Date of Award
1-1-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Southern Studies
Department
Southern Studies
First Advisor
Jaime L. Harker
Second Advisor
Kirsten Dellinger
Third Advisor
Kathryn McKee
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the performance of southern femininity in contemporary southern popular culture, specifically prescriptive literature and reality television. Both texts provide valuable insight into how southern femininity is disciplined and subverted by individual women and the public. Humorous prescriptive literature in the first chapter provides the data necessary to delineate key markers of “ideal” southern femininity and how primarily elite white women perform it. The second chapter focuses on the show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and how June Shannon opened up a liminal space for thinking about alternative southern femininities before ultimately closing it with her scandal in late 2014. It is primarily concerned about how women embody southern femininity and how other southern women police that performance. While individual women find personal empowerment through the practice of southern femininity, collectively it is a dangerous performance that maintains race and class boundaries and is exclusionary far more than inclusionary. It depends on both the hyper-feminized performance and the seemingly non-feminine performance. This thesis explores how the two act in concert and opposition and attempts to complicate the question of whether or not true subversion is possible.
Recommended Citation
Vogt, Kaitlyn, "Being Nice is Lethal: Disciplining and Subverting Southern Femininity in Contemporary Southern Popular Culture" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1226.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1226