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famous white feminists, Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria. Steinem, and a .... narcissistic than ugly (working-class) women,4 adding that 'the majority of.
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‘Who put the "Me" in feminism?’: The sexual politics of narcissism Imogen Tyler Feminist Theory 2005; 6; 25 DOI: 10.1177/1464700105050225 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fty.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/1/25

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‘Who put the “Me” in feminism?’

FT

The sexual politics of narcissism

Imogen Tyler Lancaster University

Feminist Theory Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) vol. 6(1): 25–44. 1464–7001 DOI: 10.1177/1464700105050225 www.sagepublications.com

Abstract This article examines what is at stake in the attribution of narcissism to femininity and feminism and the routes through which arguments about ‘feminist narcissism’ became central to the popular abjection of feminism. It emphasizes the central role of narcissistic theories of identity in enabling feminist theory to prise open the mechanisms of feminine identity and thereby expose and critique the sexual politics of identity practices. The article argues that theorizing the politics of narcissism opens up ways of thinking through some of the pressing and complex questions which face women today, questions of self-identity, self-esteem, body image, cultural idealization, normativity, incorporation, consumption and agency.

keywords Freud, narcissism, self-esteem, psychoanalysis, Women’s Liberation Movement, body image Want to know what today’s chic young feminist thinkers care about? Their bodies! Themselves! (Bellafante, 1998) Feminism leads women to believe that their own selfish self-fulfilment is what’s most important. (Schlafly, 2003)

On 29 June 1998, the front cover of Time magazine sported a sombre black background illustrated with a row of black and white portraits of three famous white feminists, Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, and a colour portrait of fictional television lawyer Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart). Time’s colour scheme and layout position McBeal as the heir of this feminist lineage. Under her picture ‘IS FEMINISM DEAD?’ is printed in bold red type, provocatively suggesting that this famously delusional (and anorexic) character is representative of the state of contemporary feminism. In the accompanying cover story, ‘Who Put the “Me’’ in Feminism?’, journalist Gina Bellafante argues that contemporary feminism is ‘wed to the culture of celebrity and self-obsession’ and is characterized by ‘the narcissistic ramblings of a few new media-anointed spokeswomen’ (Bellafante, 1998: 57). Bellafante illustrates this argument with ‘feminist celebrities’ who include McBeal, the Spice Girls, the fictional diarist Bridget Jones, rock star Courtney Love, Naomi Wolf, Camille Paglia and Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) Elizabeth Wurtzel (Bellafante, 1998: 57). This celebrity feminist narcissism is contrasted by Bellafante to the authentic political feminism of the late 1960s and 1970s which she portrays as ‘steeped in research and obsessed with social change’ (Bellafante, 1998: 57). Negative depictions of feminism are not new to Time; in a response to Bellafante’s article Erica Jong notes ‘there have been no less than 119 articles in the magazine sticking pins in feminism during the last 25 years’ (Jong, 1998: 19). In The Independent, the columnist Joan Smith argues that ‘obituaries’ for feminism appear so regularly that they have come to constitute a specific genre. ‘False feminist death syndrome’, as it is known, has been around for a very long time, ever since the late Victorian press described campaigners for women’s rights as ‘a herd of hysterical and irrational she-revolutionaries’. . . . We vividly recall Newsweek declaring ‘the failure of feminism’ in 1990; The New York Times assuring its readers that the ‘radical days of feminism are gone’ in 1980; and Harper’s magazine publishing a ‘requiem for the women’s movement’ as early as 1976. (Smith, 2003)

Nevertheless, however tired this ‘politics by caricature’ feels, it has had a profound effect on the way feminism is perceived.1 As Susan Faludi notes, ‘Trend journalism attains authority not through actual reporting but the power of repetition’ (Faludi, 1992: 104). Whilst ‘Who put the “Me’’ in feminism?’ incites nostalgia for the ‘fiery protests’ of the second-wave, its negative portrayal of contemporary feminism paradoxically replicates 1970s caricatures of feminism as superficial, narcissistic and nonpolitical. Indeed, as this article will illustrate, Bellafante’s use of narcissism to narrativize the demise of feminism has its origins in the popular social criticism that fomented the backlash against feminism in the mid 1970s: feminism, it’s all about Me! Since the 1970s this caricature of feminism has been supported by the increasing saturation of popular media with representations of successful single women as shallow, selfobsessed girls: think Cosmopolitan and Sex in the City. The ease with which Bellafante presents Ally McBeal, Bridget Jones and the Spice Girls as representative of feminism underlines how completely the link between feminism and narcissism has been absorbed into popular consciousness. Journalist Deborah Orr recently argued in the Independent that privileged white middle-class women, like her, are not brave enough to call themselves feminists for fear of being identified as selfish and selfindulgent (Orr, 2003).2 Beginning with Freud’s ‘invention’ of narcissism, this article considers what is at stake in the attribution of narcissism to feminism. This article explores both the central influence of narcissistic theories of identity upon feminist theory and practice, and the routes through which reactionary arguments about ‘feminist narcissism’ became central to the vilification of feminist politics. The forms of common sense about feminism that underpin Time magazine’s perfunctory question, ‘Who put the “Me” in feminism?’, provide this article with both its critical starting point and its concluding argument that feminist theory must not shy away from, but rather should radically engage with, the politics of narcissism. Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’

