Watching Women: Femininity on TV - Hardcover

by Sarah Kornfield (Author)

The women on television series are spectacularly feminine. They are the most beautiful doctors, lawyers, detectives, scientists, queens, fashion-writers, moms, Victorian ladies, and witches ever seen. Focusing on series that celebrate empowered women from mainstay crime dramas such as Bones (2005-2017) and The Rookie: Feds (2022-2023) to teen dramas, with series such as Sex Education (2019-2023) and Charmed (2018-2022), to romance series such as Bridgerton (2020-), this book analyzes the onscreen portrayals of femme, femininity, and feminism. Specifically, this book maps the televisual trends that objectify femininity and those that visualize femininity as subject, working to demonstrate how televisual style constructs femininity through its onscreen portrayals.

Author Biography

Sarah Kornfield (Ph.D., Penn State) is Professor of Communication and an Affiliated Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Hope College. She analyzes the public persuasion of sexism and her research focuses on how gender is performed, produced, and constructed in U.S. television.