Following this trend closely comes The Miss Rikei Contest in Japan, which pitted six science students and researchers against each other in a contest of intelligence and- yes- beauty. The contest purports to change the image of sciences to include women- but apparently only if those women are attractive.

Not long after, the European Commission launched a cringe-worthy campaign aimed at recruiting girls to the STEM disciplines. The Science: It’s a girl thing! video featured girls in high heels being ogled by a man in lab coats, and prominently featured lipstick, lip gloss, fingernail polish in contexts completely unrelated to science. The video was the subject of so much derision it was quickly taken off the official website.

These examples are generally well-intentioned, aimed at encouraging an interest in STEM disciplines in girls and women. However, the result is just tacked-on femininity and a familiar focus on the physical beauty of female scientists instead of their contributions to the scientific community. If nothing else the controversy surrounding them has drawn attention to the women- and frequent lack thereof- in these disciplines. However, they’ve left open the question of how to create a space in science where being feminine is acceptable. Is there anything in the ‘princess scientist’ idea that’s worth embracing?

The answer: Princess Bubblegum.

“It'll be fine. We've got Science!” Says Princess Bubblegum showing off her invention in the episode "Lady & Peebles."

The popular Adventure Time character predates The Dr. Erika Show by about a year, and embodies both aspects of the ‘princess scientist’ idea, in that Princess Bubblegum, is literally a princess and a scientist. Adventure Time goes a long way to establishing her credentials in both roles.

In American pop culture, ‘princess’ is a title that has little or no meaning beyond fluffy dresses and a shining tiara. Indeed, in the ‘princess scientist’ concept, the princess aspect only surfaces with the addition of a tiara to Dr. Erika’s standard lab coat costume. However, in Adventure Time, heavy is the bright pink head that wears the crown; being a princess in the Land of Ooo is an important responsibility, and Princess Bubblegum rules over her people with kindness and strength. On multiple occasions, she even relinquishes personal happiness in order to fulfill her duties.

In addition to being a princess, there are several ways in which Bubblegum embodies traditional femininity. Her skin and clothing are all shades of pink, and her hair, also bright pink, is actually made of bubblegum. Her wardrobe is in constant rotation and she is frequently drawn wearing new outfits.  The show often makes allusions that the candy people populating Bubblegum’s kingdom are, in fact, her own mad science creations, and she nurtures for them as if they were her children.

Princess Bubblegum explaining something scientific, from "Burning Low."

On the other hand, Princess Bubblegum is also a scientist, through-and-through. Just a few of the science-based activities she gets up to include creating a formula to raise the dead, curing diseases, brewing antidotes, inventing a myriad of gadgets, and manufacturing a living heart. Though Dr. Erika shows a ‘princess scientist’ doing real experiments, Princess Bubblegum may have her beat in the portrayal of a realistic scientific career; in several episodes, Bubblegum is shown hosting and attending scientific conferences.

"Pretty standard candy people soup. Amino acids, algebra..." - from "Goliad"

Both the ‘princess’ and the ‘scientist’ aspects of her character get equal weight; they are inseparable from each other, and work in unison in everything Princess Bubblegum does. The ‘princess scientist’ idea so often commits the same sin in representations of STEM professionals that is common place so far; instead of welcoming all kinds of people into the disciplines, it falls hard on one side of a gender binary. The women held up as and represented as ‘princess scientists’ are feminine to the highest extent, so invested in physical appearance that they win pageants and are obsessed with makeup.

The way to encourage girls and women to enter the STEM disciplines isn’t bedazzling a lab coat or filling test tubes with pink and purple chemicals. Instead of taking science and decorating it with feminine elements, we need to embrace the possibilities of the princess and the scientist dissolving into each other to form a true ‘princess scientist.’ We should be holding up representations like Princess Bubblegum, a complex, intelligent, kind, girly, strong heroine that any science would be proud to have.

A Visual.ly infographic highlights that 83% of American Pinterest users are women, and that the most common areas of interest for those users are crafts, special events planning, hobbies & leisure, interior design, fashion, and blogging resources. This certainly holds up in my experience, where the pins I see most often fall into those categories, along with others including exercise tips, babies/children, humor, and food/drink.