Ideal me It is in ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (Freud, 1991 (original 1914)) that Freud first fully develops narcissism as a key psychoanalytic concept. In this essay, Freud states that he has discovered that a primary narcissism is necessary for individual consciousness, the ego, to be ‘born’. Previously, Freud had thought the mother the first love object of all subjects; now primary narcissism supplants this primary mother-love, describing a process in which we become subjects by taking our ‘self’ as our first love object. (This theory of ‘ego-birth’ was popularized by Jacques Lacan in his influential mirror-stage thesis in 1949.) Primary narcissism is the process which inaugurates subjectivity; secondary narcissism, which can be normative or pathological depending on its degree, is an attempt on the part of the subject to return to or approximate its blissful narcissistic origins. Yet despite the fundamental and formative status of his claim for narcissism as origin, Freud is unable to offer any ‘direct’ evidence for the existence of this original narcissistic state. Indeed, it transpires that the entire hypothesis of primary narcissism can only be confirmed ‘by inference from elsewhere’ (Freud, 1991: 84). In contrast to an initial suggestion in ‘On Narcissism’ that the infant wills himself or herself into existence through a primary narcissistic identification, Freud suggests towards the end of the article that we become subjects only by means of the other’s desire. Freud argues that our very earliest awareness of ‘self’ is shaped through our subjection to an ego-ideal, ‘the common ideal of a family, a class or a nation’, that is ‘possessed of every perfection which is of value’ (Freud, 1991: 96, 88). The ego-ideal is tyrannical, it ‘constantly watches the actual ego and measures it by that ideal’ (Freud, 1991: 89), indeed it is the conditioning factor of all repression. Freud is insistent on this point: ‘A power of this kind, watching, discovering and criticizing all our intentions, does really exist. It exists in every one of us in normal life’ (Freud, 1991: 90). Primary narcissism, the birth of a conscious self whom we identify with and direct our love towards, is inaugurated by the incorporation of an ‘ego-ideal’ that is originally instilled in the infant via the voice and gaze of the parents. Freud argues that parents narcissistically imagine that ‘the laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated’ in favour of their beloved child, who will fulfil their own thwarted dreams (Freud, 1991: 85). Freud’s comments on parental narcissism suggest that the ideal traits of an (imagined) child are frequently voiced well in advance of birth: I hope it’s a boy/girl, Oh, I don’t mind, either is fine (as long as it is possessed of every skill and perfection I have myself and more but none of my negative attributes and hang-ups). Of course, children can equally be bad or indifferent objects for their parents. Nevertheless, we can all imagine the powerfully suggestive tones of voice, and the exaggerated body language, through which very young infants are continually interpellated: you ARE a good baby, you are beautiful, he is such a naughty child, he looks just like his father, she is just like me, do you love your mummy? Happiness and selfesteem are dependent upon our ability to approximate this ideal. Freud Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) argues that the (inevitable) non-fulfilment of this ideal is experienced by the infant as a fear of punishment – the fear of losing the parent’s love. As we grow up, our ego-ideal is adapted by ‘public opinion’ and failure to approximate it is experienced as guilt and social anxiety (Freud, 1991: 97). It is important to reiterate the radical structuralist claim Freud is making; namely that consciousness is a relational process that is dependent on the incorporation of the subject for whom we are an object. One of the farreaching implications of Freud’s theory of narcissism is that social norms are internalized within the formative structures of the psyche. This thesis has radical analytic potential, for example analysis of psychic revolts against prohibition should enable the analyst/theorist to establish what cultural values and norms are dominant.3 However, Freud uses narcissism and its pejorative connotations to reinforce, rather than question, the patriarchal, familial and middle-class ideals of early 20th century Vienna. For instance whilst Freud states that women have greater ‘social restrictions . . . placed upon them in their choice of object’ than men, he does not theorize the implications of this to account for the frustration, unhappiness and anxiety exhibited by his women patients, the greater instance of neurosis in women, or the hysteric’s revolt against her social destiny. On the contrary he theorizes female neurosis as an aberrant survival of women’s pre-pubescent ‘boyish nature’, arguing that normal women naturally become passive and self-absorbed as they sexually mature, contenting themselves with the childish pleasure of self-love. From the outset then, the invention of narcissism as an explanatory tool masks how it works politically as a directive and regulative fiction to pathologize those others that threaten ‘the prestige and normative power of Oedipal Man’ (Benjamin, 2000: 233).

Freud’s narcissistic women Freud argues that the sexes can be characterized by their potential to ‘pass beyond the limits of narcissism’ and love another (Freud, 1991: 78). According to Freud, the heterosexual man loves according to anaclitic (or attachment) principles. Successful in sublimating his (primary) narcissism, the male subject chooses love objects on the basis of difference and heterosexual familial experience; for Freud these are the woman who feeds you, the man who protects you and the succession of substitutes who take their place (Freud, 1991: 84). In contrast, Freud argues that the woman loves narcissistically, choosing love objects on the basis of love for herself: what she herself is, what she was, what she would like to be and someone who was once part of herself (Freud, 1991: 84). In short, Freud argues that men give up their narcissism and by elevating the sexual object into an ideal they reach the ‘highest phase of development . . . the state of being in love’ (Freud, 1991: 68). By contrast, he argues that, for some ‘highly complicated biological reason’ women as they sexually mature slide back towards the narcissism of their infancy (Freud, 1991: 83). Freud reaches the conclusion that even those women who state that they are suffering from a lack of Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ self-regard are narcissistic. As he writes: ‘We may be tempted to believe a neurotic woman . . . when she tells us that . . . since she is ugly, deformed or lacking in charm no one could love her . . . although she seems more desirable, and is more desired, than the average woman’ (Freud, 1991: 94). Such women, he argues, perform a lack of self-regard as a pretext for their (displaced) narcissism; in fact they ‘love those they would like to be’ (Freud, 1991: 84). According to Freud, beautiful middle-class women are more likely to be narcissistic than ugly (working-class) women,4 adding that ‘the majority of hysterical women are among the [most] attractive and even beautiful representatives of their sex’ (Freud, 1991: 94). Indeed, the correspondence between beauty, hysteria and narcissism that Freud evokes in ‘On Narcissism’ suggests that ‘the narcissistic woman’ was modelled on the hysteric. For instance Freud described Dora, the subject of his most notorious case study of hysteria published in 1905, as a girl with ‘engaging looks’ in the ‘bloom of youth’ (Freud, 1977: 53). Freud argued that hysterical symptoms in young women were a manifestation of repressed sexual desire. On Dora, he writes: ‘I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were . . . exclusively unpleasurable’ (Freud, 1977: 59). This diagnosis centred on Dora’s abject response to the repeated sexual advances of a much older married man, Herr K.: Dora was 15 when Herr K. first accosted her. Freud argues that Dora really desires Herr K., but has repressed her desire due to an unresolved (Oedipal) attachment to her father – hence the consequent hysteria. Freud states that the cure for hysteria is to be sought in getting the hysteric to accept her social destiny (and her castration) by redirecting her love toward a proper object, namely a man and future husband. Hence Freud spends his time trying to convince Dora that she loves Herr K. (even telling her she could marry him). This analytic cure, the cure by love, depends on transference, the transfer of the patient’s love to the analyst. Dora fails to love or even respect Freud, and, adamantly refusing his diagnosis, she dramatically ends the analysis, a step Freud furiously interprets as an act of revenge.5 Freud’s ‘discovery’ in ‘On Narcissism’ that women have a biological propensity to narcissism usefully reinforces his argument that the root cause of hysterical illness is the repression of sexual desire and provides an explanation for his failure to cure hysteria: Dora is inaccessible to the influence of psychoanalysis because she is unable to love. The hysteric, beautiful, fascinating, enigmatic, is a narcissist: Me! Me! Me! As he writes: ‘Strictly speaking, it is only themselves that such women love [with] an unassailable libidinal position which we ourselves have since abandoned’ (Freud, 1991: 82, 83). However, Freud lets slip ‘the importance of this type of woman for the erotic life of mankind’: the narcissistic woman performs a vital function as an object for masculine sexual desire (Freud, 1991: 83). As John Berger (1972) argues, in his classic analysis of the sexual economy of fine art in Ways of Seeing, the possession of (images of) beautiful women is one of the key means through which men establish selfregard, accumulate social capital and bond with other men. Depictions of Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) self-absorbed women, gazing into a mirror for instance, are particularly appealing as they enable the spectator/owner to be a voyeur: the narcissism of the (imaginary) woman depicted serves to mask his narcissistic gaze. René Girard comments that ‘On Narcissism’ recalls ‘the misguided innocence of the bearded old professor in The Blue Angel: in a close-up, the long legs of Marlene Dietrich, all clad in black . . .’ (cited in Kofman, 1985: 63). This German film depicts the downfall of the prim and moral Professor Rath who becomes obsessed by seductive nightclub singer LolaLola (Marlene Dietrich) and is slowly degraded by her as he unsuccessfully attempts to marry her and make her respectable. The Blue Angel makes explicit what remains implicit in ‘On Narcissism’, that ‘the great attraction’ for men of beautiful women is the narcissistic satisfaction that ‘having her’ promises. On closer inspection then, ‘narcissism continues to control love, even when that narcissism appears to give way to object-love’ (Butler, 1997: 187). Whilst Freud makes the narcissistic woman the other of masculine subjectivity, in fact she is not his opposite but his mirror image: she is the image of the subject whose value she is made to bear, the narcissistic desire of men.

