Description
Book SynopsisThe branding of Singapore International Airlines with the image of a beautiful, petite and servile 'Oriental' woman dressed in figure-hugging sarong-kebaya is one of the world's longest running and most successful advertising campaigns.
But this image does not simply advertise a service; it is part of a global and national regime of symbolic constructions of gender that today is seen as outdated and sexist, and bearing little relation to modern Singapore where women have good access to education and increased life choices resulting from engagement in the wage economy. The nation's economic success has been a force for their liberation.
One catastrophic consequence of women's changed lives has been the plunge in fertility rates. Singapore has one of the world's lowest despite energetic government campaigns encouraging women to have more babies and men to be more 'masculine'. The failure of these campaigns and rethinking of the Singapore Girl highlight a key premise of this book: there are limits to the power of discursive constructions of gender in the national interest.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Rethinking the Singapore Girl Imagining the Nation Public Spaces of Discourse A Word on Critical Strategies The Limits of Narrative Control 1. Narrating the Nation 17 Masculine Nation Creating Modern Subjects Vulnerable Nation Global Citizens 2. Family and Nation 43 Creating the Capitalist Family The Nation and Family as Discursive Objects The Female Body and the Unsettling of Nation 3. The Politics of Fertility 61 Decreasing Reproduction to Increase Production: the 'Stop at Two' Campaign Quality vs Quantity Have Three or More if You Can Afford It 4. Romancing Singapore 85 Selling Marriage and Parenthood The Romance of Nation - Family and Capital No Sex, Please - We're Singaporean 5. Resisting the Hardsell 113 Pragmatism vs Love The Paradox of Romance Beyond Babies 6. The New Singapore Woman 139 Bad Subjects Taming the New Singapore Woman Peeling Prawns - Recovering the Asian Woman 7. The Crisis of Representation 163 Loss of Narrative Authority Reinscribing Men - The New Singapore Man Feminised Nation References 187 Index 207
