways race intersects with the dilemma of beauty points to the limitations of this study, highlighting the need for white women to explore their racial privileges in the context of beauty.
Resisting the feminism versus feminist dilemma

When we talked about feminism, we described it as oering valued and powerful critical frameworks for making sense of our social world (see Jennifers extract above as an example). Much of our feminist theorising critiqued the society we were in, particularly in relation to appearance concerns and scrutiny of womens bodies. It became apparent in our talk that this ability to critique normative expectations of women left us with the expectation that we should therefore be above the inuence of these social norms, that in seeing them as problematic we should not and would not engage with them. When we found ourselves still participating in feminine norms still worrying about our looks we were left having to negotiate the potential challenge that it was us who were fraudulent, since we continued to buy into cultural values of which we were critical.
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Our apparent failure to live up to feminist ideals through our continued investment in normative femininity gave rise to talk of guilt about not being good enough feminists. But within our talk there was also resistance and attempts to move out of the dilemma of beauty, as Isabelles and Lucys extracts show below:
But I dont feel guilty about it (appearance concerns). I dont feel like Im betraying my feminist principles because [. . .] a long time ago I distanced myself from the idea of being a perfect feminist because Im you know, Im in society, as well, I cant step out. (Extract 4, Isabelle, May meeting) One of the things I know weve talked about is feeling guilty about things and so it doesnt make me feel guilty I just feel complicit, I suppose, but I guess one of the other things is that I am quite enjoying participating in beauty practices as well, and because I didnt do it for the whole of my twenties it feels quite feminine and girlie. (Extract 5, Lucy, May meeting)
Isabelles talk implies that the gure of dogmatic feminism is one that she had to negotiate, since she had to distance herself from the idea of being a perfect feminist. But in doing so she describes a place in which the feminist versus femininity dilemma collapses and where she is a feminist who is also in her society. Alternatively, Lucys extract oers another way to circumvent the dilemma of beauty through notions of pleasure and agency. Resisting the idea of feeling guilty, Lucy describes participating in beauty practices as pleasurable, with her talk of enjoying feeling feminine and girlie echoing third wave feminist celebrations of feminine beauty norms. Lucy thus rejects feeling guilty about colluding in ideological constructions of feminine beauty, and, as in Isabelles extract above, accounts for her engagement with current social norms rather than seeking to transcend them. Lucys statement could be regarded as an open discussion about ones investment in normative notions of femininity and the dilemmas that this raises for selfidentied feminists. But, the spectre of the dilemma of beauty remains Lucy replaces guilt with complicity, producing the dilemma in terms of identifying as feminist and yet failing to adhere to her construction of feminism as critiquing participation in normative femininity. She justies her participation in these practices, not just in terms of the pleasures of feeling feminine and girlie, but also as a person with a history of non-participation (I didnt do it for the whole of my 20s), evoking the gure of a feminist as someone who transcends feminine beauty norms. Thus, Lucys talk both disrupts and reproduces the dilemma of beauty. Rather than position oneself within society, another form of resistance took the shape of refusing to participate in forms of femininity that we critiqued as feminists. But, as in Louises extract below, this strategy could come at the cost of social isolation.
