ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, Rossie teases out the relationships between feminist identity, race, and postfeminist cultural politics in her analysis of the BET television series Being Mary Jane. This chapter argues that common postfeminist themes like career, consumption, and worries about achieving marriage and motherhood “on time” are inherently complicated by Mary Jane’s blackness and her refusal to be deracialized in ways that challenge and disrupt postfeminism. Although embedded in postfeminist sensibilities, the show is highly critical of post-racial discourse and actively engages with the politics of race in ways postfeminist texts have failed to do in the past. The result is an emergent script for postfeminist protagonists who—because they are women of color—cannot fully embody postfeminism but who also refuse to fully enact it, especially if it means turning a blind eye to racial politics and their communities of belonging.
