Illegible Rage: Performing Femininity in Manhattan Call Girl

In her book chapter ‘Illegible Rage: Post-feminist Disorders’ Angela McRobbie (2009) suggests that young women in Western societies are routinely addressed by government and media bodies on the understanding that gender equality has been achieved and that there is no longer any reason for any form of organized feminist movement. Yet, as she argues, this equality appears to have been mysteriously achieved without real change to patriarchal structures in society. Equally mysteriously, women appear to suffer from a new range of normalized pathologies that are understood as simply part of being ‘female.’ Body issues, selfesteem problems and anxiety about achieving certain markers of femininity such as marriage and motherhood are all understood to some extent to be a part of ‘normal’ contemporary young womanhood. There are a range of therapies, self-help guides, and forums — such as advice pages in women’s magazines that respond to these pathologies in place of feminist critique — which set new norms and values for young womanhood and reinforce young women’s beliefs that there are no radical alternatives. As McRobbie states: ‘the attributing of normative discontent to young women has become a key mechanism for the production of sexual difference, it provides a vocabulary for understanding the female body-ego as prone to anxiety, as lacking in certain respects, as insufficient to self-esteem’ (2009, p. 98).