Gender Theory

Gender is a sociological / cultural concept that arose out of the feminist

movement and is concerned with ideas of both femininity and masculinity.
David Gauntlett in Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction
argues that:
Femininity is not typically a core value for women today. Instead, being
feminine is just one of the performances that women choose to
employ in everyday life perhaps for pleasure, or to achieve a
particular goal.
It is this aspect of performance which is most interesting to Media
Studies students.
Judith Butlers work on gender is set out in Gender Trouble (1990). In
Butlers terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about
power in society.
She critiques notions of identity and gender by challenging assumptions
about the distinction often made between sex and gender in which sex is
biological while gender is culturally constructed. Butler argues that sexed
bodies cannot signify without gender, and the apparent existence of sex
prior to discourse and cultural imposition is merely an effect of the
functioning of gender. That is, both sex and gender are constructed.

Butler argues that gender is performative. She says that no identity

exists behind the acts or performance that express gender, and these acts
constitute the illusion of the stable gender identity.
So the appearance of being a gender is thus an effect of culturally
influenced acts so the gender woman and the gender man remains
contingent and open to interpretation.
She theorises that there is no gendered subject position that exists prior
to the performance of gender. So gender is in this sense a contingent
event because the gendered subject is something to be accomplished
that changes according to context. This challenges traditional
feminism which relies on the premise that there is a political subject that
requires agency. She argues in Gender Trouble:
Clearly the category of women is internally fragmented by class, colour,
age, and ethnic lines, to name but a few, in this sense honouring the
diversity of the category and insisting upon its definitional nonclosure
appears to be a necessary safeguard against substituting a reification of
womens experiences for the diversity that exists. (Butler 1990).
Butler does not account for the biological differences between the sexes
as she deems it irrelevant to her thesis which is that the construction of
gender is entirely cultural. In this sense Butler views sex as an alibi which
neutralises the attribution of gender at birth.
Butlers work is significant because it speaks for the subject
position of men as well as women. Her work has had some influence
on the study of pop music, and in particular Madonna. Musical
performance can be seen as representative of radical gender politics.

E. Ann Kaplan argues that Madonnas: image usefully adopts one

mask after another to expose the fact that there is no essential
self and therefore no essential feminine but only cultural
contructions.(1993)
Joanne Finkelstein suggests that:

Madonnas constant change of fashion, image, and identity promoted

experimentation and the creation of ones own style and identity.
Her sometimes dramatic shifts in identity suggested that identity
was a construct, that it was something that one produced and could be
modified at will.
The way Madonna deployed fashion in the construction of her identity
made it clear that ones appearance and image helps produce what
one is, or at least how one is perceived...
Madonnas hair changed from dirty blonde to platinum blonde, to black,
brunette, redhead, and multifarious variations thereof
Her body changed from soft and sensuous to glamorous and svelte to
hard and muscular sex machine to futuristic technobody.

Her clothes and fashion changed from flashy trash to haute couture to
far-out technoculture to lesbian S & M fashion to postmodern pastiche of
all and every fashion style. (Kellner 1994)
There is also analysis of masculinity see Sheila Whitelys Sexing the
Groove (1997).
Gareth Palmer and Stan Hawkins suggest both Bruce Springsteen and
the Pet Shop Boys manipulate their own notions of gender.
Notions of self and gender are to a certain extent shaped by
media stars leading to the idea that the gendered self is flexible and
multiple.

Richard Dyer (1990) suggests British pop music has acknowledged

elements of gayness.
Many pop stars embrace the mutability and glitter of what Bracewell
(2006) describes as hetero camp Bowie, Marc Bolan, etc.
Some feminists view women as separate ontological beings from men and
others like Judith Butler see gender as an artificial cultural performance.