With all my friends also with my family its something constantly I have to negotiate you know when theyre criticising their bodies kind of like I should do the same or if
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theyre saying something and thats a constant thing I think with friends being on diets or you know friends being . . . and somehow you have to agree you know you have to buy into that discourse cause that is feminine you know to worry about your body or to think . . . yeah, or to be watching what you eat or to that and my two sisters are terrible for that you know they are a lot . . . theyre tiny compared to me and I think they eat less healthy than me and they are denitely more obsessed about what they eat and what they shouldnt eat and blah blah blah and this, and that seems to be . . . and with friends of mine who are more right on and more feminists you know theyre still obsessed with criticising bits about their body and feeling guilty about eating food when we go out, or saying . . . commenting on eating too much or I shouldnt eat that or blah blah blah blah and that seems to be feminine, I dont know, then if Im not doing that then Im not sort of [. . ..] And thats my dilemma cause then I sort of start not feeling . . . yeah sort of feeling bad that Im outside of that you know that Im positioned as outside of that. (Extract 8, Louise, May meeting)
Similar to Jackies extract above, Louise establishes a strong connection between worrying about ones body and femininity (cause that is feminine . . . to worry about your body). This coupling of femininity with appearance concerns is pervasive for Louise, creating an inescapable reproduction of critical body talk from her friends, family, colleagues, and even fellow feminists, who are still obsessed with criticising bits about their body and feeling guilty about eating (see also Fahs [2011] for a discussion of the pervasive social policing of feminine beauty norms in relation to body hair). All the participants in the study shared an understanding that womens critical body talk, as described in Louises extract above, is a deeply problematic aspect of contemporary culture. And we constructed this critical understanding as one produced by our feminism. By refusing to engage in this feminine norm of critical body talk (and thus avoiding the dilemma of beauty, and any associated feelings of guilt or collusion), Louise however is met with a dierent problem: that of social exclusion. For Louise then, the outcome of living out her feminist values and not participating in these feminine norms that she critiques is a painful sense of exclusion, of feeling bad that Im outside (. . .) positioned as outside.
Discussion
Our analysis focused on how a group of feminist identied women constructed femininity as a bodily practice. Femininity was seen as being produced through participating in forms of body work in order to meet normative feminine beauty ideals. Lucy, for example, associated the pleasures she experienced with engaging in beauty work with feeling feminine and girlie, and both Jackie and Louises talk constructed appearance concerns as synonymous with being a woman, either in their own thinking or as a pervasive belief amongst the people around them. That we dened women through appearance concerns and associated beauty practices is troubling support for feminist research that has critiqued a cultural move in which appearance has come to represent much of what it means to be feminine
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(Gill, 2008b; Riley et al., 2008). Our analysis also shows the power of this coupling between femininity and appearance in creating subjectivities that hail even women who are at least partially critical of the ideologies and social practises that (re)produce them. Our participants/own engagement with beauty practices were made sense of in two ways. We either drew on individualist arguments (for example, Amelias Im doing it for me argument), or alternatively we understood our beauty practices as adherence to a set of cultural beauty norms of which we were critical. We associated our critique of our beauty practices and of cultural beauty norms with feminism. We therefore coupled femininity with beauty practices and feminism with a critique of these beauty practices, making sense of our beauty practices through the dilemma of feminism versus femininity. The construction of feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive is an old one, but one that continues to divide feminists (see, for example, third wave feminisms reworkings of second wave feminist positions on beauty [Gillis et al., 2007]). Not surprisingly then, we nd it structuring a signicant pattern of sense making for the group of feminist identied women in this study. A positive outcome of our use of the feminism versus femininity dilemma was an ability to critique what we considered harmful forms of thinking or behaving associated with beauty ideals, such as Jennifers decision to resist the call of anorexia. But there were also negative consequences to the feminism versus femininity construction. Positioning feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive, for example, led us to construct a dogmatic feminism and reproduce anti-feminist and homophobic discourse. Thus, although we identied as feminists and were critical of anti-feminist discourse, we still oriented to this anti-feminist discourse in the (re)production of our feminist identities. A second problem with employing the feminism versus femininity dilemma was that a sense of failure was the logical outcome of both identifying as feminists and participating in practices that we critiqued as feminists. Attempting to live out two contradictory identities led at times to feelings of guilt and fraud. Our data thus supports Baumgardner and Richardss (2004) argument that taking up second wave feminist critique of consumer orientated beauty ideals while still participating in or enjoying them, leads women to feel they are not good enough or authentic enough feminists. But rather than argue, as they do, for a third wave celebration of consumer orientated beauty ideals, our analysis suggests that we need to focus on the expectation that the ability to critique society enables feminists to step out of society. Much of our feminist theorising critiqued the society we were in, particularly in relation to appearance concerns and the scrutiny of womens bodies. It became apparent in our talk that this ability to critique normative expectations of women left us with the expectation that we should therefore be above the inuence of these social norms; that in seeing them as problematic, we should not and would not engage with them. When we failed to step out of society either because we had internalised cultural beauty ideals or because our friends, family, and colleagues continued to participate in them we were left with a sense of unresolved struggle, deep contradiction, or feeling fraudulent, guilty, or socially isolated. Instead of
