Crowned and Uncaged: Two Women, One Fight

This chapter examines the convergence of gender, resistance, and national identity in the visual andperformative discourses of Princess Diana and Miley Cyrus—two similarly iconic figures who, thoughsituated within remarkably divergent contexts, employed fashion, as well as their public persona, to subvert,disrupt, and reconstitute patriarchal norms and the figure of womanhood. Princess Diana, situated within thesymbolic economy of the British monarchy, subverted traditional expectations through gestures of sartorialtransgression—most famously exemplified by her "revenge dress"—in order to exercise her agency andcritique the institution from within. By doing so, she refigured the figural role of the royal female subject,challenging the global image of British femininity to stand for compassion, strength, and multifacetedtransgression. Miley Cyrus, conversely, working within the hyper-commercialized economy of the Americanentertainment industry, employs spectacle, camp, and transformation as tools to subvert gender roles, as wellas national expectations of womanhood. Her transformation from Disney ingénue to pop provocateur is asubversion of patriotic ideals that value female purity and control in favor of a vision of Americanwomanhood predicated on freedom, self-expression, and resistance. Drawing upon theories of semiotics(Barthes), gender performativity (Butler), and hyperreality (Baudrillard), this chapter contends that both Dianaand Cyrus subvert patriarchal authority as much as they reconstitute cultural ideals of femininity in relation totheir respective national narratives. Through their visual address and public transgression, they becomefigures of feminist patriotism—representatives of how women are able to reclaim space, voice, and dignity atthe center of national consciousness.