Written By Liane Dowling Edited By Leah Morris

Wonderbra ad by TBWA\London, 1994.

FHM ran the yearly Hottest 100, counting down the loveliest of scantily clad women the world could find. The perfectly formed Eva Herzigova and her cleavage are etched into minds and advertising history with possibly the most effective tagline ever written: “Hello Boys.” Hello Boys, indeed. Because even though the 90s were powered by the girl, it was arguably in search of male desire. Blasphemous, I know. It’s a woman's choice, we’re allowed to be sexual, allowed to flaunt it if we’ve got it. And you are absolutely correct. However, underneath the surface of this choice are the sinister lurkings of postfeminism. Something which is still bubbling away today.

For many, postfeminism triggers a notion of ‘post’ as in the past—that feminism was a thing, but is no longer required. Right? Women have achieved their active choice; they are empowered to do what they will. We saw this in the 90s, and we see it now: the promotion of hype-fem, financially independent girls who embrace their sexuality—Brat Summer, Y2K-core, OnlyFans. This latest cultural shift has it. However, the reality is that postfeminism is far more complex, nuanced, and harmful than is easily visible.

In the 90s, academics like Rosalind Gill, Angela McRobbie, and Catherine Rottenberg started to pick up on a shift in the way women were being represented. It had the familiarity of feminism, but wasn’t quite. They wanted to understand and pinpoint the emerging paradoxes and contradictions around what it meant to be a woman, and what counted as femininity.

The whole “active, empowered choice”—a narrative that required you to still be incredibly hot. In other words, empowerment that’s still hooked on male desire and the male gaze.

This is where postfeminism emerged, and it’s been evolving ever since. Without the wildly contested hyphen, postfeminism (as described by these also highly successful women) isn’t about being beyond feminism. It borrows from it: agency, choice, financial independence and merges those ideas with cultural messages that still hold women to deeply embedded standards of acceptability.

Our worth isn’t just about a career or a degree. It’s also about how we look while we’re achieving it. There’s a constant, exhausting self-surveillance: our body, our wardrobe, our mindset. Self-improvement becomes a moral duty—whether it’s our skin, our style, or our personal growth. And for many, all of this is expected while managing a family, too. It’s exhausting.

And here’s the kicker of the 90s: all this happens while denying any structural or everyday sexism. If sexism occurs, it’s “just a joke.” Girls can’t throw? Women belong in the kitchen? Lol. 

So in the 90s, we had the freedom to do what we wanted—as long as we looked good doing it, and politely ignored any blatant sexist commentary or misdemeanours.

But this piece is about nostalgia. So we’re not reliving the whole thing. Just the best bits. Right?

Sadly, I don’t think this is the case. And what has spurred this piece on is a recent album cover which, sparking a lot of support and backlash, symbolises the ultimate case in point for a nostalgia-driven, 90s hardline postfeminist revival.

The image, of course, is the original cover artwork for Sabrina Carpenter’s upcoming album—an image that, as of yesterday, now has a less controversial alternative. Now, this piece is not about Sabrina Carpenter herself. I do not believe we should blame or shame. There were numerous people who went into making that decision, and we are dealing with cultural and structural issues. Do we really believe one woman can define all that? I don’t.

Original album artwork for ‘Man's Best Friend’, Sabrina Carpenter. 

But what I do want to address is how this image is a representation of postfeminism, and why we should be vigilant. The image is explained away as an act of agency—a deliberate assertion of the artist’s subjectivity and sexuality.

However, visually, the artist is subjugated. Positioned on all fours, her hair being pulled, enacting a scene of violence at the hands of what we assume is a male figure, all while being highly sexualised. All wrapped up in the notion of satire. A joke. (Ah yes, it’s funny, I remember the 90s.)

Sounds irksomely familiar. 

Empowered, sexualised, male desire, all wrapped in a joke. It demonstrates the same contradictions of what it was to be a woman in the media in the 90s.

(Now, the only satirical way this might have worked is if, in fact, the person in the suit was Sabrina herself—if she were holding herself in that position. That would have been a bold statement. But with the release of the new image, it’s clear: there was nothing more than a hollow provocation.)

So what next? The 90s are back, baby. And with a vengeance. Enough of this woke chat, get women back in their place.

I don’t know about everyone else, but having been young in the 90s means I’m now too old to deal with this again. Worse still, this is unfolding alongside a wider cultural shift: the systemic pushback against DEI, a domestic violence crisis in Australia, and the rise of him-fluencers who—under the guise of camaraderie—repackage unattainable ideas about what it means to be a man, and what women should be. All this is happening against a growing sense of male disenfranchisement around women’s rights.

These aren’t isolated trends. They feed into each other: nostalgia, media, femininity, masculinity, and backlash. Together, they create a climate where postfeminist imagery can thrive again, disguised as irony, agency, or style.

Even though Sabrina’s team seemed to sense the tension and conceded, the original image and the storm it stirred still linger.

We’ve seen this before. This time, many of us didn’t laugh at the joke.

Let’s keep naming it, challenging it, and refusing to play along.