ABSTRACT
Turning its attention to trends in the presentation of (hetero)sex and intimate relationships, this chapter refutes assumptions of a linear progression of feminist gains by demonstrating that although contemporary editions of Cosmopolitan and Cleo employ an active, positive rhetoric surrounding women’s sexuality, such rhetoric masks discourses that present a limited, rather than liberated, model of female sexuality. Compelling illustrative examples from the 21st-century magazines are used to demonstrate how postfeminist entanglements of women’s self-regulation with feminist ideals such as empowerment and women’s sexual liberation reconfigure the active servicing of male desires, alongside women’s bodily and psychological surveillance, in positive terms. The chapter concludes that this rebranding of women’s subordination in terms that imply emancipation makes such subordination more difficult to detect, thus representing a complex and insidious new model of women’s inequality that requires feminist critique. Alongside this critique of the individualisation of risk and responsibility through postfeminist sexual narratives, the chapter interrogates the shifting styles of sex and relationship content across the decades. Ultimately, by drawing links between these changes and the ebbs and flows of feminist research and activism, the chapter makes the bold assertion that there exists a potential interrelationship between the content of women’s magazines and the visibility of feminism within the broader social world in which they reside.
