Abstrack:
This paper discusses the notion of femininity values assigned to women and considered to be the sign of womanhood (Moi, 1991) and the representation of femininity by female celebrities as staged in their auto/biographical practice in women?s magazines. The paper also analyses how celebrity auto/biographical practices constitute what can be considered as feminine narrative [structure]. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of the notions of space and time (chronotope) as coined by Bakhtin (1981) in understanding the gendering and gendered construction of femininity and the feminine narrative in female celebrities? representation in the selected corpus. The celebrity auto/biographies under discussion display complex narrative structures, where cowriters and the voices of family and friends become part of the authorial voice. They take celebrity and fame as key life achievements and draw in popular cultural media forms such as magazine articles, photographic shoots and news reports to create auto/biographies that simultaneously report celebrity lives and secure celebrity status. These auto/biographies offer challenges to conventional/orthodox narrative authority in conventional autobiography and reposition the ephemera of celebrity as a form of autobiographical practice. Further, by examining how these celebrity auto/biographies utilise different points of view, fragmented narrative structures, the integration of the everyday, and the inclusion of fashion photography I argue that these works extend the meanings conventionally attached to this category of life writing. The more flexible and fragmented structure of these book-length celebrity auto/biographies and alternate auto/biographical practices appearing in women?s magazines suggest that more embracing critical accounts of contemporary auto/biographies are necessary.
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