Packaging Freedom

Ipshita Chanda suggests provocatively that it is popular culture that the discourses of modernity, feminism and progress, all articulated by the women's movement, become lived realities. Looking at popular women's journals like Sananda, Femina, Cosmopolitan and Meri Saheli, among others, advertisements that depict 'modernity', TV serials where women are not always meekly subservient, media icons and books by women authors, she wonders whether popular culture could be used to disseminate the goals of feminism. Or is it a case of new accommodations being formed in the name of women's liberation? What are the implications for feminism?