☆ Is Fleabag post-feminist? ☆
Fleabag is a contemporary British television series that follows the titular character, Fleabag – a single, young, white, middle-class woman living in London – navigating grief, loss, anger, and heterosexuality. Fleabag explores sexual liberation and breaks gender norms through the lens of a ‘female gaze.’ Indeed, Fleabag, written by, created by, and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is without doubt a feminist icon in contemporary Western media. However, Fleabag’s location within a post-feminist cinematic world limits its reach to women outside that of white, middle-class, heterosexual society. This essay will define post-feminism and explore how Fleabag fits within the category of feminist media, as well as highlight Fleabag’s shortcomings, which are exposed through the framework of post-feminist critique.
To discern whether Fleabag fits within the realm of post-feminist media, one must first define post-feminism and how it differentiates from feminism itself. A single, true, and succinct definition of post-feminism can be difficult to express, as there are many opposing ideals regarding what it means to live in a post-feminist society. There seem, however, to be two widely accepted descriptions of what post-feminism is.
The first is grounded in the belief that feminism and feminists have achieved what they set out to do and, having ostensibly gained ‘equality’ in the home, workplace, and politics, feminism and its necessity has reached its end. Thus, post-feminism through this lens holds that any injustice and inequity in society is due to natural or individual faults and not structural and cultural barriers. This definition of post-feminism is intrinsically linked to neoliberalism and the acceleration of Western culture’s late capitalist patriarchal institutions.
The second definition of post-feminism seeks to understand and interrogate the limits and failures of previous feminist theory and questions the essentialism and binaries of previous feminist thought. Post-feminism in this respect highlights intersectionality in the feminist movement and seeks to understand how race, class, ability, trans and non-binary people, and sexual orientation intersect with the “female” experience.
To avoid confusion in this essay, I will refer to the first definition of post-feminism – one that incites “relentless individualism” and “blames women for their disadvantaged positions” (Gill, 2017, p. 609) – as neoliberal post-feminism. The second definition – one that investigates intersectionality – will be referred to as intersectional post-feminism. It is important here to note that intersectional post-feminism, in the Western world, may also be defined as fourth-wave feminism. It suggests that neoliberal post-feminist theory is exclusionary and Western-centric – appearing to discount the structural barriers present for women of colour, disabled women, transgender people, queer women, women of low socio-economic standing, or women living in developing countries. It argues that to observe the female experience as exclusively white, heterosexual, able, and middle class is problematic in that it seeks to exclude rather than unite all women.
Fleabag is both a feminist and (neoliberal) post-feminist text. However, the series fails to explore post-feminism in an intersectional context, which is arguably what post-feminism might more usefully be.
Fleabag depicts the pressures of modern Western culture through an unequivocal female voice. Fleabag is a sexually liberated, single woman, finding her way through London’s frenetic world of work, family dysfunction, loss, sex, and neoliberal hegemony. Fleabag’s pilot explores the struggle of being a modern woman and the pressures that come with being an adult – specifically, a female one. Fleabag argues that patriarchal capitalism presents women with rigid binaries – although “choice,” “freedom,” and “agency” are terms generously applied in Western neoliberal culture to “advance an image of the new, empowered woman confidently embracing patriarchal heterosexuality and commodity culture,” Fleabag explores how it is neoliberalism itself that disallows women to truly be free and agentic (Chen, 2013, p. 441).
While ‘girl power’ culture and female success and liberation is unceasingly advertised in media, it sits alongside a “hostile scrutiny of women” and surveillance of women’s bodies and choices (Gill, 2017, p. 607). This concept is explored in Fleabag through the protagonist’s (lack of) relationship status and consistent involvement in casual sex, which in turn presents a form of reduction and restriction and thus a definite lack of freedom. While this individualistic emancipation from sexual relationships – and thus emancipation from innate power dynamics – supposedly liberates Fleabag from the patriarchy, she is still unhappy due to the innate heterosexual structures of that patriarchy which inhibit the world she lives in. If neoliberalism is an “organizing ethic of society that shapes the way we live, think and feel about ourselves and each other,” then Fleabag is doomed to feel unhappy until she finds a stable relationship and job (Gill, 2017, p. 608). In this sense, Fleabag is still very much a slave to, and indeed a victim of, the patriarchal constructs that invade Western culture.
