Parody of Reality / Reality of Parody. Body Politics and Intersectional Representations of Women in Two Finnish Television Series

This paper studies representations of women and women’s bodies in multi-dimensional intersections. An intersectional approach emphasizes the multitude of factors that distinguish people from one another, such as gender, ethnicity, age, religious conviction, or social class.These differences are manifested in the human body, and by studying the representations of bodies, the embodiment – as well as the social construction – of these categories can be examined. In visual media the shaping and materialisation of these differences becomes visible through poses and gestures, costumes, make-up, staging and storytelling. Looking at the body allows one also to analyze control, the use of power, and possibilities of action and subjectivity.

We approach these questions through empirical study of two Finnish television series. ‘On the skin’ (Iholla) is a documentary reality-TV in which number of ordinary Finnish women film their everyday life and thoughts for six months.  Season two of the series portrays Sanni, a young woman with a background in conservative Christian revivalist movement, as she struggles with her identity and the different expectations and norms of religious community and secular society. ‘Wet leggings’ (Märät säpikkäät) is a comedy show created by two young Sámi women. The show can be characterized as self-reflexive parody wherein the stereotypes of both indigenous Sámi ethnicity and Finnish mainstream culture are tackled with brisk humor. In these TV-shows, the cultural conceptions and conventions related to gender, the female body, ethnicity, and religiosity are made visible – as are the projects of exclusion and inclusion leading to multi-dimensional inequalities. Reality-TV and parody allow both emphasizing and re-interpreting and deconstructing established understandings of these categories. Hence emancipation from the norms becomes possible and these shows can also be seen as producing models for new types of agency for women.