Confidence Culture

Description

In Confidence Culture , Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather than entrenched social injustices hold women back. Interrogating the prominence of confidence in contemporary discourse about body image, workplace, relationships, motherhood, and international development, Orgad and Gill draw on Foucault’s notion of technologies of self to demonstrate how “confidence culture” demands of women near-constant introspection and vigilance in the service of self-improvement. They argue that while confidence messaging may feel good, it does not address structural and systemic oppression. Rather, confidence culture suggests that women—along with people of color, the disabled, and other marginalized groups—are responsible for their own conditions. Rejecting confidence culture’s remaking of feminism along individualistic and neoliberal lines, Orgad and Gill explore alternative articulations of feminism that go beyond the confidence imperative. Review: understanding - I’ve always been uncomfortable around all the self-improvement apps and books. They never seem to ring true. This book goes a long way to explaining why. Review: Too intellectual and difficult to read - I was so excited about this book and then so disappointed. The language and sentence structure is so difficult to understand it is hard to get into any kind of flow: I’m not stupid, educated to degree level and I don’t understand most of what is being said. Why can’t people write in a way that is understandable?