There’s a lot to say about Pinterest, but what has struck me most about the site (which I’ve used heavily for over a year) is the way that pinners perform postfeminism. As the statistics provided indicate, the vast majority of American pinners are women, and many of the most popular categories of use are ones that are coded as “feminine” in our culture. But what does femininity, as displayed on Pinterest, actually look like? Below is a screenshot of the Pinterest homepage I captured at random on a Saturday afternoon. Images of fashion appear alongside exercise and cleaning tips, DIY decorating suggestions, ideas for back-to-school, and recipes. To the casual observer, such a selection would appear to heavily reinforce dominant codes of femininity–the female pinners (note the users’ names underneath each image) are collecting ideas for keeping their homes clean and their bodies fit and well-attired. They’re focused on the parties they’ll throw, the children they’re sending back to school, and the meals they’ll prepare. But these pins only tell part of the story.

On display across Pinterest is the juxtaposition of feminist and anti-feminist ideas that comprises the heart of postfeminism. Alongside such content as exemplifies dominant notions of the feminine (crafting, cooking, cleaning, mothering, decorating) are pins that fly in the face of such ideas. Images such as those shown below (all found on Pinterest) subvert the dominant paradigm in ways that would be recognized as feminist: quotations from Madeleine Albright about the need for women to help women, images poking fun at the idea that women should obey men, or asserting that little girls have as much interest in stereotypically “boy” play as “girl” play.

Due to juxtapositions such as these, postfeminism has caused a great deal of consternation and confusion–women understand that they’re allowed to “have it all,” but are unsure what that means or how to achieve it. The experience of using Pinterest has been described as similarly confusing. As the image at right shows, the pins displayed side-by-side on the site, and the messages embedded within them, are not only disparate but oftentimes completely contradictory.

Blogger Jane Roper notes that Pinterest can easily make users feel inadequate. Roper writes, “Every time I go there…Pinterest inevitably reminds me of the various ways in which I am not good enough.” She includes a litany of “feminine” qualities presented on Pinterest which she lacks, suggesting that in contrast to most pinners, she is “slovenly…a boring cook/baker…a bad mother.” Tellingly, however, Roper concludes her post: “But the upside of Pinterest–or perhaps the huge, ridiculous irony–is that people also love to post gorgeous graphics … of inspirational sayings: ‘Everybody dances to their own rhythm!’ or ‘I won’t worry my life away!’ or ‘I will love myself more each day’!”

Not only is the content on display on Pinterest exemplary of the postfeminist moment–the experience of pinners exemplifies the daily lived experience of women who encounter these mixed messages and are supposed to make meaning out of them, making the site a fascinating (if ever-changing) snapshot of contemporary ideology.

Grimm’s weekly plotlines, developed around Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s 1812 Children’s and Household Tales, follow the modern crime genre format. The series follows Detective Nick Burkhardt, a Portland police officer dismayed by his great aunt’s revelation that he is a “Grimm” – a descendent of the Brothers Grimm whose powers allow him to see pseudo-shape-shifting Wesen whose otherwise human faces transform into grotesque configurations reminiscent of big bad wolves, evil witches, giants, and the like. What’s worse, these creatures-in-disguise often partake in inter-species violence, resulting in many of Portland PD’s murder cases. The series is as much police drama as fairy tale, featuring—like CSI, Criminal Minds, and NCIS—dimly lit camera shots, stealthy detectives with guns and flashlights, and, of course, women’s bloody and broken bodies.

