Girls Gotta Give Sex and Relationship Advice: Post-Feminism, Intimacy, and Self-Governance in Podcast Culture

This paper explores the ways in which episodes of the Girls Gotta Eat podcast represent a conflict between the rhetorics of choice and autonomy and the hosts’ presumed authority. A critical discourse analysis found that lack of credibility and recognition of the listeners’ autonomy complicated the hosts’ authoritative status, oversimplifications of success and disregard for rules and regulations highlighted the hosts’ unacknowledged privilege, and the promotion of self-management and self-surveillance threatened the empowering messaging that the hosts had initially strived for. Each of these findings contribute to broader discourses around intimacy, neoliberalism, and post-feminism. The discussion focuses on productive ways for the hosts to incorporate a variety of perspectives into their advice and to acknowledge their trusted positions as a responsibility.