Women’s narcissistic wounds Rosalind Coward argues that women’s relationship to cultural ideals, and therefore to their own image, could be more accurately described as a relation of narcissistic damage (Coward, 1984: 80). Similarly Sandra Lee Bartky argues that whilst overtly ‘the fashion-beauty complex seeks to glorify the female body and to provide opportunities for narcissistic indulgence . . . its covert aim . . . is to depreciate [the] woman’s body and deal a blow to her narcissism’ (Bartky, 1990: 39–40). Naomi Wolf states that the saturation of culture with images of female beauty should be understood as a political weapon against women’s advancement (Wolf, 1991). However, the key insight of Freud’s theory of narcissism for feminist theory is that it is not simply the saturation of culture with impossible ideals but rather the ‘virtually irresistible’ introjection of these ideals that oppresses and depresses women by repeatedly wounding their narcissism (Bartky, 1990: 41). We need to theorize sexual objectification as a relation in which we incorporate the subject for whom we are an object: we can understand this as an internalization of heteronormative power relations. This explains why women can be acutely conscious of the negative effects upon their self-esteem of cultural ideals of femininity but nevertheless feel compelled to approximate those ideals in order to assuage the anxiety of failure: hence the dictum, no beauty without pain. Theorizing this negative narcissism would enable us to have more insight into how debilitating practices, such as starvation and self-harm, are compelling because they afford structures through which women can externalize their painful (narcissistic) relationships to themselves. The negative narcissistic relation helps us to understand the satisfactions of (self-inflicted) pain, such as hunger pain, and the way in which pain can give pleasure and even (temporarily) improve Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ self-esteem. In short, Freud’s theory of narcissism is useful for radical politics because it helps us understand that relations of power, be they sexual, racial or economic, are not external to the subject but are hardwired into the very structures of subjectivity.6 This is the politics of narcissism.

The sexual politics of narcissism On September 7th in Atlantic City, the Annual Miss America Pageant will again crown ‘your ideal.’ But this year, reality will liberate the contest auction-block in the guise of ‘genyooine’ de-plasticized, breathing women. Women’s Liberation Groups, black women, high-school and college women, women’s peace groups, women’s welfare and social-work groups . . . will protest the image of Miss America, an image that oppresses women in every area in which it purports to represent us. (‘No More Miss America!’, 1968)

Billed as ‘a groovy day on the Boardwalk in the sun with our sisters’, the infamous feminist boycott of the Miss America pageant in 1968 is one of the iconic moments of the Women’s Liberation Movement.7 Deliberately humorous and media-savvy, the protest symbolically enacted the rejection of oppressive ideals of femininity through tactics which included picket lines, guerrilla theatre, leafleting, lobbying visits to the contestants urging them to drop out of the pageant and a huge ‘freedom trash can’ into which they threw ‘bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies’ Home Journal [and] Family Circle’ (‘No More Miss America!’, 1968). All these strategies aimed to make sexual inequality visible. ‘In case of arrests’, the ‘No More Miss America!’ manifesto declares, ‘we plan to reject all male authority and demand to be busted by policewomen only. (In Atlantic City, women cops are not permitted to make arrests – dig that!)’ (‘No More Miss America!’, 1968). The aims of the protest set out in the manifesto handed out by organizers at the event reflected a nuanced understanding of the relationship between sexism and other forms of oppression. Remembered as a protest against ‘ludicrous beauty standards’, it was also a protest against racism (no black woman had ever been a Miss America finalist), and the Vietnam War (the 1967 pageant contestants were sent to Vietnam to entertain the troops). Susan Douglas (1994) argues that the spectacular nature of this event, and the news coverage it generated, were instrumental to the emergence of a popular Women’s Liberation Movement. The news media largely ridiculed the protest, promoting the image of the bra-burner which has been used to disparage feminists ever since.8 However, many women identified with the protest. This demonstration of feminist politics was compelling because it clearly articulated what women’s experience told them – that social inequality was a consequence not only of women’s lack of access to positions of power in public life, but an effect of living one’s personal and private life under the surveillance of oppressive cultural norms and ideals. Questions of women’s negative self-esteem and lack of self-love were central political questions for feminism. As the ‘No More Miss America!’ manifesto declared: Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) The pageant exercises Thought Control, attempts to sear the Image onto our minds, to further make women oppressed and men oppressors; to enslave us all the more in high-heeled, low-status roles; to inculcate false values in young girls; women as beasts of buying; to seduce us to ourselves before our own oppression. (‘No More Miss America!’, 1968)

