The Insanity Plea: Female Celebrities, Reality Media and the Psychopathology of British Pop-Feminism

Abstract

'In the Limelight and Under the Microscope' is an edited colletion of essays on the politics of female celebrity across a range of contemporary, historical, media and national contexts. This chapter explores the ways in which post-feminist female celebrities' apparent transgressions of acceptable femininity where once represented as “bad girl” excesses but are increasingly reframed as symptoms of “mad-girl” mental distress. It focusses on how this particular discourse in the UK is articulated through the complex textual and market relations between tabloids, scandal media and reality and autobiographical products.