Tracing postfeminist culture in Turkey: Young women's reception of chick flicks

This study analyzes young women's reception of 2000s prominent chick flicks, Legally Blonde (2001, Robert Luketic) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006, David Frankel) in Turkey. Although these films came out 21 and 16 years ago, respectively, they are still being discussed within the framework of gender today. Chick flicks have often been labeled as "postfeminist" and criticized. Even though postfeminist culture has been prevalent in Turkey for a long time, the reception of Hollywood films labeled as postfeminist and its relation to the contextual discourses on feminism in Turkey has not been examined. This reception study utilizes ethnographic methods and technics and has young women as its research subjects by reason of the fact that young women are frequently labeled as the ideal subjects of postfeminist sensibility. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews have been conducted with 14 participants, 7 of whom define themselves as feminists and 7 of whom do not define themselves as feminists. The reception of films is examined with a focus on contextual discourses on feminism. The interviews indicate that both the women who define themselves as feminists and the women who do not define themselves as feminists refer to the circulating contextual discourses on feminism. As can be expected, the participants who define themselves as feminists have mostly resonated with feminist discourse, while the participants who do not define themselves as feminists have mostly resonated with antifeminist and postfeminist discourses when they talk about feminism. However, there have been moments when this has changed during the interpretation of the films, which has led to discussions on gender issues. The participants have questioned women's place and role in society, career, relationships, and normative beauty standards. While the participants sometimes challenged the traditional gender roles, other times they reproduced them.