The argument that ideals of femininity ‘seduce us to ourselves’ by directing women to internalize ‘false values’ which ‘condition’ their behaviour illustrates the ways in which feminism began to theorize oppression by employing psychoanalytic ideas. The Radicalesbians’ (c. 1970) feminist manifesto, ‘The Woman-Identified Woman’, demonstrates how central narcissistic theories of identity were to the development of feminist politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. [We] have internalized the male culture’s definition of ourselves. That definition consigns us to sexual and family functions . . . psychic servicing [and] performing society’s non-profit-making functions. . . . This is called ‘femininity’ or ‘being a real woman’ in our cultural lingo. . . . The consequence of internalizing this role is an enormous reservoir of self-hate . . . poisoning her existence, keeping her alienated from herself, her own needs, and rendering her a stranger to other women. . . . As the source of self-hate [is] rooted in our male-given identity, we must create a new sense of self. (Radicalesbians, c. 1970)

‘The Woman-Identified Woman’ characterizes feminism as a psychosocial politics, the utopian aim of which is the remapping of female psychology through the creation of new (narcissistic) identities: a ‘Woman-Identified Woman’. Inspired by the black power movement, feminists adapted consciousness raising (CR) strategies to encourage women to identify the social, psychological and political origins of their personal problems: as Bartky notes, ‘to be a feminist, one has first to become one’ (Bartky, 1990: 11). Exemplified by the slogan ‘the personal is political’, CR groups consisting of between five and 15 women were central to the emergence of a mass women’s movement in the United States: for many women simply having the opportunity to speak about their lives and their desires was incredibly empowering. It was directly out of these CR groups that feminist literature such as the ground-breaking women’s health book Our Bodies, Ourselves (Boston Women’s Health Collective Staff, 1973) emerged. Encouraging women to ‘discover their bodies’, this literature further disseminated the politics of self-esteem and self-love. As Amelia Jones argues, ‘Women began to act narcissistically (that is, began to speak their personal concerns in the public domain) in order to proclaim their needs and particularities as subjects’ (Jones, 1998: 46). An important question is, therefore, in what ways does this political narcissism challenge and/or reinforce the idea of the narcissistic woman? The feminist practice of CR exposes the contradictions of the sexual politics of narcissism within Freud’s theory. Freud employs the connotative power of narcissism to make moral and social judgements about the narcissism of the other, displacing the pejorative connotations of narcissism on to the other to support his theory of sexuality. However, he also suggests that narcissism is not just about ‘me’: narcissism describes a type Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ of love which paradoxically always involves the other. The relation of self–self is always already a self–other relation in that what appears as selflove is actually love for the ideal instigated by and within the social sphere. Indeed, those Freud condemns for their excessive self-love are in fact those subjects least able to approximate the cultural ideals they incorporate (as part of their self) and are therefore more likely to suffer wounded narcissism than enjoy the satisfaction of closing the gap on the ideal. The question then is, what versions of narcissism are socially legitimated or denigrated? Where is narcissism visible and where does it prevail in silence? In my reading of the narcissistic woman I argued that Freud’s theory of narcissism concealed the masculine narcissism that subtends the structures of sexual inequality within which the fantasy of narcissistic woman plays a vital supporting role. Feminism exposes and challenges the sexual politics of narcissism both by making prevailing forms of narcissism visible (the homo-social bond) and by encouraging new self-conscious forms of narcissism amongst women to emerge. As the central role of the CR group indicates, the radical feminist call for women to transform and liberate their self-identity was anchored in new forms of collectivity: sisterhood, female friendship and lesbian relationships.9 As ‘The Woman-Identified Woman’ notes, ‘It is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new consciousness of and with each other, which is at the heart of women’s liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution’ (Radicalesbians, c. 1971). The feminist practice of CR makes explicit the impossibility of privatizing the story of the subject: the personal is always already social, the personal is always already political, and the ‘Me’ is always already ‘We’. CR was effective in opening up a space between feminine identity, what women should be, and political identity, what being women might mean.10 Consciousness raising is concerned with making the ‘Me’ political in order to challenge the idea that narcissism is a love that only returns to the self.11 As Jacques Derrida notes: without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation the relation to the other would be absolutely destroyed . . . the relation to the other – even if it remains asymmetrical, open without possible reappropriation – must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible. (Derrida, 1986)