Fleabag further critiques neoliberalism through its portrayal of mental health and the mind. Episode 4 of Season 1 – “Worst Road Trip Ever” – parodies the contemporary mindfulness retreat filled with yoga and meditation, comparing a weekend of silence and Fleabag and her sister cutting grass with scissors, while the men who are participating in the retreat hurl abuse at female mannequins. Fleabag here holds that capitalism and the constant striving for self-improvement further moulds “women into pliable neoliberal self-optimising subjects” and reiterates the “gendered division of labour by normalising female emotional internalisation while affording space and credence to male anger” (Darling, 2019, p. 3). This gendered division and binary is unavoidable and inevitable within a “strictly individual” neoliberal culture (Holzberg & Lehtonen, 2021, p. 12). Thus, despite all Fleabag’s unhappiness with heterosexualism, the “gendered confines of heteronormativity” will always prevail, disallowing Fleabag to be content even if she supposedly has agency and choice. What this paradox leaves is Fleabag’s “heteropessimist sensibility” that can only be communicated in biting, yet self-referential, irony and sarcasm (Holzberg & Lehtonen, 2021, p. 12).
Indeed, from the opening scene of the first season, Fleabag comedically and dryly narrates her sexual exploits as they unfold on screen, and due to this, female sexual desire is depicted as “awkward, difficult and at times deeply painful” (Holzberg & Lehtonen, 2021, p. 4). These sex scenes are not cinematic, flatteringly lit, nor artfully shot, and through these filmic techniques, Waller-Bridge argues that patriarchal capitalism still exists and therefore women are still limited in their social roles and capacity. In this way, Fleabag critiques neoliberal post-feminism, arguing feminist ideals still need to be applied to Western culture.
While the conventional Hollywood “male gaze” disembodies and disempowers women on screen through costuming, lighting, and shots that carry “strong visual and erotic impact” which connotes women’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey), the female gaze works to do the opposite of this. Fleabag, arguably, even goes beyond the female gaze that strives to represent women as agentic characters and not sex objects, by depicting Fleabag as the opposite of someone with sex appeal, portraying her in all her “cringe” and “excess” glory (Darling, 2019, p. 9). There is an evident cultural loathing of the “excessive female body” which can be recognised through the taboo of menstruation, bodily fluids, and a “historical antipathy towards female sexual appetite” (Darling, 2019, p. 3). Fleabag is crass, un-ladylike, and sceptical of romance and affection.
Fleabag incorporates tropes of this “female excess” and “grossness” through the naked female torso statue motif, the “failing maternal body” – both in Fleabag’s disinterest in children and Claire’s miscarriage that occurs on screen – and Fleabag’s constant commentary that turns “every situation sexual” (Darling, 2019, p. 1). As the series develops, Fleabag’s sexual activity becomes increasingly performative and dissociative. However, even with all these sex scenes and portrayals of female desire, the series does not objectify its women characters, exemplifying its use of the female gaze. However, the narrative and camera do not celebrate Fleabag’s sexual desire – or her arguably sexual ‘liberation’ as part of the successes of feminism within a neoliberal self-achievement context (Chen, 2013). Instead, Fleabag participates in sex with self-involved men – men who do not ask consent before engaging in anal sex, and men who obnoxiously admire her small breasts. In this way, sex is denoted as strange, awkward, and at times non-consensual. Waller-Bridge, in one way, instead of celebrating female sexuality, reveals the inversion of the female gaze and positions bad sex as the route of female oppression. Fleabag thus embraces the idea that patriarchy “rests strongly on the affective sense of bad sex” – women understand patriarchy exists, “quite simply, because [they can] feel it” (Long Chu, 2019, p. 65, 72).
