“Oh how I love being a woman”: post-feminism and contemporary femininity on TikTok

Research has explored how the rise of new social media platforms affords new opportunities for public representations of femininity to varying effects. This paper contributes to this body of work drawing on videos posted on the social media platform, TikTok. We ask, how is womanhood being represented on the platform? To address this, we thematically analysed TikTok videos (n = 150) garnering the most attention from platform users that represent experiences unique to being "a woman" which share the sound "Oh how I love being a woman." The following themes were identified: safety, beauty as self-care and feminine bonding, and authenticity as mess. Videos concerned with safety offer a critique of structural gendered norms by representing the lived realities ofg women's management of a dangerous public sphere. Concurrently, there are contrasting representations of womanhood in the private spaces of bedrooms and bathrooms. Feminine connection and enjoyment via beauty rituals celebrate a retreat into the private sphere, whilst mess signifies a particularly authentic performance of femininity. We contend that these representations may indicate a concerning trend in post-feminist culture where the public/private binary is reinforced, and structural gendered inequities are acknowledged yet perceived as inherent and unchanging.