Confidence Culture

“Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill’s brilliant study of the intersections within and between ‘confidence culture’ and neoliberal capitalism makes a vital contribution to how we think about gender, the body, and media. Complicating analyses on both the media representation and the user applications of the contemporary confidence movement, this crucially important book will appeal to media studies, American studies, and feminist scholars as well as a wide public audience.” - Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny

“You will be cheering this brilliant book on from the very first pages. Ground down by inequities at work, impossible thinness and beauty ideals, or fears that you’re not a good enough mother? Buck up, girls, it’s not structural change we need: you just need a confidence boost! Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill detail this psychological turn in neoliberalism, in which women’s very subjectivities must be disciplined to serve patriarchal capitalism. Absolutely timely and a must read!” - Susan J. Douglas, Professor of Communication and Media, University of Michigan

"Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - M. M. Ferree, Choice

"I see two primary uses for this book in classrooms. The first is to spur discussion about the benefits and challenges of its methodology. Seeing how a methodology is applied in actual research and then debating its success can help students better understand how to use it in their own work. The second is to inspire instructors to develop activities in which students identify a pop culture phenomenon (a movie, a book, or a social media campaign, for example) and then practice culture content analysis on that artifact." - Heather Brown, Resources for Gender and Women's Studies

"Confidence Culture offers critical feminist insight into the conditions shaping our existence, experiences and our feelings. . . . An absolute necessity for scholars of gender, media studies, sociology and other interdisciplinary areas." - Ipsita Pradhan, LSE Review of Books

"Confidence Culture is sure to be of interest to cultural studies scholars, particularly those studying the machinations of modern feminism. The authors’ examination of a seemingly uplifting turn in popular culture exposes how oppressive systems of power persist even in these contexts; rather than empowering women, this phenomenon prompts women to reevaluate their identities to avoid blame and hides neoliberal ideologies behind feminism optics." - Amy Whiteside, Cultural Studies

"This is an interesting and thought-provoking book that will be of interest to feminist scholars and beyond." - European Review of Communication

"Confidence Culture is not an intervention in the fields of gender studies and media and cultural studies but rather it adds to existing critiques of Western neoliberal culture and post-feminist media. The originality is in their framing of confidence as cult, and it could be pedagogically appealing to a new generation of students. This book is not an argument against confidence but rather a persuasive feminist critique of ‘confidence cult(ure)’ as a gendered technology of self that is situated within contemporary neoliberalism in the West."
  - Emily Elizabeth Hoyle, European Journal of Cultural Studies