The philosophy underpinning CR is that ‘women amongst themselves’ (Irigaray, 1991: 190) can become ‘mirrors’ for each other, removing women’s need to seek self-validation in their relationships with men or their ability to approximate social beauty ideals or perform feminine domestic roles and tasks.12 In short, CR suggests that narcissism is essential and, most significantly, that we cannot speak of ‘one narcissism’ but must think of narcissism as a structure which takes different forms and has different social and political consequences. What was unique about this strand of the Women’s Liberation Movement was the way in which it was explicitly structured around the profound resocialization of self-identity through the establishment of women’s groups, communities and networks. However, there is a tension between Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) its aim to invalidate the myth of the autonomous self, by emphasizing the common features of women’s oppression, and the idea of the real authentic self (uncovered through CR). Despite the success of the idea of ‘organizing around your own oppression’ (Dixon, 1977), second-wave feminists found it difficult to translate heightened self-awareness into effective programmes of political action. In the 1970s thousands of CR groups across the United States operated virtually independently of each other. As Jo Freeman noted in a 1971 overview of the structure of the Women’s Liberation Movement, ‘It is virtually impossible to coordinate a national action, assuming there could be any agreement on issues around which to coordinate one’ (Freeman, 1971). Moreover, the women’s movement in this period was predominately a white middle-class movement and critical differences between women, such as race and class, were often overlooked or dismissed in the rush to affirm a common identity: sisterhood, and a common source of oppression: patriarchy. A consequence of this was that the particularities of oppression, as experienced by working-class women, black women and disabled women for instance, could not be ‘heard’, and the links between feminist politics and established models for political intervention, such as the labour movement, were marginalized. As the Women’s Liberation Movement became more visible in mainstream politics, through organizations such as NOW (the National Organization for Women) in the United States, its connections to radical politics were further marginalized and dissipated. However, a discussion of the effectiveness of the Women’s Liberation Movement needs to take into consideration the contemporary debates within the movement about what constitutes politics: from the outset the Women’s Liberation Movement was concerned with rethinking what counts as politics and for many women effecting change within mainstream politics was not a primary aim.13 As Patricia Mann (1997) argues, much feminism is concerned with ‘micropolitics’, that is with the unequal distributions of power in everyday situations and new forms of agency in social relationships. The Women’s Liberation Movement opened up the problem of identity for women by challenging femininity, but in attempting to effect a politically coherent ‘We’ it instilled new disciplinary ideals, white and middle class, which did not account for differences amongst women. Feminist critiques of Betty Freidan’s (1963) The Feminine Mystique (and of Freidan’s politics as the first head of NOW) make explicit why singular and exclusionary definitions of feminism are an inadequate political response to the problem of femininity (Tong, 1992; hooks, 2000). The mistake is to see the question of which ‘Me’ and which ‘We’ as a problem which needs to be overcome for the sake of unity. Indeed, as hooks (2000) suggests, the question any feminist politics should continually ask of itself is: who is excluded? However, the hegemony of the second-wave is often overstated and, despite its shortcomings, an eclectic mix of CR groups and direct action organizations transformed the expectations and lives of millions of women in the 1970s. Feminist culture became increasingly visible as women’s bookshops, women’s studies programmes, rape crisis centres and community action groups emerged (although it is worth Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ reflecting on how many of these public signs of feminist politics have now demised).14

The backlash: let’s talk about me By the mid 1970s, arguments which connected personal experience and private life with questions of political and economic life were widely articulated. Rosalind Petchesky notes that: The Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s had become the most dynamic force for social change in the country, the one most directly threatening not only to conservative values and interest, but also to significant groups whose ‘way of life’ is challenged by ideas of sexual liberation. (in Faludi, 1992: 263)

Given the threat feminist politics posed to traditional forms of social authority, it is not surprising that the conservative right became active as the Women’s Liberation Movement began to impact on mainstream politics. As Faludi (1992) documents in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, reactionary conservatives argued that the Women’s Liberation Movement was the ‘enemy’ within. Characterizing it as anti-men, antifamily and anti-child, they accused it of ripping apart the fabric of US society. In Back to Patriarchy, right-wing author and fathers’ rights activist Daniel Amneus (1979) was explicit in his condemnation of feminism as a social disease. The health of society requires that women shall know, and know with deep conviction, that the role of the wife and mother is central to society. Such internalized conviction depends upon girls knowing that they are attractive to men – something which, in a properly constituted society with properly constituted families, they learn from the first men in their lives, their fathers . . . paternally deprived girls tend to be lacking in femininity and self-assurance in interpersonal relationships. They are more likely to be homosexual and to suffer from other psychic ills – which is to say . . . they tend to be feminist types. (Amneus, 1979: 131)

Reversing Betty Friedan’s evocative description of women’s oppression as ‘an illness without a name’, Amneus depicts a society ‘ill from feminism’. Back to Patriarchy, like ‘The Woman-Identified-Woman’, identifies ‘internalized conviction’ as the means through which women’s identity and social status is assured: they both identify women’s ‘attractiveness’ to men as a key means through which women (are directed to) acquire selfesteem and argue that the successful incorporation of heteronormative ideals trains women for a life of being-for-others, as wives, mothers and carers. Amneus argues that feminism, by questioning women’s ‘deep conviction’ that these roles are natural and vital, has created social chaos. Moreover, he argues that the assault which feminism has effected on male identity has led to an increase in male homosexuality and impotency.15 In the mid 1970s the views expressed in Back to Patriarchy were pervasive in everyday culture, but it was difficult for mainstream politicians to openly object to women’s basic rights to equality (polls suggested that the majority of women and the majority of the black Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) population supported initiatives such as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) proposed by NOW). It was, rather, ‘a coded’ consensus that selfish feminists (and other equal rights campaigners) were responsible for the social ills of the nation that had the greatest impact on the Women’s Liberation Movement. As Lauren Berlant argues, it is when reactionary arguments become ‘banal’ through repetition that they are most powerful (Berlant, 1997: 11). The most influential expressions of the need to return to ‘authority’ came not from ‘angry white men’ like Amneus, whose extreme position could easily be rebuked, but from authoritative academics, social critics and politicians from across the political spectrum. A consensus emerged across social criticism that ‘the nation’ was suffering from ‘a crisis of confidence’. This ‘crisis’ was variously blamed on the demise of traditional social roles for men, divorce and the subsequent breakdown of father-headed households, the increasing number of (middle-class) women going to work (and taking men’s jobs), the lessening of the authority of organized religion, a lack of trust in government and the diminished role of the nation in global affairs. Whilst NOW battled to get the ERA ratified, social critics argued that the 1970s was the decade of narcissism, the decade in which people stopped being political and became self-interested and self-obsessed. This is still the predominant view of the 1970s today. Two of the most influential claims of cultural narcissism were Tom Wolfe’s influential 1976 New York magazine article, ‘The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening’ (Wolfe, 1977) and Christopher Lasch’s bestseller, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Lasch, 1980). Within these narratives of the rise of selfishness, it is ‘the liberated personality’ that exemplifies a retreat from politics to ‘purely personal preoccupations’ (Lasch, 1980: 5). At several points in these accounts of the grim slide into narcissism, the ‘liberated woman’, the archetypal new narcissist, is clearly code for ‘the feminist’. Towards the end of ‘The “Me” Decade’, Wolfe, darling of the liberal elite, explicitly maligns feminism as narcissism: The great unexpected dividend of the feminist movement has been to elevate an ordinary status – woman, housewife – to the level of a drama. One’s very existence as a woman . . . as Me . . . becomes something all the world analyzes, agonizes over, draws cosmic conclusions from . . . the popularity of the women’s liberation or feminist movement [is nothing more than this]: Let’s Talk About Me. (Wolfe, 1977, 134–5)

