1st Edition
Women, Advertising, and the Illusion of Agency The Selling of Female Sexuality
Introduction: The Illusion of Agency 1. Advertising and Feminism: A Match Made in Hell 2. Female Sexual Agency: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t 3. Freedom and Choice: Let My Boobies Go! 4. Normativity: Skinny White Bitches 5. Gaze: Looking at You, Looking at Me 6. Claiming Space: The Detriments of Being a Wallflower 7. The Agency Spiral and Postfeminist Panopticon: The Prison of Empowerment 8. Closure: Rethinking Power and Representation
Biography
Irina Glass Balog is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Marketing at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Specialising in gender representation in advertising, she focuses on the intersection of feminism, postfeminism, and media discourse. Her work critiques how advertising co-opts feminist language to sell false notions of empowerment and explores themes such as sexual agency, power structures, and the paradox of "choice" in consumer culture. A passionate advocate for gender equity, Irina combines academic rigour with a provocative voice to challenge the status quo. This book is her call to dismantle the illusions that postfeminist advertising creates.
