Mean Girl Feminism: How White Feminists Gaslight, Gatekeep, and Girlboss

Honors Event and PLP Discovery Event

From the “Bitch Manifesto” to the movie Mean Girls and the popularity of the mean girl trope, the right to be mean is the new frontier for white feminist discontent. My work explores how feminism points to gender as if it is resistance in and of itself. Feminist discourses have positioned the white heterosexual mean girl/woman as both the primary problem to patriarchy and the antidote without whom patriarchy cannot be remade. I argue that the white mean girl feminist is the idealistic figure of complaint and the white hetero-patriarchal mark of bourgeois feminist maturity. In this presentation, I will share a brief overview of this book project.

Kim Hong Nguyen (she/they) is a scholar of Vietnamese descent appointed as Associate Professor of Communication Arts/Gender and Social Justice, at the University of Waterloo. Nguyen's research has appeared in leading cultural studies journals including: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Politics, Howard Journal of Communication.

Co-sponsored by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Department of Communication, and the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. For additional information, contact Dr. Laura Puaca at laura.puaca@cnu.edu.