With the phrase, ‘Let’s Talk About Me’, Wolfe fastened narcissistic femininity and feminism together in the popular cultural imaginary. The attribution of narcissism to feminism was not unique to elite white men. Writing in 1977, feminist sociologist Marlene Dixon supported this narcissistic view of feminism, arguing that the middle-class constitution of the women’s movement meant it had forgotten the economic basis of women’s oppression. It had become less, she argued, about ‘organizing around personal oppression’ than ‘organizing around your own interests’. As she writes: Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ The step from self understanding to altruistic identification and cross-class unity never occurred because the real basis for radicalization, common economic exploitation, was absent. . . . Middle class women . . . justified ignoring the mass of working class women by asserting that ‘ending our oppression will end theirs,’ i.e., the fight against discrimination would equalize the status of all women. (Dixon, 1977)

Dixon argues that ‘In the end, it is a question of power. Can a movement be built to involve and influence enough women so that it has the strength to challenge the corporate and governmental power that rules our lives?’ (Dixon, 1977). However, radical feminism was attempting to redefine what counts as politics: where politics happens and what politics is. The idea embedded in the feminist manifestos was that the dominant power relations of public life also manifested themselves in women’s most intimate relationships (and in women’s relationships with themselves). Indeed, it was the endeavour to redefine the nature of power and politics through the politicization of personal experience that arguably threatened masculine authority the most. So whilst Dixon’s criticisms of the Women’s Liberation Movement are important, she nevertheless remains blind to the aim, however flawed in practice, to redefine what counts as politics. The attribution of narcissism to feminism not only fomented the male backlash against feminism, but made women dis-identify with the Women’s Liberation Movement. I agree with Dixon, however, that an overemphasis on patriarchy concealed the economic basis of women’s oppression and the structural bonds between patriarchy and capitalism. At the end of the decade, the Republicans convinced the electorate that ‘the free-market’ would liberate everybody, restoring the happy days of patriarchal authority and resolving the narcissistic crisis engendered by the equal rights movements bent on pursuing their own selfish interests. In 1981 Ronald Reagan, the first US Presidential candidate opposed to equal rights for women, was elected to office on an anti-ERA and anti-abortion platform.

Commercial narcissism: lipstick liberation As early as 1969, the US national advertising trade publication Advertising Age debated the ‘sex object’ issue, and considered how the marketing industry could target goods at ‘liberated women’.16 Through a series of focus groups with feminists, it established that the housewife was ‘out’ and ushered in a repertoire of ‘liberated looks’ built around various categories of ‘the new woman’: the working girl, the natural woman, the sexually liberated woman. Marketing strategies which aimed to harness the liberated consciousness included advertisements that satirized male chauvinism or reversed gender roles. As Susan Douglas writes: The appropriation of feminist desires and feminist rhetoric by Revlon, Lancôme and other major corporations was nothing short of spectacular. . . . Under the guise of addressing our purported new confidence and self-love, these ads really reinforced how we failed to measure up to others. (Douglas, 1994: 247, 248)

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Feminist Theory 6(1) However, whilst Douglas argues that the advertising industry responded to feminism in order to protect corporations from the economic fallout of the women’s revolution, in fact the relationship was more complex. The cooption of feminist political rhetoric did not come after, but was coterminous with, the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Indeed, many of the advertising agencies who took the lead in figuring out how feminism could work for them were run by women who sympathized with calls to end the negative portrayal of women as ‘housewives’ and ‘sex objects’. Paradoxically the popular encoding of women’s liberation within advertising played a significant role in both popularizing and depoliticizing the Women’s Liberation Movement. The fashion and beauty industry not only bred anxiety in women (for profit) but now purported to solve it (Orbach, 2001). The liberated woman, smelling of ‘Charlie’ and smoking Virginia Slims, was a marketing dream and has been adapted ever since: think power-dressing in the 1980s and glittery girl-power in the 1990s. The uncoupling of ‘liberation’ from radical politics was effective because it offered women the pleasure of identifying themselves as (already) liberated, whilst avoiding the social anxiety associated with ‘being a feminist’ – the culture of narcissism critique had established the idea that being a feminist was unpatriotic. Paradoxically, consumer culture encouraged women to do the very thing for which feminism was ruthlessly criticized: be selfish, not political! In contemporary consumer culture, the pleasures of narcissism as liberation are more overtly marketed to women than ever before. In the 1990s, a new ‘culture of pampering’ emerged that encouraged women to compensate themselves for sexual inequality, and the difficulty of lives spent juggling the competing priorities of work and motherhood, through the consumption of scented candles and bubble-bath (products often given by women to women but consumed in private). In 1997, The Body Shop™ launched its ‘love your body’ campaign to ‘inspire customers to celebrate themselves’. The culture of pampering is antithetical to the feminist politics, promising personal solutions to public problems: leave your problems behind the bathroom door. In a society in which Weightwatchers™ and Oprah have taken the place of CR, liberation through consumption has indeed ‘gutted many of the underlying principles of the women’s movement’ (Douglas, 1994: 266). In 2003 the UK Equal Opportunities Commission commissioned a report from the consumer think-tank The Future Foundation on current perceptions of equality in the UK. Published on the 75th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the UK, it concluded that despite pronounced inequalities in pay, conditions of employment and widespread sex discrimination, the concept of ‘feminism’ was virtually unanimously understood by women in negative terms. As Lauren Berlant asks, how and why have commitments to sexual justice come to be seen as ‘embarrassing and sentimental holdovers from another time?’ (Berlant, 1997: 177). Despite the lacuna which the report highlights between women’s desire for equality and their abject response to the term feminism, it fails to account for why or how feminism has accrued such negative associations. As my Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ use of the term abject suggests, negative responses to feminism originate not in the association between feminism and equal social and political rights for women but rather in the imaginary physical and psychological connotations of feminism as narcissistic. Women’s anxiety about being identified as feminist is a direct consequence of the coercive efforts of the social elite to delegitimize feminism by naming it narcissistic. It is tragic that a politics which aimed ‘to end the imposition of all coercive identifications’ (Radicalesbians, c. 1970) should be feared by so many women today.

