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What does it mean to 'belong' to an online community? What happens to the body in cyberspace? How has the Internet been theorised: as a site of liberation, duplicity, threat? In her reading of cyberculture studies after the affective turn, the author argues for a new cyberculture studies that goes beyond dominant cultural narratives of the Internet as dystopian or utopian space, and pays attention to the ways in which online culture has become embedded in everyday lives. The book intervenes in narratives of virtual reality to propose that the Internet can be re-read as a space of fantasy. This

In July 2015, Rihanna released a seven-minute long video for her new single, entitled 'Bitch Better Have My Money' (more widely known as 'BBHMM'), the violent imagery in which would divide feminist media commentators for its representation of graphic and sexualised violence against a white couple. The resulting commentary would become the focus of much popular and academic feminist debate over the intersectional gendered and racialised politics of popular culture, in particular coming to define what has been termed 'white feminism'. 'BBHMM' is not the first time Rihanna's work has been considered in relation to these debates: not only has she herself been very publicly outed as a survivor of male violence, but she has previously dealt with themes of rape and revenge in an earlier video, 2010's 'Man Down', and in her lyrics. In this article I explore the multiple and layered ways in which Rihanna, and by extension other female artists of colour, are produced by white feminism as both responsible for perpetrating gender-based violence, and as victims in need of rescue. The effect of such liberal feminist critique, I argue, is to hold black female artists responsible for a rape culture that continually subjects women of colour to symbolic and actual violence. In this context, the fantasy violence of 'Man Down' and to a greater extent 'BBHMM' dramatises the impossibility of 'being paid what one is owed' in a culture that produces women of colour's bodies, morality and personal trauma as abjected objects of consumption. I read these two videos through the lens of feminist film theory in order to explore how such representations mobilise affective responses of shame, identification and complicity that are played out in feminist responses to her work, and how their attachment to a simplistic model of representation conceals and reproduces racialised relations of inequality.

This article draws on a review of Megan Warin's 2010 book, Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia, to discuss the ways in which a feminist ethnographic approach might disrupt dominant cultural narratives of eating disorders and embodiment. My argument draws on feminist work on figuration and 'body image' to discuss how the anorexic body becomes a figure of abjection, both in media images and in popular feminist discourse. I examine how cultural narratives and images are pathologically capable of both engendering disgust in the non-anorexic spectator and, second (and more threateningly), moving vulnerable, female spectators to imitation – a power to affect and infect onlookers which is central to contemporary debates about what is popularly called 'body image'. By drawing on Warin's work, the article examines how a critical feminist ethnography might move debates on eating disorders beyond the reproduction of tropes of abjection, disgust and discipline which have led to an impasse in the field, and ask whether, by paying attention to the lived experience of anorexia, it might be possible for the anorexic subject to speak.

This paper examines the cultural phenomenon of `new burlesque', a subculture in which young women take part in striptease performances which invoke the iconic styles and routines associated with mid-20th century cabaret. By reading burlesque websites alongside the celebrity culture and advertising, the article examines how the retro styles of dress and make-up associated with this subculture have circulated through a range of media sites as an alternative mode of femininity. By focusing on the intersections between online fan communities, popular images of burlesque, fashion, and beauty, I argue that burlesque styles involve a reclaiming of traditionally normative sites of identity production and that computer technologies are an extension of the technologies of dress, cosmetics and movements through which femininity is produced. I go on to suggest a re-framing of burlesque as a site of parody and resistance which `troubles' critiques of femininity within both feminist theory and queer theory.

In July 2015, Rihanna released a seven-minute long video for her new single, entitled Bitch Better Have My Money (more widely known as BBHMM), whose violent imagery would divide feminist media commentators for its representation of graphic and sexualised violence against a white couple. The resulting commentary would become the focus of much popular and academic feminist debate over the intersectional gendered and racialised politics of popular culture, in particular coming to define what has been termed 'White Feminism', in particular intersecting with debates about rape culture and the extent to which celebrity culture operates to secure consent to social relations of violence and inequality. BBHMM is not the first time Rihanna's work has been considered in relation to these debates: not only has she herself been very publicly outed as a survivor of male violence, she has previously dealt with themes of rape and revenge in an earlier video, 2010's Man Down, and in her lyrics. In this article, I read these two videos through the lens of feminist film theory, in particular focussing on the ways in which Rihanna's output fits in a wider history of the figure of the 'angry girl' in rape-revenge cinema. In doing so, I explore how such representations mobilise affective responses of shame, identification and complicity that are played out in feminist responses to her work, and how these reproduce themes of surveillance and victim-blaming that potentially operate to silence women of colour's experience of violence.