Dead women are standard set dressing on most crime dramas, so I wasn’t surprised by the ill-fated red-hooded coed in Grimm’s pilot. But the more I watched, the more I realized the women in this series aren’t usually homicide victims – they’re monsters. The first morphing face belongs to a beautiful Hexenbiest (loosely translated “witch bitch”) named Adalind whose Barbie-esque blond exterior hideously contorts to reveal that Grimm’s beauty is only skin deep. Adalind makes consistently dangerous choices, using her beauty—and the monstrous truth beneath it—to ruin men. Not only does she cast a love spell on Nick’s partner Hank, she also kills an elderly cancer patient and unleashes an impressive physical attack on Nick – she uses her beauty, NBC muses, to “put any man completely at her mercy.” Adalind is the monstrous feminine who seduces men before castrating them, at least figuratively, with her power.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by Grimm’s monstrous femininity. Fairy tales (and crime dramas, for that matter) are morally instructive, recycling cultural fears into cautionary tales, and Grimm funnels the mythos of women’s irresponsibility and cold indifference into a crime drama. “Tarantella,” for example, features a Spinnetod (or “black widow”) – a mother who seduces men before sucking out their internal organs through their abdomen – and the Cinderella-turned-Murciélago (“hideous bat-like creature”) in “Happily Ever Aftermath” emits a shrieking sound that explodes her entire family’s eyeballs, leaving herself heir to her father’s fortune. It is from these stories that we learn what a “good mother” looks like, and she certainly wouldn’t seduce men in the name of eternal youth. And “good women” like Cinderella are rewarded through quiet suffering, not monstrous murder.

Grimm emerged from a cultural climate particularly interested in moral instruction, as evidenced by recent legislative fervor over women’s choice. Last week, Kansas legally allowed pharmacists to withhold prescriptions they “reasonably believe” could terminate pregnancy, the “Protect Life Act” allows hospitals to “let women die” rather than perform life-saving abortions, and of course, transvaginal ultrasound legislation requires women to be probed vaginally before terminating a pregnancy. These bills are just as terrifying as, say, tales of fire-breathing lady-Dämonfeuer, which also come from the assumption that women’s free (and presumed irresponsible) choice destroys American morality in a fury of fire and brimstone. Just as Grimm’s monstrous women threaten men, GOP politics frames women’s rights as a threat to family values, “fetal rights,” and men’s sovereignty. Grimm naturally channels this milieu, borrowing from traditional anxiety about strong, independent women encapsulated by the Brothers Grimm.

As Grimm’s first season wrapped up, the monstrous women were back. Adalind sicked her cat on Nick’s fiancé, turning her into a modern-day (comatose) sleeping beauty, and the mysterious “woman in black” unleashed a flurry of ninja-like moves before revealing her identity as (spoiler alert) Nick’s mother, long thought dead. Missing mothers are common in fairy tales, but Grimm’s finale raises the question: if Nick’s mother has been alive all of these years, why hasn’t she been mothering him? Even though the woman in black may not be the archetypal “evil stepmother,” I’m not holding my breath for a “happily ever after” moment in Grimm’s second season – what kind of a boring fairy tale leaves a “good mother” alive? We’ll have to wait until fall to see if her crime was drinking children’s blood or simply disappearing from her child’s life. Or maybe Grimm will give us a truly updated fairy tale – you know, one with progressive female characters.

Mad Men is a series frequently praised and sometimes criticized for its lush visual style.  Foremost in the attention paid to the program’s style is its mise-en-scene—the sets, the props, the hair, make-up, and costumes.  While this retro style is certainly one of the fun elements of Mad Men viewing, its presence is never mere style for style’s sake.  A basic lesson in the analysis of media texts is the awareness that all on-screen elements are there for a reason; they have been chosen deliberately and they thereby communicate meaning.  Mad Men’s vintage setting and generous budget may make its style particularly compelling, but for me—and perhaps for many other of the show’s admiring viewers—the attention to how things and people look is key to the show’s exploration of gender roles so precariously perched on the edge of disruption and change.

“The Rejected” in particular uses the way the characters look to map out some of the ways that femininity, and the kind of sexuality normatively associated with it, is on the verge of change.  The young SCDP secretaries that make up the focus group are garbed in the dresses, jewelry, updo’s, and hair height we associate with the “fifties” part of the 1960s.  Sure, there is a range of looks amongst them—the more juvenile Dotty and Allison in their plaid, the Joan-wannabe Megan in her curve-enhancing jewel tones—but together they represent a traditional young femininity.  This femininity sees marriage as the ultimate goal.  Or so concludes Dr. Faye Miller, the educated, professional, (married) market researcher.  But Faye sees herself as a different kind of woman. She changes her clothes to lead the focus group, abandoning her more businesslike jacket and scarf for a look more akin to the secretaries, hoping to induce a greater degree of revelation from her test subjects.

