In the decade spanning 2010-2020, social media showcased growing celebrations of lifetime milestones across multiple platforms. Utilizing theoretical and methodological approaches based in cultural studies, Milestone Celebrations in the Age of Social Media analyzes social media phenomena including gender-reveal parties; promposals; publicized marriage proposals; divorce celebrations; and the rites of the Death Positive Movement. As our increased digital capacity ignites competitive consumerism and social media currency, we are emboldened to share and circulate major life events across public platforms. These milestone markers redefine how we communicate about topics including courtship, birth, marriage, divorce, and death. While each trend represents a unique occasion, these celebrations share themes inherent to our human experience in the digital age. Culminating in the wake of the pandemic and its impact on each communal celebration, this book illustrates one of our most vital human drives - connection.

A decade ago, it was difficult to imagine parents-to-be jumping from planes or dyeing their hair to publicly declare the sex of their unborn children. Yet gender-reveal parties have rapidly grown in popularity, saturating the public imagination surrounding pregnancy and parenthood. As a highly visible trend, gender-reveals correlate with our increased digital capacity for sharing, competitive consumerism, ritualized communitas, and social media currency. At the roots of this trend, there may be motivations to reassert binary identities against a climate of acceptance and progression surrounding gender fluidity. To analyze the divisive discourse surrounding this phenomenon, this book explores issues including technologies of reproduction and media; community and competition; visibility and signifying the unborn; consumerist imperatives; and those uninvited from this trend. In the process of selecting costumes of gender before birth, Gieseler argues, parents-to-be appropriate the unborn body as a contested, discursive site.

The Voices of #MeToo: From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar illustrates the complicated, intersectional genealogy of #MeToo – arguably one of the most successful social media projects in recent history. Exploring intersectional identity politics in #MeToo reveals how marginalized voices are engaged or silenced in the social media juggernaut. This text analyzes the discursive moment of the movement within diverse communities facing issues of: racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, ethnocentrism, binaried ideologies, toxic masculinities and systemic oppression. This book too interrogates the implications of #MeToo including: the experiential duality of public and private citizens; the appropriation and silencing surrounding identity politics and grassroots activism for people of color; the double-bind of oppression and dismissal for the LGBTQ+ community; the varied responses to #MeToo around the developed, developing, and underdeveloped world; the unique experiences and challenges facing citizens with disabilities in discussing #MeToo; and, the discussion of destabilized masculinity for hetero, cisgender men living in the #MeToo moment.

The Voices of #MeToo: From Grassroots Activism to a Viral Roar illustrates the complicated, intersectional genealogy of #MeToo – arguably one of the most successful social media projects in recent history. Exploring intersectional identity politics in #MeToo reveals how marginalized voices are engaged or silenced in the social media juggernaut. This text analyzes the discursive moment of the movement within diverse communities facing issues of: racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, ethnocentrism, binaried ideologies, toxic masculinities and systemic oppression. This book too interrogates the implications of #MeToo including: the experiential duality of public and private citizens; the appropriation and silencing surrounding identity politics and grassroots activism for people of color; the double-bind of oppression and dismissal for the LGBTQ+ community; the varied responses to #MeToo around the developed, developing, and underdeveloped world; the unique experiences and challenges facing citizens with disabilities in discussing #MeToo; and, the discussion of destabilized masculinity for hetero, cisgender men living in the #MeToo moment.

The cinematic vamp presents a fascinating archetypal character, functioning outside the bounds of normative societal and gender constructions. This filmic icon motivated the plot yet was often killed by the narrative end. Therefore, this book attempts to resolve the implications of the primary research question: Why did the vamp die? To answer this query, the text follows two theoretical paths. First, this book uses Michel Foucault's theories to ask: Is the vamp's death punishment for her location as a gendered "other"? Secondly, the text uses psychoanalytic approaches, and specifically the Freudian death drive, to ask: Does the vamp's death represent and embody the bondage between sex and death? These theoretical possibilities are applied in the analysis of the 1927 Clarence Brown film Flesh and the Devil. In addition, this text expands the typology of the vamp, freeing her from her archetypal roots and proving her existence throughout cinematic history. This book is directed towards researchers in Communications, Media Studies, and Film and Gender Theory. This text is also addressed to those interested in aspects of psychoanalysis and social construction and representation.