Breaking the Rules: Zodwa Wabantu and Postfeminism in South Africa
Abstract: Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper, is notorious as an older working-class woman who fearlessly challenges social norms of feminine respectability and beauty. Her assertion of sexual autonomy and her forays into self-surveillance and body-modification, mediated by the Daily Sun and other tabloid and social media platforms, could be read as a local iteration of a global postfeminist subjectivity. However, the widespread social opprobrium she faces must be accounted for: Using Connell's model of the gender order together with a coloniality frame, I argue that northern critiques of postfeminism omit to consider the forms of patriarchy established by colonialism in southern locales such as South Africa. The local patriarchal gender order, made visible within the tabloid reportage, provides the context within which the meaning of Zodwa Wabanu's contemporary postfeminist identity is constructed. I examine a range of
- Location
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Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
- Extent
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Online-Ressource
- Language
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Englisch
- Notes
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Veröffentlichungsversion
begutachtet (peer reviewed)
In: Media and Communication ; 9 (2021) 2 ; 52-30
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (where)
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Mannheim
- (who)
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SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
- (when)
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2021
- Creator
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Boshoff, Priscilla
- DOI
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10.17645/mac.v9i2.3830
- URN
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urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023010509210795669706
- Rights
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Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
- Last update
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15.08.2025, 7:35 AM CEST
Data provider
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Associated
- Boshoff, Priscilla
- SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
Time of origin
- 2021