But the really new femininity introduced in “The Rejected” belongs to Joyce Ramsay, the new friend who takes Peggy into a hipster world of Warhol-worshipping, pot-smoking adventure.  Joyce does not look like any of the other women in the Mad Men world.  She wears a men’s style blazer and button-down shirt, her hair parted in the middle, laying flat against her head and secured in a low ponytail, her one piece of jewelry an “ethnic” looking turquoise necklace.  And she wears pants.  Pants.  Joyce’s “unusual” vibe is further secured when she kisses (licks?) Peggy at the party.  As usual, Peggy is the point of negotiation for these differing depictions, a position made clear as she stands amidst a triangle of options:  Megan, the SDCP men in suits, and Joyce and her hipster gang.

While Mad Men uses its characters’ sartorial style in these thoughtful and revealing ways, AMC and the show producers are also aware of the marketing magic of the program’s fashion-savvy.  Capitalizing on a broader cultural embrace of the program’s retro style, AMC has partnered with national retailer Banana Republic to sell “Mad Men Style” to the (upscale) mass market.  In weekly vlogs, costume designer Janie Bryant chats with Banana Republic Creative Director Simon Kneen, who links the Mad Men look for both women and men to BR’s contemporary stock.  Meanwhile, a weekly “Fashion File” blog post deconstructs that week’s looks, much as I have done here.

We can certainly see these sorts of marketing efforts as savvy exploitations of one of the program’s appeals.  But I’m not convinced that these efforts detract from the value of the show’s use of fashion and style to explore femininity and masculinity in flux.  A show that takes fashion seriously is also taking seriously a cultural arena long dismissed for its association with the feminine.  To discount it as mere surface appeal or promotional wizardry risks duplicating that troubling rejection of the feminine.  But to take fashion seriously in a way that also explores the limits of conventional gender roles and the welcome potential for feminist change, that helps us share in the looks of the Peggys, the Allisons, the Megans, and the Joyces as they try to find their way?  Yes, please.

Another sub-genre focuses on an individual retailer, with bloggers identifying as fans of a particular store and focusing their energies upon reviewing its latest offerings.  One such community exists around the retail chain, Anthropologie, a retailer of women’s clothing, shoes, and accessories, as well as home décor items. Anthropologie identifies itself as targeted to women with household incomes between $150,000 and $200,000, but the bloggers in this community, including such blogs as Anthroholic and Effortless Anthropologie, do not necessarily fit this income level.  Indeed, there are links between these blogs and those of the academic bloggers, which suggests that Anthro “fans” come from a variety of economic circumstances.  The Anthro bloggers are well aware of the pricey nature of their adored objects, and regularly discuss strategies for acquiring Anthro products more affordably.  Indeed, much time on these blogs is spent monitoring the sale patterns of the stores and website, tracking ebay offerings, and buying, selling, or trading items within the blog community.

The Anthro blogs are as much about appreciating the store’s unique products as they are about consuming them.  Bloggers spend significant time in Anthropologie fitting rooms, photographing themselves in the latest items, most of which they are not buying imminently.  While there is no doubt that such blogs celebrate and support mainstream consumerism, they also exhibit features typical of other kinds of fan communities, those that media scholars are more accustomed to studying.  For one, they certainly function communally, with bloggers and readers supporting each others’ style choices and complimenting each others’ taste and appearance.  They also challenge dominant conceptions of feminine beauty, as fashion fans of all sizes and appearances are celebrated and seen as role models.  The women wearing Anthro clothing on these blogs have adopted some of the poses and style choices forwarded by the company’s own advertising, but much of the photography is more utilitarian, with women taking pictures of their outfits in mirrors, their cameras or, more typically, their camera phones more visible than their faces.

There is no doubt that the ability to think this carefully about fashion, as well as to invest the time and money in maintaining a particular look, not to mention blogging about it, is a product of privilege.  But the style bloggers whose work I am so enjoying remind us that we all negotiate a place for ourselves in a culture within which we possess different degrees of privilege in different contexts.  The women of the style blogging communities I have explored consciously use fashion to shape their identities, form connections with one another, and define particular iterations of contemporary femininity.  That they do so in negotiation with a patriarchal, consumer culture makes no less significant their efforts to find small ways of making that culture their own.