Just Like Us: Digital Debates on Feminism and Fame

By: Caitlin E. Lawson

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Synopsis: In Just Like Us: Digital Debates on Feminism and Fame, Caitlin E. Lawson examines the rise of celebrity feminism, its intersections with digital culture, and its complicated relationships with race, sexuality, capitalism, and misogyny. Through in-depth analyses of debates across social media and news platforms, Lawson maps the processes by which celebrity culture, digital platforms, and feminism transform one another. As she analyzes celebrity-centered stories ranging from “The Fappening” and the digital attack on actress Leslie Jones to stars’ activism in response to #MeToo, Lawson demonstrates how celebrity culture functions as a hypervisible space in which networked publics confront white feminism, assert the value of productive anger in feminist politics, and seek remedies for women’s vulnerabilities in digital spaces and beyond. Just Like Us asserts that, together, celebrity culture and digital platforms form a crucial discursive arena where postfeminist logics are unsettled, opening up more public, collective modes of holding individuals and groups accountable for their actions.