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Verheijen, Lotte and Cordoba, Sebastian (2025) “I will always 100% be a tomboy, even underneath all this”: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the commodification of female masculinities in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. CADAAD Journal, 17 (2). pp. 108-126. ISSN 1752-3079
This study explores how female masculinities, specifically tomboy identity, are represented and commodified within The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (RHOBH). Drawing on Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), we examine how tomboy self-identification is constructed through language, visuals, and genre-specific conventions in reality television. Although RHOBH is grounded in hyper-feminine aesthetics and neoliberal values, several cast members refer to themselves as tomboys in confessionals, childhood retrospectives, or while performing masculine-coded activities. These expressions of tomboyism are typically brief, self-declared, and context-dependent, reflecting personal and enacted layers of identity while bypassing relational or communal affirmation. Our findings suggest that tomboy identity functions as a protective and performative strategy used to portray relatability, critique femininity, and reinforce authenticity without disrupting the show’s hyper-feminine norms. Through analysis of temporal-spatial identity constructs and visual semiotics (e.g., canons of use, instantiation, eyeline vector), we show how tomboyism is commodified to maintain viewer appeal while reinforcing heteronormative and consumerist ideals. Ultimately, tomboy discourse in RHOBH allows cast members to symbolically challenge gender norms while materially upholding them, revealing the complex ways reality television negotiates gender, identity, and power through mediated performance.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 4.0.
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