This idea brings into question Fleabag’s post-feminist disposition. Evidently, Fleabag rejects the neoliberal post-feminism I previously defined – Fleabag understands that patriarchy is still thriving and condemns the West’s current late capitalist neoliberal hellscape. However, Fleabag’s “centralised femininities” are the sole reason Fleabag is able to demonstrate “cringe” in the series. Investments in cringe as a mode of expression are tasked with negotiating the tensions between the intersectional relations of identity politics. Fleabag, being a pretty, white, middle-class woman, does not attempt to negotiate these tensions at all. Thus, Fleabag seems to also reject the intersectional post-feminism and, due to this, paradoxically embraces neoliberal post-feminism by not acknowledging Fleabag’s privilege in modern culture.
Fleabag is the “archetypical Young Millennial Woman—pretty, white, middle-class, cisgender, and tortured enough to be interesting but not enough to be repulsive.” It is due to this that Fleabag can so effortlessly affiliate herself with abjection – her “excessive” participation and conversation of “sex, dirt, and bodily fluids” is only accepted by audiences due to the accepted traits of femininity she possesses on a visceral level – being white, middle-class, heterosexual, and good looking (Holzberg & Lehtonen, 2021, p. 83). Fleabag often blends “cringe aesthetics with representations of conventional feminine beauty and white middle-class respectability.” Thus, even when Fleabag is participating in sordid behaviour – she “farts, drinks, jokes about rape,” or in any way contests gender expectations – she looks pretty doing it and therefore stays grounded in the sphere of “respectable femininity” (Holzberg & Lehtonen, 2021, p. 83).
In this way, Fleabag declines to acknowledge the privileged space in society white, middle-class, heterosexual women occupy. Respectability is one of the most “ubiquitous signifiers of class,” informing the way one speaks, who one speaks to, and how one dresses – or is able to (afford to) dress (Skeggs, 1997, p. 2). Fleabag’s anxiety surrounding feminism furthers this idea of insufficient discussion of intersectional post-feminism. Fleabag’s confession that she worries she “wouldn’t be such a feminist if [she] had bigger tits” places the definition of feminism firmly within a regressive aesthetic-based cause and highlights her privilege and lack of recognition of women outside a white, “respectable” – upper or middle class – image.
However, Fleabag’s Godmother’s and sister’s feminisms are posed in a cynical and satirical light. The Godmother’s ‘Sexhibition’ is a curated art collection that privileges “self-congratulatory postures of feminist achievement” (Wanzo, 2016, p. 5), while the Godmother herself disregards actual solidarity with Fleabag and other women with whom she associates. Consequently, she is portrayed as sly and manipulative. Claire, too, is ridiculed and depicted as cold and heartless, undertaking the position of a neoliberal feminist.
References:
Chen, Eva. (2013). Neoliberalism and popular women’s culture: Rethinking choice, freedom and agency. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16 (4), 441-452. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549413484297.
Darling, Orlaith. (2019). “The moment you realise someone wants your body:” neoliberalism, mindfulness and female embodiment in Fleabag. Feminist Media Studies. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1797848.
Gill, Rosalind. (2017). The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: A postfeminist sensibility 10 years on. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20 (6), 607-626. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549417733003.
Havas, J., & Sulimma, M. (2020). Through the Gaps of My Fingers: Genre, Femininity, and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television. Television & New Media, 21(1), 75–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418777838.
Holzberg, Billy, and Aura Lehtonen. (2021). The affective life of heterosexuality: heteropessimism and postfeminism in Fleabag. Feminist Media Studies, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1922485.
Long Chu, Andrea. (2019). The Impossibility of Feminism. Differences, 30 (1). 63–81. https://doi-org.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/10.1215/10407391-7481232.
Skeggs, Beverly. (1997). Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage.
Waller-Bridge, Phoebe (Creator). (2016). Fleabag [TV Series]. BBC Broadcast.
Wanzo, Rebecca. (2016). Precarious-Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthetics. Camera Obscura, 31 (2). 27-59. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3592565.