Confidence Culture

Product Description In Confidence Culture, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative. Review “Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill’s brilliant study of the intersections within and between ‘confidence culture’ and neoliberal capitalism makes a vital contribution to how we think about gender, the body, and media. Complicating analyses on both the media representation and the user applications of the contemporary confidence movement, this crucially important book will appeal to media studies, American studies, and feminist scholars as well as a wide public audience.”―Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny Review “You will be cheering this brilliant book on from the very first pages. Ground down by inequities at work, impossible thinness and beauty ideals, or fears that you’re not a good enough mother? Buck up, girls, it’s not structural change we need: you just need a confidence boost! Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill detail this psychological turn in neoliberalism, in which women’s very subjectivities must be disciplined to serve patriarchal capitalism. Absolutely timely and a must read!” -- Susan J. Douglas, Professor of Communication and Media, University of Michigan About the Author Shani Orgad is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science and author of Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality. Rosalind Gill is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London, and author of Gender and the Media.