Single Women in Popular Culture

ANTHEA TAYLOR Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is the author of Mediating Australian Feminism (2008) and journal articles in feminist literary and cultural studies.

• Introduction Theorizing Women's Singleness – Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and the Politics of Representation From the Second Wave to Postfeminism – Single Women in Popular Discourse Spinsters and Singletons – Bridget Jones's Diary and its Cultural Reverberations Desperate and Dateless TV – Making Over the Single Woman Self-Help and the Single Girl – From Salvation to Celebration Blogging Solo – Women Refiguring Singleness Bibliography Index

'Rejecting oversimplified accounts of her metamorphosis from spinster to singleton, this original book astutely assesses paradoxical cultural discourses wherein the single woman is sometimes approvingly evaluated for her exemplary conduct as a neoliberal subject yet often anxiously positioned as a challenge to heternormativity in a 'couple culture' that strenuously resists self examination.' - Diane Negra, University College Dublin, Ireland 'Single Women in Popular Culture is an exemplary, groundbreaking work within the field of feminist media and cultural studies. It employs feminist cultural criticism critically to address major questions related to the hyper-visible positioning of heterosexual women's singleness within the terrain of popular culture.' - European Journal of Women's Studies