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feeling comfortable with an understanding that we, as academics and subjects, can be both critical of, and inuenced by, culture (Gavey, 2011), we felt ashamed of our own cultural embeddedness. Our analysis supports Gills argument that being critical of female beauty ideals does not automatically displace other kinds of aective response including shame, hatred or desire (2011b); a nding that has signicant implications for feminists advocating media literacy training as a way to help women negotiate contemporary feminine ideals. In our cooperative inquiry we explored dierent ways of engaging with the dilemma of beauty, which included doing it for me arguments, rejecting perfectionism feminism, allowing for the pleasures we may have in engaging in feminine beauty work, and refusal to participate in normative feminine practices that we critiqued. These moves were individualistic. Reecting neoliberal sensibilities that emphasise individual solutions to structural constraints and absenting the vibrant eld of ongoing feminist activism, these strategies had their own set of problematic consequences: individual agency and choice arguments absented structural analyses; accepting the pleasures of beauty practices or distancing oneself from the need to be a perfect feminist failed to resolve the dilemma eectively; and refusal to participate could lead to social isolation. We also failed to consider deeply intersectionality in our gendered experiences, since our whiteness and middle-class position were not oriented to in these resistance strategies. It is striking that beauty was not discussed in relation to race. Equally, our feelings of guilt about engaging in normative beauty practices acquire an additional dimension if we recall that in a western context middle-class women may be expected to appear natural or unconcerned about their looks (Craig, 2007). In this context, our expectation to refuse to take part in beauty practices might be indicative of our feminism, but also of middle-class taste and privilege where natural looks have, at least in the past, been valued. This observation suggests that the dilemma of feminism versus femininity is lived out dierently, calling for a deeper analysis of the complex ways in which beauty regimes intersect with race and class (see also Fahs, 2011). The focus of our discussion was mostly on the troubling aspects of our feminist identity, rather than the joyful, pleasurable, liberating, and inspiring experiences that feminist thinking and activism also entails. Our continued identication as feminists despite the troubles it brings us, suggests that these pleasures and privileges exist and run deep. Indeed, our focus on our troubles may in part be due to the method chosen. Cooperative inquiry is an exceptional method for exploring indepth identity concerns. But in seeking to elicit positive social change by identifying shared problems and their attendant solutions, it focuses on problem identication. Perhaps another method might have highlighted more our pleasures of feminist identication. Research on gender and postfeminism rarely explores the experiences of feminists and feminist academics. Our analysis turns the gaze back onto us to explore how feminist academics, who research postfeminism and neoliberalism, negotiate this context at an individual level. Cooperative inquiry allowed us to identify and explore in an in-depth way a form of sense making that had troubled core aspects
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of our identities in terms of what it means to be female and to engage authentically with the world. And having examined our use of the femininity versus feminism dilemma, we suggest that future research could focus on nding ways to help feminists identify alternatives to this dichotomy that may more clearly challenge the individualist and hidden racialised and classed aspects of postfeminist sense making. Alterative discourses may also, for example, interrogate the dilemma itself, the notion that such dilemmas should be resolved, or question the idea that being able to critique society will empower feminists to live lives free from dominant cultural expectations of appropriate femininity. Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the British Academy (ref: SG-43703). Thanks to our co-participants and to Professor Rosalind Gill for comments on an earlier draft.
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Sarah Riley is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Aberystwyth University, interested in exploring identity from a social constructionist perspective. Recent projects include looking at dance music cultures as forms of social and political participation (Economic and Social Research Council) and using cooperative inquiry to explore dilemmas of femininity (British Academy). She has coedited Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Doing Your Qualitative Psychology Project (SAGE, 2012), and with Adrienne Evans is writing Sex, Identity and Consumer Culture (Open University Press, forthcoming). Christina Schar is a Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at the Department of Culture, Media, and Creative Industries, Kings College London. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, young femininities, and neoliberalism. Christina has conducted qualitative research on young womens engagements with feminism, which is forthcoming in the monograph Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World (Ashgate, forthcoming). Rosalind Gill and Christina Schar are editors of New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

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