Give us back our bodies As consumer culture has intensified since the 1970s, compulsive illnesses such as anorexia and self-harm have increased. The Toronto-based National Eating Disorder Information Centre states that in the United States, 90% of women experience body-image dissatisfaction, 80% have dieted by the age of 18 years and up to 15% of women have the symptoms of an eating disorder.17 It is regularly claimed that low self-esteem, negative body image, compulsive forms of consumption and disordered eating are consequences of living in a media culture saturated with unachievable ideals of female beauty.18 Concerns about these issues are well versed within the public sphere, as the ‘love your body’ motif suggests. In June 2001, the UK government held a ‘Body-Image Summit’ which brought together magazine publishers, fashion designers, psychologists, academics and teachers with the aim of pressuring industry to modify the extremes of its representational practices. In an article in the Observer entitled ‘Give Us Back Our Bodies’, psychotherapist Suzie Orbach reflected on the summit, in which she played a central role. She writes: The Government had recognised that the private anguishes of millions of females . . . was something that they ought to address. Ministers were recognising that this was affecting girls as young as three and women as old as 80, skewing their ways of eating, away from hunger and appetite and towards watchfulness and wariness. Now they heeded the evidence that size and beauty is a social and political issue . . . arguments explicitly linking personal experience and private life with the political and economic structure were entering the mainstream of political power. (Orbach, 2001)

Whilst public awareness of these issues is heartening, a turgid resistance to political change meant that the Body-Image Summit had little if any impact on industry. The only way such a resistance can be undermined is through the development of effective political tools. Intervention is hindered by a lack of understanding of the mechanisms through which women incorporate cultural ideals in ways that lead to debilitating anxiety and illness. The normative and disciplinary body images that surround us are in ‘dialogue’ with our own body image, but are we therefore compelled to use these images as points of identification and the means by which we locate ourselves? Are some subjects more vulnerable to idealized images than others? What can vulnerability tell us about the mechanisms of Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) identification?19 Let us take the example of the idealization of dangerously thin bodies in the media: it is not simply the case that looking at these images damages women, rather we need to consider how we encounter these bodies materially, how we incorporate, how we eat these images, how these idealized images become part of ‘me’–‘not-me’ and form my sense of who I am; the ideal-ego does not belong to the subject, but is an amalgam of the images and desires projected upon the subject from without. We are captured by and introject this ideal-I. The task that confronts feminist theory is three-fold: to ascertain what ideals of femininity are within specific generational, historical and geopolitical contexts, to understand more fully how the process of incorporation works and to find ways of producing ideals which do not have such devastating effects. In other words, feminist theory needs to return to the sexual politics of narcissism.

Who put the ‘Me’ in feminism? In this article I have examined what is at stake in the attribution of narcissism to femininity and feminism, and the routes through which arguments about ‘feminist narcissism’ became central to the popular abjection of feminism. As Berlant argues, ‘the transgressive logic of the feminist maxim “the personal is political,” [was] redeployed on behalf of a staged crisis in the legitimacy of the most traditional, apolitical sentimental patriarchal family values’ (Berlant, 1997: 179). As power is increasingly concentrated in global corporate enterprises, whose interests our governments now serve, the feminist political ideals of the second-wave have been distorted into anti-political advertising: liberation through consumption. Moreover, feminist academics and critics too often fall in with the popular ideological backlash offering critiques of ‘do me feminism’ and ‘lipstick liberation’ without questioning the political history of the fantasy of the narcissistic feminist.20 Despite the ways in which narcissism has been consistently employed as a rhetorical means of denigrating women and delegitimizing feminist politics, I have also demonstrated the central role of narcissistic theories of identity in enabling feminist theorists to prise open the mechanisms of feminine identity and critique the sexual politics of identity practices. Theorizing the politics of narcissism opens up ways of thinking through some of the pressing and complex questions which face women today, questions of self-identity, self-esteem, body image, cultural idealization, normativity, incorporation, consumption and agency.

Notes Thanks to Sara Ahmed, Mimi Sheller and Jackie Stacey for their advice and helpful feedback. 1. The phrase ‘politics by caricature’ is from Berlant (1997). 2. Orr argues that ‘“Feminist” is too political and provocative a sign’, contradicting Bellafante’s argument that contemporary feminism is devoid of politics. 3. This is Butler’s (1997) argument. Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ 4. Freud notes that ‘the frequency of ugliness, organic defects and infirmities in the lower classes of society does not increase the incidence of neurotic illness among them’ (Freud, 1991: 94), which reminds us of the class bias of Freud’s work. 5. For an account of Dora’s ‘rejection’ of Freud see Marcus (1985). 6. This formulation is perhaps most eloquently expressed by Fanon (1986) who uses theories of narcissism to explore how cultural values are ‘epidermalized’, creating a disjuncture between the black man’s consciousness and his body. 7. Faludi (1992: 99) reminds us that the feminist protests for jobs, pay equity and coeducation that preceded the Miss America protest were not considered exciting enough for the news media to cover. 8. See Stacey and Hinds (2001). 9. ‘The Woman-Identified Woman’ thesis was central to Adrienne Rich’s model of the lesbian continuum and provoked a debate about whether feminism was the theory and lesbianism was the practice. 10. This draws on Rose’s (1986) formulation. 11. Thanks to Sara Ahmed for suggesting this phrasing. 12. Interestingly, the same philosophy underpinned Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman (1974). Irigaray’s work was almost unknown outside France until it appeared in translation in 1985; an unfortunate consequence of this is that Irigaray’s important early work is not properly considered in the historical and political context within which it was written. 13. See Nash (2002) for an informed discussion of the Women’s Liberation Movement as a social and political movement; see also Coward (1999), Threlfall (1996) and Walter (1999). 14. As I write, my institution, Lancaster University, is closing its Women’s Studies BA programme. 15. Freud (1964) has argued that feminism is a displacement of female narcissism. 16. See Craig (1997) for a detailed account of how the advertising industry responded to the Women’s Liberation Movement. 17. These figures were taken from the National Eating Disorder Information Centre at www.nedic.ca. 18. Empirical studies have demonstrated a link between media culture and disordered eating. See for example Becker et al. (2002), a major study examining the impact of television in two towns in the Pacific islands of Fiji. This study involved interviewing schoolgirls within a few weeks of the introduction of television to the area of Nadroga in 1995 and again in 1998. One of the findings of this research was that in 1995 the number of girls who self-induced vomiting to control their weight was zero; three years after the introduction of television 11% of the girls were vomiting in order to reduce their weight. In the interview data, the girls stated that they actively tried to emulate images of western women imported via television. 19. One interesting aspect of the Becker et al. (2002) research was that it indicated that the Fijian schoolgirls were particularly vulnerable to the idealized images on television because of the ethnic differences they perceived between themselves and the bodies on display. Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) 20. See Braithwaite (2000) for an overview of the critique of contemporary third-wave feminism.

