Abstract

This chapter examines the brand persona of the "Singapore Girl" created to market the services of Singapore's state-owned airline. It examines the differences – and crucially, the similarities - between the globally circulating knowledges that surround the figure of the Singapore Girl, and the political, social and domestic contours of gender politics within Singapore itself. The Singapore Girl figure illuminates how feminine subjectivities have been shaped within and for the postcolonial nation-state. I argue here that this process is never purely domestic; the state’s preoccupation with conscripting women’s bodies, labour and identities into the service of meeting national goals and objectives is always conducted with reference to broader international considerations. It is this dual influence of international processes and national gender politics that has, for a large number of Singapore women, worked to circumscribe political activity and reinforce essentialist understandings of gendered behaviour. Reading the Singapore Girl enables us to see how gender politics in Singapore are shaped by the flows of global exchange and through their positioning within specifically Singaporean relations of power.