Authors

Iryna Shuvalova¹;  ¹ University of Oslo, Norway

Discussion

Despite the increasingly prominent role women have been playing in the Russo-Ukrainian war, including on the battlefield and in the political arena, representations of femininity in Ukrainian popular culture have often failed to keep pace with these developments, remaining rooted in the traditionalist notions equating femininity with domesticity and sexualized vulnerability. I examine Ukrainian popular songs to trace the alternative visions of woman-ness, particularly those emerging in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. By exploring the work of such artists as Stasik, Alyona Alyona, and Angy Kreyda, I map their efforts to undermine the outdated dominant cultural narratives, including through the queering of the feminine and the questioning of heteronormative body politics and power dynamics. I also examine representations of femininity in the post-invasion works by male-identifying Ukrainian performers and collectives, providing a comparative perspective on the landscape of alternative femininities in contemporary Ukrainian popular music and society as viewed through the lens of the continuing war.