Leveraging Womanhood: Commodifying Feminism In Media Production

Within a predominantly patriarchal society, women are deemed secondary and inferior to men in many pursuits and this is against feminist views that strongly concern on gender equality. In the wake of post-feminism in the late twentieth century, it is interesting to explore the notion of women emancipation through media production, particularly in Malaysia. This article, therefore, seeks to examine the idea of feminism within the images of Malay women in local magazines. How did media producers choreograph the representation of Malay women? In what way they performed duties to uplift the status of women? To what extent they were aware of the idea of mediated women as commodity in the selling business? Drawing from the postfeminist media culture, a focus group interview with six female editors of women magazines was conducted to unfold the commodification of women’s agency by image producers. Beauty and brain emerged as the major theme from the discussion. All published images have been projected towards upgrading women position in the society and being exemplary to the audience. Women have been empowered with their job, education, achievement, and social status, yet never been discounted from the traditional elements of look, fashion, home, and motherhood in their life. In the media, women are liberated from being objectified and empowered with who they are and how they feel, eventually have become active labour for capitalists, hence feminism has been commodified.