ABSTRACT
Popular media constructs the postfeminist female subject as someone who is autonomous, in control, and sexually empowered; and yet she is also continually monitoring and objectifying herself as a heterosexual male fantasy. The 1990s saw the emergence of a new kind of female subject that seemed to embrace commercialism and embody neoliberal subjectivity. This new female subject became familiar for many through popular culture and such pop-feminist notions as "Girl Power", popularised by the British pop group the Spice Girls. In the fat female body, the medicalisation of fatness and gendered norms and expectations of women's appearance meet. Postfeminist media construes self-management and self-discipline as part of female subjectivity, not as an external pressure. In postfeminist media discourse, women are thus first and foremost responsible for producing themselves as desirable heterosexual subjects. In Western body culture, the acceptable size range of the female body has become very limited, moreover, fat phobia and fat hate are pronounced.
