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VanHaitsmaPamela2002 dr.pdf (2.61 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Feminist Discourse and White Privilege: Served Up Fresh and Tasty?

Van Haitsma, Pamela
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060843

Abstract Details

2002, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Womens Studies.
This thesis is a textual analysis of Fresh and Tasty (FAT), a woman’s snowboarding magazine. My analysis focuses on the ways in which the magazine functions as a site of feminist discourse and constructs whiteness. FAT makes a number of important feminist contributions on behalf of women and snowboarding in the U.S. and, in doing so, becomes a site of feminist discourse that works within and through both feminist and anti-feminist discourses. The magazine seems to exemplify the “I’m not a feminist, but...” phenomenon, and the equality/difference binary common to contemporary U.S. feminist discourse appears throughout FAT as well. Although both discursive moves serve important functions, they are politically limiting and problematic insofar as the magazine represents systemic feminist analyses of power and privilege as “complaining” and obscures differences among women. FAT’s feminist political potential is also undermined by its visual and discursive constructions of whiteness. Whiteness is represented as normative, and femininity is constructed as white femininity, both of which are symptomatic of white privilege. I conclude my analysis by raising questions about the political limits and implications of FAT’s version of feminist discourse.
Judith Mayne (Advisor)
Valerie Lee (Committee Member)
69 p.
Womens Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Van Haitsma, P. (2002). Feminist Discourse and White Privilege: Served Up Fresh and Tasty? [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060843

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Van Haitsma, Pamela. Feminist Discourse and White Privilege: Served Up Fresh and Tasty? 2002. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060843.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Van Haitsma, Pamela. "Feminist Discourse and White Privilege: Served Up Fresh and Tasty?" Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392060843

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1392060843
434
© 2002, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.