References Amneus, D. (1979) Back to Patriarchy. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. Bartky, S. (1990) Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. London and New York: Routledge. Becker, A., R. Burwell, D. Herzog, P. Hamburg and S. Gilman (2002) ‘Eating Behaviours and Attitudes Following Prolonged Exposure to Television among Ethnic Fijian Adolescent Girls’, British Journal of Psychiatry 180: 509–14. Bellafante, G. (1998) ‘Who Put the “Me’’ in Feminism?’, Time 29 June, pp. 54–60. Benjamin, J. (2000) ‘The Oedipal Riddle’, in Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman (eds) Identity: A Reader. London, New Delhi: Sage, The Open University. Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. Berlant, L. (1997) The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays in Sex and Citizenship. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Boston Women’s Health Collective Staff (1973) Our Bodies, Ourselves – a Book by and for Women. New York: Simon & Schuster. Braithwaite, A. (2000) ‘The Personal, the Political, Third-wave and Postfeminisms’, Feminist Theory 3: 335–44. Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Coward, R. (1984) Female Desire: Women’s Sexuality Today. London and Sydney: Paladin. Coward, R. (1999) Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium? London: Harper Collins. Craig, S. (1997) ‘Madison Avenue versus The Feminine Mystique: How the Advertising Industry Responded to the Onset of the Modern Women’s Movement’, www.rtvf.unt.edu/people/craig/craig.htm [accessed 2 July 2003]. Derrida, J. (1986) ‘There is No “One” Narcissism’, www.hydra.umn.edu/ derrida/narc.html [accessed 20 December 2000]. Dixon, M. (1977) ‘The Rise and Demise of Women’s Liberation: A Class Analysis’, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm [accessed 1 June 2004]. Douglas, S. (1994) Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Times Books. Faludi, S. (1992) Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. London: Vintage. Fanon, F. (1986) Black Skin: White Masks, trans. C.L. Markmann. London: Pluto Press. Freeman, J. (1971) ‘The Women’s Liberation Movement: Its Origins, Structures and Ideas’, http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm [accessed 20 September 2004]. Freud, S. (1964) ‘The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman’ (1920), pp. 147–72 in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18, trans. J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Tyler: ‘The “Me” in Feminism?’ Freud, S. (1977) ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (“Dora”)’ (1905[1901]), pp. 31–153 in Case Histories 1, Vol. 8 of The Penguin Freud Library, trans. J. Strachey. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freud, S. (1991) ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914), pp. 65–97 in On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, trans. J. Strachey. London: Penguin. Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell Publishing Company. hooks, bell (2000) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Irigaray, L. (1974) Speculum of the Other Woman. Irigaray, L. (1991) ‘Women-amongst-Themselves: Creating a Woman-to-Woman Sociality’, pp. 190–7 in Margaret Whitford (ed.) The Irigaray Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Jones, A. (1998) Body Art/Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jong, E. (1998) ‘Ally McBeal and Time Magazine Can’t Keep the Good Women Down’, New York Observer 13 July, p. 19. Kofman, S. (1985) Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud’s Writings, trans. C. Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Lasch, C. (1980) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton. Mann, P. (1997) ‘Musing as a Feminist in a Postfeminist Era’, pp. 222–43 in Jodie Dean (ed.) Feminism and the New Democracy. London: Sage. Marcus, S. (1985) ‘Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case-history’, pp. 56–91 in C. Bernheimer and C. Kahane (eds) In Dora’s Case. London: Virago. Nash, K. (2002) ‘A Movement Moves . . . Is There a Women’s Movement in England Today?’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 9: 311–28. ‘No More Miss America!’ (1968) www.hcwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/ miss.html [accessed 13 September 2004]. Orbach, S. (2001) ‘Give Us Back Our Bodies’, Observer 24 June, http: //observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,511730,00.html [accessed 11 January 2005]. Orr, D. (2003) ‘Who Would Call Herself a Feminist?’, Independent 4 July. Radicalesbians (c. 1970) ‘The Woman-Identified Woman’, http: //scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm [accessed 20 September 2004]. Rose, J. (1986) Sexuality in the Field of Vision. London: Verso. Schlafly, P. (2003) in Georgia Pellegrini, ‘Phyllis Schlafly Lifts the Veil on Feminist Fantasies’, http://MassNews.com, 21 May 2003 [accessed 2 November 2004]. Smith, J. (2003) ‘I’m a Feminist, so I Suppose I Must be Dead’, Independent 6 July, http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnistsm_z/joan_smith/ story.jsp?story=422038 [accessed 11 January 2005]. Stacey, Jackie and Hilary Hinds (2001) ‘Imaging Feminism, Imaging Femininity: the Bra-burner, Diana, and the Woman who Kills’, Feminist Media Studies 1(2): 153–77. Threlfall, M., ed. (1996) Mapping the Women’s Movement: Feminist Politics and Social Transformation in the North. London: Verso. Tong, R. (1992) Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. London: Routledge. Downloaded from http://fty.sagepub.com at Lancaster University on July 2, 2007 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Feminist Theory 6(1) Walter, N. (1999) On the Move: Feminism for a New Generation. London: Virago. Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. London: Vintage. Wolfe, T. (1977) ‘The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening’, pp. 111–47 in T. Wolfe, Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine. Toronto and New York: Bantam.

Imogen Tyler is a lecturer in the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University. She is currently completing a book, Global Narcissism: The Cultural Politics of Self-Love, which explores the historical and theoretical genesis of the concept of narcissism alongside a trenchant and probing analysis of the cultural and political consequences of self-love. Global Narcissism tracks the concept of narcissism through an archive composed of theoretical and popular texts, objects and practices, with a particular emphasis on US culture from the 1970s to the present. Her other main research interest is in maternal identity (see ‘Reframing Pregnant Embodiment’ in Transformations: Thinking Through Feminisms, Routledge, 2000 and ‘Skin-Tight: Celebrity, Pregnancy and Subjectivity’ in Thinking Through the Skin, Routledge, 2001). Address: Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK. Email: [email protected]

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