ABSTRACT
The Hunger Games can be read as a postfeminist vision of how girls relate to the world. Katniss’s potential love interests both reveal alternative approaches to dealing with the Capitol (Peeta’s media savvy; Gale’s ethically questionable militancy) to position Katniss as necessarily engaged in a heteronormative equation of adolescent development and romance. The self-consciousness of the romance subplot – much of this triad’s survival rests on Katniss’s continued performance as starry-eyed bride – speaks to the ongoing social requirement of heterosexual love to maintain legible femininity. This is but one aspect of the ‘postfeminist masquerade’ in which Katniss is trapped by The Games and the demands of the surrounding media. Much like the heroines of ‘girl power’ pop culture in the 1990s, or more current heroines of speculative fiction like Twilight’s Bella Swan, Katniss’s empowerment is only encouraged by the Capitol so far as it meets the needs of a dominant status quo; Katniss is otherwise managed, mediated, and even silenced.
