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This collection of essays considers the ways in which feminism is still an important issue in twenty-first century society. Looking at various forms of literature, media, and popular culture, the book establishes that contemporary images of femininity are highly contested, complex, and frequently problematic.

"What does it mean to be naked in public? Approaching this question from across the disciplines, Naked Exhibitionism examines the evolution of female exhibitionism from criminal taboo to prime-time entertainment. Taking an interdisciplinary approach which brings together all fields of popular culture, including literature, media, film and linguistics, Claire Nally and Angela Smith offer an examination of gendered exhibitionism from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. They ask whether bodily exposure provides the liberation it professes to or restricts our most secret selves to the sanitised realm of socially-sanctioned gender roles. From the art of burlesque as a riotous kingdom of the imagination to reality TV which helps women to unearth their 'true' and buried feminine selves, Nally and Smith explore how the critical history and theory of exhibitionism intersects with the wider movement towards gender equality. Examining effects of second-wave feminism to problematise the naked female form, female and gender-transgressive performers from Bette Davis to Dita von Teese are placed in their cultural context. In order to demonstrate that female exhibitionism remains at the heart of popular culture, this book also examines the works of Peter Ackroyd and the controversial playwright Sarah Kane, uncovering the contradictions behind the evolving representations of public exposure. Within a post-feminist framework, the cultural constructions behind the repackaging of female exhibitionism are explored and the prominence of bodily exposure in popular culture examined, along with the implications of those artists who perform gender as a public masquerade. Finally, hit TV shows Ladette to Lady and How to Look Good Naked are interrogated to expose the buried contradictions behind this public unveiling: are women seizing control of their own identity, or is this revelation an illusion? Innovative, unflinching and pertinent, Naked Exhibitionism explores naked bodies in the public gaze and critically reformulates the feminist and cultural debate around the performance of gender."--Dust jacket

Introduction -- Advertising in Ireland 1850-1914. Prologue -- the Irish advertising scene from the 1850s to the 1880s; Advertising and the nation in the Irish revival -- Print culture. The Shan van vocht (1896-1899) and The leader (1900-1936): national identity in advertising; The Sinn féin depot and the selling of Irish sport; The lady of the house (1890-1921): gender, fashion and domesticity; Unionism, advertising, and the Third Home Rule Bill -- "High" culture. Oscar Wilde as editor and writer: aesthetic interventions in fashion and material culture; Consumerism and anti-commercialism: the Yeatses, print culture, and home industry; Advertising in Ireland 1914-1922; Advertising, Ireland, and the Great War -- Coda - from the Armistice to the Saorstsst

Let's spend the night together explores how sex and sexuality provided essential elements of British youth culture in the 1950s through to the 1980s. It shows how the underlying sexual charge of rock 'n'roll – and pop music more generally – was integral to the broader challenge embodied in the youth cultures that developed after World War Two. As teenage hormones rushed to move to the music and take advantage of the spaces opening up through consumption, education and employment, so the boundaries of British morality and cultural propriety were tested and often transgressed. Be it the assertive masculinity of the teds or the lustful longings of the teeny-bopper, the gender-bending of glam or the subterranean allure of an underground club/disco, the free love of the 1960s or the punk provocations in the 1970s, sex was forever to the fore and, more often than not, underpinned the moral panics that fitfully followed any cultural shift in youthful style and behaviour. Drawing from scholarship across a range of disciplines, the Subcultures Network explore how sex and sexuality were experienced, presented, conferred, responded to and understood within the context of youth culture, popular music and social change in the period between World War Two and the advent of AIDS. The essays locate sex, music and youth culture in the context of post-war Britain: with a widening and ever-more prevalent media; amidst the loosening bonds of censorship; in a society shaped by changing patterns of consumption and the emergence of the 'teenager'; existing, as Jeff Nuttall famously argued, under the shadow of the (nuclear) bomb