Seeing Her, Wanting Her: Postfeminist Desire and its Contradictions in Zendaya’s Magazine Covers

This article examines Zendaya’s modelling evolution as a case study to explore how a postfeminist critique and psychoanalysis can illuminate the contradictory nature of women’s advertising. My analysis compares Zendaya’s covers in Seventeen (2012) and Essence (2020), emphasizing the stark differences in aesthetics, where Seventeen conforms to ideals of (white) femininity, and in opposition, Essence centres around Black femininity and desire. By situating Zendaya as both a gendered and racialized ‘other,’ the intricate dynamics of femininity, race, and age in media portrayals are made visible. I argue that Zendaya’s image is sold through postfeminist ideals of empowerment, choice, and sexuality by Seventeen and Essence, revealing the complicated nature of contemporary popular culture. Drawing on feminist media studies scholars (Mulvey and Hollows) and postfeminist literature (McRobbie and Gill), my research examines how Zendaya’s image functions as an ego-ideal, through which women misrecognize her as a superior figure and desire to emulate her, obscuring the structural inequalities that shape that desire. I will illustrate the importance of ego-idealization in postfeminism through how quickly empowerment and sexual subjectification turn into self-objectification for both the model and the viewer, as magazines capitalize on feminist rhetoric while depoliticizing it. My analysis supports the broader discourses within feminist media studies by highlighting how representations can both reinforce and resist postfeminist frameworks that exploit female empowerment, stressing the necessity for tangible female agency across media. Ultimately, I advocate for a more disruptive force in the realm of women’s media that aligns with Hélène Cixous’s idea of feminist writing or, in this case, visual media.